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Its a city with more people in it than 25 states.
Also home to no less than 17 different US congressional districts, 27 State Assembly districts, and 14 State Senate districts. Lots of opportunities to bring socialists into your administration, contract with labor-friendly businesses and encourage pro-labor policy in the enormous municipal workforce, and line up the next generation of socialist aspirants for high office. As a center of power from which to cultivate more like-minded Socialist politicians you'd be hard pressed to name a better spot.
I would say the bigger issue with the LA Mayoralty is that it's a generally weak-mayor system, requiring more buy-in from City Council and a good raport with the City Controller to get a budget approved. Fortunately, DSA already holds several city council seats and has been expanding its popularity city-wide for over a decade.
If you're going to be a Socialist in America and you have aspirations toward public office (or just a role in the public-sector bureaucracy), you can pick quite a few worse places to live.
I look at it same as Mamdani.
We need to show people a good example of these policies in practice. And this addresses the criticism of only going for President or higher office.
It's less of a problem now that national media effectively refuses to cover third party candidates as more than a novelty or a joke. Historically, a run for President guaranteed a national platform and easier national ballot access for the party (for better or worse). Now third party bids just make you a national pariah. You get more media mileage running as a Congressional or Mayoral underdog in a hot primary than as a 2% vote-getter at a national level.
As an aside, I don't think the US would elect from a third party, for President. However, I do think the US would elect an independent to the Presidency. There is just too much legacy baggage and propaganda against third parties in the US.
Ross Perot won 19M votes - a full 19% of the total cast - in 1992. And that was after dropping out suddenly, then needing to reboot his campaign following a popular high watermark in June. At that point, Perot led the national public opinion polls with support from 39% of the voters (versus 31% for Bush and 25% for Clinton).
I think you're underselling how influential an outsider could be if both parties ran really disappointing candidates. It should be noted that Republican polling was in the garbage by the end of Bush 41's term, while Democrats suffered enormous structural headwinds (virtually every big state had a Republican lean in 1992).
It isn't that hard to imagine a 2028 campaign in which a turd like JD Vance runs against a Mondale-esque Democrat and the popular voting majority is woed by a Platner-style independent. Or a third-party George Wallace / Huey Long candidate tries to do National Socialism outside the two party system, with the backing of Silicon Valley tech trillionaires and media magnets.
Hell, we almost saw something similiar with the RFK Jr campaign (before he was bought off and brought in by Trump) in 2024. And Trump himself, after he threatened to run indie during the 2016 GOP Primaries. We actually saw something like this play out in 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt ran an independent campaign against his own former VP, Howard Taft, and consigned the GOP to a third place finish (while handing Woodrow Wilson a landslide win).
I mean, look, we're in a politics forum thats practically a shitpost-tier. From my own perspective.. I think Bernie should have ran Independent in 16', '20, and '24 after the bullshit the Dem's pulled. I personally reject almost all of the traditional "wisdom" of whats possible in politics.
But just because you or I think those things, there is a form of permission wall ideas like these have to get through. Or at least media believe it has the ability to shut down strategies like this.
I keep trying to think about who should run for President on the left in 2028, and I keep feeling like I don't have an option to put forwards. Do you have any suggestions for candidates you think could run this outside power strategy?
Christ, if Dems weren't calling him a "stealth Trumper" before... I'm sorry, but Sanders simply wasn't hard core enough to pull that off. The dude is a Democrat. The problem isn't his liberal credentials nearly so much as the rest of the party being stealth Republicans. It's very much a "Idk why I should run third-party when they're the ones that suck". Fucking Hillary should have launched a third party bid by the time Dems had finished fumbling the bag in 2024.
The obvious answer is AOC.
The pro-tier answer is JB Pritsker. Legit closest thing to an FDR quality candidate I've seen in my lifetime.
The dream answer is just sneaking into a Pete Buttigieg campaign rally and having Mamdani hit him with a steel chair, then take over the thing whole cloth.
The joke answer is Hasan Piker.
Okay apologies I should have been more specific. I meant in the context of our conversation, as in "Who could run 3rd party and win, if the Dems insist on a corpo-Dem and Republicans continue to be Republicans"...
I don't think she could win as a 3rd party candidate and her political instincts are kinda shit.
This is a good answer but are they the kind of person looking to challenge establishment power?
I want to live in that timeline. But here's a curveball for you since this is the thread were in..
What if, perhaps, it was the Jr. Senator from Maine who decided to run in 2028...
Edit: realized this was a different post than I thought (I thought we were in the Mills thread). Not changing the text.
Ah. That's a harder question, since you need someone both credible with political insiders and popular with outsiders.
I think any serious third party bid would come from the right, by way of a disgruntled conservative friendly to mega-donors trying an outside bid.
Tucker Carlson is friendly enough with Elon Musk and has a large following independent of the GOP as an institution. He's got potential.
I could also see a high profile Crypto bro going for it. Justin Sun is a high profile contender. He's got Andrew Yang energy.
Both have a Trumpian path to victory, posing as outsiders will functioning as mega-donor insiders
Idk if he's got broad national appeal. Winning a plurality in Maine is very different than competing across California, Texas, and Florida.
But I could see his endorsement powering an outside bid.
I'm just reminded of another Jr. senator who didn't spend long in the seat, and who went on to take the presidency. Like, I genuinely think Platner is far more electable nationally than anyone we've discussed so far. He's a progressive mind in a maga body. He walks like a chud, talks like a woke.
On Tucker and the right, I think at least the call on Tucker running is spot on, for example, if Vance thinks he "owns" the MAGA movement because he got carried by DJT's coat tails.
And residents still have a fractional amount of voting power compared to someone in Wyoming. Thanks senate structure…
The Senate isn't the main problem. We need to fix the House before we can ditch the Senate.
What I mean is, repeal the Permanent apportionment act of 1929 and make the House of Representatives actually representative.
With that one act of Congress, the House and Presidency would realign themselves with national popular vote.
This would make further changes possible.