Show me a nation that has been captured by the far left either historically or contemporarily that hasn’t done so.
I guess define far left.
If you define far left as AOC or Bernie, then I can point to most of the other industrialized nations.
If you define far left as Mr. Marx S Stalin and his Grand Plan blog, then you are simply picking nuts out of straw.
Right – and there’s what, 2 socialists in congress? And they’re Swedish style Socialists, so basically capitalists with regulation.
I suppose you have a cite for this, right?
This could easily be true.
But there’s an enormous difference between pushing a position that is broadly popular and becomes a new platform plank of the party, and pushing a position that is broadly unpopular and at least potentially leads to election losses. The Democrats have the barest of majorities in the House. After the Georgia runoffs, they’re likely to lose a Senate that was totally winnable.
Even given the presidency, this should be seen as a major loss for Democrats.
2022 will flip the House red. 2024 has a good chance of electing a Republican president. Ted Cruz will be wearing a bad orange toupee on the campaign trail, channeling its electoral power. It will be someone like him who is nominated. Trump has provided the roadmap. Other candidates can follow that path now. They know where it leads.
Democratic data scientist David Shor thinks it’s pretty clear that activists were hitching unpopular polices like “Abolish the Police” or “Defund the Police” onto the broader agenda. The actual real-world effect of that this cycle is unclear. But the polls are clear on this. Marginalized communities don’t want less policing. They want police to actually start serving the interests of their communities instead of brutalizing their communities.
This is in keeping with broader research Shor likes to cite on winning elections.
People can pooh-pooh NYT opinion articles, or messages from members of Congress. But I trust Shor when he says that Democrats benefit when issues on which they are strong become salient in the public conversation. I trust him when he says that Democrats suffer when issues poor for Democrats become salient. That just makes sense. I don’t think we have a good way to judge, this close to the election, which issues were salient, let alone how much damage such-and-such a person caused. But it makes sense that an issue has become salient if the most important newspaper in the country is willing to publish an op-ed article that supports the idea. It makes sense that an issue has become salient if a member of Congress pushes the idea, even if it’s not many of them.
This isn’t nutpicking. These are some of the most important institutions in the country. It wouldn’t be a shock if notable people in important positions caused some damage with their messaging in support of positions that the overwhelming majority of people find distasteful.
Some posters in this thread are trying to blame Republicans for all of this. Well, it’s certainly in the Republicans’ interest to try to tie together, in the public’s mind, hugely unpopular policies with the Democratic party. And they have certainly tried to do that. But it’s not some conspiracy theory to say that these viewpoints showed up in Democratic institutions – or at minimum, blue-tribe institutions – at the very highest levels. That’s just plain fact. It plausibly makes the Republicans’ job much easier when things like that happen.
What I posted is far more factual, you know with the rulers of China and the USSR in the 20th century being far left and selling their revolutionaries on the promise of the good outcomes of collectivism, than ridiculous unsupported and unchallenged assertions of what the Republican party is. Now what do you mean by far left? And why is your definition of far left supposed to supersede the historical usage?
You’re pretending to be stupid for some reason… but I’m sure you know well enough that Communism is completely different from what US domestic politics calls ‘far left’, and the rest of the world calls ‘center-left’.
The ‘far-left’ in America is not even suggesting going as far as the Nordic model of social democracy.
The Nordic countries are some of the wealthiest (per capita) and most successful countries in the world, and by far the happiest.
Then perhaps it’s best to not use such a loaded term? It’s like calling Sweden first world when Sweden was 3rd world. Terms have meanings.
And I have no problem with using far left as it was meant to be used. If Republicans are called Nazis then referring to self-proclaimed far left as far left should be fine.
Um… wake up, Rip van Winkle! You’ve overslept! 
It’s 2020 now, the Cold War was over 30 years ago.
(And the Nordic countries were doing pretty well with social democracy even 30 years ago.)
You seem to be arguing about terminology, when everyone else is arguing about actual policies.
You want ‘far left’ to mean communism, and pretending and arguing as if does. But it simply doesn’t, when we’re talking about the far left of the US Democratic Party in 2020.
So you’re arguing against an imaginary enemy - in other words a ‘straw man’ argument. How about engaging with the actual policies advocated by Bernie, AOC, etc.?
It’s less imaginary than calling Republicans, mainstream Republicans, the party of white supremacists, Nazis and fascist. The far left of the US acts like the far left typically does. Using violence to advance a political agenda and suppress others’ civil liberties is not so-called social democracy.
And about the Nordics that folks so love to bring up. Bernie Sanders is wrong on democratic socialism in Sweden, and everywhere else
Any association between liberals in the US or any western country and the Stalinist/Maoist regimes in USSR and China is pure rubbish. It’s a smear by association - like equating conservatism in Canada with fascism.
How many things were unpopular when they started?
Women voting?
Black men in the military?
Gay men in the military?
Women in military combat roles?
Civil rights?
Gay rights?
Interracial marriage?
You have to start somewhere.
The specific place you start is with making the idea popular.
Huh. Tell that to the NRA, the Tea Party and, really, the entire GOP platform of the last 30 years. What centrists fail to get is that politics is a war for ideological ground, and they start out the entire affair ceding ground to the conservatives who are not pushing for centrist positions. We have to pull the Overton Window back to the left, or y’all are going to compromise and compromise yourselves straight into minority rule fascism.
Might be too late; and if not, I really hope this Presidency was one hell of a wake-up call.
How many of the things I listed are even popular now? Maybe they eked out a just over 50% win but I would not call them popular. Hell, a huge swath of the country is working to minimize the things on that list right now. There are popular pundits even today saying women should not vote.
So again, if you don’t start you get nothing at all.
I have been posting this image a lot the past few weeks but it tells what you said so well I have to post it again:
Last time I saw you post this someone argued that it must be wrong because the majority of European parties are to the right of democrats by that model. But actually the vast majority of (unnamed) European dots appear squished in on the far, far left. Am I missing something?
I kind of remember that.
Since I did not produce the chart I can’t really answer how they did their thing. For this I rely on the exceptional reputation that The Economist holds (which is a slightly-right leaning magazine) and hope they vette these things well and only publish reputable sources.
Nah man, can’t be calling the Republicans fascists and Nazis when that is absolutely not true and balk at calling the far left, quite a few who have no problem with Soviet imagery or Che imagery or the label Marxist, as they are.