[cmrdporcupine]

Absolutely no way. The Democratic party is currently having a public freak out about 3 DSA members winning in NY primaries and about the mayor of NY. They voted en-masse last year to join with the Republicans in congress to symbolically "denounce socialism" in all its forms.

a) That party would rather lose to Trump than let even moderate social democrats have strong influence b) There is no way they're going to bat for left wing agitators in jail.

> I don't think you can be a total milquetoast "water under the bridge" candidate to win either.

Yep, and that's why they won't win. They're going to go out of their way to frame themselves as super moderate reasonable totally not the "radical left democrats" and run someone semi-Republican trying to appeal to the non-existent center. And piss off anybody "left wing" (or even just sympathetic to Gaza) under the age of 40, which is increasingly a large part of the American populace.

Red-baiting and using the power of the police and law against far left organizations is the bread and butter of the security apparatus in every western country since at least 1917. It's only been temporarily distracted by Islamic radicalism and left wingers have been remarkably disorganized and weak since the fall of the USSR.

[roncinephile]

> appeal to the "non-existent" center

This is an insane notion. The center decides all elections in a two party system.

[cmrdporcupine]

Then why does the US have a far right gov't?

[roncinephile]

Stretch out the time horizon. There's been a consistent tick tock pattern that stretches back to 1776. The United States vacillates from one extreme to another. It's our defining characteristic. The people who find themselves drunk with power become the caricature that disgusts the non-political center into voting them out of power so that a new cadre of political leeches can take office and become their own kind of disgusting caricature.

[cmrdporcupine]

There is no political spectrum that makes sense where you could define Biden or Clinton as any kind of "extreme."