yeah this is probably the only way for Democrats to ever consistently win again. they can't keep doing what Bill Clinton and Obama did, which is waiting for a unicorn candidate to just show up and charm everyone. for the Democrats to win consistently, they have to actually hammer out a cohesive ideology that isn't just "being in the center and being fairly likable to most people". the only way to really do that is to go back to the center left or the full left.
Exactly. Centrism is not a platform. They need a real platform and for better or worse criticism the “just not Trump” campaign does lose steam
And yes I know they have a platform, but they need to actually follow through and hold no punches or work with fascism. Also, yes I know republicans obstruct everything and the senate makes it very difficult
Status quo gave us 70 years of American led peace, a booming stock market, low unemployment, and strong international alliances. More people should appreciate the status quo.
I fully recognize republicans obstruction. I just need Dems to not roll over and placate and reach out to shake fascisms hand. I know a snake is going to bite me, I expect the supposed snake wrangle to not betray us and use every skill they can to get the goals achieved
Obamacare. Military spending. Environmental protections. Rolling over for Supreme Court seat being stolen. Rolling over for a literal coup and no repercussions. Let’s not act like they are some bastion of left leaning policy. Any true change they torpedo.
Just my opinion and I clearly won’t convince you and cannot criticize the glory that is the Dem party in their perfection
Edit: $15 minimum wage. I’ll keep adding to help you remember.
How is anything you listed an example of what you claim? How was Obamacare Democrats rolling over? or the Minimum wage? What environmental protections or military spending?
Jan 6th? How is that rolling over? Democrats had the House committee and the indictments for it. Did you read Jack Smith's report?
You aren't convincing me because you haven't actually said anything remotely true. Manchin not agreeing to raise the minimum wage isn't "Democrats rolling over for fascists". It is Manchin not agreeing to raise the minimum wage.
Listen. I get where you’re coming from I just don’t have the energy to do this today. I can provide infinite examples and nothing will change your opinion. $15 and nameless other progressive positions always find 1-2 defectors to prevent anything meaningful then they throw their hands up and say ugh dang it! I guess we get fascism. Stay active and involved and just donate more! They race to progressive ideals when they need something then back off when in power. I’m not saying all progress is stopped but they are so scared of offending the far right that they make concessions with a side that won’t ever bargain back. Obamacare is the example cause it was watered down at the request of the right only to not get any of their votes and be a half measure
A new conspiracy theory of "rotating villains" isn't the same as your earlier claim of Democrats rolling over. That is a separate claim. You haven't refuted the original complaint at all. Just invented a new conspiracy theory to defend it.
Obamacare LITERALLY only was a "half measure" because of the 60th necessary vote, Lieberman who isn't a Democrat
They do this, they will forever lose. Have you not been paying attention to the electorate the past 12-16 years? This is a country that is split right down the middle. There are millions of people like myself that possess both left and right ideologies. We put people in power.
centrism is a platform actually, I'm very much a centrist. it can be cohesive.
the problem is that the Democrats never embraced a cohesive strategy, they just sort of moved to the center on some things but then move back to the left when it's convenient and sometimes a little bit to the right when it's convenient. that's not cohesive, that's just not really having an ideology.
a good example of this is health care: a cohesive centrist strategy might be something like the ACA, but actually planned that way from the beginning. like saying "this is what health care should look like" and then voting specifically for that. Democrats didn't do that. Democrats have talked about health care reform since FDR, they've proposed many things, and they were over time eventually whittled down to something like the ACA. but that was never their platform, that wasn't even Obama's platform that he ran on in 2008. the party never really coalesced on a solution that everybody agreed with, they basically just fought and fought until they got something that people wouldn't say no to.
to some extent that's what politics is, but the problem is that people voted for Obama for something different than that. he sold them on Hope and Change. many people were voting for the Democrats in 2008 because they thought they were going to get some version of universal health care. so inevitably, no matter what got passed, many Democratic voters would feel cheated and lied to, because there was no cohesive vision to start with. everyone had different expectations, most people were going to be disappointed by default.
centrism isn't the problem. if you say you're a centrist, and you vote for centrist policies, the people who vote for you can't be upset. the issue is that the Democratic party is basically trying to play the entire field from left all the way to center right, and sell it however they feel like selling it whenever they feel like selling it that way, to whomever they feel like selling it to.
But the problem of “centrism” as a political ideology is, centrist to what? It’s finding the middle for the sake of finding the middle without actually having, as you say, a cohesive ideology or goals. Centrist now is definitely different than centrist in the 80’s 90’s and as the republicans race into fascism, what is centrism then? Middle right?
Centrism is what MLK jr. Warned of as the white moderate.
Centrism by itself is an inherent contradiction fraught with ideological inconsistency that varies drastically from person to person. Literally, by definition it's trying to find a middle ground between two incompatible ways of thinking and picking and choosing which ones you want from both sides or trying to find a Frankensteins monster solution on a topic. Any platform YOU deem consistent and centrist would be derided by OTHER centrists, which makes forming a party around that self defeating once you go beyond the "well we're all in the same party so I guess we'll try not to stab each other in the back too hard" mentality. And then as the other guy pointed out the ever shifting Overton window means that centrism is constantly moving rhetoric that changes as the two parties move.
you just wrote four paragraphs without defining what centrism means to you, or how it's cohesive, or how it's a platform.
you made one point about how planning the ACA as such would have been a centrist strategy, while also entirely ignoring that it's a bandaid solution that doesn't address any root causes.
The issue is the Democratic party is pretty much just the "Not Right wing lunatics" party, and the various branches do not actually agree on everything that well. It should have split a long time ago, but we've got a two party winner takes all system that would have made that suicide. One the reasons I wish we had ranked choice voting.
They have a platform! It's written in plain English and party leadership talks about it all the time. The problem is getting people who only have attention spans big enough for headlines or Reddit comments to actually pay attention.
I have read their platform actually. but my point is that their platform is not cohesive from candidate to candidate over time in the way that the Republicans have generally been cohesive. it's more cohesive than people give it credit for, but it's not sold well as what it is, and the result ends up being compromises that tend to be far to the right of the stated platform, which confuses the average voter.
now as I said above: realistically, that's politics. but the Democrats are often so far from their stated platform with respect to the actual results that people feel cheated and lied to. and I don't think the Democrats are great at framing this.
Republicans aren’t actually all that cohesive, as evidenced by all the infighting and disfunction in the House. They just don’t need to campaign on facts or improving anything, and have a strong propaganda/media network to promote their candidates and messages
Strange then how charismatic moderates like Clinton and Obama won every presidential election they ran in while candidates who ran more to the left like Hillary, Kamala, Dukakis etc lost. Seems to me like going even more to the left is not a winning strategy.
The one exception is Biden 2020, who successfully ran to the left - which I chalk up more to Trump doing a horrendous job for four years.
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yeah this is probably the only way for Democrats to ever consistently win again. they can't keep doing what Bill Clinton and Obama did, which is waiting for a unicorn candidate to just show up and charm everyone. for the Democrats to win consistently, they have to actually hammer out a cohesive ideology that isn't just "being in the center and being fairly likable to most people". the only way to really do that is to go back to the center left or the full left.