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Wolfy Jack's avatar

On the piece about Golden and your rebuttal of progressive Jamelle Bouie's take:

"We are well past the age of split-ticket voting. If and when voters turn against Biden, they’ll turn against congressional Democrats too. Try as they might, these Democratic skeptics will struggle to distance themselves from their party and its leadership. If past elections are any evidence, they’ll fail."

I totally agree that Bouie has it bass ackwards on this and that if Dems don't distance themselves from the woke issues, weak on crime, ignore border security, they will continue to lose.

I support Welcome and will continue so, but I get more skeptical that this is correctable in the short term because Wolfy's political corollary to Newton's law shows that for every political action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and whatever pushback we can do, and it is worth doing, the progressives will push the other way.

It was notable that not one Dem Senator voted for the bill specifying that Title 9 is not for transgender women. This despite Newsome's recent correction. If Democrats want to die on that hill for XY humans playing women's sport, that even a majority of Democrats dont believe in I have less hope that Dems will shake their unpopularity.

Now, I am glad that Golden won, but that in the quirky state of Maine, and doesn't reflect the continuing trend of straight ticket politics, with all the Dem Senate spots left in Red states biting the dust - OH, WV, and MT.

It is worthy to keep trying but I am pushing a corollary third party approach, not to be antagonistic to Welcome, but to be a second front that I am calling the New Democratic Party ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/1865832800920360 ) with the general beliefs of the New Democratic Caucus. This is certainly a quixotic delusion of grandeur move as I am a devotee of St, Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, and my last group Roy Cooper for President in 2024 never reached the threshold of minimal visibility.

But it does reflect a good idea. That if Democrats are unable to distance themselves from the always more vocal and media getting attention progressives, we need an alternative. As long as a third party refused to be a spoiler and would never do anything that would help MAGA, I think in specific races it could outdo a moderate Democrat.

The prime example imo is Dan Osborne who ran for Senate in NE, and ran well ahead of every Democrat in the US for statewide office in comparison to Harris' vote. He was supported by most Dems, but refused the party's endorsement, b/c he knew that in NE as in much of America the Dem brand is toxic

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