Liberals can fuck off with their electability bullshit. Arguments without credibility are farts in the wind.
Her politics were great, but she was really offputting to a lot of people. And she had plenty of opportunities to explain herself, but she didn’t really do a very good job of it. And a lot of people lost confidence in her.
Despite the world seemingly hellbent on making me a cynic, I find encouraging that she got so close to winning, despite her being a flawed candidate because of her questionable stances in the past.
I listened to her interview on Pod Save America and she definitely could have been more forceful about making the case that she’d grown from her past stances. I still would have voted for her, if I lived there, but I’m also probably more dialed in to politics than the average voter.
Yeah, I saw that interview too. I can’t remember which guy interviewed her (Jon Favreau, I think), but he gave her a bunch of chances to really rehabilitate herself and her image, and boy oh boy did she wiff on each one.
Look, I don’t care if she likes Thanksgiving or not, I don’t think that’s going to affect how she does her job. But a lot of things she said in her past really weirded a bunch of people out who would otherwise probably have voted for her. And I think that’s what cost her the election.
Socialists need to be able to make the case they’ll defeat Republicans.
This leads directly into the next point. It should have been clear after Joe Biden’s victory over Bernie Sanders in 2020 that the ability to defeat Republicans in general elections is nonnegotiable for Democratic primary voters. In places like New York City, where the GOP runs a local mascot like Curtis Sliwa for mayor rather than an actual candidate, this is less of a concern. But in a state like Wisconsin, where voters remember the devastation wrought by eight years of Scott Walker’s austerity-crazed, viciously antiunion Republican administration, Democratic primary voters were unwilling to take a chance with someone they viewed as less likely to win the general election.
Socialist candidates need to embrace the work of making this case, and need to campaign in a way that demonstrates to voters that we take beating Republicans every bit as seriously as they do.
This is a very important point I rarely see leftists talking about.
Leftists talk about it all the time because we’re forced to defend ourselves against disingenuous “electability” concerns from a political faction that lost twice to a rapist and pedophile with the mental acuity of a 6-year-old. The typical centrist Democrat is historically unelectable and yet they still feel like they’re in a position to lecture progressives on electability, when it should be the other way around.
Democrats get the presidency roughly fifty percent of the time.
What’s the leftist percentage?
This logic suggests that women need not apply for presidential elections, after all, men have won them 100% of the time.
Is that really the rationale you want to lean on?
I think we can do better than that, myself.
But women have gotten many, many more votes than leftists in presidential elections so far so the average voter is definitely more interested in voting for a woman than a leftist.
I know that the amount of sexism with democrats and leftists (just look at the reactions here to the Graham Platner scandal) definitely played a part in Clinton and Harris losing but Biden winning.
But women have gotten many, many more votes than leftists in presidential elections so far so the average voter is definitely more interested in voting for a woman than a leftist.
But there was a point where women had no votes for president, was that a reason for them not to run? Do you really not see the error?
The women also had a lot of people in lower offices so they had put in the ground work too.
Let’s keep those goalposts where they are for a little longer: are you still saying that because any given subset of people haven’t been in past presidential elections, they shouldn’t run for president? I think it’s important to grasp what that does to the pool of people that are considered suitable for the presidency.
That statistic implies nothing except a confirmation of our deeply entrenched two-party system.
Unfortunately it is our reality for the foreseeable future and it would be for the best of everyone to be able to recognize that fact.
The most electable Democrat in US history was FDR, who ran on a platform with far more in common with the DSA platform than the modern Democratic party. The DSA is employing an entryist strategy to restore the Democratic party to its former glory during the rollout of the New Deal. The recent wave of DSA-backed candidates are fully cognizant of the fact we have an entrenched two-party system and are acting accordingly.
FDR was president almost a hundred years ago.
Enough time for the Democratic party to completely abandon the economic populism that once made it so popular they had to create term limits to put a stop to it.
There’s a cadre of chodes out there who think that anything short of immediate overturn of the entire system is unacceptable. Overturn to what, they can’t say.
All candidates are not the same and candidate quality is very important, as much as policy positions. Some great DSA and DSA-aligned candidates have won their primaries, endorsed by Bernie and AOC. But in their judgement they both decided not to endorse Hong.
As a deeply concerned US voter who desperately wants a massive blue wave in November, I am very pleased with this result.
I don’t care if you hate milquetoast moderates. We need leadership that the broadest possible swathe of society will consider legitimate
“We don’t need policies that will help people…we just need to win elections”, is literally why things suck so much.
Having amazing policies does nothing to help actual people unless you can enact them. If you want to participate in electoral politics (as opposed to building working class power directly) then winning elections is one of the core components of that.
Democrats have an incredibly easy opportunity right now, just like in 2020 and 2024. They could simply point to all the bad stuff the Republicans have done and promise to do better things. The Dems should be winning by outstanding margins by promising very simple things, like not shooting immigrants or making groceries cheaper. Instead, the Dems promise nothing and as a result, what should be really easy races become down to the wire nail biters.
The Democrat party simply needs to follow the playbook of the most successful Democrat in history, FDR. Promise progressive policies and then actively work towards those policies and you get elected so often they gotta change the rules to stop you from getting re-elected. We can see this with the most popular modern Dem president Obama. He did half the equation, promise progressive change, and even though he didn’t follow through, dude got elected twice and is still a household name in the Dem party. Clinton, Biden, and Kamala weren’t even willing to lie about enacting positive changes and Biden only won because Trump’s COVID policies killed over a million people. Even then, Biden won by a tiny margin when, again, he should have won by an incredible margin.
Dems don’t promise nothing, they promised to go to war and crush the progressives.
You do understand how it works, right?
If you don’t win the election, the other side does.
… and even if you win, if a big chunk of the population doesn’t consider you legitimate, that is society slowly disintegrating
People won’t vote for policies that will help them.
Good old fashioned human stupidity is why things suck so much.
You do understand that the majority of MAGA believe their policies help people?
(yes, they only include people like themselves, but to have a properly nuanced understanding you should acknowledge that your political opponents believe themselves to be doing good)
You do understand that the majority of MAGA believe their policies help people?
They believe it helps them, and that’s all they care about. Themselves. As far as “people” in general, they couldn’t give less of a shit.
Sure. It’s fine to acknowledge that they think they’re helping people…but the real nuance comes from understanding that those policies actually aren’t helping people.
milquetoast moderates
The big takeaway for me is people are u ironically calling Crowley a “milquetoast moderate”…
Dude has literally sued his police department…
Not just personally sued them, joined an existing ACLU class action.
Then became vice chair of the same city:s ACLU chapter…
I wanted Hong to win too, but it’s concerning so many people are quick to paint this guy like you just did.
He seems fine, and while I may have missed something, I usually don’t.
He supports the genocide in Gaza and cynically weaponizes identity politics to defend his position. He said he considers being called an establishment candidate a slur. Crowley is not fine, he’s a sellout who fails the most basic test of moral character that is condemning an ongoing genocide in which our own government is complicit.
Aipac is the enemy on that we all agree
Right…
So if someone showed he was working with AIPAC, that would be a bad thing…
But no one has so what the fuck are you taking about?
So I’m looking and I have no idea why I wrote this. I think maybe I responded to the wrong person? This has nothing to do with what you said, apologies
The DSP arm hate the impure: anyone slightly less to the left than them.
Dynamics work the same on the edges, left or right
Not really, it’s desperate propaganda to divide the party.
What I did was say that divide is stupid and highlight that sometimes more than one person running in a primary could make a good politician.
What you did, was divide the party
Uh… leadership that doesn’t do shit isn’t famous for having a lot of legitimacy. These days milquetoast moderates only have legitimacy among other milquetoast moderates; the days when a moderate one-size-fits-no-one politicians will have people shrug their shoulder and think “oh well” are long gone. People today want politicians who have concrete solutions to the problems of the working class and are willing to work to make them happen; that’s how you build legitimacy in 2026.
