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+--- Thread: Discussion Your Favorite Reformists? (/showthread.php?tid=1956)
Your Favorite Reformists? - Impress Polly - Mar 27 2026
This post was inspired by Elsacat's recent thread about more women deciding to run for office after participating in No Kings protests.
By now you know me: I'm not much of a reformist or a big believer in electoral politics and I just cannot make myself care about the fate of the Democratic Party as an institution. I'm actually morbidly grateful for Trump. He's been the greatest gift to radical feminists and everyone like them in generations! Trends like "decenter men" and "going boy-sober" and whatnot would be nowhere near the cultural mainstream today if it weren't for his cartoonish misogynistic buffoonery and the kind of clarity that comes from moids loving it so much. Still, reforms can be useful in as far as they might shift the culture in a way that generates more class consciousness among women. If they serve to help create a revolutionary culture, they are useful and worth pursuing.
I'm an American and what they call a low-propensity Democratic voter. I'm an independent who voted in half of the six presidential elections I've been eligible to do so in, for example, always unenthusiastically for Democrats. 2008 was my last vote for a male candidate. For anything. I vote only for women nowadays. That's a matter of principle. My political goal is to live in a society, nay a world, without men, and I vote in the most logically matching way that I can. It's not that being a woman means I'll support you, it's just a bare minimum requirement that gives you the opportunity for my vote. I think like men that way, but mirrored. Thus I am grateful for more women deciding to run for public office.
Who might I personally find it actually exciting to vote for? Well I have had my favorite elected reformists over the years. In the 2010s I was kind of a fan of New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who made it her (Gilli)brand to champion women's causes. It was she, for example, who introduced the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act (mandating paid family leave) and led the charge to remove sexual assault cases involving military personnel from the military's chain of command and proposed actual legislation to do things like get rid of corporate nondisclosure agreements and end forced arbitration in sexual harassment and assault cases in response to the #MeToo phenomenon, and who had the audacity to one suggest that yes, in fact Bill Clinton should have resigned the presidency after sexually exploiting an intern. In 2017, she was unique in voting against confirming any Trump nominees for any post. In the 2020 presidential election when like a quarter of the Senate declared presidential ambitions, including Gillibrand, I considered her my first choice. Alas though, my priorities proved far from those of both Democratic donors and the voting public alike, as she quickly became I believe the first candidate to drop out.
Apparently Democrats were bitter about her holding Democratic officials like Al Franken and Bill Clinton to the same standard as Republicans, so her campaign failed to gain traction. From there, my support defaulted to Elizabeth Warren, who ran a far more economist, Bernie Sanders-like campaign, until she too dropped out before it came time for my state to vote. Sanders, in turn, refused to commit to so much as choosing a female running mate; a commitment even the establishment candidate Joe Biden was willing to make. I wound up sitting out both the primary and the general election as a result.In more recent years, Gillibrand has gone a very different direction that I've found less inspiring. She's become a crypto industry champion and, apparently feeling rebuked by her 2020 campaign, endorsed Andrew Cuomo for New York City mayor last year even after he'd resigned the governorship in disgrace after getting caught in numerous sex crimes. Credibility has been lost. She's just another politician to me now.
These days my fave member of Congress is Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett. She's a sharp-tongued populist who supports Medicare-for-all, the Green New Deal, and just generally the standard Progressive Caucus economic positions popularized by Bernie Sanders, but can be differentiated from the Squad by her more nuanced positions on a range of social issues like immigration and foreign policy. Also co-chaired Kamala Harris's presidential campaign. She ran for the U.S. Senate this year, but was defeated in her party's primary by this man...
...or someone very much like him anyway because it is Texas. Anyway, I relate to her whole "progressive but not the Squad" image, like her willingness to speak her mind, and find her particular combination of positions especially favorable to women. (Notable to me: Her coalition of supporters was mainly working class women and feminists. No wonder I relate. It may also be notable that a certain likely 2028 candidate, Gavin Newsom, endorsed Talarico in that race while a likely top rival of his, Kamala Harris, endorsed Crockett. Symbolism portending things to come in wider Democratic politics perhaps.)
Tomorrow is of course the next No Kings protest. Before we go flip some tables like that barefoot rabbi though, what's your relationship to electoral politics? Do you have favorite elected officials?