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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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The Democrats have generally never put in much effort into pushing back against Republican attacks.
Allowing yourself to be defined by the enemy doesn't seem like effective politics. Indeed Democrats have often preferred to undermined advocacy efforts because of this.
Edited by Mio on Dec 19th 2020 at 11:30:25 AM
RE: Soundbites make for bad politics
Unfortunately, as we saw with Warren's campaign, detailed plans of how you intend to achieve your aims don't sell well to the majority of the public. Doormonster's "Clickbait Is Literally Hitler" actually serves as a pretty good example of the average consumer - if they can't consume the idea easily, they'll just shrug and keep walking by regardless of the validity of the point. But boiling them down to just the core of your meaning (like, say "Make America Great Again") can get a lot of people on your side even if the idea itself is (deliberately) vague, because it's also an easily understandable, digestible one.
Edited by ironballs16 on Dec 19th 2020 at 11:34:40 AM
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"![]()
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Where the hell did I ever pull the Silent Majority Fallacy?
I simply said that discourse and convincing people can be considered direct action just as much as protests. They're both attempts to improve optics.
And optics, ESPECIALLY in a democratic nation, mean everything, they're extremely powerful. It's why white nationalists like Dick Spencer (nazi who got punched on live tv for everyone who forgot) tried to appeal to the public by looking like "gentlemen" and just as valid as other political ideologies.
Edited by Makir on Dec 19th 2020 at 5:33:37 PM
I just want to point out that Sanders was actually winning the primaries early on because the moderate vote was split. After a while of this happening, Biden won the endorsement of a famous civil rights leader, the moderates all dropped out strategically and Biden started gaining massively. So while if you had ignored the primaries from the start the end result would have been unsurprising (Biden was ahead in most polling for months), in the beginning it was not really clear cut and it seemed that Sanders had a real chance. Ultimately though, that didn't really transpire.
This has been painted quite negatively by some people as the "democratic establishment" trying to prevent a Sanders win, but to be honest I have a hard time seeing that as anything overly malicious? The moderates made a strategic decision to rally around the candidate who had the best chance and it paid off for them. Ultimately Sanders still lost to Biden because of the limitations of himself as a candidate and his campaign.
That being said, even if you think that the primaries are flawed (that much I think most can agree with) and not necessarily the best indicator of what most democrats want, that still doesn't mean most democrats identify with progressive policies or a more hard-left agenda. I'm not accusing anyone here of saying that but it seems like there's this recurring sentiment in certain circles of people assuming the democrats' problem is that they simply are not left enough which I don't necessarily think has much evidence or at best is overly simplistic.
Scuba Wolf: You're correct, of course, but just because the primary system is fucked up doesn't mean the outcome would necessarily have been different.
Mio: Or maybe it's because there isn't actually a vast, silent majority hoping that progressive politics emerges triumphant.
Makir: It helps if you talk to people outside your immediate political circle. Like I said, I've done that, and when I start going into a discourse on economic theory to justify progressive policies, they tend to glaze over and revert to their prior points of view. Debating the typical voter does not work as well as you think it does, because most people will hold to their opinions regardless.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
As Draghinazzo pointed out, it could have. I'm mostly just angry because it shouldn't be able to screw any voter from the 2nd half of states out of their vote, but it often does due to the way the primary system works. Which is why I don't consider it indicative of what the majority of Democratic voters want. Though that's more of a case for a quicker primary (like maybe 1 month) and ranked choice voting.
Edited by ScubaWolf on Dec 19th 2020 at 11:41:00 AM
"In a move surprising absolutely no one"![]()
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Basically it was a similar situation as Trump during the 2016 primary but the Democrats were far more effective at keeping out their "Extremists" as opposed to the Republicans.
And really I don't think it matters if it was malicious or not as it did demonstrate that the party was at least tacitly hostile towards the progressive agenda if that many members of the party got together to make sure that Sanders wasn't nominated.
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That's a pretty impressive strawman.
Just because I think the dominant wing of the Democratic party is hostile to Progressive efforts does not mean that I think Progressives would just start winning across the board if they got out of the way.
The point is that it is difficult for Progressives to even advocate for their positions when people who are supposedly allies undermined them at varies points and express hostility towards their efforts and agenda.
Edited by Mio on Dec 19th 2020 at 11:44:40 AM
Because they don't think that agenda is capable of winning national elections. Self-labeled Progressives have an intense myopia when it comes to this. I consider myself a progressive, but I don't have any illusions about how difficult it is to sell those ideas. I want someone who can win first and embodies my ideal agenda second.
Edited by Fighteer on Dec 19th 2020 at 11:53:21 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
Trump was in a similar position much of Republican primary, but because he remained the clear front runner and the other candidates did not strategically withdraw for the sake of say, Rubio, or Jeb he was able to coalesce the remaining support behind him.
Admittedly I don't think Bernie had quite as much explicit support as Trump did within the party, and if Sanders did win I don't know if he could have rallied/ strong armed the elder/elite members of the party around him the way Trump did with the Republicans.
Edited by Mio on Dec 19th 2020 at 11:54:36 AM
Before we get too far into rehashing the primaries, Trump is downplaying the government wide cyber attack, covering for Russia, and trying to pin the blame on China.
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Trump was reviled within the party, but he generated a vast groundswell of populist support that forced the party to adopt his agenda or be burned at the stake. We got Trump precisely because the Republican establishment is spineless and cannot stand up to its extremist base.
I'm not sure this is a model we want to emulate.
Edited by Fighteer on Dec 19th 2020 at 11:59:16 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"(Acting) Defense secretary Chris Miller has ordered an end to all Pentagon transition briefings.
Although he tried to claim that this was about a previously agreed upon break for the holidays, the Biden team insisted there was no such break agreed by them. As this is taking place in the aftermath of the worst cyberbreach perpetrated by Russia
(BBC article about it), this is extremely concerning because this is interfering with the Biden team's ability to clean it up when they are in power.
Edited by Resileafs on Dec 19th 2020 at 12:02:55 PM
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That's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy isn't it?
You have to actually convince people of your policies and ideas, but if you never do and prevent others from doing so because they are "unpopular" then they are just going to stay that way. It them begs the question of whether you genuinely believe in these policies or you are just capitulating to the status quo.
To be frank, gaining political power is useless if you don't plan on using it to achieve your goals, which of course assumes that moderates and progressives share the same goals, which I don't necessarily think so.
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There is no true equivalent to Trump on the American Left so frankly I don't see that as an enormous issue. Not to mention all electoral politics involves at least some degree of populism, what matters more is how that populism is constructed and utilized.
Edited by Mio on Dec 19th 2020 at 12:05:25 PM
It's a dilemma, isn't it? You can't get in power without being elected, but if you can't get elected on the platform you want, then you can't get it to happen. Recognizing this isn't capitulation; it's realism.
If we'd nominated Bernie Sanders and he'd lost to Trump, we'd be in really deep shit right now. At least we have a chance to fix things.
If, in some hypothetical system where it was possible, the Democratic Party split up along its various factions, those factions would still have to form a coalition in order to govern by majority, and there's no guarantee said coalition would be any more "progressive" than what we have now. Just look at Europe.
Edit: For a long time, liberal/left groups around the world have operated under the notion that there is some natural progression towards their ideology and that we only need to get out of its way for it to happen. This is the greatest fallacy of the 20th century.
Edited by Fighteer on Dec 19th 2020 at 12:11:49 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Yep. And we're arguing about Biden's progressive credentials. While the house is burning down we're stabbing each other over whether the fire extinguisher is eco-friendly enough.
Edited by Fighteer on Dec 19th 2020 at 12:16:39 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
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I don't think anyone has argued that any leftist policies are inevitable, though some (probably myself ioncluded) have argued that they are necessary in order to resolve broad economic, social, and environmental issues.
There is political power beyond elected positions in the form of movements, but it takes time to build and it tends to make powerful people (even those who are ostensibly your allies) get really scared.
Honestly there isn't anything to be done about that until Biden takes office isn't there? Unless you want to take some direct action aganist Trump right now, I can't think of any reason you would make that statement except to shame people for criticizing Biden and the Democrats.
Edited by Mio on Dec 19th 2020 at 12:25:17 PM
I am shaming people for it. I am shaming people for calling Biden the death of progressivism before he's even taken office.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Admittedly I don't think Bernie had quite as much explicit support as Trump did within the party, and if Sanders did win I don't know if he could have rallied/ strong armed the elder/elite members of the party around him the way Trump did with the Republicans.
Edited by sgamer82 on Dec 19th 2020 at 9:30:07 AM
If ProgressivesTM can't win the primary without demanding that centrists bow down, suck Bernie's dick, and withdraw from the election, they don't deserve to win. It's this kind of baseless triumphalism that leads leftism down the path of electoral failure. "I would have won, if only I didn't have opposition!"
It's absolutely pathetic.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
