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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9
As the party fielded more and more candidates who championed economic-right policies in order to attract corporate donations, the idea of "purity testing" was turned into a stock phrase to attack critics using labels, instead of justifying it on its own terms.
Phrases like "moral purity" now serve two functions: firstly, to dismiss criticisms from the Left wholesale without having to discuss them directly, and secondly, to blame them for the rise of fascism.
In theory it was also supposed to serve a third function of bullying the Left into voting Democrat, but that didn't work.
That's because "the dems" aren't leftists. It doesn't matter if we subdivide or not, your "leftist" party is a moderate center party drifting right year after year.
Of course you're going to have trouble gathering leftist support.
I mean you're totally right, anywhere else in the western world the Dems are a center right at best. But Trump turned the GOP into his party in less than ten years. If we on the left banded together with a common cause with deliberate action we could change the Dems similarly. But instead we'd prefer to fight ourselves.
The left keeps coming up with policy that excites voters and centrists keep kicking them to the curb and whining about those unreasonable leftists wanting to do things other than sell weapons for the genocide that centrists love so fucking dearly.
You still need a majority to create policy, everyone 50% +1 is your ally, or you're not part of the conversation. You don't have to like them, but until we can get a majority of support for true leftist ideas, you have to work with people you disagree with, or you don't actually believe in democracy.
Does anybody "work with" us on the left or are we the only ones that need to sustain this fallacy and always compromise, to the point we no longer are even being represented?
What is there to work with though? There's no cohesive movement on the left to speak of so which of the umpteen factions would they start with? We'd need to think and vote as a much bigger bloc for the left to get the kind of representation we want.
Who is "us", are they supposed to reach through your computer screen? I've done activism on and off for years, every time I put in the effort it yields results from the Dems, left leaning or not. If you want our side to win, you have to put in the work. You can't expect the Dems to work with you if you're not along side them doing the work as well. Your responsibility doesn't start and end at the voting booth.
Unfortunately, this "working with" is always a one-way street. Never do centrists say, "well, we just have to support the progressive cause to maintain party loyalty."