[the__alchemist]

I don't understand why the left puts up with it. They are too easily distracted by hot-button issues. These are some of the most important issues facing the present and future of our civilization and biosphere. I wish I had a solution, or knew the step to take. I suspect one of the root causes is the narrative, e.g. from news agencies, is being controlled by the propagators of the problem.

[spankalee]

Our system is not set up to be able to resist things like this. Once one party has control over all three branches of the federal government, all we can do at the federal level is wait for elections.

States can try to do some things in some cases, but the Supreme Court will get in the way and now the National Guard and Marines.

[clscott]

The last time you voted in The United States of America may be the last time you get a vote in The United States of America.

All three branches of The United States of America has been captured by a tyrannical government. Rights are being eroded for inhabitants of The United States of America, including its citizens.

You have no right to: safe medicine, safe food, safe water, vote.

The sooner the people recognize this and take action, the shorter it will be to reverse.

Americans have a duty to act, and act quickly: what's already been taken will take generations to regain.

[thomasmg]

Right. My fear is that the rules of the elections will be significantly changed as well soon, by this party.

[hackyhacky]

Already happening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Texas_redistricting

[odie5533]

The human brain can not handle social media. It has melted our brains and completely controls the Main Signal with its algorithms. The right is better at controlling the media in such a system, and is ascendant. We live in meme world now. Nothing is serious. It's all just memes.

[cloverich]

It does feel like this. I remember this moment clicking for me with my dads family who was typically more rational. "did you hear California is going to outlaw bacon now"; everyone laughs.

I mention that sounds kind of click baity? look it up. California wants to impose more stringent minimum space standards for amimals bred to slaughter (prop 12). Seems maybe good, or at least worthy of a real discussion?

But everyone had moved on by then, ironically to how much they care about animal rights (spending significant time volunteering in shelters and such).

Its just too easy to dumb people down with memes.

[estearum]

Well, also our adversaries have a vested interest in tilting those systems toward MAGA in particular.

Trump reneging on NATO, turning military attention toward (checks notes) Venezuela, and isolating ourselves in global trade is just an absolute dream come true for China and Russia.

[tstrimple]

There have always been shitty conservatives in the world. The US fought a civil war against them. Civilized people fought against them and won civil rights and women’s suffrage and the right for gay folk to get married. These assholes have always existed in society and unfortunately always will. This is not a problem of social media but of acceptable antisocial behavior and beliefs.

[hshdhdhj4444]

The American left is one of the most impotent political entities.

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.

[otterdude]

until people starting giving a shit to form alternatives, they're the only option that exists. Were not in a college classroom debating ideals, this is a real life triage situation

[mschuster91]

At least our "purity tests" don't end up with dead people. By the current state of information, the CK killer was a Nick Fuentes follower.

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.

[softwaredoug]

“The Left” as educated elites clustered in cities has and will always be fairly impotent (at least electorally, maybe not culturally)

“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.

[cogman10]

This is hogwash.

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.

[cardamomo]

I agree with this assessment, and Mamdani's popularity in NYC provides some credence to this. Voters have wanted the Dems to move left since at least 2016, but the Democratic establishment routinely punishes those who aren't moving rightward.

[adrr]

Party has moved been moving left since Clinton. Clinton was more conservative than George W Bush. Balance Budgets(fired a bunch government workers), welfare reform,NAFTA etc.

[cogman10]

The base has been, the representatives have been sclerotic. A good number of them came in with clinton and have had essentially the same politics as clinton.

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.

[adrr]

And what purity tests are those?

[recursive]

Probably the identity politics stuff if I had to guess.

[flkiwi]

Identity politics. Rejecting identity politics for economic justice. Rejecting economic justice for economic revolution. It goes on and on. There are so many overlapping and contradictory purity tests among the various branches of the left, that meaningful opposition from the left is more of a coincidence than anything one can plan for.

[adrr]

Name a purity test. Stop dancing around the question.

[recursive]

This is a setup to fail a purity test. We'll skip the formalities and you can just preemptively consider this a failure.

[flkiwi]

Name a meaningful victory of the American left's approach in the last 25 years. Stop dancing around the question.

[tyleo]

A visible example is the ACLU questionnaire which covers support for transgender medical care with state resources for detained immigrants.

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...

[estearum]

You can agree or disagree with inmates having a right to medical care? That would require going to SCOTUS, at the very least. This right is well-established in the US.

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.

[tyleo]

Yes, politicians can agree or disagree with policy. That is their job. E.g., “here is a good policy we don’t have which we should enact,” and “here is a bad policy we should get rid of.”

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.

[estearum]

Again: this is not in any "politician's" hands. It's in SCOTUS's. Inmates have a right to medical care in this country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estelle_v._Gamble

[SamoyedFurFluff]

Frankly it read to me more like Harris had a totally moderate response that was blown up by the right as something she is a die hard believer in. No one is dying on the hill of trans rights except for trans people as far as I see on the political stage. Republicans talk way more about trans people than democrats. Republicans pass way more laws about trans people than democrats. Republicans raise way more money on trans people than democrats. Democrats literally don’t seem to stand for anything as a unified force: government shutdowns over roe v wade overturn, start reading Epstein files into congressional record, refuse to cooperate with a single republican bill until they get some red meat for their base. I haven’t really seen anything and I’m not even particularly leftist. I just can’t imagine a single time democrats threw a massive shitfest for red meat, but I hear it nonstop in republican spaces.

[tyleo]

I agree that she had a moderate response. I think it appeared that she was dying on the this hill because she didn’t address it in her 2024 campaign yet it received so much air time in Republican ads.

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.

[UncleMeat]

Do you believe that if she had gone on camera and said "I was wrong, trans people shouldn't receive this care in prison" that it would have stopped the GOP ad campaign? No chance.

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.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

Right, that’s what I’m saying. This is the opposite of a democrat dying on a hill. They cede everything and are killed for it on the spin.

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.

[SpicyLemonZest]

Because it’s framed differently. The Democratic base don’t consider themselves to have thrown a “shitfest” over Keystone XL, and don’t consider Biden’s day 1 executive order killing it to be “red meat”.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

Biden day 1 executive order was over 4 fucking years ago. About a week ago a bunch of Koreans were rounded up and deported out of the country. Less than 48h ago republicans were saying the Charlie Kirk killer was a trans and his body wasn’t even cold yet. Cmon bro, these are not comparable. The democrats simply don’t do red meat shitfest fight stuff.

[UncleMeat]

It wasn't a hill to die on. If it was she would have made support for trans rights a central part of her campaign. Trump made it a central part of his campaign.

"Never say anything that the right can play in an ad" is not my idea of effective campaign strategy.

[tyleo]

It was a hill to die on in the sense that her campaign was getting killed and she said nothing. The ad was actively damaging her campaign so doing nothing was dying.

Why do you think she didn’t say anything?

[hypeatei]

You're referring to very far left circles that definitely don't represent liberals or more moderate Dems. I agree though, those circles consist of single-issue voters (e.g. palestine) that harm actual progress.

[DrewADesign]

Yeah the centrist dems— the vast majority of currently elected democrats— are really knocking it out of the park. It’s the tiny handful of actual progressives that snuck through the DNC’s fortress walls that are messing everything up with their pesky fringe principles… that also poll extremely well with the general public.

[righthand]

Moderates being the majority platform on both sides blaming their minority “extremeist” wing for their failures is step one of most US political debates.

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.

[a4isms]

"/s" to the point of "/S!!!"

[hypeatei]

> tiny handful of actual progressives ... that are messing everything up

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?

[DrewADesign]

… did you see how many mainstream popular national politicians came out of the woodwork to support Cuomo despite being the less popular candidate by a significant amount? Did you catch the coordinated drop-out/endorsement of Clinton in 2016 which killed Sanders’ lead? Did you see all of the people in the party rushing to make an issue of Mamdani supporting Palestine in a race for mayor of NYC which is definitely not near Israel or Palestine, physically or through policy, and legally can’t even interact with those countries as a delegate of the US? Yes there is resistance to progressive candidates from the DNC leadership. No, it’s not a conspiracy theory.

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.

[hypeatei]

> look at recent polls

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.

[righthand]

I mean insinuating that a sect of a political party is “extremist” or “far” into some ideology because they see the current political atmosphere is futile is not discussing politics in good faith.

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.

[DrewADesign]

People we call “far left” in the US would be mainstream labor candidates in most European political environments.

[nulld3v]

The "Palestine" issue is single-issue on the surface, but it is often used because it is a succint way to package a broad set of desired foreign policy changes: more cooperation with the Islamic world, less aggression/hegemony, and less money fed to insatiable MIC.

Personally I do not see how we can afford to maintain the MIC for much longer, so these issues are very important to me.

[giantg2]

The reason we can afford it is due to our GDP. We aren't that far ahead of other developed countries when you look at it as a percentage of GDP. The real issue is our debt, for which the interest payments are almost as much as our defense budget while adding nothing to the economy. But neither side is serious about tackling this issue.

[hypeatei]

Fair enough. Would you sit out an election over this issue, though? Especially where the other option is Trump?

[nulld3v]

Definitely not, I agree with you that it's counterproductive.

[cluckindan]

Again with the left vs. right. Are you really that easy to divide into two diametrically opposed groups?

[the__alchemist]

This is also a key part of it. People should explore the complexity instead of treating this as team sports. I think we have a genetic disposition to this sort of thinking, but can overcome it.

[CaptArmchair]

From the posted article:

> EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections

> The move continues to expose communities across the country to toxic forever chemicals in tap water

If this really were a "team sport", one half of the team wouldn't be set on undermining the health of the other half of the team.

[somenameforme]

Rolling back PFAS protections would not simply affect "the other half of the team", it would affect everybody. If there isn't some context missing here, this is an action that would be ubiquitously unpopular, let alone when contrasted against the goals of MAHA.

[estearum]

The beauty of gerrymandering is that the gerrymanderers don't need to be popular.

Also the baseline GOP today exists in a different reality (e.g. where Trump won the 2020 election and Democrats did the COVID lockdowns)

[somenameforme]

Gerrymandering has no effect on the Senate or Presidency making this largely a non sequitur. Furthermore, administrators of independent agencies (such as the EPA) need to confirmed by the Senate. Up until 2013, appointees could be blocked by a minority with a filibuster. That rule was changed in 2013 by a Democrat majority Senate under Obama, to make it such that a simple majority could force through any appointee.

That was one of countless examples of where powers passed by one side with a majority invariably end up coming back to bite then when they become the minority. The Founding Fathers designed our political system to be largely dysfunctional without widespread consensus. That was clearly wiser than the path we are increasingly choosing in modern times.

[testaccount28]

hi there! i'm not sure you read the comment you're replying to!

i guess you reject their request to stop trying to defeat the other team. but you also object to the use of the word "team" to describe a political party?

could you explain?

[smt88]

Due to gerrymandering, our elected officials are increasingly sorting themselves into left and right, whether that represents us or not.

[dvrj101]

i mean the right literally voted for epsteins BFF and also the most prominent partner in child trafficking. Hiring minor under pretense of internship, drugging/spiking then and then trafficking them to private island. The difference between right and left is like night and day.

in case someone's feeling got hurt. Throughout the history of world not USA, right ideology has also blindly supported deregulation that people will die but regulation will naturally take place( ? ) like free markert

[hypeatei]

The left doesn't hold power in any branch of government right now. The most they can do before midterms is cause a government shutdown, but that can backfire unless messaging/demands are perfect.

[actionfromafar]

Messaging should probably be "follow the law". Until that happens, voting in the house is just charades.

[Filligree]

What do you propose they do?

[the__alchemist]

I would love to have an answer to your question!

Edit: Here's a start: Be more critical of the news. Content a bit; the scope of topics that are discussed more importantly.

[bee_rider]

Left wing politicians and media figures try to impact the media narrative (just like all media figures and politicians). It is part of the skill set. Like yeah, it would always be better for an engineer to get better at quickly understanding large codebases. Better for a soccer player to get better at aiming the ball. But that’s the game they are all playing, they are doing it as well as they can (in the case of left wing politicians, either they are bad at it or they are at some systemic disadvantage).

[tombert]

Being critical of the news is good, but I don't think we want the lefty equivalent of the "Do Your Own Research" conspiracy crowd.

The problem with undermining trust in the news media is that people will just replace that with blind trust with something else, and we have no way of really knowing if that something else will be worse. This is what happened with conservatives and led to the rise of Infowars.

[deadbabe]

We are soldiers in revolt for truth, And we have fought for our independence, When we spoke nobody listened to us, So we have taken the noise of gunpowder as our rhythm, And the sound of machine guns as our melody

[purple_turtle]

Drop counterproductive and unpopular Culture War issues and instead fight about very stupid ideas pushed by Trump et all.

Part of problem is that the most unproductive and unpopular and poor ideas are the most loved ones among their elites.

[jkeel]

I agree. I wish there was a more organized "left" but from what I've seen it's just many many random groups that are not on the "right". If there was an organized left, then they should focus only on improving the well being of the average US family through improving the economy and healthcare to work for everyone. The left let's itself get baited into these culture wars. If everyone's lives improved then I believe a lot of these culture war issues would improve as a byproduct of a happier populace who would be more forgiving to those around them.

[purple_turtle]

> The left let's itself get baited into these culture wars.

Well, at least some of them left (or some part of it) started entirely on its own.

[cogman10]

> They are too easily distracted by hot-button issues.

I disagree.

The issue is there's about 1000 fires burning all with somewhat critical importance.

But further, the left and the politicians ostensibly representing the left simply are not aligned (at least in the US). It's a rock and a hard place. Generally the politicians positions are better than the right, but far less than what the left actually wants. So they rely heavily on "what are you going to do, let the other guys win?".

Meanwhile, the right has adopted nearly the opposite position. On most positions when the base says "jump" they say "how high?".

A big reason for that is money in politics. What the rightwing base wants is generally pretty compatible with monied interests. It's no skin off the nose of a rightwing politician if they want to ban books, that doesn't ultimately harm Disney's bottom dollar.

For the left, what they want in almost all ways will negatively impact monied interested. Better regulations makes rich polluters mad. Nationalized healthcare makes every business (except maybe small businesses) mad.

That's why "left" politicians tend to only support initiatives which effectively do nothing like recognizing a MLK or saying it's ok to be gay. And even then, they are happy to ditch those positions to win more rightwing base support because, shocker, that rightwing base is likely to care less about their inaction on climate change.

You are right, though, news is a big problem. And that's because mainstream media is corporate captured. That's why left policy positions no matter the channel are always framed in the absolute worst way possible. For example, whenever nationalized healthcare comes up I can guarantee you the framing will be "How will you pay for this very expensive program that will eliminate choice and cost a lot of money which might make everyone sad and probably will bankrupt everyone?"

[avidphantasm]

The just-released MAHA report[1] mentions PFAS limits for drinking water to be enforced by EPA. Hopefully the unusually extreme contradictions in policy force a change.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/MAHA-R...

[softwaredoug]

I think because “The Left” in the US - The Democratic Party - is actually a big tent, center-left party with a lot of different issues and stakeholders. They look more like a political party has historically in the US (big, messy, inconsistent)

[supportengineer]

If you were an elderly high ranking Democrat, would you risk it all? Your power, your status?

[kilroy123]

It's called anacyclosis. A long cycle that has repeated throughout history. The US is the final step before the cycle repeats, Ochlocracy or "mob rule".

It blows my mind that people refuse to accept modern countries and societies still don't go through this cycle.

I truly think the US will have a Putin like dictator by 20230. (I don't think this is good or want that)

[tombert]

Short of some January-6th style insurrection, I'm not entirely sure what "the left" [1] could actually "do" here. I am absolutely not advocating for a January-6th domestic terrorism event, I think that would be a very bad idea, but I also have no idea what we could actively do.

It's easy to say "reject the news agencies", and sure that might be a good idea, but that carries the risk of "substituting bullshit with different, more dangerous bullshit". This has already been somewhat demonstrated; the conservatives spent decades undermining trust in news media and that led to the rise of assholes like Alex Jones and conspiracy theories becoming normalized by American conservatives. It's easy to say "well the left wouldn't do that", but you have no way of knowing that any better than I would.

I don't want to be cynical or hopeless, but I genuinely have no idea what I could do to help fix any of the shit going on right now.

[1] whatever that actually means, I've heard about a dozen definitions.

[shagie]

Normalize factual focused news that covers the topics that right (and center) news doesn't cover. This doesn't need to be biased and shouldn't be denigrating - I would like to believe that the liberal bias of reality is sufficient. Personally, I don't want to listen to angry people of any political bend. Name calling sounds childish.

As to conspiracy theories on the left, they're there. Some of the anti-vax conspiracies came from people who would be considered on the (I'm going to apologize of this is seen as denigrating considering my earlier statement) granola side of the left. There's a fair bit of populist anti-corporate conspiracies and attribution of active malice rather a dispassionate corporate approach to trying to maximize profits.

I would suggest instead considering that it isn't "left vs right" conspiracies (though they have their own spectrum) but rather that there exists a "prone to conspiracies demographic" that is swayed by the left or the right at a given time and those conspiracies that are most in line with the political ideology of the swaying are more likely to be normalized. Politicians agreeing with the conspiracies speeds up its normalization and helps sway the conspiracy minded demographic.

I believe that the pro-science, pro-space, climate change is real, vaccines work of... lets put a range of 2008 to say... 2020 (its not that Biden abandoned it but rather that that congress was not advancing policies and the focus was more on "don't have it break more") significantly alienated the prone to conspiracy demographic from the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has embraced this demographic with the claims of a stolen election, supporting anti-vaccination positions, and openly accepting support of the various anti-{race} groups.

It wouldn't take too much for anti-capitalism or anti-government conspiracies to be normalized and spoken openly by "the left" if that is one's target demographic. It's that left leaning and conspiracy leaning is a slim demographic to try to target. If the conspiracy demographic was decoupled from the current Republican Party, then I would expect to see more left leaning conspiracy theories be espoused openly.

[tombert]

> I would suggest instead considering that it isn't "left vs right" conspiracies (though they have their own spectrum) but rather that there exists a "prone to conspiracies demographic" that is swayed by the left or the right at a given time and those conspiracies that are most in line with the political ideology of the swaying are more likely to be normalized. Politicians agreeing with the conspiracies speeds up its normalization and helps sway the conspiracy minded demographic.

I would love to believe this, but I am not sure that I do anymore.

Anti-vax conspiracies have become extremely normalized in conservative circles and at least according to CNN, 70% of conservatives believed conspiracies that the 2020 election as stolen [1]. Assuming a roughly 50/50 split, 70% of 50% is about 35%; one third of the entire country. Maybe it's always been like that, but I don't think so, I feel like up until around ~2014 conspiracy theorists were largely on the fringes.

And of course, that 70% is people who are admitting to it. Famously, people were embarrassed to admit they wanted to vote for Trump which skewed the polling data. I suspect that the percentage of conservatives who believe in 2020 election conspiracies is actually a fair bit higher.

So I don't think I buy that "the conspiracy fringe was always there and conservatives were just more welcoming to them", I think that conservatives are actively creating new conspiracy nutes, and I think this is a consequence of their concerted effort to create distrust in media.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/03/politics/cnn-poll-republicans...

[cardamomo]

I found this post useful in understanding this phenomenon: https://www.offmessage.net/p/how-liberalism-sabotages-itself

The basic gist is that the left is too generous in its understanding of others' intentions, assuming good intentions from all actors long past the point where that's rational.

[mlinhares]

They're also coopted by their donors and the thinking they can't be mean to their "colleagues", look at all the democrats saying they're "waiting for the republican party to come back". They want the same status quo they had in the past because it serves those already in power there, they can continue to collect donations and salaries if it all stays the same without doing much work.

Look at how desperate they all were to leave DC and go on vacation, these people are not serious and they don't think there will be any consequence to them.

[ThinkBeat]

There is no left in America, in any historical or contemporary manner.

If you look closely at the Ds they back Trumps policies, not that they come out and say so. Rather Bernie will come out and attack it. but Ds on so mnay fornts now remain silent and passive.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

[UmGuys]

Currently, if there were any resistance, they would swiftly be gunned down in the street. Hasn't the orange goon made that clear enough to you? The problem is we didn't enforce justice after the civil war or the coup on January 6. The cult of domestic terrorists has a monopoly on violence.

Edit: Also, most of the politicians in both parties get money from the same interests (oil, Israel, tech). So the leadership of Democrats basically wants the same thing as GOP, so there's only voiced resistance.

[smt88]

My friend pointed out yesterday that the left has lost its "evangelical spirit". It seems to have become political dogma that you can't persuade people to your side -- you can only turn them out to vote.

But Charlie Kirk went to the most left places he could think of, debated people, and won some converts.

Who on the left does that? Why doesn't anyone drive out to rural football games or country music concerts, have conversations, and put them on YouTube?

[tombert]

I don't like him anymore because I think he's a perverted creep, but in the streaming space Destiny was reasonably good at this. I haven't watched him in years, but I remember reading about a few people that he managed to talk out of the more radical conservatism.

[BriggyDwiggs42]

I’d add that the act of debate never convinces opponents, but serves as a performance which can make your ideas look good to an audience. Plenty of lefties do debates online, not to say that’s identical.

[Jaygles]

I think this is the core of the issue for the Democra)ts. Conservative groups are focused on figuring out what actions are effective in gaining power and executing on that. They don't shy away from unethical methods like spreading misinformation and gerrymandering. They've understood this for a very long time and have been planting seeds for decades, such as taking over AM radio to entrench a conservative mindset in rural populations.

From my observations the liberal and progressive groups seem to take on strategies where they claim the moral high ground and treat anyone not following their way of thinking as opponents and not as potential allies/converts. So even in cases where they are technically or morally "correct" in their stance, they aren't effective in bringing outsiders to their side. One example was the "recognize your (white) privilege" thing. While it was arguably based on sound ideas, proclaiming an entire demographic is receiving more than they earn is never going to bring people over to your side.

I don't have much confidence that the Democrats will be able to turn things around in short order. The Democratic leadership seem stuck in their ways with no long term vision

[DrewADesign]

> Who on the left does that?

Sanders and AOC. Look at the stops on their Fighting Oligarchy Tour. It’s just that the DNC leadership will do everything in their power to fight actual progressives.