Sorry, and the party headed by a “millionaire” who promised to give other millionaires a tax cut and was endorsed by some of the richest men in the world, is the party of the little guy? That one?
Just to appease the gmods:
“When god wishes to punish us, our prayers are answered”
I am absolutely, positively certain that I am right and you are wrong. Your claim “America is politically too far right” is utterly wrong (especially with regards to this issue, which has VERY wide support) and entirely beside of, and missing, the point. You also totally missed the mark in your comparison to the ACA, which had an uphill battle in Congress but not in getting Barack Obama elected reasonably easily. The ACA has always been more popular among Americans than any Presidential candidate, despite being a pretty lame piece of legislation. Its protection for pre-existing conditions is popular among REPUBLICANS. Medicare is also very popular.
Present people with a bold, affirmative, simple platform that they think will help them and they will vote for it. If you inexplicably don’t want to run on the obviously popular subject of true medicare, fine, Find another. But “we need to move to the center with a variety of mild technical promises” ain’t it.
Don’t, and you will lose elections over and over.
It’s their choice.
Exactly true. Food prices are in your face. I think this damaged Harris more than Trump’s economically illiterate promises helped him, but if you don’t present a clear, affirmative set of simple promises, this is the sort of thing that lingers.
Mark Cuban was on Sam Harris’s podcast a few weeks ago, and he talked about how Kamala Harris had an interesting plan for reducing drug prices. It was, to hear him describe it, a pretty good plan - a bit modest, not far enough, but it would have helped, and now Americans will pay too much for drugs. Sam Harris had clearly never heard of it before, and Sam Harris is not a stupid or uninformed man. I had never heard of it. I asked my best bud, who lives in California, about it, and it was news to him too. I do not understand why that wasn’t one of just three things the Harris campaign wasn’t pumping nonstop into public discourse.
Take wild big swings. If Trump can rally an idiot army behind “build the wall, make them pay for it” your team can rally behind something equally as concise and wild. Look to FDR’s new deal, or JFK’s race to the moon. Just do something.
Then why did so many progressives lose their primary to moderate democrats?
If far left ideas are so popular, why don’t they win elections?
That’s a primary, not a general election, and is it true that progressive are likelier to lose primaries? You don’t see Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders getting primaried out. I mean, one would have to look at a great many primaries - literally hundreds just at the federal level - and ascertain the extent to which the very conservative (in the general sense) party leadership supports progressives versus old stock party hacks. Also “progressive” is not the same as “has a clearly started affirmative platform.”
Hell, the paragraph you quoted didn’t even say anything about being progressive, did it? My point stands for all parties. Simple, clear, affirmative promises.
I agree that the Democrats need a clearly stated affirmative platform, that they currently lack this, and that it was a huge problem.
But I don’t agree that this platform needs to be significantly to the left of where the Democrats are now.
I think we need to run on the issues that matter to people, and in this case those issues were Inflation and Immigration. And the Dems had good policy on both, but the way they communicated that was terrible.
Mind you, I say that in hindsight, given the fact that so many people went Trump that he won the popular vote. That means there are real voter concerns we didn’t tap into properly, even though our policy on those issues is on paper appealing to a lot of people.
Oh I’d have to agree in 2024 those should have been more clearly addressed; you do have to react to the conditions of the day.
About single-payer healthcare? Because in Blue Colorado SPHC got only 30% support.
Yeah, that is a bizarre assertion.
The ACA was so initially popular that Congress flipped in the mid-terms because of it. After a few years, yes, people realized it wasn’t some grand socialist plot and that it was actually helping people get health insurance, and THEN it got hard to get rid of.
Running on it beforehand was an electoral loser. Single payer would be much the same. A lot of people would end up liking it after a few years, but it’s a tough sell to most voters ahead of time.
I posted this on FB. Thought I’d share it here too.
Red sky at morning sailor take warning
It was a very red morning yesterday morning.
WARNING!! WARNING!!
(BTW, this is a web pic)
Colorado House District 8
Incumbent Caraveo (D) up by less than 2500 votes with 20% still left to go.
Well, we’re both speculating and it’s likely to be a very long time indeed before anyone even floats the idea of UHC and we find out who was right and who was wrong. I mean, Bernie Sanders did float the idea, and how far did that get him?
The main point here is that you haven’t addressed some of the really serious objections I mentioned that I think even some liberal Americans and virtually all conservatives would have against UHC. The paranoid distrust of government I mentioned goes all the way back to the Founders and is deeply entrenched in the American political culture. The hysterical objections we heard from the right about Medicare back in the 60s and more recently even against the lame ACA would be as nothing compared to the vast tsunami of protest that would be raised by the right against a proposal for single-payer, considerably bolstered by the vast resources of the health insurance lobby, which I believe is one of the largest lobbies in Washington, if not in fact the largest.
On top of all that, large numbers of Americans have a strong if misplaced belief in what might be called the philosophy of self-reliance, meaning that the goods and services you have should in some way be earned and not just given to you. I personally think that health care is a fundamental human right and applying this sort libertarian thinking to it is just callous bullshit, but it’s no small matter because, like distrust of government, it’s deeply ingrained in the American psyche. Which is why some folks would quite literally and cheerfully pay more for their health care and endure all the hassles of private insurance if it prevented “the undeserving” from getting it “for free” as a matter of some kind of moralistic libertarian principle that they think strengthens society.
Anyway, we’re getting quite a bit off topic so I’ll stop there. I do agree with you, though, that Democratic strategies need a major revamp, and they need to coalesce around clear major issues that will resonate with voters. I’m just saying that at this point in the evolution of American politics, single-payer health care would be a non-starter.
old southern saying: “some times god allows the devil to answer prayers”.
(my emphasis)
I would counter that she did, indeed, pump “lowering drug prices” into the public discourse. She spoke of it often (in broad sound-bite strokes), and was quoted about it several times a week.
I’ve noticed a theme in the post-mortem reporting of Harris’ campaign: A lot of commentators report that she wasn’t saying things that Harris, indeed, said all the time. I guess it’s hard to compete over and over with Trump’s antic du jour, though.
Looking at the undecided House races and assuming the Ds get all the seats where they are leading only gets them to 214.
Looks like Speaker Johnson will continue. Yuck.
Exactly.
These are people who are afraid of languages. No, I’m not kidding. Should we indulge their pathetic fears? No.
I haven’t been on this board in, like, 6 years. But I see Der still likes to miscategorize the right.
Needles to say, I’m ecstatic that Trump won. Three in a row (2020 was stolen, argue with yourselves). The handwringing over what Trump “might” do is far overblown-- he’s already served one term, and he didn’t “end democracy”. He’s not going to do that his 2nd term, either.
I just hope he doesn’t f**k up Medicare and Social Security since I am retiring in several months.
Where I live, the post-2016 activism got a lot of progressives into local (and some national) offices. In the years since then, they went big on DE&I, inclusion, “Latinx”, bathrooms, pronouns, and a whole lotta tone policing of more moderate allies. Much much less on progressive approaches to economy (tho did increase local minimum wage) and some outright in-everyone’s face failures (especially with homelessness and drug abuse).
The overall vibe I got with local moderates like myself, especially starting around 2021 when Biden came in, was pursuing the wrong balance. But this did not mean that specifically-targeted progressive & affirmative economic ideas were unpopular with moderates; in particular, several targeted progressive state initiatives were well-received and passed and got better approval than the politicians themselves.