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Peaceful protests, boycotts and sternly worded letters rely on the people you're protesting having a sense of shame. Which the right (and most of the left) no longer have.

They can do a lot more than that - it can scare them, and that will have an effect.

At their core, Conservatives are cowards. They are literally afraid of EVERYTHING - it's their primary characteristic. They want to remain in their safe little bubble, with no changes to anything. Any changes can only bring uncertainty, and uncertainty is terrifying to them.

So when the crowds at the protests get larger and larger, week by week, they begin to realize that they are outnumbered, especially the leadership, who KNOWS they cheated to win the election, and know they don't have anywhere near the numbers on their side that they claim. They know that when the Tipping Point arrives, and the Left finally rises up, they don't stand a chance.

All they have to defend themselves is empty bluster, and they are scared shitless that we all see it, which we do. That HitlerPig/ Hegseth presser this morning is a perfect examples. Those were two frightened cowards, demanding that everybody acknowledge their empty power, and hoping nobody will realize how weak they really are.

So protests, boycotts, letter campaigns, etc. all serve to amp up their fear, and sooner or later they will do something about it. It's likely that the first reaction will be violent, but when the counter-response is crushing, and continues to be crushing, they will quickly start demanding to make a deal.

That's when we should purge MAGA once and for all. No mercy.

I've got one in my district. I'll be on board with all efforts going forward to replace him.

I'm a Hogger.

Hoggs out for harambe

Keep your Hoggs cranked

AROOOOO

Are you saying we shouldn’t vote blue no matter who?

Cities and states sometimes have different rules for different races. Cities are often so Democratic, that elections sometimes end up being between two Democrats. I've even seen Republicans register as Democrats so they have a shot at getting people just to listen to them.

Often races like judges, school boards, etc. are officially "non-partisan," but you can usually figure out which is which by their positions on the issues.

This was a primary election so both major parties were fielding several candidates. The reality is no Republican is getting elected in NYC as long as we have free and fair elections in the USA so the democratic primary winner is the most likely person to win in November when the general election is held.

You are not obligated to run under a party in US elections. It just makes it easier to win.

It depends on the city. Mine (Madison, WI) doesn't officially list any party affiliation for mayor or city alders. We also use a runoff election system, so we're not stuck on two parties for local things.

In practice, candidates are often backed and/or endorsed by some political parties. Common ones are Progressive Dane (county level party) or Working Families (which has national reach and is basically a socialist party working within the Democratic party). When they move up to state or federal seats, they usually join the Democrats while continuing to work with the Working Families party.

Mayoral elections like most US elections are multi-party in principle, but usually there are the two major parties and the rest are marginal or fringe. Some offices are solidly enough controlled by one party that the primary essentially determines the general election winner. Example: AOC primaried out the incumbent in a solidly Democratic seat. She then ran in a general election against a Republican and others, but none of them really mattered.

I don't know whether the NYC Mayor election is like that these days. I know NYC has had Republican mayors in living memory, like Ghouliani. Bloomberg (I just checked) did two terms as a Republican, then a 3rd as an independent on the Republican ballot line. He later ran in the 2020 presidential primaries as a Democrat.

Right now there's a situation where Andrew Cuomo (anointee of the NY and maybe even national Dem establishent) just lost the primary but might run as an independent. If the Dem establishment keeps supporting him, maybe he has winning chances. Something like that happened with Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, who lost a Dem primary but then got re-elected as an independent with Dem party support. His opponent (Ned Lamont, now governor of Connecticut iirc) wasn't even left wing from what I remember.

For his independent run, Lieberman started a new party "Connecticut for Lieberman" and ran as its candidate. After being reelected, the new party had served its purpose and became useless to him, so he forgot about it and the incorporation documents expired. Someone else then got control of it (I guess that's like domain squatting) and apparently used it for some entertaining pranks. I wasn't around for that though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_for_Lieberman

The whole two party system thing in general isn't really a rule per se, you're allowed to run as part of some other party or independent of one, for any office that I know of. In smaller local elections like town councils and such you can even be competitive that way. It's just that the way we do voting, most of the time, means that for any election in which a reasonable number of voters participate, only two parties can be competitive and any more would actually make their side less likely to win. It's a not originally intended side effect of the rules we use, that now serves to keep the existing parties' monopoly on most higher offices.

Yes, very much so. Each party has their candidate. Some states might let multiple members of the same party run, and there have certainly been instances where people have run unopposed for certain offices, but generally most elected positions in the US are partisan.

It has been a key Republican strategy for several decades now to control as many states governorship as they can manage because it allows them to do things like gerrymandering and to pass state policies that favor Republicans.