this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2025
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Lol okay. You make it sound like running a campaign is so easy. Maybe you should run the next one.
If you go with a full progressive or overtly leftist campaign you will also lose. You will gain votes from the "purity politics" left from people like you but you will lose the support of so much of the centrist/independent block.
43% of the US population identifies as independent. 27% identifies as Democrat. We don't have a large enough voting base to win by ourselves without independent/centrist votes. If you abandon them as well, we also lose. Conservatives can always count on their base to vote for whoever.... apparently we've learned that we can't do that with progressives. It's apparently our way or we sink the whole fucking boat with everyone in it. We apparently only vote for the PERFECT candidate, or we just won't vote at all...or vote 3rd party.
The last time Democrats tried, they won a super majority.
Notice how you've just assumed based on nothing that independents are all "centrists" who don't vote Democrats because they're too progressive. Which is wrong.
People don't want to vote for people who see "actively genocidal" as "not perfect"
Yeah mate....back in 1932. I'm sure nothing's really changed since then. And if you think we've had a "progressive" candidate since then... I'd LOVE to hear this hot take.
I was talking about Obama, who ran a progressive campaign.
Also, if you believe that Democrats haven't run a progressive campaign in 90 years, you have ZERO leg to stand on saying it would lose.
He was barely center-left. None of his actual policies were progressive. He had a more progressive tone in his campaign, but none of his actual campaign promises could be construed as "progressive". The ACA built on private insurance, not Medicare for all; his military policy built a strong global military posture; hell...he even spoke plenty about "working across the aisle".
The only progressive thing about Obama was the fact that he was a black candidate. He was able to speak like a progressive, but still nab a massive amount of independent, and his policies reflected that.
Edit to your edit: the last overtly "Progressive" candidate was George McGovern in '72, but he lost to Nixon in a landslide. You act as if merely having a "progressive" candidate is the secret sauce to winning the election. I'm desperately trying to tell you that it's a hell of a lot more complicated than that.
He still ran faaaaaar to the left of any recent Democratic campaign, which still completely torpedoes your assertion that the current Democrats aren't running right enough to win elections.
Oh please, there is not some huge group of independents who voted for Obama because they saw him as a conservative centrist who then went on to not vote for Clinton, Biden, or Harris because they were too left wing. That isn't a thing.
Oh so only 50 years then! Still means your claim that progressive candidates can't win us totally baseless.
No, I am just rejecting your baseless assertion that progressive candidates can never win.
Other around: you're trying to argue that it's as simple as "independents are in the middle of Democrats and Republicans" and I'm telling it's a lot more complicated then that