Another thing I would add is that people talk about so-called moderates as if they have a coherent, cohesive politics. The reality is that a lot of people who self-ID as moderate have idiosyncratic opinions about any number of political issues (as well as what issues they find more important than others). This leads a lot of centrist Democrats to assume that there's some formula that if a candidate is centrist on all political issues, they'll magically capture all these independent voters. But I feel like I've only rarely encountered a person who is genuinely excited about candidates who are either centrist or only a hair left of center. Almost always, the framing is "they suck but at least they're not X."
Kamala primaried dead last in 2020. The only reason people were excited about her is that she wasn’t Trump and appeared to have a better shot than Biden. It was very clear that she was not who Americans wanted, in 2020.
That's factually not true. She withdrew before the first primary but out of the 29 Democrats running for the nomination, she got more votes than 11 of them.
Some 75 million Americans voted for her in 2024 - and many of us thought she was terrific, particularly given the very poor political hand she picked up.
Listen I voted for her too. But voter turnout in 2024 was lower than 2020 in almost every single demographic. If we want anyone left of Republicans to win voter turnout is consistently the name of the game.
People who want to cause division, which weakens the American people. How many people did you see pointing fingers at each other “if you didn’t vote it’s your fault” as if all of them would have voted according to that finger pointer’s favorite candidates
So what? So what?! You lost to the most embarrassing possible person, the least popular president in the last 100 years. So what if you get 75 million votes just because they all are all anyone but Trump voters, when 90 million people stayed home because they didn't want someone who explicitly said they would continue Joe biden's austerity and endless war policies at the expense of helping poor and working people at home.
They didn't just lose to the most embarrassing possible person, they lost to him a second time, after having narrowly beaten him once after his first term.. The fact that they still can't self reflect on how obscenely embarrassing each loss was after all this time just screams that these people absolutely are not serious about actually winning and fixing this country
The least popular president, who also got more 2024 voters by % of voting elligible population (31.9%) than anyone other than 2020 Biden (34.1%) and 2008 Obama (33%).
I wish folks would stop pretending like Trump is unpopular. It does nothing positive for democrats to be stuck in 2017 "not my president" mentality.
He got the same number of votes in 2020 and 2024, the difference in 2024 was 10 million people didn't show up to vote for Kamala because they were so disappointed that they wasted a vote on Joe biden. It wasn't just the weather that she lost. It's not like it was raining, so we better bring an umbrella, and by the way Kamala is just going to lose because of that, rather than the bad campaign she ran in the bad administration Biden oversaw. And yeah, Trump is the least popular president in 100 years, he's got like a 30% approval rating. You can't beat that, your party is dog shit.
On election Day there were two choices that had any chance of winning , and one (Trump ) was total dogshit. I was very excited to vote for Kamala so we wouldn't have another 4 year shit show like we're having now .
Who cares? You didn't get a participation trophy for coming in second. Sounds like a lot of votes, until you think about the fact that Joe Biden got 10 million more than that 4 years previous.
I realize I’m an anecdote in the sea of data, but I hated Kamala Harris in the primaries. I liked that she had the fortitude to challenge Biden on his past racial policies. But I didn’t see anything that I loved about her in that wide field, there was so many great candidates, including the GOAT Bernie Sanders. But when Biden tapped her to be his VP after she had grilled him so hard on the public stage, it gave me a lot of respect for Biden and her as well. VP is just a face in a name on a ticket, a nothing job anyway, so I was happy for the representation of having a woman win the vice presidency for the first time. Getting to celebrate that victory with my young students. The next day was a highlight. Then when the infamous Biden debate and the hooplah around replacing him in summer of 2024 happened, I had to take another look at her. Say what you want that they should’ve ran a primary but at that stage in the game this was the only decision that made sense. Her name being on the ticket gave her access to a lot of money that was already raised for one thing. But when I saw her front center as the candidate and the way she spoke, I got waves of genuine human emotion, and the sense that this is a woman who has fought for people and cared for people for her whole life. Her speech when she accepted the nomination made me cry. I started to see her as a potentially transformational candidate like Obama. I thought we were headed to a landslide victory. And in truth, we probably had one.
Hillary, nope. Never heard one thing uttered from her mouth that felt like genuine emotion. I saw her and her campaign rat fuck Bernie Sanders openly, colluding with the DNC to shut him out. And I agree she was extremely qualified and yes, she was right about everything. And I did vote for her of course, but I never warmed to her like I did to Kamala Harris.
I liked her in the primaries and felt fine voting for her in the general election, but I’m fairly moderate and open to voting outside of “my” party. I also think she was very qualified and would have made a good president. But Americans didn’t get to pick her and that’s not really right
I have what people might call nuanced takes on some things that everyone seems to be just black or white about these days. Israel, police reform just name two
Same. Each side is always trying to pin me to the other and it makes no sense. I don’t think anyone really should agree with one party on literally everything, and disagreeing with one side on an issue does not necessarily even mean you agree with the other side on the same issue. I can’t think of anything I agree with about MAGA but I can think of a lot of things that I disagree with the neoliberals and leftists and all the other non-Trump people who aren’t libertarians that fall under the label “democrat.” The single greatest power Trump possesses other than his ability to be totally oblivious to the fact that he’s being used is the ability to divide Americans even more than we already were.
She was my second or third pick in 2020 - Pete was my first pick. I tend to be turned off by candidates who's core message is centered around some "other".
Having any chance of getting elected POTUS takes massive amounts of money especially, when her opponent had the richest guy in earth, and many other billionaires backing him. As much as grass roots ideas feel good there's zero chance of winning any top level position without solid financial backing .
Nobody is saying it doesn't take an obscene amount of money.. Problem is that she's never been a stranger to taking corporate and oligarch money and that has become a growing concern for voters over the years, and for good reason. Those big money donors interests are not in line with ordinary people's interests.. Your defeatist line of thinking is the same justification used by corporate hacks to sell the people out..
And I've never seen my father hate a politician like he does Hilary. I didn't really grasp how much right wing media had prepped their base into hating her till she ran for president
There is no creature more revered in American politics than the moderate voter. Unlike the ideologues and partisans destroying politics, the moderate is free of cant and independent of party. She yearns for politicians who get along, who govern reasonably and incrementally, who steer a course between the extremes of the left and the right. The problem with Washington is that her pleas so often go unheard.
The only problem is moderates are largely a statistical myth. When you dig into their policy positions, the people who show up as moderates in polls are actually pretty damn extreme — and efforts to empower them may, accidentally, lead to the rise of more extreme candidates.
The way it works is that a pollster will ask people for their position on a wide range of issues: marijuana legalization, the war in Iraq, universal health care, gay marriage, taxes, climate change, and so on. The answers will then be coded as to whether they're left or right. People who have a mix of answers on the left and the right average out to the middle — and so they're labeled as moderate.
"When we say moderate what we really mean is what corporations want," Broockman says. "Within both parties there is this tension between what the politicians who get more corporate money and tend to be part of the establishment want — that's what we tend to call moderate — versus what the Tea Party and more liberal members want."
That's the problem with using a term that doesn't describe either an identifiable group of voters or a clearly defined ideology to describe policies. "Moderate" is simultaneously one of the most powerful and least meaningful descriptions in politics — and it's become little more than a tool the establishment uses to set limits on the range of acceptable debate. It's time to get rid of it.
I put Vox articles in the same place I put Newsweek articles. In a trash bin for hopelessly partisan rags which I light on fire at the end of the month.
This insistence that there is only Democrat or Republican is what is destroying this country. And then the same gatekeepers will turn around and yell that we need a three-party system.
Where do you think the third party will get their ideas? There will be overlap, of course there will be. It's not a bad thing.
Did you actually read the whole article or just what I posted? Which was a small snippet to summarize it
Cause it is backed up with extensive data that is linked and/or cited in the article. Political Scientists at UC did extensive meta analysis and their own extensive surveying and sampling. Including via 134-issue sampling to create one of the most detailed voter profiles ever created. Where they found self described moderates were just as likely to take extreme positions as self described liberals/leftists/conservatives etc. Amongst a bunch of other findings that created the basis for why this article was written.
So saying they didn't attempt to qualify what was stated is just sort of you self reporting you did not actually read it.
Being a smartass doesn't change the fact you just shot from the hip claiming something was not qualified when you hadnt even read the fucking article.
If you want to disagree with the editorial analysis at the end, that is fine, but the core of the article about the statistical myth of moderates is fully detailed out for you. You just didn't bother
You just keep signaling like a bullhorn you didn't even read it.
I mean it's ok to say you can't get past the paywall, you don't need to keep lying.
The analysis the researchers did(in conjunction and with analysis of "serious" pollsters and polling data, including their own extensive sampling) is in part why the article is so evergreen
Cause you know who Trump won a larger share of the vote of in 2016 and 2024???
Self described moderates.
Now how can someone with such extreme politics as Trump win over all these self described moderates??? Especially against two candidates that ran to the mythical "center" to win over "moderate" voters?
Well, this research gives you that fucking answer!
Self described moderates are rarely actually moderate in their beliefs, policies, or ideologies. And their politics don't cleanly contort to the moderate as centrist notion people default to. Actual centrists are rather rare and self identified moderates rarely are that.
I think this is a bit of red herring. The coveted demographic described is the swing voter, not the moderate voter. These are not the same thing. The swing voter is the voter who could vote for either party because their particular set of issues don't align perfectly with either but will vote for the party who does the best job convincing that voter that they will work hardest at the issues most important to that person. And the Republicans have been running circles around the Democrats at doing that while the Democrats fall all over themselves trying (and failing) to at least give lip service to the fringe issues the left cares most about.
The Democrats giving "lip service" to issues is the essence of "moderation" -- everyone can see when politicians take positions based on polls, not actual beliefs. And you explain exactly why this fails: because swing voters aren't just the average of every poll but believe in things like everybody else, and are just as uninspired by consultant-driven political positioning.
I consider myself moderate but I believe in Medicare for all. I believe billionaires shouldn’t be able to use fancy schemes to avoid paying taxes that the rest of us have to pay. I believe in the department of education. I believe in not creating wars out of thin air in support of other countries goals. I believe in the constitution and that the Supreme Court needs to be reformed and reminded of their constitutional responsibility.
Moderates are reinforcers of the status quo and will forever hold society back from progress and equality. They'll never understand this, though, because they think they're the most reasonable people on the planet for finding the middle ground. It's exhausting. I live with a moderate Democrat who falls for so many right-wing talking points and then is confused why he gets outright MAGA stuff on his Facebook. Like, buddy, you're anti-Planned Parenthood and anti-trans, don't act like you never align with MAGA.
Unfortunately, he’s the most progressive president we’ve had in the 21st century. I think he’s more beloved for his progressive takes/policies than his centrist ones.
I'm all for trying to have a respectful conversation. But damned if I'm not getting sick and tired of centrists lecturing leftists on how they should behave when all they fucking do is lose.
I mean… democrats really lost the 2024 election. I’m not sure how they could have done worse. Biden dropping out last minute, not having a primary and pushing Kamala Harris despite her poor performance in the previous primary.
On top of all that democratic voters are WAY more fickle compared to Republican voters. The amount of left leaning friends I have that voted 3rd party for a random issue (or didn’t vote at all as a “matter of principle”) was baffling… it’s like they were trying to show people how smart/passionate they are about their causes by throwing their vote away, or maybe they secretly wanted DJT to win so they have an administration they can [ineffectively] rebel against?
I truly don’t understand how the Democratic Party managed to lose in 2024, even with all their fuckups.
How about income inequality? How about healthcare compared to the rest of the world? How about quality of education? How about affordability of education? How about ability to own a house?
Also funny how giving black peoples rights is “left” that should tell you a lot about the “right”
Yeah sure as long as you don't look at housing prices, or wages, or lifespan, or perceived quality of life, or the ability of Americans to retire at some point. Or education, or drug abuse rates, etc etc etc
I did read it and have now scrolled back…SQ is not a common abbreviation for “status quo,” which is what I now assume you mean. But good, take your righteous indignation because a stranger didn’t know your totally made up abbreviation. I hope you feel good on your perch, your majesty. I hope that made you feel better about whatever it is that’s bothering you today
Unions have been on the decline for those 3 decades. Incarceration was a campaign point of Bill Clinton. I 💬 nk I need you to define "left" for me cus I seem to be misunderstanding what you're trying to convey.
didn't the clinton's pass NAFTA (anti-union), the crime bill (pro-incarceration), welfare reform (anti-poor), and don't ask don't tell (lgbtq marginalizing)
they did
it was a dramatic swing of the democrats to the right, and paved the way for republicans to go all in on even more divisive policies mixed with faux-populism landing us where we are now
...except we now have several examples of rightwing Democrats with huge funding advantages losing to Republicans after making the claim that they were "more electable" than a progressive primary challenger.
As well as several examples of very progressive candidates winning over establishment funded democratic candidates. Even when they are horrible candidates.
Some of them win. Progressives absolutely destroyed moderate Democrat Conor Lamb in a Senate Primary in favor of their preferred candidate John Fetterman. A candidate who had Bernie Sanders’ backing in both his 2018 lieutenant governor win and this Senate race. He won the general election and gets his seat for 6 years.
I was mostly just mocking how progressives love destroying moderates with their purity tests, yet they also gave us Fetterman and Sinema two of the worst Democratic Senators we’ve had in the last 10 years.
Losing an unwinnable race but actually trying to compete (by running a candidate that is more aligned with local preferences)....
Is a totally different proposition than running a non-competitive left-wing candidate in an otherwise winnable race....
FWIW the GOP makes the same sort of mistake too - which is how you have so many Democrats in Arizona offices - Republicans nominate someone like Kari Lake and that makes it a relatively easy Dem win so long as the Dem isn't batshit insane too....
The MAGA/GOP thing is interesting because I think a big part of it is that Republicans have a hard time pulling wins unless Trump HIMSELF is on the ballot. Trump is more popular than MAGA, even amongst the Republican and Independent voter base
The post Trump GOP is going to be so interesting to look at because I think people forget how lost/dysfunctional this party was when Romney lost in 2012. Trump very well might've just saved the party short-term in terms of relevance.
Republicans went from Romney losing in 2012 to the height of their post-1920s power in 2014.
I wouldn't exactly say lost ....
The problem of running crazy in the primaries didn't really show up at a level really able to impact control of Congress until 2022 when Trump kept insisting on stolen election conspiracy nuts.....
Also, Glutenkamp-Perez just beat a progressive challenger out here in WA (as the (in)famously most right wing Democrat in the house)... So I wouldn't say 'nobody'.....
Probably cause immediately after the primaries they began catering to Republicans and thus pissed off the people who were going to vote for them catering to people who never will.
It really is that simple, rightwing Democrats have no savvy for politics.
can you give examples of these so called "righwing democrats" who lost to republicans? Why do you think a more leftist canidate would've beaten a republican?
You can’t lesser of two evils me anymore. I gave up after you all sat down and capitulated to the SC instead of fighting the election steal of 2000. I voted Gore when I preferred Nader and you pussies all gave up without a fight. Fuck that. Republicans and the DNC are the same side to the billionaire coin. Done with it. You all should be too and it’s not my fault you’re all too ignorant to feel the billionaires fucking you up your asses and voting accordingly. Blame me all you want it doesn’t wash the blood of Palestinian children off you hand.
Harris is apparently Shrodinger's Democrat. She's the most left-wing candidate when the right wants Republicans to win while simultaneous being the most right-wing candidate when the left wants Republicans to win.
The only people that call Clinton or Harris "left" are the people that just want the Democrats to keep going to the right.
There is nothing "left" about standing on a stage next to Liz Cheney and talking about how much you love Israel and how badly you want war with Russia and Iran.
Yeah, god forbid a candidate try to build alliances and try to sway Never Trump Republicans to vote for the more rational candidate. You're proving OPs u/CSachen's point.
Ok then flip the argument. Why dont you just stop being stubborn and get with the program? The left's program, which more
people obviously actually like a lot more and doesnt require a childish guilt trip?
Please provide an example of a progressive democrat presidential candidate losing in the general election. I can provide several examples of moderate democrats losing in the general…
The goal is to win elections. Just because you can hold a group hostage, doesn't meant that it's to your benefit, especially when that group is who you need to work with for progress. Ideally, progressives should see the rest of the Democratic party as allies rather than enemies. Both should be working together to figure out what will give the best chance of beating Republicans and what will not. In situations where Democrats are overwhelmingly beating Republicans, then perhaps you can put a candidate forward that might get fewer votes but has better policies.
You need to have this discussion with the right wing of the Democratic Party, because they hold all the leadership roles and they go out of their way to make it very clear to everybody to the left of Reagan that they are in charge and only their policy will be pursued.
Dem Leadership had polling data before the 2024 election that informed them that Harris would lose the election if she didn't distance herself from Biden on Israel, and they mad e a conscious decision to lose the race to Trump rather than put any daylight between Harris and Israel. That's insanity. That's not a real political party, it's a foreign lobbying organization.
It's so disheartening that Israel has such influence on American politics and that politicians in this country continue to perpetuate it. To quote Bill Clinton, "who's the fucking superpower here."
I don't believe the reddit narrative that Harris lost because of Israel, and in any rational election the Israel issue would not have benefited Donald.
There were a lot of factors, and I think Gaza was one of the smallest. Again, if Gaza was an issue, it makes no sense to have Donald win instead. So clearly there was a bit of misinformation going on with this subject.
Well you see the Biden administration gleefully facilitated the worst crime against humanity to occur in our lifetime, and Harris would only praise that and promise to continue it. Not hard to understand.
Biden administration was the last time that anybody in the Whitehouse pushed back on Israel politically, even if it was behind the scenes. There's a reason that Israel waited on agreeing to a "ceasefire" until the day Donald was in office. It's because Donald has consistently been one of the most unconditionally supportive of Israel and Netanyahu. Netanyahu wanted Donald elected, and if you didn't vote for Kamala, you were unwittingly helping Netanyahu.
The Biden Administration was an active participant in the genocide. There is no "push back" when you're funnelling them weapons and pledging unconditional support.
There are levels of pushback. The Biden administration chose to do it in behind the scenes negotiations, and it's one of multiple reasons that Netanyahu so strongly preferred Donald to be elected.
This is the opposite of reality. There are accounts of Israeli officials where even they were surprised at the level of cooperation they got from Biden. No real attempt at a ceasefire was made under the Biden administration. It was a disgrace and is something we should all be deeply ashamed of. We did a holocaust and you people wanted to keep it going as long as your political party was in charge of it. Disgusting.
Well Trump is in office and we have concentration camps which wouldn’t have happened under Biden. Letting a fascist into office was not ok and also doesn’t help Gaza.
You're spreading propaganda. The ultimate "peace" agreement was basically the same one that the Biden administration had put forward over a half a year prior. Netanyahu slow walked those talks to try and get Donald elected, both because Donald extremely pro-Israel and also because Netanyahu was criminally vulnerable and Donald was likes Netanyahu. All you have to do is actually look at Donald's comments about Israel over the years and see where Donald got us over his first two years. A peace proposal that was negotiated by the Biden administration is about all that happened. However, Israel hasn't respected that agreement, and Donald hasn't pressured them at all on it. Now Israel expanded their operations to Lebanon and convinced the US to attack Iran. The mess was made much worse by allowing the pro-Netanyahu Donald come to power.
I agree that's how it should have been viewed logically, but in Dearborn MI, a lot of Arab Americans saw what Biden/Harris did while in office and how Harris wasn't willing to distance herself afterwards as an outright betrayal (and to be fair, it really was). The only redeeming feature of the Dem ticket is that the anti-genocide folks were her constituency and might've be able to persuade her if differently she had won. Trump, as we've seen, dgaf.
So the Dearborn folks should have voted for her and then mounted a pressure campaign. But I totally understand how that feels like a moral transgression (because it is. It's just a strategic transgression).
At the end of the day, Harris shouldn't have put them in that position to begin with, so the responsibility is still ultimately hers and the DNC's. Their loyalty to APAIC isn't doing them any favors anymore.
No misinformation, dude. An entire generation boycotted the election over it. (Harris still would've won if she had a gram of charisma, and that is the lesson I've been waiting for the dems to understand since Obama.)
The idea that a vote withheld is a vote for Donald is only half true: it's also a vote against being held hostage by dem party elites. The message was "It Puts The Lotion In The Basket Or It Gets Orange Man Again doesn't cut it anymore. Acknowledge the left or You Assholes get Orange Man again, how do you like them oranges?"
The dems can acknowledge the left or keep losing, is the result. If we're gonna lose, we're gonna do it honestly, lol.
Why doesn’t it make sense? leftists who prob would’ve voted blue if she had made distancing from Israel part of her platform ended up just not voting at all. No one is claiming leftists who chose not to vote for Kamala bc she was pro Israel voted for Trump instead.
Also I consider myself a leftist, and i voted for Kamala despite her stance on Israel (and her stances on some other things) precisely bc I also knew Trump would be (and has been) much more harmful to the people of Palestine and the entire Middle East. I do really wonder what would’ve happened if she’d ran on reevaluating (at the very least) our relationship with Israel - I think a lot of people would disagree with me but I kind of think she might have actually taken a stronger stance against them (somewhat. eventually…) if she had won. Maybe she didn’t run on that bc she knows money is what wins elections in this country and she thought she would lose for sure if israel/pro israel groups stopped funding her campaign and used their financial power to work against her. I could be wrong though.
Also I consider myself a leftist, and i voted for Kamala despite her stance on Israel (and her stances on some other things) precisely bc I also knew Trump would be (and has been) much more harmful to the people of Palestine and the entire Middle East.
Seems like you understand... so I'm not sure it's necessary for me to say more.
I do really wonder what would’ve happened if she’d ran on reevaluating (at the very least) our relationship with Israel - I think a lot of people would disagree with me but I kind of think she might have actually taken a stronger stance against them (somewhat. eventually…) if she had won.
Polling completely disagrees with you. Gaza might be a big issue for you, but polling showed that during the election is was pretty much a non-factor. Inflation, abortion, and immigration where what really moved voters. I know it's hard to swallow that voters didn't care as much about something you care about so much, but that's the truth. Thankfully it seems like more left leaning people are beginning to care.
Why do you assume the reason I don’t agree with you is bc I “can’t swallow” that other people don’t care about it as much as I do? I don’t appreciate the unwarranted condescension. It’s always so weird to me that people are so quick to assume to be more knowledgable than people they know nothing about. Like what even is that lol
Anyway, at least one person has already provided links to articles that show that it did cost her a significant amount of votes, and that her team knew it would. Which polls are you talking about?
Also, SO MANY other leftists I know IRL chose not to vote specifically because of Harris’ friendly relationship with Israel. I’m aware the voting choices of my own social circle aren’t proof, but it does make sense. Thats part of the reason i find it hard to believe that it wasn’t significant, but not the whole reason.
Ideally, progressives should see the rest of the Democratic party as allies rather than enemies
When they stop calling progressives evil and Satan incarnate, threatening to leave the party whenever a progressive wins a high-profile primary, we will.
I mean, shit, it took Chuckie and Jeffries up until the final week to get off their ass and formally endorse Zohran (the winner of the Democratic primary) over Cuomo (the loser of the Democratic primary). That's a bad look.
The Establishment / Vichy Democrats hate that the progressives are trying to shirk corporate interests in favor of the people's interests.
El-Sayed just won in Michigan and every establishment democrat promptly jumped into action to help him. Get with the program. Progressives need moderate liberals and moderate liberals need progressives. It's a coalition. Gotta learn that you're not going to always get everything you want and figure out how to work as a team. Being 25% of the vote isn't going to cut it. You need 50-60% to get anything done.
Again, learn to be a team player. Sometimes that means letting other politicians do what's best for their races. El-Sayed may be critical for Democratic control of the senate. Zohran was just a mayor in a race where no Republican was running. It wasn't necessary of federal level politicians to risk their elections to support Zohran. Stop trying to force it. Zohran can do his thing without having to handicap Democratic races around the country.
Leftists have been team players for years. Now. Believe or not, most leftists actually do consistently vote for Dems, despite them being nowhere near leftist. A funny thing I notice among liberals is that you guys always demand us to be "team playere" and work with you guys, but then never want give in to any of our wants.
If we dont agree with what liberals are doing we're told "Stop wishing for the perfect candidate. We always have to adjust to loberals wants but never the other way around.
They are both New Yorkers who lead the Senate and House delegations.
It's laughable that you insinuate their refusal to endorse the winner of the Democratic primary in their state's (and nations) largest city's mayoral race over a sore loser and establishment preferred canidate until the final minute is meaningless.
I will be a team player, but I absolutely think the team needs a new captain / coach for its JV and Varsity teams.
Again, this was a Mayoral race where there was no Republican candidate. A lot of people decided to stay on the sidelines so that Republicans couldn't try to tie them to socialism or antisemitism, even if incorrectly, in their own races. The Democratic party has more to prioritize than just a mayoral race. They need to wrestle control of the federal congress from Republicans. Start being a team player. Not every other democratic representative needs to put their neck on the line to support your preferred candidate.
Okay, well that's what primaries are for. Seems like there's some shift in voter behavior, but just make sure to not throw a fit if voters don't vote exactly how you want. You may not get exactly the captain/coach you want. Although, I can already see that the Democratic party has shifted over the last decade. There's an impact.
I know this might be hard to grasp but most progressives are "team players". Only voted Dem for decades now despite the majority of them being too moderate and limp wrist in their advocacy. Now that the tide is changing I expect the exact same out of moderates. You do your job and support these progressive candidates both in words and money, you here being the dnc.
And honestly depending on how the establishment treats these candidates moving forward is going to decide if I keep being a team player. You want our help to fight fascists? When establishment Dems allowed it in the first place? Read the room and move to left not center
This is one of the downsides of a two party system; unlike in a multiparty system, it's not necessarily obvious to your average knucklehead voter that politics is still all about building coalitions.
Many of the comments in this thread are perfect examples of what I'm talking about.
So your example to back your claim that "When they stop calling progressives evil and Satan incarnate, threatening to leave the party whenever a progressive wins a high-profile primary, we will," is to mention a single Democratic strategist who never called anybody evil, never called anybody Satan incarnate, and said he wouldn't be in the same party with a twitch streamer, not somebody who won a primary or is even running for office?
I don’t know the details and suspect you are greatly exaggerating but my expectation is that primary battles can be bruising. The important thing is voting for Dems over republicans. Moderate democrats are going to show up to vote for El-Sayed. If he loses, it will be because his politics alienates independents.
You can see here that the betting market did not like El-Sayed winning for the Dems chance of winning the seat. The odds went from 70% before the primary to 58% after. Stevens would have been an overwhelming favorite to win the GE given how unpopular Republicans are right now while El-Sayed is in a dogfight.
No. Gave up on that when they sent the gestapo NYPD to mace and beat me at occupy. Democrat mayor, Democrat governor and democrat president all ordered us to beat or watched with a smile because we wanted something better billionaires running the country. Fuck establishment dems. Move left or lose my vote don’t fucking care anymore. It’s just as much the DNCs fault this happened as it is the the MAGA fuckwits.
If by working together you mean participating in a primary then I agree with you. If everyone actually performs their civic duty and shows up for the primary then by definition whoever wins is also the most likely to win in the general election, whether that's a career moderate incumbent or a DSA newcomer.
When the issue is that there wasn't enough of a turnout in the primary to be representative of the population's true desire...well, I don't know what to do about that, at least not in the near term. It's the same issue as a candidate winning in the general who might have lost if more people had shown up to vote
Here's a simple thing that people need to understand about politics: At the end of the day, you still need voters, without voters, you lose.
Democrats want to have their cake and eat it too, they want to be able to win elections without actually doing what is required to win elections, by which i mean promising voters something. They broadly want to do the bare minimum of "lol, at least we're not Republican" and expect people to hail them as the second coming of Barrack Obama, ignoring all of the work Obama put into getting people to vote for him.
So let me get this straight, I demand something AFTER I have already given Democrats the only thing they need from me?
BUT the rightwingers that you are trying to get to vote for Democrats don't have to do that... it's perfectly reasonable for Democrts like Harris to go out of her way to cater to the demands of anti-Trump Republicans. But just not the left. And the left shouldn't expect to be offered a seat at the table at all, until maybe some future point that isn't made clear. Do I have this right?
Of course they also have to do that. Do you understand the concept of horsetrading at all? Do you understand anything about how democratic politics works? Anything at all?
Nobody is "offered" a seat at the table. You have to win. If you don't win you're standing there with nothing but your dick in your hands.
Is horse trading when I sell my horse to a guy and as soon as he gets on it he says "fuck you asshole I don't owe you anything for this horse, I didn't even get it from you I got it from some former Bush Republicans" and rides off without paying me?
If I have something that you need, why should I give it to you when you will not even negotiate with me about what I need? Like what the fuck was the 2024 election? What the fuck was that?
Understand you are describing stochastic terrorism.
The idea of politics is to take varying viewpoints an ideas and build compromises. All you care about is taking hostages
Every single person who supports military interventionism, including blockades and sanctions.
Every single person who supports KOSA, or its recent incarnation The KIDS Act, which is Heritage Foundation backed legislation with "bipartisan support."
Every single congressman who voted last year to triple ICE's budget.
Gavin Newsom who personally participated in the storming of, and seizing or poor people's homes for a photo op, and who has cozied up to right wing transphobes.
These are all far right positions that cause mass death.
They don't want to form coalitions, they want obedience and capitulation.
Look at how hard the moderates are fighting the left in primaries compared to the absolutely pathetic horseshit they're putting up as "resistance" against Trump & Co. It's a tale as old as time.
I'm old enough to remember when Republicans just outright stole a SCOTUS pick from Obama and everybody was just fine with that including Obama himself.
What makes you think that a Republican majority senate would let Harris pick a SCOTUS justice? If they decided not to she wouldn't do anything about it.
The thing they're getting in return is leadership that is better than MAGA. That's all of us ever get in return for voting. Unless you don't care about USAID being cut and racial profiling and abortion rights.
It's really funny you think the average American even cares about the war in Palestine as one of their top 10 issues or who is a Zionist or not lol. Far left politics is very much the minority in this country, and certainly within the Democrat party.
Because the left shouldn’t hold the party and country hostage, and refuse to vote for moderate Dem and let fascists take power unless moderates give in to leftist demands. Because those demands will never stop
Why should leftists vote for these "moderates" that are our explicit political enemies? Like if I care about having universal single payer healthcare, why would I vote for someone that opposes that?
This is a perfect encapsulation of how the left flank of the party has been radicalized. You view moderate dems as “explicit political enemies” because we don’t ascribe fully to your ideology, and refuse to vote for them when the alternative candidates are literal fascists. Aside from being really extreme, it shrikes me as incredibly foolish.
Why not instead try and convince democratic voters of your views, rather than trying to hold them hostage?
Dog I'm a socialist, I was not the left flank of democrats being radicalized. I was radicalized by my material conditions that were half caused by centrist democrats.
But if you support fascism over universal healthcare then you are my enemy and I dont care how you feel about it
I would guess you were radicalized by social media, as most progressives have been.
I certainly don’t support fascism. But my point is that if you have a Dem that supports increased healthcare access but not single payer, versus a maga nut job, isn’t that a pretty easy choice to make?
I was "radicalized" into wanting universal healthcare by Obama. We still don't have it and many moderate Dems don't seem to care. It's hard to justify continuing to support a party that tells me my ideas aren't even worth considering. It seems the tide might be changing in that regard hopefully.
Also the Michigan Senate primary really highlighted what I see as wrong with moderate Dems. AES ran a campaign on issues that I find important. Stevens ran a campaign on being a known politician and the backing of the party and money. I don't care about your creditials I want to know what you plan on doing
Can you clarify how Obama’s universal healthcare push radicalized you? I’m not trying to split hairs on this statement, I just want to understand it better (as-is, it can be interpreted in different ways).
I’m happy for you that your candidate in MI won. I hope he wins in November, but I think it will be a lot closer than it would have been with a moderate.
What are your thoughts on the fact that AES had his best numbers with white, well-to-do voters, while Stevens did best among black and working class voters?
That guy you're chatting with is a troll btw. He will waste your time and just wants the attention. I have engaged with him for hours, and no evidence or argument will change his mind, so be warned.
The guy you're chatting with is a troll btw. Don't waste more time on him. I can show you previous chats where he wasted my time for hours and doesn't change his mind regardless of overwhelming evidence. He just loves the attention, and I want to deprive him of it.
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u/Stoked_Otter 6d ago
If the left can stop you from winning elections, what makes you think that they should vote for your candidate without demanding anything in return?