For the previous 8 years, instead of fighting fascism and white nationalism, the Democrats have made their enemy the populists within their own party.
It ended expectedly.
My heart belongs to Bernie.
The left really should actually organize and form a secret party of political actors who run as republicans to disrupt the vote.
They should just run fake centrists in the Democratic Party and then turn all progressive when they get into office.
Like centrists did with the fake progressives Fetterman and Sinema.
How does that make any sense compared to moderates going to the Republican party?
Like, the current Dems are “progressives” who want what every other 1st world country got decades ago, and “moderates” who want what Republicans wanted decades ago…
Why are the “moderates” trying to moderate the Dem party instead of the one that’s so far from center they’re openly fascist?
If they had stayed where they were in the 80s, then the furthest right we’d have been in 2024 was Kamala
Do you understand how ridiculous it is to say everyone to the left of them should go R?
Absolutely best case scenario we end up with two modern Dem parties and that fixes nothing.
But if the moderates go to the Republican party?
They’d get what they want, they can be pro-fracking. They can be for genocide, they can be for politicians using insider knowledge to make millions off the stock market, they can be for the end of political donations regulations.
And have total party unity on all those topics, while moderating the Republicans so they run McCains instead of trumps.
But that’s hard.
And moderates have never been fighters.
The only way they’ll go moderate Republicans, is if Dems kick them the fuck out of running the party.
They did it in 08, they’ll do it again if we get a progressive to the general. It’s not a problem either because we’ll gain waaaaay more votes than we lose.
They would last MAYBE one term before they were instantly primaried and removed from power.
The reason manchin and sinema are so destructive is that they were from INCREDIBLY purple states. Going up against them would just split the vote and guarantee the republican candidate one. fetterman is more of a special case and time will tell on him.
The other? To get elected as a magat you need to be a pretty hateful son of a bitch. And people are already turning on AOC for removing her pronouns from her social media bio.
Because… just look at the Bernie Bros. Democrats are INCREDIBLY good at purity testing each other. So someone who pretended they wanted to enslave women and then voted for progressive legislature? They would be forever tainted and vilified… and kind of rightfully so.
Bernie won fewer votes in Vermont, his home state, than Kamala. One of the rare incumbent Democratic Senators who actually underperformed Harris.
I go back and forth, but I do think Sanders would have had good odds in 2020. We had the same “I can’t vote for the status quo” non-arguments going around and a semi-populist candidate arguing for all the things people desperately needed (a socioeconomic safety net, basically) at the height of COVID and civil unrest would have done well. That said, an old white guy who was “warm and safe and was in the same room as Obama a few times” was probably still the right play.
But yeah. In 2024 when all people care about is “not the status quo” and “why eggs expensive”? A guy arguing for MORE government programs does not fair well against “Yo, what if we got rid of all taxes and government funding? Don’t ask where the money is going”
But yeah. In 2024 when all people care about is “not the status quo” and “why eggs expensive”? A guy arguing for MORE government programs does not fair well against “Yo, what if we got rid of all taxes and government funding? Don’t ask where the money is going”
This is something I’ve always tried to get people to understand.
If you’re running for office, and your opponent is saying monkeys flying out of your ass are terrorizing the city and causing a huge problem, you’d be right to want to write them off as an unhinged lunatic with no grasp on reality, because anyone can see there are no flying monkeys. Should be pretty cut and dry; ignore him and let him go back to giving sermons to pigeons in the park.
But if 51% of the voting base believes that monkeys flying out of your ass are their top concern, you had better come up with a solution for the flying monkeys. Of course, you could try to appeal to reason and logic and point out that you have pants on and there are no flying monkeys. But if 51% of voters are hooked on the flying monkey problem, you’ll be making those appeals during your concession speech, while your opponent will suddenly point out that there are no flying monkeys because he managed to solve the problem on day one.
That’s just the reality of running for office. Sometimes, feels win out over objective reality. There are a certain number of voters who fall into this category, and those voters were always out of reach. You cannot use logic to persuade someone to change a position they didn’t logic their way into to begin with.
That is why trump and vance were so adamant about no fact checking during the debates. All they had to do was say “nuh uh. I saw it on the news” and the moderators couldn’t really do much.
Which gets back to the underlying problem of Democrats not actually having a way to communicate with voters. Because even when Fox was saying “Just to be clear for legal reasons, there is no evidence of Haitian immigrants eating dogs” it was followed with “now let’s see what else god emperor trump has to say”.
Whereas Democrats? We had people who were more interested in attacking Biden than trump (even after he stepped down) and who mostly just said “ha ha, trump says stupid shit.”
Because, yeah, logic can’t beat vibes. But we also weren’t putting out the vibes the way we were in 2020.
You don’t need to concede to their belief and subsequent policies if they aren’t grounded in reality, like on immigration. You provide a counter narrative grounded in reality that actually address their needs and concerns, real or perceived.
The Republican narrative on immigration is that immigrants are criminals, bringing crime and drugs into our country to kill our citizens, steal jobs, and exploit welfare, so we need mass deportations. None of that is based on reality.
US citizens are responsible for smuggling in drugs. Immigrants are responsible for less crime per capita than US citizens, use much less welfare than citizens, and contribute far more than they use. The underlying fear is cost of living and safety. So a counter narrative that both points out the realities of mass deportation, aka concentration camps, and provides real solutions to the problems, would absolutely capture those voters and fracture the Republican base.
Those real solutions would include legalization of illegal immigrants to stop companies from exploiting both them and citizens with a two-tier immigration system, increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy to pay for universal social services, systemic solutions to addiction and homelessness, and increasing security to catch smugglers at points of entry. All of which are popular. You address their fears, improve their material needs, and point out how terrible the oppositions ‘solutions’ are, all without conceding to the Republican framing based on racist lies.
In fact, many progressive policies are popular across the board, including Republicans and independents.
Polls on campaign messaging
How to Win a Swing Voter in Seven Days
“The View” Alternate Universe: Break From Biden in Interviews, Play the Hits in Ads
Polls on policy
How Trump and Harris Voters See America’s Role in the World
Majority of Americans support progressive policies such as higher minimum wage, free college
Democrats should run on the popular progressive ideas, but not the unpopular ones
Here Are 7 ‘Left Wing’ Ideas (Almost) All Americans Can Get Behind
Finding common ground: 109 national policy proposals with bipartisan support
Progressive Policies Are Popular Policies
Tim Walz’s Progressive Policies Popular With Republicans in Swing States
But yeah. In 2024 when all people care about is “not the status quo” and “why eggs expensive”? A guy arguing for MORE government programs does not fair well against “Yo, what if we got rid of all taxes and government funding? Don’t ask where the money is going”
Bernie has better answers to that than Trump, though.
Okay now do swing states, the only states that actually end up mattering in presidential elections. Bernie captivated audiences on Fox news during his campaign, appeared in Republican town halls and listened to people. Id bet you dollars to donuts Bernie would outperform her by miles in the swing states.
… So he would do worse in the solid blue states but better in the purple states because… red leaning voters are secretly socialists but blue leaning voters are neoliberal scum?
Read my comment again and dont skip the part about him being well recieved on Fox News and Republican town halls. Its right there why ignore it? Was kamala as well recieved by fox news viewers?
No, it’s because Trump-leaning voters are very blatantly populist and anti-status-quo and Bernie would deliver that more genuinely than Trump.
Bernie ain’t winning shit beyond his seat right now
I am skeptical if the guy who was a meme about how nobody cares about politics on c-span AND who has historically refused to condemn the horrific “communist” regimes would do well against an opponent who does nothing but throw schoolyard insults. Calling Biden “a communist” makes most of the moderates laugh. Calling Bernie “a communist” leads to him basically saying what only the far (American) left wants to hear and terrifying the hell out of the center.
But also? This makes no fucking sense and just makes “leftists” look like assholes.
- Because Hilary was not as left leaning as Sanders you… refused to vote and gave the right wing moron the win?
- Because Biden was not as left leaning as Sanders… he won? Or are we now saying that Genocide Joe is a straight up marxist?
- Because Kamala was not as left leaning as Sanders you… refused to vote and gave the openly fascist hatemonger the win?
I do think the Dems screwed up the “primary”. But also? There was no time. Conventional wisdom is that you don’t run against your own incumbent and the extent of Biden’s infirmity was not apparent until way too late. We were never going to have nation wide votes and it was always going to be “super delegates”. But maybe a more public “debate” rather than all the major players just saying “Yeah, Kamala is awesome” within a few hours of her announcing would have done more for the “base” who… still decided not to vote?
Just to reply to myself on the primary thing:
Part of me does wonder if we wouldn’t be better with a standing policy to ALWAYS primary the POTUS. Done well, we have a way, as the people, to influence the platform and make our candidate much stronger.
Then I remember that we are STILL litigating 2016 because some people are pissy that the person they wanted didn’t get the votes (obviously only because of people understanding the existence of superdelegates, I guess?) and all the damage that was done to Hilary because Sanders didn’t concede when he should have and use his political capital to get concessions (as he seemed to have done with Biden in 2020).
