Which is normal politics. Why didn’t Warren and Bernie make a deal then?
Face it- if he can’t win a primary then that’s on him. And this is coming from someone who voted for him in 2020.
Point being- people need to stop acting like there is some mythical force stopping progressives. If they truly were that numerous then Bernie would’ve been elected as the candidate in 2020 (2016 I’ll give you the DNC fuckery.)
Moreover, they could elect AOCs all over the country too. But guess what- either they aren’t that numerous or they’re lazy as shit. Either way, you get “centrist” candidates like Biden. People seriously need to wake up and either start voting en masse in the primaries or realize that America is just not that progressive.
I recall that in 2016, it was apparent to me that those in control of the media were intentionally giving Bernie as little coverage as possible. The stuff they were doing was blatant, once you became aware of it.
I remember seeing a news segment where they said something like, “The current leading Democrat in the primaries is Hillary Clinton. Yeah she’s doing great. Also in 3rd place is Martin O’Malley or something.” They would just blatantly omit Bernie.
I kept seing stuff like this and it really made an impression on me. Then, when the whole GameStop stock thing happened and all those private investors were making tons of money, taking it from rich hedgefunds, the media started telling everyone how dumb they would be to try to get in on the action. They were protecting the interests of the rich. It was a little intimidating to see them all do it, implying who was really in control of information and public perception.
So, I disagree. It’s not as simple as, “America is not that progressive.”
That was back when Facebook was actually doing something useful: there were so many huge Bernie rallies posted to Facebook that the MSM was forced to acknowledge him. Now that social media has been “fixed”, we won’t see anything like that again.
Buddy, half your comment history is whining about non-voters costing Harris the election, and you’re gonna turn around and say, “less people voted for Bernie, deal with it?” Bernie had the entire party lined up to block him; name another candidate the party has done that to. Meanwhile, Harris had a level playing field with Trump and he wiped the floor with her.
Face it- if she can’t win an election then that’s on her. And this is coming from someone who voted for her in 2024. People seriously need to wake up and either start voting en masse in the general elections or realize that America is just not that moderate.
or realize that America is just not that moderate.
I think we can look at the House of Representatives for a better representation of how moderate/progressive the electorate is. Where a statewide or national election requires a lot of money, a single district is much more accessible for a candidate with a smaller staff to campaign in.
I think the real crux of our problem is the distance between how people feel about individual progressive policies vs how they feel about progressive people who espouse all those policies. The right has been very successful at linking the culture war issues to progressives and demonizing them as SJWs, to distract from actual policy proposals.
The national party does not invest all that heavily into individual district primary races. When a few tens of thousands of people at most are voting, there’s just only so far money can go. It’s very feasible for a candidate with a small staff of volunteers to simply canvas the district themselves.
I’m afraid that conspiracy is not the reason we don’t have more progressives in the House.
Downvote and no response to my provided numbers, huh? We’re supposed to be the fact-oriented people, we care about reality, about evidence. Even when its hard, even when it doesn’t conform to our beliefs that try to explain the world in simple and emotionally convenient ways.
It’s not entertainment, this is people’s real lives and the impacts politicians have on them. It’s your unsupported theories running headfirst into hard numbers. If you have numbers to prove me wrong, go ahead and share. But you don’t, do you? Just unsupported online conspiracy theory from your echo chambers.
I’ve been a progressive for decades, we’re on the same side, you and I. I just don’t hide behind comforting illusions.
At least 16 Democratic members of Congress donated to Cuellar’s campaign through their campaign committee or leadership PACs during the 2022 election cycle, according to an OpenSecrets analysis of FEC filings. In total, the campaign received some $40,400 in political contributions from other sitting Democrats.
Not sure on 2020 numbers, they’re not as quick to find. Not exactly breaking the bank here though. Almost half of his funding that cycle (almost 2 million) actually came from AIPAC, and a lot of the rest from industry and business contributions.
I don’t think that’s entirely correct. If what you were saying about progressive politicians were true, Bernie Sanders would not be the most popular politician in the country. I think the real problem is that the Democrats are no longer credible messengers of a working class message. I think that’s why Dan Osborne won by not only running as an independent, but flat out rejecting the local Democrats endorsement.
Also, it’s important to remember that it was the centrists who pivoted towards culture war issues when they no longer had a progressive economic message they could run on. As Hillary Clinton said during the 2016 primary:
If we broke up the big banks tomorrow…would that end racism? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community? Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?
Bernie is the most popular politician in the country? Regardless though, what popularity he has does not extend to all people who espouse progressive ideas, so other factors are at play.
I also don’t see that as a pivot as much as a slow march towards equal rights that dems have been fighting for for decades. And even so, it does not have much to do with the messaging strategy employed by the right. We’re not fighting against facts, we’re fighting against a messaging framework that paints progressive people as bad while ignoring the content of progressive policy proposals.
Yeah, Bernie is routinely ranked the most popular politician in America. I think it’s also worth noting that, while conservative messaging is very good at making figures like AOC seem radical or extreme, it does the same to centrist figures like Pelosi or Obama; Republicans convinced themselves that Obama was a communist for continuing Bush’s bank bailouts and implementing Mitt Romney’s Healthcare plan. No matter what the Democrats do, the Republicans will paint them as radical leftists, so they might as well go for bold, popular policy agendas like Medicare for All or a $20 minimum wage rather than small incremental changes that voters don’t understand or care about.
No matter what the Democrats do, the Republicans will paint them as radical leftists, so they might as well go for bold, popular policy agendas like Medicare for All or a $20 minimum wage rather than small incremental changes that voters don’t understand or care about.
It is non-voters. Whether they’re left leaning or center or whatever really doesn’t matter. They’re going to get it one way or the other. They had a chance to drive the car more left but decided it wasn’t worth showing up so now it’s going full speed right wing back to the 50s and worse.
Congrats?
I mean, you’re basically making my point. People who don’t vote decide the election with their inaction. Whether it was not coming out for Bernie or not coming out for Kamala, it’s the same thing.
So yes, thank you for proving my point better than I could. I appreciate the assist.
Bonus- Bernie finished behind Kamala in Vermont. So let’s not act like progressivism is some silver bullet here.
Buddy, you’re proving mine. If Bernie’s loss in the primary is proof that Americans aren’t that progressive, then Harris and Hillary’s losses in the general prove that Americans aren’t that centrist. You can’t have it both ways.
So that would mean that the majority of the electorate is far-right, which would make no sense given how strongly progressive ballot measures overperformed against the Harris campaign, or why Bernie polled more favorably against Trump than Clinton or Biden. Somehow, Americans would have disliked centrist and progressive politicians and like far-right politicians, but for some reason prefer progressive policies, and also favor the most high profile progressive in the Senate…or, Occam’s Razor, people prefer progressives, but the Democrats keep rat-fucking them in the primaries in favor of centrists.
I’m sorry, but I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make here. Harris ran to the center, Trump ran to the far-right. If people who consider themselves moderate or centrist voted for him, that just indicates that even people who think of themselves as being in the middle politically aren’t interested in the Democrats centrism anymore. Anyway, I’m not trying to be a jerk, I’m just not sure where you’re coming from here.
I used to think that, but really he won the center voter. He appealed on jobs, and inflation, and manufacturing, and all those things that are center. He really did get the center voter.
We can bemoan that people should be smarter to see through the BS (and I think most people on lemmy can see through it), but people aren’t and Trump won the center voter.
Trump did a better job appealing to the center than Harris did. Harris relied on the left showing up for abortion rights and for democracy, and they didn’t show up.
I used to think that, but really he won the center voter. He appealed on jobs, and inflation, and manufacturing, and all those things that are center. He really did get the center voter.
These aren’t centrist issues, these are just…issues. Like, jobs isn’t left, right, or center. It’s just something that matters to people. But trying to solve it by deporting 13 million people is far right.
These aren’t centrist issues, these are just…issues.
… Which means they are issued that the center cares about.
Like, jobs isn’t left, right, or center. It’s just something that matters to people.
Seriously? You walked around the whole thing to (kinda) say they aren’t center issues, just to return to say they are issues that appeal to the center. They don’t need to be exclusively center issues. It just needs to win the center voter.
It’s an issue that the center is glued to and that the center wants and that the center voted for. So yes, Trump appealed to the center. And he won because he got the center voter. Yes Trump also appealed to the far right via what really aren’t even dog whistles anymore. But he also appealed up the center. And the center is how he won.
Like c’mon how many different ways do I have to put it to say that he appealed to the center, got the center voter, and won because of the center voters.
I used to think that, but really he won the center voter. He appealed on jobs, and inflation, and manufacturing, and all those things that are center. He really did get the center voter.
It sounds like you’re just making up justifications for the party not moving to the left in the future.
Every time they rely on the left they lose. Like we just saw that. They relied on the left coming out for abortion rights and to save mfing democracy and they couldn’t even do that.
You know you remind me of a conversation I had with someone else. I told him that I wanted environmental policy, but that environmental platforms didn’t win elections. He couldn’t comprehend separating those out. To him you had to think that environmental policy was good and think it won elections. Or if you said environmental policy didn’t win elections, well to him that meant you personally didn’t want environmental policies. He had to group those two together. He was literally unable to separate them out. Well that’s exactly like you, just on different issues.
It makes perfect sense when you realize places like Missouri and Florida voted for abortion rights yet also voted for Republicans and trump all over too.
And again, there’s no big magical force keeping progressives out of winning primaries. They just don’t. So again, my point, either people aren’t that progressive or progressives fucking suck at voting. Either way, same result.
Moreover, we’ll use your metric of progressive policies winning over Harris and analyze why she won more over Bernie himself. Must mean people are more moderate right?
And again, if that’s the case, then centrists are even suckier at voting, because they keep fucking losing even harder. And it still doesn’t explain when progressive preform so much better in elections where Democrats can’t put their thumb on the scales for centrists.
Part of me thinks Bernie never really wanted to be president, I think he thinks he can do more good as a senior senator pushing the DNC left while trying to stop the right from whatever evil they’re planning this week, and maybe he can, but so far that hasn’t worked very well. If he and the squad broke ties with the DNC and started their own party, and were able to pull enough of the left off the couch and away from the DNC to make the DNC the “spoiler” that needed to “fall in line or else Trump wins” that would be the best imo
Kind of a reverse Freedom Caucus. I could potentially see that working. Then again, people say AOC is no longer pure, etc. so I’m not sure progressives have the stomach to stick together long enough for that to work.
They’d need a solidly progressive platform… The individuals matter less than the goals… Leave guns and abortion on the table for later… Stick to all the things we mostly all agree on. Keep the messaging simple too… “Life sucks. It sucks because you don’t have enough money…YOU deserve to be making more money for whatever you are doing. The corporations and billionaires are taking YOUR money, and we’re going to take it back and give it to you”… Maybe follow up with a bunch of times rich people got more at everyone else’s expense.
Which is normal politics. Why didn’t Warren and Bernie make a deal then?
Face it- if he can’t win a primary then that’s on him. And this is coming from someone who voted for him in 2020.
Point being- people need to stop acting like there is some mythical force stopping progressives. If they truly were that numerous then Bernie would’ve been elected as the candidate in 2020 (2016 I’ll give you the DNC fuckery.)
Moreover, they could elect AOCs all over the country too. But guess what- either they aren’t that numerous or they’re lazy as shit. Either way, you get “centrist” candidates like Biden. People seriously need to wake up and either start voting en masse in the primaries or realize that America is just not that progressive.
I recall that in 2016, it was apparent to me that those in control of the media were intentionally giving Bernie as little coverage as possible. The stuff they were doing was blatant, once you became aware of it.
I remember seeing a news segment where they said something like, “The current leading Democrat in the primaries is Hillary Clinton. Yeah she’s doing great. Also in 3rd place is Martin O’Malley or something.” They would just blatantly omit Bernie.
I kept seing stuff like this and it really made an impression on me. Then, when the whole GameStop stock thing happened and all those private investors were making tons of money, taking it from rich hedgefunds, the media started telling everyone how dumb they would be to try to get in on the action. They were protecting the interests of the rich. It was a little intimidating to see them all do it, implying who was really in control of information and public perception.
So, I disagree. It’s not as simple as, “America is not that progressive.”
That was back when Facebook was actually doing something useful: there were so many huge Bernie rallies posted to Facebook that the MSM was forced to acknowledge him. Now that social media has been “fixed”, we won’t see anything like that again.
That’s entirely the media and rich people. How does that excuse people not voting for Bernie in 2020?
What the media presents has a strong influence on public perception. When the races are close, they only need to sway a few percent of voters.
Buddy, half your comment history is whining about non-voters costing Harris the election, and you’re gonna turn around and say, “less people voted for Bernie, deal with it?” Bernie had the entire party lined up to block him; name another candidate the party has done that to. Meanwhile, Harris had a level playing field with Trump and he wiped the floor with her.
Face it- if she can’t win an election then that’s on her. And this is coming from someone who voted for her in 2024. People seriously need to wake up and either start voting en masse in the general elections or realize that America is just not that moderate.
I think we can look at the House of Representatives for a better representation of how moderate/progressive the electorate is. Where a statewide or national election requires a lot of money, a single district is much more accessible for a candidate with a smaller staff to campaign in.
I think the real crux of our problem is the distance between how people feel about individual progressive policies vs how they feel about progressive people who espouse all those policies. The right has been very successful at linking the culture war issues to progressives and demonizing them as SJWs, to distract from actual policy proposals.
Sure, as long as we ignore that the Democratic Party protects centrists and actively opposes progressives in primaries.
The national party does not invest all that heavily into individual district primary races. When a few tens of thousands of people at most are voting, there’s just only so far money can go. It’s very feasible for a candidate with a small staff of volunteers to simply canvas the district themselves.
I’m afraid that conspiracy is not the reason we don’t have more progressives in the House.
Henry Cuellar.
Downvote and no response to my provided numbers, huh? We’re supposed to be the fact-oriented people, we care about reality, about evidence. Even when its hard, even when it doesn’t conform to our beliefs that try to explain the world in simple and emotionally convenient ways.
Demand that someone else entertain you.
It’s not entertainment, this is people’s real lives and the impacts politicians have on them. It’s your unsupported theories running headfirst into hard numbers. If you have numbers to prove me wrong, go ahead and share. But you don’t, do you? Just unsupported online conspiracy theory from your echo chambers.
I’ve been a progressive for decades, we’re on the same side, you and I. I just don’t hide behind comforting illusions.
Not sure on 2020 numbers, they’re not as quick to find. Not exactly breaking the bank here though. Almost half of his funding that cycle (almost 2 million) actually came from AIPAC, and a lot of the rest from industry and business contributions.
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022/08/democratic-leadership-corporate-interests-help-rep-henry-cuellar-fend-off-primary-challenge/
Anyways, details are important. When we look at them, we see a lot more than some sort of “party suppression”.
I don’t think that’s entirely correct. If what you were saying about progressive politicians were true, Bernie Sanders would not be the most popular politician in the country. I think the real problem is that the Democrats are no longer credible messengers of a working class message. I think that’s why Dan Osborne won by not only running as an independent, but flat out rejecting the local Democrats endorsement.
Also, it’s important to remember that it was the centrists who pivoted towards culture war issues when they no longer had a progressive economic message they could run on. As Hillary Clinton said during the 2016 primary:
Bernie is the most popular politician in the country? Regardless though, what popularity he has does not extend to all people who espouse progressive ideas, so other factors are at play.
I also don’t see that as a pivot as much as a slow march towards equal rights that dems have been fighting for for decades. And even so, it does not have much to do with the messaging strategy employed by the right. We’re not fighting against facts, we’re fighting against a messaging framework that paints progressive people as bad while ignoring the content of progressive policy proposals.
Yeah, Bernie is routinely ranked the most popular politician in America. I think it’s also worth noting that, while conservative messaging is very good at making figures like AOC seem radical or extreme, it does the same to centrist figures like Pelosi or Obama; Republicans convinced themselves that Obama was a communist for continuing Bush’s bank bailouts and implementing Mitt Romney’s Healthcare plan. No matter what the Democrats do, the Republicans will paint them as radical leftists, so they might as well go for bold, popular policy agendas like Medicare for All or a $20 minimum wage rather than small incremental changes that voters don’t understand or care about.
But that assumes they want to.
It is non-voters. Whether they’re left leaning or center or whatever really doesn’t matter. They’re going to get it one way or the other. They had a chance to drive the car more left but decided it wasn’t worth showing up so now it’s going full speed right wing back to the 50s and worse.
Congrats?
I mean, you’re basically making my point. People who don’t vote decide the election with their inaction. Whether it was not coming out for Bernie or not coming out for Kamala, it’s the same thing.
So yes, thank you for proving my point better than I could. I appreciate the assist.
Bonus- Bernie finished behind Kamala in Vermont. So let’s not act like progressivism is some silver bullet here.
Buddy, you’re proving mine. If Bernie’s loss in the primary is proof that Americans aren’t that progressive, then Harris and Hillary’s losses in the general prove that Americans aren’t that centrist. You can’t have it both ways.
So that would mean that the majority of the electorate is far-right, which would make no sense given how strongly progressive ballot measures overperformed against the Harris campaign, or why Bernie polled more favorably against Trump than Clinton or Biden. Somehow, Americans would have disliked centrist and progressive politicians and like far-right politicians, but for some reason prefer progressive policies, and also favor the most high profile progressive in the Senate…or, Occam’s Razor, people prefer progressives, but the Democrats keep rat-fucking them in the primaries in favor of centrists.
Expect Trump took the center voters. I think we all see through him, but the center voter loves him for economy and jobs.
I’m sorry, but I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make here. Harris ran to the center, Trump ran to the far-right. If people who consider themselves moderate or centrist voted for him, that just indicates that even people who think of themselves as being in the middle politically aren’t interested in the Democrats centrism anymore. Anyway, I’m not trying to be a jerk, I’m just not sure where you’re coming from here.
I used to think that, but really he won the center voter. He appealed on jobs, and inflation, and manufacturing, and all those things that are center. He really did get the center voter.
We can bemoan that people should be smarter to see through the BS (and I think most people on lemmy can see through it), but people aren’t and Trump won the center voter.
Trump did a better job appealing to the center than Harris did. Harris relied on the left showing up for abortion rights and for democracy, and they didn’t show up.
These aren’t centrist issues, these are just…issues. Like, jobs isn’t left, right, or center. It’s just something that matters to people. But trying to solve it by deporting 13 million people is far right.
… Which means they are issued that the center cares about.
Seriously? You walked around the whole thing to (kinda) say they aren’t center issues, just to return to say they are issues that appeal to the center. They don’t need to be exclusively center issues. It just needs to win the center voter.
It’s an issue that the center is glued to and that the center wants and that the center voted for. So yes, Trump appealed to the center. And he won because he got the center voter. Yes Trump also appealed to the far right via what really aren’t even dog whistles anymore. But he also appealed up the center. And the center is how he won.
Like c’mon how many different ways do I have to put it to say that he appealed to the center, got the center voter, and won because of the center voters.
It sounds like you’re just making up justifications for the party not moving to the left in the future.
Every time they rely on the left they lose. Like we just saw that. They relied on the left coming out for abortion rights and to save mfing democracy and they couldn’t even do that.
Clearly the answer is to run to the right of Trump. It’s not like you don’t want to.
Lol still on your strawman huh.
You know you remind me of a conversation I had with someone else. I told him that I wanted environmental policy, but that environmental platforms didn’t win elections. He couldn’t comprehend separating those out. To him you had to think that environmental policy was good and think it won elections. Or if you said environmental policy didn’t win elections, well to him that meant you personally didn’t want environmental policies. He had to group those two together. He was literally unable to separate them out. Well that’s exactly like you, just on different issues.
Do tell, then. What wins elections? How do you intend to rephrase “just move to the right”?
No response huh! Just (effectively) more strawman. Well think about it. At least try to break that “AND” operator you insist on other people.
It makes perfect sense when you realize places like Missouri and Florida voted for abortion rights yet also voted for Republicans and trump all over too.
And again, there’s no big magical force keeping progressives out of winning primaries. They just don’t. So again, my point, either people aren’t that progressive or progressives fucking suck at voting. Either way, same result.
Moreover, we’ll use your metric of progressive policies winning over Harris and analyze why she won more over Bernie himself. Must mean people are more moderate right?
And again, if that’s the case, then centrists are even suckier at voting, because they keep fucking losing even harder. And it still doesn’t explain when progressive preform so much better in elections where Democrats can’t put their thumb on the scales for centrists.
Part of me thinks Bernie never really wanted to be president, I think he thinks he can do more good as a senior senator pushing the DNC left while trying to stop the right from whatever evil they’re planning this week, and maybe he can, but so far that hasn’t worked very well. If he and the squad broke ties with the DNC and started their own party, and were able to pull enough of the left off the couch and away from the DNC to make the DNC the “spoiler” that needed to “fall in line or else Trump wins” that would be the best imo
Kind of a reverse Freedom Caucus. I could potentially see that working. Then again, people say AOC is no longer pure, etc. so I’m not sure progressives have the stomach to stick together long enough for that to work.
They’d need a solidly progressive platform… The individuals matter less than the goals… Leave guns and abortion on the table for later… Stick to all the things we mostly all agree on. Keep the messaging simple too… “Life sucks. It sucks because you don’t have enough money…YOU deserve to be making more money for whatever you are doing. The corporations and billionaires are taking YOUR money, and we’re going to take it back and give it to you”… Maybe follow up with a bunch of times rich people got more at everyone else’s expense.
Now this I agree on. They don’t dumb down the message nearly enough.