Nonsense. Every poll of voters showed that the problem in 2024 was the perception that Democrats were too liberal or too far left on various issues.
The left is a bunch of snakes to whom the Democrats owe nothing. They kept getting all their demands met by Biden, most notably a ridiculous crusade for student loan forgiveness that voters (accurately) perceived as a wealth transfer from people who work to pay taxes towards an upper middle class that had chosen to use student loan programs to avoid entering the workforce and accumulate economically useless degrees. It was yet another example of the three-step:
Democrats promise a hugely alienating policy that appeals to no one who wasn’t already voting for them and pushes swing voters to the right
They completely bungle the implementation, in this case trying to rebut rational people pointing out that the president has no legal authority to discharge student loans by executive order by just saying “trust me bro,” leading to the initiative being struck down in court
When they finally come up with a plan that will pass legal muster and wipe out $200 billion of student loan debt, none of the people who claimed that student loans were the key issue of the generation seem to appreciate it or care, and they all find another reason to campaign against Harris
The even further left (DSA types etc) clearly just hate America and want to make life worse for everybody. The Democrats do not owe them anything. The concept of “betraying” them as if the party owes these people for sabogating the 2024 campaign is ludicrous.
The most interesting data point about California is of course the 2022 recall election for the San Francisco DA. When given the choice between “a normal Democrat” and “a far-left pro-crime Democrat” you can’t find any population that actually wants the second one, even in San Francisco. People hate street crime. All people, including at least 80% of Democrats. The only reason these freaks like Larry Krasner, Muriel Bowser, and Brandon Johnson manage to win elections is because they game the primary in places where people will “vote blue no matter who” in the general election. Put a Josh Shapiro-type normie up against them and they can’t win even in the most liberal places because even the most liberal places despise them.
Democrats HAVE to disassociate themselves from the city politicians who have embraced criminals as their base. It’s probably the most toxic part of their brand right now, especially with the people most affected by crime (less white, younger people i.e. the people who live in cities).
“The left” is their base. If the Democrats abandon the left then they have barely anyone left to vote for them. Just people who hate Democrats and want to kill or enslave everyone not a right wing white male.
The Democrats’ base is black voters, people with college degrees, people who want their kids to avoid dying of infectious diseases, and, increasingly since 2016, people who value being normal in a general sense of American legal norms or not associating with the MAGA freakos screaming about “seed oils” and “the great replacement” and other insane bullshit.
The ideological left is a parasite on this coalition that actively works to sabotage it and agrees with Trump on virtually every important issue besides Israel. They also really hate the concept of being normal in every context and value anti-social behavior as an end in itself, which doesn’t actually play well with anybody, least of all the black churchgoers and highly educated suburban professionals who actually determine who the Democratic nominees are.
The proof is in the pudding when you actually have a real primary election that lays the choices bare. The San Francisco recall said a lot. In the 2020 primary, when you eliminated the 2016 “people find Hillary Clinton repulsive on a personal level and will vote for anyone else” factor and just had a straight up “somewhat leftist [not even as leftist as the DSA] Bernie Sanders” versus “normal liberal Joe Biden” poll, Biden won 75% of the Democratic vote. That said it all and ended the question of who “the base” is permanently among any good-faith observers.
All of those make someone “on the left” in the US. Or self destructively stupid if the support the Republicans anyway. “Reality has a liberal bias”, acknowledging reality makes you left wing.
Resurrecting this thread because I found an interesting article on the subject:
The recommendations are mostly things that have already been said, but the survey data is interesting. The thesis is that liberal, college educated whites have become a dominant faction in the Democratic party, determining its direction and image, and this group tends to have consistent ideological views, agreeing with each other and disagreeing with college educated conservatives on most issues. Due to their strong ideological views, they are not persuadable politically. Meanwhile, many or most non-white working-class people also vote for the Democratic party, but they are much less likely to self-identify as liberal, and much less likely to have consistently ideological views on issues tested. As the party trends towards views common in college educated whites, it becomes less welcoming towards the far more moderate and conservative non-white working class, and even more unwelcoming to the white working class, ceding those voters to Republicans.
Even assuming that’s true, what’s the point? Turning into the Republicans is just another way of losing. And wouldn’t work, anyway; people will just keep voting for actual Republicans instead of fake ones.
Bernie, Warren, and AOC still hold, I believe, on taxing wealth which would have to be apportioned among the states by population. Their system is unconstitutional not that I think they have a firm grasp of the Constitution. I saw an interview with Warren where she claimed something Trump was doing was an illegal and unconstitutional annexation of Congress’ power because Congress could take back the power it had given the Presidency.
These arguments always seem to boil down to “the Democrats need to pander to the bigots”, which brings up the question of why anyone who isn’t a bigot should want them to win if they do so.
Aside from any fiscal considerations, taxing the billionaire class out of existence is imperative because it distorts the democratic process for any individual to have that much power. Politically, I think defining the likes of Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos as The Enemy has a lot of upside.
Matt Yglesias is an attention-seeking moron who should never be taken seriously about anything. He’s the centrist Pete Hegseth. As the first paragraph of my link notes, he’s the sort of person who was viewed as very wise by the people running the Biden and Harris campaign, and had access to high-level officials including the President. He was (of course) dismissive of any concerns about Biden’s cognitive capacity, then he thought Harris was a brilliant candidate, then she lost so he started complaining about how she was too far left.
Honestly, I think what the Democrats most urgently need to do, regardless of their policy positions, is make sure that nobody associated with the Biden/Harris campaign (many of them also veterans of the HRC campaign) ever gets to be on the Party payroll again, because they objectively suck at their jobs.
So that Trump wouldn’t be in power, threatening democracy in America, risking another Great Recession due to his economic illiteracy on tariffs, installing his unqualified cronies in important positions while firing whole departments of government workers, slashing aid to the poorest, implementing project 2025, and all the other things that a somewhat-less-liberal Democratic party would not be doing.
And who is the bigot in this scenario? Non-white working class voters, three-quarters of whom identify as moderate or conservative. Aren’t these the same people whose ‘lived experiences’ we are frequently instructed to listen to?
Replacing Trump with a Democratic fascist would not be an improvement. And many of those “non-white working class voters” are bigots, which is why so many supported Trump. Misogynists, religious bigots, transphobes, various sorts of ethnic bigotry; bigotry isn’t some white male Republican monopoly. They were just too stupid to realize that Trump would also go after them.
I still say it’s not issues. Trump didn’t win on issues, he won on being Trump, and not being Harris/Biden. It’s messaging. So far most Democrats still aren’t really trying to reach voters outside their base - meaning actually trying to make news, get headlines, get in front of other voters, except for a notable few. Van Hollen did great, IMO, by actually making news for an important issue. There’s still plenty of time, and maybe Trump will crater everything so much it won’t matter. But I still think Democrats ought to be going to hostile places - Rogan, Fox, etc., and actually bring their messaging to voters who never see it.
Doesn’t work; it’s far too easy for a hostile and dishonest forum like that to make somebody they consider an enemy look bad. And if they don’t think they can make an enemy look bad, they won’t let that enemy on. They’ve been doing that for propaganda for decades after all, letting on “liberals” that they can make look bad.
For the most part, Democrats aren’t even trying. They should be saying “they’re afraid to have us on their shows. They’re afraid of an argument. They’re afraid we’ll anger their corporate, billionaire funders.” And like I said in the other thread, everything (like EVERYTHING) should be about corporations and billionaires. Everything should be tied to them and how they’re screwing everyone over for their own benefit. Every issue and every argument.
I think AOC and Bernie are trying, and I like what Van Hollen tried to do (and I think there’s a distinct possibility that Garcia is alive because of Van Hollen – that because of that attention, Salvardoran authorities went and made sure he wasn’t killed or in mortal danger), and more Democrats need to do this. No pandering like Newsome, but fighting and making news.
And @Der_Trihs, if you come back with “that won’t work either”, then ISTM that your point is that Democrats should crawl in a hole, and defeatism and doomerism is just as dumb as MAGA-ism.
