No, that’s not what we’re saying. We think mainstream democratic candidates are good candidates who are better than the progressive candidates. I didn’t settle for Hillary Clinton; she was my first choice going into the primaries. If Sanders had won the nomination, I would have voted for him because he was running against Trump - but I would have been holding my nose while I did it.
This is what you guys need to wake up to. Your progressive platform is not as popular as you believe. It is not being suppressed by the political establishment; it just doesn’t have widespread support.
But like I said, if it had come down to a choice between Sanders and Trump I would have showed up on Election Day and voted for Sanders. And any progressive who didn’t show up on Election Day and vote for Clinton deserves a share of the blame for the Dobbs decision.
If you break it down policy by policy, the US is far, far more progressive than the Overton window is allowed to be. Both the democrats and republicans try to stamp out progressive ideas because they are both fundamentally conservative and tools of the oligarchy. Democrats actually work harder to stamp out progressive ideas more than republicans do, because the democratic party, being the slightly less right party, is where progressives would naturally try to make headway in a two party system. They are aided by the US mass media being almost entirely owned by 6 giant conglomerates (which came to fruition because of the telecommunications act signed by Bill Clinton that removed any restrictions on how much of the media market one entity could own).
The idea that the US is some open discussion of ideas where everyone comes to their positions through independent thought and soundly rejects the progressive agenda is not at all attached to the reality that we live in, which is shaped by what the two parties even let us argue about, and what the self-serving corporate media will even allow into the public discourse. For instance, if people advocated for a general strike to protest economic inequality, do you think the corporate media would be willing to spread that story?
Most people can be guided to only think within the box that they’re allowed to - that’s what the Overton window is, and the effect of it is far more powerful than you realize. They’ve been conned by this false two party system into squabbling over things rich people don’t care about like guns and abortion while not even being able to see that there are policies that can change their lives for the better in terms of economic power, home ownership, health care, etc.
So when you poll Americans on issues related to progressive economics, they are overwhelmingly supported, but they don’t actually have a meaningful choice to be able to vote for those policy positions, as per this which I linked earlier but no one read.
Look at this from the top down - the rich and powerful aren’t going to give us a real choice to improve our lives at their expense if they have a choice about it, so they steered two right wing, rich-serving parties that are allowed to squabble on issues the rich don’t care about. Then they get you to buy into their system by feeling as though you’re morally obligated to vote for the party that still serves their interest and moves the country in a direction that favors them, because you (justifiably) feel compelled to vote against the other party that they also control which will do those things faster and more recklessly.
…the “progressive platform” is largely what much of the rest of the world sees as “basic human rights.” That you consider it to “not be as popular as you believe” is a pretty damning indictment IMHO.
I think that there is widespread support for progressive ideas in America. “The government providing healthcare coverage for all” is about a progressive ideal as one can get.
That these popular ideas can’t get traction isn’t the fault of the progressives. One only has to look at the sneering tone used in this very thread to see how much push back the very mention of the word “progressives” gets. The political establishment very much tries to suppress progressive ideals. Its why President Biden said very loudly and very clearly at the SOTU “Fund the Police.” It was about as direct a “fuck you” to the progressive wing of the party as you could get.
Really? And what is Hillary Clinton’s record on a public healthcare system?
Why isn’t it?
You say the ideas are great. And they have widespread support in other countries. And Americans express agreement for these ideas in polls.
So the most obvious flaw in progressivism in America is the progressives who are espousing it. You guys are apparently driving people away from the cause.
Given how Obamacare is just soo much more popular than the Affordable Care Act is I’m quite certain that labeling Medicare for All AOCcare is a sure winner!
No, we get rid of this hellscape medical system by giving ‘the people’ what they actually want (even if they don’t realize it) and labeling it ReaganCare.
…she supported the progressives on a public option.
I believe that you quoted me saying “I think that there is widespread support for progressive ideas in America.”
That’s a given. But what I actually said was "the “progressive platform” is largely what much of the rest of the world sees as “basic human rights.”
I disagree. AOC, Warren, Porter, Pressley, Tlaib, Bowman, Cori Bush, the progressives who are espousing it, are not driving anyone away who hasn’t already made up their minds about them.
This is just how politics works. People were driven away from the progressive cause because they didn’t like Bernie. They were driven away from the moderate cause because they didn’t like Hillary. They were driven away from the Republican cause because they didn’t like Trump.
This doesn’t have much to do with what I said. This isn’t a level playing field. The moderates have significantly more funding, have significantly more power and reach, and have effective control over the Democrat messaging. All of that plays a much bigger part in why progressive policies struggle to get traction than simply “because the progressives drove me away.”
…am I really sounding like the kind of person wanting to re-litigate what happened in 2016? I’ve already said that I think she should have won. But I don’t think we should be putting all the blame for her losing on those that didn’t vote. Clinton didn’t lose because millions of people stayed home. We are only talking about a handful of votes in a handful of states. As you do with every election.
It was the impact of the email scandal that made the difference IMHO. That turned the election.
Agreed. If I really wanted to find a secondary thing to blame after the James Comey torpedo, I’d have to point it at Hillary Clinton herself for not campaigning in the swing states she thought she was going to win but didn’t. (In her defense, maybe she would have still won them but for James Comey.)
Bernie Bros and protest votes would be third at best. At least IMO.
Though if I had cast a protest vote in one of the swing states (or just not voted) and that state voted for Trump, I bet I’d feel pretty defensive about it.
She voted for updates to health care that were incrementally better than what came before, but were also a huge gift to the insurance industry and did nothing to reverse the massive consolidation of medical facilities into a few large conglomerates, which drive up costs.
Maybe she even had the best of intentions in mind—expand access to health care to all Americans—but the plan she supported also did nothing to fix the underlying problems in the health care system. That’s one example of the problem I have with her and her Democratic colleagues. Still got my vote.
I dunno ‘bout that. “Everybody” is a lot of people and large segments of the voter group give priority attention to (a) “bread-and-butter” issues, or (b) their particular pet grievance or (c) do I like this person, and “2 or 3 Justices may retire or die in the next 4 years and their replacements are likely to screw you over” is not even in their screen and when it happens it does surprise them.
…I’ve made dozens of posts about the 2016 election. But I don’t think “what if” scenarios are particularly helpful. Supporting the public option probably meant that many progressives did choose to vote for her. So yes, your logic is correct. But how many more people are we talking about, though? I don’t think that this turned the election. But that’s just my opinion (based on everything I’ve heard and read.) I don’t think we gain anything by relitigating this again.
I’m only going on about it because the progressives are being painted as the “big bad” here. When in reality about a hundred different things (some, obviously more important) happened all at once to give us the perfect storm and the Trump victory. Everything from the email scandals to Russian interference to voter suppression to yeah, maybe some progressive voters didn’t vote. Most of us didn’t envision Trump winning. It wasn’t on most peoples radar. In hindsight it should have been. But many of us were blindsided by the result.
No more blame than you would for every other election.
The first half was back in 1993. Bill Clinton had included public health care in his platform when he was running for President. When he was inaugurated one of the first things he did was to launch a task force to put together a public health care program that would cover all Americans. Which we were recently told is a top priority for the progressive cause.
And Hillary Clinton was the chair of that task force. She was the leader at the center of creating a public health care system.
The program unfortunately failed. Special interests opposed it and Republicans supported those special interests. The program got Harry and Louise’d.
This is when Hillary Clinton revealed she wasn’t a true progressive. Because she didn’t just complain about how it wasn’t fair and the failure was everyone else’s fault. Instead we got the second half of the story you mentioned.
Hillary Clinton worked on getting health care reforms that were better than the existing system. They were far from perfect but they were what was achievable in the real world.
A progressive would look at this story and say “We wanted a full public health care system and didn’t get it. So we got nothing.” A moderate would look at this story and say “We did what could be done and made things better than they were. So we got something.”
The thing about the non-voters in 2016 wasn’t that Bernie or whatever inspired a bunch of progressive voters to sit out when normally they would vote dem. There’s always a segment that sits out. The issues with that were:
-It happened to be an election where the GOP won by narrow margins in a few states. So the people who play with fire every time got burned this time.
-This was an election where the stakes were obvious. In some presidential terms you don’t have any SCOTUS nominations. In this one there was literally an open seat going into the election and it was the result of the GOP not being willing to even confirm a moderate. On top of how old the court (especially liberal justices) was getting.
2000 was obviously the modern election with the narrowest margin and it very likely was the reason for hundreds of thousands if not millions of deaths in Iraq, but at least you could say that no one knew that would happen at the time of the election.
