Should Dems move to the Right of Biden?

[Felis Leo]

Conservatism is a dead ideology. The last election was an outlier, not a harbinger.

True, but people will choose a corpse over a non-entity.

 

[Gatsby]

Oh, money in politics. Look at what’s happening in NY. You have major media and dem establishment shoving Cuomo down everyone’s throat.

So it sounds like you are saying money in politics influences the outcome, and that your preferred candidates aren't good at raising it. Sounds like a good reason not to nominate them.

You want to propose a meaningful law that gets money out of politics, fine, put it on a ballot initiative and I'll vote for it. In the mean time, I suggest Democrats play the game according to the same rules as everyone else.

 

[Surrealistik]

I think the democrats need to remember that they lost the presidency by just 1.5 points, by 2.3 million votes out of 156 million cast. Also, that the democrats did gain 2 house seats in the only other what could be called, national election. This when the sitting president had just a 39% overall job approval/57% disapproval. The economy, inflation, rising prices did the democrats in. What could be done about the economy differently, I don’t know. I’ve always been one who believed the economy, inflation is like the weather. It’s going to do whatever it’s going to do. If presidents or governments could control the economy, we’d have all good times, all ups, no downs and no bad times.

Immigration, securing the southern border. Immigration was the second most important issue in folks deciding who to vote for. Behind the economy in general and inflation, rising prices in particular. Along with the economy, illegal immigration really hurt the democrats. The rest of your issues was fine as far as I’m concerned. But many folks voted their wallets last year which means against Biden, Harris and the democrats.

Moving as a whole to the right, probably wouldn’t do much good. According to Gallup independents, the non-affiliated, the less to non-partisan group make up 43% of the electorate. Which means the democrats need to get them to vote for their candidates. When Biden won, independents voted for him by a 54-41 margin. When Harris lost, independents still voted for her 49-46, but that 10-point drop of independent support cost her the election. That 10-point drop was due to many independents feeling they had it better under Trump, financially, living standards etc. than under Biden. Independents aren’t a monolithic group. They will support the democrats on some issues, oppose them on others. Same for the republicans, support them on some issues, oppose them on others. Prime example is an independent who is pro-choice and pro-2nd amendment at the same time.

Moving right won’t help much in my opinion. Right now, most independents are disgusted with both major parties. Movement left or right by either party isn’t what they’re looking for. They’re looking for both major parties being willing to compromise and stop treating each other like they’re enemies to be destroyed. They don’t want the far-left agenda forced on them anymore than they want the far right agenda forced on them as Trump is doing now and what Biden and the democrats tried to do during his presidency.

Kamala could have followed through and continued to message on the substantive things she was talking about early in the campaign that would directly attack cost of living such as tackling greedflation, (un/anti)competitive industries, and collusion both digital and otherwise (software/algo actuated rent collusion is a huge problem for example) rather than burying these policies in a PDF on a website no one will read, and it likely would have won her the election given its closeness. People close to her apparently dissuaded her to drop these issues out of fear of alienating donors and corporations, but, as we've seen, their support wasn't about to clinch the win.

 

[The Brad Dad]

So it sounds like you are saying money in politics influences the outcome, and that your preferred candidates aren't good at raising it. Sounds like a good reason not to nominate them.

You want to propose a meaningful law that gets money out of politics, fine, put it on a ballot initiative and I'll vote for it. In the mean time, I suggest Democrats play the game according to the same rules as everyone else.

Running republican lite candidates only get Republican elected and/or Republican policies implemented.

 

[The Brad Dad]

It was neither. It was an ordinary outcome in line with historical trends. Republicans have won 3 of the 6 presidential elections this century. They have won somewhere in the ballpark of 225 out of 400 Senate elections this century. Clearly there are plenty of voters willing to pull the lever for a Republican candidate. It's not as though this past election cycle, the voters just suddenly elected a crop of candidates wildly out of step with their past policy views.

If we didn’t have an EC, the GOP would be a regional party.

 

[Allan]

Foreign Policy
- Healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid) No
- Public Health Policy (e.g. Vaccines) No
- Social Security No
- Civil Rights No
- Economy They do great on the economy.
- Immigration Yes
- Foreign Policy no
- Political Corruption ?
- Climate Change No
- Infrastructure No
- Regulations No
- Unions / Labor / Workers Rights No

 

[reinaert]

No totalitarian-curious voters are going to reward a rightward ratcheting DNC with support.

 

[Gatsby]

If we didn’t have an EC, the GOP would be a regional party.

1. But we do have an electoral college.
2. The GOP seems to do just fine in Senate races and House races too.

 

[Gatsby]

Running republican lite candidates only get Republican elected and/or Republican policies implemented.

Running candidates wildly to the left of red/purple state views means only Republicans get elected and Republican policies get implemented.

 

[cpwill]

Running republican lite candidates only get Republican elected and/or Republican policies implemented.

Well last year, running a progressive helped get you Trump, so...

 

[The Brad Dad]

Well last year, running a progressive helped get you Trump, so...

Biden would have beaten Trump again. We lost because the country still hates blacks and women more than they hate Trump.

 

[The Brad Dad]

Running candidates wildly to the left of red/purple state views means only Republicans get elected and Republican policies get implemented.

If Harris had stayed left and not moved center she probably wins. Barely but probably wins.

 

[The Brad Dad]

1. But we do have an electoral college.
2. The GOP seems to do just fine in Senate races and House races too.

They do fine in house races because of gerrymandering. Conservative policies are not popular.

 

[Helix]

Nah. If they go even further right, I might be out of the voting game. I wouldn't be excited about voting for anti-LGBTQ bigotry or for vouchers designed to destroy public schools.

 

[j brown's body]

They do fine in house races because of gerrymandering. Conservative policies are not popular.

People in states pass liberal referendum all the time and then elect and re-elect legislators that thwart them.

It's as if they don't trust themselves.

And the Dems do a terrible job advocating for these issues.

 

[j brown's body]

Well last year, running a progressive helped get you Trump, so...

Dems didn't articulate a vision, Tru,p did.

 

[The Brad Dad]

People in states pass liberal referendum all the time and then elect and re-elect legislators that thwart them.

It's as if they don't trust themselves.

And the Dems do a terrible job advocating for these issues.

Bingo. We still have too many folks in the party afraid to be Democrats

 

[Gatsby]

Sample agenda for Democrats running in red state Senate races:

• Medicaid expansion
• Border security
• Protect Social Security and Medicare
• A mixture of tax increases on rich people and spending cuts to balance the budget
• Confirm judicial appointments from presidents of either party who are moderate and well-qualified
• Loudly and repeatedly criticize the Democratic Party on social issues, policing, border security, guns, and energy policy

Sample agenda for Democrats running in purple state Senate races:

• Raise the minimum wage
• Comprehensive immigration reform
• Protect Social Security and Medicare
• Raise taxes on rich people to balance the budget
• Protect abortion rights

And that's it. The specifics can and should be slightly different depending on the state and election cycle, but you don't need to run maximally left-wing candidates in every single jurisdiction in the country. You really don't need to have a laundry list of things you want to spend money on, or a list of shout-outs to all your BIPOCs and Latinxes and LGBTQ2SIIAA+ Folx.

When people ask why we should outreach in states that only elect conservatives, I think they are misunderstanding the goal. Think of it as a soccer team, with your Bernie Bros playing forward and your Joe Manchins playing goalkeeper. The goal for getting a Democratic senator from, say, Utah shouldn't be to have one more vote pushing for Medicare For All Drag Queen Kindergartners or whatever. The role of that hypothetical senator is mostly to play defense against Republican radicalism, and to support popular Democratic agenda items when possible.

 

[MikePrime]

Biden would have beaten Trump again. We lost because the country still hates blacks and women more than they hate Trump.

The lefting obsession with saying america hates blacks and women is such a weird fetish. Youre not fighting a colonial empire in the 18th century dude, stop cosplaying.
America hates blacks and women relative to who???
How did Barack Obama beat two white people over a decade ago?
How are Black Americans disproportionally beloved celebrities and athletes that people see as heroes in the super racist, sexist america you live in?
Biden would of gotten pummeled, by every imaginable poll and statistic and thats why they pulled the plug on him and chose, cough cough a black women.
Also Bidens entire poltical legacy is built off his relation to a super famous black american.
get your inflammatory crap out of here.

 

[Gatsby]

If Harris had stayed left and not moved center she probably wins. Barely but probably wins.

I would prefer we nominate candidates who don't barely win, much less lose, against a candidate as weak as Donald Trump. That's the kind of candidate who should lose by 10-20 points and there isn't even any question about beating him. And indeed that's what would have happened in decades past.

 

[Gatsby]

They do fine in house races because of gerrymandering. Conservative policies are not popular.

Look, you can blame it on the gerrymandering or the electoral college or money in politics all you like. But those are actual features of how our political system operates, so we should nominate candidates who can win in the actual American political system rather than in some idealized political system that we don't have.

 

[btthegreat]

As always. Trump completely distorts the typical American left/right paradigms, because he is not an ideologically driven candidate, and neither are his devout followers.

Yet we keep trying to draw some ideological conclusion from Trump's victories and losses. None of this is about policy. We need to look at the kind of candidates and tactics we employ, the way we sell our message, not what the message is.

 

[PIPEWRENCH]

I'm told that Dems should move to the right, because it's a winning strategy. Should Dems move to the right of Biden on the following issues:

- Foreign Policy
- Healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid)
- Public Health Policy (e.g. Vaccines)
- Social Security
- Civil Rights
- Economy
- Immigration
- Foreign Policy
- Political Corruption
- Climate Change
- Infrastructure
- Regulations
- Unions / Labor / Workers Rights

Bonus Question #1: What does that coalition look like? The base would undoubtably change from what it currently is. Do they pick up disaffected MAGA voters to replace Progressives?

Bonus Question #2: Would progressives still be blamed for Dems losing after they were formally removed from the coalition?

....

The Myth of the Moderate Republican

Liberal Republicanism’s collapse didn’t spring from some loss of decency in an age of polarization, but from the transformation of class struggle in America.

jacobin.com

The Increasingly Dangerous Myth of the 'Moderate Republican' | Common Dreams

The current notion of a "moderate Republican" is an oxymoron that helps to move the country rightward. Last week, every one of the GOP's so-called "moderates" voted to install House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who won with the avid support of Donald Trump and got over the finish line by catering to su

www.commondreams.org

Biden was not running the country. However they need to distance themselves from whoever was running things.

 

[Perotista]

Kamala could have followed through and continued to message on the substantive things she was talking about early in the campaign that would directly attack cost of living such as tackling greedflation, (un/anti)competitive industries, and collusion both digital and otherwise (software/algo actuated rent collusion is a huge problem for example) rather than burying these policies in a PDF on a website no one will read, and it likely would have won her the election given its closeness. People close to her apparently dissuaded her to drop these issues out of fear of alienating donors and corporations, but, as we've seen, their support wasn't about to clinch the win.

What I noticed which may or may not fall in line with your thinking. Harris campaign was all anti-Trump, negative. She didn’t give the voters a reason to vote for her other than she wasn’t Trump. Believe it or not, there are some voters out there who need a positive reason to vote for someone, not just against someone. Without that positive reason to vote for Harris, they may have voted for Trump, may have voted third party which 1.9% did or 3 million voters or they stayed home which a lot of folks who voted in 2020 did. Turnout for 2020, 63%, 159 million voters, turnout for 2024 59%, 156 million voters even though there were 7 million more people eligible to vote in 2024 than 2020.

 

[rahl]

Biden would have beaten Trump again. We lost because the country still hates blacks and women more than they hate Trump.