I see this correction a lot around here. I think it misses the point, because in a Red vs Blue system, whichever party replaces old Blue, in part or whole, is still called Blue. Obviously that is OP’s intended meaning.

For example, tea party libertarians, Christian nationalists, and MAGA populists basically took over the GOP, replacing old school Neo-cons fiscal conservatives etc, but everyone still calls them Republicans. Likewise, the DSA candidate Zohran Mamdani ran in the primaries as a Working Families / Democrat candidate, and in the general election as a Democrat.

When someone refers to future Dem strategy on Lemmy IME you can safely assume they agree that old Dems suck, and they need no additional reminders, as if they haven’t been paying attention for over 20 years. They’re referring to what happens next, the new party we elect to replace the old do-nothing status-quo controlled-opposition Democratic Party. I hope that makes sense.

Also, a separate but very important thing to bear in mind, if any of the groups I mentioned, including tea party, Christian nationalists, and even Trump, had tried to run third party instead of taking over the GOP from the inside, each would have fallen flat on its face, and the Republican Party today would still be fielding candidates like John McCain and Mitt Romney.

The same applies to the Democrats. Voting third party or not voting at all in general elections won’t fix the Democratic Party. The primary way to do that is voting in primary elections or pestering your existing representatives who aren’t up for reelection this year.