Just a WAG,
Because there are more voters to the right of mainstream Democrats than voters to the left of them?
Definitely not Bernie, he couldn’t win the Democratic primary, why on earth would anyone think he could win the general election?
If by this you mean that the number of people who are not satisfied with either of the two parties outnumber those who are, you may be correct.
If by this you mean that there is a coherent set of positions which will be satisfactory for all of this group, or even to a portion of this group that is larger than those that are satisfied by either the Democratic or Republican party then I am highly skeptical.
The set of voters who are independent includes those like you who don’t think the Democrats are going far enough, but also those who don’t think the Republicans are going far enough, it also includes those who think that the answer is somewhere in the middle involving a set of policies that some of which match the Democrats some of which match the Republicans, as well as those who also consider themselves to be in the middle because they choose a combination that is diametrically opposed to the previous middle group.
What I wonder is if there really are more voters to the right than to the left of mainstream Democrats who would ever support any Democratic candidate at all.
I don’t know, but I think it’s possible that “mainstream Democrat” has moved so far rightward over the past few decades that it may have already colonized almost all of the Democrat-accessible center.
Yeah, I almost appended my post with something like,
That is folks who think they are right of the Democrats. Not that the Democrats are necessarily right but folks that have a kneejerk reaction to things. See: How ‘health care reform’ polls vs ‘Obama Care’ when they’re presented as identical proposals.
I think it really comes down to madmonk28 said. If the progressives can’t win the Democratic primary which is self selected for those who support their view, how do they expect to win the general election which includes a broader audience?
How do they do that? They are answerable to their voters, not to the party.
That doesn’t even come close to making any sort of coherent sense in the real world.
Do you really think that you are going to get 17 Republican Senators to go along with that?
Your job is to vote. You are perfectly within your rights to hold out ideological purity over practicality, and watch as the country burns around you as you wait for your superman. It’s your vote, you can waste it how you like.
Just don’t complain to the people who did vote for the continuation of our country and expect to be taken seriously.
If Democrats could rally behind their candidate regardless off who it is the way Republicans do, then the appeal to Democrats is irrelevant–all that matters is the appeal to swing voters.
Of course, I think Bernie has negligible appeal to swing voters, and Democrats can’t rally behind their chosen candidate anyway, but that would be the theory, I suppose.
They’d really like to you believe that. Democratic party is way right of center and has been for decades. Republican party is fully into batshit insane reich winger territory and, quite frankly, aside from the current fashion for fascism has nowhere more to the right they can possible stake out territory.
Let’s try this experiment without primary fuckery and see how it goes, shall we? Saying progressives can’t win when the two major parties are completely owned and operated by the corporate oligarchy that has unlimited money, ALL the media outlets and control over basically every facet of American society starting with elementary education and going on from there is pretty disingenuous. David vs Goliath was a pretty story but hey, David had a literal god on his side and that’s what it took to win THAT conflict. Also some serious luck.
I’ve seen the kayaker protests at the dock with Manchin’s yacht–apparently he’s not terribly accountable to his constituents either.
Go study up on “controlled opposition” and get back to me. Fact is, if Democrats had even a fraction of the party unity enforced by the GOP they’d be fucking formidable, the fact that they don’t is basically weaponized incompetence. Or real incompetence, either way they shouldn’t be in charge of a snow cone stand, let alone a country.
I do my job and have done so for over forty years straight–that gives me the absolute right to complain about the way the country is being run. That’s my ticket, I paid for it and I will fucking well be as vocal as I like about it. Anyone who doesn’t like it can pound sand for all of me.
So you want us to back the candidate that can only win in a made up world, not the real one?
And fuck all that Bernie bro whining bullshit about how it was stolen from you. With your sexism and racism, you guys aren’t much better than the Trumpists, you white boys are only interested in a revolution if you get to be in charge. You woke up and started paying attention sometime in your 40s and now we have to wait for you to get up to speed. Some of us have been engaged since our teen years.
Fuck you, you vile piece of shit.
You have the only major candidate that people are familiar with in decades who is actually a little left of center, who isn’t beholden to corporate interests, who actually wants to enact policies that would really help the average American, who doesn’t play the “we can only win by chasing the Republicans to the right” game, who has 50 fucking years of public service doing the right thing the entire fucking time, way ahead of his time, and the only reason you can think of that someone would support him is because they’re racist and sexist?
You are garbage. You think, somehow, the people who want to elect the guy that will help people are alienating people, but you just deciding that anyone who doesn’t agree with 100% on everything must therefore be racist and sexist and you think we’re the ones alienating people? You are the one driving division and scaring people away. Your positions aren’t based on reason or empathy, you are full of condescension and hate, and I’m sure every fucking day you blame the people who actually want to make things better for people for ruining the world.
I love the short memories of establishment Dems who forget that HRC used EXACTLY the same accusations, slurs and labels against Obama that she later trotted out against Bernie. The same dirty tricks and bullshit because she’s a stupid mercenary asshole with no imagination. And establishment Dems just dance like fucking organ grinder monkeys to the same tired tune over and over and over. Now maybe you want to tell me how Russia did it all? That’s usually next lol.
Maybe this will jog a few memories, assuming you aren’t as drunk wet brain as fucking Hillary Clinton:
Yeah, but the people to the right of us are the people who we need to convince to vote for progressive issues. The people to the left of us do support those progressive issues, just not when it comes to voting.
And yeah, it becomes a quandry. Do we move the party to the left to make the more progressives happy, and lose out on everyone in the center, or do we try to court the center, which will piss off the progressives and make them sit out the election?
The progressives are the ones putting ideology over practicality, and creating this problem.
I don’t really know what this even means anymore. Democrats work for reproductive freedom, healthcare access, improved education, environmental concerns, addressing wealth inequality, civil rights, and a host of other progressive issues.
They do get stymied by having an opposition that just obstructs everything they try to do, holding the country itself hostage, but the way to overcome that is to vote for the Democrats and give them the power to overcome this obstruction.
If the Democrats have moved to the right, it’s because they had to, as nothing they do is good enough for progressives anymore, and it’s a vote they can’t count on. If someone tells you that they won’t vote for you, then you stop listening to them.
How are you saying we should choose the nominee then? You choose?
That doesn’t answer the question as to what the Democratic leadership is supposed to do to get him to vote for their agenda.
Well, the reason that they don’t is specifically because of people like you. So are you claiming to be the incompetence of the Democratic party?
You can complain, I didn’t say you couldn’t. I just said that no one is going to take you seriously, no one is going to listen to you, no one is going to give a flying fuck what it is that has you so upset.
You’ve marginalized yourself, and have only yourself to blame. Whine all you want, it doesn’t change that.
Why not? I can hardly do any worse!
You seem unclear on the “not my job, not my responsibility to come up with solutions” concept. That is WHAT WE PAY CONGRESS MAJOR MONEY TO DO. And they ARE NOT DOING IT. And rather than giving them the usual consequences of such lack of actions the goddamned voters keep sending them back to continue their inactivity. Frankly, I doubt you WANT me to enact my personal preferred methods to fix shit because of the whole pearl clutching insistence that VIOLENCE NEVER SOLVES ANYTHING ONOZ. Because violence absolutely does fix a lot of things including intransigence in politicians. They avoid what scares them, as do most organisms, the problem is they’re scared of the wrong things. They need a little education on what is actually scary in the world.
Lol, “marginalized myself?” Victim blame much? Fuck off.
The democratic primary is not a mini version of the general election, there’s a different target audience and different factors. The democratic primary also does not favor people who are barely in the party, like Bernie, but rather it favors people who are well known within the party, like Clinton. Acting as though Bernie had an advantage in the primary doesn’t hold up, and acting like you couldn’t win the presidency if you can’t win the primary also does not follow.
For a simplistic example, imagine there are 2 groups of voters. The democratic regulars will vote democrat no matter what, and they tend to favor people well known in the party who are in party leadership. And a group of people who are usually not interested in politics, but they are interested in Bernie because he’s a rare person not beholden to corporate and rich interests above all else in our managed democracy.
Now - you run a primary with those candidates, and the well known democratic candidate wins. However, what happens if other candidate were to become the nominee? All of those people who believe “vote democrat no matter what” are still going to vote for the guy, but you also pick up all those voters who aren’t regular democratic voters but who would vote for him. That number combined is bigger than just the regular democratic voters. In this example, the guy who couldn’t win the democratic primary still does better in the general election.
Now, you can make another case that he alienates moderate voters that blah blah. I’m just saying “he can’t win the primary therefore he couldn’t win the election” does not hold up. Those are two separate contests with different factors.
Get the fuck over yourself you pompous douche. Sanders is about Sanders, that was clear when he ran again in 2020 and split the progressive vote and when he was tonguing Joe Rogan’s asshole.
Guess what? black voters didn’t want Bernie and unlike you guys, they show up and participate in every fucking cycle, not just when it’s cool to do so. He lost in 2016 and pitched a fit giving the election to the fascists and he tried to do it again in 2020. He lost by not getting enough votes, that’s how it works.
Now go spoil the Barbie Movie for those people who haven’t read the books you fucking loser.
You move the party to the left so that you actually do things that make life better for the American people, and the votes will follow. The whole fucking point is that democrats never do anything that actually helps anyone, they just do the republican agenda but less batshit. A lot of people don’t vote democratic because they - correctly - don’t think the democratic party is actually ever going to do anything to make their lives better. That’s not exactly a recipe for voter participation.
Think of it the other way. Let’s say you’re the bunch of rich people that actually run this country and you want to create a managed democracy in a two party system. So you create one party that caters to all the fucking worst of humanity and will completely let you and your businesses steamroll over everything. No regulations, no taxes, just fucking scorched Earth.
And for the other party, you create another right wing party that places your interests above all else, but maybe they’re a little bit more sane, they have less disgusting social policies, but they’re ultimately subservient to you, too. And then you spin this narrative to people of “hey, you can’t let the most evil party win, so you have vote for the one that’s the lite version of them”
Boom - the democratic party never actually has to do anything to improve the economic well being of the average American, they can completely serve the rich, and yet you can tell all of the reasonable members of the American public that they absolutely have to vote for this right wing policy completely under the control of the rich that won’t actually ever accomplish anything, but are just going to wreck things slower than the other party, and these people will spend their entire lives telling everyone that it’s their moral obligation to always vote for evil lite, and that anyone who actually wants to help anyone and stop playing this game is the true evil that must be opposed.
That is exactly what this thread is, and what the America of today is. The only thing everyone in power and their sycophants can agree on is that the economic well being for the average person must never come before the interests of the rich and powerful. You have been steered into a world where desperately clinging to evil-lite is all you can never hope to do, which is exactly what this managed democracy has programmed you to do.
I see we’ve entered into the batshit crazy conspiracy theories section of the thread.
No, the RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA OMG ONOZ RUSSIA AAAAAHHHH section already showed up WAY upthread.
“Both parties serve the interest of the rich first” is a crazy conspiracy theory?
Or, to look at it the other way, if what I said was true, how would the US look different than it does today? How would you distinguish a world in which both parties are captured by the rich as part of a managed democracy and the real world?
I contend that you cannot, because that is what has happened in the real world.