If they eat shit because of mass defections and people throwing their weight behind 3rd parties, especially socialists like PSL who do non-parliamentary ground work as well, and people continue throwing their weight behind them voting for them and joining them, and continue agitating and growing to not only pull the Democrat-defectors and people who are holding their nose who can be convinced that this is not helping (of which there are and continue to be many); but also continually activating the 35%-50% that don’t even vote because of how disillusioned and disenfranchised they are by the corporate-imperialist duopoly; such that the margins of working class voters that Democrats rely on by being the “lesser evil” are starved from them, while they are instead committed to fighting over the increasingly shrinking bourgeois and petty-bourgeois voterbase with the republicans then they will never get power again unless they reorient toward the left; which we know and you’ve stated as much, they are institutionally structurally incapable of doing.

This means either the ruling class floats a reformist social-democrat “labor” or “progressive” party to try to capture working class voters from moving to the growing socialists, which we are growing and will — from those radicalized after the 2016 primaries to the George Floyd Uprisings to now and on it’s been exponential; which would cause the Democrat party to split in half with half joining the republicans (that they’ve already been converging with anyway), and half hedging their bets and fleeing to the new “progressive” party like ‘rats from a sinking ship,’ which would not only alienate the new “progressive” party’s left wing by “democrat-izing” the party with the same people and politics they were trying to escape from (with which sufficient agitation easily moves many of them into more radical politics and joining the socialists), but would force this reconstituting on the bourgeois politicians as a chaotic retreat into positions they don’t want against a rising socialist party. This also, in turning the focus of the bourgeois politicians inward, inevitably helps the victims of imperialism and sharpens the external contradictions of empire, which have in many places already approached or reached rupture points.

Or they ignore this and ignore us and drop the thinnest-of-masks they still have; joining the open-fanged republicans straight away. This would be their worst option for maintaining the illusion of liberal democracy, and would promptly radicalize a huge portion of working people who never held any illusions about the Republicans or about Trump into socialist and revolutionary politics. And with supporting the PSL and actively engaging in movement-building with them, having the socialists standing on the other side of the see-saw with the weight of the working class when this happens, funneling masses to us, could legitimately lead to a sort of dual power situation. This latter option would be incredibly self-destructive for the ruling class, but they are that and have clearly become so comfortable and entrenched in their interest they’ve forgotten how to play politics, so who knows.

We need to think proactively and dialectically, and engage ourselves in confronting with sharp intent the contradictions that exist; with a mind for movement-building among the masses, many of whom still engage with electoral politics or otherwise still believe in it as an institution, if not the parties in it. This is what I see as the proper line. And though you’re not wrong (in fact are quite accurate) in describing exactly what the Democrats are happy to do in their cruise-control political niche within the duopoly which they’ve grown so comfortable with, it is an improper and opportunist line to just accept that as is and so capitulate to their precepts which only serves their ends. Instead, we need to think about how to exploit their strategy by our understanding of what and who they are, and make it untenable and force them into positions that they are incapable of handling.