Warren certainly is trying to appeal across D bases with her recent bit about how the criminal justice system is racist. I just doubt that she will connect even if she mouths the right words and it may lose her some liberal white populists who might vote for a progressive but who, again, share more with elements of the Right than they’d like to admit.
The last matters for the general but not for who wins a primary.
Yes identity politics gives a Black candidate who promotes some progressive ideas more than identity issues a leg up. Harris is already seen as not progressive enough though, too moderate and too much connection to monied interests … Obama, who always ran as a centrist, was a disappointment to many progressives when he actually governed as one.
To my take it is less about the positions stated than how well the candidate can connect with those who have those concerns. The candidates story, the empathy that is felt from a candidate, a sense that that they actually get what the worries and concerns are, and offering something to hope and aspire to that we might not have even been thinking about but that makes us feel better about who we are and can be … that’s more important to getting votes than actual policy positions.
Another issue is priorities. Your most fervent voters will be the ones who feel that you are focused most importantly on the issue or two they care most about. Warren can talk about racial justice but I think everyone knows what her brand is: she’s going to appeal most to the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Blacks will vote for her, but will they turn out for her? She seems like she’d do worse than Clinton with African-Americans, because at least Hillary had the Clinton name and a fairly moderate reputation. Most AFrican-Americans are moderate Democrats with a religious bent. Actually, they are the most reliable churchgoers among all ethnic groups. I’m just not sure someone like Warren reaches those voters. Joe Biden on the other hand, has warm feelings in the community from his association with Obama, is deeply religious himself, and a moderate with a working class reputation. He’ll also win union voters. Warren will struggle with those too.
Now I know my predictions on Presidential nominating contests are always wrong, but I do know for a certainty that the leftmost candidate has never won a general election, and only been nominated a few times. It’s always someone who campaigns as a moderate who wins.
I really hope you’re wrong. If black primary voters aren’t going to support white progressives, or latin, or Jewish, or any non-black progressives, and are stupid enough (or careless enough, or pessimistic enough, or foolish enough, but I’m going with “stupid”) to choose relatively conservative candidates in the mold of a Hillary Clinton or Jimmy Carter, then blackness is bullshit, and the country is screwed. Too many poor white & Hispanic Democrats are fed up with Democrats who act like Republicans.
But I do think you are wrong. Bernie’s campaign admitted they would have done better if they’d really engaged with union members in the South earlier. It’s not the black professionals who work at the Atlantic or the New York Daily News the progressives need, so much as working-class persons of all colors.
“I feel your pain”? Yeah, let’s not waste our time seeing if you can get anyone to fall for that trick again.
The GOP make promises and keep them, and they win because they are predictable, apparently principled, and perhaps most importantly they seem to believe they are right. Confidence in one’s positions is attractive.
Centrist Democrats promise nothing and largely deliver likewise. Who knows what they believe in, other than their own alleged intellectual superiority?
The point of the new Berniecrat wing is to have actual policies to run on.
The Democrats need centrists, but not in the sense that pundits believe. Democrats need centrists, but they don’t need to be centrist. What they need is to convince centrists that “leftist” ideas aren’t that bad, and that they’re part of an overall effort to rebalance power in this country.
People are scratching their heads when they see Bernie Sanders and Anna Ocasio Cortez campaigning in Kansas, but they actually ‘get it’. It wasn’t that long ago that Democrats were highly competitive in rural Midwest states like Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas. In recent years Democrats have barely been competitive in Ohio and Iowa, which is where they used to win more than they lost. Democrats lost Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and they’re in danger of losing in Minnesota. Clearly whatever centrist formula the Democrats have been relying upon…is failing big time.
Democrats lost the heartland because they allowed Republicans to turn elections into referendums on social values, and because they believed that they traded their party’s platform of economic and social justice for corporate campaign cash. Democrats are not blameless for the decline of American democracy; they were the ones who should have been defending it and instead they promoted corporate welfare, gutted social welfare, and looked the other way as the (mostly minority) prison population exploded. Over time, the power has shifted overwhelmingly to the right despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of voters don’t like the right’s agenda.
The Democrats give them nothing to vote for, no reason other than “At least we’re not those guys.” That also feeds the perception that the Democrats are pussies - and if there’s one thing voters hate, it’s a bunch of pussies who are too scared to stand up for what they believe in. Voters invariably choose politicians who strongly defend their immorality over nice people who are afraid to assert themselves.
I find your perspective edifying. If Black voters do not like the ideas that you find appealing and vote for the candidates you like then “blackness is bullshit” and Blacks are, you are “going with ‘stupid’”? Fascinating this perspective from the progressive side.
Obama was a centrist and given the environment he functioned within I personally think he accomplished quite a bit by working with those across the spectrum. Bill Clinton also accomplished quite a bit in my mind … and failed at some major swings at bat too.
Another interesting and edifying perspective. Actually caring about the justifiable concerns and real problems of a large number of Americans, having empathy and compassion, is to you a “trick.” Informative that such is how you as a socalled “Berniecrat” think.
Not sure what meds you have skipped that you see the GOP making promises and keeping them … except for a conservative court … and see that party as “principled”. But I learned early to never argue with someone who is delusional. So sure. [backing away slowly]
It is true that is always easy to run on “policies” than to actually do anything.
I’m sorry. I think I let my anger get the better of me. I mean this:
If adaher is correct about black people, and they vote for racist, conservative snobs who hate poor whites and poor blacks alike–or even nice guys like Jimmy Carter who are politically dumb enough to appoint snobs like that (looking at Paul Volcker here)–then their blackness is bullshit and the politics of blackness is stupid.
tl;dr “If adaher is correct about black people… [that] is stupid.”
Funny though … that is not at all what adahar said.
Or are you characterizing Biden as a racist, conservative snob who hates poor whites and poor blacks alike?
I appreciate your trying to walk back from what you said. Honestly though I am convinced that this a mistake of your saying what what you really think.
But let’s spin your position as politely as we can: the “politics of blackness” is bullshit if Blacks do not support progressives and choose candidates like Biden instead, the world would be a better place if we called bullshit on all identity politics and just accepted that people are jerks. Discuss.
That does indeed seem to be the most polite take on what many “Berniecrats” think. The sense, at best, clearly is that racial issues are a symptom of economic inequality and not an item of independent importance.
For her sake Warren knows better and even in 2016 knew that"Economic justice is not — and has never been — sufficient to ensure racial justice" I believe that she actually believes that and is not just mouthing it. However I also think that there are may white “Berniecrats” who will not get behind her with enthusiasm if they believe she means it and that alone, even if believed, is not enough to win over many who vote with racial justice as a front and center item, let alone Black voters overall, many of whom are not so far convinced on many other items of the economic progressive agenda, especially, but not exclusively, in many Southern communities (read primary races).
Yes, but that *is *merely a matter of priorities. Progressives, those who recognize that we can and must do better, know that there are many, many ways we can do better, but that it’s necessary to focus on a few items at a time to achieve any of them (Conservatives/Regressives only need to say “No, this is the best we can do, no matter how sad you may think that is, now fuck off” and laugh with disdain). Those who identify different priorities for progress are still in favor of progress, and in no way the opposition. In no way are other issues than the ones you focus on not problems as well.
That does not mean that only those progressive candidates who emphasize priorities a voter agrees with are worthy of their votes - progress in other areas is still progress and still good for all of us. You won’t find many, or any, anti-racism advocates who will disdain to vote for someone appealing to economic or environmental issues instead, for instance.
July 6 article. Who among them is the great Donkey hope? I still say Sanders and Biden, both of whom will be 78 if they were to be sworn in are the best shots.
I don’t see why using five negative themes is more powerful than using one negative theme five times as often. And I do think anti-identity-politics is an issue which works very well for Trump. Precisely because Warren isn’t a real native American, he can get away with the despicable direct racial attack of using the word Pocahontas.
However, Warren has a big advantage over any other senatorial candidate – she used to be a Republican. She’ll rarely mention this while seeking the nomination, but would be a fool not to stress it after Labor Day. Warren explaining that she was a Republican because she supports a mixed economy of regulated capitalism will sound great to suburban swing voters, and is consistent with explicating her core message. Bernie explaining why he was a Socialist Workers Party elector candidate, at the same stage in his life, will sound terrible to the same voters. He’s be forced to explain he was a Trotskite, not a Stalinist, distracting from his core message.
This isn’t to say Warren can defeat Trump. Defeating an incumbent President always is a stretch. Carter? There was a recession the year he ran for re-election. Without one, Trump should be seen as the presumptive favorite. To defeat him, you’d need an candidate without the senatorial curse. Just because Obama overcame it doesn’t man it wasn’t true. A nationally unknown Democratic governor is the only Democrat who could be a November favorite.
Biden is a wild card. He’s prone to gaffes and has risk of health problems.
Biden isn’t “prone to gaffes.” Somehow this idea became canon, that he’s a gaffe machine, but the fact is that anyone who has been in politics as long as he has, and isn’t an artificial robot, is going to make a few off-color remarks, and for some insane reason this has come to define Biden in a lot of peoples’ minds. Why? He was totally low-key as Obama’s VP. And in this day and age, the concept of gaffes is bullshit, we have a current president who says whatever is on his mind and his spontaneity is a major asset to him, not a liability. I’m just getting so unbelievably tired of everyone saying Biden is prone to gaffes. This is outdated political thinking.
Warren cannot get it done, she doesn’t have a shot in hell, if she is the nominee I will be collecting on all the bets I’ve made on Trump being re-elected.
I haven’t looked for statitistics, so maybe you are right. But I think “anyonae who has been in politics as long as he has” is itself a problem. The reason governors are better candidates than senators probably has to do with them not having been in the national limelight as much.
Maybe I made this same mistake in my own post. Who the candidate is only has a little influence on the outcome. That’s why the GOP was able to squeak by with a weak candidate like Trump in what was structurally a GOP year. Economics conditions next year will be more important than who the Democrats nominate, or whether the GOP winds up with Pence or Trump.
The progressives need to understand that most people aren’t like them. Yes, all their facebook friends to agree with them, so it feels like a massive majority but it just isn’t so. As was shown in the 2016 primary, the majority of the party prefers a centrist, it wasn’t even close. Yes, I realize that most Bernie supporters feel that it was unfair that Hillary got to be the nominee just because she got the most votes, when it was clear that Bernie should have won because they really, really, really, wanted him to. If a progressive candidate can’t win the primary, how is he/she going to win the general election. Do you really think that general election voters are more progressive than those who vote in the Democratic primary?