Single payer means no opt out. Thus the “single” part.

Could be SSRIs

Ok, I guess I was thrown off by “the party nominates.” You’re saying that anyone can run under any party line, similar to today. (But not really the case in European parliamentary systems, typically)

Then how do you end up with 5 candidates?

Mamdani was not “nominated by the party” and never would be. Unless you mean “runs on a party line in a primary” which is what we have now.

“Each party nominates” sounds like a system in which a Bernie, an AOC, or a Zohran would never even make it onto a ballot.

Is that supposed to resemble a serious question? I'm talking about the party apparatus, not the ballot line, as you well know.

Taking pains not to needlessly strengthen and reward your enemies is something that noone who cares about democracy and equality can afford to dismiss. The Democrats gave us Trump; they aren't some kind of countervailing political force.

It doesn’t, and I explicitly said that was not a claim I was making.

If you don’t see that as a political problem to solve, say that, but don’t pretend it’s not a coherent concern.

It might be wrong, but it’s not nonsense, Rick. The premise is a pretty simple one, that a vacuum of small-d political will among the large-D Dems impedes attempts to counter nihilistic populism with something more inclusive.

It's the same reason that, without taking sides in the "is it really fascism?" debate, I'm skeptical of "antifascism" as a banner to rally beneath. It gives far too much rope to the Democrats to self-define as "democratic," without any more need to promote actual democracy than in the last 40 years.

No one dares touch populism with a ten-foot pole—not Newsom, nor Harris, nor Pritzker, nor Mayor Pete, and certainly not Schumer or Jeffries—though it would do more to undermine MAGA than a thousand No Kings marches.

In fact, I think you can credibly attribute the uncanny blank void that Democratic political leaders are all currently embracing to the likelihood that they are just waiting for "the resistance" to craft the terms they will all pretend to passionately cherish in the next election cycle.

Which offers nothing to prevent the "we" who stopped MAGA from getting absorbed into the Democratic blob, because no divergent vision of "what matters" was part of the program. "No Kings" just fertilizes the ground for liberal elites to plant more of their demonic seeds in.

If people think they are fighting for democracy, and no one has any actual democracy to offer them, they are going to take refuge in self-preservation, not solidarity. So I don't have a lot of confidence in "first let's defeat MAGA, then we'll build the movement we actually want."

I think this approach has some downsides. Among them, it undersells the challenge of radicalizing people while simultaneously valorizing norms that never were, which fosters a kind of fantasy romanticism that I don't think is qualitatively different from the romanticism that fueled the axis powers.

My subtext here is that I worry about “No Kings” as a rubric for restoring democracy when presidential executive power has a long, home-grown history, often without constitutional crisis. (Washington, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Nixon, Bush, Trump).

You depart from brother William on these facts?