Sounds great, but you'd be swimming against the tide. Churches, fraternal orgs, clubs, all have been declining the last 30 years. Not sure how a political party would be any more successful at it, as much as I wish it could.
I'd be more interested in PSOE? I think they're the only incumbents that did *better* than the Dems in this year's incumbent-hating history. And, uh, somewhat larger than Belgium is...
Question is, are you willing to do the 'questionably legal data harvesting from the medical centre patients, balls-to-the-wall pro-car populism and demanding to stop sending weapons to Ukraine' bits too?
Also, Antwerp was arguably their first ever stronghold (strong local organising), and while they have gotten into power in a few municipalities this year, the parliamentary elections a few months ago went worse than expected for them (losing ground in Wallonia in the face of a right-wing landslide)
You wonder whether 25% of the Democrats' TV ad spend in Pennsylvania would have gone further offering medical and dental clinics in Philadelphia, Erie, and Pittsburgh.
The stuff about them staying in opposition "because the conditions weren't right" is laughable.
In Wallonia, there was an all-left majority with the socialists and the greens. Thanks to their inflexibility the government was more right-wing than it needed to be.
At the federal level, they didn't make any choice, they're simply too toxic for any right-wing to even contemplate allying with them.
Again, their presence in Parliament forced the ruling coalition to include the Christian Dems, which meant vetoing an abortion liberalisation law back in 2020.
Dems have a terrible image that doesn’t communicate what they are for and imo filling the void after Trump guts the ever loving shit out of the government is a good way to communicate that Democrats are for you, your family, your neighbors, and will be there to have your back.
Low on food? We have a food bank.
Trouble with your employer? We’ll connect you to a lawyer to chat about it, free of charge.
Want to form a union? Yeah your local Democratic party will help you.
Trouble with utilities? We’ll call some folks and look into it.
Anecdotally, my local party went from throwing a winter heating fundraiser party to just fundraising by our membership, again, with the goal of paying people’s heating debts.
We raised more money but went from 62% Dem to 49% Dem in 4 years.
So, yes communal activities are good I think.
Like plenty else went wrong too; I was a remarkably ineffectual chair for a host of reasons.
But chief among them might be slow rolling our getting back to fun events in favor of just keeping the thing running while I was too busy.
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we're bringing the Hull Houses and social capital back
And from personal experience meeting them at uni, the leadership has plenty of Stalin defenders.
In Wallonia, there was an all-left majority with the socialists and the greens. Thanks to their inflexibility the government was more right-wing than it needed to be.
Again, their presence in Parliament forced the ruling coalition to include the Christian Dems, which meant vetoing an abortion liberalisation law back in 2020.
Trouble with your employer? We’ll connect you to a lawyer to chat about it, free of charge.
Want to form a union? Yeah your local Democratic party will help you.
Trouble with utilities? We’ll call some folks and look into it.
We raised more money but went from 62% Dem to 49% Dem in 4 years.
So, yes communal activities are good I think.
But chief among them might be slow rolling our getting back to fun events in favor of just keeping the thing running while I was too busy.