Lu Zwei wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2026 9:12 am

Frankie99 wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2026 8:26 am Every moderate I know is more afraid of moving to the left because they're convinced it will hurt them financially. It's almost pavlovian for moderates to align with the right out of fear.

They want the change, they don't want the pain. They may not actually want the change.

But how exactly will it hurt them financially? Can you come up with one solid example?

In America there is an ingrained fear that taxing the wealthy will mean either higher taxes for the non wealthy as well, or that wealthy “job creators” will tighten their belts and shed jobs or force pay cuts or all this stuff. It is not rational but it’s capitalist propaganda that’s fed to us from birth.

gotdamn wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2026 8:30 am

twelvepoint wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2026 8:12 am It kind of melts my mind to wonder what has gone so wrong with elections and the democrats over the last decade. I really don’t know if it’s lack of appeal to people who want real progressive changes, or whether it’s a lack of connection with undecided - and probably low information- voters. Probably both? But does appealing to the former demographic alienate the latter, or vice versa? And if so, will it code an election? Arrggh, my mind is melting again.

What? They're undemocratic and more worried about donors keeping the cash flow than winning elections. This is the party who shut out a populist candidate in Bernie Sanders and outright refused to have a primary in a pivotal election against a convicted felon out for revenge.

The problem is at the top, the voters know what they want.

I agree with Dems being morally… bankrupt? Is that too harsh? Playing to the center all the time is awful, you’re right.

But not all voters know what they want.

twelvepoint wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2026 9:41 am

Lu Zwei wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2026 9:12 am

Frankie99 wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2026 8:26 am Every moderate I know is more afraid of moving to the left because they're convinced it will hurt them financially. It's almost pavlovian for moderates to align with the right out of fear.

They want the change, they don't want the pain. They may not actually want the change.

But how exactly will it hurt them financially? Can you come up with one solid example?

In America there is an ingrained fear that taxing the wealthy will mean either higher taxes for the non wealthy as well, or that wealthy “job creators” will tighten their belts and shed jobs or force pay cuts or all this stuff. It is not rational but it’s capitalist propaganda that’s fed to us from birth.

Appreciate the response. Yeah, that's what I really thought, but I didn't want to sound like a projecting prick. But that only spans to trickle down. It's 40 or so years old. It should not take you that much time to reverse it. A good start is seeing it working on a city/state level, no!?

twelvepoint wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2026 10:02 am

gotdamn wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2026 8:30 am

twelvepoint wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2026 8:12 am It kind of melts my mind to wonder what has gone so wrong with elections and the democrats over the last decade. I really don’t know if it’s lack of appeal to people who want real progressive changes, or whether it’s a lack of connection with undecided - and probably low information- voters. Probably both? But does appealing to the former demographic alienate the latter, or vice versa? And if so, will it code an election? Arrggh, my mind is melting again.

What? They're undemocratic and more worried about donors keeping the cash flow than winning elections. This is the party who shut out a populist candidate in Bernie Sanders and outright refused to have a primary in a pivotal election against a convicted felon out for revenge.

The problem is at the top, the voters know what they want.

I agree with Dems being morally… bankrupt? Is that too harsh? Playing to the center all the time is awful, you’re right.

But it's not only that. There is a study that pretty much tells you that people tend to starting leaning to the right as they start to "age".

This is the approach I took in our 2014 study. By taking the average of seven different groups of several thousand people each over time – covering most periods between general elections since the 1960s – we found that the maximum possible ageing effect averages out at a 0.38% increase in Conservative voters per year. The minimum possible ageing effect was only somewhat lower, at 0.32% per year. 97-year-old Beatty Orwell, centre, part of Jewish Care’s push to get care users to vote, with friends Marie Posner and Amelia Finger at a day centre in east London.

This may not sound like a massive effect, but over the course of a lifetime these increments do add up.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... d-politics

So many interesting points here. To the idea of a Democratic candidate that's supposedly representing the left but often isn't I see two problems.

The first is outright corruption and greed. Classic slimy politician careerist stuff where the blue donkey brand is just a different lane for cash than the red elephant one. We all know what that's about, plain and simple.

The second problem is more insidious. It's the fragmented dialogue between primary voters, candidates, consultants, and testing messages. There's a professional "common sense" about what they can platform. People who are legitimately invested in things that your average PRFer would be excited about are put through a strainer of DC physics describing what won't actually work, and things that they merely suspect won't work without evidence. The question is what actual hoops you have to jump through to win. An earnest and authentic candidate might pare down their messages and goals because they know it'd be better to win on some meaningful changes than lose on all of them.

Someone could write an academic journal type research paper (probably already have) about what form of leftism actually wins in the U.S.A. connected to real life examples. My vague notion from being curious about it and reading about it a bit, is that over the years basic leftist policies seem to poll a little better than the candidates who embody all of them. If you offer workers' protections, and citizens health care that isn't a corporate joke they like it. If you stand a man or woman up who's got some deep policy knowledge and is platforming that stuff it seems like a two digit percentage of potential voters shrinks away in fear.

In 2020 a lot of different things could have happened. For some reason a lot of Americans who voted in the primaries legitimately wanted Joe Biden as a candidate. He was very popular in a list of what I found to be full of superior choices. The DNC is disconnected and slimy enough to divert us from the annoying fact that a lot of Americans actually like centrism, or at least candidates who come from that place. Of course we get superior voices in congress because a neighborhood, district or city of people can understand what someone like AOC offers, or in a mayor like Mamdani. It's a lot harder to inspire a plurality of people from Des Moines or Mesa AZ with those messages for a national candidate.

I feel like there are dems right now who are trying to outfit a Pritzker or Walz type of person (I know Walz is done, he's just a type) that can outfit some actual progressivism as wholesome apple pie and avoid the red scare shit. I'd really like to see someone thread that needle in 2028.

I think in Anglo Saxon countries generally what’s been historically successful has been “municipal socialism”. This is generally a highly transactional form of leftism that focuses in hard on public service and spaces. Stuff people can see. It’s much less confrontational and often succeeds at local/provincial/state level while at a national scale things are the usual meh to dumpster fire.

Trump inherited the Palestinian genocide from Joe Biden. Both him and his heir apparent showed no interest in putting a stop to it and it was a major factor to Harris losing in the last election. Any analysis of power in the United States ignoring that fact is lost. To call it a pet issue or shrug and say that nobody’s perfect is gross. To say that they’ve lost their moral center is an understatement. They are not the union party you grew up with and will never be that way again. They are fully on board and integrated into the billionaire/military industrial complex and have no interest in breaking from it. Get the idea of a leftist president out of your head. There isn’t even going to be a progressive candidate, much less a leftist. Any dnc presidents you get are going to be unwilling to reverse any past gains that the right makes.

You crow on and on about the left. We would be in way, way better shape if the left were an actual problem. They are just a scapegoat for you and the beltway shitbags to complain about while the right wing continues to make gains through whichever administrations.

This all started because someone was blaming Iran on… the left. As if every abstaining voter were in some kind of left wing cadre working in tandem to punish the DNC for not being communist enough. I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of brainrot leads to that sort of thinking. There is no organized left, there is only people on the internet that you are getting worked up at.

I think it’s pretty obvious that at some point society outpaces some people’s willingness to give it careful analysis, so the best they can do is fall back on a few narratives that were planted by the very people who benefit from them. All of this is only going to get worse with AI and misinformation so you have to buckle down if you intend to keep your wits about you.

losthighway wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2026 11:14 am
In 2020 a lot of different things could have happened. For some reason a lot of Americans who voted in the primaries legitimately wanted Joe Biden as a candidate. He was very popular in a list of what I found to be full of superior choices.

No, there was a big ratfucking that happened. They circled wagons to shut out the progressive candidate in order to hand it to Biden. He didn’t just win the nomination without the entire party working against the Bernie wing.

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Wed Mar 04, 2026 1:45 pm You crow on and on about the left. We would be in way, way better shape if the left were an actual problem. They are just a scapegoat for you and the beltway shitbags to complain about while the right wing continues to make gains through whichever administrations.

This all started because someone was blaming Iran on… the left. As if every abstaining voter were in some kind of left wing cadre working in tandem to punish the DNC for not being communist enough. I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of brainrot leads to that sort of thinking. There is no organized left, there is only people on the internet that you are getting worked up at.

Sorry, who is "you"? Me, someone else, or "all you bastards"?

First of all, to level the playing field, you need to repel the corrupt campaign financing policies that are in place right now. There is no long term healing without that.

Here, this is the election law here in Croatia: https://www.izbori.hr/site/UserdocsImages/154

Just translate the language and see how it's done in a shitty third world country and why the limitations are in place...

lol Joe Biden was far behind Buttigieg in the 2020 primaries til the South Carolina primary - a state no one involved was going to win in the federal.

So then the 2nd place candidate drops out ahead of Super Tuesday to endorse the 3rd place candidate.

Right! The problem is with the voters, of course.

The DNC will ratfuck every primary from 2016 til the end of time. You do not have a choice.