Democratic political strategy
I know posts like those feel good, but the objective fact is that the political conversation and (much more importantly) public policy has moved drastically leftward in both shorter terms (the last decade) as well as more medium-term measurements (the last fifty years).
Universal health care used to be something that was at least mentioned during campaigns, now not so anymore. Fracking, inhumane border policies to keep those crazed illegal immigrants out, explicit support for genocide; these are far right policies, and the dems are falling over themselves to support it. Every cycle they move further right.
The Affordable Care Act passed, and addressed some of the most glaring, campaigning worthy issues. It’s only been 14 years, and already support for the ACA is rising, and opposition is falling off.
Support for more fracking has risen slightly in the last 4 years, but it lags behind the growth in support for solar, wind, and even nuclear. I suspect (caveat emptor) that as renewables bring energy costs back into check, support for fracking will follow the drop in support of coal production. It should not be a surprise that any shelter is popular in a storm.
Both parties used to be strongly against illegal immigration, now one campaigns against it, but did most of the things they were allowed to do to encourage and allow it, including publicly declaring their support for illegal immigrants, and passing sanctuary city laws.
I don’t have a strong grounding in how much open support there is for genocide, but I think the American population is more aware of it happening than they were in the past. Hopefully that means we care more now.
Thank you for mentioning the ACA! It is a perfect example of the democrats campaigning on a progressive cause, and as a result mobilizing their base and beyond to support them enthusiastically. Progressive policies win, and adopting them, as the democrats at least tried in the obamna era, is a recipe for winning elections.
Now regarding fracking and the border wall, I really think you need to talk to Harris’ people and the current regime, because they have not gotten the memo that their support is reluctant. During their debate, Harris and Trump were yelling over each other to show who’s more pro-fracking. Four years ago such a climate change denialist stance would’ve been unthinkable for the dem candidate four years ago. That does not sound like reluctance to me.
Then the border wall. Please think back to how for example the Clinton and Biden campaigns talked about it. The messaging was very simple: the border wall is inhumane, this country was built on immigration, and even beyond that the wall would be ineffective for obvious reasons. The biden campaign was a bit more about the latter, but still. Now, Harris refers to undocumented immigrants as “illegal immigrants”, completely joins in on the false narrative that undocumented immigrants bring with them a lot of crime (which is categorically false, citizens by far outrank undocumented immigrants in violent crime per capita) and brags about her strong border policies. This is a core part of her messaging that came back in town halls, debates, and interviews. You cannot just ignore this or expect the electorate not to notice. Again, please think back to what the dem campaigns used to be like four and eight years ago. This kind of stance was rightly ridiculed and rightly vilified. Beyond just the messaging, there’s what the current regime is actually doing: the border wall is still being built (again: ridiculed and vilified, rightly so, and you know this), and there are more children in cages at the border than there were under Trump.
And beyond that, the republican candidate was able to position himself as the pro peace candidate next to “most lethal fighting force in the world” Harris! So on this the democrat messaging was actually even more right wing than that of the republicans! They are absolutely sprinting to the right, and denying so is completely ahistorical.
How cute, you guys are trying to rewrite it in your favor. Too bad the science says otherwise.
These stats are about the policy preferences of the electorate, while OP is about the politicians. But your picture is a fantastic illustration as to why the democrats lost the election. It’s because they keep moving further right (look for example at their recent pro-fracking, pro-border wall, pro-genocide presidential candidate).
“Pro border wall” the chart above would indicate that overall sentiment would be the opposite, less border wall more movement.
Frankly the people are the ones moving further to the right because the state does not educate them and regulate corporate power, transforming the public into a myopic panicked herd.
That’s actually false. When it comes to policy preferences, the actual electorate swings pretty far left compared to the right wing and far right parties they can choose between. Universal health care, parental leave, paid sick leave, higher minimum wage all enjoy broad and firm popular support, and neither party is even talking about this.
If you read this study, it mentions people are prone to affective polarization, that is a state of mind that is in itself extreme and it’s related to people being myopic, that is governed by strong emotions such as panic instead of choosing rationally.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t read the whole thing. But I did try to find a section supporting what you say, and sure, it talks about affective polarization, but it doesn’t show anywhere that this leads to people voting irrationally in the sense of voting against their own material interests, as far as I can see. Is there any section you’re referring to specifically?
!! yea
always important to remember that the electorate’s preference in policy has only a loose relationship to who they vote for. this air gap is where most elections are fought, where strong messaging tightens the gap and messaging failures loosen it. the 2024 presidential election had a hella loose connection between party and people.
That connection is much less loose if you consider how right wing the democrats have gotten over the years. And beyond that, note that a big part of Harris’ loss is that her republican light “I’m basically Nikki Haley” campaign mainly reflects itself in people not voting for her. The statistics you mention (or the polls you base your comment on, not sure where it’s coming from) are presumably talking about voters, not the electorate. Harris’ inability to mobilize her base is the problem here, not republicans voting republican.
The rightward shift of the GOP and the tendency of the seemingly infinite number of spineless Dem careerist politicians to seek compromise is very real, but please remember the 90s and 2000s, everyone. They were not as rosy and left-wing as you remember; while not nearly enough, the Dems are notably more left than they were then.
In the larger picture the rightward trend is kind of true on economic fronts.
But yeah, since the 90s we’ve slowly moved left.
Since the 90s we’ve moved left economically as well. The 90s were where the Dems had their massive neoliberal shift, after all. Not hard to be more left than THAT.
Can you please explain what you mean exactly by “economic fronts?” Do you mean there are specific things they’re further right on than before, or that they’re further right on the economy as a whole? If the latter: what issues are you accounting for, and how are you turning their stances into a clean metric?
If I were to guess, I’d say, the left is winning on social fronts. IE Say topics like gay marriage, Partial legalization of pot etc… would never have even been on the table 40 years ago.
Now admitted, The current position of the pieces of the country is poised in a way that we are very likely to take huge backslides on those issues.
If there’s so much appetite for a progressive/socialist party in the USA, how come there isn’t one that gets a significant amount of financing and votes?
Because that wouldn’t be in the interest of the billionaire class so it’s actively suppressed. I mean, the government killed Malcolm X and MLK Jr. There’s no telling how many more. Look at the response to BLM or the pro-Palestinian protest in comparison to the Jan 6 traitors. The left are painted as radicals for wanting equality and healthcare, while the right gets a free pass on being pedophiles, con men, and foreign assets.
I’m talking about a party with a platform, doing an actual campaign to get people elected, not a protest movement.
Look at how much money Harris managed to get from regular people, you would believe the left would be able to organize more than just protests, that there would be the Republicans, the Democrats AND the Progressives (or whatever the name it would have)…
Campaigning in the US relies heavily on money from wealthy investors to get off the ground. Meaning, any new party that wants to get going needs approval from the wealthy to do so.
Additionally, a huge percentage of the population pays no attention to politics at all, just closing their eyes to the whole election and either not voting, or voting for the party they’ve always voted for every time, so even if your party managed to get some attention, it’d just be another 3rd party further fracturing what small portion of the population risks voting outside the 2 party system as it is.
In other to have a shot at winning, you’d need to somehow make enough money to afford competing with the 2 established parties for screen time, which would mean major corporate backing that would only happen if they liked your policies.
The Left did organize. It was during the 2016 election season. Bernie Sanders was on his way to warning the endorsement for presidential frontrunner, when the DNC fucked him over.
There are a lot of monied interests looking to keep the working class split and divided by prohibiting a pro-labor candidate from reaching society at large.
I volunteered for Bernie Sanders. His two runs for President (along with a long career) are probably as close as you can find to what a modern progressive party would look like.
https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=n00000528
He raised a lot of money, had very large rallies, and a lot of very passionate volunteers. But lost, and there’s two reasons why.
- First past the post spoiler effect - Bernie had to run as a Democrat within the Democratic Party primary system. If he had run as progressive or democratic socialist he would have split the democratic vote. In a first past the post system Duverger’s Law mathematically guarantees 2 party rule.
Any progressive alternative would split the democratic vote, and ensure that, at least for a while, the republicans would win every election. You can see on Lemmy and Reddit and all other kinds of social media the amount of anger and infighting this causes on the left. This is a strong disincentive for anyone to start an alternative party.
- The donor class - the Democratic Party is largely funded by big money donors. Big money donors have a lot of money because of how things are currently arranged. If the way the country works today has made you fabulously wealthy, even if that means a lot of people suffer, you tell yourself “they suffer because they don’t work hard like me” and want things to stay the way they are. So you donate to both parties to control them and make sure that whatever particular apple cart you’ve cornered doesn’t get overturned.
Every problem the American people face is a profit generator for some fuck face. Rent too high, some landlord is enjoying record profits. Can’t afford medicine, some pharmacy CEO is buying their third yacht. Those people have enough money to buy politicians, ads, political parties, media networks, social media companies, etc. They aren’t just going to sit back and let you fuck up their money making machine, they will deploy those assets against anyone that threatens the status quo.
Here’s a particularly egregious example coming from MSNBC during Bernie’s last run when his reforms threatened their wealth https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/chris-matthews-bernie-sanders-public-executions-949802/
So that’s what any progressive party is up against. The mathematical certainty that they would lose until they could unseat the current Democratic Party, something that would take some number of election cycles. The donor class wanting to thwart any change. And let’s say they do overcome both of those things. That party then becomes the thing the donors try to buy next. Your party starts with high minded ideals but one by one the members of your party get big paydays from the billionaires and suddenly they want to soften this reform and maybe hold off on that reform and… oh look they are holding the exact same positions as the current Democratic Party. Because those positions are the positions of the people that own the party, and they will happily buy another.
