What's a Zilch?
this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
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Zilch means zero, nothing.
A massive lead you say?
Good for him.
He doesn’t owe them shit
Ask AOC how that plays out
AOC is a great politician in the wrong country. No way will America vote a latina or a woman, or both.
AOC is a great politician in the wrong country.
AOC was a genuinely transformative candidate for about six months in 2019, right after she got elected but before Nancy Pelosi put her in a headlock and nuggied her into submission. Now she's just a cardboard cutout of democratic socialism that the neoliberal base of the party can drag out to fundraise with.
No way will America vote a latina or a woman, or both.
America elected an African American Man, because he had a 1000 watt smile and knew how to talk pretty on TV.
I think AOC still needs work on her stage presence. But with some coaching and practice, a bit more time dealing with the national news vultures, and a base that's hungry enough to buy what she's selling, she could be a front-runner for anything she wants to run for.
If she makes it to a general election, indie voters are absolutely going to trip over their own dicks turning out for President Cute Feet. But I suspect she'll be sandbagged in the primary by some mummy brigade from Iowa accidentally unplugging all the voting booths from the district with voters under the age of 40. Then she places a tight second behind Pete Buttigieg and the super-delegates tell her they'll make her the VP candidate if she can raise an extra $150M.
Jon carries a lot of water for the idea that the Democratic Party leadership are inept.
They are not. They accomplish every task they set out to.
The problem is that they don’t want the same things the voters in the party want.
They don’t want to “win”. The only thing they want is to maintain their proximity to wealth and power, and so they have cast their lot with the oligarchy, the same as Republicans.
The Democratic Party ”runs cover” (“block tackle” for you Europeans) for the Republicans while the Republicans overtly dismantle democracy. There is always a parliamentarian or a “blue slip rule” to help the Dems steal defeat from the jaws of victory. How many times do they need to strain credulity and invent some new excuse or mechanism for their failure for it to form a composite image of collaboration?
The Democratic Party is a honeypot used to attract and neutralize progressive policies and politicians, and prevent the “Overton Window” of American politics from moving left.
At every crucial moment they have supported the privatization and financialization of the commons, the wars of aggression, the surveillance & police state, and they will continue to do so until Palantir storm troopers are dragging people from their Blackrock housing to Amazon work camps to fulfill their mandated techno feudal district conscription period.
If either party paid attention to their voters we would have had an election of Bernie Sanders vs Ron Paul years ago, but both of them have their chosen one, and the only time we've seen a massive pushback against that has been the time the alternative was actually worse.
Thank you! Like why are we acting like what's happening in the Middle East isn't chuck schumers lifelong wet dream in action??
Thank you. I'm tired of people thinking the neo-liberals of the Democrats are their friends. They point toward the few pieces of legislation they pass that's positive when they ignore all the needed legislation they never even give lip service to. In all the time since its inception payments for disabilities and similar have not risen to meet inflation, the amount they can keep in a bank account hasn't changed since like the 1970s. There's SO much wrong that the Dems could platform on and spend so much time doing if they win but they don't want to.
I think you're wrong. Or rather, I think you're mostly wrong.
Like, in no way do I think they are extremely good at what they do, unless your argument is that they don't give a shit, which I also think is wrong. They definitely want to win. They definitely want to control things. They literally make more money (not the organization, mind you, the people who run the organization) when they are in control. It is silly to think otherwise. Heck, it is safer, too!
But, I think they are quite dumb, or maybe it's better to think of them as out of touch. They rely on political calculus, but they're using some pretty bad variables. Because otherwise, there wouldn't be any progressive Democrats at all. Like, that is inherently detrimental to their centrism. Giving crumbs isn't as useful to them as people say because it let's others know how hungry they are for more of that. Hope is contagious.
I think they work with what they got, and what they got is so rapidly changing that they freak out and pick what they think is the safest option over and over again. And their base hates it, but they'll deal with that part later, there's just too many fires for them!
Like, sure, there's a little bit of trying to control how progressive they can be, but they just... Suck at that, too. I dunno, man. A lot of people can skate by on incompetency, and that just feels more likely.
If they wanted to win they would release the 2024 election autopsy. Instead they buried it. Yes, they dont mind winning elections but they absolutely would rather lose than allow progressives in power. They just buried the election autopsy a week ago and now everyone forgot about it. Same thing trump relies on to stay in power.
Folks like you being unrealistic about what we can all see happening is a huge part of their enablement.
"Gosh, golly, we blew it again, so sorry everyone! Being the good guys, we have a harder challenge, we have to fight for change the right way. Sometimes we lose by sticking to our principles 😞"
Yeah fucking right. Of course they'd prefer themselves be the current half dominating the other, but not so they can make any kind of sweeping changes. Just because it's cushier on top. And yes, the DNC is where the folks who sincerely do want to fix things end up. And just look how they're prevented from ever getting anything done. They get co-opted and sidelined, another major function of the party. Absorb the true believers and thereby dull and mute their influence.
The moment Dems have actual control and power - even for a moment - as soon as it's theirs they roll over. Recent shutdown capitulation was a perfect example, but it's just over and over and over. I'm not claiming every rank and file Democrat politician is "in on it", I'm claiming it doesn't matter, if the party structure and behavior is obviously corrupt and strictly self-serving as the commenter you're replying to laid out.
It's rich people against us, Dem leadership is against us. Please stop being so naive. Your naivete is a literal weapon they wield to abuse us all.
I don't believe I disagreed with the assertion that the DNC leadership wants to make sweeping changes. I said that they are NOT some type of controlled opposition. If they were, they wouldn't be fucking up as hard as they do at every aspect you stated. They are a combination of inefficient, out-of-touch, greedy, and... Lazy, but like they want everyone to like them which makes them inauthentic?
I think it's unrealistic to think the DNC is smart enough to undermine everything but somehow not smart enough to just... Lie better? You know? Why bother being so fucking pathetic when it is easier, cheaper, and faster to just lie? Why make an autopsy on why you lost the election and burying it because of your Israeli money ties if you were a genius and could just make a fake report that blames progressive policies real fucking easily.
Like, sure, call them sociopaths and everything because the DNC is having to defend legitimately bad positions in spite of its supporters opposition because money, but don't pretend that is out of some masterminded technique. They are not that smart.
Sometimes I wonder if they don't have a monthly secret meeting where they look at which issues appear to be up and coming and then flip a coin for which party takes which side of it. Kinda like debate club.
It often looks more like performance art. The dems pretend to take one side of an issue, and then rally their base about how the GOP want to stop the solution or tear down current protections. And of course the GOP takes the other side and rallys their base against what the "lunatic" dems want to do (which of course the dems would never do because then the issue would be gone), and they start proposing ways to tear down whatever law already favor the democrats side.
When the dems get in power, somehow very few of the things they proposed before actually happen. And the ones that do are so soft an executive order can undo them.
It's just a shell game. Perception manipulation.
All of this is true, but by saying it you might somehow influence the outcome of an election in a manner that favors Republicans.
Therefore I hate you with every fiber of my being and denounce you as a Sockpuppet of an Enemy Nation.
I just haven't decided if you're a Russian Bot, a Chinese Wumao, or an Ayatollah Accomplice. Perhaps all three.
I'm not an american, but it seems like the only way americans will be represented by their government is if they out the 2 party system.
There's this vibe of self-destruction in american society that is rooted in the 2 party system: one party is your mortal enemy and another doesn't quite represent you - so everyone just low key feels like destroying the whole thing rather than working on making it better.
Yeah i used to say this as a kid: why is the government spending any money at all on primaries, and then why do they only spend money on two parties. Any private party should just pay for their own primaries, the govt should only be concerned with the general elections.
To my prepubescent eyes, it was clearly the government rigging elections. But all the adults told me that I didn't understand.
Now 30 years later it's plain as day that it was always a problem, and now we have a chomo-in-chief blowing up fishermen halfway around the world and people still don't see the problem with the two party system.
Money In Politics
Two Party System
Gerrymandering
Electoral College
The four horsemen of a Democratic apocalypse.
If we could fix just one of those four issues, things would gradually start to get better. But the politicians in Washington don't have the political will or desire to do so, because removing any one of them naturally limits their power and authority.
I would argue based on 2025-26 the US is a one party system. A party of corruption, graft and self-enrichment.
I don't disagree, but the problem stems from neither party being motivated to be anything more than ideologically different from one another, and the system being designed on purpose to squash a viable 3rd party from ever emerging. If we instead had a parliamentary system and did away with FPTP voting, we could have more coalition building around issues rather than feeling like we have no choice but to select what we deem to be the lesser of two evils, and political parties would be forced to fix issues rather than just campaign on them.
We only have a 2 party system on paper. Behind closed doors, they are working for the same goals. Make the rich people happy so they can be rich people with influence. The general population is just something that they have to manage on their way to their goals. Adding more parties will help, but it will eventually end up the same. As long as you need money to get elected, then money will control those who get elected.
If we organize we could seize control of the democratic party, and the Democratic establishment has been scared shitless of that since 2016, but they managed to play us off each other like chumps. And they still are. Because we have no organization. Turning us against each other.
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the only way americans will be represented by their government is if they out the 2 party system.
Have you seen the other options? Libertarians are a NAMBLA fueled trainwreck. Greens are... not great for a lot of reasons. Third Way is just fascism in a three piece suit. Reform is six oil companies in a trench coat.
You can't multi-party your way out of this one.
You can indeed have better governing by a multi party system. But then again how would you americans know? Oh wait, you are somehow different then everyone and even trying something different is crazy.
Enjoy your rapidly collapsing empire I guess. You have truely tried nothing and are all out of ideas after all.
You can indeed have better governing by a multi party system.
Glances at German, the UK, France, and Canada
I'm still waiting for these bets to pay out.
But then again how would you americans know?
Because we're not trapped in the fucking basement. Countries with multi-party systems have the exact same basket of Principle-Agent problems suffered by US constituencies. The Two-Party system is endemic of partisan entrenchment and FPTP elections and a bunch of other archaic proto-democratic procedural relics. But a Three-Party system doesn't get around all the other problems of district-based representation, over-large constituencies, money in politics, private monopolies in mass media, or the simple fact that the bigger parties have all the manpower and the first selection of appealing candidates.
It should be mentioned that Donald Trump tried to run for President way the fuck back in 2000 and couldn't even get the Reform Party endorsement. What propelled his campaign in 2016 was the obsessive media coverage that he couldn't get sixteen years earlier.
Trump was able to tap a neglected base of voters largely concentrated in the GOP and solidify a party at war with itself under Obama. Splitting his brand of MAGA Fascism into its own partisan force leaves us with all the same problems we're facing under a modern GOP majority.
Similarly, the Reform UK in Britain is just gobbling up all the Conservative voters. This, while the Greens and... uh... Your Party(?) are snatching up Labour. When you can only have one winner per district, multiple parties do nothing to improve individual representation, because you're still stuck in a district that's split 60/40 between "People who kinda-sorta agree with you" and "People who want to see you drawn and quartered".
Enjoy your rapidly collapsing empire I guess.
Whistling past the graveyard, bitch.
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