Democratic political strategy
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How cute, you guys are trying to rewrite it in your favor. Too bad the science says otherwise.
“You guys” Bro the only us and them are billionaires and everyone else. Stop being distracted and focus on the problem, the fuckers siphoning any and all value away from honest hard working people and then blaming other less fortunate honest hard working people for it.
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.
That is indeed what the chart indicates.
The chart shows democratic party voter opinion, not their politician’s opinions. Kamala basically ran on Trump’s 2016 border policy and earned zero votes because of it.
This just highlights how out of touch the DNC is from its own voter base. Those lines shifting left are the democratic voters, not their politicians. The democratic party has been constantly trying to pivot to the center and finding nothing but corporate donors.
Too bad the science says otherwise.
Graphs say exactly what they say. Nothing more, nothing less. These graphs don’t say otherwise.
“Look, it goes left”. No, it goes up, graphs were just rotated. These graphs don’t say otherwise.
The Overton Window is set in an abandoned lot. The house burned down a long time ago.
Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man. You take a step towards him, he takes a step back. Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man.
Always reach across the isle and punch nazis.
“Why isn’t anybody voting for us”
I think the question they ask is more like “why are people voting for the other side?” …leading to “we need to be more like them”
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I’m not arguing what the actual issue is, just how they consider the issue.
Sorry, I misread your comment, I think I read first “they” as “to” or something. I agree with you, deleting my comment.
They only look at the votes that were cast not voters who stayed home
The problem is theres nothing on our side. Our choices are right of center and so far right they fell off the graph.
There’s also the choice of doing what Bernie did, and build up an alternative from the local level, but that would require people to realise that politics aren’t restricted to TV-level races nor snooze for 4 years.
If Americans did that in large scale they could to the democratic party the reverse of what the tea party did to the republican party.
The Democratic party hates Bernie though. Theyran so hard against him back in '16 and '20. I swear the Democrats would rather lose to a Republican than run an actual left candidate.
The democrats are still at their core a liberal party, and ultimately running a left candidate would be against their interests.
What’s really frustrating is the Dems just dont seem to have any vision of what they want. They clearly don’t want the dystopia of the Trump party, but aren’t really offering a vision of something different or a way things ought to be. (And they won’t be able to as long as they are trying to cater to workers as well as the Wall Street class at the same time.)
You are talking about “they” like the party is run by lizard people ruling by the divine right of kings. The “they” in the republican party also didn’t an obviously extreme right candidate and their base gave “them” the boot.
Fair point, but how else to refer to it/them? I don’t particularly feel affiliated with the party, so them seems to work.
That’s because there are only a handful of “Bernies”. A party is not a monolithical block, it’s the sum of it’s members, and the centrists end up being in charge because they are the ones that end up representing the party at most levels. If you want to shift the balance you need leftists to run for school boards, and city halls, and build from there by starting taking over the state committees and DNC members elected by each state (which in turn control the DNC).
If even the most extreme of the extreme right managed to do it in the republican party, there’s no reason why a moderate left movement couldn’t do it in the democratic party - if anything I would expect it to be easier.
Well that would require people to actually go vote every time instead of just bitching online. Or discouraging everyone from voting by saying someone is “Republican light”
Or discouraging everyone from voting by saying someone is “Republican light”
I voted for Kamala. She was still Republican Light. It pissed me off watching her run to the right, it pissed me off having to vote for a Republican Light platform, it pissed me off that it lost her the election, and now we have fucking crazy man in the whitehouse again because they decided she needed to be more like R not less.
I’m not voting Republican Light again. Next time I’ll be one of the ones getting yelled at I guess. If we’re going to keep ratcheting right, I’m at least not going to support it.
This fails to recognize that for a very long time things trended left. I remember talking to someone in the 90s and we went down a list of major issues and the left had essentially won on all of them. Roe vs Wade EPA Gay Marriage Welfare Reform and Child Tax Credits
My hope for the Democratic party is that they go to a single issue for the next National election, and that issue should be Anti-trust/Breaking up monopolies
You’d need to explain how this helps the average person.
Bearing in mind that these employers have hundreds of thousands of people working for them, you would need to somehow ensure that people aren’t voting for a spike in unemployment.
FWIW I don’t disagree at all, but how would this be implemented in practice, and how would it be framed as a good thing for those employed by those companies?
Things should be progressing no? that’s the whole point of being the “progressive party”
That’s an important issue, but if Democrats ever see power again, it’ll be important to focus on re-enfranchisement (RCV, instant runoff, or anything fairer than FPTP; NPVIC; national mail voting; mandatory voting), on judicial reform to undo the corruption and incompetence that has been packed there. Without those, keeping any gains will be impossible.
Then, triaging existential threats is critical, which will mean fighting climate change, investing in public transport (trains), and breaking up trusts will have to be pursued simultaneously. Stopping any support for genocide needs to happen as soon as possible.
There will be plenty more structural changes to fix beyond that: Protecting whistleblowers and protesters, improving FOIA, replacing norms with laws (Emoluments Clause enforcement, financial records disclosure, no insider trading for Congressmembers, &c), and all manner of civil rights protections and police reform.
After all that, it’ll be time for the stuff I’ve been hoping for: nationalizing healthcare and Internet access, and copyright reform.
Sadly, support for genocide won’t be an issue by the midterms.
NPVIC ain’t going to happen. Not for at least another 40 years or so.
It was a great idea, but this (so-called) Supreme Court would absolutely shut it down in no time flat. The balance of this court isn’t likely to shift for a very, very long time.
The only solution to get rid of EC before then will be a massive movement that results in a constitutional amendment.
Tl/Dr: start pre-lubing your assholes now, they ain’t gonna help you there.
ETA: the funny thing about having to codify “norms” into law was that the expectation would be that government would be transparent enough, and press would be free enough, that lawmakers wouldn’t even think about shit like insider trading, because the risk of getting found out and the hit your reputation and career would take wouldnt be worth it.
Instead, ass hats celebrated it.
Adding seats to the court needs to happen, as well as reapportioning representatives, and giving electoral votes to DC and the territories. We need to find politicians that aren’t afraid to do it.
Yeah it’s very depressing to realize that the country will continue to head towards the shitter, or at least won’t move away from it, until I’m dead or close to it. Probably longer. No matter what else happens, we still have a stacked SCOTUS and a highly gameable (and also stacked) district court system. Mitch didn’t just hold up a SCOTUS seat nomination…he held up a ton of lower court seats, too.
Sorry kids. Buttery males.
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.
Right, that’s why I said in the larger picture. Before Reagan, taxing the rich and a living minimum wage were standard. Now it’s considered radical. But we’ve definitely moved back to the left since then.
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?
I mean taxing the rich and a livable minimum wage used to be acceptable. But due to the rightward slide, the tax rate from most of the 20th century and livable single income minimum wages would be considered radical now.
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.
And then Roe v Wade was overturned…
That’s a slope, not an aisle
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.
Affordable is not universal.
That makes sense only if identity politics is the entire political discourse to you.
ultimately its the voters. we have primaries as well as general and remember congress is what can really change things. The last election shows voters felt we were not right enough at all levels.
I think thats an over simplification.
Disinformation is part of it. Also leftist voters feel disempowered (they shouldn’t, but they are). And voters often don’t understand the politics behind good policy.
Its been shown that if dem policy were presented, then voters would overwhelmingly support it.
Maybe voters are more left than dems, but don’t like dems fundamentally, because they have no backbone.
Sure there is disinformation but it does not nullify information. The voters can’t say they did not know what trump was like or what the republicans have become. There was the four years previous and everything they actually say. If folks voted for it, its what they want. If folks did not its still what they wanted. What else would someone expect the results to be. What have the results been in elections before. We all know we have first past the post. We all know its a two party system. We can get that changed but its going to have to be a the primaries and working at every level. I hope the majority make better decisions in two years if they have that chance.
Everything you say might be right.
I think its perhaps a bit overblown…
But how do you plan to fix this? Go around and talk to each voter? No, let’s think about why they became the way they are. I guess we could talk to voters that are disengaged and learn why. We could see what systems are in place so we can change them.
That seems more productive to me.
Do you think im saying to not do anything because I am not. Just don’t paint the better option as the reason when there will be an actual us political party doing the things for the next 2 and 4 years. Lefts move left by choosing left, even if its not as left as we want it to be lets still move that direction.
not saying i disagree, but people always link this article as though it even has a section on partisan politics. it doesn’t, or really even pose any evidence that suggests the effect applies to the overton window. would be curious if there are any sources that pose evidence.
i just read it and don’t think it applies here. the effect seems to apply to situations where the movement in one direction perpetuates itself, due to cyclic nature or outside influences.
if the democratic party wanted to, they could totally pull the overton window to the left. it’s not like there’s a perpetual demanded for the democratic party to move to the right; they just want to do it.
/genuine question, asides from the obvious of republicans adopting left policy, what would have to happen for another party switch to occur?
like, i know it happened once. wondering what circumstances and context brought that about and if that’s even a realistic framing to think about today’s world?
Knowing Better has a good video about the Party Switch, although I’m not sure it’s applicable to today
There is also the Whig party for reference. They were one of the two parties until they refused to take a meaningful stance on slavery. They were the ‘bipartisanship states rights solves it’ party versus the ‘pro-slavery’ party.
There is no longer a Whig party and the slavery party went to war over a decade or so after the anti slavery parry formed.
So there’s that alternative to Party switch.
I agree. I think we’re at the stage where the Democrats are the Whig party. They aren’t going to change, they need to be replaced with a true progressive party.
Assuming that we continue to be as much of a democracy as we were, now might be the time for that replacement to happen.
just playin’ the long game. won’t be long now and it will loop around to the far left.
I always knew the political quadrant was, topologically speaking, shaped like a pacman game
So, everyone’s hoping for the bit overflow
The reverse Ghandi.
This guy civs
Ah, so they are doing horseshoe theory in real life?
Yup, we just need to accelerate and we totally won’t end up in a fascist dystopia
Remember back in the past, when Democrats were communists and Republicans were social Democrats? Oh wait, that never happened, this graph is nonsense
This is recent history, not all history, and FYI it is a meme not a scientific study.
This could mean that there’s room on the left for a brand new party.
Only if America will implement proportional representation
There are plenty of people trying but it is clearly not working
It could if we weren’t locked into a two party system.
I mean, if there ever was a time for a grass roots growing of a third party, it would be NOW, not a year before the election with Putin-stooge Jill Stein.
Yes, but please voting reform at the same time. I do not enjoy this rollercoaster where we vassals of the US cross our fingers and hope the nut jobs don’t get into power.
And then they do.
Please for the love of God, make voting reform the number one issue above all else, because it affects all else.
I can agree with that, but I’m not sure it will happen. And like most people I’m too busy trying to keep a non-negative balance in the checkbook to do much about it.
