>It’s one thing to tell progressives that, while you share their ultimate goals, your reading of the evidence suggests that the scope of what’s politically possible is narrower than they think, and therefore the best strategy is to moderate on select issues to maximize the odds of beating Republicans and push policy to the left.
>That’s not an easy sell. Progressive political spaces are filled with well-meaning people who tend to have strong ideological views, so there is a natural tendency to engage in a little motivated reasoning.
>But it’s even harder to convince people to compromise on their deeply held principles and hopes when you don’t actually share the same end goals. Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani want to create social democracy in America. I don’t think that Tom Suozzi and Adam Gray do.
Submission statement: according to the data, the democratic base has shifted significantly to the left and moderates no longer make up the majority of the party. The centrist wing will likely have to make accommodations rather than thinking they can steamroll the left electorally going forward. This is important as the factional dynamics of the 2028 primary are going to likely be way different than 2016 or 2020.
>The moderate wing of the party is used to calling the shots. When Lyndon Johnson was Senate majority leader, he liked to tell Hubert Humphrey and Paul Douglas that the problem with the liberal wing of the Democratic caucus was that it couldn’t count. What he meant is that southern senators had the votes and the organization to beat the liberals every time.
>For a long time, that was true of the Democratic Party as a whole. No longer. The liberal wing of the party has the voters and the institutional clout and the support of the old guard of elected officials. Today, it’s the moderate faction that is the junior coalition partner, which is a position it has not yet reconciled itself to. Now, it’s the centrists who need to learn to count — at least when they’re trying to win intra-party factional battles.
kittenTakeover on
Centrists often win general elections, but they don’t win primaries as easily because the center of a political party is not the center of the country.
ace158 on
It does seem like left wing/progressive populists are having their best showings in Dem primaries ever these days
The party base seems more aligned with them on AI/Data centers, Israel. ICE, healthcare etc
DevOpsOpsDev on
I think the question is, just because most members of the party are to the left of the rest of the country, are the people that vote in a primary also that far to the left?
Generally primary voters for democratic candidates have been, if anything, more conservative than a lot of the more vocal base.
RaaaaaaaNoYokShinRyu on
“Center-left”, succ, I see no difference.
oywiththepoodles96 on
Centrists need to find charismatic candidates . Say what you want , but AOC and Zohran Mamdani are super charismatic . If the centrist answer to that is Gavin Newsom( who looks and sounds like the evil mayor of Gotham ) , then yeah AOC will in the end defeat him for the nomination . Buttigieg should be the moderate candidate. But centrists democrats being cowards as usual will not coalesce around him because they will be afraid to have a gay man lead the ticket .
djm07231 on
I think America is now doomed to follow the footsteps of Peru where it is perpetually locked into runoffs between crazy communist leftists versus hard right conservatives.
With the ending being conservatives winning almost every time unlike Peru because US is not really a progressive country at all.
7 Comments
>It’s one thing to tell progressives that, while you share their ultimate goals, your reading of the evidence suggests that the scope of what’s politically possible is narrower than they think, and therefore the best strategy is to moderate on select issues to maximize the odds of beating Republicans and push policy to the left.
>That’s not an easy sell. Progressive political spaces are filled with well-meaning people who tend to have strong ideological views, so there is a natural tendency to engage in a little motivated reasoning.
>But it’s even harder to convince people to compromise on their deeply held principles and hopes when you don’t actually share the same end goals. Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani want to create social democracy in America. I don’t think that Tom Suozzi and Adam Gray do.
Submission statement: according to the data, the democratic base has shifted significantly to the left and moderates no longer make up the majority of the party. The centrist wing will likely have to make accommodations rather than thinking they can steamroll the left electorally going forward. This is important as the factional dynamics of the 2028 primary are going to likely be way different than 2016 or 2020.
>The moderate wing of the party is used to calling the shots. When Lyndon Johnson was Senate majority leader, he liked to tell Hubert Humphrey and Paul Douglas that the problem with the liberal wing of the Democratic caucus was that it couldn’t count. What he meant is that southern senators had the votes and the organization to beat the liberals every time.
>For a long time, that was true of the Democratic Party as a whole. No longer. The liberal wing of the party has the voters and the institutional clout and the support of the old guard of elected officials. Today, it’s the moderate faction that is the junior coalition partner, which is a position it has not yet reconciled itself to. Now, it’s the centrists who need to learn to count — at least when they’re trying to win intra-party factional battles.
Centrists often win general elections, but they don’t win primaries as easily because the center of a political party is not the center of the country.
It does seem like left wing/progressive populists are having their best showings in Dem primaries ever these days
The party base seems more aligned with them on AI/Data centers, Israel. ICE, healthcare etc
I think the question is, just because most members of the party are to the left of the rest of the country, are the people that vote in a primary also that far to the left?
Generally primary voters for democratic candidates have been, if anything, more conservative than a lot of the more vocal base.
“Center-left”, succ, I see no difference.
Centrists need to find charismatic candidates . Say what you want , but AOC and Zohran Mamdani are super charismatic . If the centrist answer to that is Gavin Newsom( who looks and sounds like the evil mayor of Gotham ) , then yeah AOC will in the end defeat him for the nomination . Buttigieg should be the moderate candidate. But centrists democrats being cowards as usual will not coalesce around him because they will be afraid to have a gay man lead the ticket .
I think America is now doomed to follow the footsteps of Peru where it is perpetually locked into runoffs between crazy communist leftists versus hard right conservatives.
With the ending being conservatives winning almost every time unlike Peru because US is not really a progressive country at all.