Focus on actually helping out the working class and you’ll get all the votes you need. Until then, throwing out a few progressive scraps has stopped working because people are sick of the bullshit rainbow capitalism.
This podcast is very relevant:
To be entirely honest, I don’t think that would work. I wish it were true she lost because all the real leftists stayed home or voted for trump in protest, but that’s obviously not true. She lost because this country is racist and sexist.
Actual leftists have no power over anything and are very small in number, that’s why she ran a more conservative campaign in the first place. But, it didn’t work. Despite doing everything in her power to not look like a leftist, everyone still labeled her as a radical leftist because she’s a black woman. That is why she lost.
I wish it were true she lost because all the real leftists stayed home or voted for trump in protest, but that’s obviously not true.
Left policy isn’t for the leftists, it’s for everyone except the capitalists. Left policy polls incredibly well when it’s divorced from democrats that have shown over and over will not do what their base wants.
Republicans fear their base, democrats despise their base.
She lost because this country is racist and sexist.
Do you think Biden would have done better?
Despite doing everything in her power to not look like a leftist, everyone still labeled her as a radical leftist
She told her base to fuck off, the genocide will continue, the wall will be built, we will have the most lethal military in history, all so that republicans would vote for her.
And then 5% of her vote came from registered republicans, down from 6% in 2020.
Left policy isn’t for the leftists, it’s for everyone except the capitalists.
America does not even remotely understand this, so they will not vote as such.
Do you think Biden would have won?
Not this time with how unpopular he is now, but any other white male option would have worked or at least had a better shot.
And then 5% of her vote came from registered republicans, down from 6% in 2020.
Because she’s a black woman.
She already had the vote of every leftist, because leftists hate trump more then they dislike her. The voters she needed were suburban white men, which is who she tried to appeal to. It didn’t work because of racism and sexism.
America does not even remotely understand this, so they will not vote as such.
Polling and history say otherwise.
Obama won by such a blowout because he campaigned on policies that helped everyone, such as free healthcare. And then instead he did what republicans wanted, means-testing every policy and giving them half the discretionary budget, and the dems got blown the fuck out in 2010.
In 2020, like a quarter of voters I spoke to thought they were voting for free healthcare, college, freeing the immigrant concentration camps, legalizing cannabis, abolishing police, and every other good policy the republicans falsely accused the democrats of wanting. It was always awkward to explain that the election for any of that had been the primary but they should still vote dem.
I agree in the importance of real progressive policy and messaging to match, but I very much disagree with your assessment of Obama’s 2008 campaign. Obama ran as a Rorschach candidate, allowing voters to imprint whatever they wanted to see. (Not unlike Trump in some ways.) It was a good strategy for a Democrat in 2008, but that ship has sailed. Potential Democratic voters are past believing in empty rhetoric.
No, there was a ton of progressive actions he promised during the primary, from withdrawing from Iraq earlier than Bush’s plan to prison reform and cannabis legalization to healthcare.
The ACA was based on a right wing healthcare plan from the Heritage Foundation, the same think tank that just brought us Project 2025. It was hardly a progressive plan, yet it was perfectly compatible with what he ran on. I don’t see anything about cannabis legalization in the 2008 platform.
Iraq is all over the place, but that was an obvious thing to campaign on given how unpopular it was. Even so, the only real promise made was to withdraw from Iraq to free up resources to send into Afghanistan, so it was more of a strategic plan than a progressive shift.
Obama’s campaign gestured in a lot of directions to give everyone something to be happy about, but it carefully avoided real commitments to anything. That’s what allowed voters to imprint their own ideas onto his campaign. It really was masterfully done.
America does not even remotely understand this, so they will not vote as such.
Yeah, I’m not sure you need to be talking about what voters do or don’t understand. Quit repeating establishment bullshit.
Because she’s a black woman.
I seriously doubt this was the factor so many people think it is. Republicans have the racist/sexist vote locked up no matter who is running.
Where this can come into play is that women and minorities (especially blacks) have to avoid a lot of behaviors that would never hurt a white male candidate. They can’t show a hint of outrage,weakness, or indecision, or they just become a stereotype. For all the mistakes Harris made, I don’t think I ever saw her fall into that trap.
Republicans have the racist/sexist vote locked up no matter who is running.
That is an extremely reductive narrative that ignores how prejudice actually works in this country. Racist and sexist biases conscious or not shaped perception of Harris on the left, right, and everywhere inbetween. Prejudice is not a binary thing. It is a cultural force that is more than capable of impacting the decision making of people who are not outwardly racist/sexist.
that ignores how prejudice actually works in this country.
I’m pretty sure that’s how prejudice works everywhere. It’s kind of weird how you zeroed in on that and then ignored the entire next paragraph where I talked about how it does sometimes matter.
Generalizations are generalizations, and it should be understood that they aren’t intended to be true in every case. I’m well aware that prejudice can be subtle. I’m also aware that a lot of people voted for Kamala specifically because they like the idea of a woman president. I don’t think either of those was a significant enough factor to change the outcome.
I ignored the next paragraph because it doesn’t sometimes matter, it always matters. Racism doesn’t suddenly start working because a person made a mistake. It might latch on to a mistake, but it can and will work without it. That is what I believe happened this election.
Here’s the polling that says otherwise. Progressive policies are popular.
Polls on campaign messaging
How to Win a Swing Voter in Seven Days
“The View” Alternate Universe: Break From Biden in Interviews, Play the Hits in Ads
Polls on policy
How Trump and Harris Voters See America’s Role in the World
Majority of Americans support progressive policies such as higher minimum wage, free college
Democrats should run on the popular progressive ideas, but not the unpopular ones
Here Are 7 ‘Left Wing’ Ideas (Almost) All Americans Can Get Behind
Finding common ground: 109 national policy proposals with bipartisan support
Progressive Policies Are Popular Policies
Tim Walz’s Progressive Policies Popular With Republicans in Swing States
So you’re telling me that most of the country agrees with her policy more than trump’s, yet the majority still voted for trump? I wonder if this might have something to do with racism and sexism.
It’s not about actual leftists; leftist policy is where you naturally get when you do things for the people. And both people like politicians who do things for them and hate politicians who don’t. Democrats think they can get people to show up by doing nothing and they simply can’t. I can’t find it now but I saw an article around here that shows how as the election came closer Harris dropped anti-establishment rhetoric such as taxing wealth and combating price gouging and defined her platform by being a conservative, not being Trump and that idiotic border wall. Coincidentally, as she did that support for her dropped.
Unless you have some evidence, please don’t go blaming it on leftists. That’s just establishment bullshit. Leftists have been shown to be the most consistently reliable voters in the country with more engagement than even Bible thumping nationalists. Engagement (including voting) is lowest at the middle of the political spectrum, which is exactly where anyone who thought about it for two seconds would expect it to be.
The establishment always bitched about leftists going third party (Although the Libertarians hurt Republicans far more than the Greens hurt Democrats) but that was clearly not a real factor this time, so now they insist that leftists went to Trump. No matter what, it always must be the fault of the left, not the precious “centrists” they love so much.
Step one in fixing this broken down wreck of a party is to stop buying their bullshit excuses. They lost because they didn’t do enough for the American people, and because they weren’t loud enough about what they did do. If they bragged about helping unions then they might piss off their corporate sponsors and they won’t get to go on tour after leaving office and get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for 45 minute speeches.
Actual leftists have no power over anything and are very small in number, that’s why she ran a more conservative campaign in the first place. But, it didn’t work. Despite doing everything in her power to not look like a leftist, everyone still labeled her as a radical leftist because she’s a black woman. That is why she lost.
My initial reaction to reading this was visceral, but in rereading I think you need to expound a bit about who you mean. I do not agree, but I can see why you think that.
What I find more useful and interesting is trying to figure out who it is that didn’t vote and how we can move them from the disenfranchised existence they are in. There are a lot of them, many are urban which means they likely lean left. So a GOTV that actually got even 75% voter turnout out would give the right a stomping.
Why that failed is worth understanding.
Compared with 2020, about 20 million prior Dem voters stayed home. Care to try again l
Gosh, if only they had landed that George W Bush endorsement things would have been different, I’m sure. The party relies on essentially blackmailing their base while pursuing 1% of Republican voters who don’t vote for them anyways, over and over.
He also attributed Trump’s win to broader failures in Democratic Party messaging
Again and again the Dems only think about their messaging. The American people are fucking sick of messaging. We want action.
It is about action, but also messaging. Democrat are shit at bragging about their accomplishments for working Americans because they don’t want to offend corporate interests and wealthy donors.
Politics are all about the interdependence of action and messaging. If you don’t run on powerful messaging then, even if elected, you aren’t going to have the ability to take significant action. If you don’t take significant action, then it’s a whole lot harder to create effective messaging. You can’t have one without the other.
Any progressive that somehow managed to run the gauntlet and become president would find themselves in conflict with both Republicans and Democrats in congress. The only way to break that log jam would be a massive populist uprising. The only way to get that is with powerful messaging.
Maybe if they just lean a little farther right. I’m sure it’ll work this time!
‘We should’ve done more podcasts’
I think it’s important to highlight the importance of primary elections here. Unlike most other countries, the process of choosing who a party nominates to stand for election is entirely controlled by voters in the USA through primary elections.
The Democratic Party loses because the Republican Party nominates populists that people are excited to vote for. If the Democrats want to win, they need to do the same—nominate people that voters are actually enthusiastic about.
Primary elections have historically rubbish turnout. If progressives, social democrats, and socialists want their candidates to be nominated, they should be starting information campaigns to get their fellow left-wing Democrats to vote in primary elections.
True enough but the DNC is absolutely not innocent here with how they like to fuck around in their primaries.
Of course that’s true, but the rules surrounding superdelegates and other tomfoolery wasn’t enough to make a difference in any recent presidential primary. 2024 was an anomaly but it seemed pretty likely Kamala would have won the nomination regardless (this is not an excuse to not hold a primary).
The rules for primaries to legislative or local offices are actually completely clean and fair, at least as far as I can tell.
The way we run our primaries is an absolute joke. The presidential race is over months before half the country has even had a chance to vote. That gives the establishment every opportunity to manipulate media coverage to boost their preferred candidate.
The way every single establishment candidate dropped out and endorsed Biden (who was near last place) on the same day was ridiculously transparent. I’ll also go to my grave with absolute certainty that Warren stayed in because the establishment got to her. I don’t know if it was a carrot, a stick, or both, but they kept her in the race as a spoiler. Warren completely dropped her campaign but refused to drop out for almost another month.
We should be up in arms about the Democratic primary process, not calling them “clean and fair”. Everyone should vote on the same day, we should have ranked choice style voting, and debates shouldn’t all be run by corporate media. That’s the minimum we should accept.
As for the superdelegates, they are the perfect demonstration of how our of touch and clueless the party establishment is. It doesn’t even occur to them that if they ever were to override the will of their voters that it would sink the party for a generation or more. There is no world in which they could do that then win the general.
I didn’t say the national presidential primaries were clean and fair. I said that local primaries are. And that is true.
Regardless, nothing you said changes the fact that when it came down to actual votes in the primary, those who voted in the Democratic primary seemed to prefer moderate neoliberals over social democrats and progressives in 2016 and 2020.
All this complaining about the primary process amounts to useless hand-writhing because no amount of calling for reform or argumentation is going to change the system. Calling for people to be “up in arms” is a useless activity because being angry by itself means nothing. If you want change, you need power. If you want power, you need to get it by playing within the rules of the current system.
So vote in the damn primaries to get the party to nominate progressives and tell your mates to do the same. Start or sign ballot initiatives to move to nonpartisan blanket primaries and ranked-choice voting.
Putin won with actual votes too.
Exit polls in the 2020 primary showed that voter’s had really only one issue that drove their vote, and that was electability. Corporate media absolutely pounded out the message that Bernie was less competitive with Trump than more establishment candidates. That was disinformation because Bernie and Biden performed almost identically in polls against Trump. Bernie was the clear favorite when it came to platform and policy.
Getting people actively engaged or “up in arms” is how you win elections, including primaries. That is a lesson the establishment understands when facing off against progressives, but consistently fails at in general elections, at least since 2008. It’s not a waste of anything to get people energized, even on a losing issue.
Quit fucking lecturing progressives on the need to vote. Progressives vote more consistently than any other group in the US political spectrum. You are just furthering establishment disinformation. They want people to think progressives are flaky and unreliable so they can continue to win the electability argument in primaries. Progressives don’t just vote. They make up almost the entirety of the grass-roots Democratic ground game, and the vast majority of individual donors.
Progressives vote more consistently than any other group in the US political spectrum.
If that’s true, then that means that they’re losing primaries despite being disproportionately represented. You’re just saying that progressives losing primaries is more than fair. If progressive are the most consistent voters, and they still lose, then they’re just not popular.
It is true. See this Pew study.
Did you even read what I just wrote? Exit polls said that Bernie was the candidate that voters would most like to see in the presidency but, for most voters, electability was an overriding concern for pretty obvious reasons. Bernie and Biden performed almost identically against Trump in polls, but that’s not what voters believed. News coverage was relentless in telling voters that Bernie was “too radical” to win in the general, so that’s what most voters believed.
The important part of a primary isn’t the actual person, it’s that they force the democrats to acknowledge what their base wants and pretend to want it too.
It’s also the best opportunity candidates get to frame issues and demonstrate vision. Conventional wisdom is that a contested primary is bad for the general, but that hasn’t been true for decades. Election after election, a contested primary wins the general.
“The Democrats” are a lot less cohesive than you’re giving them credit for. Yes, there’s a national committee and several important figures within the party, but there is no single “leader of the Democratic Party” who dictates policy down to their underlings. Plenty of times we’ve seen prominent Democrats in power defy the party leaders and suffer no immediate consequences.
The traditional American political system is very decentralised. Parties are more like labels that politicians adopt rather than actual vehicles for political control. Anyone is free to join any party and nobody needs the party’s permission to stand for election.
Meanwhile, if you take a look at how political parties work in other countries, there’s usually a person holding the title of “party leader”, that usually being the president, leader of the opposition, prime minister, or holder of some other important state office. The party leader is in control of the entire party and all of the party’s elected officials are expected to follow the party’s official ideology as dictated by the leader. If they refuse, then they will be kicked out of the party. The party leadership has complete control over who is allowed in the party and who it nominates to stand for election.
The Democratic Party has several important leaders. Biden, of course, is the president and thus the most influential. But he’s not the dictator of the party. He still has to negotiate and work with the likes of Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Hakim Jefferies in the House for his agenda. And, of course, Biden doesn’t have the power to dictate policy to the various state chapters of the party, which have their own local leaders setting agendas independent of what Biden wants.
Contrast this with the Republican Party, which in recent years has become a lot more hierarchical, with Trump as the undisputed party leader. Trump’s power over the party is all informal, but informal power is still power and the reality is that Trump, as the de facto leader of the Republican Party, can almost unilaterally dictate who the party nominates and what the party’s policy platforms will be on a national scale. That sort of centralisation just isn’t present in the Democratic Party.
Plenty of times we’ve seen prominent Democrats in power defy the party leaders and suffer no immediate consequences.
That’s the problem, the democrats have all the same tools the republicans have, but they only use them against progressives. How defiant do you think Manchin or Sinoma would be if they were cut off from DNC resources, removed from committee assignments, and an AG was specifically selected for their willingness to effectively prosecute them and their families for their blatant corruption?
the process of choosing who a party nominates to stand for election is entirely controlled by voters in the USA through primary elections.
Courts have ruled consistantly that the political parties, which are private institutions, have control over all aspects of the primary process. Political parties are private tyrannies that put their agenda above the will of voters.
How it works on paper and how it works in reality are two different concepts.
Yes, the Party can nominate whoever it wants by fiat, but… do their own self-established rules (which they do follow) allow them to do that? Do you really think that’s how it works in reality?
This is like saying “the NFL is a private organisation and can declare any team they want to be the winner of the Super Bowl without paying attention to the result of the games”. Yes, that’s technically legally true but that’s not how it actually works in reality.
I’m not suggesting the party nominates a candidate by fiat, that would be a ridiculous PR blunder. I’m saying they achieve that same outcome, but by a thousand slightly more subtle means.
For just one example, when I was volunteering for local progressive candidates, they all struggled to find vendors to print their flyers, signs, etc. Why? Because the Democratic Party has a policy that any vendor who works with a primary challenger will be banned from future business with the party. This policy has been shown to be selectively applied to progressive challengers.
But it certainly happens at the top level too. Look at how Debbie Wasserman Schultz, then chair of the Democratic party, changed the rules multiple times to explicitly benefit Hillary over Bernie in 2016. Or how, in 2020 after Bernie won Iowa, all of the centrist candidates dropped out and endorsed Biden.
I hear a lot about the corruption of the democrats that blocked Bernie and I can see the toll it’s taken on America. How can we fight back? I am willing to donate or protest the dnc picking another neolib but I’m not sure what to do.
If they’re staying on the couch and not voting, they’re not voters.
Calling them “their voters” also misrepresents things and highlights part of the problem
