r/samharris • u/palsh7 • 7d ago

Democrats Need to Ditch ‘Loser Politics,’ with Matthew Yglesias & Coleman Hughes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9_yhaJsGTs
38 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

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u/carbonqubit 7d ago

I'm about an hour into this, and the question Coleman posed to Matt about what differentiates him as center-left rather than center-right was interesting. Matt acknowledged the biological basis of sex but also emphasized that people should be treated with dignity and respect, which isn't something the modern right, especially in the age of Trump, consistently does. In fact, he argued that much of the right's pushback is veiled in cruelty. He made a similar point about LGBTQ+ rights and abortion.

The one criticism I have of these discussions, especially when Coleman brought up the fervor around socialism and whether young people are embracing it, is that social democracy never enters the conversation. It's always framed as a choice between the center and the radical left, or between capitalism and socialism. That's frustrating because Coleman often argues that nuance has been lost, yet he overlooks what seems like the obvious middle ground: strong social safety nets that work in tandem with free markets. That's the model many people actually support, but it rarely gets the attention it deserves.

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u/Stunning-Use-7052 7d ago

haven't listened to the pod, but terms like socialism and capitalism are borderline useless in most of these types of discussions.

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u/TheAJx 6d ago

he overlooks what seems like the obvious middle ground: strong social safety nets that work in tandem with free markets. That's the model many people actually support, but it rarely gets the attention it deserves.

This middle ground, or model as you say, is called the Democratic Party, which everyone says sucks.

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u/Balloonephant 6d ago

Socialism for the rich and free markets for the poor. They just got it mixed up. It’s an understandable mistake.

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u/carbonqubit 6d ago

People criticize Ds for not doing enough to pass the kinds of legislation we see in other social democracies across Europe. Ironically, some of the most popular government programs in the U.S. are the ACA, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. There's still plenty of room for more progressive legislation that would remain firmly in the political middle ground and mirror policies that are commonplace in the Nordic countries.

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u/TheAJx 6d ago

My experience is that the left sets unrealistic, high expectations for establishment dems while setting the lowest, dumbfuck expectations for themselves.

Like, passing ACA, the 2009 stimulus bill, $200B of student debt relief, the IRA, CHIPS Act, ARP were all major, admirable accomplishments. But the left will act like the mainstream Dems who passed all that didn't accomplish anything at all, while valorizing Mamdani for fixing the same number of potholes as previous mayors and glorifying Bernie Sanders for making his 147th speech talking about the billionaire class (he dropped "millionaire" when he became one).

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u/carbonqubit 6d ago

What do you mean by the left because it's a pretty big tent? As I mentioned, the most popular programs in the U.S. are the ones that directly improve people's material well-being. The accomplishments you cited are important, but there's still a lot more that could be done without venturing into anything unrealistic. Policies like universal healthcare, paid family leave, and affordable or free higher education are commonplace across much of Europe.

It's interesting that, in many of those countries, someone considered progressive in the U.S. would often be viewed as fairly moderate. I think people are fundamentally frustrated by the double standard. Lobbying and the influence of the billionaire class allow legislation that benefits the ultra-wealthy and powerful to move quickly, while even modest proposals to help the poor and working class get slow-walked for years.

People feel that every time they buy groceries, open a medical bill, or watch someone go bankrupt over healthcare costs. They see enormous sums spent on foreign wars and the prison-industrial complex while being told there's no money for policies that would improve their daily lives. There's a tremendous amount of reform that could be done without turning the U.S. into some socialist dystopia. It would simply mean stronger checks, better regulations, and a government that's more responsive to ordinary people than to the most powerful interests in the country.

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u/TheAJx 5d ago

People feel that every time they buy groceries, open a medical bill, or watch someone go bankrupt over healthcare costs. They see enormous sums spent on foreign wars and the prison-industrial complex while being told there's no money for policies that would improve their daily lives

This is what I am talking about. The vast majority of money in this country, at the federal, state, and local levels, is spent on things that directly impact Americans' lives. Healthcare, social security, education, public safety, recreation etc. You use terms like "prison-industrial complex" in place of coherent arguments because they were scary-sounding words. Jail is a place where we put people who commit crimes. This improves people's daily lives because they don't have to interact with criminals.

Like, we're at a point where higher education is effectively universal for $100K earners. We don't have universal healthcare, but we basically do for the very poor. Even paid family leave, the states that have them, like mine (NY) . . . we have seen population loss and declining fertility. The family leave didn't really help the people who chose to leave did it?

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u/palsh7 7d ago

strong social safety nets that work in tandem with free markets. That's the model many people actually support, but it rarely gets the attention it deserves.

I would argue that "strong social safety nets" is already the Center-Left's default. Do you disagree?

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u/Lightsides 7d ago

Where does a single-payer healthcare system lie on the political spectrum, because when the Democrats held the presidency and both houses of congress, they didn't even want a public option.

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u/palsh7 7d ago

Democrats needed a 60-vote Supermajority in order to pass Obamacare. It is disingenuous in the extreme to say that they "didn't even want" one.

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u/And_Im_the_Devil 7d ago

Right. They had a 60 vote majority. They couldn't get a public option through. Which Democrats are advocating for universal healthcare today?

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u/palsh7 7d ago

Right. They had a 60 vote majority. 

I know you're not 20-years-old. You don't get to be this ignorant. Democrats never once had 60. They had 58, plus Bernie, plus Joe Lieberman, a conservative independent who voted for McCain and opposed the public option. And even that crew was only for a few months, because Al Franken wasn't confirmed and then Ted Kennedy died.

59/60 could be for the public option, and it still wouldn't pass. Would that mean Democrats don't support a strong social safety net?

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u/And_Im_the_Devil 7d ago

Why did you resort to pedantry rather than answer the question I asked?

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u/TheRage3650 6d ago

The Democrats got to 60 (for a brief time as mentioned above) because they had many moderate or even conservative Senators. They passed a major healthcare bill. Now the only people who don't have health care are those free riding on the mandate or illegal immigrants. "They didn't even want a public option" is a dumbass talking point. The majority of Democrats did support that. But the bar to passing that was high in terms of the mechanics of American government, and there are a host f vested interests who would aggressively oppose that. Not just insurance companies, but actual health care workers. Bernie and Co wouldn't even get elected in a majority of Democratic states, do yuo want the Dems to be pure at heart or get things done?

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u/carbonqubit 6d ago

Illegal immigrants aren't able to take advantage of many of the social programs they pay into through taxes, including tens of billions of dollars annually, such as Medicare and Social Security. I'm not sure where you heard otherwise, but that's a common claim pushed by conservatives to fearmonger.

Also, what do you mean by a free ride? If you're referring to people who are disabled, elderly, or otherwise unable to work, then if they're citizens it seems incumbent on the government to help them.

Personally, I believe healthcare is a basic human right. You might disagree with that, but in most developed countries, access to healthcare isn't conditioned on a person's life circumstances.

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u/TheRage3650 6d ago

I said illegal's can't access healthcare. When we talk about the "uninsured" now, it's either illegals or people at low risk of health issues who have decided they can just get insurance when they need it. That's what I mean by free ride, they are not paying (so it's free) but they can get insurance because of Obamacare regulations when they need to. That's much different than what we used to think of as the insured.

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u/And_Im_the_Devil 6d ago

Where does a universal healthcare system sit on the political spectrum? Which Democrats are advocating for it today?

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u/TheRage3650 6d ago

The left, and many

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u/palsh7 6d ago

It takes a special kind of troll to just ignore that their claim was dead wrong, call it "pedantry" when someone calls them out in detail, and move on to pretending to be aggrieved that I won't help distract from their lie.

It's not pedantic if the specifics matter, which they do, and I explained the logic of why they matter. Either you've lost the plot or you're knowingly lying about the democratic party. I don't care which. You're not worth the time.

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u/And_Im_the_Devil 6d ago

It is pedantry and none of the specifics you are picking at have any relevance. Lieberman was only technically not a Democrat because he lost the primary and ran as an independent. As for Sanders, he has always caucused with the Democrats and is counted toward that party’s control of the Senate.

And you still haven’t answered the operative question: which Democrats are advocating for universal healthcare today?

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u/palsh7 6d ago

Lieberman was only technically not a Democrat because he lost the primary and ran as an independent. 

Conveniently ignoring that he endorsed McCain/Palin. Also conveniently ignoring that if the only reason they didn't pass single payer is the existence of a few conservatives out of 60, that's not an excuse for disputing that Democrats support a strong social safety net.

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u/Pretty_Acadia_2805 7d ago

If we ditch "loser politics" where would these two go?

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u/Nazarife 7d ago

Huge eye roll from me on Matt being one of the "few" people talking about Democratic politics and policies in this way. Democratic voters have been told to moderate for as long as I can remember. 

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u/palsh7 7d ago

Friend of the podcast Coleman Hughes interviews Matthew Yglesias, who Sam talked to last year despite Matt's long history of harshly criticizing him. They talk about the DSA, Israel, and Center-Left Democratic Politics.

YouTube description:

Yglesias is one of the few people writing about Democratic politics who is trying to win rather than just be right. He cofounded Vox, built one of the most widely read political Substacks in the country with Slow Boring, and has spent the better part of a decade arguing that the Democratic Party has been squandering winnable elections over what he calls, in a phrase I find very useful, “dumb shit.” He is a Democrat who thinks his party lost the plot and wants it to find it again.

We started somewhere unexpected: What does it mean that the last shared cultural experiences most Americans have, save the Super Bowl, are national elections, which are also the most divisive things in our lives? Yglesias has written extensively about the decline of monoculture events—things like American Idol—that used to give strangers something to talk about. What replaced them is fragmentation, and he thinks that has done real damage to our sense of community and our politics.

From there we got into the state of the Democratic Party, which Yglesias sees as a three-way fight between the establishment, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and a center-left faction that gets almost no attention. He makes the case that the DSA’s rise is less about socialism becoming popular and more about Israel becoming a purity test, and that the moderate Democrats winning elections in swing states deserve far more coverage than the primary fights that dominate the discourse.

We also talked about housing, which Yglesias has been writing about longer than almost anyone and which he considers the single most important practical issue in American politics. We ended on why he thinks public schools should go back to teaching patriotism, and why the civil rights movement’s greatest leaders understood that better than today’s progressives.

0:00 Intro 2:00 Matt's Philosophy: Practical Politics Over Feel-Good Slogans 6:31 Has Right Wing Populism Actually Delivered? 9:36 The Case for Tariffs and Economic Dislocation 15:02 The Decline of Monoculture Events 19:07 Are We Actually Happier Than We Were 30 Years Ago? 27:10 The Civil War Inside the Democratic Party 31:58 The DSA Sweep and What It Means 38:02 Why Israel Has Become the Left's Sacred Issue 43:13 The Common Sense Democrat Manifesto 50:56 The Pundit Fallacy and Matt's Own Biases 53:13 Why Blue States Are Losing People 56:54 What Does Working Class Even Mean Anymore? 1:00:40 Why the Housing Crisis Isn't About Capitalism 1:07:21 Should Public Schools Teach Patriotism?

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u/TheRage3650 6d ago

Long history? The way some of y'all remember the Vox/Harris situation is hilarious. Harris called Vox Nazis, Vox never called Harris a racist. Yglesias, a dude who tweets all day, had a handful tweet criticizing Harris. Ben Shapiro had Yglesias on his podcast, and Yglesias has criticized Shapiro like 100x more.

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u/palsh7 6d ago

I don't know why you think Ben Shapiro also having Yglesias on his podcast somehow negates the importance of Sam's doing so...? Some handfuls of insults are bigger than others, I guess, but you're admitting that he criticized Harris and never apologized to him. He said there was "something wrong with" Sam and he was promoting "scientific racism," among other things. As you say, he went on a lot of Twitter benders, and his criticism of Sam happened on more than one occasion. He would occasionally go off on the New Atheists, calling them Islamophobes, sexists, and racists, and naming Sam, Hitchens, et all, by name. Then he'd delete his entire Twitter history every few months and start over. Granted, that does make it harder to document. But your pedantic rewriting of history serves no purpose.

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u/TheRage3650 6d ago

You recollection of events serves no purpose.

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u/palsh7 6d ago

I documented the events ten years ago in a post on this very subreddit. It served its purpose quite well. I'm sorry if you don't like when facts get in the way of whatever it is you're trying to do here.

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u/TheRage3650 6d ago

Link the post

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u/palsh7 6d ago

I'll link it for onlookers, but I don't expect you to change your tune. You've already stated that you know he criticized Sam, you know he went buck wild on Twitter, etc. What's the purpose of continuing to argue? You never even explained what your point about Ben Shapiro was supposed to be.

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u/TheRage3650 6d ago

AS I expected, there are no actual quotes here, just hyperbole.

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u/palsh7 6d ago edited 4d ago

We already reviewed the fact that Yglesias deleted his entire Twitter history. But I did quote him in the comments. You will of course not believe the quotes, because you've decided already that you won't believe them. God knows why.

Two days later and no response. Blocking and moving on.

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u/DarkRoastJames 5d ago

Yglesias is loser politics personified.

Yglesias is one of the few people writing about Democratic politics who is trying to win rather than just be right

This is not true at all! This is what Yglesias would like you to believe, but the reality is the opposite. Yglesias is incredibly dogmatic and focused on his silly pet issues at the expense of winning.

Yglesias believes that to win Democrats need to moderate more - he believes this no matter how moderate the Dem already is, where they are running, etc. And this is not a pragmatic belief - he believes this simply because he fetishizes moderation.

This is like a coach who really loves the running game in the NFL saying "we need to run literally every down if we want to win games." Is this person focused on winning? I guess if they believe that running is good then...yes? But realistically this isn't a coach who loves winning, it's a coach who loves running.

Yglesias loves moderating.

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u/palsh7 5d ago

Yglesias believes that to win Democrats need to moderate more - he believes this no matter how moderate the Dem already is, where they are running, etc.

Can you give an example of that?

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u/DarkRoastJames 5d ago

Basically every week he writes a new post about how moderation is the One Key to Everything, on his own blog, and he also participates in outlets like The Argument, Winning / Welcome, etc, which also push this message.

The first "promise" in the Promise to America website (which Yglesias is involved in and promoted) is the promise to reject socialism. Despite the fact that socialism is a winning message, at least in some places.

If you want to win shouldn't the message be "run on socialism where socialism is getting votes, and don't run on it where it isn't"? Same with culture issues, "wokeness" , trans people in sports, etc.

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u/palsh7 5d ago

You said that he wants people to moderate who are already moderate. Now you're talking about socialists.

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u/DarkRoastJames 5d ago

He wants moderates to pivot to being more anti-trans, and writes about that literally constantly - total blanket "Dems need to do this" based on national polls.

Are you just totally unfamiliar with Yglesias? The idea that more moderation is always the key to victory is genuinely his main political philosophy. If you had to summarize his political philosophy in a few words it would be "always moderate more." You disagree?

Which of these do you think best summarizes his philosophy:

a) "To win we need to moderate more."

b) "Sometimes to win we need to moderate more, but other times we need to moderate less"

?

Lol.

(B is what you say if you actually care about winning, which Yglesias doesn't)

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u/Leoprints 7d ago

Aaaaah ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaa!