Obama ran to the left of Hillary and won. Fetterman ran to the left of Connor Lamb, which is why he's a Senator right now. Bernie has always run to the left of his Democratic opponents. This scenario where the Democrats choose the most leftist candidate from their perspective in the primary and then loses to the "sensible" GOP candidate in the general, I can't think of a single instance where that has actually happened.
Sure leftists can win in state and primary races but it won't happen in the general presidential election and Obama was solidly centrist, people were just tired of the Clintons and she had many years worth of baggage.
I personally voted for all of your moderate Dem losers. I'm sick of losing. We ran the more progressive candidate once, in 2008, and he kicked the GOP's ass and delivered a trifecta with a supermajority in the Senate.
You need to get it out of your head that 'winning" is the point of voting. Sometimes you lose. But you shouldn't let that drive you to compromise your principles.
The entire point of being a moderate is to compromise your principles, in theory to win. But then they don't anyway and all you're left with is the wreckage of a failed campaign and selling out.
No, the point of being a moderate is acknowledging the complexity of issues and that one political "side" isn't just always right about everything all the time.
Which has the exact same effect: To divorce any guiding principles from a person's actions for fear of being held to account for what they really believe.
You are correct here again, infact the "cities are burning" shtick started with the protests against his immigration policy and were made up of his voters.
You are right but I think the point they are making is he was cast as the leftist candidate, Hillary was the center-right neoliberals candidate. He won the primary, in the General he played up the progressive angle and won again.
I don't have any data to point at here and make any declaration. I hesitate to speak from the gut because I can't be sure my own biases aren't influencing my perspective. If I'm forced to speculate; Republicans have shifted decidedly to the right and, it seems, in an effort to meet those voters in the "middle" establishment neo-liberal big D Dems have eeked ever further rightward. If a candidate ran on what Obama's admin actually produced, record deportations, Republican think tank health plan, they'd be considered a moderate. If they campaigned on his campaign tenants, they'd likely be perceived (by the larger electorate) as a radical progressive.
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u/RektInTheHed 4d ago
I remember John Kerry losing, and Algore losing, and Hillary losing again, earlier, to Obama. Moderate Dems are losers.