“[SLUR A] is a slur” and “[SLUR B] is worse than [SLUR A]” are two separate conversations.

Well, for starters, I’m an anticapitalist, so I find fault with most politicians (clearly not to the extent that I won’t vote for them though).

With that caveat in mind, the biggest complaint I have is actually with his current stated position on Israel. He currently opposes BDS (which is hardly surprising even for the most progressive Democratic politicians), and hasn’t come out in support of a complete arms embargo on Israel. He’s one of those politicians who pretends there’s a difference between the practical application of Israel’s use of “defensive” and “offensive” weapons.

That being said, I think he can be moved farther left, because he cares more about representing the will of the people (or at least, the appearance of representing the will of the people) than Schumer or any of the other AIPAC-owned senators do.

Fuck yeah he is! I don’t agree with his positions on everything (I’m definitely further left than he is), but on the most time-sensitive issues at present, he’s right where we need a senate leader to be.

And more importantly, he seems to be the most ethical senator who is open to considering the role.

It’s sounding more and more like our best strategy is to advocate to replace Schumer with Chris Van Hollen as leader.

If you have Democratic senators, you can sign the below petition and it will be sent to them as a letter/email from you:

https://resist.bot/petitions/PMHONJ?ref=a2a69496-d365-42e3-baf9-90bdf97610f0&channel=apple

It’s sounding more & more like our best bet to replace Schumer is Van Hollen.

If you have Democratic senators, you can sign the below petition and it will be sent to them as a letter/email from you:

https://resist.bot/petitions/PMHONJ?ref=a2a69496-d365-42e3-baf9-90bdf97610f0&channel=apple

You may want to check out the Amendment App (web app). People can use it to request a candidate’s position on a specific issue, and I’ve seen people recommending it for getting their incoming congresspeople’s position on congressional democratic leadership on the record.

1. Staffers are required to keep record of what issues are being brought to their congressperson’s office by what number of constituents on a daily basis. The larger the number of constituents bringing the same issue to them, the harder it is to ignore.

2. Even receiving a form letter on your congressperson’s position is useful. Forcing them to declare their position before democratic congressional leadership has formally been chosen gives you confirmation as to how to proceed. If they are expressing support for an unethical congressperson like Jeffries or Schumer, you can share this letter with other constituents, who can then organize to make your congressperson’s life absolute hell until they choose to represent the will of their constituents accurately.

Ugh, that’s terrible. If you feel up to it, maybe you can share this response with other progressive communities in your district?

Spreading the word that he is putting himself on the record as supporting Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker of the House can spark organized outrage and encourage folks to increase the pressure.

If any of you want to help take Jeffries (and Schumer) down, I made this post of resources to use to pressure our democratic congresspeople over the next few weeks:

https://lemmy.world/post/54043642

Awesome! Yeah, whenever I have some downtime, I browse various Resistbot petitions and sign a couple.

Then we run as our own party. But until that point, the way to most effectively move the needle to the left is to shift an already-existing dominant party to the left.

I hope we eventually overthrow the two party system entirely, that’s the dream.

Everyone in leadership is an compromised by AIPAC, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, and so on.

Everyone currently in leadership is compromised. But we just voted in new blood who isn’t, and there are also more established congresspeople who aren’t compromised by corporations or AIPAC/Zionist influence.

You can replace Schumer and Jeffries, but their replacements will also be pro-Israel and pro-billionaire.

This is speculation and it is unhelpful. Right now, we have a window of time to pressure our congresspeople to replace Schumer and Jeffries with people who have proven themselves to fight against billionaires and Zionists. Is it an uphill fight? Yeah, but the outcome has not been decided yet, let’s not accept defeat without trying.

Based on what? If you don’t have data or logic to support your opinion, what do you think you’re accomplishing by clinging to an incorrect opinion?

It just will never work. It will have bad results.

You don’t have any proof to back this up, you’re just being a doomer.

People naturally don’t like being told what to do.

Sooo… like I said, they can turn in an empty ballot…

This is actually very stupid and authoritarian, too.

It’s not, it would be authoritarian to force people to cast a vote for candidates on the ballot. Being allowed to write in candidates or turn in a blank ballot gives you the same amount of freedom to make your voice heard.

If we are going full authoritarian

We’re not

then I personally would rather prevent so many people from voting.

The data shows that the more people that vote, the better the elections tend to go for progressive candidates and policies.

By every observable metric, the more people who turn out for elections, the more progressive the elections go.

Sure compulsory elections would also bring out all the ignorant bigots, but by and large, they tend to show up to vote more often than progressives do already.

We could do compulsory voting without making you choose literally anything on the ballot. If you want to protest vote, you could literally turn in an empty ballot (and honestly that’s what everyone should be doing who genuinely wants to protest vote).

I’m keeping a record of everything my elected officials do right, and everything that they do wrong. And every time I call them, I tell them that we’re keeping track of whether they’re listening to their constituents, we will organize accordingly when they’re up for re-election.

It sounds like an empty threat, but for those of us who actually care, we’re making shit happen.

In my district, we just got rid of an establishment dem representative, and got our first progressive representative in decades.

We can, and are, moving the needle left.

While definitely worth signing to cover all our bases, I just want to clarify that each Resistbot petition is sent directly to your specific elected representative/senators as a letter/email from you, their constituent :)

For a quick, easy way to directly write to your congresspeople to tell them to oppose Schumer & Jeffries, you can sign these Resistbot petitions:

Reject Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker of the House

Reject Chuck Schumer as Senate Majority Leader

I don’t have time right now because I’m at work, but if anyone wants to create a petition on Resistbot, we can sign & boost it, and it will automatically send the petition to our representatives