Short answer is no. Democrats are equally beholden to AIPAC (Israeli) and corporate interests . Until you reverse the United Citizens supreme court case, you americans will continue to be controlled by the billionaires and Israelis.
Was just discussing this with a friend. Establishment Dems are moving center (80s right) and refusing to pursue progressive ideas because they want to court the trump voter. Fuck them all.
The real test will be whether they actually deliver anything - particularly on ending aid to ISRAEL, not, as Bernie Lib-Zio Sanders would say, “the Netanyahu government”. My expectation for the genocide in Palestine is that empire would ultimately set up Netanyahu as their fall guy.
Of course it was, but it was MUCH more difficult for them. It is disingenuous to pretend that Citizens United didn’t exacerbate an already bad situation.
In reality, there were two historical moments that changed the timeline: 1) RFK’s assassination, which allowed Nixon to become president and took us down the Dark Republican path that led to MAGA, and 2) The 1974 Tax Code re-write, that first baked Trickle Down Economics into the tax code, created the Oligarch class, and gave them the disposable money to fund political manipulation.
Robert F Kennedy Sr., brother of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy Sr… He was expected to be the next president after JFK, then later he was seen as likely to be the next president after Lyndon B. Johnson. He was assassinated during the democratic primaries, in which he was the primary anti Vietnam war/pro civil rights candidate.
Johnson remains the last president to oversee major expansion of infrastructure and welfare. Biden tried for the infrastructure, but it was largely repairing as opposed to Johnson doing The Great Society which included everything from the civil rights act and extending constitutional protections to native reservations to Medicare and Medicaid to funding metro rail in several major cities and so much more. Kennedy likely would have continued down this path but with much less killing south east Asians
Rutherford B. Hayes believed the US was a corporatocracy.
Larry Lessig has been arguing since before the internet that the ownership class (including corporations and their lobbyists) get their legislature passed where the public does not. Representatives do not change how they vote according to the demands of the voters.
Reagan opened up Washington to lobbies and special interest groups. Before that, paying off your representative to pass legislation (or block it) was considered bribery and was an imprisonable offense.
So by Citizens United the federal and state governments were intrinsically corrupt.
What the citizens united decision did was open the door to unfettered foreign influence. The local oligarchs at least had to pretend not to hate people so it wouldn’t effect their quarterly earnings. Now anyone can own a piece of our government anonymously.
This is why Election Reform, with the objective of taking money out of politics, is essential. Right now, it takes massive money to win a campaign, so politicians have no choice but to beg for more, and make promises in exchange. That leaves the workers on the outside.
But if money is taken out completely, everyone becomes electorally equal, and the only election currency is every American Citizen’s single vote. That makes the rich guy’s vote no more powerful than anyone else’s, and politicians will be forced to work for the people who have the most votes, and the wealthy will be the smallest voting demographic, whose needs are less important to candidates.
But you have hit upon the problem: We have an oligarch problem primarily. Way more than we have a party problem. Or rather, solving the billionaire problem would be the necessary first step before we are able to solve the party problem. We have many other problems like fascist propaganda, which also need fixing. We’re pretty fucked. But overturning Citizens United will certainly help. Not solve. Help.
What we had before Citizens United is what lead to Citizens United. Unless we overturn the structures that made the Citizen’s United decision possible, we don’t fix anything.
Honestly, I think this is overblown at this point. We’re seeing now that giant ad budgets, while helpful, are not some silver bullet. El-Sayed was massively outspent by Stevens.
What people miss is that there is a certain saturation point for ad dollars. The parties love to spend as much money as possible, as the consultant class takes a cut of everything. But we’re seeing now that mass TV ad spend just isn’t what it used to be. You can persuade some people that way, but once everyone knows your name and general message, each dollar you spend is less and less effective.
The point is that in these big races, we can probably get 90% of the effect with 20% of the budget. This allows candidates to fund their campaigns mostly with small-dollar donations. You only need to take oligarch money if you want to have the massive ad spend.
And taking oligarch money has electoral consequences. We can’t run populist left candidates. We have to run extremely unpopular centrist corporate candidates. They have to carefully choose all their policies to not offend their wealthy donors. The only hope this type of candidate has is through massive ad spending. But if we simply run more popular candidates, the need for ads is low enough that campaigns can be funded by small dollar donors and mass boots-on-the-ground voter outreach. Unpopular candidates also have trouble getting people passionate enough to volunteer their time for the ground game.
My estimate is that the delivering party is going through a similar crisis as the republican party had with the tea party. The republican party ended up absorbing the tea party which led to a further shift to the right.
In a similar vein the DSA is becoming a significant power within the democratic party and even AIPAC money isn’t saving the establishment. The old guard is losing the fight and I imagine in a desperate attempt to cling to power some of them will take some of the DSA positions. I’m sure they’ll try to keep AIPAC funding but I hope people find it such a divisive point that it becomes untenable.
Short answer is no. Democrats are equally beholden to AIPAC (Israeli) and corporate interests . Until you reverse the United Citizens supreme court case, you americans will continue to be controlled by the billionaires and Israelis.
This primary is proving the opposite. Progressive dems are winning by campaigning on being against AIPAC.
but Democrat “corporate centre” is against these progressives so my answer is still no.
The point is we can replace them.
About the only hope I have left right now.
Was just discussing this with a friend. Establishment Dems are moving center (80s right) and refusing to pursue progressive ideas because they want to court the trump voter. Fuck them all.
FYI, those people lost control of the DNC in 2024.
The real test will be whether they actually deliver anything - particularly on ending aid to ISRAEL, not, as Bernie Lib-Zio Sanders would say, “the Netanyahu government”. My expectation for the genocide in Palestine is that empire would ultimately set up Netanyahu as their fall guy.
As we all know, US politics wasn’t controlled by oligarchs before Citizens United.
Of course it was, but it was MUCH more difficult for them. It is disingenuous to pretend that Citizens United didn’t exacerbate an already bad situation.
In reality, there were two historical moments that changed the timeline: 1) RFK’s assassination, which allowed Nixon to become president and took us down the Dark Republican path that led to MAGA, and 2) The 1974 Tax Code re-write, that first baked Trickle Down Economics into the tax code, created the Oligarch class, and gave them the disposable money to fund political manipulation.
“…RFK’s assassination,”
If only that was true. Typos are disappointing. 😭
Robert F Kennedy Sr., brother of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy Sr… He was expected to be the next president after JFK, then later he was seen as likely to be the next president after Lyndon B. Johnson. He was assassinated during the democratic primaries, in which he was the primary anti Vietnam war/pro civil rights candidate.
Johnson remains the last president to oversee major expansion of infrastructure and welfare. Biden tried for the infrastructure, but it was largely repairing as opposed to Johnson doing The Great Society which included everything from the civil rights act and extending constitutional protections to native reservations to Medicare and Medicaid to funding metro rail in several major cities and so much more. Kennedy likely would have continued down this path but with much less killing south east Asians
Noted. Mind, I still would have liked that bullet to travel through time and space into one of our era’s problems.
Rutherford B. Hayes believed the US was a corporatocracy.
Larry Lessig has been arguing since before the internet that the ownership class (including corporations and their lobbyists) get their legislature passed where the public does not. Representatives do not change how they vote according to the demands of the voters.
Reagan opened up Washington to lobbies and special interest groups. Before that, paying off your representative to pass legislation (or block it) was considered bribery and was an imprisonable offense.
So by Citizens United the federal and state governments were intrinsically corrupt.
What the citizens united decision did was open the door to unfettered foreign influence. The local oligarchs at least had to pretend not to hate people so it wouldn’t effect their quarterly earnings. Now anyone can own a piece of our government anonymously.
This is why Election Reform, with the objective of taking money out of politics, is essential. Right now, it takes massive money to win a campaign, so politicians have no choice but to beg for more, and make promises in exchange. That leaves the workers on the outside.
But if money is taken out completely, everyone becomes electorally equal, and the only election currency is every American Citizen’s single vote. That makes the rich guy’s vote no more powerful than anyone else’s, and politicians will be forced to work for the people who have the most votes, and the wealthy will be the smallest voting demographic, whose needs are less important to candidates.
It certainly made it easier, though.
But you have hit upon the problem: We have an oligarch problem primarily. Way more than we have a party problem. Or rather, solving the billionaire problem would be the necessary first step before we are able to solve the party problem. We have many other problems like fascist propaganda, which also need fixing. We’re pretty fucked. But overturning Citizens United will certainly help. Not solve. Help.
What we had before Citizens United is what lead to Citizens United. Unless we overturn the structures that made the Citizen’s United decision possible, we don’t fix anything.
We need a second Reconstruction.
Honestly, I think this is overblown at this point. We’re seeing now that giant ad budgets, while helpful, are not some silver bullet. El-Sayed was massively outspent by Stevens.
What people miss is that there is a certain saturation point for ad dollars. The parties love to spend as much money as possible, as the consultant class takes a cut of everything. But we’re seeing now that mass TV ad spend just isn’t what it used to be. You can persuade some people that way, but once everyone knows your name and general message, each dollar you spend is less and less effective.
The point is that in these big races, we can probably get 90% of the effect with 20% of the budget. This allows candidates to fund their campaigns mostly with small-dollar donations. You only need to take oligarch money if you want to have the massive ad spend.
And taking oligarch money has electoral consequences. We can’t run populist left candidates. We have to run extremely unpopular centrist corporate candidates. They have to carefully choose all their policies to not offend their wealthy donors. The only hope this type of candidate has is through massive ad spending. But if we simply run more popular candidates, the need for ads is low enough that campaigns can be funded by small dollar donors and mass boots-on-the-ground voter outreach. Unpopular candidates also have trouble getting people passionate enough to volunteer their time for the ground game.
My estimate is that the delivering party is going through a similar crisis as the republican party had with the tea party. The republican party ended up absorbing the tea party which led to a further shift to the right.
In a similar vein the DSA is becoming a significant power within the democratic party and even AIPAC money isn’t saving the establishment. The old guard is losing the fight and I imagine in a desperate attempt to cling to power some of them will take some of the DSA positions. I’m sure they’ll try to keep AIPAC funding but I hope people find it such a divisive point that it becomes untenable.