OK. And?
Huh? I'm not a wokescold.
Indeed he did! In a Democratic primary, held 17 years ago. That doesn't mean that the American electorate viewed Hillary Clinton as a moderate or a conservative when she ran for president in 2016.
Maybe. It would depend on a lot of things, like what the important issues were, who the Republicans nominated, and whether AOC ran as an unreconstructed socialist or a Tim Walz-style progressive.
I'm not sure why you think this is relevant to the fact that Bernie Sanders was never particularly popular in West Virginia. The one time he was on a ballot there was a Democratic primary in which he got 51% (120K votes), which is just not that much.
And yet none of these red states ever seem to elect Bernie Bros. Curious!
Hillary Clinton is not my model of a Democrat, particularly for winning races in West Virginia. Hell, it was a miracle someone as liberal as Joe Manchin managed to get elected there so many times.
Great, let's nominate Democrats who talk about rural infrastructure rather than Democrats who talk about socialism and transing the kids. Co-signed.
??
And then Joe Biden walloped Bernie Sanders. In a Democratic primary. Bernie Sanders has never stood for a general election anywhere outside of Vermont, the bluest state in the country.
Why not? If they don't have that power, then what makes you so sure they represent the mainstream voter? For that matter, why do they need to "beat Democratic leadership" at all? If they were so popular they would *be* the Democratic leadership.
Like I said, it really depends on what the issues are, who the Republicans nominate, and which version of AOC runs for president: The unreconstructed Bernie Bro socialist, or the Tim Walz style abundance liberal which you tell me exists in there somewhere. She's a savvier politician than many people give her credit for, so I wouldn't put it past her to successfully pull off that transformation, but she doesn't appear to be attempting to do so yet.
"More popular than Kamala" (by a few hundred votes) in her own district is not an acceptable bar for someone who wants to be the next Democratic nominee for president. That should be table stakes. I'd be extremely concerned if Democrats nominated anyone who ran behind Kamala Harris in their last election.
Not really. Hillary Clinton had some good policies when she ran for president, but she also had a lot of bad ideas. The woke stuff was really en vogue in 2016, and Hillary Clinton leaned heavily into it. Additionally, she helped kill Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership. (Granted her opposition didn't matter anyway since she didn't win the election, but it would have been a step backward.) She was also less than great on foreign policy.
Maybe in Bernie Bro echo chambers, but as the Pew poll I cited above clearly indicates, the majority of Americans viewed Hillary Clinton as left-of-center, and only 10% viewed her as a right-winger.
Oh. OK then. I'm not sure why you're trying to convince me that she's a Tim Walz style abundance liberal who just wants to Build Back Better, in this hypothetical scenario that you made up. If she runs as a democratic socialist and doesn't even pretend to be anything else, then I would have a very difficult time voting for her. Correct.
That's not what your poll options indicate. If you're talking about "Trump's MAGA successor" that implies you mean something more than some generic Republican turd who just wants to cut taxes for rich people.
Well AOC has only been on the ballot in her district, so that's the only place we have actual evidence of her level of support. And it's...underwhelming. Not the worst numbers in the world, but she only ran a few hundred votes ahead of Kamala Harris in her district. And Kamala Harris lost the election. If AOC replicated that performance in every district around the country, she would also lose the election.
Yup, among other things. I'm not sure where you got the impression that woke identity politics is my "model politician." That stuff annoys the piss out of me.
Maybe! But merely agreeing with Republicans is not the goal, it's aligning with voters on things that are important to them (while also having objectively good policies so that voters don't get mad at them later). For example, a politician might be in favor of cutting social security AND in favor of transing the kids, and that would somehow average out to "centrism." But they would be on the horrendously unpopular side of both issues and don't deserve any brownie points for that kind of "centrism".
As I asked you in your other thread on that subject, and which you ignored: I'm unaware of any points of agreement he has with abundance liberalism, aside from the fact that he seems to have less hostility to housing development than most socialists do. What other points of agreement do you think he shares with them? I don't live in NYC so I'm not voting in this election and haven't been following it that closely except as a casual observer, so if Mamdani has more in common with abundance liberalism than that, by all means please share.
It's just weird that you name AOC as the Democratic candidate, but won't name a specific Republican candidate...and that you identify the candidate as "Trump's MAGA successor" in the title and then try to soft-pedal it in your posts by claiming it would be a continuation of 1970s conservatism. Are you deliberately trying to obscure the question you are asking, or is it really that jumbled in your own mind?
I suppose that will be up to the party voters in the next election, as it always is! But I'd caution them about ejecting people from the party who actually vote for Democrats, in favor of people who don't. A risky strategy. And a bit weird that you are talking about what "we" (meaning the Democratic Party) should do, when your most recent voting record consisted of not voting for the Democratic candidate and declaring Joe Biden and Kamala Harris worse than Donald Trump.
Far as I’m concerned, that’s no choice. Definitely third party, voting against both. There has been certain elections that I wanted my vote officially registered as being against both major party candidates.Here we go.
It's 2028 and the presidential nominees are AOC and Trump (or Trump's successor). We know the policy agenda, we know the messaging. The table is set. Pick your candidate.
AOC is not my first choice, but she's a smart politician, has made pragmatic alliances with the center in the Democratic Party and is the successor to Bernie Sanders. I'm willing to compromise.
Yep.
A centrist, as Bill Clinton always said the POTUS candidate needed to be.
I'm talking about actual electoral results. No one should be nominated for president without a solid track record of actual electoral results; we can't afford to dick around with favorability polls for the most important job in the government, when their actual electoral performance is underwhelming. Maybe AOC will do better next time. Fair enough, let's see it. Or if she wants to appeal to a broader electorate, she could try running for a statewide office in New York.
Great, but I note that this doesn't actually mention anything abundance-related he wants to do aside from his housing policy (which does seem to be better than most socialists). Nothing else was mentioned. I'll ask again. You assert that he's selling himself as an "abundance" candidate. What, besides housing, are some examples of this? There needs to be more than one policy, plus saying the word "abundance" a bunch of times.
Because so far, the Democrats have been closer to what I prefer than Republicans. If that ceases to be the case at some point in the future, then I expect I will do just that.
Voters like me who haven't made up their mind? If recent voting history is any indication then it seems that I'm a more reliable Dem voter than you are. I'm not the one of the two of us who threw a tantrum, anti-endorsed the Democratic nominee, and declared Biden and Harris to be worse than Trump. So I'm not sure what you are talking about. If voters who are to the left of ~70% of the electorate are too right-wing for you and need to be excised from the party (a party for which you do not even regularly vote), then what's the plan to win the election? Who are you adding to your coalition to make up that ground, and what is your plan for getting them on board?
When RFK Jr. was running as an independent, I found him interesting. That isn’t the same as support. I did keep track on the number of states RFK Jr. got on the ballot. Then late August RFK Jr. withdrew and endorsed Trump. That was the point in time I lost all interest in him as he had become just another Trumper. Biden had withdrew at the end of July, the DNC and Democratic Party leaders anointed Harris as their nominee without any primaries. I kind of followed her for a bit, but then the Libertarian Party nominated Chase Oliver, I had my man. I had backed Chase Oliver in his 2022 senate run against Walker and Warnock. The rest is history as they say.
