I'm proud to have been one. Some of us get tired of knives in the back, but if it serves what I believe in, my vote will be behind it regardless of color.
It's never red, tho.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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I can’t imagine being proud of something I’m forced to be in.
Many of us started as plain-jane, even... proud Democrats before we were stabbed in the back 20 times by our own party. Now the label is as fake as my smile.
You don't have to join a party. I've been an Unaffiliated Independent since I registered to vote 49 years ago. It means I can't vote in the Primaries, but my candidates were always too left to win anyway, so I would just support whoever won the primary, but they were NEVER my guy.
I have recently considered registering as a Democrat, only so I can vote in the primaries, because we are finally getting candidates - mostly Democratic Socialists - that I actually care about, and I actually WANT to give them my vote.
I have to join or I’m not allowed to vote in primaries in my state.
I can't vote in Primaries either, but when I look back on it, there's the rare occasion that the guy I would have voted for won the primary anyway, but MOST of the time, the person I would have voted for didn't stand a chance anyway, so my primary vote never really mattered. I can't think of a single time where I regretted it, because my preferred candidate lost by only one vote, mine.
The only time the person I voted for in the primary won it was Fetterman.
If you don’t vote in the primaries then of fucking course your candidates are “too left to win”.
There are so many fuckin’ losers out there bitching that who they’d prefer “doesn’t have support” while actively not supporting them. Of course they’re losing, you’re deciding they’ve failed before it even happens and leaving them in the dirt.
I disagree that we only find it in history books. Under Obama we gave tens of millions of vulnerable people medical coverage. Under Biden railroad workers got all their demands met after the union strike ended, thousands of marijauna convictions pardoned, $183 Bn of student debt forgiven.
The amount of progress we could have had if people simply stopped voting the GOP into power to oppose us, it would be glorious.
Obama didn't give us anything. We had Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden, and none them gave us any substantial health care plan at all. Obama came closest, with a Republican plan. He finally threw us a bone, and it was a Republican bone.
And then the Congressional Democrats gave it back.
This isn't even Mamdani's best quote,. I like this one:
"For far too long, our party has seen its job as managing decline instead of delivering material change for working people,” Mamdani said at a rally headlined by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. “It has seen its job as explaining why we cannot instead of showing how we can."
Perfect.
We didn't give tens of millions of people medical coverage; we forced tens of millions of people to buy medical insurance or else pay a tax penalty. I'm glad that it was at a discounted rate, but given the choice between paying for nothing or paying for shitty insurance, the decision was easy, but a lot of people really struggled to make ends meet as a result and it shouldn't have put additional strain on those families.
The Biden moments were also good but ultimately half measures. Railroads should've been nationalized, cannabis should've been legalized, and student loans and absurdly priced tuitions should've been massively reformed.
I'm glad to have seen something that wasn't just more horror on those topics, but they're a far cry from what The New Deal did for people.
The Tax Penalty was avoidable by all by simply checking a box on your tax filing. It was purely voluntary.
If you wanted a better bill then you may be happy to hear the DNC had one which didn't pass because they lacked the votes: Joe Leiberman and every Republican refused to let it pass.
Notwithstanding, while I like Obama overall, but Obama gave us the boondoggle of a Republican plan that gave billions to insurance companies to screw over working Americans with high deductible bullshit that made us pay thousands for the privilege of paying thousands to see a doctor and still bankrupting us when we get sick. We were cockblocked by shitty Democrats who refused to get actual universal coverage by giving us a public option and prevented actual sweeping change like the New Deal from even getting a chance.
The original bill was identical to German public option healthcare until an independent Joe Leiberman refused to vote for it leading to the watered down version.
Are you saying Republicans have been running Germany for decades?
Wow, that's a bit of not understanding things there.
One, it wasn't just that independent asshole Joe Liberman, though he was a major problem, that tanked the public option. You had Democrats like short conservative Democrats like Kent Conrad and Blanche Lincoln that simply did not like a public option and refused to vote for healthcare reform with a public option in it. And honestly the public option wasn't even ideal, M4A would have been better but conservative Democrats would openly bitch and revolt when that's even mentioned and Obama couldn't even get something as paltry as the public option passed within his party is not exactly what is be bragging about.
Two, the public option that was proposed by the ACA was significantly different from the German system. The public option proposed by the ACA was going to be funded by the premiums alone, just run by the government to hopefully offer a better deal to help keep other health insurers in check with a larger base and negotiating power and it wasn't mandatory like the German GKV and based on income. To say the public option in the ACA was identical to the GKV is completely ridiculous and stupid to even say.
Man, get your facts straight there buddy.
According to HuffPost:
Conrad's spokesperson told Salon that the story was inaccurate. Conrad told his constituents that he won't let the government run their health care, but that this position does not preclude the public option.
So you fell for a hit piece.
As for Lincoln, her own website declared she was pro-public-option, but she made public statements otherwise and she had been acting very conservative in her last year in congress so it's difficult to say how she would have voted if the original bill ever came to vote.
But we will never know because of Leiberman being a guaranteed "No" not beholden to the party for his attempt at reelection.
Regardless, it's easy to see the GOP are the enemy even if 1 or 2 out of 60 DNC are only better 97 out of 100 votes.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/report-lincoln-won-t-support-public-option
We know exactly how she would have voted when she was publicly saying she stood with Liberman even with the already watered down public option proposed by the ACA.
As for Conrad, you literally quoted him saying he won't vote for a government run plan but supports a government run plan. You've got to be as dense as a fruitcake to think that this guy supported a public government run option especially when his actions show the direct opposite of supporting it. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/conrad-settles-into-familiar-role-hard-to-see-how-a-public-option-gets-the-votes
That's not falling for a hit piece, that's called a shitty conservative taking out both sides of their mouths while killing a moderate proposal of a public option.
Also, let's get back to your ludicrous claim that the original public option was just like Germany current plan.
The word preclude means "to make impossible" meaning Conrad's spokesperson's statement "previous comments do not rule out Public Option".
I can't tell if you're misleading others or misled yourself.
And as for that quote of Lincoln, her campaign website still said otherwise. Keep in mind that during all of this there was a large organized campaign to change her mind including billboards and calls to action wherein people were urged to contact her office, she actually changed her stance multiple times throughout. Her major complaints were about deficit which were easily dismissed as the bill did not increase deficit at all.
But you don't understand. All those benefits are coming directly out of Republican voters' taxes. Like, Republicans pay money, and people who they hate might get a benefit from it. They call that Socialism, and all they know about that is when it creeps up on you, it's bad.
Combine that with the fact that Democrats keep nominating... Ladies... for President, and what do you expect a good ol' boy to do? Vote for a woman who is all socialist and stuff?
You should probably add a /s before you upset somebody you don't intend to.