When someone describes themselves as a Prada Socialist, know that when push comes to shove, the Prada part of the description will win over Socialist.
Sinema is a fraud and has always been a fraud, just like most of the folks running in supposedly leftist third parties. They know very well how they impact the electoral map and who benefits from their presence on the ballot, and it's not the major party that is closest to the supposedly leftist platform those third parties are running on.
In the long run, we need a bonafide labor/socialist party that’s not the Democratic Party. But simply running a quixotic third party presidential run isn’t going to achieve very much, and to your point empowers the reactionary Republican Party.
Short of wholesale revolution, that rejects our oligarchic Constitutional order, the best scenario is that the Democratic Party passes voting rights, becomes a super majority party, the GOP has to moderate itself and then it’d be time, assuming there’s a robust resurgence of trade unionism and other grassroots organizing willing to shift into being a political party, for a new left party to take over very deep blue districts and States and then caucus with the Democrats. Hopefully, the GOP would go the way of the wigs and we’d have a two party system with a left party and the Democratic Party is the new rightwing Party.
That’s a long way off though. In the meanwhile, it’s best to mount as many primary challenges as possible, and most importantly, for the left, organize, organize, organize, especially in sectors that can’t be outsourced like healthcare and transportation and logistics. With a unified working class, you can run campaigns in certain places, pressure even the most “moderate” of Democrats (if you can really turn the screws on capital, you can make some GOP politicians do what you want as well), and make demands not just for workplace democracy but also on issues of social justice.
Demographically Diverse, militant, sectoral unions is where the left’s future resides. If we achieve that, the electoral politics will take care of itself.
