[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.

[adrr]

The conservative masquerading as an independent blaming the left for fake issues of why as you can't support them. Trope is as old as time.

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.

[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

[tyleo]

That link refers to decisions made based the US Code and the constitution. Politicians write those. Courts have responsibility in interpreting them. It’s still a politicians job to take a stance and decide what they should be.

[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.

[tyleo]

Idk where you’re getting that quote from. No one would say that.

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?

[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.

[tyleo]

Fair enough. It’s the appearance of dying on hills.

[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.

[SpicyLemonZest]

It's not comparable because you agree with the Democrats' positions! When it comes to immigration, for example, I'm sure you'd agree with me that Trump's efforts to end various TPS designations are "red meat shitfest fight stuff" - if he succeeds, he'll get to deport quite a lot of people. But Biden's extensions of those very same TPS designations (some of which have been "temporary" for decades now) weren't "red meat", because you agree with Biden that the designations are correct and the people protected by them should not have to leave the US. The Democratic base just isn't very interested in framing politicians as brave disruptive fighters for doing the right thing.

[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.

[DrewADesign]

> If you could link them,

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.

[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.