Best way to accomplish this is to beat the GOP into dust, let the Democrats control everything, and inevitably split into two parties.
I fear we may need a judge’s ruling on whether it’s anti- Trump right leaning moderates or left-wing progressives we should be chasing in this election. You and I certainly can’t seem to agree. Which is weird, because from my p.o.v. I may be somewhat more left leaning than you.
A party can’t tailor a message well when they are trying to make it appeal to two completely different groups at the same time. They will inevitably alienate either us or the disaffected Republicans, since we have no common ground with people like them.
I don’t see any further moderate Republicans coming over.
If Kasich’s speech at the DNC didn’t convince them, nothing will.
We don’t need to chase the progressives, they are already here. We just need to not alienate them by further compromising our party in a futile attempt to appease those who are against everything that the party claims it stands for.
You are Canadian right? For you, a conservative is to the left of a moderate democrat.
I live in Trumplandia. I have acquaintances (no friends) who are Republicans. The ones who will vote for Biden will vote for Biden. They already made that choice long ago. The ones who will vote for Trump will vote for Trump, and there’s no changing that.
And with that, I will wish you the best of luck. I must return to exploitation of society by capitalist means for my filthy lucre, while I still can.
I don’t know that it didn’t. We’ll see.
It didn’t for my mother, but she’s a racist who thinks that the BLM activists should be shot by the National Guard.
We’re not picking her up.
That’s because in the spectrum of American politics, they’re an extreme fringe. They’re the Democratic/Left equivalent (at least in terms of distance from the center) of loons like the alt-right.
And that’s the point that some of us are trying to make- pandering to them does nothing but actively turn off the more moderate Democrats, much less the moderate anti-Trump Republicans out there who are likely to vote for Biden, unless he or the Democratic party does something very stupid.
And this talk of not voting at all because Biden/the Democratic party aren’t doing what they want sure sounds like what petulant children do, not fully grown adults.
I am. But have lived in the US for many years now. Still have family up there though. I would not say that the difference between a Canadian conservative and moderate American Democrat is that stark. I think it largely overlaps and includes some moderate Republicans as well. I am however, a Canadian Liberal. So yeah, well left of an American moderate. I have no idea what the current New Democratic Party is up to these days.
There are more than you think that support universal healthcare, free college education, and even some form of UBI. These are not fringe, other than the fact that the Democratic party pushes them to the edges.
Not voting for a party that doesn’t represent your interests seems a pretty rational and grown up thing to do.
But you are saying that not voting for Biden because some protesters are chanting “Defund the police” is the adult thing to do?
The reason the allies made a compact with Stalin wasn’t because they liked communism.
The converse being equally true.
Were they making a compact with Stalin to be their president?
I think that, if the terms of the Alliance said that Stalin was to have any say whatsoever over the operating of the Allied countries, that alliance would not have ever happened.
Frankly, the US was making a much more serious commitment by allying with Stalin than a random left wing voter is by voting for Biden.
And Stalin had a lot of say. The analogy isn’t perfect because the allies had enough power to maneuver around what he wanted, but the iron curtain happened because the USSR occupied those countries, had allied help for doing so, and then negotiated with the other allies and got things like splitting Germany as a concession.
The analogy is that the extreme left can make a compact with the moderate Dems to defeat the real enemy that is Trumpism.
You yourself said the schism of the Democratic party can come later. In fact, you welcome it.
Also keep in mind that to the Right and even many moderates living in their boring suburbs, they don’t see the BLM movement as a fight against oppression. They view it as a violent uprising by criminals, anarchist, Marxists and other elements of society they largely despise, coming to take what’s theirs.
Basically, the left has inadvertently created what amounts to a right-wing nightmare. For three years, anyone with any conservative sensibilities felt under PC attack because of the left’s outrage over Donald Trump. Then you have a pandemic where Democratic state and local governments are trying to instill more controls to slow the spread of the virus. Now you have the BLM protests and riots while many on the left are advocating defunding police forces.
Like this comes right out of the “Why you need 20 guns in your basement” handbook
Exactly!
This doesn’t really make the analogy all that favorable. If asking the progressives to ally with the moderates is like the Allies allying with Stalin, and Stalin then went and got a bunch of “concessions” that meant oppressing hundreds of millions of people, then I see that as a cautionary tale, not a recommendation.
But the moderate left cannot make a compact with those further to the left?
I really do not consider most of the progressive party to be all that extreme. I don’t agree with some things, I do with others, but it’s hard to sort out when it’s all just all lumped in as “extreme”.
I don’t think that calling for the police to stop brutalizing the citizens that it is supposed to protect is all that extreme, and I don’t think that asking people to allow it to continue without complaint in order to defeat Trump is reasonable compact to ask them to sign on to.
Yeah, and until then, we need to work together.
And they will as long as they watch Fox News and further right wing sources that tell them these things. It won’t matter what BLM actually does, it will be twisted into something that makes fragile easily scared white suburbanites scared.
That’s all they have, fear. That’s what they tell us all day and night, fear fear fear. And now elements of my party are trying to tell me that I should be fearing them too.
Out of curiosity, are you voting for Biden?
The Stalin analogy works better when applied to the Democrats cozying up to groups like the Lincoln Project. That is working with the enemy to defeat a more dangerous enemy.
And FYI, insulting us and diminishing our concerns like @bump and other centrists tend to do just pushes us farther away. My centrist and liberal friends always like to take opportunities to vote-shame me. It doesn’t work.
Sometimes folks should be ashamed of who they vote for. Trump voters should be ashamed, IMO. ISTM that it’s reasonable to believe that anyone not casting their vote to increase the best chance possible of beating Trump, and beating the GOP in general, is being shameful with their vote.