In light of the recent election, it’s clear that the Democratic Party needs a significant leftward shift to better address the needs and concerns of the American people. The party’s centrist approach is increasingly out of touch, limiting its ability to appeal to a broader base and especially to young voters, who are looking for bold and transformative policies. The fact that young men became a substantial part of the conservative voting bloc should be a wake-up call—it’s essential that the Democratic Party broadens its appeal by offering real solutions that resonate with this demographic.
Furthermore, one major missed opportunity was the decision to forgo primaries, which could have brought new energy and ideas to the ticket. Joe Biden’s choice to run for a second term, despite earlier implications of a one-term presidency, may have ultimately contributed to the loss by undermining trust in his promises. Had the party explored alternative candidates in a primary process, the outcome could have been vastly different. It is now imperative for the Working Families Party and the Progressive Caucus to push for a stronger, unapologetically progressive agenda within the Democratic Party. The time for centrist compromises has passed, as evidenced by setbacks dating back to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss, the persistently low approval ratings for Biden since 2022, and Kamala Harris’s recent campaign, which left many progressives feeling alienated. To regain momentum and genuinely connect with the electorate, a clear departure from moderate politics is essential.
What a ridiculous takeaway. They moved right and lost, but somehow this shows that moving right was the correct decision? That’s nonsense, it shows the exact opposite.
The Cheneys do not represent any substantial constituency. Virtually nobody likes them, right or left. Kamala went chasing after the mythical “moderate republican swing voter,” and they told her go fuck yourself the way they always do, and in the meantime she neglected her actual base which meant less enthusiasm and mobilization.
The democrats have tried this shit over and over. The people who like right-wing politics already have a party catering to them that they’re happy with. How many times does this strategy have to result in abject failure before you start to question it?
Not the first time I’ve heard this bullshit either,. It’s a surprisingly common talking point among centrists, even though it’s so blatantly stupid. Oh, the Democrats are going to the right because the left won’t vote for them? Well, the right won’t fucking vote for them either, so why are they still moving right? Why is courting the right a reasonable and smart thing to do, while courting the left is dumb and bad? Especially when they keep courting the right and they keep fucking losing?
Sorry, you are saying that folks joined the GOP and voted for orange voldemort because … he was to the left of Dems?
As part of a broader coalition. Not after them solely.
I disagree. She was on places like “Call Me Daddy” and SNL - the outreach was there.
Well, it worked in 2020, but not in 2024. Meanwhile, Clinton did not purse this in 2016 - instead calling the worst of these folks “deplorables” - and still lost.
So the answer is - certainly more than just the one time.
Trump got 72 million votes in 2024, compared to 74 million votes in 2020, so I’m not sure where you’re getting this idea that Dem voters moved to Trump. Trump just successfully turned out the same base of supporters that he had before, while Harris didn’t. But even if your claim were true, it would still indicate that moving to the right is ineffective, because in that case it failed to stop them from leaving. It’s just utter nonsense no matter how you try to look at it.
I cannot possibly emphasize enough how much I do not mean “going on SNL” when I talk about mobilizing and energizing the base.
So that one comment outweighs the entire rest of the campaign where she moved to the right to try to appeal to moderate republicans?
Hey, you know what, Harris called republicans “weird.” So I guess we can’t count this either as an example of your ideology being proven decisively wrong for the upteenth time. And the next time that the democrats try this and it blows up in their face yet again, there will be some random comment that means you can exclude that data point too.
This makes me think you’re replying without reading. I’ll make it easy for you though and quote my earlier comment,
Moving on,
This is a good point. Agreed.
Citation needed.
What I’m aware of (e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/07/uncalled-house-senate-races-popular-vote-2024-election/ - https://archive.is/W93jB) says we don’t have the final popular vote counts yet.
No, nonsense doesn’t make sense. But this does make sense. The issue is - if I’m right and the whole country is moving rightward, then Dems can only survive by also moving to the right.
In other words, one interpretation is that Dems and Harris didn’t go far right enough.
I hope that’s wrong though, since it suggests lefties like myself are an endangered breed.
That’s fair - would be helpful then if you state what you do mean. Or in other words, what you think would be effective in “mobilizing and energizing the base.”
It wouldn’t - if that had happened. But - while it is true Clinton tried to get moderate Republicans on board back in 2016, she really didn’t shift at all for them. Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/while-wooing-republicans-clinton-sticks-progressive-policy-n628501
Again, it’s more than just a random comment.
Hmm… I don’t recall this actually. Citation needed.
Well, you can’t count it as that, but for a different reason - you’ve failed to prove anything wrong, let alone decisively.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election
The final vote totals are not in yet, true, but I’m going off what information we have now.
Well, the good news is that you are completely wrong.
Harris lost for two very simple reasons. First, because she attached herself to a status quo that many people were dissatisfied with. Second, because she attempted your shitty strategy of shifting right to win over republicans, when republicans are perfectly satisfied with the party they’ve got.
You’re operating on lots of false assumptions, like this idea that who people vote for just comes down to who’s closer to them on the political compass or something. Honestly, Harris could’ve run to the right of Trump on every issue and Trump supporters still wouldn’t vote for her. That’s just how reality is, and your ideology is out of line with it.
Running a progressive campaign with progressive policy. Not punching left. Not supporting genocide. Not bragging about Dick Cheney being on your side.
Even just calling Republicans weird was actually working but she couldn’t even stick with that because she was too concerned with winning over the mythical moderate republican vote.
Really?
Yep. So that happened very close to Biden dropping out, hence I think I missed it in all the noise about the change.
It’s good to have source though. In this case it provided additional context - the comments were limited to the top two, unlike Clinton who insulted potential voters. (Actually let’s not kid ourselves - these folks almost certainly voted against her in the end.)
That’s not unreasonable, but I’d argue it’s premature. If the results change, that could invalidate the conclusion.
The sources I referenced seem to disagree with you, but after all they may yet be proven to have jumped to conclusions too soon as well.
Like I said, it’s premature to conclude this.
I’ll grant you this - if the final numbers show that the GOP didn’t get more than 2020, and Harris ended up getting a lot less than Biden did (on the order of tens of millions), then I’ll concede and agree.
Though I’ll through in an additional wrench - I’d want to see what happens with the popular vote in California specifically. To rule out things like Dem voters in Republican or battleground states getting their votes suppressed as being the cause of the GOP win.
But if the numbers say differently - that more people voted this year overall, for example, then I’d argue that supports my original (and deeply disappointing) case. (I’m not sure year if 2020 is the right comparison either due to the effects of the pandemic - that might have been an unrepeatable one off. I’d also want to compare to 2008 or 2012 after adjusting the numbers for population changes.
Agreed. I confess that why his core voters like him so much remains a bit of mystery to me - even the most extreme on the right haven’t been able to displace this guy, a new york liberal who basically stole their playbook and used the bits he liked.
But this puzzles me less than a Clinton and Biden supporting Dem turning red this year.
Like Clinton did in 2016, as per the NBC source I referenced earlier? We know how that turned out.
Yup, agreed. I can see Palestine/Gaza indeed being a sticking point. I still will never understand those folks who voted GOP because they didn’t like Biden/Harris on Gaza - which many claimed to do as per https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/14/hamtramck-donald-trump-arab-american-muslim - but I could easily understand them sitting out or voting third party. And with Dick Cheney’s history, that might influence single issue voters negatively who might otherwise be primed to want to believe in the best of intentions from Harris.
Of course, Harris was between a rock and a hard place on this issue - but we don’t need to rehash all of that. From what’s coming out now, it’s clear that Harris wasn’t able to strike the necessary balance and win over this important voting bloc - such as https://www.voanews.com/a/in-historic-shift-american-muslim-and-arab-voters-desert-democrats/7854995.html and https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/11/7/dont-dare-blame-arab-and-muslim-americans-for-trumps-victory - and I certainly can’t rule out the possibility that your suggestion here might have been enough to swing things the other way.
If that’s false - then how do people choose who to vote for? What else would be the measure that they use?
Well, they also tend to follow endorsements (hence why AOC and Sanders endorsed Harris), and do things like punish the incumbent if the economy feels really bad, etc. I’d agree that closeness isn’t the sole thing.
Per your citation it was just the two folks who are heading to the White House, not Republicans generally.
Actually, she did - see https://www.npr.org/2024/10/30/nx-s1-5170908/harris-argues-that-trump-poses-a-threat-to-democracy-in-the-final-days-of-the-race & https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/15/harris-slams-trump-in-pennsylvania-as-us-election-race-heats-up
Christ. If Hilary Clinton is your idea of a progressive candidate and going on SNL is your idea of mobilizing the base, then you are just on a wavelength that is so far removed from mine that frankly I don’t think there’s any real possibility of a productive conversation.
Seriously, come on. People have all sorts of reasons for chosing a candidate. This is so obvious that I shouldn’t have to explain it.
For the record, Clinton wasn’t progressive enough for me (but I would have indeed settled on her back in 2016) and I don’t watch SNL (though considering how many do, I still think it’s great outreach).
But I’m not the only one who thinks this way. Here’s a great post - https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/18340229 - describing how much and how well Dems turned out this year (with the estimate being that Dems will have actually beat their 2020 numbers once the popular vote count is finished). It’s just that red voters turned out in even higher numbers this year.
Since the final popular vote tally is still unknown, it is speculative, but if it’s right, then I think it’s enough to disprove your contention (that Harris lost because turnout from Dems was low because they were turned off by the lack of progressive policies and Gaza and etc - this can’t be the reason if turnout went up instead of down!).
That’s still speculation, but whether it’s more people voting Trump or fewer people voting Democrat is a moot point. If the Dems moving right led to the outcome that more people voted Trump, then it was still a losing strategy.
Funny where you cut off the part where I list some of the other reasons. I’d agree that it’s obvious that people have all sorts of reasons for choosing a candidate, but what didn’t compute for me is why someone who would be more progressive - or even just pro-Gaza - would support the anti-progressive who wanted to let Israel’s prime minister “finish the job”, so to speak.
Well, it can be worthwhile explaining it anyways sometimes. Often I’ve seen two people who actually agree but keep arguing because of semantics or the like, but if it’s all laid out plainly then these tend to quickly come to an agreement. Other times, it’s useful just to see how far the “wavelengths” are apart, as you put it.
Very few people supported Trump because they thought he’d be better on Gaza. Some may have chosen to take a gamble on literally anyone because the Dems are so bad on it, but I doubt that represents a major bloc.
On the other hand, I think it does represent a major factor when it comes to the economy. People are dissatisfied with the status quo and Kamala ran on the status quo. Trump was able to present himself as an alternative, and he was the only other choice.
I honestly think she could have not just mobilized more democrats, but also peeled off more republicans by seperaring from Biden’s economic policies and presenting a further left alternative. Not everyone who votes republican is ideologically committed.