Abstaining or voting 3rd party to “make Dems listen” doesn’t work. If anyone thinks they can play Mexican Standoff, you can’t because the Dems have an out: the center voter. Every time they lose, they go to the center to find voters.
And remember they need all 3 of presidency, house of representatives, and senate to pass pretty much anything. If they don’t have all 3 they will go to the center to find voters. Some people call this rachet effect, but really they’re looking for voters. Want them to stop ‘racheting’? Then give them consistent and overwhelming victories.
If the people voters want more right, then that’s the will of the people voters. Thus the message: If you, as a leftist, want them to go left then you have to vote for Dems.
We can go through the whole history if you want. Every time the Dems go left, they lose. Every single time. So they go to the center to find voters. Then certain people whine “Why are they going center!!! We won’t vote for them!!! Rachet!!” That’s when I say playing Mexican Standoff won’t work. Because they have an out and you don’t. If you want them to stop going center, they have to win first. Because, again, when they lose they go to the center to find voters.
Very good choice NoIWontPickAName, we can go over the history of how the left doesn’t show up!
Ok let’s go through this chronologically.
Carter: Tried to do some left things and got fucking yeeted from office. Aka the left never shows up.
Bill Clinton: After successive Dem losses Bill figured out “it’s the economy stupid”, aka center policy, not leftist policy. Plus when you run against an incumbent (Bush senior) you generally run from the center. So that’s what he did. And he won.
Gore: After the population hopefully warmed up with Bill Clinton, he stuck his head out left with climate change. And bam he lost the election. Thanks 3rd party protest voters! Aka: The left never shows up.
Obama: So guess what Obama learned? Don’t stick your head out. He ran on vague “hope”, hoping the ambiguity would be enough considering Bush’s disastrous wars. And he won.
More on Obama: so he enacted the ACA. That’s great, right? The thanks Obama got for that was to lose the House of Representatives for year 3 and 4. And lose the House of reps again for years 5 and 6. And then lose both the House of reps and the Senate for years 7 and 8. He enacted left policy and: The left never shows up.
Hillary Clinton: So what did Hillary learn from the last 6 years of Obama? She learned that the left never shows up. So she ran a mostly center platform to get voters, BUT with a big position to left on the map room to climate change. She basically declared war on climate change. You know that big existential issue that all the leftists care about, right? The big important issue that the left says they will show up for, right? And guess what happened? Bam she lost. Thanks protest non-voters! Aka: The left never shows up.
Biden: Just like Obama learned from Gore, Biden learned from Hillary that you don’t stick your head out left on anything. Not one thing. And he was running against an incumbent, so once again when you do that you run center. And he won.
More on Biden: But did left things anyway. He Biden did green energy, EVs, drug price control, PACT act, etc. And what were the results? Lost the House of Representatives for years 3 and 4. Polls showed him losing the election to Trump. He enacted left policy and: The left didn’t show up for midterms, and was not going to show up for the next election.
Harris: So guess what Harris is doing? She’s adopting Obama’s tactic to run on vague “get ahead” and having energy. From what I know she’s not announced anything left, other than vague tax the billionaires. She has no reason to think the left will ever show up.
And people are amazed that they don’t run a big left platform? Every time they stick their head left they lose. Every Single Time. And the next guy learns to go to the center to win. Because the center voters actually show up.
With this history, you’d be an absolute fool to cater to and rely on the left. Because. They. Never. Show. Up.
So how do you get them to move left? By giving them victories first. Consistent and overwhelming victories. Show them it’s safe to take policy chances. Because when they lose, like they’ve lost 20 years out of the last 24 years, they will go to the center to find votes.
And some follow up thoughts:
Ok. Then you don’t get to complain how the dems move to the center, or racheting, or anything else. You know, to the voters that actually show up.
This is about the Overton Window. You want the overton window to move? Then you have to vote for Dems. Waiting for this magical left platform isn’t going to happen.
You reallllllllyyyyy don’t want to take the point that this is not a game of Mexican Standoff that you can win. They have an out. You do not. And their out, the center voter, actually shows up.
See my other comment. Oh you did and all you can say is “biased”. Think about it? They have 44 years of history beaten into them. They lose every single time they go left.
Thats. Not. What.They. Are. Doing. At All.
Progressive votes and the election win are right there for the taking. All the centrists need to do is stop shipping those weapons. Im not even demanding that Kamala stop pushing fracking and gun proliferation thats murdering our children. Progressives are bending over backwards to try to make this work and they are being offered exactly nothing except threats,condescenscion, far right policies, and hostage taking talk by the centrists.
Progressive votes never show up. Anyone else can see my comment https://lemmy.world/comment/12867004. You’d be an absolute fool to cater to or rely on the left showing up. Because. They. Never. Show. Up. The only time Dems win is when they go to the center.
Why yes I made a top level comment to the post and I am responding to people that reply to me. That is not what you portray it as, so that tells me you’re here in horribly bad faith. Ciao.
I like how you twist that to “party license”. If the peoplevoters vote that way, that is the will of the peoplevoters. Don’t like it? Vote. For Dems. (Though the GOP bear some responsibility being obstructionist pos.)
So give up? Yea, it fucking sucks and is unfair as hell but voting is too easy to claim a lack motivation. It’s not a sustained effort, it’s something happens incredibly rarely and you can definitely handle. You can even mail that shit in in most places.
If you vote then it will be hard for the democrats to win and start shifting your countries policies to leftward(even if it’s an inch at a time). If you don’t vote then it will be impossible to do it.
Dems are a coalition. Centrists are not powerful enough within that coalition to act like utterly unaccountable god-kings. If that needs to be beaten into them then so be it.
Lol I assume you mean that you (the leftist) will beat some message into the Dems. Dude, you will not win this Mexican Standoff because the Dems have an out: The center voter. Who, wait for it, actually shows up.
Alll your “beating” is beating yourself when you hand the overton window over to the GOP. It’s the biggest self own in history.
What, are you slow walking your replies now that I called out you out? What part of when they lose they go to the center do you really not want to accept. Shipments will depend on Israel’s actions. God why do I bother. Ciao.
so you think if we vote for them no matter what they do, they will start representing our wishes out of the goodness of their hearts, instead of Aipac’s who come to them with palletloads of cash? Thats… an interesting theory.
First, again, they go to the center when they lose. If they don’t lose, they don’t need to go to the center to find voters.
Second: They will do what peoplevoters want. That is the whole point, voters. Right now the voters are voting for brutally slow progress. That’s what they get when they give Dems control of all 3 for only 4 years every 24 years. Want faster progress? Then be the voters that vote for faster progress by giving Dems consistent and overwhelming victories.
In addition to that, I really think Dems want left policy. They do it when they can despite it costing them elections. According to your logic they would never have done the ACA, or green energy, or EVs, or union empowerment (inb4), or student debt forgiveness, or Chips act, or Pact act, etc, etc. But they did, and it cost them.
I dont think thats true all the time.
as we have seen with Biden, If a dem president is a centrist or far right for a dem, it shifts the entire party and the judiciary rightward. These things have monentum.
So I’d say its not simply the “D” that matters in overton shift. It also sets the topics in the political conversation, and either strengthens the party for the next election or leaves it in shattered and misaligned, like we are now about the unpopular far right wing genocide being pushed by a democratic US presidential administration.
They go to the center when they lose. If they don’t lose, they don’t need to go to the center to find voters. You can see my other comment, they’ve only had all 3 houses for 4 out of the last 24 years.
It’s the left’s fault for not feeling motivated to vote for a center-right party, they’ll become even more right if we don’t vote for them. Progressive candidates are dumb and unpopular.
I honestly don’t know what point you’re trying to get at. In any case, if the left wants to be effective, they have to vote for Dems. Because, again, when they lose they go to the center to find voters.
Well, its not over yet.
The left needs to police the far right wing elements within the dem party, and thats what its doing. gun proliferation does not belong on a dem platform and neither does enabling genocide. Thats the real problem here.
And asserting ourselves through voting hasnt ‘not worked’ yet. We’ll see.
The death grip the Evangelical, ethno-state, GOP has created for its self, proves that voting locally for change, and voting in the “lesser” evil, in the presidential election, works. This was their strategy, only the GOP for the presidency, then, on the local levels, they spent most of their time getting people to vote them into smaller positions of power, especially judicial ones. Over the past 40 years they have entrenched themselves into so many voting districts, so many courts, so many sheriff’s offices, etc., that, even being the minority, they exercise power much greater than their numbers. During this time, they kept moving those local offerings further, and further right. So now we are seeing a significant amount of governors, and senators, that are full blown fascist/theocratic.
If we lock in the Dems federally, and vote progressives locally, we can accomplish the same. Especially if we focus on local voting reforms that are different styles of voting, that allow for more breathing room of third parties. The proof is that the far right theocrats did just this with the GOP.
Coalitions dont work if the larger group demands unconditional loyalty or ignores their coalition partners non negotiables. Dems are a coalition of various groups that cant win alone.
actively enabling Genocide is a non negotiable for progressives. And progressives are the difference between dems winning and dems losing.
Centrist dems have been trying to hold the entire party hostage to trumps evil so they can take AIPACS dirty bribes. So now progressives will play the exact same hostage games. We’ll all go over the cliff into the bloody abyss together, or a few simple policy changes can be made.
So get those changes done and lets win this election together. Or dont and our country is over. You choose. We already made our choice, and it was really no choice to be made at all. We were never going to lift a finger to enable genocide, its not who we are.
Again, this is about being effective. If you want to be effective, if you want to move the overton window, that is done by giving Dems consistent and overwhelming victories.
And you throw away yours as well. We all lose. Finally a ‘together’ outcome where we are all on the same side and not just taking centrist far-right marching orders like slaves.
you totally ignore that the Dems could simply represent the will of their constituents and not lose, and not need to “look for votes” outside the boundaries of their party. Kamala would be coasting to vicotry if she wasnt supporting Bidens dirty far right war. She is trying hard to not represent the Dems and take a far right stand on this, and thats the root of this problem. Not Progressive voters or the youth.
This is an incorrect framing of the situation. You aren’t being asked for a Yes/No vote on Democrats. You are being asked if you prefer Democrats or Republicans. Or for this election, if you prefer Democracy or Fascism. If you vote “no preference”, that does not communicate “I prefer the Democrats, but want them to move further left”, either logically or politically.
There are lots of ways to communicate desired policy changes: letter-writing, primaries (including campaigning/funding for candidates), protests, marches, press, social-media, etc. Voting against your interest is not one of them.
I absolutely understand the anger at the Democratic party. I mention several useful activities to work toward fixing its many failings. The Republican party is strictly worse. Giving equal support to both is counterproductive.
Dems need all 3 (presidency, house of reps, Senate) to do pretty much anything. They’ve had that for [drumroll please] 4 out of the last 24 years. Or 6 of the last 32 years. Or 6 of the last 44 fucking years.
They never had 51 votes to repeal the fillibuster. Sinema and Manchin both refused to do so. Neither of which are Democrats anymore. We should elect more Democrats to the Senate that will.
Dems need all 3 (presidency, house of reps, Senate) to do pretty much anything.
Thats not how politics works buddy. If what you said were true neither the dems or republicans would have passed any bills in the history of the “republic”. Clearly theres also horse trading, and bribery/lobbying you are pretending dont exist in order to make this weak point.
With the obstructionist MAGA caucus in your government that would rather vote no to bipartisan bills because it would give a Democrat a win, barely any bills get passed!
I live in a red state, and the Democratic Party cannot even get enough warm bodies to ruin for every office here. The Libertarians do better with their candidates than the Democrats.
In Germany, the 2 historically biggest parties were SPD (used to be liberal-democrat) and CDU (conservative) and they often were the ones tugging it out while the smaller parties were filling in as coalition partners for one or the other.
Over time, the SPD splintered into several semi-big offshoot parties (Linke, for example) while the CDU stayed as a whole. As a result, CDU is now commonly a favorite for getting most votes in an election.
Is that consistent with politics across the globe? And if, why do liberal or center parties tend to split up more than conservatives?
Counterexample: The European Parliament. IMHO, it looks like 4 right-wing groups, 2 left-wing ones and 2 centrist ones. While the exact positioning could be argued over, the right wing is quite certainly more fragmented than the left is.
I commonly hear the left is a loose coalition of factions (which can split apart), while the right fall in line. I think there are fewer factions on the right, or the factions are not as far apart, so coming together is easier. They also unite in absolute hatred of the left, so will fall in line to slay that beast.
100% agreed regarding coalitions, unfortunately centrists dont seem to know they are in a coalition, or that the party even has a platform. They are so spooked by trump that they will do or say anything to win. Anything.
Centrists on this thread today accuse Progressives of being members of the far right as a ploy to hide the fact that they are the ones pushing far right policies themselves. The centrists are much closer to being republicans anymore than they are to adhering to the traditional democratic party platform. Real Democrats wouldnt risk the drinking water of the whole continent to enable more fracking to big oil company donations. They wouldnt be ok with more school shootings to pander to the NRA donations (especially when the NRA is heavily infiltrated by Russia). And they wouldnt sponsor and enable a far rightwing genocidal war in the middle east – pitting us against the entire rest of the world-- to draw foreign lobbying donations. But American progressives are somehow willing to swallow every bit of that traitorous behavior except one to get over the finish line together, whereas centrists are willing to change not a single damn thing to win, and proceed to whine and threaten.
Abstaining or voting 3rd party to “make Dems listen” doesn’t work. If anyone thinks they can play Mexican Standoff, you can’t because the Dems have an out: the center voter. Every time they lose, they go to the center to find voters.
And remember they need all 3 of presidency, house of representatives, and senate to pass pretty much anything. If they don’t have all 3 they will go to the center to find voters. Some people call this rachet effect, but really they’re looking for voters. Want them to stop ‘racheting’? Then give them consistent and overwhelming victories.
And in their trips to the centre they keep seeming to forget that they keep shifting further and further right
Centrists are a curse here
They. Are. Looking. For. Voters.
If the
peoplevoters want more right, then that’s the will of thepeoplevoters. Thus the message: If you, as a leftist, want them to go left then you have to vote for Dems.See you have this backwards, they are supposed to change and then they are rewarded with votes.
If you vote them in before they change, they have no reason to change.
We can go through the whole history if you want. Every time the Dems go left, they lose. Every single time. So they go to the center to find voters. Then certain people whine “Why are they going center!!! We won’t vote for them!!! Rachet!!” That’s when I say playing Mexican Standoff won’t work. Because they have an out and you don’t. If you want them to stop going center, they have to win first. Because, again, when they lose they go to the center to find voters.
You don’t reward people when they do things that you don’t want.
Cause: Politicians do the correct thing.
Effect: voters reward them.
Very good choice NoIWontPickAName, we can go over the history of how the left doesn’t show up!
Ok let’s go through this chronologically.
Carter: Tried to do some left things and got fucking yeeted from office. Aka the left never shows up.
Bill Clinton: After successive Dem losses Bill figured out “it’s the economy stupid”, aka center policy, not leftist policy. Plus when you run against an incumbent (Bush senior) you generally run from the center. So that’s what he did. And he won.
Gore: After the population hopefully warmed up with Bill Clinton, he stuck his head out left with climate change. And bam he lost the election. Thanks 3rd party protest voters! Aka: The left never shows up.
Obama: So guess what Obama learned? Don’t stick your head out. He ran on vague “hope”, hoping the ambiguity would be enough considering Bush’s disastrous wars. And he won.
More on Obama: so he enacted the ACA. That’s great, right? The thanks Obama got for that was to lose the House of Representatives for year 3 and 4. And lose the House of reps again for years 5 and 6. And then lose both the House of reps and the Senate for years 7 and 8. He enacted left policy and: The left never shows up.
Hillary Clinton: So what did Hillary learn from the last 6 years of Obama? She learned that the left never shows up. So she ran a mostly center platform to get voters, BUT with a big position to left on the map room to climate change. She basically declared war on climate change. You know that big existential issue that all the leftists care about, right? The big important issue that the left says they will show up for, right? And guess what happened? Bam she lost. Thanks protest non-voters! Aka: The left never shows up.
Biden: Just like Obama learned from Gore, Biden learned from Hillary that you don’t stick your head out left on anything. Not one thing. And he was running against an incumbent, so once again when you do that you run center. And he won.
More on Biden: But did left things anyway. He Biden did green energy, EVs, drug price control, PACT act, etc. And what were the results? Lost the House of Representatives for years 3 and 4. Polls showed him losing the election to Trump. He enacted left policy and: The left didn’t show up for midterms, and was not going to show up for the next election.
Harris: So guess what Harris is doing? She’s adopting Obama’s tactic to run on vague “get ahead” and having energy. From what I know she’s not announced anything left, other than vague tax the billionaires. She has no reason to think the left will ever show up.
And people are amazed that they don’t run a big left platform? Every time they stick their head left they lose. Every Single Time. And the next guy learns to go to the center to win. Because the center voters actually show up.
With this history, you’d be an absolute fool to cater to and rely on the left. Because. They. Never. Show. Up.
So how do you get them to move left? By giving them victories first. Consistent and overwhelming victories. Show them it’s safe to take policy chances. Because when they lose, like they’ve lost 20 years out of the last 24 years, they will go to the center to find votes.
And some follow up thoughts:
Ok. Then you don’t get to complain how the dems move to the center, or racheting, or anything else. You know, to the voters that actually show up.
This is about the Overton Window. You want the overton window to move? Then you have to vote for Dems. Waiting for this magical left platform isn’t going to happen.
You reallllllllyyyyy don’t want to take the point that this is not a game of Mexican Standoff that you can win. They have an out. You do not. And their out, the center voter, actually shows up.
By far the most astute take on the subject I’ve read in a while.
thats a crazily biased and simplsitic summary of what actually happened.
Simplistic yes because you have to do that to summarize 44 years of history. Biased? That’s what happened.
well this time they are going to lose by going right. Maybe they need to think about it and make a different plan then.
See my other comment. Oh you did and all you can say is “biased”. Think about it? They have 44 years of history beaten into them. They lose every single time they go left.
Thats. Not. What.They. Are. Doing. At All. Progressive votes and the election win are right there for the taking. All the centrists need to do is stop shipping those weapons. Im not even demanding that Kamala stop pushing fracking and gun proliferation thats murdering our children. Progressives are bending over backwards to try to make this work and they are being offered exactly nothing except threats,condescenscion, far right policies, and hostage taking talk by the centrists.
Progressive votes never show up. Anyone else can see my comment https://lemmy.world/comment/12867004. You’d be an absolute fool to cater to or rely on the left showing up. Because. They. Never. Show. Up. The only time Dems win is when they go to the center.
Thats pretty rich coming from you. Almost every other comment on this thread is you. “Dude”.
Why yes I made a top level comment to the post and I am responding to people that reply to me. That is not what you portray it as, so that tells me you’re here in horribly bad faith. Ciao.
The odds of Democrats keeping the Senate seem dismal. So it sounds like we’re giving the party license to do nothing for another two years
I like how you twist that to “party license”. If the
peoplevoters vote that way, that is the will of thepeoplevoters. Don’t like it? Vote. For Dems. (Though the GOP bear some responsibility being obstructionist pos.)Sorry 50M Californians, but 40k West Virginians decided to go a different way. Guess this means no civil rights for another two years.
So give up? Yea, it fucking sucks and is unfair as hell but voting is too easy to claim a lack motivation. It’s not a sustained effort, it’s something happens incredibly rarely and you can definitely handle. You can even mail that shit in in most places.
If you vote then it will be hard for the democrats to win and start shifting your countries policies to leftward(even if it’s an inch at a time). If you don’t vote then it will be impossible to do it.
If your full effort begins and ends with election season, you’ve already given up.
Who said that? Oh right, nobody. Fuck, bro, get it together.
This is aimed at those people that think not voting or voting 3rd party is effective to “make Dems listen”. It is not. Voters have a say.
Dems are a coalition. Centrists are not powerful enough within that coalition to act like utterly unaccountable god-kings. If that needs to be beaten into them then so be it.
Lol I assume you mean that you (the leftist) will beat some message into the Dems. Dude, you will not win this Mexican Standoff because the Dems have an out: The center voter. Who, wait for it, actually shows up.
Alll your “beating” is beating yourself when you hand the overton window over to the GOP. It’s the biggest self own in history.
We’ll see wont we. If progressives stay strong and dont vote early, I’d bet real money Harris caves on the weapons shipments.
What, are you slow walking your replies now that I called out you out? What part of when they lose they go to the center do you really not want to accept. Shipments will depend on Israel’s actions. God why do I bother. Ciao.
so you think if we vote for them no matter what they do, they will start representing our wishes out of the goodness of their hearts, instead of Aipac’s who come to them with palletloads of cash? Thats… an interesting theory.
First, again, they go to the center when they lose. If they don’t lose, they don’t need to go to the center to find voters.
Second: They will do what
peoplevoters want. That is the whole point, voters. Right now the voters are voting for brutally slow progress. That’s what they get when they give Dems control of all 3 for only 4 years every 24 years. Want faster progress? Then be the voters that vote for faster progress by giving Dems consistent and overwhelming victories.In addition to that, I really think Dems want left policy. They do it when they can despite it costing them elections. According to your logic they would never have done the ACA, or green energy, or EVs, or union empowerment (inb4), or student debt forgiveness, or Chips act, or Pact act, etc, etc. But they did, and it cost them.
So vote for them regardless and then they will listen?
The more elections the far right loses, the more the overton window shifts to the left.
I dont think thats true all the time. as we have seen with Biden, If a dem president is a centrist or far right for a dem, it shifts the entire party and the judiciary rightward. These things have monentum.
So I’d say its not simply the “D” that matters in overton shift. It also sets the topics in the political conversation, and either strengthens the party for the next election or leaves it in shattered and misaligned, like we are now about the unpopular far right wing genocide being pushed by a democratic US presidential administration.
Democrats move further right to get votes from the center but when they win it’ll go left trust me bro
This, but unironically.
They go to the center when they lose. If they don’t lose, they don’t need to go to the center to find voters. You can see my other comment, they’ve only had all 3 houses for 4 out of the last 24 years.
It’s the left’s fault for not feeling motivated to vote for a center-right party, they’ll become even more right if we don’t vote for them. Progressive candidates are dumb and unpopular.
I honestly don’t know what point you’re trying to get at. In any case, if the left wants to be effective, they have to vote for Dems. Because, again, when they lose they go to the center to find voters.
seems like if the left wants to be effective at this point it has to go far beyond voting
Well, its not over yet. The left needs to police the far right wing elements within the dem party, and thats what its doing. gun proliferation does not belong on a dem platform and neither does enabling genocide. Thats the real problem here.
And asserting ourselves through voting hasnt ‘not worked’ yet. We’ll see.
The death grip the Evangelical, ethno-state, GOP has created for its self, proves that voting locally for change, and voting in the “lesser” evil, in the presidential election, works. This was their strategy, only the GOP for the presidency, then, on the local levels, they spent most of their time getting people to vote them into smaller positions of power, especially judicial ones. Over the past 40 years they have entrenched themselves into so many voting districts, so many courts, so many sheriff’s offices, etc., that, even being the minority, they exercise power much greater than their numbers. During this time, they kept moving those local offerings further, and further right. So now we are seeing a significant amount of governors, and senators, that are full blown fascist/theocratic.
If we lock in the Dems federally, and vote progressives locally, we can accomplish the same. Especially if we focus on local voting reforms that are different styles of voting, that allow for more breathing room of third parties. The proof is that the far right theocrats did just this with the GOP.
Coalitions dont work if the larger group demands unconditional loyalty or ignores their coalition partners non negotiables. Dems are a coalition of various groups that cant win alone.
actively enabling Genocide is a non negotiable for progressives. And progressives are the difference between dems winning and dems losing.
Centrist dems have been trying to hold the entire party hostage to trumps evil so they can take AIPACS dirty bribes. So now progressives will play the exact same hostage games. We’ll all go over the cliff into the bloody abyss together, or a few simple policy changes can be made. So get those changes done and lets win this election together. Or dont and our country is over. You choose. We already made our choice, and it was really no choice to be made at all. We were never going to lift a finger to enable genocide, its not who we are.
Again, this is about being effective. If you want to be effective, if you want to move the overton window, that is done by giving Dems consistent and overwhelming victories.
Again, Dems go to the center when they lose.
Anyone else can see my comment https://lemmy.world/comment/12867004.
So stay home/throw away your vote, I’m sure they’ll realize their mistake and go to the left any decade now to chase those reliable voters.
And you throw away yours as well. We all lose. Finally a ‘together’ outcome where we are all on the same side and not just taking centrist far-right marching orders like slaves.
they don’t have to, let the whole thing collapse. Fascism never lasts long
Yeah, I’m sure the people who suffer and die under the fascist regime will be comforted by the fact it probably won’t last long.
Too bad you’ll find Nazis right along with you cheering on the rise of fascism, so I think your opinion can be safely discarded.
you totally ignore that the Dems could simply represent the will of their constituents and not lose, and not need to “look for votes” outside the boundaries of their party. Kamala would be coasting to vicotry if she wasnt supporting Bidens dirty far right war. She is trying hard to not represent the Dems and take a far right stand on this, and thats the root of this problem. Not Progressive voters or the youth.
Seriously? Every time they run a left platform or enact a left policy, they lose. Why do I bother, ciao.
This is an incorrect framing of the situation. You aren’t being asked for a Yes/No vote on Democrats. You are being asked if you prefer Democrats or Republicans. Or for this election, if you prefer Democracy or Fascism. If you vote “no preference”, that does not communicate “I prefer the Democrats, but want them to move further left”, either logically or politically.
There are lots of ways to communicate desired policy changes: letter-writing, primaries (including campaigning/funding for candidates), protests, marches, press, social-media, etc. Voting against your interest is not one of them.
I understand why you’d say this. But you arent trying to understand why people are trying to pressure the dem leadership to be better.
I absolutely understand the anger at the Democratic party. I mention several useful activities to work toward fixing its many failings. The Republican party is strictly worse. Giving equal support to both is counterproductive.
Dems need all 3 (presidency, house of reps, Senate) to do pretty much anything. They’ve had that for [drumroll please] 4 out of the last 24 years. Or 6 of the last 32 years. Or 6 of the last 44 fucking years.
It was significantly shorter than that when you consider Senate control to be 60, which is what’s needed to bypass the fillibuster.
They honored the fillibuster by choice. They didnt have to.
They never had 51 votes to repeal the fillibuster. Sinema and Manchin both refused to do so. Neither of which are Democrats anymore. We should elect more Democrats to the Senate that will.
“Biden says eliminating filibuster would “throw the entire Congress into chaos”” https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/joe-biden-town-hall-filibuster/
Supermajority was 4 months, out of the last 44 years. But whenever I mention that people think I’m fixated on that for some reason.
*Oh downvoted already. Some people really don’t like hearing this.
You shouldn’t cry about fake internet points
I’m not crying, I’m laughing how certain people downvote because they don’t like hearing facts.
Somehow the terminally online tankies will still blame Democrats for that, too.
Thats not how politics works buddy. If what you said were true neither the dems or republicans would have passed any bills in the history of the “republic”. Clearly theres also horse trading, and bribery/lobbying you are pretending dont exist in order to make this weak point.
With the obstructionist MAGA caucus in your government that would rather vote no to bipartisan bills because it would give a Democrat a win, barely any bills get passed!
I live in a red state, and the Democratic Party cannot even get enough warm bodies to ruin for every office here. The Libertarians do better with their candidates than the Democrats.
The obviously the tactical strategy is to vote libertarian
I’ve thought about that recently.
In Germany, the 2 historically biggest parties were SPD (used to be liberal-democrat) and CDU (conservative) and they often were the ones tugging it out while the smaller parties were filling in as coalition partners for one or the other.
Over time, the SPD splintered into several semi-big offshoot parties (Linke, for example) while the CDU stayed as a whole. As a result, CDU is now commonly a favorite for getting most votes in an election.
Is that consistent with politics across the globe? And if, why do liberal or center parties tend to split up more than conservatives?
Because conservatives gravitate towards authority, and progressives are looking to break the status quo.
So conservatives value order, authority, and it causes them to fall in line.
Progressives are looking to break that order, believing that things can be better than they are right now. That causes them to infight more often.
Counterexample: The European Parliament. IMHO, it looks like 4 right-wing groups, 2 left-wing ones and 2 centrist ones. While the exact positioning could be argued over, the right wing is quite certainly more fragmented than the left is.
I commonly hear the left is a loose coalition of factions (which can split apart), while the right fall in line. I think there are fewer factions on the right, or the factions are not as far apart, so coming together is easier. They also unite in absolute hatred of the left, so will fall in line to slay that beast.
100% agreed regarding coalitions, unfortunately centrists dont seem to know they are in a coalition, or that the party even has a platform. They are so spooked by trump that they will do or say anything to win. Anything.
Centrists on this thread today accuse Progressives of being members of the far right as a ploy to hide the fact that they are the ones pushing far right policies themselves. The centrists are much closer to being republicans anymore than they are to adhering to the traditional democratic party platform. Real Democrats wouldnt risk the drinking water of the whole continent to enable more fracking to big oil company donations. They wouldnt be ok with more school shootings to pander to the NRA donations (especially when the NRA is heavily infiltrated by Russia). And they wouldnt sponsor and enable a far rightwing genocidal war in the middle east – pitting us against the entire rest of the world-- to draw foreign lobbying donations. But American progressives are somehow willing to swallow every bit of that traitorous behavior except one to get over the finish line together, whereas centrists are willing to change not a single damn thing to win, and proceed to whine and threaten.