If they keep winning, they can’t just keep moving to the right
Yes, they very obviously can. Because when they move to the right, they keep winning. Why would that prevent them from moving to the right? That doesn’t make a lick of sense.
Finally, at least some glimpse into this strange line of thinking. But you’ve got everything backwards.
When they’re strong, with no real threat, they have no reason to give us anything at all. They’ve proven that they can win comfortably on a centrist platform so there’s no reason to change that, either progressives will fall in line behind the “lesser evil,” or there aren’t enough to matter. They can even shut out progressive candidates from the party whenever they choose.
When they’re weak, they have no choice but to compromise on what they want to expand the coalition. They have tried, repeatedly, to expand the coalition right, and it hasn’t worked. They will therefore be forced to the negotiating table with us, or they will end up fading to irrelevance and being replaced.
You don’t have to compromise when you’re in a strong position. That’s what being in a strong position means.
Regardless, electing a centrist only ensures that the threat of the right will keep growing. Because we are in a state of decline, and merely maintaining that ensures that voters will be dissatisfied and will likely vote against whoever they blame, which will generally be the incumbent. The last few elections have gone D-R-D-R and personally I expect that pattern to continue, as long as both sides are dogshit and don’t fix anything. The status quo is what created the threat of the far-right so you’ll never break that threat by maintaining it.
But you’ve got everything backwards.
No, it’s quite the opposite and when people like populate lemmy plentiful Ly think they’re pulling one over on the Dems so they will finally do what they want, they don’t realize they’re sawing their own legs off while the rich folks heading the DNC laugh at them.
Consider why they saw Mamdani as a loss internally/clearly fought against him winning.
When they’re strong, with no real threat, they have no reason to give us anything at all.
When they’re losing, they can’t give you anything.
When they’re winning, especially if they win sufficiently, they can’t just sit on their hands, and then you can apply pressure via a takeover of more progressive candidates.
The threat of losing is aok to them because it means the whole system just rachets back one step so they can promise you in the future that things will just go back to almost how they were before the ratchet.
This is literally something people here constantly complain about.
either progressives will fall in line behind the “lesser evil,” or there aren’t enough to matter.
What logic is there to this? Why would the progressives suddenly just hang they’re hats especially if they’re being voted in through primaries, state or local politics? It’s clearly a selling point within the DNC so that doesn’t math out.
When they’re weak, they have no choice but to compromise on what they want to expand the coalition. They have tried, repeatedly, to expand the coalition right, and it hasn’t worked.
You’re sooooo close to getting the point in this excerpt.
There are very obvious reasons that they do not want to expand to the left, and it’s what we’ve been talking about.
They will therefore be forced to the negotiating table with us, or they will end up fading to irrelevance and being replaced.
Forced by what forces? Once again, they’re fine with losing because you will be backed into a wall or people who aren’t idealists will be backed into a wall and they can again resume the ratchet mechanism.
You are negotiating at the wrong place. You have no such leverage as is imagined here.
The only way to move them left is by getting more progressives in Congress, as candidates, in state and local politics.
Anything else just 0lays into their plans to wait for republicans to fuck things up and then act like hero’s returning to slow “progress” and the status quo.
You’re thinking about this from a naive “we must hit them because they do bad” when it’s just not that simple and in fact they clearly are ok with you thinking that.
Regardless, electing a centrist only ensures that the threat of the right will keep growing.
This idea comes from the perspective that you can put up a progressive. You cannot unless you win in the primaries and they still won’t be your solution as even a progressive federal candidate still would need to pass laws through the house and senate and their various coworkers who don’t want things to move much.
They absolutely would have big impacts on the direction of various agencies for sure, so no small feat, but you aren’t getting any sort of sweeping change that would sway anyone stupid enough to think “well things are still bad so I’m not going to vote” etc.
The point is, no matter how you swing it, letting the democrats lose, hurts progressive goals.
Its not a position of power to lose progress just so that to the average voter, restoring some of the progress lost is the reason they are enticed the next time. Just not how it works.
Hence, no, you want to break the cycle of bouncing back and forth aimlessly as much as you can because this is what allows for the stall you hate and somehow think will simulateously pressure them to stop the behaviour that causes it.
You have to think outside of “I’m mad and I must punish the people I am mad at” and instead think about their goals and incentives.
They truly care less about many of the things you think apply leverage to them than you think they do, and I’d argue that they in fact depend on people acting like that for the reasons mentioned.
When they’re winning, especially if they win sufficiently, they can’t just sit on their hands
Yes they can! And do! Because they already won, without even promising to do things! You keep asserting random shit like “they can’t” “they have to” but there’s no basis for it.
What logic is there to this? Why would the progressives suddenly just hang they’re hats especially if they’re being voted in through primaries, state or local politics? It’s clearly a selling point within the DNC so that doesn’t math out.
What are talking about? They don’t need selling points to win over progressives if progressives are already reliably voting for them when they run on a centrist platform. I’m not talking about “progressives suddenly hanging their hats,” and I have no idea where you got that from.
Forced by what forces? Once again, they’re fine with losing because you will be backed into a wall or people who aren’t idealists will be backed into a wall and they can again resume the ratchet mechanism.
No, they aren’t fine with losing. Well, maybe they are, but if you’re “fine with losing” for long enough, eventually you’ll stop being a credible political force and be replaced by another entity that actually wants to win.
This whole thesis is just an extremely convoluted way to reconcile the fact that the Dems suck with justifying voting dem anyway. It’s more motivated reasoning than actual truth.
What they’re actually “fine with” is you continuing to give them the support they ask you for, despite it being part of your five dimensional chess strategy to own them. They don’t really give a shit about the difference between a loyal true believer centrist and a progressive as long as they both find reasons to vote for them consistently. It’s just silly to think that supporting and voting for a politician is anything but the exact thing they want from you, it’s basically a conspiracy theory. It’s just being a centrist with a bajillion extra steps in your reasoning to pretend otherwise.
No, it has nothing to do with “being mad,” or “naievity” or “they did bad so we have to punish them.” They will give in to our demands, or they will lose. And if they would rather keep losing, then we will simply replace them. It’s really a very straightforward tactic, it’s just a matter of understanding a very basic level of how to negotiate and also having the spine to follow through.
Frankly I think that your perspective is delusional and I’m not really interested in discussing it further.
Frankly I think that your perspective is delusional and I’m not really interested in discussing it further.
before putting in reasonable effort.
You perspective here truly is naive and knee-jerk reaction based.
You say you “simply” replace them when that is not an option in a 2 party system, and would cede power to fascists presumably until millions died fighting for that to end.
You continue to fundamentally misunderstand what motivates the DNC and pathetically play right into what they would like.
In my previous comment they couldn’t just sit because of the threat of progressives and the fact that they could no longer simply run on undoing some of the harm the previous republican administration did.
It is clear you did not actually read my comment to take in meaning but instead to try to reassert your opinion which has clearly been proven not to work, over and over again for decades.
Your logic that progressives would have no pull if democrats won makes no sense because they then would be the threatening force taking over from the Conservative old gaurd.
I feel you’ve been stuck in echo chambers wishing for counterproductive idealism (revolutions you won’t start or third parties that can’t win) or status quo supporting ideas (“”“applying pressure to democrats by letting them lose”“” (crazy you think that makes sense)) so long your knee-jerk reaction to a different perspective is to not actually think it through and repeat as you’ve been told.
Yes, they very obviously can. Because when they move to the right, they keep winning. Why would that prevent them from moving to the right? That doesn’t make a lick of sense.
You havent thought about it very hard then.
Who are they against when they lose? an increasingly big threat, so they can offer even less.
Who are they up against when they win? /Themselves and the more progressive elements that come to replace them.
Finally, at least some glimpse into this strange line of thinking. But you’ve got everything backwards.
When they’re strong, with no real threat, they have no reason to give us anything at all. They’ve proven that they can win comfortably on a centrist platform so there’s no reason to change that, either progressives will fall in line behind the “lesser evil,” or there aren’t enough to matter. They can even shut out progressive candidates from the party whenever they choose.
When they’re weak, they have no choice but to compromise on what they want to expand the coalition. They have tried, repeatedly, to expand the coalition right, and it hasn’t worked. They will therefore be forced to the negotiating table with us, or they will end up fading to irrelevance and being replaced.
You don’t have to compromise when you’re in a strong position. That’s what being in a strong position means.
Regardless, electing a centrist only ensures that the threat of the right will keep growing. Because we are in a state of decline, and merely maintaining that ensures that voters will be dissatisfied and will likely vote against whoever they blame, which will generally be the incumbent. The last few elections have gone D-R-D-R and personally I expect that pattern to continue, as long as both sides are dogshit and don’t fix anything. The status quo is what created the threat of the far-right so you’ll never break that threat by maintaining it.
Consider why they saw Mamdani as a loss internally/clearly fought against him winning.
When they’re losing, they can’t give you anything.
When they’re winning, especially if they win sufficiently, they can’t just sit on their hands, and then you can apply pressure via a takeover of more progressive candidates.
The threat of losing is aok to them because it means the whole system just rachets back one step so they can promise you in the future that things will just go back to almost how they were before the ratchet.
This is literally something people here constantly complain about.
What logic is there to this? Why would the progressives suddenly just hang they’re hats especially if they’re being voted in through primaries, state or local politics? It’s clearly a selling point within the DNC so that doesn’t math out.
You’re sooooo close to getting the point in this excerpt.
There are very obvious reasons that they do not want to expand to the left, and it’s what we’ve been talking about.
Forced by what forces? Once again, they’re fine with losing because you will be backed into a wall or people who aren’t idealists will be backed into a wall and they can again resume the ratchet mechanism.
You are negotiating at the wrong place. You have no such leverage as is imagined here.
The only way to move them left is by getting more progressives in Congress, as candidates, in state and local politics.
Anything else just 0lays into their plans to wait for republicans to fuck things up and then act like hero’s returning to slow “progress” and the status quo.
You’re thinking about this from a naive “we must hit them because they do bad” when it’s just not that simple and in fact they clearly are ok with you thinking that.
This idea comes from the perspective that you can put up a progressive. You cannot unless you win in the primaries and they still won’t be your solution as even a progressive federal candidate still would need to pass laws through the house and senate and their various coworkers who don’t want things to move much.
They absolutely would have big impacts on the direction of various agencies for sure, so no small feat, but you aren’t getting any sort of sweeping change that would sway anyone stupid enough to think “well things are still bad so I’m not going to vote” etc.
The point is, no matter how you swing it, letting the democrats lose, hurts progressive goals.
Its not a position of power to lose progress just so that to the average voter, restoring some of the progress lost is the reason they are enticed the next time. Just not how it works.
Hence, no, you want to break the cycle of bouncing back and forth aimlessly as much as you can because this is what allows for the stall you hate and somehow think will simulateously pressure them to stop the behaviour that causes it.
You have to think outside of “I’m mad and I must punish the people I am mad at” and instead think about their goals and incentives.
They truly care less about many of the things you think apply leverage to them than you think they do, and I’d argue that they in fact depend on people acting like that for the reasons mentioned.
Yes they can! And do! Because they already won, without even promising to do things! You keep asserting random shit like “they can’t” “they have to” but there’s no basis for it.
What are talking about? They don’t need selling points to win over progressives if progressives are already reliably voting for them when they run on a centrist platform. I’m not talking about “progressives suddenly hanging their hats,” and I have no idea where you got that from.
No, they aren’t fine with losing. Well, maybe they are, but if you’re “fine with losing” for long enough, eventually you’ll stop being a credible political force and be replaced by another entity that actually wants to win.
This whole thesis is just an extremely convoluted way to reconcile the fact that the Dems suck with justifying voting dem anyway. It’s more motivated reasoning than actual truth.
What they’re actually “fine with” is you continuing to give them the support they ask you for, despite it being part of your five dimensional chess strategy to own them. They don’t really give a shit about the difference between a loyal true believer centrist and a progressive as long as they both find reasons to vote for them consistently. It’s just silly to think that supporting and voting for a politician is anything but the exact thing they want from you, it’s basically a conspiracy theory. It’s just being a centrist with a bajillion extra steps in your reasoning to pretend otherwise.
No, it has nothing to do with “being mad,” or “naievity” or “they did bad so we have to punish them.” They will give in to our demands, or they will lose. And if they would rather keep losing, then we will simply replace them. It’s really a very straightforward tactic, it’s just a matter of understanding a very basic level of how to negotiate and also having the spine to follow through.
Frankly I think that your perspective is delusional and I’m not really interested in discussing it further.
Luckily I read your
before putting in reasonable effort.
You perspective here truly is naive and knee-jerk reaction based.
You say you “simply” replace them when that is not an option in a 2 party system, and would cede power to fascists presumably until millions died fighting for that to end.
You continue to fundamentally misunderstand what motivates the DNC and pathetically play right into what they would like.
In my previous comment they couldn’t just sit because of the threat of progressives and the fact that they could no longer simply run on undoing some of the harm the previous republican administration did.
It is clear you did not actually read my comment to take in meaning but instead to try to reassert your opinion which has clearly been proven not to work, over and over again for decades.
Your logic that progressives would have no pull if democrats won makes no sense because they then would be the threatening force taking over from the Conservative old gaurd.
I feel you’ve been stuck in echo chambers wishing for counterproductive idealism (revolutions you won’t start or third parties that can’t win) or status quo supporting ideas (“”“applying pressure to democrats by letting them lose”“” (crazy you think that makes sense)) so long your knee-jerk reaction to a different perspective is to not actually think it through and repeat as you’ve been told.