Robert Nielsen
teokajlibroj.bsky.social
Robert Nielsen
@teokajlibroj.bsky.social
42 followers 20 following 34 posts
Leftist, Galway, Politics, Esperanto, Chess
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PBP has copied Mamdani and is proposing state supermarkets in their alternative budget.

Unfortunately, they copied him so completely they forgot that no one in Ireland calls them "grocery stores."
Reposted by Robert Nielsen
There’s a template from Milwaukee 100 years ago for politically and substantively successful socialist governance, but many leftist intellectuals of the time found the laser focus on quantity of city services to be problematically boring.

www.slowboring.com/p/learning-f...
Learning from Milwaukee's "Sewer Socialists"
The only way to succeed as mayor is to do a good job with the boring stuff
www.slowboring.com
What is this bizarre fantasy people have that murdering people in the street is super popular and should be some sort of political program?

Social media is not real life, ordinary people are horrified by this stuff.
If the killing of the UnitedHealth CEO has taught us one thing, its that we're maybe not as divided as we think. When 90% of people empathize with the people the CEO exploited more than with the CEO, it should tell our politicians something

Stop bowing to billionaires & actually work for the people
I'm not saying I have the answers, but I haven't seen anyone propose a strategy for the Left other than 'avoid Fianna Fáil & Fine Gael and hope that our vote will grow while in opposition.'

I don't think repeating the same strategy and hoping for a different result is good enough.
What good is it to tell someone struggling to pay rent that at least the Social Democrats keep their ideological purity by staying opposition?

'Sure things are hard now, but just wait 10-20 year and maybe then the Left will be strong enough to win power.'
If there is no left wing government around the corner, then it seems reasonable to enter a coalition to get the best that you can for your voters.

Remaining in opposition might be good for winning votes, but how does it help people struggling to find accommodation?
But then their popularity collapsed.

In 2020, SF, GP, LAB, SD & PBP gained 41.5% of the vote.

In 2024, they received 34%.
There are plenty of people who think the Left should remain in opposition and keep focusing on housing and eventually they will win enough votes to form a government.

This seemed like a good strategy after 2020, as there was a feeling that it was only a matter of time before Sinn Féin would win
Now that the dust has settled from the election results, the question is where does the Left go from here?

The lesson from the Green Party seems to be that coalition will cost you support and it's better to remain in opposition if you want to win votes.

But then what? #GE24
Watched "The World's End" last night, it's pretty good but a step down from Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead (which isn't saying much as they're classics).

It has some laughs but the ending is a mess.
Reposted by Robert Nielsen
The final seat numbers, when counting concludes in 🇮🇪 #ge24, are set to be:

Fianna Fáil 48
Sinn Féin 39
Fine Gael 38
Social Democrats 11
Labour 11
Ind Ireland 4
PBP-Solidarity 3
Aontú 2
Greens 1
100% Redress 1
Independents 16
Remember during the austerity years when people insisted FF/FG were doing austerity for purely ideological reasons? SF even had posters warning of a generation of public service cutbacks.

At the time I believed it, but once the budget was balanced, the cuts and privatisatons ended.