The only purpose they seem to serve is strengthening the far right by imposing counter productive purity tests and pushing people to vote for the far right options over more centrist ones.
And hell, just look at how first the Tea Party and then MAGA managed to yeet a lot of what used to be "moderate" Republicans out of the party alright.
“The Left” as defined by a broad, working class based coalition independent of urban/rural has historically been formidable. But as the closest example of this in recent history - Obama coalition - erodes, and GOP eats into working class voters, it becomes less formidable.
Really The Left (the Democratic Party) needs to rebuild an electorally successful coalition. The leaders that could lead that aren’t obvious to me yet.
The american left by and large is simply unrepresented. Democrats have represented center right positions since clinton.
If anything, it's those centrist democrats that use purity tests as much as possible to eject the left from the party.
As a good example of that, consider the case of Al Franken vs Andrew Cuomo. Franken was pretty progressive, so when it came out that he had a picture in bad taste where he mocked squeezing boobs, gone. 24/7 news about how he's really a monster and the worst person in the world.
Meanwhile, Cuomo has multiple credible allegations of sexual harassment and who does the party STILL back even after he lost the primary? He literally got endorsements from Democrats who shed tears because of the Al Franken photo.
The same thing happened to Bernie Sanders. The centrist dems and media started circulating garbage about how he was sexist over a comment he didn't make.
Biden had a decent representation of left cabinet picks. But otherwise, the party has been pretty slow to change. Obama, in particular, gets remember as being progressive yet he truly was not. He took some antiwar stances and then failed to deliver on those promises. That was about the end of his left leaning policies.
Strongest economies are from blue states. Poorest are red states. Same with crime. Health out comes(Life expectancy, infant. mortality). Who was the only president to run a surplus in recent history.
Anyway, instead of being dedicated to achieving change, the American left CONSTANTLY gets distracted, e.g., complaining about those successful Democratic presidents (or candidates) who drive meaningful change as "incrementalist", "too moderate", or, my absolute favorite, "liberal" as if the European use of the word has ever mapped to the American use. I've even seen people on the left criticize AOC for selling out, when what she is doing is practicing effective politics.
Harris’s written support was turned into an ad campaign for Trump. You can agree or disagree with the policy but it isn’t a great hill to die on if you want to win elections.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/harris-gender-surgeries-ja...
I also agree that it feels like Democrats don’t stand for anything. But I think by leaving that space open they let ads like this paint what they stand for.
My issue with what you said is the claim <some issue> is not a hill to die on. They are not dying on any hills at all.
To die on a hill means that you stand on the hill and get killed rather than leave it. It means having a conviction so strong that you will never walk it back. That's the polar opposite of the establishment dems right now.
There are many things Harris could have done to improve the situation like publicly stating a balanced position. Doing nothing was dying on the hill.
What do you think she should have done?
California, for example, is currently pursuing a lawsuit (https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bont...) seeking to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. That's a controversial position on a high-profile issue whose opponents consider it to be outrageous persecution. Would you say this is an example of "shitfest red meat"? Or do you think that it's just an ordinary lawsuit, because you're not personally outraged by it, because you think California's position is reasonable?
One can agree or disagree on the question of whether transgender care is medical care, but I think the sensible position for any political party (on virtually any such question) is to defer to the scientists and medical experts who spend all day working on this stuff.
AFAIK, the then-current science said that this was one of the only effective treatments for gender dysphoria, and under our Constitution inmates can't be denied medical care, even if it gives somebody the ick or would be politically inconvenient at the next election cycle.
I’m not saying I agree or disagree with this policy but the point of politicians is to advance policy one way or the other which requires agreeing/disagreeing.
If you think we're going to amend the Constitution to ban gender affirming care for inmates you're living in outerspace, but I suppose your position is that politicians are supposed to just say shit that has the correct hate-valence and then it's as-good-as-accomplished?
Inmates received this care under Trump 1 (because USG is obligated to provide it, Constitutionally): https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/us/politics/trump-prisons...
They've tried stopping it in Trump 2 but have been enjoined by courts (because USG is obligated to provide it, Constitutionally): https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/federal-judge-temporaril...
Your reaction proves the point that this is a purity test.
I’m not taking a stance one way or the other but you aren't able to engage without arguing against points I didn’t make.
Your argument: It is a purity test for politicians to say that transgender inmates should receive care (which Kamala passed, to the detriment of her electability)
My argument: It is actually SCOTUS who decides this (or would require a Constitutional amendment, which is obviously absurd)
"Never say anything that the right can play in an ad" is not my idea of effective campaign strategy.
Why do you think she didn’t say anything?
I never said that. There were many far-leftists who sat out in 2024 due to Palestine, proclaiming that Kamala would've been just as bad or worse than Trump on that issue which is ludicrous. Needless to say, I'm not opposed to progressive ideals but the reality is that they're more focused on principles than getting elected.
> that also poll extremely well with the general public
If that's the case, why don't we see more candidates like Bernie/AOC/Mamdani being elected across the country? I can probably guess your next is answer is that the DNC and/or billionaires suppress their campaigns?
And you don’t have to look for second order effects to see how progressive issues poll — look at recent polls on Palestine, single-payer health care, housing affordability, and plenty of other progressive policies, by reputable non-partisan sources.
Centrism is just as much of a political perspective as being anywhere else on the spectrum and can color political perspectives just as easily — it just biased in favor of the status quo so it’s got a much easier job.
Blaming individual voters for voting ‘wrong’ is the first line of defense for people unwilling to take a hard look at the efficacy of the people that are supposed to be mobilizing and representing those voters. If your politician doesn’t represent the voters’ values enough to gain their vote, the problem is the politician. The mainstream dems have just run out of leverage to coerce people into candidates they don’t align with using the “vote blue no matter who” tactic.
If you could link them, that'd be great because I don't know exactly which ones you're looking at. My guess is that these ideas sound great on paper: who doesn't want more affordable housing? But, the actual policies (or lack thereof) being proposed are not popular with the general voting populace.
Affordable housing sounds great for example, but the plans from Bernie et al. seem to include a lot of government spending on building public housing and implementing rent control on private housing. I can personally see why someone might be opposed to voting for even more government involvement in housing which we already have quite a lot of and look where we're at.
I concede that the DNC (and their donors by extension) resist far-left candidates but I don't believe that, if the proposals are so popular, it would be consistently suppressed by higher powers in that manner. Basically, I don't think the lack of far-left politicians can be explained by that single issue.
> Blaming individual voters for voting ‘wrong’
My point was that they're not voting at all. No one in politics will take those people seriously because that doesn't get anyone elected. Maybe you don't personally purity test or sit out elections, but that kind of behavior certainly exists and turns off people outside the circle.
Let me be clear, the Dems didn't lose the 2024 election due to progressives sitting out. I just think they could be taken more seriously as a bloc by not abstaining because they're mostly aligned with the objectives of the Democratic party. There are only two options we have in elections, and working with what we have is the only option to get out of this mess.
Google, for example “Israel poll,” and look for organizations like Gallup, Pew and other reputable sources.
> the actual policies (or lack thereof) being proposed are not popular with the general voting populace.
Come on. This is a much bigger citation needed than finding a poll about a national political topic.
> I don't think the lack of far-left politicians can be explained by that single issue.
There isn’t a lack of progressive candidates. They’re in local positions— municipal, local representative— all over the place because city representatives are too close to the metal for that kind of interference. Unless you’re in a place like New York with an overwhelmingly large number of progressive voters, for the past couple of decades, there’s a zero percent chance of advancing to a national position without DNC backing. And they have announced that they’re directly fighting third party candidates.
> My point was that they're not voting at all.
Progressives vote in the primaries when candidates represent their viewpoints. The democrats refuse to give candidates that inspire their support nationally, which is their only job if they want to represent the people. If they don’t run candidates that people are willing to vote for then people won’t vote for them. That’s how this works. And if they’re actively suppressing third party candidates, expecting people to say “oh well, I don’t support 60% of what this candidate supports, including a core issue of morality, and pretty sure they’ll back down on most of the rest… but I don’t support 85% of what this candidate supports” is a losing strategy to get people to the polls. And then telling those have the “wrong priorities” and it’s their fault the country is on fire is an absolute fantastic strategy to alienate people, permanently. It’s cynical emotional blackmail to shift the blame from the people who failed at their job to mobilize voters onto the voters they failed to mobilize.
> Let me be clear, the Dems didn't lose the 2024 election due to progressives sitting out. I just think they could be taken more seriously as a bloc by not abstaining because they're mostly aligned with the objectives of the Democratic party.
The fact that you think the mainline democratic opinion is so important that people need to worry about being ‘taken seriously’ by them is exactly the reason the only people that take centrist democrats seriously are centrist democrats. They have manipulated the electoral landscape to stay in power despite mostly losing for the last decade and still think they have some kind of moral or intellectual authority.
Come up with all of the blame-shifting, exculpatory framing you want, but ultimately, the people that run the campaign are responsible for winning or losing the election. The hard truth is that democrat leadership lost the election in 2024 because they failed to present a candidate that people were willing to vote for in a way that inspired those votes. If they care about the country, believe in our electoral system, and aren’t willing to represent people on the left by letting whoever is most popular get elected, they shouldn’t proudly harpoon third party candidates. Whether they’re arrogant enough to assume they know better than registered voters, or are just power hungry, they’ve been more focused on staying in their offices than wielding their power as a party.
Most lefists/extreme right/far-left/far-right are not the “far right” or “far left” caricatures depicted by the media, internet comments, or the mouth of the political party conventions.
> I can probably guess your next is answer is that the DNC and/or billionaires suppress their campaigns?
Of course the DNC suppresses their campaigns. Most NY Dem leaders have not even backed Mamdani even after winning the primary (not to mention that Cuomo has an entire billionaire backed Super PAC still funding him after he lost the primary badly). You being able to guess that doesn’t make the idea false. The idea being a talking point doesn’t make that truth less valid.
It’s those dang progressives and their policies that moderates push through for election appeal then turn around and partially implement and defund and finger point and blame when those policies then fail after being setup to do so.
If you can’t blame progressives then you can’t get elected in this country.
Personally I do not see how we can afford to maintain the MIC for much longer, so these issues are very important to me.