[wsws.org]

@Ian-Duggan Well these are people who are so socialist that they put "democratic socialist" in scare quotes when talking about Ocasia-Cortez.

Duverger's Law is the immovable object here. A third party will never succeed at national-level elections under the American System (unlike, say, British or Australian coalition governance systems and "top 3" voting, etc). So whether you're talking about the D or R parties, you are only going to succeed at anything through those two (or something that replaces their charred hulks, whether in name or not).

My prediction is that the GOP will self-destruct and be replaced by something more purist radical right (combination Tea-Party and Trumpism with some uncertain level of Christian fundamentalist / dominionist influence) and the Democratic party will self-destruct and be replaced by something more Bernie Sanders-like. But "self-destruct" is a slo-mo process that doesn't happen in one election cycle, nor is it sustainably moved forward by purists who can't compromise and play the long game. Compromise is not a dirty word in this context. And in my view admitting you have friends across ideological boundaries whom you respect on a personal level is not a sin either.

The Democratic party is being moved inexorably to the left by the youngsters coming of age. How far that will go depends on how quickly those youngsters become the establishment and become more conservative with age, but I think the centrist / plutocrat party will at least for a time give way to something more like what it represented a couple of generations ago, championing unions and farm workers and immigrants and the like -- but with the added championing of universal health care, which I hope they will manage to push on through.

That will of course never satisfy a hardcore socialist or communist but I personally wouldn't want it to go that far anyway.

@mordant reform was possible when the west feared the soviet union now the bourgeoisie is asking for all its reforms back, mark my words my friend this is not a question of reform or revolution but rather a question of revolution or counter revolution

@Ian-Duggan Well a portion of the bourgeoisie perceives enough of an existential threat that they can be manipulated into giving up those reforms, which that subset never really wanted to begin with. They have always feared the Hated Other in all its forms, and always wanted to tell themselves that they were part of a romanticized South that was going to rise again from the ashes or some such similar claptrap. Just at the point they were resigning themselves to publicly conforming to an incomprehensible new order of egalitarian sentiment, along comes Trump and stokes up the hopes and dreams they've always held dear of transcendent rebirth through true belief and exclusion of unbelievers (be they cultural or religious beliefs, or both).

That is the power of fascistic nationalism and xenophbia. It's always been latent within certain cultural groups. I'm poor and can't get anywhere and it's all the fault of those black / brown / gay people or foreigners and their snowflake enablers.

The good news is that a slightly larger portion of the bourgeoisie very much wants to keep the reforms and to continue to expand them.

I know which group has the sustainable strategy. The fascists will ultimately fail. The amount of human suffering and dystopia or [counter-]revolution involved before "ultimate failure" is the open question.

@mordant Obama, Bill clinton and the so called liberals enabled Trump by tearing apart social spending and transferring wealth to the rich. The Democrats and all the pseudo left parties that supported them claimed the great divide was gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity all the while talking about class as little as possible. I put it to you to you that to large extent the white working class in america isn't racist yet but they are sick of identity politics and its unscientific mutterings of privilege, I'll tell you who's privileged the top 10% petit bourgeois to bourgeois class. The fact of the matter is that liberals in government from Obama's record shift of wealth from bottom to top his spying system he set up and his illegal wars and drone assassinations has shown no remorse for the poor, he's acting in his own class interest. [wsws.org]

I feel like no true scotsman fallacy is a way to stop talking but alexandria and Bernie are not socialists by real standards. Bernie voted for multiple wars and voted to fund the Iraq war by the tune of billions twice, and you cannot be a socialist without being against imperialist wars ( all wars for that matter except class war). Alexandria and Bernie are pushing for war with russia and Alexandria has accepted money from the banks surely you can see when the right wing calls themself democratic they're lying what I see is when charlatans call themself left they're lying. I think you are misusing this fallacy or at the very least it is a flawed fallacy, say there's a narcissist in your mist, this person will tell you they are the most honourable, trustworthy, smart and kind people to know but narcissists have to say this because their actions say something different, that they're liars, cheats and thieves so a narcissist will say their trustworthy and a normal person but if a psychiatrist catches them out are you then going to claim no true scotsman. Also Obama claimed he was left but he had no qualms doing the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich on record.

We are in an international revolutionary crisis and the working class has to organize internationally if we want the socialist revolution to succeed. Trotsky pointed out in his theory of permanent revolution that only when the last revolution in the last capitalist country is successful do we actually have Communism/Socialism that is a global working class entirely owning the means of their own production and only then will the democratic revolution be permanent. This is why I have opinions on Canada, the US, England, Greece and India etc etc. The working class owns no nation so it has to unite internationally in a globalized trade world to stand against the bourgeoisie and the Unions who will simply threaten the native workers with moving production to a cheap labour country this is exactly why my fight siding with my class has to have comradeship internationally.