Step 1 is already done, and now institutional resistance from inside the party is the problem. So it is in fact time for step 2, there’s enough of a body of voters to start building it.

The trick is that to subsume the DNC in the next ten years or so, the party has to form a coalition with it for now while remaining separate. That could achieve two goals: first, put a lot of pressure on Republicans they aren’t ready for. Next, create a strong leftward tension that just isn’t represented right now and which the Democrats will be walled off from controlling.

It’s sort of what happened with the Tea Party / MAGA.

You might mess up! That’s normal. Even experienced professionals do. That might be part of your apprehension? Like, if those experienced professionals can goof up, imagine what an inexperienced person might do?

But, the reality is that you’ll mess up the same when you mess up. It’ll be a little cut here, a little singe there. Your kitchen won’t explode, you won’t catch on fire. All in all, you stop thinking of some things as mess-ups and start thinking of them as just a normal outcome.

Here’s what I would recommend doing if you want to practice in safe ways:

• Practice mixing drinks. Not necessarily cocktails! Like, mix some herbs and juice in with a club soda. Tada, that’s cooking.
• Practice making salads with take-home kits. Add some vinegar or oil and herbs in addition to what you’ve got out of the kit.
• Make hot drinks: teas, coffees, things like that. Eventually start making your own syrups for them: look up simple syrup recipes and infusions.
• Get frozen pizzas or other frozen foods. Buy extra shredded cheese and Italian seasoning. Cook them as normal except add the cheese and seasoning on top before you do.

Here’s what I would recommend if you want to increase your own personal safety:

• Get a fire extinguisher and put it somewhere obvious in your kitchen.
• Look for “cut resistant” gloves. They help protect your hands when you’re working with knives and stuff.
• Get some timers with magnets on them and practice using them. The most likely way something’ll catch fire is if you’re distracted and timers will help you avoid that.
• Get some silicone mitts and handles for the oven. They’re incredibly heat resilient!

I’d also maybe just say familiarize yourself with cooking enough to demystify it? Like, marathon watch Good Eats or Iron Chef or something? Put it on in the background while you do other stuff, and just get used to seeing kitchens and food in action?

Fundamentally though this might be worth talking to a therapist about, because it could be that you’ve got some kind of reason (maybe more rational than you imagine) to have this apprehension. If that’s the case the first step is, honestly, talking it out with someone and not ignoring it and forcing yourself to do something you’re uncomfortable with.

Yup! It took them like 10+ years before they managed to get a presidential candidate too. but they immediately got into the legislative wings, it was already well underway in Bush’s second term. Hell, they were powerful enough to thrust Palin on McCain when he ran.

The people who say this can’t exist because of FPTP are right… but only for the presidency.

In every other part of government, extra parties are very viable. Even more so if they get into legislation and prove an ability to establish coalitions. The whole dynamic of elections can change in the House every 2 years.

I’m sick and tired of this stance because Republicans have done it with Libertarians and “quiet conservative” Independents for the last decade.

It’s not the Greens because they don’t take local or legislative elections seriously. But a pro worker party that backed up the right legislation would be amazing.

These people are all whooshing hard on what you said. They can’t even imagine non-scold comments anymore.

That is exactly what they just said.

Ever wonder about how the rallies were really low attendance but Kamala’s were bumping? What if you had two entire social networks that were at a fever pitch for months, non stop? How about three? Just three 24/7 online rallies, unending, with most of America logged on and posting every single day?

It’s also worth mentioning that turnout percentage wise, 12m fewer votes is just 6-7%, and a turnout swing of that size is perfectly normal

Yeah, this is a big problem as well. I don’t want to make it seem like Republicans are somehow good for workers. They’re way worse. They will devastate the working class in the coming years.

I’m saying that it doesn’t seem to workers like there IS a party that is pro worker. And to be honest, “isn’t as bad for workers” isn’t the same as “pro worker”. So I think that if workers don’t feel like Democrats or Republicans are on their side, that seems perfectly rational to me.

Okay, cool. I’m glad I asked, instead of assuming it wasn’t genuine!

I’m not pointing the finger specifically at Biden, but I know there’s some debatable space even regarding him. I also think the rail strike is an example of bad publicity more than anything else. Biden actually intervened to stop the strike AND then pressed the rail companies to concede to the unions. It was actually a pretty big win, but it looked horrible to anyone who didn’t do the work to pay attention to the whole thing (which is damn near everyone).

The things I’m thinking about are party-wide, and they aren’t all recent. Some of it is clumsy communication, though that’s bad because it’s usually due to a big disconnect between policy-makers and regular folk. But, some of it is actual screw-ups that we never even tried to stop or reverse, or even admit was a mistake in the first place.

The Economy vs the economy (recent): Democrats are really proud of themselves for their stock market performance, and all signs point to them actually fixing up the capital-E Economy quite a lot from the devastation (and time bomb legislation) of Trump’s term. But most of us are actually concerned with the lower-case-e economy, which sucks right now.

• Grocery prices shot through the roof. My bill went from $800 to $2k/mo over the last few years. We aggressively cut back but things are much leaner now. We can’t eat out anymore. Most of this isn’t inflation, it’s just people charging more, but it’s gone completely unmentioned for years.
• Housing prices also shot through the roof. Again, because of megacorporate bad behavior, with giant companies buying up billions in houses and just… raising the prices. Things were already bad here, but this has been a catastrophe.

This and a bunch of other stuff collaborates to create an impression to folks that inflation is high and the economy sucks. But, technically, those cost of living setbacks aren’t actually due to inflation, and technically they aren’t “the economy”. So the Democrat message of “the economy is great!” has a lot of people pretty angry and frustrated.

NAFTA, and the globalization trend (decades of bad policy, here): Huge swaths of legislation which directly resulted in the loss of domestic industry and handouts to megacorporate / Wall St. bodies can be directly traced to Democrat policies. Seriously. It’s not like all policy can be predictably good or bad over a long period of time, but this specifically has never seemed good. Factories began to close domestically the instant NAFTA passed legislation, and we’ve never really recovered.

The problem here is that this is largely due to the Neoliberal / Third Way movement of Democrats. This is a pseudo-conservative corporation-friendly movement that led to Clinton’s huge sweeps in the 90s, and because of that dramatic success, Democrats see corporate lobby/donors as a core pillar of the party now. In fact, the same folks that pushed Harris’ incredibly disappointing play for “swing voter” Republicans are part of this pillar. They aren’t “borderline” conservatives, they are literal conservatives.

Fundamentally, I’m not saying “Democrats are BAD!”, I’m saying that these disconnects and pro-corporate stances are real. To look at the Democrats and feel like they aren’t sticking up for workers isn’t irrational. It makes a lot of sense.

To see what a pro-worker party might be like, think about Bernie (who seems real damn frustrated with the party right now) - as an independent, he establishes a firm coalition with Democrats in order to serve the purpose of mitigating Republican harm, but his entire slate of concerns are so completely different from Democrats writ large that they seem like totally different platforms. And, well, honestly, they are.

Yes, I can. Is that something that you would earnestly want me to do, or are you just curious if it’s something that I’m able to do?

I don’t think this was the decider. I may think their vote was unfortunate, and probably very unfortunate for them specifically, but the truth of the matter is that the abandonment of the working class in the Rust Belt is what swing the election. This would have been a safe protest vote in a world where the Democrats openly and unashamedly courted workers.

The real irony is that if they had courted workers, they would have been able to support a bolder stance against the genocide as well, and thus not lost these votes.

😂 sure

gr8 b8 m8

Arkansas?

This is what springs to mind for me as well. OP, you should try to remember this: the people around you are not as concerned with you as they are their own lives. And their own lives are probably pretty intense for them to deal with!

• Understanding other people’s lives might have intensity you don’t know about or understand is empathy. Displaying empathy will help you establish bonds with others and this is a good place to start.
• Say they do ostracize and dislike you. So what? Can they really even do anything about it? Should you even care? Probably not. It probably doesn’t matter at all. So you’ll have to deal with it for now, but they’ll move on and so will you.

It sounds like your wife is in deep grief. MS is torment, and she might be processing that grief for the rest of her life. She may not have space for a romance at all. That may never change. Sometimes, MS doesn’t let you get “back to normal”.

It is deeply crucial that you get everyone to counseling now, and not just individually but in spouse and group sessions. As much as you can afford. You have already started a new dynamic and grieving your old one is natural. But you can still support each other and it’s important to do the work and figure out what that looks like.

Partnerships can be loving and supportive and caring and not romantic. Sometimes it’s a phase that comes back to romance, sometimes not. But you need to be ready to relearn a lot of things and that starts with counseling.

Edit: And oh my gosh, I should have led with this - I’m so sorry y’all are going through this. It’s incredibly hard and I hope you get the help you need.