Is it your position that Democratic leadership has not recently come out and very clearly stated that this election was closer than it should have been, and that this is so because of certain progressive/controversial positions being too out of step with their base? Are you not aware that it is an extremely common refrain already that the Democrats won fewer races than expected, by less than expected, because of those things, and that moving forward from here they need to lean away from those things?
Or do you just not care what point I was actually making because you didn’t read the words in the post, much less try to come to any sense of what I might have been trying to use them to say? Why did you respond at all? I can’t tell around here anymore.
I dunno if you count that as “official”, but the major networks have not followed. Yet. It’s only a matter of time, given that Trump has to win like 55% of the remaining votes left in the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia areas, and he’s consistently only getting 20-25% from these areas from the last 2 days of counting.
Yeah, in 2016 there’s a plausible argument that the Democratic Party biased the process in Hillary’s favor, but in 2020 there was none of that chicanery and Biden won solidly. Sanders simply didn’t get the votes, and the others did worse than either Sanders or Biden. I think the degree of success that he had indicates that a liberal instead of the ‘center-to-right’ moderates we’ve had can certainly be a contender, but the fact that he couldn’t beat Biden (with all of Biden’s faults) shows that Bernie just wasn’t a strong enough candidate. I think that a younger candidate with a similar platform but a better image and lacking Bernie’s baggage (in particular, better relations with non-white demographics) could well win the Democratic primary and go on to win the general election, but even if Biden had dropped out of the race, Bernie would have crashed and burned against Trump.
I think what the Democratic Party needs to do is just keep honest primaries and get behind whoever can actually win them, not try to play games to pick a particular candidate (whether ‘playing the liberal card’ or following ‘It’s Her Turn’ for a preferred moderate-to-right). I think it’s very clear that non-moderate can certainly win, but needs to also be a good candidate - and the primaries are a good test of that.
Election was closer than we wanted it, sure. "that this is so because of certain progressive/controversial positions being too out of step with their base"- I am gonna need a cite. Leadership? That would be Joe Biden, Maybe Harris or Pelosi. Give me a quote from them.
extremely common refrain? By whom? I havent heard that at all.
Was this the BIG BLUE WAVE we hoped for? Nope. So? We won seats in the Senate and will win the White House.
(1) Losing isn’t going to make Trump go away. He’s a fascist demagogue. His demagoguees aren’t going to be un-demagogued by an electoral loss, especially such a slim one. If he leaves office he will take his Nuremberg rally on permanent road show, fulminating against the President, the election, the lawsuits, the prosecutions. It’s his most successful business. He’ll keep doing it and millions of American will gladly hand him their money to do so. So long as he is physically able to push air over his vocal chords and work his Twitter finger he’s going to be out there calling on the dogs of hatred and paranoia to howl at the sky. He’ll bring the country to Civil War if he can but he isn’t going away.
(2) The Republican Party has tasted the blood of fascism and its success. They kept the Senate and all the state houses and just barely lost the presidency. They’re not giving it up. People like Romney will either be sidelined or compromised. We are going to have a permanent authoritarian fascist party on every ballot in every election for the near future at least.
We are in for a bumpy ride.
As for going left in the next election, the proportion of liberals actually shrank this year. I would love to see those liberal policies move forward but the only way to do it is from the center.
First, Carter beat Ford, Reagan beat Carter, Clinton beat Bush, and Biden beat Trump. (Pennsylvania is a lock for Biden.) That’s four out of the last 8 elections with an incumbent.
The reading I’m doing is that moderates were scared by the propaganda against the left. Trump’s tweets kept up a steady beat of the horrors of a Biden America. Remember that half the country lives in a different media world; that’s all they saw and heard and they believed it. They believed it even though Biden couldn’t be marked with the socialist label; it was sufficient that he was going to be a front man for the left. The strategy almost worked. Imagine if anybody else had run. Would the number of non-voters turning out for a Sanders come anywhere close to the number lost? Almost certainly not.
The Dems didn’t flip any legislatures. The Dems probably won’t win the Senate. They lost seats in the House! Can we take seriously any argument that more progressive candidates would have done better? Trump gained minority voters all over the country based on the threat of Joe Biden!
Sure I’d like a progressive agenda. If you want one, then put everything you have into winning one of the two Georgia Senate runnoffs. That’s as close as you’ll come for the next generation.