this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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I've seen a lot of similar comments lately. People wanting to start 3rd parties etc, because the Democrats suck so bad.
Yes, it's true. They suck, but if you're going to beat the Republicans, you'll need to look at what Trump did. He didn't start a 3rd party. No, he took the existing party and changed it into whatever the fuck it is now.
You need to change the democratic party from within too, because 3rd parties will always lose because of the first past the post. 3rd parties also have a tendency to branch out, because quite frankly, not being Democrat or Republican isn't enough of a politic in itself, and you guys don't get along well on anything else. The Republicans had this issue for a long time until Trump came along providing them with something that united their voters more than the previous politic of simply being not Democrats.
The democratic party already has a framework for running politics and they actually have some kind of democracy within that allows people to change it. Yeah, it will require a lot of work to get enough people engaged in politics to make the change, but it is absolutely much less than what is required to start a successful 3rd party.
So why not join the majority party — in this case the GOP — and reshape it again from the inside? We’ve seen the GOP is open to tectonic shifts of change, as long as it’s coming from fellow “Republicans.” Donnie himself was a Democrat before he noticed the door to the GOP was already open wide.
It's always going to be more difficult challenging the "winning" strategy.
Democrats seem to be more open to change and internal democracy.
Whatever shed of ideology is left in either party is also pointed in different directions. Roughly described, the ideologies are (supposed to be) that left wing is taking ideas from the masses and sending them upwards through democratic elections, while right wing only accepts top down decision making. Seeing the many "Trump regret" clips, it's pretty clear that his policies did not originate from his voter base.
Another case of point is when politicians flip flop and change party. Democrats allow right wing politicians to infiltrate their party dragging them to the right, whereas you don't see someone like Bernie Sanders joining GOP to drag them towards social democracy.