Harold Fjord posted:

Important metachat question: is it a circlejerk if it's just two of them?

The left is in a no win bind with American electoralism. The best we can do is try to position ourselves to succeed in local balkanization and defeat the attempted uprising of neofuedal fascist warlords.

We can't appeal to the rich, because they are the ones loving us. That leaves everyone else. But if you try to appeal to non rich Republican voters you'll be framed as supporting the most hardcore fascist opinions among them and derided by the rich lib media and lose the well meaning but dumb lib supporters you need to win. If you try to appeal to non voters you might succeed for a while. But ultimately the greater party machinery will ensure you never get to enact your agenda and seek to bully you into various bad votes.

The problem is not that it's hard to elect a third party or primary a Dem, it's that it's impossible to do it at the scale needed to do what needs done in the time frame that it MUST be done, or even in the time frame needed to establish political bona fides. And of course wreckers like Sinema will be constantly trying to worm their way in and undermine you for a payout.