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More evidence the US is not a progressive country and anyone who thinks it is will be disappointed by election results for their entire lives.
Right now the goal of electoral politics is to move back toward like… classic liberalism. As opposed to neoliberalism or worse, fascism
The data [from Pew] suggests that the progressive vision of winning a presidential election simply by mobilizing strong support from Democratic constituencies simply did not materialize for Mr. Biden.
Wtf did I just read? The idea is to mobilize strong support from Democratic constituencies by running a progressive candidate who supports progressive causes. Obviously, if you run a right-winger like Biden, he’ll draw more support from the right and fail to mobilize the left. Are they trying to pretend that Biden was a progressive or something? What an incredible take.
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For that evidence they’d need to look to Congressional downballot races which are more fluid and open to experimentation. The evidence of progressive voter mobilization doesn’t show up there either.
I disagree. This is from the 2020 election:
Funny enough, the two Florida democrats who lost in blue districts also specifically distanced themselves from a ballot measure to raise the minimum wage on the basis that it was too progressive - both they and Biden lost in Florida while the ballot measure passed.
Progressive policies are broadly popular. Running on things that are popular tend to get you more votes. People like it when you do stuff for them.
The only evidence I’ve seen to the contrary is a NYT opinion piece that cites centrist think tanks and random people’s opinions. I didn’t see anything in there that looked reliable or compelling.
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Thank you for filtering out the irrelevant information and editorializing in the opinion piece.
I’ll concede that there is some evidence to support your position, but I would still argue against it. Much of the data used in these studies comes from a different political landscape than what we’re dealing with today. There are many studies that show increasing political polarization over time, and I would argue that that reduces the fluidity of voter choices. Republican voters now are less likely to vote for a Democrat now than they were in the 90’s, when, for example, Bill Clinton won Louisiana and Tennessee. I would also point out that this conventional wisdom failed to account for Trump’s 2016 victory and the fact that the Republican party remains strong despite becoming increasingly extremist.
I don’t have time to read through all of your studies but I did read through the first. Something I found notable, which I expected, was that while the study found that extremism was correlated with general election losses in both parties, the effect was significantly more pronounced in the Republican party. This makes the successful rise of right-wing extremism even less coherent with your point of view. But from my perspective, it makes perfect sense - in the current polarized environment, mobilizing one’s own base is more effective than appealing to the center, so much so that even if you’re promoting broadly unpopular policies, it can still win against someone who has failed to adapt.
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Biden posturing as a Republican will not make Republicans vote for him.
Adopting rightwing policies ‘does not help centre-left win votes’
But it will help shift the general public more to the right and get neoliberals bending over backwards to start defending Republican policies when Biden implements them so all according to keikaku.
Would be nice if he courted the existing left leaning part of the democratic party, but fuck it let’s try and please the party that tried to overthrow the government
And this is the game we always play. Biden will try to get enough conservative voters to overcome the resistance from the actual left. If he manages then we go further right like we always have and if he fails we go even further right like we always have. That’s the great thing about Democrat presidents. They accomplish the same thing as Republican presidents. Just a little bit slower.
The left wing is gonna vote for him anyway, if they vote at all. Half of the leftists I talk to don’t even vote because they say democracy is a failure and nothing matters. To a liberal, a leftist is an extremist.
I got really lucky and hit by a car 5 years ago that let me buy a condo that has doubled in value. This leftist is going to call it a day. I’m looking at places maybe in Uruguay to move to hopefully before November. I don’t know who to blame but I do know the Democrats and the Republicans are both not anything I ever want to support. And sure give me a party of Democrats that is built from politicians like Bernie Sanders or AOC, and I’ll happily vote Democrat but that’s a fantasy. The Democrats themselves are far right enough that they hate those candidates and their positions.
Have fun fleeing the country I guess!
So it would make sense to show them democracy isn’t dead and inspire them to vote? Or just cuddle up with fascists? This just shows those disenfranchised voters it is dead and what’s the point since biden would rather work with people actively trying to destroy democracy than work with the new largest voting bloc in this country
I don’t think he’s trying to “cuddle up with fascists”. The fascists don’t represent the entire party just as progressives don’t represent the entire democrat party. He’s trying to get the uneducated “always vote for the guy with the R next to his name” type dudes. They exist, plenty of ignorant people out there.
I guess they do, it’s just hard to imagine that someone could be that ignorant in this day and age and I still think it’s a dumb move because those people that just blankly go through life and just vote R because that’s what pappy always did are so dumb they will just vote R no matter what biden does so bidens time is better spent working with progressives, he can do both but the dnc has made it very clear they do not care about progressives
Biden and the DNC have made concessions for progressives too. I celebrate those victories because if I don’t I start to lose hope.
https://prospect.org/labor/2023-08-28-bidens-nlrb-brings-workers-rights-back/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/therecord/
The last link contains the White House’s own stance on the issues. It’s good to see their takes and then fact check them.
I know he’s not nearly good enough. I hate that we had to compromise. But we have to keep our eyes on the prize and take our wins where we can.
Solidarity forever.
Has he tried sounding racist when pitching his immigration policy?
Modern Times require Retro Joe solutions
That is in no way unexpected.
Exactly. And the other comments so far are pretty ignorant. All close elections are won by winning over independents AND people registered to the other party. Just because Republicans in Congress appear largely in lock-step with Trump doesn’t mean Republican voters are.
It’s fair to speculate that many Trump haters left the Republican party in 2016 and more in 2020. But certainly not all of them. And beyond the Trump haters are a swathe of people uncertain or uncomfortable with Trump who can be won over.
Not what I meant. Democrats will bend over backwards to try to appeal to Republicans before they ever consider appealing to alienated progressives.
It’s because progressives always vote blue anyway, when they do, and represent a small portion of the voter base. Most Americans are liberals
So don’t blame them when you lose.
I’m a progressive. Why would I do that? Most progressives live in states where voting for President has no effect anyway. The blue wall, + New York, + Illinois…
Of which they’ll get 0
I’m not so sure. I think it’s established that the percentage of Republicans who won’t vote for Trump is a lot higher than the percentage that will admit to it in front of their peers.
All we need is a few %, low single digits.
Your uncertainty doesn’t have bearing here. There is a preponderance of evidence showing that since 2016 (and before), there number of ‘swing’ voters has diminished to basically nothing.
Neither Trump nor Biden are actually running against each other , because no voters are going to be converted from one side to the other.
They are both running against “the couch”, in that whoever can convince enough of their voters that the election is worth showing up for, will win.
Also, if you were a Republican, why wouldn’t you vote for Trump? He delivered, in one way or another, on all the major policy goals of the base. For the Republican agenda, he’s been the most effective president since Reagan.
Bidens camp is in a fever dream with this strategy. And I agree with the article. it is their strategy.
They are both running against “the couch”, in that whoever can convince enough of their voters that the election is worth showing up for, will win.
Yep, which is why we see a massive number of people around here who are actively trying to depress Democratic turnout by complaining about Biden and the Dems. A whole bunch of alleged leftists really don’t seem like they mind another Trump presidency since they aren’t, after all, trying to convince voters to vote against that.
Bidens camp is in a fever dream with this strategy.
Oh. Huh. Imagine that.
Also, if you were a Republican, why wouldn’t you vote for Trump? He delivered, in one way or another, on all the major policy goals of the base.
You fucking what? He got three SCOTUS justices and tax breaks for billionaires and…?
He tanked the economy and killed over a million with his handling of COVID, the wall didn’t get built, Mexico didn’t pay for any of the repairs that did, Hillary has -34 felonies to her name, his trade war with China didn’t bring back manufacturing, Russia was emboldened by his term, American global superiority was damaged by his garbage foreign policy, fossil fuel usage is continuing to decline in favor of renewables…
So other than showing bigoted racists that it’s okay to be a loudmouth bigoted racist in public (which I will admit is a Republican goal) what “major policy goals” did he actually achieve?
For the Republican agenda, he’s been the most effective president since Reagan
Yeah, I would argue that he’s the least effective GOP president since Regan.
He tanked the economy and killed over a million with his handling of COVID, the wall didn’t get built, Mexico didn’t pay for any of the repairs that did, Hillary has -34 felonies to her name, his trade war with China didn’t bring back manufacturing, Russia was emboldened by his term, American global superiority was damaged by his garbage foreign policy, fossil fuel usage is continuing to decline in favor of renewables…
I agree with all that. But you and I don’t live in the same world that Republican voters do. They litterally live in a completly different media and ‘story of history’ landscape. You obviously do, and should, despise all of the things that Trump did while he was president. But there is no denying that these were the things that Republican voters wanted him to do. And he gets to blame any failures on Democrats or the deep state or whatever other kookie bullshit they come up with.
You can and should hate the Republican agenda, but you shouldn’t put blinders on to suggest that Trump didn’t pursue it aggressively, and actually accomplish much of it. He got tax cuts for billionaires. He got the Supreme Court, and thus Roe. He at least tried to do almost all of the things he said he would do. You should disagree with all of those things, but you are not a Republican voter. Neither am I. But we should be clear headed about what Republican voters want, especially considering how horrible it all is.
I think they will get a percentage of the “never Trump” section of the Republican party. The real question is what that percentage of the Republican party actually is, as admitting that currently can open people’s worlds to a deluge of toxicity/ostracizing.
Why would they vote Demonrat when they could vote libertarian or RFK Jr?
Because they know both of those options are terrible
That’s not unexpected, since Clinton and his DLC, the modus operandi has been to court the right wing vote, and as they do, the entire party shifts to the right to accommodate them.
Politicians accommodating what voters want? What do they think this is, a democracy?
They wouldn’t have to shift so far right if the far left wasn’t too busy being angry that the politicians are doing what the voters want to go out and vote themselves.
Are referring to some silent majority? Conservative voters are historically an over represented voting block.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/us/gerrymander-explainer.html
Conservatives are just liberals but more racist. Change my mind.
If you lump together all the liberals you get enough to win an election. And that includes so-called “moderate republicans”
Conservatives are just liberals that are openly racist. Liberals are covert in their racism and bigotry
