- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
Summary
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has criticized the Harris-Walz 2024 presidential campaign for playing it too “safe,” saying they should have held more in-person events and town halls.
In a Politico interview, Walz—known for labeling Trump and Vance as “weird”—blamed their cautious approach partly on the abbreviated 107-day campaign timeline after Harris became the nominee in August.
Using football terminology, he said Democrats were in a “prevent defense” when “we never had anything to lose, because I don’t think we were ever ahead.”
While acknowledging his share of responsibility for the loss, Walz is returning to the national spotlight and didn’t rule out a 2028 presidential run, saying, “I’m not saying no.”
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I am convinced 'Murica generally is too racist to vote a black person into office. Obama was only voted into office because he is an extremely charismatic and charming person. So much so that he was voted into office in spite of being black. Kamala is neither charismatic nor charming. Also, there is sexism and she’s a woman.
Too safe? No, they were too center.
I was just thinking earlier today that I miss Tim Walz. Walz 2028!
Gee who would have thought that completely ignoring the anti-war/genocide crowd and courting the CHENEYS “moderate Republicans” while keeping absolutely silent about Medicare for all and touting a “keep America lethal” platform would have backfired for one of the least popular politicians ever who was just anointed as the presidential candidate without any sort of primary at all. I’m so confused!
And the Dems are, mostly, still too safe. They need to start fighting while they still have a chance of stopping the insanity.
Step 1: Schumer needs to step down.
Step 2: ditto Jeffries
Step 3: AOC and Bernie need to take their place.
Not just Chuck but the whole leadership of the Democrat party needs to go.
While I agree, here’s what I worry about. Even if the leadership is replaced, the culture of the Democrats is to listen to consultants, voter panels etc. It’s commendable to take voters wishes into account, but what most voters want is a leader, not a listener.
Example: during the campaign voter panels talked about inflation and immigration whereas healthcare was ranked at the bottom. Therefore Democrats did not talk about healthcare.
But this is really a chicken and egg story. If nobody talks about healthcare, voters feel that healthcare is not on the ballot, and so they won’t mention the topic in voter panels. Luigi showed (once again) that healthcare in the US is fucked and that many people in fact care deeply about the topic. I am almost sure that Harris would have done better had she made healthcare the central issue of her campaign. The moral is that as long as Democrats are following, rather than leading, they will continue to lose elections.
They need to lead, but they also need to not just be reactionary. They should absolutely listen to what us voters are saying. But they should also be looking at the overall situation, and trying to understand why voters are not super stoked about how things are going instead of insisting “the economy is fine”. And then, maybe, I dunno, do some real, honest root cause analysis, and come up with some fucking creative solutions.
And by “they”, I mean the congresspersons themselves. Not an intern. Not a consultant. Not a lobbyist. The person who was elected. Do the work. Do your fucking job.
The entire party needs to go. Let it burn and be replaced by a workers party that represents us.
And whos stopping Republicans from going full steam ahead on gassing the Mexicans and trans people in the meantime?
It sure as fuck isn’t Democrats. Their ratchet effect enables Republicans
Let it burn and be replaced by a workers party that represents us.
That went horribly wrong in Russia. It turned out Lenin and Stalin didn’t represent anybody besides themselves. And their main targets weren’t people on the right, it was the other 2 socialist parties, the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks.
Liberals know as much about communism, and workers rights as Republicans. None
Please tell me how supportive Lenin was of the Workers’ Soviets as soon as the revolution got calmer.
Communism was a mixed bag. For many east Europeans, the monarchy had observed the revolts of 1888 with horror and had concluded that technological progress would be the death of them, so they explicitly resisted industrialization. That means that while much of Western Europe was enjoying the fruit of industrialized agriculture and trains for transporting goods and people, East Europe were still living without trains; a sad experience that I can relate to as an American. In many cases, the arrival of the USSR was linked with rapid industrialization, as the soviets sought to modernize these countries that had been held back by their fearful monarchy and feudal lords. That doesn’t erase the bad stuff that happened, but there’s probably a lot more communist governments that you’ve never heard of from the global south that were actually just doing fine until the CIA said “not on my watch!” and set up violent right-wing movements to depose them. For more, see The Jakarta Method.
There’s never been a fully communist or capitalism government. The issue is we don’t hold those power to a higher standard. Under no situation should one politician or politics party should have this much power. The power needs to stay with the people more directly. The old system worked because information traveled slowly. We know what the American people want. And it’s not capitalism, nor communism.
What does ‘fully communist’ or ‘fully capitalist’ even mean? These are modes of production and schools of thought, not scales where something can be more capitalist or less capitalist.
China and even North Korea has carved out areas for capitalistic pursuits. The USSR still had “business” private industries. America has Social security and other social “businesses” For the longest time the post office turned a profit. Reagan ruined that. I’m saying there’s no way either system can work entirely by itself. Our whole idea of work, economics, and relationships with society needs a more radical approach than the apparent binary systems.
But they wore pink shirts and held up tiny auction bid signs!
Not all of them.
True! Just the wild and crazy ones!
The “radical left,” per FOX “News,” ladies and gentlemen.
The dem leadership is absolutely too safe. The only ones saying what should be said are the ones that have no power.
Reducing Democrats in Congress is the opposite of progress. We should be recalling Republican congresspeople that don’t represent their constituents, or we’ll be waiting until November 2026 for our next chance to flip seats.
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/recall-of-state-officials
People vote for Republicans because if you think Democrats are never going to do anything to help you, you might as well vote for the party that will lower your taxes. There’s real problems with that logic, but it is true that Dems put serving corporations ahead of serving the people.
Trump and the GOP raised taxes on most middle class income groups in 2017, according to the official congressional JCT analysis.
We’re talking politics, not objective reality.
Still playing safe? They’re playing it even safer than before, and they have even less to lose. I don’t understand what they don’t get. They need to go on offense. Now is the time for it if ever. They literally have no power, so just make noise and make sure everything happening is loud and people know who’s doing it.
Step 2: pelosi needs to retire.
prison for her would be much better for everyone.
Maybe they should copy what Bernie Sanders is doing. He’s not even running and packing out town hall meetings. Who knew being against oligarchs, authoritarians, corporate cronyism and for the middle class would appeal to people?
No shit. I didn’t feel like I was voting for progressives. It left like I was voting for “not Trump.” You could have put a piece of corn-bread at the podium and I would have voted for it instead of Trump. But still. I didn’t vote for them because I just loved what they had to say… Because they weren’t for changing anything. They wanted to keep the status quo where it was. They were only listening to their wealthy donors. It was sad to watch.
One problem the DNC has is that they keep throwing boring ass lawyers into a game that isn’t about law. It’s about being a face the country knows to run the government.
You need charisma, you need to appeal to people, and you need to be human. Obama did this perfectly. Bill Clinton had it in him. Biden at least had such a long record in politics he could wing it his first term. I don’t know how he managed to win, but he did.
Clinton, while being a lawyer, had already been the governor of Arkansas. Meaning he had the experience being that executive. He could convince people to work beyond their own interests. Al Gore, we all know, won the 2000 presidential election, but the supreme court let everything get fucked up.
Kerry? Never stood a chance. Hilary? No chance. Kamala? As much as we needed her to win, she was unappealing to stupid people.
Lawyers, by nature of their career, have to read and understand the most boring ass shit and then convince others that the boring ass text supports their side of the case. That means a lot of them are boring people.
You wanna know why Walz is popular? He fucking loves football. He can connect to highschool students. IDK about you, but if you’ve ever met high schoolers, they aren’t the brightest, and bored easily. He’s progressive, but he won’t shove it in someone’s face to be more righteous. Not many people can do that.
To win an election, you have to excite people. Trump, despite his rhetoric clearly being terrifying, was, unfortunately, exciting.
Obama covered both lawyer and entertaining. He also had an appeal similar to Reagan, confident and comforting during uncertain times. The conservative media made politics entertaining, now we have entertainers as politicians and I can’t get on board with that
It’s not something we are going to change anytime soon. Far too many people to change to counter that.
Instead, we need candidates like Walz, who have a brain on their shoulders, and have a way to excite outside of putting on a show.
Bernie Sanders was another example of it. AoC is as well.
I mean, I agree with you, but this is also a huge problem. This is why you have someone who pretended to be a successful businessman on TV as a president now. I really miss the days when boring but competent people could run a country.
That ship sailed with the first TV debates, tbh. I watched the Carter-Reagan debate and it wasn’t a contest. I hate Reagan’s dumb fucking face, that bastard fucked America up for forty plus years and set us on the track we’re on, but he ate Jimmy Carter alive and went back for seconds. They weren’t even playing the same sport. Carter, a Nuclear Engineer, was up there delivering a university lecture about why he should be the president, and Reagan went up there, turned on the actor, and gave America the best cigarette ad it had ever seen.
It’s far easier to have a better candidate than change how 80 million people think.
Is this a problem of how people think, or is it a problem of what sells views in newspapers (and that media companies are too rich)?
Boring yet competent people don’t get elected in a country with mass media. They just don’t get coverage, so people don’t know they’re there.
As example, look at the first televised presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon. Kennedy was young and inexperienced, but let them put makeup on him for the debate. Nixon had more experience but looked like a sweaty mess on TV. This helped Kennedy a lot.
Biden won because he wasn’t trump. Simple as that.
This is pretty much all true. Except for…
One problem the DNC has is that they keep throwing boring ass lawyers into a game that isn’t about law
The DNC wasn’t making the decisions. The Harris campaign was.
Kerry? Never stood a chance. Hilary? No chance. Kamala? As much as we needed her to win, she was unappealing to stupid people.
Somewhat true. But Hillary could have won if she had simply mixed in a few bearded Biker types in the background crowd as prominently as all the Muslim women. But these candidates were the mistakes of the voters, not the DNC.
To win an election, you have to excite people. Trump, despite his rhetoric clearly being terrifying, was, unfortunately, exciting.
I change the channel whenever Traitorapist Trump talks so that he never gets a full sentence out. Still do. I don’t want to hear one more lie.
But you and I aren’t the person Trump is trying to excite.
It’s the 25% of Americans that equate critical thought with torture. That is the chunk of people you can’t reason with. So you have to have a way for them to care at all. Unloading garbage nonsense that has the occasional inflammatory rhetoric is exciting.
Talking about football? Not exciting to me, but these 25% of Americans? You better bet your ass they like it. They like beer and they like the idea of not having to worry about finances as well.
Unloading garbage nonsense that has the occasional inflammatory rhetoric is exciting.
Oh I agree that the #1 problem is that Harris needed to use way more aggressive rhetoric against Traitorapist Trump.
The old guard (both literal and figurative) need to get the fuck out of the way for the AOC’s and Crockett’s who will actually speak to power instead of cowering in the corners.
The other big problem is that politics have become such a negative impact on people’s lives in the US that regular people don’t want to run for office anymore, which is what we really need.
It’s to the point that I might prefer either a direct democracy with no representatives at all or electing reps via a lottery system. Most of the people with the desire to run for office, and all but a handful of those with the characteristics necessary to wade through the muck of special interests and campaign finance to actually get in office, are the kind of people you want as far away from power as possible.
The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke has government by lottery.
Test potential politicians for mental illnesses and make sure they have empathy etc. Make them do mandatory counselling. I mean, counsellors and mental health workers have to do this because they’re working with vulnerable people, but politicians don’t??? Their decisions affect everyone, including vulnerable people.
Impossible. You can’t have tests like that for candidates or voters. You just end up reinventing literacy tests.
Not to mention the eugenicism this would ignite.
How so? Bad eggs would be simply rejected.
The eugenicism is because of the tests; not the politicians.
You think this would work because you assume we could write such tests with such accuracy as to evade bias (or that such requirement for testing wouldn’t be exploited by opportunists to place metrics much more aligned with whom said opportunists would like to eradicate).
I’d point out that you say the tests should test for empathy but Empathy Deficit Disorder exists and, as EDD people often point out, the lack of being able to feel empathy doesn’t stop them from wanting to help people and making choices based off that desire. They just don’t feel empathy when they do it.
Of course, you’re not using that word to mean literally understanding and relating to others’ feelings; sympathy would certainly qualify.
But how do you ensure that? Who gets to implement these tests? And what stops it from being someone who just sees Empathy Deficit Disorder and goes, “Eew…keeping them away from this….”
I always feel to like I sound like I’m being condescending but (and I mean this as genuinely as possible) you should try selling out writing and theory by disabled authors. Because of the way disabled people are erased from both culture and society as practically a matter of function, it can be really hard to even realize the ways in which our assumptions don’t factor them in. Stuff covering ability and autonomy are incredibly interesting in the ways they think about concepts due different lived experiences.
We already assess people for mental health issues. I’m saying that politicians should be under massive scrutiny to make sure that we’re not allowing people with deficits in the areas which would make them callous, self-serving and so on, to rule over people, particularly vulnerable people. Pathological liars and manipulators shouldn’t be given a platform or the respectability of office to brainwash people on a global scale. Its almost so basic and obvious as to be unspeakable, but we know now that we must structure our societies & create standards to keep these people out of power.
We in fact should select for the traits that we want/don’t want in leaders and only allow people into politics who have those traits. This testing is already happening in many professions, maybe even most. Even shitty customer service jobs use these tests - well, all I’m saying is that we need politicians to be tested as much as astronauts are. How can that possibly be a bad idea?
I don’t think the metrics and so on should be any different than what already exists. Respected people in the psychology field have already said that trump is mentally ill in such a way that he’s unfit to rule.
The problem is that now he’s manoeuvred himself into a position where he can’t be removed, and soon even us talking like this will be illegal.
I’m all for disability rights, just not to the detriment of public safety - which exists in every sensitive field. Politics is a sensitive field. Politicians should be strong in emotional, compassionate and cognitive empathy, as well as sympathy. They should also have a good track record of being moral and decent people. Stealing from cancer kids charities would be a no, no matter what disability that person had.
This could be summed up as ‘no tolerance for intolerance’ or ‘no kindness towards cruelty’.
People working in psychiatry are judged in this way, but not politicians? Politicians have way more responsibility over people’s lives. They should be under maximum scrutiny and we should be as sure as we can be that they’re the best of us, including morally. We already make them have health checks.
i don’t love the implication here that politicians are corrupt due to mental illness. they can be perfectly average mentally and still be corrupt because corruption is an innate and ever-present exploit of human psychology. empathetic people can be mistaken of where to place their empathy. mentally ill people can be a better option for a public office than someone else who is neurotypical, it all comes down to their platform and record of reliability. disability should not be mutually exclusive with ability to govern.
Power corrupts, yes, but you must see it in your life, and certainly if you’ve ever had dealings with the police or been mistreated by a teacher at school… Not all but some people in those roles are doing it precisely because they get a kick out of misusing their power, often when people are vulnerable and so can’t defend themselves.
This is a character flaw at a minimum but can be part of a mental illness. I don’t think the line is so definite between mental illness or health. People can have traits of illness without enough dysfunction to be diagnosed with the illness.
Disability which is incompatible with kindness, understanding, decency etc should not be allowed power over people, especially vulnerable people. Most people who were ill and were decent would not want to be in a position where they could harm people. Cluster B’s and such wouldn’t care. If they don’t care (consistently), then they shouldn’t be in a position of power over people. There are plenty of other jobs.
Looking at trump in particular the reliance on voters being good judges of character has to end, which means there must be a mechanism in place to prevent people like trump ever getting near power.
i think the second we open up the avenue for certain character traits to be banned from public office, it opens up a new avenue and mechanism for oppressive government bodies to prevent their opponents from gaining power against them. Who gets to decide what traits count as disqualifying? what measures do we use to identify who has met this threshold? where and how could someone be treated for these in order to gain back eligibility? how difficult would it be to change these rules if they were incorrect? how hard would it be for a bad actor to change these rules for their own gain? how much money would be spent on this and the lawsuits that return from it?
I’d guess a council of psychologists would administer their own tests under lie detector, perhaps a yearly lottery from an eligible pool of reputable and experienced specialists, maybe also other renowned experts. No positions being permanent could eliminate some problems. The difficult part would be deciding where the lines are drawn. Someone like trump should be easy to disqualify without any testing, just from his widely reported past record of scams, fraud etc.
Imagine a young Putin, whose service record is largely secret, not much other history to go off, who doesn’t give away much, surely has information about past testing and is very smart.
So it’s not going to be 100% reliable, just a tool to hopefully improve the situation. It could begin with disqualification being reserved for only the worst, and then record how candidates perform vs predictions and readjust as necessary.
As to treatment, its impossible to say, it really depends on the individual to know if it’s even possible. Also whether its a good idea to let candidates repeat what are essentially aptitude tests which they could cheat.
If anyone is subject to oppressive government scrutiny it should be politicians.
i think it would be infinitely simpler to just ban the actions you don’t want people to do and a better mechanism to enforce it than to try and police the amorphous qualities of their character and behavior. Like, our problem here is that the executive branch has been granted too much power by congress, corporations are treated like people and can vote with their dollars, and congress + the supreme court have no mechanism to enforce laws against the executive branch. If the system was actually segregated enough in duties and insulated from capital, it would be immune to the effects of someone even as bad as trump. It would also prevent all of the false positives and the mechanisms for abuse that would open when we start calling people ineligible for innate and immeasurable qualities.
The old guard (both literal and figurative) need to get the fuck out of the way for the AOC’s and Crockett’s who will actually speak to power instead of cowering in the corners.
They sure as eff do!
Pelosi hated the left long before the left hated her.
Yep. Every time I hear Jeffries talk I am thinking “shut the fuck up and go fetch AOC”.
They were too far right. They pursued the “moderate republican” vote and lost spectacularly.
It is a politically suicidal idea. But they just can’t stop themselves. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is what they do best.
You mean touting the endorsement of war criminal Dick Cheney wasn’t a good thing?
Could have even been worse, they could have made his daughter the vp pick
That was what they thought the “safe” thing to do was. “Decorum” and “reaching across the isle”. All that “when they go low, we go high!” shit, in the face of actual Nazis.
More like “when they get votes, we go bye”
Democrats think they’re in a fairy tale, still asleep having the American dream. It’s all offices with rich histories and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parades in their world. Their campaign donors are “good proud American businessmen (and WOMEN!) who show the world that evil communism isn’t the answer and only centrist cooperation can achieve freedom!”
It’s why they thought they’re could win by having a brat summer. They thought “we’re clearly the good guys, the ones who like civil rights, hell we’re running a half black, half Indian woman!”
And now that they fucking lost their answer is “wear pink and sing ‘We Shall Overcome’ on the house floor” when the ONLY ONE OF THEM to stand up to Trump, in the most minor of ways mind you, is censured - and fucking 10 OF THEM VOTED FOR IT! YOU WEAK, INEFFECTUAL ASSHOLES!
Decorum and traditional norms will not save you now. Get out and speak truth to power. Shit all over them on the news. EASY QUOTES THAT GO VIRAL. Vote as a bloc against everything they try to do. Filibuster, stall, use procedure against then whenever you can. BE FUCKING BULLIES for your cause, because they sure as shit have been doing it to you for 50 FUCKING YEARS. The SAME GODDAMN GUY WITH NIXON is running around dressed like a CARTOON VILLAIN who ties women to train tracks and is still RATFUCKING YOU
god DAMMIT if I’d have known that the majority of adults in this world were so goddamn stupid I’d have made much different decisions in my life
Harris’s husband and brother in law steered Harris right into defeat. She shouldnt have trusted a word those two idiots said.
No excuse for the DNC, but I think seeking the “moderate Republicans” is a condition of their big donors. Every time the Democrats lose, since Reagan won, they move right because they think they lost because they weren’t conservative enough. And despite all polling that suggests otherwise, they keep doing it.
In general, they would get more money and power if they won, so why do they keep shooting themselves in the foot every fucking time? In my mind, even if you factor in that they don’t give a shit about the common people and are motivated by money, it only makes sense if they are being manipulated by their big donors to do this stupid shit.
Every time the Democrats lose, since Reagan won, they move right because they think they lost because they weren’t conservative enough.
That was true thru Obama but it stopped with Biden. Biden was the most progressive president since LBJ, even though Dem voters could have chosen even more progressive candidates.
Biden was the most progressive president since LBJ
Centrists’ big lie.
They get far more money being the foil of leftist movements by making themselves the only option for anything less far right than the conservatives and then paying lip service to the left while continuing to support moderate conservative policy.
See that’s funny because every single left leaning moderate I know (including myself) thinks they were/are way too left and they need to “come back towards center” so to speak.
For people even sorta in the middle both parties appear to be playing a game where they sprint as fast as they can towards extremism and most people aren’t down with that.
They don’t need to try and court moderate Republicans. They need to gain back the moderate lefties they lost over the last 10+ years.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/24/politics/democratic-party-left-liberal-q-poll/index.html
I know that Lemmy has very different views on the topic, but you guys are the extreme left. So of course you find the Democrats trying to go back towards getting moderate vote again as the “wrong move”. Unfortunately you guys (I am speaking broadly at the general political leanings of Lemmy I know you guys arent all far left) are the minority of the total political spectrum these days.
Fucking moderates.
Yeah keep that up. I’m sure you guys are totally gonna win in 2028 by continuing to alienate anyone who doesn’t agree with you 100% across the board.
Fucking progressives.
Ironic, isn’t that exactly what you’re doing, dingus?
No. I’m pointing out how disconnected from reality the far left (Lemmy) is.
Of the two political parties of the US right now only one is going to kick you out immediately for disagreeing with them on certain things. The other one doesn’t really care if you have different opinions on certain topics.
The Ideological homogeneity required by today’s left/democrats pushes out so many people that I don’t think they will be able to win another election again.
I want the Democrats to have viable candidates and run on good policy again, but more than anything I want them to shed this inflexible and dogmatic voter base they have been fostering over the last 16 years.
If you’re a ‘left leaning moderate’ that thinks the democrats are too left, you’re right-wing. The democratic party in the US is a center-right party.
My political stances didn’t change. I was firmly left in ~2012 and now you guys call me right wing. Who moved?
every single left leaning moderate I know (including myself)
My user note on you and vague memory of your post history determined this to be a blatant lie. You claim to be that, but you most certainly are not
Yes I’ve gone over this with various users on here already. You have me tagged as a Republican or whatever, but every single time anyone has asked me about specific stances they find that I am not.
This is exactly the type of shit I am talking about. The modern left only accepts people who agree with them on all things and think exactly like them. Any slight deviation is viewed as a threat and shoved forcefully away.
Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. Denies being a duck.
You know it’s hard to tell who’s actually a duck anymore when you call anyone that blinks differently than you a duck.
Bro, look at the total stream of your comments. You spent a whole day arguing with god knows how many people about different iterations of this same accusation, basically that you are a dem but everyone keeps calling you conservative.
Maybe the problem here is you, give that a thought. Or dont. I dont care what you do. But your single note woe-is-me trolling is disengenuous and tedious, and maybe you could tone that down a bit and comment less, or with a little more diversity of thought.
I have not once claimed I am currently a dem on this website. I have said Multiple times that I used to be one. I’ve been an independent since 2016.
Multiple people on Lemmy have marked me as a conservative/Republican incorrectly because I have one or two stances that don’t align with the left and they assume that I must be a full on Trumpy because of that.
You can see right there that most of my opinions land me pretty much smack dab in the middle of most categories.
have me tagged as a Republican or whatever
I have you tagged as a Conservative, actually, which is accurate based on your repeated comments spewing right-wing bullshit like transphobic lies
The modern left only accepts people who agree with them on all things
No, just most things, especially the big and easy ones
I’m not conservative at all lmao. Y’all kill me with that shit.
Holding the opinion that biological women and trans women are not the same and shouldn’t be treated as such just means I have eyeballs and a functioning brain. I don’t think they deserve any hatred or attacks. I simply don’t think they should be playing sports along side biological women because they are not physically the same as biological women. I think trans people deserve as much love and respect anybody else. I just do not subscribe to your delusional world where they are also 100% exactly the same as their bilogical mirror. There are differences and no matter what you say it won’t change those facts.
I don’t agree with you on all things but I know you are well intentioned so I could happily co-exist with you.
I’m just guessing here (feel free to correct me) that because of my opinions on this topic you would not wish to associate with me whatsoever and you probably think I am evil right?
That is the difference I am talking about.
Hey I’m curious, what do you think about the Democrats is “too far left”? Like actual policies because the article you linked lists 4 positions that aren’t a part of the parties platform and never have been.
I was really curious. Hopefully they will come back.
They did and are refusing to answer. They’re just a conservative that’s larping as a Democrat for internet points.
You do know the American political compass is special among political compasses, right? Compared to Europe (or even Canada), our definition of “moderate” is their equivalent of “conservative”. Likewise, our “left” is “center”.
Wishing the already-not-left Democratic Party starts shifting even more right is wishing for a two-party system where the options are conservatism and fascism.
I’m not talking about a global scale. I’m just talking about the US and how those terms are used here.
I’m not touching that broader conversation about political scales globally.
Here in the US both parties have been running in opposite directions and in most people’s eyes the left has been running faster. Hence the article. One of many that found similar data when polling americans. Most Americans are somewhere in the middle and that is crux of the issue.
Yeah, no.
The only thing that has shifted left in the Democratic Party is the public’s perception of them. They intentionally fuck over actual leftists (aka progressives) within their party while offering up milquetoast policies that look progressive on paper but are either completely toothless or designed to benefit to their corporate lobbyists first and foremost.
They’re a conservative party who used rainbow capitalism to masquerade as the comparatively left-wing alternative to the Republican Party. The reality is that every election cycle in the past two decades, they’re promising more “liberal” ideas while acting more conservative. Do you know who had a record number of deportations under their administration? It’s not Trump. It’s not Obama. It’s Biden.
Anybody that thinks the Democratic Party is sliding any direction other than right is either right-wing and arguing in bad faith, an anti-“woke” moron like Elon Musk, or consuming too much Fox News.
What they did was court Republican voters instead of Democrat voters, and neither Republicans nor Democrats were amused.
What they did was court Republican voters instead of Democrat voters
She “courted Republicans” with the most liberal platform since LBJ? Taking a picture with Liz Cheney, WITHOUT CHANGING ANY POLICIES, was a good thing not a bad thing. Because far right republicans supporting Democrats is objective confirmation of the threat of Fascism. It proves that Dems weren’t making exaggerating the threat to democracy.
Politics is not about having white papers on your website.
I’m hardly breaking new ground in my assertion here, even if you personally don’t agree.
If you somehow don’t realize how progressive and working class interests were kicked to the curb in favor of courting those (still) elusive republican votes there are many, many opinion pieces out that that can detail it more eloquently than I.
Here’s but one paragraph from but one such article:
The Democrats’ sharp turn to the right can be mapped through their party platforms and political programs. In 2020, they offered a “new social and economic contract” of “shared prosperity” and racial justice. By 2024, Harris and running mate Tim Walz failed to directly or meaningfully mention the impacts of racism, police brutality, inequality or diversity in their 82-page policy platform.
https://inthesetimes.com/article/progressives-left-kamala-harris-election-2024-democrats-resistance
And look at all the good it did them:
You mean you didn’t appreciate Harris campaigning with Republicans and throwing more support behind fracking than universal healthcare? Damn, what are you, some kind of socialist?
The Democrats need to embrace populism to get into office, like they did with Obama in 2008. Remember, Obama wasn’t the Democratic establishment’s first choice, but as Obama’s movement grew, they recognized that they could ride his wave back into power. Something similar happened in 2016 with Bernie Sanders, but in that case the Democratic establishment turned away from the candidate with the rapidly growing populist movement, because his language was much too explicitly and aggressively left populist for their comfort. This was a mistake. Had the Democratic establishment embraced Bernie’s movement, I don’t think Trump would have been elected in 2016.
I hope by now moderate Democrats realize a Bernie Sanders presidency would have been better than the Trump presidency. Many Democrats, apparently, didn’t think Bernie was a better option than Trump, that they were both equally bad options. Again, I hope moderate Democrats recognize now that that thinking was wrong. Bernie would have become more moderate once in office, just like Obama. Because Bernie, like Obama, would have listened to the experts.
That’s what the Democrats need to do: wait for a populist movement to form around a candidate, ride that populist wave into office, then the experts and technocrats can take over.
That all being said, Democrats also need to ensure that the experts and the technocrats are doing their jobs properly. Part of the reason these populist movements exist is because of the failures of technocrats and experts, failure to recognize the limitations or contradictions within their ideology. The technocrats must ensure that once they are back in power they are managing the country and the economy properly, so that the largest possible number of people can thrive, otherwise they will not be able to hold on to power.
Small correction: The DNC isn’t employing technocrats and experts; they’re employing neoliberals concerned first and foremost with extracting money from the poor and putting it in the hands of the rich. If they were concerned with improving people’s lives they’d have implemented progressive economic policy like everyone with two braincells to rub together has been telling them to.
If they were concerned with improving people’s lives they’d have implemented progressive economic policy
The DNC has no power to implement any policies. The House Democratic Caucus (HDC) and Senate Democratic Caucus (SDC) are the organizations with that power. The HDC/SDC are way more powerful than the DNC.
Neoliberalism started taking over as the dominant paradigm in the 1970s, and had become firmly entrenched in academia and the political technocratic state by the 1980s. That has changed, and is continuing to change, but there was a time when the majority of experts and technocrats were neoliberals. Many still are, unfortunately, though, I think the influence of neoliberalism is declining, albeit slowly (at least too slow for my preference).
Do Republicans become more moderate once they get in office? No, and their voters punish the ones that do. So why are you talking about Democrats doing that like it’s a good thing? That strategy is a big part of our current problem. We keep trying to elect more progressive candidates but a bunch of them get into office then almost immediately say “jk, all that progressive business was a ruse, I’m actually here to lower corporate taxes”. If I wanted a moderate I’d fucking vote for one.
So why are you talking about Democrats doing that like it’s a good thing?
One of the characteristics of populism is being anti-establishment, even against the established academic and technocratic paradigm. So, when a populist candidate moderates once in office, they become less populist and come more inline with the established academic and technocratic paradigm when they seek the advice and guidance of experts. Not all populists moderate once in office, because they don’t all listen to experts. Trump is a great example, and I think right wing politicians who get elected by building a populist movement are less likely to moderate once in office because they are less likely to listen to experts.
One of the characteristics of populism is being anti-establishment, even against the established academic and technocratic paradigm.
Yeah that’s a good thing, because as you said in your other reply the established academic and technocratic paradigm is fucking stupid. You should want them to be against the established paradigm if you want anything to change.
the established academic and technocratic paradigm is fucking stupid.
Its insane to be against science and intelligence and knowledge.
[You Must Not ‘Do Your Own Research’ When It Comes To Science]
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/you-must-not-do-your-own-research-when-it-comes-to-science/
Its insane to be against science and intelligence and knowledge.
The “science” behind neoliberalism is supply-side economics, which I hope I don’t need to say doesn’t work.
You should want them to be against the established paradigm if you want anything to change.
But simply being against the established paradigm isn’t enough to change things. You need to build a new paradigm, and that takes time, and it can’t be accomplished by just ignoring the existing experts and technocrats.
You need to build a new paradigm,
No need for that; there’s already a perfectly fine paradigm that can be used. It’s the leftist-progressive economic policy exemplified by FDR’s New Deal.
You’d have to ask the experts why they abandoned that paradigm in the 1970s, in favor of neoliberalism.
But ultimately I think you and I agree that the moderates shouldn’t be so adverse to left populism.
One of the characteristics of populism is being anti-establishment, even against the established academic and technocratic paradigm.
Hell no. FDR was a populist. You do NOT need to be against expertise and intelligence to oppose the billionaire elites. Rather the opposite. We need smart and competent people to beat the billionaires.
Surely the Democrats will stop moving to the center now that they understand that they weren’t properly addressing the needs of the people… right? right?
I’m sure the Dems will finally start supporting trans people, and will intervene as states like Texas make our existence illegal. I’m sure that there will be investigations into systemic issues with the police both being used against transgender people and the fact that our murders are often not investigated. I’m sure that the Dems will advocate for trans people to have protections in their employment and housing. We totally aren’t disposable minorities who’s support is wanted, but not enough to recognize us as human beings.
I thought it was that americans were to misogynistic and racist. Incl. a whole lot of Democrats that had no problems voting for Biden but couldn’t be bothered to vote Harris.
“Thank you”
it’s everything. the democratic party since Obama was elected has been unwilling to grapple with that our populace is split between people who think racism is an ongoing aspect of the fight for liberation, people who think racism ended some time in the past like in 1864, 1920, 1950, 1970, or 1989, and people who outright engage with racist ideologies. democrats try to engage with an idyllic populace who generally means well when the actual populace is a bunch of colonizers.
our best bet for a president who can address all the problems of this political environment is basically the wokest white dude we can find. and the way tim walz is acting and behaving, he might be operating with the understanding that given bernie sanders’ age, it might have to be him.
i ask everyone to do the following: pay attention to what tim walz does, but don’t treat him as your savior. every liberation movement has required three figures: the violent revolutionary (think Malcolm X), the pacifist the respectability politics people are willing to engage with (think dr martin luther king jr), and the emotional/spiritual leader that soothes people who are hurting’s souls (this leader usually goes unnamed because they are not looking for a position of power). you need to choose your role in our liberation movement as soon as possible and start agitating. and understand tim walz will never exit his lane of pacifist the respectability politics people are willing to engage with.
tim walz, also, for how much we love him, has blind spots and will say some ignorant shit in tho years to come. have grace and patience with him for as long as he will listen. america has a long legacy of politicians who entrench themselves in something dumb because when you have as many critics as someone in office has, the legitimate criticism tends to get buried under a mountain of unreasonable criticism.
Tim Walz wouldn’t win an election even if he ran unopposed.
The DNC needs a socially conservative but economically progressive candidate if they want to reclaim the narrative that they are the party of the working class. Tim Walz is already Tampon Tim to them. Like it or not, middle America wants to keep trans people in the margins. I know it’s awful to say, but they will need to keep fighting to win acceptance in society. The government simply cannot forc, coerce or even nudge people to accept them.
The DNC needs a socially conservative but economically progressive candidate
Well they are 100% dependent on the voters for that.
I disagree a lot that Dems need a “socially conservative” candidate. What they do need is a candidate who does NOT focus on identity politics and does focus on wealth inequality and all directly and indirectly related issues.
It’s genuinely insane how many people keep thinking and saying this nonsense. Identity politics are a reason Republicans won but they are NOT the reason Democrats lost.
If anything they lose every battle on identity politics because they keep ceding ground to the right wing. If they bit BACK - if they called a spade a spade, if they called out bigotry and actually supported and amplified minority voices - they would get more support. Not less.
It’s becoming mainstream again to be outright homophobic and that’s only possible because democrats insist on civility, “focusing elsewhere” and allowing right-wing assholes to run the conversation.
Don’t get me wrong - economics is ultimately the true make-or-break for the country and the world - but abandoning allies and friends is a losing strategy. The less empathetic and open-minded the populace, the less likely they are to support any meaningful economic progress.
It’s kind of the same thing right? I mean when I mean socially conservative, I mean a candidate that when asked about trans right will say what Newsom said not too long ago. The fact of the matter is that the republicans rely on democrats staying mum about trans issues. They will spend hundreds of millions to stir up grievances that don’t really affect most of the voters but it stirs their emotions. If dems don’t address it directly, the voters think (rightfully), is because they agree with this agenda, so I won’t vote for the dem candidate because I do not want men in women’s bathroom.
You need a dem candidate that says he is not for that. The progressive wing might not like it, but the progressive wing is not gonna win the elections alone.
Yeah, I don’t think those racist misogynists were going to vote for anything less than mass deportations.
I’m talking specifically about the millions of people who voted for Biden in 2020 but sat out Harris 2024.
Are these the same voters who support the Palestinian genocide? At some point we have to have the courage to stand for the right thing instead of pandering to our most cynical neighbors.
Not voting for Harris when you voted for Biden cannot be explained by anything that has to do with Palestinians.
If I believed what you were saying, then I wouldn’t even bother voting.
In a democracy you always vote for the least bad option. There will never be a perfect party for every single person.
Not voting for Harris after having voted for Biden means choosing Trump as a better choice than Harris.
How’s that working out for the Palestinians?
I voted for Harris, so I reckon my vote worked as well as yours for the Palestinians.
My point is that if I were so cynical to think we can only win by appealing to the worse in our party, then I wouldn’t bother defending democracy. At that point it is not simply a matter of voting for the lesser evil, but telling your neighbors that is is okay to be a racist misogynist.
I do believe in democracy, which is why I ask for more, not less.
Liberals love to blame racism and misogyny for their own failings.
The Democrats seem to think misogyny played a part, yes, but I’m not convinced that this was the case. It’s an easy excuse. But it glosses over a problem that Democrats have not been willing to face for almost 20+ years.
They are convinced that if they become the center, they’ll win the majority.
The Harris campaign ran the same play as the Clinton campaign: I’m not Trump.
The only case of misogyny that I can see is that Biden ran the same campaign. But the problem with this argument is that we were in a Trump presidency. The effects of it were clear to voters. If you carry over this logic to Biden, Harris lost not because she was a woman but the effects of the Biden presidency was clear to voters.
Harris had the opportunity to come out as progressive. To go further than Biden. To guarantee colleges loan forgiveness for everyone. To come out against healthcare companies. To come out against the alt right.
But she didn’t.
She played the same plays as Hilary: I’m not Trump. I’ll save democracy. Israel is cool.
The sad thing is she could be leading the charge right now to help organize people against fascism. If she really learned any lessons from her campaign, she’d be with Bernie and doing tours to help people protest.
The DNC would rather eat crumbs that fall off the table than risk biting the hands that feed it (corporations). They have lost legitimacy in my book and will only support them as opposition to the fascists because there isn’t another option. If a true progressive party gains momentum, you can bet that the DNC and GOP will work together to push progressives out.
The only case of misogyny that I can see is that Biden ran the same campaign.
Biden didn’t, though. Biden ran a centrist-ish campaign, to be clear, but he also coopted many of Bernie’s popular promises and generally ran on making things better for the average American. He promised a move left, while Harris promised a move right. They were not running the same campaign.
They have lost legitimacy in my book and will only support them as opposition to the fascists because there isn’t another option.
Here’s my perspective as a non-American watching this shitshow unfold: Y’all will need to create another option before it’s too late. The DNC isn’t an option; it’s losing by default.
He promised a move left, while Harris promised a move right. They were not running the same campaign.
Nope. The Harris platform was more to the left than Biden. She was going to impose additional taxes on corporations and billionaires that went beyond Biden.
We’re trying! There’s only so much we can do. I’m in a deeply red district and trying to coalesce enough people to do anything liberal has been like pulling teeth
She played the same plays as Hilary: I’m not Trump. I’ll save democracy. Israel is cool.
Even though Hilary always had a bunch of Muslim women in the background of all her crowds and identity politics helped sink her campaign.
They’ll never learn. It’s the same thing every election cycle.
