With positively overwhelming turnout, r/neoliberal users weighed in thusly on the pair of questions concerning the insurgent left wing within the Democratic electorate.
What is your view on the rise of the hard left in the Democratic Party? (N=695)
I’m worried about it. – 388 (56%)
I’m not really worried about it. – 159 (23%)
I’m generally in support of it. – 115 (17%)
A majority expressed worry about the phenomenon, although it comes nowhere close to consensus. A fairly considerable minority — 1 in 6 — of respondents said they supported the growth of the leftist bloc. However, 198 (28%) selected the option that its extent was greatly overstated.
Recruit more center-left candidates under the age of 50. – 481 (74%)
Try to alleviate material frustration with market-friendly, “Abundance” policies. – 455 (70%)
Aggressively push for institutional reforms to disempower the MAGA right. – 454 (70%)
Push incumbents over the age of 70 to retire. – 410 (63%)
Make some concessions, such as on the US-Israel relationship. – 389 (60%)
Push back, in some cases forcefully, even if parts of the base respond poorly. – 273 (42%)
Embrace the insurgency — they’re largely on the right track. – 97 (15%)
None of these strategies in particular. – 8
[Write-ins] – 67
The most popular listed approach, garnering support from three quarters of voters, was to recruit younger candidates, followed closely by pursuing an “Abundance” agenda and institutional reforms to weaken the hard right. In the middle tier were pressuring older incumbents to retire and making certain concessions to the left, while direct pushback lagged behind. Still, those who selected the option outnumbered those who favored full integration of the hard left roughly 3 to 1.
67 respondents — 10 percent of the sample — wrote in their own response, which they were allowed to do in conjunction with the provided options. Enlisting the help of GPT-5.5, I developed and then manually grouped into six non-mutually exclusive categories (14 were coded separately as miscellaneous).
The largest of these were anti-left (13, 19%). Next up were leadership critiques, the lion’s share of which advocated stronger action against the hard right, and institutional reform, with a number of calls to modify the electoral system to allow for more choices (each at 10, or 15%). Pro-left and policy specifics, an outright majority of which demanded land value taxes, tied at 9 (13%). Rounding us out were shitposts (6, 9%), which included bangers such as
Neo-Lusviggian policy (Universal Sardine Coverage, whites to shut uod 🤬)
Posted by AmbientMorning