this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
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Trump - JD Vance - Joe Rogan - Glenn Greenwald - Newsweek
Liz Cheney is far more hated by the right than the left. (A flaw with the left from my perspective.) BTW: I'm still waiting for any evidence whatsoever that progressives didn't show for Harris.
And every time the Democrats move to the right, so do the Republicans. That is the process that got us to Trump so, no, I don't think any sane person would look at where the country is today and pat the Democrats on the back. Aiming to be just a bit better than the Republicans just gives the Republicans space to be even worse. In the last 3 presidential elections, Democrats were so ineffective that they lost to Trump. The working class of this country has been on a steady downhill road for the last 50 years, and the messaging Bill Clinton used doesn't work anymore.
Also, in at least one of those elections, Obama was the upstart populist candidate. Both Hillary and McCain were establishment candidates in that election. Obama then went full establishment as soon as he won, but his next opponent was Romney, who was also an establishment candidate. I don't expect the Republicans to be running another milquetoast establishment candidate for a long time. It could even be argued that Bill Clinton ran as a populist for at least his first run, then moved to the center just like Obama. Reagan absolutely ran as a populist.
I literally explained this immediately after I said it.
That's literally what the Pew study showed. Your unfounded and ridiculous argument that they vote Republican notwithstanding. You could argue that they disproportionately vote for third party candidates but, since the libertarian party regularly outperforms the greens, progressives are far more loyal than the right. Anyways, third parties were clearly irrelevant this cycle, so now you have to pretend progressives are voting for Republicans.
So, "just trust me bro". Anecdotal evidence, especially filtered though a partisan hack, is worthless.
Funny how you assume that AOC/Trump voters are progressives voting for a Republican and not conservatives voting for a progressive, or liberals voting for a conservative and a progressive. The only reason you assumed the first is because it reinforces what you already believe. A rational analysis would consider the possibility that there is some other factor at play than ideological self identification. If you actually looked into the interviews done with these voters you would have seen the answer. They aren't progressive, or liberal, or conservative. These are the voters I described before who don't even think about politics until right before an election, then vote based on vibes. I guarantee that you know a lot of these people. Their choice was made on the populist-establishment spectrum, not the left-right spectrum. When people's lives are shit, it's populist messaging that gets their vote.
You think establishment Democrats would be more popular without criticism from progressives, but you actually have it wrong. This is a populist age and you can't just make voters love the establishment, at least not without putting them in camps for brainwashing. With no populist left messaging, people aren't just going to swing to the establishment. They will go populist right. At least with a populist left making noise in the Democratic camp, people have a reason to think that Democrats hear them. There is at least a hope that the Democrats will address their problems. Establishment Democrats think bragging about a great economy just tells people they aren't seen. Even a con-artist like Trump seems like a better choice than just being invisible. When Democrats address this at all, it's with a throw-away line in a speech and crocodile tears. People need a narrative. Trump gave them one, and Harris didn't. Republicans nurture their populist base, while Democrats try to suppress theirs.
The context was voters calling Harris a warmonger, not republican mouthpieces.
The graph on you link is blocked by a pop up so I’ll have to take your words for it. In my experience though yes this is anecdotal voters were most influenced by inflation. Which is supported by these polls. Hated or not I don’t think she had a net negative result on the outcome.
Democrats have since started working with progressives like AOC and Bernie which is a move to the left. But you aren’t the first I’ve seen to claim otherwise by saying democrats have moved right.
Trump lost in 2020 and also lost the popular vote in 2016…
The pew study only showed that people on the farthest ends of the political spectrum were more likely to vote. It doesn’t support your claim that progressives voted democrat in 2024.
The example you brought up of voters in AOCs district who voted for Biden and AOC in 2020 but voted Trump and AOC in 2024 reflects that.
There isn’t conclusive evidence to support every claim. As long as we admit when we are referring to anecdotal evidence then we are arguing in good faith. That’s what I’ve been doing. You refuse to do that and want to treat your opinions and assumptions as fact.
There isn’t enough evidence to go into that much detail. But based on this:
AOC is left leaning indicating her supporters are too and in her district her supporters increased their votes for Trump in 2024 compared to 2020 and decreased their votes for the democratic candidate in 2024 compared to 2020. Meaning this is an example of left leaning voters voting for Trump in 2024.
AOC is left leaning. So for her to win, her district needs to be made up of enough left leaning voters. And when she asked them to explain why they voted for Trump this response indicates they were not conservatives voting for a progressive:
While it is not the most sophisticated method of surveying voters, the responses were swift and candid:
No, I think the 2024 election was one between fascism and the only other option which just happens to be what you call establishment democrat. I don’t care who the alternative to fascism is… they are better than fascism. And the undecided middle voters that don’t pay close attention, hear the criticisms from the left towards democrats along with the propaganda from the right towards democrats and the result was Trump winning. And if Trump gets what he wants we will never vote again.
Given the near unanimous reaction to the assassination of a health insurance CEO, I think the question of whether a populist message can sell across the spectrum is settled. Too bad the Democrats didn't harness that pent up anger to beat Trump.
There was never a question of whether a populist message can sell across the spectrum. That wasn’t even part of our conversation. By definition it will always be popular across the spectrum.
The conversation was about whether the criticism from progressives towards democrats sowed apathy in voters and whether that apathy decreased votes for democrats.
That started the conversation, but it's not the only thing you had wrong.
Democrats are shit at their jobs and happy to remain so. As long as that's true, expecting progressives to ignore it is ridiculous. The unanimity behind the assassination is proof that the energy was there and the Democrats ignored over a decade of progressive advice to use it. They'll do it again too if we can't overcome institutional inertia and force a change.
The right wing spin machine exploits this anger all by itself. Without progressives, there is absolutely no Democratic message that competes with right wing noise. There would be no rush to PBS and MS-NBC, it would be a rush to Fox, Ben Shapiro, and Matt Walsh. Americans don't know much, but they do know Democrats are full of shit. Media outlets trying to hold up the Democratic facade are all losing audience rapidly. The Democratic establishment is an unsellable product.
We know that GOP run ads to paint democrats in a negative light. They do this because it sways the opinion of voters to not vote for democrats. To pretend that that same cause and effect doesn’t exist when progressives do it is delusional.
If progressives knew how to reach people then they wouldnt be a minority in our government. Let alone a minority inside of the Democratic Party that you claim they are better than. But they are. Because they don’t know how to reach people. Making your claims inherently false whether you want to admit it or not. So you will continue to be wrong about that until progressives hold the majority of positions in our government.
The unanimity behind the assassination of the UnitedHealth CEO is just a sign of how bad our healthcare system is. Democrats are the only ones who have made improvements on our healthcare system. Unfortunately they weren’t able to do more because they had to compromise with the rest of Congress to get anything at all passed.
If progressives were any good at reaching people then they would have more seats in Congress and we would have a single payer healthcare system right now. But we don’t. Why don’t we? Because we don’t have enough progressives in Congress. Why don’t we have enough progressives in Congress? You guessed it! Because they don’t know how to reach people or win elections.
Progressives can’t even reach enough people to hold a majority inside the Democratic Party that you claim is unsellable.
Damn, full circle back to the same bullshit talking points. All of this has been answered. Too far gone I guess.
With screenshots in Reddit posts.
Let me know when progressives start winning elections.
I gave you everything you need to google it yourself and find the same information elsewhere, and I even offered to do it for you if you provided a link one single piece of supporting information for any of your assertions. All you did was add a new claim about inflation driving votes with a link to a page that didn't mention inflation at all. That's not the most ridiculous thing though. Nothing competes with this statement.
So, you are looking at where the country stands at this moment, and your thought is "gosh, the Democrats must be doing something right!" Never-mind that wealth inequality has skyrocketed over this period of stunning Democratic success. We might lose the entire new deal over the next four years, but the presidential scorecard isn't so bad! 5 out of 9, wow! If that isn't classic Democratic delusion, I don't know what is.
Of course that's not really the Democrat's fault, because some people online criticize them. Presumably the Republicans have swept all three branches because right leaning voters never criticize Republicans or fight back at all. The Tea Party? yeah, that wasn't a thing. Republicans ousting their own Speaker in a populist uprising? Never happened. MAGA is just a bunch of fine folks who give free hand-jobs to the Republican establishment.
Republicans are winning because their base fought harder against the establishment than the Democrat base did. Despite all the whining, progressives have consistently gone easy on the Democrats, and Democrats have consistently blamed progressives for their failures. I love how you keep pointing out that Progressives have effectively gained no power in the party yet, somehow, they are the only reason the party can't get it's act together. I don't know if you're just so emotionally invested in the Democratic establishment that it's blinded you, or if you are personally connected to the consulting gift machine that runs it. In either case, good luck on your insane quest to convince the Internet to not call out what's plain as day.
You trying to explain that progressives are better at winning elections, while they are losing elections:
Progressives did quite a bit better in this past election than corporate Democrats. But I won't argue that the establishment hasn't been really successful at beating progressives in primaries. Besides being clearly true, it would hardly be fair to rob them of credit for the only thing they do well.
But, primaries are not the same as general elections. Money impacts both, but it impacts primaries far more. There is far less free media available, and name recognition can be impossible to build without it. There is also the myth that progressives can't win general elections that makes voters reticent to nominate progressives. We see it over and over where the progressive platform is preferred, but the establishment candidate gets the nomination.
Cheap shots aside, any real analysis paints a very different picture. Establishment candidates do better when they lean left. Obama ran on "change" and won in a blowout. Then he went establishment and almost lost. Lucky for us the Republicans were only running establishment candidates against him. Hillary ran establishment vs right-populist and lost. Biden ran "progressive lite" against Trump's "establishment lite" and barely won. Kamala went right against fascist-right and lost. See the pattern?