JF

to me, that would mean turning it on its head. it's expressly designed to prevent that happening.

Yes, exactly. I hear this all the time, “you can’t reform the party.” But if you had enough working class power to win with a 3rd party (which you don’t), you would also have enough power not to “reform” the DP but essentially to force a hostile takeover.

What I see from third partyists seems to be more of a way of simply reassigning blame. You can tell yourself the only reason people are flocking to your organization is because of Bernie shepherding them into the Democratic Party.

correct me if i'm wrong, but it seems like there's an assumption that the matter is one of merely choosing one of the two strategies, just pick the right one.

why would we assume that one or the other of these 2 choices -reform a Party within the existing power & patronage system, or build up an outside Party as a challenge- must be successful?

So that we don't have to act accordingly and spend the rest of our lives backstabbing and blackmailing our friends to stay out of the working class?

act accordingly?