General Discussion

Last edited Sat Nov 29, 2025, 07:50 PM - Edit history (1)

I think one of the fundamental problems with our party apparatus is that the old-time establishment types truly believe that US politics is like a pendulum. We get swings to the right and they are always followed by swings to the left. Accepting this theory means that we lose half the elections, but the Republicans always overreach so we win the next one and everybody is good. And this problem is further exacerbated by the fact that political consultants are actually more valuable when "the pendulum" has us out of power. People are always willing to spend money to get back into power, because the power is worth billions of dollars.

There are several problems with the pendulum theory:

1) It does not swing back through the middle and then to the left. Instead, what we see is a long-term movement toward the far right. Today, the Dem establishment is far away from the grassroots progressives that they assume should be part of the Dem base. This is a big reason why registered Dems were 50% a couple of decades ago, but now are only 25% of the electorate.

2) The pendulum theory suggests the smartest place to be is in the center because the pendulum passes through the center twice as often as it gets to the extremes. (That is a fallacy -- see #1) The party apparatus tries to field candidates who will fit into that center position. And what that means is that when we do win elections, we cannot accomplish any big changes because whatever "mandate" we have is to do nothing. The public hates that. They know this country has serious problems. The last thing we need is status quo. The public has shown that they are willing to support a full-fledged fascist who is promising change over a party that isn't committed to any particular changes.

The pendulum theory is 100% wrong and it has been killing us. We need to introduce new ideas into the conversation, and to do that, we have to replace the leadership that is committed to the imaginary "center".