Thread by @ErikLoomis

I agree with every sentence in this piece except the idea that progressives will somehow break from Dems to achieve their goals, which is completely betrayed by the entirety of American history and exists on Leftist Dream Planet.

jacobinmag.com/2019/01/alexan…

If you see what AOC, Pressley, and others are doing in moving the Dems rapidly to the left and your takeaway is the inevitability of a leftist third party, well, I am going to go suffocate myself now.

The left's third party infatuation is so vexing. There is NOTHING in American history that suggests they can work. All the energy you would spend in organizing that party is energy you could spend fighting for issues and taking over the Democratic Party.

And none of this is new. Socialists have been arguing for third party campaigns going back over a century. It might have made sense at one time, although not really. But how it makes sense today, I do not know. It's just an expression of anger, which isn't a long-term politics.

Third party challengers don't even succeed in moving the Dems to the left, unless I am forgetting John Kerry's socialist platform in 2004.....

Meanwhile, intraparty challenges do move the party to the left. How one can look at Bernie, AOC, etc. and not see how incredibly successful this strategy has been in only 3 years is beyond me.

None of this is apologizing for 2 generations of terrible Dems. But this is where historical perspective is necessary. It took conservatives a half-century to turn the Republican Party into what it is today. You can't replicate that in one election cycle.

I realize everyone today has the attention span of a YouTube video, but this is a long-term project. We can't throw up our hands at the first sight of some whiny centrist Dems and say the project can never work.

This is why I am so excited by @justicedems seeking to oust terrible Dems in primaries. These are people who look at the last three years and realize how to operate effectively.