What did Democrats do wrong?

[wareyin]

in what way did harris try and chase the progressive left but them throwing the baby out with the bath water?

what?

 

[dirtywick]

what?

chasing a small group that is notoriously fickle and prone to throwing the baby out with the bathwater unless they get everything they want.

Harris tried that, but that strategy didn't work.

i thought that's what you mean, she tried to appease the progressives but it didn't work. in what way did she try that?

 

[wareyin]

Unless you're perhaps a radical libertarian or sovereign citizen, the restaurant analogy is a bit porous. If we do not like any of the restaurants, we can choose not to eat out.

Yes, every analogy breaks down if you get granular enough.

We don't get to choose not to have a President. We don't get to choose to have a President who is not a member of one of 2 parties. Our next President will be either a Republican or a Democrat. So yeah, there's always more than 2 restaurants and you don't even need to go out to eat anyway so that part doesn't fit. But those people who spent years leaving "bad yelp reviews" for the Dem party know damn well that leaving a bad review for a restaurant is not how you improve the menu at that restaurant, it's how you shut that restaurant down.

 

[wareyin]

i thought that's what you mean, she tried to appease the progressives but it didn't work. in what way did she try that?

no. Harris tried the logical move to court the centrists and the moderate right.
"If it’s a numbers game, the logical move is to attract that larger, more reliable block of voters" rather than chasing a small group that is notoriously fickle and prone to throwing the baby out with the bathwater unless they get everything they want.

Harris tried that"

 

[dirtywick]

no. Harris tried the logical move to court the centrists and the moderate right.
"If it’s a numbers game, the logical move is to attract that larger, more reliable block of voters" rather than chasing a small group that is notoriously fickle and prone to throwing the baby out with the bathwater unless they get everything they want.

Harris tried that"

ok, sorry i misunderstood.

i guess i'm not necessarily sold on the premise that the logical move was to court centrists and the moderate right, or that attempting to find some common ground with progressives would have hurt her with the centrists and moderate right voters she already had. i think maybe the mistake was making the assumption that she could get enough support among them to flip the election.

in any case, going on to blame the progressives she deliberately ignored as a part of her strategy for not taking the l seems misguided

 

[Donal]

You're complaining that it’s "discouraged" to primary incumbents?

No, I'm complaining the rules were changed as soon as things didn't go the way the leadership liked it.

That’s how every political party on earth functions! They protect their seats. You can’t claim the party is a weak, failing product while also painting it as an all-powerful machine that "suppressed" progressives.

You don't need to be all-powerful to rig a system you already control.

When progressive candidates win with the actual voters, they win the primaries.

And then the party leadership targets them harder than they target right-wingers.

When progressive candidates win or even come close to winning those primaries, that moves the party to the left.

Which is why party leadership will burn the place down to prevent that.

Instead, progressives went with the ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ plan of helping MAGA win the general, which moved the entire country to the right.

"We're going to ignore and chastise you in favor of chasing people who have repeatedly told us they would never vote for us, and when we lose, we'll blame you."

As for your "civility" comment, give me a break. While progressives were busy purity-testing the only party that could stop Trump, the rest of us were trying to protect the people who are actually suffering under this administration. ICE is literally murdering Americans in the street thanks to the far left working to help MAGA. Hell, they spent years helping MAGA frame the only people who could stop the GOP, and now that Trump won and put his billionaire friends directly in charge of the government, they want to pretend they're worried about billionaire donors? Please. Your moral victory is a death sentence for the policies and people you claim to care about.

It ain't progressives voting in favor of funding ICE. It ain't progressives voting with Republicans to confirm Trump cabinet appointees. It ain't progressives telling us how important it is to fund Israel's military while hemming and hawing over healthcare, housing, education, etc. here.

 

[wareyin]

ok, sorry i misunderstood.

i guess i'm not necessarily sold on the premise that the logical move was to court centrists and the moderate right, or that attempting to find some common ground with progressives would have hurt her with the centrists and moderate right voters she already had. i think maybe the mistake was making the assumption that she could get enough support among them to flip the election.

in any case, going on to blame the progressives she deliberately ignored as a part of her strategy for not taking the l seems misguided

Well, we were working with the "lose 1 to gain 5 vs lose 5 to gain 1" scenario that Beelzebuddy introduced, and there are more in the center, center left and center right than on the far left by a significant margin.

I did point out that assuming progressives would understand that "most bad" is far worse for them and for the country than "least bad" was an error as well.

 

[dirtywick]

Well, we were working with the "lose 1 to gain 5 vs lose 5 to gain 1" scenario that Beelzebuddy introduced, and there are more in the center, center left and center right than on the far left by a significant margin.

I did point out that assuming progressives would understand that "most bad" is far worse for them and for the country than "least bad" was an error as well.

i would consider offering them nothing and insulting their lack of loyalty an error as well

 

[Emily's Cat]

Wait...who are the accelerationists? What influence do thy actually have? Is it more or less than the donors running the centrists?

The accelerationists are progressives... although I think most of them aren't intentionally accelerationist. Mostly, it's the willingness to put other people into giant social experiments where they don't bother to consider the easily foreseeable negative outcomes, and make no effort whatsoever to mitigate the risks involved in those downsides.

Progressives are people who want to gamble with other people's lives and wellbeing.

That doesn't imply that all progressive ideas are bad ideas - many of them are clearly well intentioned, and some of them are decent ideas. It's the unwillingness to employ common ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ sense and plan ahead for things that a normally functioning person can see are a risk. That's amplified by the emotional attachment to those ideas, such that when someone does point out the risk, the pointer-outer is demonized and vilified for considering the risk, then the risk is hand-waved away. At this point, it's become a fairly predictable playbook:
1) That will never happen
2) Okay, it happens, but it's rare and doesn't matter
3) Okay, it matters but it's actuall a good thing
4) You're a bigot/fascist/racist/etc. for pointing it out, how can you be so cruel!

Anyway... the problem isn't Democrats, it's not even liberals. The problem is progressives, and the degree to which progressive activists have influenced policymakers.

There are, of course, extremists on the Republican side as well. They also influence policy. From my perspective, the extremists on the Republican side haven't gained ground over my lifetime, not in any material way. They're still there, but they're still outliers and we all know they're off their rockers and full of crap. The ability to recognize outliers as complete nutballs seems to have fallen by the wayside among a lot of everyday Democrats.

 

[wareyin]

i would consider offering them nothing and insulting their lack of loyalty an error as well

What loyalty? Did you miss the whole "notoriously fickle" bit?

 

[dirtywick]

What loyalty? Did you miss the whole "notoriously fickle" bit?

that's your assertation. i don't think you could even fairly call them fickle, they've never really been offered any incentive to vote for the dems besides it's the less worse option. they have no representation, so they don't always turn out to vote in the numbers you want. that's not fickle, that's completely expected behavior imo

edit

if anything i think the moderate dems use them as scapegoats when their own unpopular candidate fail.

 

[wareyin]

No, I'm complaining the rules were changed as soon as things didn't go the way the leadership liked it.

You don't need to be all-powerful to rig a system you already control.

And then the party leadership targets them harder than they target right-wingers.

Which is why party leadership will burn the place down to prevent that.

"We're going to ignore and chastise you in favor of chasing people who have repeatedly told us they would never vote for us, and when we lose, we'll blame you."

It ain't progressives voting in favor of funding ICE. It ain't progressives voting with Republicans to confirm Trump cabinet appointees. It ain't progressives telling us how important it is to fund Israel's military while hemming and hawing over healthcare, housing, education, etc. here.

Donal, you’re trying to have it both ways. You claim the establishment "burns it all down" to stop progressives, but when a progressive like Zohran Mamdani wins his primary, he is the Democratic nominee. Schumer not endorsing him is a far cry from party leadership "targeting" him.

The only people who actually decided to burn it all down were the online progressives who spent the general election telling people to stay home or vote third-party. You claim the Dems are beholden to billionaires, yet your strategy of sabotaging the only viable alternative to MAGA literally put billionaires like Musk and Lutnick in charge of the Cabinet.

You’re complaining about 7 centrist votes while your own progressive purity tests are exactly what handed Trump and the Republicans the power to fund whatever they want in the first place. Those tests gave a total monopoly on the government to MAGA, and without those short sighted 'burn it all down if I don't get everything I want' tests, those 7 centrists wouldn't have been a factor at all. In a two-party system, not helping your side win is helping the other side win. You helped the side that’s currently pulling the triggers. Period.

 

[wareyin]

that's your assertation. i don't think you could even fairly call them fickle, they've never really been offered any incentive to vote for the dems besides it's the less worse option. they have no representation, so they don't always turn out to vote in the numbers you want. that's not fickle, that's completely expected behavior imo

edit

if anything i think the moderate dems use them as scapegoats when their own unpopular candidate fail.

You seem to have tripped yourself up by both claiming that it's only my assertion that they're fickle, but also excusing that fickleness as "completely expected behavior." Would you care to try again?

 

[wareyin]

There are, of course, extremists on the Republican side as well. They also influence policy. From my perspective, the extremists on the Republican side haven't gained ground over my lifetime, not in any material way. They're still there, but they're still outliers and we all know they're off their rockers and full of crap. The ability to recognize outliers as complete nutballs seems to have fallen by the wayside among a lot of everyday Democrats.

Are you saying the extremists in the Republican party are not the people in power today? To claim they haven't gained ground "in any material way" ignores the reality of the current administration.

The GOP is objectively more right-wing today than it was under Bush. Between Project 2025, the DOGE gutting the civil service, and the constant purging of anyone labeled a RINO, the people you call "off their rockers" are the ones actually running the show.

If the "nutballs" are the ones signing the executive orders and commanding ICE, they aren't outliers anymore. They are the establishment.

 

[Emily's Cat]

But here in these forums we see a great deal of "both-side-ism" coming not from the left but from the right. I think at least some of the blame should go to those who, in their "both sides are the same" delusion, vote for the worse, whether as a gesture, for some issues they consider worth any price, or simply to get on the bandwagon.

I think you have some false assumptions in here. I can't speak for everyone of course, but most of the people here on ISF who view both sides as being broken are independents, and most are traditional liberals. Additionally, I don't think anyone believes that both parties are the same, but rather that both sides are failing in their duty to serve the interests of the people of the US... but they're failing at that duty in spectacularly different ways. I think almost none of us in that category voted for Trump.

I think you're making the assumption that "both sides" = "both sides are the same", and that "both sides are the same" = "right", and then making a second leap to "right" = "voted for Trump".

 

[dirtywick]

You seem to have tripped yourself up by both claiming that it's only my assertion that they're fickle, but also excusing that fickleness as "completely expected behavior." Would you care to try again?

i'm claiming your description of an understandable response as a fickle response is inaccurate

 

[Emily's Cat]

Look, first of all I think people put WAY too much stock in the race for NYC mayor, a position which has basically zero to do with anyone outside of NYC

NYC has kind of a lot of influence on the country as a whole though. At a minimum, the NYSE is kind of a big ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ deal, NYC has the largest regional economy in the world - larger than most other whole countries, and the UN is headquartered there. While mayor may not be the single most important role in the US, it's not like it's insignificant to the health and welfare of the city.

I'll make you a deal: You agree that nobody outside of the US should give a crap about who the US president is, and should just shut up about it, and I'll agree that NCY Mayor is totally a non-issue that nobody outside of the city should care about.

 

[Emily's Cat]

i mean, intentionally positioning yourself as the least worst candidate truly is a bad strategy.

That's kind of what all of politics has been like for the last two decades.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Oh, ok. Except Cuomo was, by definition, not a Democrat in that race. I'm failing to see how "independent" and "Democratic candidate" look the same to you.

Bernie Sanders?

 

[Emily's Cat]

It does assume that voters can understand that picking the absolute worst candidate will be...worse. That obviously overestimates voters.

Vote for me, I only kill random pets and the elderly - the other guy kills babies!