Simple. The Dems with real power were acting like they were woke-friendly because they thought it would win them the election. These corporate Dems don't really care about this stuff, they just want the W.
Apparently they didn't get the memo everyone else did: woke is not longer in vogue.
Freddie reserves the word “Left” for “economic Leftism” - basically Bernie, minimum. Social liberalism isn’t included as much under the umbrella, and Identity politics aren’t included at all. It’s admittedly confusing.
I would imagine it's because Democrats are theoretically a lot closer to the kind of economic Leftism that Lasagna suggests, than Republicans. I mean, on a Left/Right political scale it is. It's kinda like trying to go from wherever you are to the next state, as opposed to the next country; Democrats are just locationally closer to what a typical marxist would want to see in a government.
Granted like you said those right/left distinctions are getting more and more meaningless as time goes on though, it's mostly a money grab now. I've heard some people suggest that the new scale is more accurately described as establishment/anti-establishment. /shrug
And that was the same election when this left-liberal stopped voting for Democrats for federal office. I’ve been waiting almost 25 years for them to become a dovish, working-class party again that I could find my way back home. But alas!
Not if he doesn't live in a "swing state" - and it remains to be seen how much Trump's policies will differ from those of the Corporate Democrats as far as the working class is concerned.
Well, Trump had the decisive edge for dovish people concerned with working class issues. Is there any reason for people who want those things to have voted for Kamala Harris? Or AnYoNe BuT TrUmP?
Your candidate lost. She didn't win over voters, many of whom just stayed home. People can vote for whatever they like.
Equating a vote for a third party candidate or a non-vote for the candidate you like as "voting for the other candidate" or "getting them elect" is a really, really sad cope for the failings of your candidate.
Your candidate lost. Get over it and please get a different strategy than this pathetic finger wagging that will never change anyone's mind.
Drinking age was 18 until the mid to late 80s and the legal limit was 0.10 or something like that. Also, the cops were very lenient. I grew up in West Texas and was allowed to continue driving myself home numerous times in the late 80s and early 90s after having been pulled over for any number of things. And without being ticketed.
Clintonism didn't lose, because it legitimately captured the only people the real decision makers on the left have in the G20: white people in the professional managerial class who can afford to pay lip service to stupid bullshit because they're well off enough not to care about the outcomes.
Has it legitimately occurred to anyone here is that the best argument for the Democratic party to shift to the right is because the majority of the American people are a hell of lot closer to positions staked out on the right than those on the left?
The left used to own this position on economic issues, but squandered that (for ... reasons?) and on every other issue, is way, way, way to the left of the median American voter.
Americans overwhelmingly do not support unrestricted abortion rights. They do not support "gender affirming care" for children. They do not support abolishing or defunding policing. They support Israel and despise Hamas. They do not support open borders.
Opposing endless, pointless, wars? Ironically, the right owns that now, so I'll give you that. The arc of history.
So beyond that, what "further left" positions are being advocated here beyond the stuff people have already soundly rejected the left positions on? Even as they simultaneously, ironically!, scream about wanting more "free stuff" from the government? Is that the whole substance of the "shift left" argument? More "free" shit?
The idea that the problem is that Democrats shifted too far right rather than left is utterly unconvincing. I don't see it.
That boils down to "prosperity" which the right has a position on too, they just don't see it as a social safety net (though the American right does support that).
Again, I beg people here: has anyone actually considered that the United States is not Denmark, in circumstances *or* social and cultural attitudes?
This is an enormous blindspot for PMC liberals, and as much as I like Freddie and how he differentiates himself from Acela Corridor shitlib mainstreamers, this take falls into the same trap.
The Democrats must shift right to win for the very simple fact that the American populace is, for lots of reasons, way, way to the right of where they pivot too except on the issue of "I pay taxes and want unlimited 'free' shit in exchange for that"
The US doesn't have to be Denmark. It also doesn't have to be Somalia.
Anyway, end the empire and the stupid wars and there will be a lot $$ to go around, now that were are not investing money in projects with negative ROI.
Seriously, an empire needs a Scary Enemy at all times.
1. To justify why we can't have nice things. Healthcare? Infrastructure? Education? We don't have time for that now, don't you know we gotta fight Saddam/Milosevic/Bin Laden/Saddam again/Ghadaffi/Assad/ISIS/Putin/Hamas/Houthis/ad nauseam.
2. To justify crackdowns on civil liberties. You and your namby-pamby Bill of Rights, you hate our freedom! What, are you on the side of the fascists/communists/Islamicists/Russians/ ad nauseam?
We already spend significantly more than any other country on healthcare; we have more healthcare than we know what to do with.
We spend more per-pupil on education than anyone, and yet there are giant stacks of studies showing that the per-pupil spend either has no relation to, or a negative correlation with, achievement because huge amounts of that money go into the maw of corrupt teacher's unions and public contractors.
"Anyway, end the empire and the stupid wars and there will be a lot $$ to go around, now that were are not investing money in projects with negative ROI."
The entire defense budget is less than 20% of current entitlement spending. You could wipe out the entire defense budget and you would not be able to afford European style welfareism.
Defense is by far the largest nondiscretionary item in the budget, and the biggest entitlements are social security, etc., which are financed through earmarked taxes.
If the entire "defense" budget was wiped out, the US economy would go into a massive tailspin. You do understand why there is a military base and a group of military contractors related or unrelated to the corresponding base in just about every US congressional district, right?
Ever read the news when they were doing BRAC or when an MIC contractor said they were going to pick up and leave or close down shop? Any idea just how far into every aspect of American economic life the MIC has its tentacles?
Now, it's a much more complicated scenario if we were going to talk about shutting down the military budget and re-allocating it to other programs AND industries capable of providing a welfare-like system that also makes things and provides services to actual American communities, and one that there is simply no room to get into here, either in favor or against.
No, the vast, vast, vast majority of the federal budget is Medicare and Social Security, and existing debt-service. If we wanted to balance the budget, we'd basically have to cut everything else just to keep up with those three.
It doesn't matter - it's still all part of one expense column on the balance sheet, and even with the way it's supposed to be paid for, it's bleeding out money hand over fist.
So what have the Democrats done about this other than "Obamacare" which was a giveaway to the capitalist 'healthcare industry'? The right sure as fuck isn't going to do it, since they are and always have been owned by the oligarch arch-capitalists.
Unless you look at the plurality of polling going back several decades. If you do, I'm sure you'll find many questions framed different ways, many of which likely elucidated 5, 30 or 180 second answers, and mostly favoring a form of universal healthcare.
But to your example:
"Sure we want universal healthcare" - if it's 57-70% of people answering that way in 5 seconds, is that not something to consider?
""As long as you don't mess with my company health benefits." - If 10% of people added that caveat I'd be surprised. And the ones most likely to are the people working for large organizations or institutions with numerical bargaining power, i.e., state governments, school districts and massive companies. The same or better bargaining power accrues when its EVERYBODY potentially under the same negotiating umbrella. So if the question were phrased that way and allowed an answer commensurate with the new phrasing, I'm fully confident that the percentage in favor of a universal healthcare OPTION would be the same, if not higher.
""And don't raise my taxes, the rich gotta pay for it." (And unfortunately there aren't enough rich people to pay for it.)" - An insurance/hospital/pharmaceutical industry narrative strawman or canard that is not based on empirical reality or the actual policy proposals in question.
But...in fact even IF taxes were SLIGHTLY raised on the upper and lower middle classes, their overall annual expenditures would go down to a degree that more than offsets any minor increase in income tax. So again, if the question was phrased in a manner that explained this using hard math and real-world examples, I have full confidence that the overall percentage of Americans favoring some kind of universal healthcare or universal healthcare option would remain the same or go up from where it has already polled. Also, do you have any idea how much taxpayer money ALREADY goes to PRIVATE healthcare, as in straight out of taxes levied against income (that you never take home to begin with)?
If we define "left" by the mostly symbolic language games and identity nonsense that dominates the party, then, yes, they are to the left of most voters. It's not about "free shit". It's about seeing that your taxes, in some way, made your own life a little better. Imagine the potential of that.
'every other issue?' Not way to the left of America generally on healthcare safety nets, labor unions, consumer protection, workplace safety regulation, clean air/water. All things the GOP votes against time and again.
And Freddie isn't saying Democrats shifted too far to the left.
I literally wrote that he didn't. I said he SHOULD have, because they did. They are so far to the left of the Average American, I doubt they could see them in a side view mirror.
The idea that the Democratic party just needs to shift further left to appeal to average American voters is totally delusional and divorced from reality.
You're right! And I fixed it. This is what happens when you spend an entire paragraph writing left and right too many times while trying to Tweet simultaneously.
And while you seem (?) to give Dems a pass on economic issues, you don't specify what they get right. Fact is Dems are in line with Americans generally about taxing the rich more and reining in corporate power and influence. Freddie is right they they do more talking than acting on this.
I think the challenge is that Americans aren't terribly coherent. 'Universal healthcare' (which could mean a whole lot of things) polls well but the taxes to pay for it don't. People say they care a lot about climate change but also say they wouldn't want to personally pay small amounts of money to combat it. We are culturally about the most welcoming country in the world to immigrants, and we are very sympathetic to the hard scrabble, but the polls also show people are really mad about the total collapse of border security and farcical state of the asylum system
One could go on and on like that. And the position of Democrats has gotten even harder by Trump's attempt to do his own triangulation dance on entitlements. Currently they may be in a worst of all worlds and they need to break out of it.
All of that said, it is far from obvious that there is a big, harder left constituency in the US ready to deliver elections for whoever can tap into it. There are however plenty of people alienated by what is (fairly or unfairly) regarded as leftist cultural claptrap. Despite Freddie's principled protestations, that is what most people think leftism is.
I teach politics and government at a university in Australia, and even among my students the number who subscribe to some overarching ideology (be that liberalism, socialism, conservatism, libertarianism, social democracy or whatever) has always been a minority.
Also, I think that if we were to closely examine the combinations of political positions that form the packages we think of as "Left", "Centre" and "Right" in the contemporary world, we could find some very interesting and glaring contradictions in all camps. We would probably also find that the contradictions in the positions of the "Left" camp are obvious to people in the "Right" camp, and vice versa, but that few can see the beam in their own eye.
Part of the problem is that partisans are eager to use single issue polling to advance an agenda. Obviously people would be happy to get "free" health care but that's not the real world. The polling that asks what kinds of new taxes people would be willing to pay for that health care is obviously far more relevant and it's easily graspable by the general public. But it doesn't serve a bullshit narrative so it gets ignored.
"'Universal healthcare' (which could mean a whole lot of things) polls well but the taxes to pay for it don't."
That's the Fox News take. Depending on how it would be structured, and this applies to most proposals, it's not a question of whether or how "the taxes" will pay for it. From a small business or individual perspective, the costs of healthcare will go so far down that it will more than offset any small rise in taxes among certain socio-economic constituencies. IOW, so-called Medicare for All would REDUCE the effective tax burden for the vast majority of Americans.
That's fantasy my friend. There are no free lunches. Which doesn't mean I'm against fixing our system to get to true universal coverage (it's probably my biggest issue). But even other developed countries that spend less on healthcare the tax burden is a lot higher on the middle class, and in ways that would be really tough for Americans to swallow. You're also assuming savings would flow to individuals, which, to put it mildly, would be TBD.
Beyond supporting the basic existence of a safety net and trade unionism, both of which are now owned by the Trumpian evolution of the GOP, they're getting nothing right here. On any issue.
What are they getting right here? Throwing another hundred billion to Ukraine? Keeping Israel from destroying Hamas? Climate change catastrophism and scarcity fetishism?
All of those are as popular with American voters as genital herpes. The Democratic party threw out bullshit, which is fine, but their fatal flaw is that after a few years, people in positions of influence started taking that bullshit seriously. Or pretending to take it seriously.
Either way, the only solution is a clean wipe and restart. The brand is just fucking toxic now.
You are confusing "americans' with "republicans". The latter are much more strongly against materially supporting democratic Ukraine against its dictatorial invader/aggressor.
Anybody who's paying attention to the course of the war knows that Ukraine is in deep, deep trouble. If Americans believed that the Ukrainians are on the verge of defeat would they still be in favor of military aid?
Again, you're through the looking glass. The Democrats have moved steadily to the right on every major economic and class policy issue since the 1970s. What you're doing here is refusing to listen to the *actual* left and applying some right-wing talk radio filter to reality. So let's hear what various elements of the left are really saying:
P.S. How did Kamala's embrace of the Cheney family in a bid to lure more conservative, right and center-right voters work out for her? How about the Biden administration's embrace of endless foreign wars, which has historically been a right position (regardless of which of the two wings of the Uni-Party are in office)?
You're free to provide some examples of the Corporate Democrats moving to the left and watching it fail. Please do so.
Instead, so far all you have are emotions, feelings, and meaningless phrases - no concrete real world arguments. For one thing, I never said "Pivoting to REAL leftism has never been tried!" when talking about actual US Democrat vs. Republican politics - That's just one of your emotional straw man arguments. In fact I'd argue that it HAS been flirted with, even tried in some instances, and it WORKED. Further, I've pointed out in other comments that Donald Trump co-opted Bernie Sanders' own leftist economic populist talking points and attacked Hillary from the left on those issues. Do you refute that? If so, how?
What I also said was let's ask the actual left whether the Democrats have moved in any meaningful way toward that direction on any economic or foreign policies or whether they've moved to the right instead. I provided two links to two prominent left-leaning or leftist publications which lay out the case for how the Democrats have moved to the right, along with the Overton Window.
So again, do you have anything concrete to discuss?
I saw some data this morning on how the working class perceives the two parties, and one optimistic spot was healthcare. Republicans "only" had a two-point advantage on healthcare, and among Hispanic working class voters, Democrats had a 24-point advantage.
So while I agree with RW that the party is too far to the left on many topics, if they became more moderate on cultural issues and immigration, and campaigned on reducing healthcare costs, that could potentially win some of these voters.
Polling consistently shows a large majority of Americans are satisfied with their current health care. It's a lousy issue to try to hitch one's political wagon to because it has no urgency and people just don't care about it.
There's an appetite for tinkering around the edges, but change on a massive scale?
IIRC Obamacare was estimated to extend coverage to 17 million additional Americans. That's tiny. It has symbolic significance for both sides that is far out of proportion to its actual impact on either the economy or the health care system. And even with its modest impact Obamacare was still a big reason behind the "shellacking" the Democrats got in the midterms of 2010.
The political weakness of Obamacare was that it didn’t set the subsidy limits high-enough. Those families below the annual income limit that qualified did comparatively well under Obamacare. Those just above the limits got royally screwed.
Mind you, all that came about because he needed to make the CBO numbers work out so his program would be graded as debt-neutral or better in a 10 year window. A requirement—along with abandoning the public-option—that was forced upon him by insurance companies and Congressional Republicans.
In retrospect, he coulda just said “fuck the CBO I’m going to give working-class people cheap healthcare” that would have been good politics for 2024, but not in 2008.
Hate to split hairs here, but I will. "...white people in the professional managerial class who can afford to pay lip service to stupid bullshit because they're well off enough not to care about the outcomes." It's not just white people in the PMC; there's a whole lot of POC doing the same thing.
Oreo, coconut, banana, take your pick - it's just all Acela Corridor shitlib watercooler jargon for "stupid fucking coalition ethnics don't even know that we know what's AcKShuALLy best for them".
I would disagree with you that most Americans are closer to Right positions than Left - at least in the classic liberal/conservative sense. I think a heckuva lot of Americans who identified as Left a decade ago have moved Right not because they agree more with Republican policies or issues, but rather the new 'Progressive' Left has scared them into doing so.
Freedom of Speech is probably the easiest example of this. The 1st Amendment used to be to the Left what the 2nd Amendment is for the Right. Since the New Progressives have shown they don't really care all that much for it anymore, and are still nominally calling the shots for the Dems (although this election dealt them a huge blow), the Right is happy as all hell to claim the 1st Amendment as their own...however disingenuous that claim may be.
Unrestricted abortions, sex changes for kids, abolishing the police, taking down all the border fences...these are not typical Liberal stances. They are New Progressive stances, and I think it would be wise to try and distinguish between the two. What Freddie is talking about, Clintonism, is a third offshoot of the Democratic party that is center Right.
But it has been well documented many times over that most Americans would indeed prefer a lot of classic 'Left' issues like state-funded affordable health care and schooling, affordable housing, living wages, and lower taxes for at least the bottom half.
I'm not sure what issues you are talking about, unless you are talking about opposing 'woke' stuff...which almost everyone already does. Or maybe having low taxes, which everybody also wants. As for the Israel/Hamas thing, I would bet it's a lot closer than you think if you distinguish between Hamas and Palestinians...they aren't the same thing.
One of the most frustrating things about the Trump phenomenon is is that he’s reclaiming economic positions—and getting votes and support from them—that the Democratic Party abandoned en masse in the aftermath of the Dukakis defeat in the late 1980’s. He’s just rebranded and red-coded them as “America First” populism.
I was way too young to know better then, but nowadays I often wonder how different (if any) things would be had he won then. I see Dukasis' defeat as a real watershed moment, a bigger moment than Gore's or McCain's defeat anyway. And not just for Dems but for the country as a whole. Perhaps I'm artificially inflating the whole thing, it's hard to say with what-ifs. But I still think he would have made a great president.
Dukakis lost to “kindler, gentler” Reaganism, which itself was past its peak marketing appeal. A lot of Clinton’s appeal in 1992 was his youthful “freshness”. Trump’s appeal in 2016 and 2024 was a kind of repackaged freshness of a different sort. The ideological positions taken by those candidates were almost besides the point.
This has got to be one of the most vile partisan-right comments I've ever read at this blog for the level of open mendacity, bad faith/disingenuous arguments, and logical fallacies. And that it is getting most of the 'likes' at this point shows how much of Freddie's readership uses this blog as a stalking horse of sorts for conservatives looking for what they think is the left criticizing/eating itself when it is really the rational left (Freddie) criticizing the center-right Democratic Party (aka liberals and neo-liberals). Let's begin:
Used to own what position? I suppose you are trying to say that the left had more economically popular policies. Guess what, they still do. See Bernie Sanders. The Democrats have ABANDONED the left, not embraced it. This will become a common theme.
*"...the best argument for the Democratic party to shift to the right is because the majority of the American people are a hell of lot closer to positions staked out on the right than those on the left..."
Unfortunately for your "point", the Democratic Party *HAS* shifted to the right and that's largely what Freddie and the left criticize it for. Perhaps some shallow populist rhetoric occasionally makes it through the Corporate Democrats' K-Street narrative filter, but find me a single far-reaching economic or socio-economic issue where the elected Democrats have legitimately moved to the left in terms of policy fights.
Open borders? That's a Libertarian/libertarian issue, not a "left" issue. The left advocates for working class solidarity *across* borders, not open borders. It was the conservative GOP whose donor class consisted of agri-business (mega-farms, meat and poultry packing) and manufacturing (garment industry, automotive) that has historically pushed for increased immigration into the US and the removal of economic borders outside of the US so they could lower their bottom line and increase profits at the expense of the American and foreign (Mexican in the case of NAFTA) working and farming classes. That Bill Clinton ultimately signed it into law (along with other policies conceived by conservatives) says to you that the Democrats have moved to the left?! You're delusional.
"Unrestricted" abortion rights? Not a "left" issue and a straw man, to boot. It's a liberal/libertarian issue. Has little to do with day-to-day or long-term working class solidarity important to the left, but if in fact it was a "left" issue, what have the Corporate Democrats done about abortion rights/access from a hard *POLICY* standpoint? Little to nothing. So either way you slice it the Democrats have either moved to the right or ignored what you're labeling the "left" on the wedge issue, except, you guessed it: exploiting the wedge issue during election campaigns for scare mongering and fund raising in liberal circles. On top of all this, in fact the majority of Americans across all political affiliations favor the right to abortion access according to a spectrum of reasonable parameters.
Gender affirming care? Another Democrat/liberal issue. Nothing to do with the left.
Endless wars? Another shared GOP/Democrat neocon/neoliberal policy constant. Endless wars are necessary for the capitalist-imperialist system to avoid major contractions and continue "endless" growth in the core of the imperium and ensuring chaos and instability at the fringes of empire to fracture the working classes there, remove governments from power that want to nationalize their resources and/or protect their own citizens from rapacious/extractive western finance-capitalists and, by extension, the PMC and wealthy donor shareholders' stakes in them. So again, you're "confusing" (conflating) Democrats for (with) the left. The American left is anti-war on principle. The elected and bureaucratic Democrats are not. Only if you think you can completely re-define and re-group massive swaths of the American and European publics into brand new "left" and "right" camps is it remotely possible to say that the right "owns" opposition to endless foreign wars.
And it gets better: What have/will YOUR chosen policy makers on the right *ACTUALLY* do when it comes to these wars, covert regime change actions, and other meddling abroad that is absolutely crucial to maintaining the western capitalist system? Do you sincerely think that Trump will gut the DOD, close down any of the 800-something military bases or installations throughout the world and stop taking threatening/warlike postures against "enemies" like China, Russia and even socialist Latin American countries (from where, by the way, the vast majority of the unwanted immigrants are coming across the "open borders" and functioning as lagging indicators on Hillary and Trump's LA policies)? Keep dreaming, and I didn't even mention Iran.
The TL/DR version of the above is that without even seeming to realize it, you agree with Freddie about the Democrats (or Clintonite/Obama Democrats) moving to the right while either ignoring the fact that the right, historically and presently, elects politicians who do the same things or applying a double standard that favors the right/conservatives on the issues in question.
If you looked at the past four years in terms of what the Democrats did with the political power they gained in 2020 (in Washington and in state governments alike) and said to yourself, "hmm, yes, all this is very right wing Clinton era Democratic party politics", you'd have to be out of your mind or inhabit some political space to the left of the lunatics who were rioting for Hamas at Ivy League schools.
I wondered how long it would take for someone here to try and pivot to "but REAL leftism has not been tried!", because not only is it wrong, it's also completely unrelated to the point that I made about American voters are generally are to the right of where Democrats, never mind "the AcKSHuAL left" that can't even get Bernie Sanders on a presidential ballot, are politically.
And its not like voters are shy about this! Every conceivable poll consistently take views that lean further to the right (as currently defined by the GOP) than to left (currently defined by the Dems, let alone the lunatic "AcKsHuaL LeFT"), on a plurality of issues!
And the most ironic thing is that Trump captured a lot of those because the Democrats, and even the "real left" abandoned them entirely.
The reason Trump won is because he paid attention to what the voters said they wanted, and said he would do it in exchange for making him president. It was really that simple. But since the Kayfabe requires pretending Trump is some sort of Pat Buchanan right winger, the Democrats and the "AcKSHuAL LeFT" (LOL) keep seeking more leftward distance between themselves and median voters. And then claiming it's the voters fault, and not theirs!
How can anyone imagine that's a politically coherent approach to building political coalitions? Let alone actually acheiving political power?
"....the left of the lunatics who were rioting for Hamas at Ivy League schools."
And there we have it. You're a deranged delusional Zionist. "Rioting for Hamas?" You lost all credibility in your first sentence.
"American voters are generally are to the right of where Democrats, never mind "the AcKSHuAL left" that can't even get Bernie Sanders on a presidential ballot, are politically."
"Can't even get..." him on the ballot? LMFAO! How about "The right-leaning Democrats aCTuAlLLY SaBOTagED his candidacy under their aegis?!" You do realize that Donald Trump won in 2016 in large part by co-opting Bernie Sanders' talking points and doing an end-around on Hillary ... FROM THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC LEFT?!
But I'll play along - Name some policy issues where the majority of Americans are to the right of Democrats. Back it up with polls or any sort of analysis you want. But define the actual policy issues in question first.
"...keep seeking more leftward distance between themselves and median voters. And then claiming it's the voters fault, and not theirs!"
More empty AM talk radio rhetoric unless you can name any "leftward distance" in terms of politicking OR policies from Obama to Hillary to Biden to Harris.
"I wondered how long it would take for someone here to try and pivot to "but REAL leftism has not been tried!""
Well then I guess you can keep wondering since nothing in my comment explicitly said that nor implied it from the American political/economic perspective. And you're being super disingenuous again there, because nobody, ever has said that "but REAL LEFTISM has not been tried!" That was an argument for "real communism" and it's completely irrelevant to my comment or this discussion in general.
The Democrats could run Mitt Romney for president in 2028 and if he lost, Klein and Yglesias would say it’s because the party pandered to the left too much.
1. "When the Democrats lose, there’s always pressure within the party to move to the right; this is also true when the Democrats win. It’s true when the economy is bad, and when the economy is good, in times of war and in times of peace, when the party is in power or out of power, when the day of the week ends in y…. It’s the Groundhog Day reality of the modern Democratic party, an infinite regress."
This is because the donors want Team D to basically be corporate imperialist muppets, basically Team R, but with more pronouns. Unless and until the donors go on strike, Team D will be their loyal fartcatcher.*
*Note that Tema D insisted with one voice that Biden was as "sharp as a tack" until the donors said "no more", whereupon the senile old turd was uncermoniously dumped and replaced with Harris.
2. Let us pretend that Trump and Team R really were as bad as we are regularly assured. That in turn raises the question of how unappealing Team D must be, if they were unable to convince enough of the public to vote for Harris instead of an amalgam of Literal Hitler, Caligula, and Simon LeGree all rolled into a weaponized virus?
I mean, Harris only had a 2-1 spending advantage and the MSM to act as her unpaid marketing interns, not to mention the Justice Department on her side. But with all those advantages, Harris got trounced by someone we are reguarly assured is both utterly incompetent (granted, there), but also Evil Incarnate.
"If the rule that you followed led you to this, of what use then was the rule?" - Anton Chigurh
Exactly. The corporations/banks and oligarchs own the Democratic Party now by virtue of endless money allowed in electoral and legislative politics (Citizens United and dark money) and the Clintonite shift to the economic right. Hence, the Democrats have shifted ever to the right in terms of real economic* policy while their K-Street publicity/lobbying firms have managed to use some of those billions to woke wash, rainbow wash, and green wash the narrative in order to keep the liberal/neoliberal factions of their electorate happy.
* It's impossible to divorce economic policy from foreign policy when the country's economy is based on endless expansion of markets and resources for extractive and rent-seeking capitalists. There will ALWAYS be 'endless' foreign wars and regime change/regime sabotage actions as long as there are foreign countries with resources or markets to exploit, and especially when those countries have leaders that want or try to minimize the western finance-capitalist class's ability to extract rent and resources - or stand in the way entirely by nationalizing them. You see, even if it's Denmark - a tiny country - we're talking about, it's terrible for western capitalists to allow them to have a socialist-leaning system because it serves as a threat of a good example.
Freddie repeatedly claims the Republicans always pull right, and never try to triangulate back to the center. As a counter-argument, I would point out how much the Republicans got rebuked in the 2022 midterms, primarily because of abortion. After that, lots of Republicans started moderating their pro-life stance and find a compromise position more or less like Roe -- which is what most of the country wants and what most of the rest of the Western world already does. God knows they gave up on fiscal conservatism long ago, despite a minor revolt from the Tea Party. Even when they controlled the government they couldn't bring themselves to kill Obamacare, because, surprise, even Republican voters kinda like the idea of everyone having healthcare. It's not just a tug-of-war. There really is a center of gravity in the middle, pulling against the extreme positions in both parties.
I would be careful about the latter point--there's an awful lot of movies and video games that seem to reinforcing the cliche of "go woke, get broke" in terms of sales numbers.
It's not the wokeness in the games. It's that the games are not very good. Some of the most popular games in the past several years have options for transgender and nonbinary characters (Cyberpunk 2077 and Balder's Gate 3 to name two) and yet are very successful. Because they are good games. Much like the series Arcane: it was woke, but also really fucking good.
Sounds like you agree with me regarding games. Those games were good, so no one cared about the social justice bits. By the way, the Harry Potter game had plenty of social justice tropes in it, too, but it was a good game, so no one cared.
Arcane was a TV series and not a movie, but it seems like a similar thing. If the movie is great, no one really cares if there's some woke bits in it. Hollywood has been far to the left of the median American for years, and still managed to produce beloved and very successful movies that had their more left values on full display. Just look at most Disney films from the 90s.
The writing in games is atrocious, like something a 13 year old boy will turn out. But that's largely ok. Games get away with that because nobody actually pays attention to the story as compared to hitting ESC to fast forward past the cut scenes.
Movies, on the other hand, don't have that luxury. If their stories are awful they can't count on gameplay to bail them out. As for the politics, what's the political slant of the Fast and the Furious movies, or 90% of what Hollywood churns out?
The woke aren't the cultural centre. Similarly, it's notable when any bits of far-right entertainment experience commercial success.
Think instead of gay marriage. It was not at all mainstream in pop culture in 1995, even among the respectable left, but by 2015 it was ubiquitous. The pace of change in cultural attitudes towards gays in 20 years - and even more surprisingly, SSM - was breathtaking.
Trump's own policies are a triumph of Republican triangulation. He got the party to moderate on social security, Medicare, abortion and free trade. The idea that Republicans only ever pull further to the right is delusional.
How about Americans just like changing things up every eight years as an explanation of why Gore lost? There are a lot of variables at play here and to cast Gore's defeat as a repudiation of Clinton's policy of triangulation given Clinton's personal success is a bit of a stretch.
Agreed. VPs have to run both with and against their boss' record, and that's often a difficult needle to thread (ask Harris). The scandal factor also significantly affected Gore's chances, especially among D-leaners that figured out who Clinton was between 1992 and 2000.
W. came across as much more relatable than Gore, although I personally thought he was a bigger phony than Gore. They were both phony.
I'm not usually prone to such things, but the country would have been much better served if McCain had beat Bush in 2000.
Looking briefly at an estimate of the illegal immigrant population, it is estimated to have more than doubled from 1990 to 2000, from 3.5 million to 8.4 million. By percentage terms, that's the time period of biggest growth in the last 35 years. It then stays somewhat stable for most of the 2000s-2010s. All estimates of course, but it seems like the 90s were a bad time for illegal immigration.
My bad, I should have written Clinton would never have allowed illegal immigration given the extraordinary amounts of bad press it received in 2021.
I don't think Clinton has many core political beliefs, but he was extraordinarily sensitive to public sentiment--see welfare reform, his nascent plan to privatize social security, the crime bill, etc. He correctly interpreted the rise of Gingrich's House Republicans as representative of national sentiment and decided that it was better to ride the wave than drown in it.
Yes, to be sure. But in my mind it's pretty obvious that Clinton doesn't care about illegal immigration one way or the other. What is relevant to him is what the public thinks because what the public thinks is directly relevant to his approval ratings.
Illegal immigration is mostly down to the economy, and the 90s was the best decade for that among at least the last 6.
Ironically, if relative economic growth wasn't so strong during Biden's term (after 2021), he wouldn't have had nearly the issue with immigration either.
My understanding of the current border problems is that they arose from increased awareness of some loophole in America's asylum laws. I'm not sure exactly how much discretion the executive branch has to deal with that. Maybe Clinton would have moved faster than Biden to do what he could to plug the hole, but ultimately it seems like the laws themselves need to be revised. The Republicans in congress would obviously block any attempt to close the loophole, they wanted to let in as many illegals as possible so that they can run on a platform of deporting them.
Trump responded to increased border crossings by blackmailing Mexico into using its newly constituted National Guard--a national police force originally intended to fight drug cartels--to instead perform border security duties. The number of interceptions at the southern border plummeted.
When Biden was elected his administration allowed those agreements to lapse until November of 2023. At that point bad publicity from crimes committed by illegals made the status quo politically untenable and a new agreement with Mexico was reached to restrict the passage of migrants across the country to the border with the US. That is why border crossings in the last year of Biden's administration were basically in line with Trump's.
Now that Trump is back in office he is once again signaling his intent to coerce Mexico into playing the role of border cop, on pain of economic devastation.
It probably depends on whether you actually need asylum or are just applying to take advantage of the loophole. Mexico is probably more attattractive than a lot of places people are actively fleeing.
The numbers were a lot lower during Trump's first term when "Remain in Mexico" was introduced so I suspect that there are a sizable number of individuals looking to exploit the asylum loophole for economic gain.
Yes, exactly, and this only surprises people who apparently have trouble believing that massively perverse incentives could ever lead to massively perverse results.
The numbers were a lot lower in MOST of Trump's term because the draconian and unprecedented economic sanctions levied against Venezuela took a while to bite. That country has sent the most migrants over the past several years for the first time in history. Regardless of any "stay in mexico" policy, the numbers successfully crossing into the US were always going to be lower before the results of the sanctions were really felt.
I remember the Republicans in 1996 complaining that Clinton was cheating by stealing all of their positions. That raises the question: if Clinton hadn't tacked right would he have lost?
Understanding Clinton requires examining his biography. He served a single term as governor of Arkansas before losing. The lesson he learned was that you have to go where the voter is. When he ran for President he executed Ricky Ray Rector, who was so profoundly brain damaged that he saved the dessert from his last meal for after the execution, and trashed Sister Souljah to demonstrate his moderate, law and order credentials.
If he hadn't done so would he have beaten Bush? I doubt it. Elevating the left wing of the Democratic Party is a recipe that would leave them on the fringes of political power for decades.
What is "Clintonism" exactly here such that it's distinct from Bill's own character and behaviors?
You can fault Gore for being a lackluster campaigner, but that's not the fault of "Clintonism" either way.
I'd argue Obama was big on Clintonism--he stole Mitt Romney's healthcare plan and was a moderate on most things despite the "hope and change rhetoric." (Remember that the Clintons wanted actual socialized medicine, they just couldn't get it off the ground.)
One can argue Carter's deregulation of major industries was also very Clintonian.
"When the Democrats lose, there’s always pressure within the party to move to the right; this is also true when the Democrats win."
Well, if one accepts the median voter theory then obviously if the left-leaning party loses it was probably at least in part to being a little too lefty on any given issue at any given time.
"the result is a country that moves right regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats win."
Gay marriage.
Interracial marriage.
Women's roles in the workforce and society.
Government spending.
Environmental regulation.
Trump's support of Social Security and Medicare, and avoiding federal restrictions on abortion.
"People like to dismiss this with references to meaningless cultural politics, elite liberal language games and Pride flags flying outside of Raytheon and the like, but such symbols are just that, meaningless."
I assure you the commitment to the Pride agenda was not mere symbols.
"nor any of the rest of them have ever been able to articulate a remotely convincing explanation of how this scenario can result in anything but a right-wing drift."
Your definition of "right" vs. "center" vs. "left" is extraordinarily atypical. Klein and Yglesias advocate for using significant government means to e.g. help the poor.
"instituted Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which codified into policy that openly gay people could not serve in the military"
It was already policy gay people couldn't serve. DADT let them serve if they stayed in the closet and decreased pressure on investigating such things. It was a compromise position that successfully led to full rights.
"used sanctions and bombs to kill countless innocent civilians in Iraq, most of them children, while doing nothing to undermine the regime’s control"
Uh, did he save no Kurdish lives?
"no voters who are motivated by fiscal responsibility are ever going to vote for a Democrat in the first place."
I, for one, exist.
"The Democrats were the party of sober fiscal conservatism and backlash against social change."
Would you prefer Clintonism or Reaganism? Your choice in the 1990s (a period most Americans look back on quite fondly.)
"Like Kamala Harris, Gore had attempted to triangulate his way into a position that conservatives own and will always own"
Remember "compassionate conservatism"? Both sides try to encroach on areas they think they need to.
"Harris, with her absurd efforts to campaign as a tough border cop, Gore, with his relentless insistence that he was the one who would balance America’s checkbook. Voters who care about that stuff are Republicans."
This is such a great explanation for why the Hard Left will not win in the US. A huge number of people care about illegal immigration and fiscal responsibility. (Trump, of course, is terrible at balancing America's checkbook and the GOP has not had a great track record despite all the rhetoric.)
"I’m not going to prosecute the Ralph Nader fight again"
Yeah, why would you. It almost certainly led to Gore's loss because American leftists love nothing more than being self-defeating.
Given how bad you view Bush to have been, shouldn't you be extremely pissed at Nader for remotely contributing to Gore's loss? (Nader was on the record saying he wanted Bush to win.)
I am a Bernie Sanders-style lefty, and I would love to have reason to think that a truly left politician and a party that put left economics at the forefront could win power in the US. But I just don't see evidence for it.
In the early 20th century, blatant inequality and labor unrest propelled working people to make demands and withstand the violent pushback by capital, with significant success. In the mid-20th century, fear of socialism gave working people leverage to make gains through unions and other kinds of organizing. Why has there been nothing comparable since the 1970s?
After unions were weakened and the service economy took hold, has their been any effective organizing by working-class folks? People seem to know they are being exploited. But the messages by democratic socialists like Sanders or reformers like Warren don't seem to have any traction with wage-earners who are struggling.
The only lasting gains seem to be things like the centrist Obama's incrementalist advance in healthcare––won against bloody opposition and fierce headwinds, and opposed or ignored by most working folks, until it was sort of absorbed into their lives and became something they value.
TBF, it was fear of socialism through the lens that all socialism becomes pure state communism. Because there was a healthy and rising middle class, the messaging worked incredibly well. Why rock the boat or endanger our nice suburban lifestyle?
Organizing was infiltrated and effectively co-opted or crushed by capital with the help of the US and state governments after the Powell Memorandum (not saying there is direct causal link, more a contemporaneous one). The 'news media' gradually lost its own labor-left friendly or economic populist stance.
In the 80s, after suffering several national crushing political defeats, the Democrats began to embrace big money too. This became essentially codified under Clinton and by the time Obama took office on a namby pamby hopey changey mildly populist campaign, the ship had mostly sailed. Organized labor was also subject to the same human nature (i.e., greed and lust for power) that any group of people are. Throw in the outside 'help' and the financialization/service-ification of the economy you mentioned and it got even harder to organize. Now that the Dems have totally embraced big tech and have taken to using its power to stifle messaging and organization attempts that are inconvenient to capital/oligarchy it's going to be even harder.
As far as Obamacare, it's interesting. Single payer was off the table from the get go, even a single payer OPTION. So of course the end result, while it did help many people, was a giveaway to the insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital conglomerate industries.
Future Dem candidates need to learn how to use a conservative tone, especially when talking about social issues, while touting more progressive economic messaging.
Plus, voters always want to blame someone/something for their problems (this is Trump's superpower). So, target corporate corruption and greed... for example, corporate ownership of private homes. Is that the sole reason home ownership is out of reach for a huge segment of the population? No, but, it is part of the problem and is a perfect target to pull in pissed off voters.
"Future Dem candidates need to learn how to use a conservative tone, especially when talking about social issues, while touting more progressive economic messaging."
The donors would go apeshit. A lot of consultants wou8ld lose their vacation homes. We are talking vacation homes, here!
"“As I always say to the left, what part of the peace and prosperity were you most upset with?” he asks. “Which part did you hate? Was it the income growth, the employment growth, the drop in welfare rolls, the drop in crime, the fact that America was respected around the world, peace in the Middle East? Which part did you hate most?""
The answer here would be in how the prosperity was distributed. Whose income grew? Whose employment grew after NAFTA?
"the Republican party is a right-wing party that works relentlessly to advance right-wing ends; the Democratic party is a centrist party that only sometimes tries to mildly slow the country’s drift to the right; the result is a country that moves right regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats win. People like to dismiss this with references to meaningless cultural politics, elite liberal language games and Pride flags flying outside of Raytheon and the like, but such symbols are just that, meaningless. In terms of policy we have two right-wing parties of varying extremity and so even modest center-left policy wins become impossible."
Maybe you don't share the definition of left-wing that the majority of Democrats share - I mean I don't know how you can look at FDR and LBJ and not see them as steering the federal government extremely to the left, so much so that we're still working out the contradictions between the bold new government involvement in the economy and the Constitution that's supposed to provide the rules for running our country.
At some point after The Great Society people saw that economic redistribution didn't have the desired effects, it did not resolve poverty or "lift up the working class" in any meaningful, durable way. So by and large leftists switched gears to the grand post-modern Post-Colonial project, where the primary leftist value is making sure no one ever feels like they are disrespected unless they are a regressive mouthbreathing chud conservative.
I'm sorry your movement got hijacked by a weird synthesis of Millenarian faith in the coming Reckoning sans a deity and therapy culture that requires everyone wear a happy face, I would be annoyed at that too. But have faith, I'm a weird classical liberal and "my" movement has been taken over by authoritarian loving hypocrites. It's a weird, sad world.
The Great Society wasn't aimed at lifting up the working class. Its (grandiose, but politics often is) goals were to eliminate poverty and racial inequality. Both of which were hot button issues in the early 60s. Poverty and racial inequality have both lessened in its aftermath. Both are far from being eliminated.
Simple. The Dems with real power were acting like they were woke-friendly because they thought it would win them the election. These corporate Dems don't really care about this stuff, they just want the W.
Apparently they didn't get the memo everyone else did: woke is not longer in vogue.
Freddie reserves the word “Left” for “economic Leftism” - basically Bernie, minimum. Social liberalism isn’t included as much under the umbrella, and Identity politics aren’t included at all. It’s admittedly confusing.
I would imagine it's because Democrats are theoretically a lot closer to the kind of economic Leftism that Lasagna suggests, than Republicans. I mean, on a Left/Right political scale it is. It's kinda like trying to go from wherever you are to the next state, as opposed to the next country; Democrats are just locationally closer to what a typical marxist would want to see in a government.
Granted like you said those right/left distinctions are getting more and more meaningless as time goes on though, it's mostly a money grab now. I've heard some people suggest that the new scale is more accurately described as establishment/anti-establishment. /shrug
And that was the same election when this left-liberal stopped voting for Democrats for federal office. I’ve been waiting almost 25 years for them to become a dovish, working-class party again that I could find my way back home. But alas!
So you essentially voted for Trump - thanks.
Not if he doesn't live in a "swing state" - and it remains to be seen how much Trump's policies will differ from those of the Corporate Democrats as far as the working class is concerned.
Well, Trump had the decisive edge for dovish people concerned with working class issues. Is there any reason for people who want those things to have voted for Kamala Harris? Or AnYoNe BuT TrUmP?
(Spoilers: no, not really)
Your candidate lost. She didn't win over voters, many of whom just stayed home. People can vote for whatever they like.
Equating a vote for a third party candidate or a non-vote for the candidate you like as "voting for the other candidate" or "getting them elect" is a really, really sad cope for the failings of your candidate.
Your candidate lost. Get over it and please get a different strategy than this pathetic finger wagging that will never change anyone's mind.
people who say this are neurologically indistinguishable from a dust mite
"Do you know how drunk you had to be to get a DUI in the 1970s?"
Sorry for wasting the space, but just wanted to add how hilarious this statement is.
Especially in Texas in the 1970s. I didn't think they made that much beer.
Drinking age was 18 until the mid to late 80s and the legal limit was 0.10 or something like that. Also, the cops were very lenient. I grew up in West Texas and was allowed to continue driving myself home numerous times in the late 80s and early 90s after having been pulled over for any number of things. And without being ticketed.
In the 70s, with no objective, measurable standards, you didn't have to be drunk at all.
Clintonism didn't lose, because it legitimately captured the only people the real decision makers on the left have in the G20: white people in the professional managerial class who can afford to pay lip service to stupid bullshit because they're well off enough not to care about the outcomes.
Has it legitimately occurred to anyone here is that the best argument for the Democratic party to shift to the right is because the majority of the American people are a hell of lot closer to positions staked out on the right than those on the left?
The left used to own this position on economic issues, but squandered that (for ... reasons?) and on every other issue, is way, way, way to the left of the median American voter.
Americans overwhelmingly do not support unrestricted abortion rights. They do not support "gender affirming care" for children. They do not support abolishing or defunding policing. They support Israel and despise Hamas. They do not support open borders.
Opposing endless, pointless, wars? Ironically, the right owns that now, so I'll give you that. The arc of history.
So beyond that, what "further left" positions are being advocated here beyond the stuff people have already soundly rejected the left positions on? Even as they simultaneously, ironically!, scream about wanting more "free stuff" from the government? Is that the whole substance of the "shift left" argument? More "free" shit?
The idea that the problem is that Democrats shifted too far right rather than left is utterly unconvincing. I don't see it.
"So beyond that, what "further left" positions are being advocated here beyond the stuff people have already soundly rejected the left positions on? "
Concrete material benefits. Not the kind of leftism that Team D stands for. Think Huey P. Long, not Kamala Harris.
That boils down to "prosperity" which the right has a position on too, they just don't see it as a social safety net (though the American right does support that).
Again, I beg people here: has anyone actually considered that the United States is not Denmark, in circumstances *or* social and cultural attitudes?
This is an enormous blindspot for PMC liberals, and as much as I like Freddie and how he differentiates himself from Acela Corridor shitlib mainstreamers, this take falls into the same trap.
The Democrats must shift right to win for the very simple fact that the American populace is, for lots of reasons, way, way to the right of where they pivot too except on the issue of "I pay taxes and want unlimited 'free' shit in exchange for that"
The US doesn't have to be Denmark. It also doesn't have to be Somalia.
Anyway, end the empire and the stupid wars and there will be a lot $$ to go around, now that were are not investing money in projects with negative ROI.
That's how we get the freedom!
Seriously, an empire needs a Scary Enemy at all times.
1. To justify why we can't have nice things. Healthcare? Infrastructure? Education? We don't have time for that now, don't you know we gotta fight Saddam/Milosevic/Bin Laden/Saddam again/Ghadaffi/Assad/ISIS/Putin/Hamas/Houthis/ad nauseam.
2. To justify crackdowns on civil liberties. You and your namby-pamby Bill of Rights, you hate our freedom! What, are you on the side of the fascists/communists/Islamicists/Russians/ ad nauseam?
We already spend significantly more than any other country on healthcare; we have more healthcare than we know what to do with.
We spend more per-pupil on education than anyone, and yet there are giant stacks of studies showing that the per-pupil spend either has no relation to, or a negative correlation with, achievement because huge amounts of that money go into the maw of corrupt teacher's unions and public contractors.
It benefits a comparative lot of American taxpayers with stock in Raytheon, or jobs at lobbying firms or munitions factories.
I find it kind of amusing that people believe an entire industry, that has less market capitalization than Apple alone, is driving American policy.
"Anyway, end the empire and the stupid wars and there will be a lot $$ to go around, now that were are not investing money in projects with negative ROI."
The entire defense budget is less than 20% of current entitlement spending. You could wipe out the entire defense budget and you would not be able to afford European style welfareism.
Defense is by far the largest nondiscretionary item in the budget, and the biggest entitlements are social security, etc., which are financed through earmarked taxes.
If the entire "defense" budget was wiped out, the US economy would go into a massive tailspin. You do understand why there is a military base and a group of military contractors related or unrelated to the corresponding base in just about every US congressional district, right?
Ever read the news when they were doing BRAC or when an MIC contractor said they were going to pick up and leave or close down shop? Any idea just how far into every aspect of American economic life the MIC has its tentacles?
Now, it's a much more complicated scenario if we were going to talk about shutting down the military budget and re-allocating it to other programs AND industries capable of providing a welfare-like system that also makes things and provides services to actual American communities, and one that there is simply no room to get into here, either in favor or against.
No, the vast, vast, vast majority of the federal budget is Medicare and Social Security, and existing debt-service. If we wanted to balance the budget, we'd basically have to cut everything else just to keep up with those three.
Ss and Medicare are paid for out of special earmarked, not the general budget.
It doesn't matter - it's still all part of one expense column on the balance sheet, and even with the way it's supposed to be paid for, it's bleeding out money hand over fist.
That is not really true. The trust funds are accounting legerdemain.
"(though the American right does support that)" - Indeed.
The majority of Americans polled have and continue to say that the government should provide for some form of universal healthcare:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/468401/majority-say-gov-ensure-healthcare.aspx
So what have the Democrats done about this other than "Obamacare" which was a giveaway to the capitalist 'healthcare industry'? The right sure as fuck isn't going to do it, since they are and always have been owned by the oligarch arch-capitalists.
"The majority of Americans polled have and continue to say that the government should provide for some form of universal healthcare."
The devil is in the details.
The 5 second take in a poll might be: "Sure we want universal healthcare."
The 30 second take might be "As long as you don't mess with my company health benefits."
The 3 minute take might be "And don't raise my taxes, the rich gotta pay for it." (And unfortunately there aren't enough rich people to pay for it.)
Unless you look at the plurality of polling going back several decades. If you do, I'm sure you'll find many questions framed different ways, many of which likely elucidated 5, 30 or 180 second answers, and mostly favoring a form of universal healthcare.
But to your example:
"Sure we want universal healthcare" - if it's 57-70% of people answering that way in 5 seconds, is that not something to consider?
""As long as you don't mess with my company health benefits." - If 10% of people added that caveat I'd be surprised. And the ones most likely to are the people working for large organizations or institutions with numerical bargaining power, i.e., state governments, school districts and massive companies. The same or better bargaining power accrues when its EVERYBODY potentially under the same negotiating umbrella. So if the question were phrased that way and allowed an answer commensurate with the new phrasing, I'm fully confident that the percentage in favor of a universal healthcare OPTION would be the same, if not higher.
""And don't raise my taxes, the rich gotta pay for it." (And unfortunately there aren't enough rich people to pay for it.)" - An insurance/hospital/pharmaceutical industry narrative strawman or canard that is not based on empirical reality or the actual policy proposals in question.
But...in fact even IF taxes were SLIGHTLY raised on the upper and lower middle classes, their overall annual expenditures would go down to a degree that more than offsets any minor increase in income tax. So again, if the question was phrased in a manner that explained this using hard math and real-world examples, I have full confidence that the overall percentage of Americans favoring some kind of universal healthcare or universal healthcare option would remain the same or go up from where it has already polled. Also, do you have any idea how much taxpayer money ALREADY goes to PRIVATE healthcare, as in straight out of taxes levied against income (that you never take home to begin with)?
If we define "left" by the mostly symbolic language games and identity nonsense that dominates the party, then, yes, they are to the left of most voters. It's not about "free shit". It's about seeing that your taxes, in some way, made your own life a little better. Imagine the potential of that.
'every other issue?' Not way to the left of America generally on healthcare safety nets, labor unions, consumer protection, workplace safety regulation, clean air/water. All things the GOP votes against time and again.
And Freddie isn't saying Democrats shifted too far to the left.
I literally wrote that he didn't. I said he SHOULD have, because they did. They are so far to the left of the Average American, I doubt they could see them in a side view mirror.
The idea that the Democratic party just needs to shift further left to appeal to average American voters is totally delusional and divorced from reality.
You literally wrote:
"The idea that the problem is that Democrats shifted too far left rather than right is utterly unconvincing. I don't see it."
Think it's a typo.
Think so too. Otherwise it's kind of incoherent.
You're right! And I fixed it. This is what happens when you spend an entire paragraph writing left and right too many times while trying to Tweet simultaneously.
Thanks, Steve!
And while you seem (?) to give Dems a pass on economic issues, you don't specify what they get right. Fact is Dems are in line with Americans generally about taxing the rich more and reining in corporate power and influence. Freddie is right they they do more talking than acting on this.
I think the challenge is that Americans aren't terribly coherent. 'Universal healthcare' (which could mean a whole lot of things) polls well but the taxes to pay for it don't. People say they care a lot about climate change but also say they wouldn't want to personally pay small amounts of money to combat it. We are culturally about the most welcoming country in the world to immigrants, and we are very sympathetic to the hard scrabble, but the polls also show people are really mad about the total collapse of border security and farcical state of the asylum system
One could go on and on like that. And the position of Democrats has gotten even harder by Trump's attempt to do his own triangulation dance on entitlements. Currently they may be in a worst of all worlds and they need to break out of it.
All of that said, it is far from obvious that there is a big, harder left constituency in the US ready to deliver elections for whoever can tap into it. There are however plenty of people alienated by what is (fairly or unfairly) regarded as leftist cultural claptrap. Despite Freddie's principled protestations, that is what most people think leftism is.
Yes, Americans want contradictory things. (Probably true of people globally)
Is your take away from that though that there really is the big left constituency Freddie's essay implies there must be?
It probably is true of people globally.
I teach politics and government at a university in Australia, and even among my students the number who subscribe to some overarching ideology (be that liberalism, socialism, conservatism, libertarianism, social democracy or whatever) has always been a minority.
Also, I think that if we were to closely examine the combinations of political positions that form the packages we think of as "Left", "Centre" and "Right" in the contemporary world, we could find some very interesting and glaring contradictions in all camps. We would probably also find that the contradictions in the positions of the "Left" camp are obvious to people in the "Right" camp, and vice versa, but that few can see the beam in their own eye.
Tony Blair has a good little explainer here of why he finds single issue polling highly unreliable after studying it.
https://youtu.be/xle3C36bAvI?t=1678
Part of the problem is that partisans are eager to use single issue polling to advance an agenda. Obviously people would be happy to get "free" health care but that's not the real world. The polling that asks what kinds of new taxes people would be willing to pay for that health care is obviously far more relevant and it's easily graspable by the general public. But it doesn't serve a bullshit narrative so it gets ignored.
"'Universal healthcare' (which could mean a whole lot of things) polls well but the taxes to pay for it don't."
That's the Fox News take. Depending on how it would be structured, and this applies to most proposals, it's not a question of whether or how "the taxes" will pay for it. From a small business or individual perspective, the costs of healthcare will go so far down that it will more than offset any small rise in taxes among certain socio-economic constituencies. IOW, so-called Medicare for All would REDUCE the effective tax burden for the vast majority of Americans.
That's fantasy my friend. There are no free lunches. Which doesn't mean I'm against fixing our system to get to true universal coverage (it's probably my biggest issue). But even other developed countries that spend less on healthcare the tax burden is a lot higher on the middle class, and in ways that would be really tough for Americans to swallow. You're also assuming savings would flow to individuals, which, to put it mildly, would be TBD.
Beyond supporting the basic existence of a safety net and trade unionism, both of which are now owned by the Trumpian evolution of the GOP, they're getting nothing right here. On any issue.
What are they getting right here? Throwing another hundred billion to Ukraine? Keeping Israel from destroying Hamas? Climate change catastrophism and scarcity fetishism?
All of those are as popular with American voters as genital herpes. The Democratic party threw out bullshit, which is fine, but their fatal flaw is that after a few years, people in positions of influence started taking that bullshit seriously. Or pretending to take it seriously.
Either way, the only solution is a clean wipe and restart. The brand is just fucking toxic now.
"The US is providing ___ support to Ukraine":
18% say not enough
25% say about the right amount
27% say too much
29% not sure
You are confusing "americans' with "republicans". The latter are much more strongly against materially supporting democratic Ukraine against its dictatorial invader/aggressor.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/11/25/wide-partisan-divisions-remain-in-americans-views-of-the-war-in-ukraine/sr_24-11-25_ukraine_1/
"An increasing number of Americans think Ukraine is winning its war with Russia"
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/50379-more-americans-think-ukraine-winning-russia-war
Anybody who's paying attention to the course of the war knows that Ukraine is in deep, deep trouble. If Americans believed that the Ukrainians are on the verge of defeat would they still be in favor of military aid?
The regime in Kiev is in desperate need of warm live bodies, and they gladly accept foreign volunteers.
Go join them if you wish to help them so much, and gamble with your own life and not with ours.
Again, you're through the looking glass. The Democrats have moved steadily to the right on every major economic and class policy issue since the 1970s. What you're doing here is refusing to listen to the *actual* left and applying some right-wing talk radio filter to reality. So let's hear what various elements of the left are really saying:
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/us-democratic-partys-shift-right
https://jacobin.com/2024/10/harris-trump-election-conservative-voters
P.S. How did Kamala's embrace of the Cheney family in a bid to lure more conservative, right and center-right voters work out for her? How about the Biden administration's embrace of endless foreign wars, which has historically been a right position (regardless of which of the two wings of the Uni-Party are in office)?
How has pivoting to "REAL leftism has never been tried!" working out for this "real left" ... ?
You're free to provide some examples of the Corporate Democrats moving to the left and watching it fail. Please do so.
Instead, so far all you have are emotions, feelings, and meaningless phrases - no concrete real world arguments. For one thing, I never said "Pivoting to REAL leftism has never been tried!" when talking about actual US Democrat vs. Republican politics - That's just one of your emotional straw man arguments. In fact I'd argue that it HAS been flirted with, even tried in some instances, and it WORKED. Further, I've pointed out in other comments that Donald Trump co-opted Bernie Sanders' own leftist economic populist talking points and attacked Hillary from the left on those issues. Do you refute that? If so, how?
What I also said was let's ask the actual left whether the Democrats have moved in any meaningful way toward that direction on any economic or foreign policies or whether they've moved to the right instead. I provided two links to two prominent left-leaning or leftist publications which lay out the case for how the Democrats have moved to the right, along with the Overton Window.
So again, do you have anything concrete to discuss?
I saw some data this morning on how the working class perceives the two parties, and one optimistic spot was healthcare. Republicans "only" had a two-point advantage on healthcare, and among Hispanic working class voters, Democrats had a 24-point advantage.
So while I agree with RW that the party is too far to the left on many topics, if they became more moderate on cultural issues and immigration, and campaigned on reducing healthcare costs, that could potentially win some of these voters.
Source: https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/will-democrats-get-in-touch-with
Polling consistently shows a large majority of Americans are satisfied with their current health care. It's a lousy issue to try to hitch one's political wagon to because it has no urgency and people just don't care about it.
There's an appetite for tinkering around the edges, but change on a massive scale?
IIRC Obamacare was estimated to extend coverage to 17 million additional Americans. That's tiny. It has symbolic significance for both sides that is far out of proportion to its actual impact on either the economy or the health care system. And even with its modest impact Obamacare was still a big reason behind the "shellacking" the Democrats got in the midterms of 2010.
The political weakness of Obamacare was that it didn’t set the subsidy limits high-enough. Those families below the annual income limit that qualified did comparatively well under Obamacare. Those just above the limits got royally screwed.
Mind you, all that came about because he needed to make the CBO numbers work out so his program would be graded as debt-neutral or better in a 10 year window. A requirement—along with abandoning the public-option—that was forced upon him by insurance companies and Congressional Republicans.
In retrospect, he coulda just said “fuck the CBO I’m going to give working-class people cheap healthcare” that would have been good politics for 2024, but not in 2008.
Hate to split hairs here, but I will. "...white people in the professional managerial class who can afford to pay lip service to stupid bullshit because they're well off enough not to care about the outcomes." It's not just white people in the PMC; there's a whole lot of POC doing the same thing.
Brown on the outside, white in the middle.
An ice cream sandwich?
Or an Oreo.
Oreo, coconut, banana, take your pick - it's just all Acela Corridor shitlib watercooler jargon for "stupid fucking coalition ethnics don't even know that we know what's AcKShuALLy best for them".
Honest question: do you think we need multiple political parties then? If most of America is basically Republican, what would be the point?
Yes, we do.
As Dave Mustaine famously said, "if there's a new way? I'll be the first in line. But it better work this time".
I'll take a stab at this.
I would disagree with you that most Americans are closer to Right positions than Left - at least in the classic liberal/conservative sense. I think a heckuva lot of Americans who identified as Left a decade ago have moved Right not because they agree more with Republican policies or issues, but rather the new 'Progressive' Left has scared them into doing so.
Freedom of Speech is probably the easiest example of this. The 1st Amendment used to be to the Left what the 2nd Amendment is for the Right. Since the New Progressives have shown they don't really care all that much for it anymore, and are still nominally calling the shots for the Dems (although this election dealt them a huge blow), the Right is happy as all hell to claim the 1st Amendment as their own...however disingenuous that claim may be.
Unrestricted abortions, sex changes for kids, abolishing the police, taking down all the border fences...these are not typical Liberal stances. They are New Progressive stances, and I think it would be wise to try and distinguish between the two. What Freddie is talking about, Clintonism, is a third offshoot of the Democratic party that is center Right.
But it has been well documented many times over that most Americans would indeed prefer a lot of classic 'Left' issues like state-funded affordable health care and schooling, affordable housing, living wages, and lower taxes for at least the bottom half.
I'm not sure what issues you are talking about, unless you are talking about opposing 'woke' stuff...which almost everyone already does. Or maybe having low taxes, which everybody also wants. As for the Israel/Hamas thing, I would bet it's a lot closer than you think if you distinguish between Hamas and Palestinians...they aren't the same thing.
"The 1st Amendment used to be to the Left what the 2nd Amendment is for the Right."
What happened was that the progressives got the whip hand.
Amen.
One of the most frustrating things about the Trump phenomenon is is that he’s reclaiming economic positions—and getting votes and support from them—that the Democratic Party abandoned en masse in the aftermath of the Dukakis defeat in the late 1980’s. He’s just rebranded and red-coded them as “America First” populism.
Well, that's Freddie's thesis restated, right there.
I was way too young to know better then, but nowadays I often wonder how different (if any) things would be had he won then. I see Dukasis' defeat as a real watershed moment, a bigger moment than Gore's or McCain's defeat anyway. And not just for Dems but for the country as a whole. Perhaps I'm artificially inflating the whole thing, it's hard to say with what-ifs. But I still think he would have made a great president.
Dukakis lost to “kindler, gentler” Reaganism, which itself was past its peak marketing appeal. A lot of Clinton’s appeal in 1992 was his youthful “freshness”. Trump’s appeal in 2016 and 2024 was a kind of repackaged freshness of a different sort. The ideological positions taken by those candidates were almost besides the point.
Not to mention the role of H. Ross Perot.
He's reclaiming *POSITIONS* while doing nothing (or making things worse) in actual *POLICY*... It's all messaging. And it works on American voters.
Yes, working class Trump voters will ultimately see the inside of the same empty paper-bag that the Clintonites were offering.
This has got to be one of the most vile partisan-right comments I've ever read at this blog for the level of open mendacity, bad faith/disingenuous arguments, and logical fallacies. And that it is getting most of the 'likes' at this point shows how much of Freddie's readership uses this blog as a stalking horse of sorts for conservatives looking for what they think is the left criticizing/eating itself when it is really the rational left (Freddie) criticizing the center-right Democratic Party (aka liberals and neo-liberals). Let's begin:
Used to own what position? I suppose you are trying to say that the left had more economically popular policies. Guess what, they still do. See Bernie Sanders. The Democrats have ABANDONED the left, not embraced it. This will become a common theme.
*"...the best argument for the Democratic party to shift to the right is because the majority of the American people are a hell of lot closer to positions staked out on the right than those on the left..."
Unfortunately for your "point", the Democratic Party *HAS* shifted to the right and that's largely what Freddie and the left criticize it for. Perhaps some shallow populist rhetoric occasionally makes it through the Corporate Democrats' K-Street narrative filter, but find me a single far-reaching economic or socio-economic issue where the elected Democrats have legitimately moved to the left in terms of policy fights.
Open borders? That's a Libertarian/libertarian issue, not a "left" issue. The left advocates for working class solidarity *across* borders, not open borders. It was the conservative GOP whose donor class consisted of agri-business (mega-farms, meat and poultry packing) and manufacturing (garment industry, automotive) that has historically pushed for increased immigration into the US and the removal of economic borders outside of the US so they could lower their bottom line and increase profits at the expense of the American and foreign (Mexican in the case of NAFTA) working and farming classes. That Bill Clinton ultimately signed it into law (along with other policies conceived by conservatives) says to you that the Democrats have moved to the left?! You're delusional.
"Unrestricted" abortion rights? Not a "left" issue and a straw man, to boot. It's a liberal/libertarian issue. Has little to do with day-to-day or long-term working class solidarity important to the left, but if in fact it was a "left" issue, what have the Corporate Democrats done about abortion rights/access from a hard *POLICY* standpoint? Little to nothing. So either way you slice it the Democrats have either moved to the right or ignored what you're labeling the "left" on the wedge issue, except, you guessed it: exploiting the wedge issue during election campaigns for scare mongering and fund raising in liberal circles. On top of all this, in fact the majority of Americans across all political affiliations favor the right to abortion access according to a spectrum of reasonable parameters.
Gender affirming care? Another Democrat/liberal issue. Nothing to do with the left.
Endless wars? Another shared GOP/Democrat neocon/neoliberal policy constant. Endless wars are necessary for the capitalist-imperialist system to avoid major contractions and continue "endless" growth in the core of the imperium and ensuring chaos and instability at the fringes of empire to fracture the working classes there, remove governments from power that want to nationalize their resources and/or protect their own citizens from rapacious/extractive western finance-capitalists and, by extension, the PMC and wealthy donor shareholders' stakes in them. So again, you're "confusing" (conflating) Democrats for (with) the left. The American left is anti-war on principle. The elected and bureaucratic Democrats are not. Only if you think you can completely re-define and re-group massive swaths of the American and European publics into brand new "left" and "right" camps is it remotely possible to say that the right "owns" opposition to endless foreign wars.
And it gets better: What have/will YOUR chosen policy makers on the right *ACTUALLY* do when it comes to these wars, covert regime change actions, and other meddling abroad that is absolutely crucial to maintaining the western capitalist system? Do you sincerely think that Trump will gut the DOD, close down any of the 800-something military bases or installations throughout the world and stop taking threatening/warlike postures against "enemies" like China, Russia and even socialist Latin American countries (from where, by the way, the vast majority of the unwanted immigrants are coming across the "open borders" and functioning as lagging indicators on Hillary and Trump's LA policies)? Keep dreaming, and I didn't even mention Iran.
The TL/DR version of the above is that without even seeming to realize it, you agree with Freddie about the Democrats (or Clintonite/Obama Democrats) moving to the right while either ignoring the fact that the right, historically and presently, elects politicians who do the same things or applying a double standard that favors the right/conservatives on the issues in question.
If you looked at the past four years in terms of what the Democrats did with the political power they gained in 2020 (in Washington and in state governments alike) and said to yourself, "hmm, yes, all this is very right wing Clinton era Democratic party politics", you'd have to be out of your mind or inhabit some political space to the left of the lunatics who were rioting for Hamas at Ivy League schools.
I wondered how long it would take for someone here to try and pivot to "but REAL leftism has not been tried!", because not only is it wrong, it's also completely unrelated to the point that I made about American voters are generally are to the right of where Democrats, never mind "the AcKSHuAL left" that can't even get Bernie Sanders on a presidential ballot, are politically.
And its not like voters are shy about this! Every conceivable poll consistently take views that lean further to the right (as currently defined by the GOP) than to left (currently defined by the Dems, let alone the lunatic "AcKsHuaL LeFT"), on a plurality of issues!
And the most ironic thing is that Trump captured a lot of those because the Democrats, and even the "real left" abandoned them entirely.
The reason Trump won is because he paid attention to what the voters said they wanted, and said he would do it in exchange for making him president. It was really that simple. But since the Kayfabe requires pretending Trump is some sort of Pat Buchanan right winger, the Democrats and the "AcKSHuAL LeFT" (LOL) keep seeking more leftward distance between themselves and median voters. And then claiming it's the voters fault, and not theirs!
How can anyone imagine that's a politically coherent approach to building political coalitions? Let alone actually acheiving political power?
"....the left of the lunatics who were rioting for Hamas at Ivy League schools."
And there we have it. You're a deranged delusional Zionist. "Rioting for Hamas?" You lost all credibility in your first sentence.
"American voters are generally are to the right of where Democrats, never mind "the AcKSHuAL left" that can't even get Bernie Sanders on a presidential ballot, are politically."
"Can't even get..." him on the ballot? LMFAO! How about "The right-leaning Democrats aCTuAlLLY SaBOTagED his candidacy under their aegis?!" You do realize that Donald Trump won in 2016 in large part by co-opting Bernie Sanders' talking points and doing an end-around on Hillary ... FROM THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC LEFT?!
But I'll play along - Name some policy issues where the majority of Americans are to the right of Democrats. Back it up with polls or any sort of analysis you want. But define the actual policy issues in question first.
"...keep seeking more leftward distance between themselves and median voters. And then claiming it's the voters fault, and not theirs!"
More empty AM talk radio rhetoric unless you can name any "leftward distance" in terms of politicking OR policies from Obama to Hillary to Biden to Harris.
"I wondered how long it would take for someone here to try and pivot to "but REAL leftism has not been tried!""
Well then I guess you can keep wondering since nothing in my comment explicitly said that nor implied it from the American political/economic perspective. And you're being super disingenuous again there, because nobody, ever has said that "but REAL LEFTISM has not been tried!" That was an argument for "real communism" and it's completely irrelevant to my comment or this discussion in general.
Keep spinning.
The Democrats could run Mitt Romney for president in 2028 and if he lost, Klein and Yglesias would say it’s because the party pandered to the left too much.
1. "When the Democrats lose, there’s always pressure within the party to move to the right; this is also true when the Democrats win. It’s true when the economy is bad, and when the economy is good, in times of war and in times of peace, when the party is in power or out of power, when the day of the week ends in y…. It’s the Groundhog Day reality of the modern Democratic party, an infinite regress."
This is because the donors want Team D to basically be corporate imperialist muppets, basically Team R, but with more pronouns. Unless and until the donors go on strike, Team D will be their loyal fartcatcher.*
*Note that Tema D insisted with one voice that Biden was as "sharp as a tack" until the donors said "no more", whereupon the senile old turd was uncermoniously dumped and replaced with Harris.
2. Let us pretend that Trump and Team R really were as bad as we are regularly assured. That in turn raises the question of how unappealing Team D must be, if they were unable to convince enough of the public to vote for Harris instead of an amalgam of Literal Hitler, Caligula, and Simon LeGree all rolled into a weaponized virus?
I mean, Harris only had a 2-1 spending advantage and the MSM to act as her unpaid marketing interns, not to mention the Justice Department on her side. But with all those advantages, Harris got trounced by someone we are reguarly assured is both utterly incompetent (granted, there), but also Evil Incarnate.
"If the rule that you followed led you to this, of what use then was the rule?" - Anton Chigurh
Exactly. The corporations/banks and oligarchs own the Democratic Party now by virtue of endless money allowed in electoral and legislative politics (Citizens United and dark money) and the Clintonite shift to the economic right. Hence, the Democrats have shifted ever to the right in terms of real economic* policy while their K-Street publicity/lobbying firms have managed to use some of those billions to woke wash, rainbow wash, and green wash the narrative in order to keep the liberal/neoliberal factions of their electorate happy.
* It's impossible to divorce economic policy from foreign policy when the country's economy is based on endless expansion of markets and resources for extractive and rent-seeking capitalists. There will ALWAYS be 'endless' foreign wars and regime change/regime sabotage actions as long as there are foreign countries with resources or markets to exploit, and especially when those countries have leaders that want or try to minimize the western finance-capitalist class's ability to extract rent and resources - or stand in the way entirely by nationalizing them. You see, even if it's Denmark - a tiny country - we're talking about, it's terrible for western capitalists to allow them to have a socialist-leaning system because it serves as a threat of a good example.
Freddie repeatedly claims the Republicans always pull right, and never try to triangulate back to the center. As a counter-argument, I would point out how much the Republicans got rebuked in the 2022 midterms, primarily because of abortion. After that, lots of Republicans started moderating their pro-life stance and find a compromise position more or less like Roe -- which is what most of the country wants and what most of the rest of the Western world already does. God knows they gave up on fiscal conservatism long ago, despite a minor revolt from the Tea Party. Even when they controlled the government they couldn't bring themselves to kill Obamacare, because, surprise, even Republican voters kinda like the idea of everyone having healthcare. It's not just a tug-of-war. There really is a center of gravity in the middle, pulling against the extreme positions in both parties.
I think the political center of gravity has moved right while the social/popular culture center of gravity has pulled left.
I would be careful about the latter point--there's an awful lot of movies and video games that seem to reinforcing the cliche of "go woke, get broke" in terms of sales numbers.
It's not the wokeness in the games. It's that the games are not very good. Some of the most popular games in the past several years have options for transgender and nonbinary characters (Cyberpunk 2077 and Balder's Gate 3 to name two) and yet are very successful. Because they are good games. Much like the series Arcane: it was woke, but also really fucking good.
In Cyberpunk 2077 and BG3 I would say that the progressive politics are largely ignorable. Plus the gameplay was pretty good.
OTOH in a medium like movies there is no gameplay to swoop in and save the day, and the number of woke box office successes seems to be pretty short.
Sounds like you agree with me regarding games. Those games were good, so no one cared about the social justice bits. By the way, the Harry Potter game had plenty of social justice tropes in it, too, but it was a good game, so no one cared.
Arcane was a TV series and not a movie, but it seems like a similar thing. If the movie is great, no one really cares if there's some woke bits in it. Hollywood has been far to the left of the median American for years, and still managed to produce beloved and very successful movies that had their more left values on full display. Just look at most Disney films from the 90s.
The writing in games is atrocious, like something a 13 year old boy will turn out. But that's largely ok. Games get away with that because nobody actually pays attention to the story as compared to hitting ESC to fast forward past the cut scenes.
Movies, on the other hand, don't have that luxury. If their stories are awful they can't count on gameplay to bail them out. As for the politics, what's the political slant of the Fast and the Furious movies, or 90% of what Hollywood churns out?
The woke aren't the cultural centre. Similarly, it's notable when any bits of far-right entertainment experience commercial success.
Think instead of gay marriage. It was not at all mainstream in pop culture in 1995, even among the respectable left, but by 2015 it was ubiquitous. The pace of change in cultural attitudes towards gays in 20 years - and even more surprisingly, SSM - was breathtaking.
Look at gun control or opposition to the death penalty. Some liberal positions advance to mainstream acceptance, others don't.
Trump's own policies are a triumph of Republican triangulation. He got the party to moderate on social security, Medicare, abortion and free trade. The idea that Republicans only ever pull further to the right is delusional.
How about Americans just like changing things up every eight years as an explanation of why Gore lost? There are a lot of variables at play here and to cast Gore's defeat as a repudiation of Clinton's policy of triangulation given Clinton's personal success is a bit of a stretch.
There was also the fact that in many ways that election was tampered with/stolen, just like in 2004.
Agreed. VPs have to run both with and against their boss' record, and that's often a difficult needle to thread (ask Harris). The scandal factor also significantly affected Gore's chances, especially among D-leaners that figured out who Clinton was between 1992 and 2000.
W. came across as much more relatable than Gore, although I personally thought he was a bigger phony than Gore. They were both phony.
I'm not usually prone to such things, but the country would have been much better served if McCain had beat Bush in 2000.
There's no way that Clinton would have let millions of illegals into the country.
But it seems like he did?
Looking briefly at an estimate of the illegal immigrant population, it is estimated to have more than doubled from 1990 to 2000, from 3.5 million to 8.4 million. By percentage terms, that's the time period of biggest growth in the last 35 years. It then stays somewhat stable for most of the 2000s-2010s. All estimates of course, but it seems like the 90s were a bad time for illegal immigration.
My bad, I should have written Clinton would never have allowed illegal immigration given the extraordinary amounts of bad press it received in 2021.
I don't think Clinton has many core political beliefs, but he was extraordinarily sensitive to public sentiment--see welfare reform, his nascent plan to privatize social security, the crime bill, etc. He correctly interpreted the rise of Gingrich's House Republicans as representative of national sentiment and decided that it was better to ride the wave than drown in it.
"My bad, I should have written Clinton would never have allowed illegal immigration given the extraordinary amounts of bad press it received in 2021."
That's a *very* different thing than what you first wrote!
Yes, to be sure. But in my mind it's pretty obvious that Clinton doesn't care about illegal immigration one way or the other. What is relevant to him is what the public thinks because what the public thinks is directly relevant to his approval ratings.
Illegal immigration is mostly down to the economy, and the 90s was the best decade for that among at least the last 6.
Ironically, if relative economic growth wasn't so strong during Biden's term (after 2021), he wouldn't have had nearly the issue with immigration either.
My understanding of the current border problems is that they arose from increased awareness of some loophole in America's asylum laws. I'm not sure exactly how much discretion the executive branch has to deal with that. Maybe Clinton would have moved faster than Biden to do what he could to plug the hole, but ultimately it seems like the laws themselves need to be revised. The Republicans in congress would obviously block any attempt to close the loophole, they wanted to let in as many illegals as possible so that they can run on a platform of deporting them.
A brief history:
Trump responded to increased border crossings by blackmailing Mexico into using its newly constituted National Guard--a national police force originally intended to fight drug cartels--to instead perform border security duties. The number of interceptions at the southern border plummeted.
When Biden was elected his administration allowed those agreements to lapse until November of 2023. At that point bad publicity from crimes committed by illegals made the status quo politically untenable and a new agreement with Mexico was reached to restrict the passage of migrants across the country to the border with the US. That is why border crossings in the last year of Biden's administration were basically in line with Trump's.
Now that Trump is back in office he is once again signaling his intent to coerce Mexico into playing the role of border cop, on pain of economic devastation.
Well I guess we're about to find out just exactly how much discretion the administration has.
"Remain in Mexico".
I suspect applying for asylum will be a lot less attractive if you have to stay in Mexico for the duration of the process.
It probably depends on whether you actually need asylum or are just applying to take advantage of the loophole. Mexico is probably more attattractive than a lot of places people are actively fleeing.
The numbers were a lot lower during Trump's first term when "Remain in Mexico" was introduced so I suspect that there are a sizable number of individuals looking to exploit the asylum loophole for economic gain.
Yes, exactly, and this only surprises people who apparently have trouble believing that massively perverse incentives could ever lead to massively perverse results.
The numbers were a lot lower in MOST of Trump's term because the draconian and unprecedented economic sanctions levied against Venezuela took a while to bite. That country has sent the most migrants over the past several years for the first time in history. Regardless of any "stay in mexico" policy, the numbers successfully crossing into the US were always going to be lower before the results of the sanctions were really felt.
I remember the Republicans in 1996 complaining that Clinton was cheating by stealing all of their positions. That raises the question: if Clinton hadn't tacked right would he have lost?
Understanding Clinton requires examining his biography. He served a single term as governor of Arkansas before losing. The lesson he learned was that you have to go where the voter is. When he ran for President he executed Ricky Ray Rector, who was so profoundly brain damaged that he saved the dessert from his last meal for after the execution, and trashed Sister Souljah to demonstrate his moderate, law and order credentials.
If he hadn't done so would he have beaten Bush? I doubt it. Elevating the left wing of the Democratic Party is a recipe that would leave them on the fringes of political power for decades.
To be fair, but for H. Ross Perot, Clinton would be a footnote in history.
Plus there was a recession, which is political poison for incumbents.
What is "Clintonism" exactly here such that it's distinct from Bill's own character and behaviors?
You can fault Gore for being a lackluster campaigner, but that's not the fault of "Clintonism" either way.
I'd argue Obama was big on Clintonism--he stole Mitt Romney's healthcare plan and was a moderate on most things despite the "hope and change rhetoric." (Remember that the Clintons wanted actual socialized medicine, they just couldn't get it off the ground.)
One can argue Carter's deregulation of major industries was also very Clintonian.
"When the Democrats lose, there’s always pressure within the party to move to the right; this is also true when the Democrats win."
Well, if one accepts the median voter theory then obviously if the left-leaning party loses it was probably at least in part to being a little too lefty on any given issue at any given time.
"the result is a country that moves right regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats win."
Gay marriage.
Interracial marriage.
Women's roles in the workforce and society.
Government spending.
Environmental regulation.
Trump's support of Social Security and Medicare, and avoiding federal restrictions on abortion.
"People like to dismiss this with references to meaningless cultural politics, elite liberal language games and Pride flags flying outside of Raytheon and the like, but such symbols are just that, meaningless."
I assure you the commitment to the Pride agenda was not mere symbols.
"nor any of the rest of them have ever been able to articulate a remotely convincing explanation of how this scenario can result in anything but a right-wing drift."
Your definition of "right" vs. "center" vs. "left" is extraordinarily atypical. Klein and Yglesias advocate for using significant government means to e.g. help the poor.
"instituted Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which codified into policy that openly gay people could not serve in the military"
It was already policy gay people couldn't serve. DADT let them serve if they stayed in the closet and decreased pressure on investigating such things. It was a compromise position that successfully led to full rights.
"used sanctions and bombs to kill countless innocent civilians in Iraq, most of them children, while doing nothing to undermine the regime’s control"
Uh, did he save no Kurdish lives?
"no voters who are motivated by fiscal responsibility are ever going to vote for a Democrat in the first place."
I, for one, exist.
"The Democrats were the party of sober fiscal conservatism and backlash against social change."
Would you prefer Clintonism or Reaganism? Your choice in the 1990s (a period most Americans look back on quite fondly.)
"Like Kamala Harris, Gore had attempted to triangulate his way into a position that conservatives own and will always own"
Remember "compassionate conservatism"? Both sides try to encroach on areas they think they need to.
"Harris, with her absurd efforts to campaign as a tough border cop, Gore, with his relentless insistence that he was the one who would balance America’s checkbook. Voters who care about that stuff are Republicans."
This is such a great explanation for why the Hard Left will not win in the US. A huge number of people care about illegal immigration and fiscal responsibility. (Trump, of course, is terrible at balancing America's checkbook and the GOP has not had a great track record despite all the rhetoric.)
"I’m not going to prosecute the Ralph Nader fight again"
Yeah, why would you. It almost certainly led to Gore's loss because American leftists love nothing more than being self-defeating.
Given how bad you view Bush to have been, shouldn't you be extremely pissed at Nader for remotely contributing to Gore's loss? (Nader was on the record saying he wanted Bush to win.)
I am a Bernie Sanders-style lefty, and I would love to have reason to think that a truly left politician and a party that put left economics at the forefront could win power in the US. But I just don't see evidence for it.
In the early 20th century, blatant inequality and labor unrest propelled working people to make demands and withstand the violent pushback by capital, with significant success. In the mid-20th century, fear of socialism gave working people leverage to make gains through unions and other kinds of organizing. Why has there been nothing comparable since the 1970s?
After unions were weakened and the service economy took hold, has their been any effective organizing by working-class folks? People seem to know they are being exploited. But the messages by democratic socialists like Sanders or reformers like Warren don't seem to have any traction with wage-earners who are struggling.
The only lasting gains seem to be things like the centrist Obama's incrementalist advance in healthcare––won against bloody opposition and fierce headwinds, and opposed or ignored by most working folks, until it was sort of absorbed into their lives and became something they value.
TBF, it was fear of socialism through the lens that all socialism becomes pure state communism. Because there was a healthy and rising middle class, the messaging worked incredibly well. Why rock the boat or endanger our nice suburban lifestyle?
Organizing was infiltrated and effectively co-opted or crushed by capital with the help of the US and state governments after the Powell Memorandum (not saying there is direct causal link, more a contemporaneous one). The 'news media' gradually lost its own labor-left friendly or economic populist stance.
In the 80s, after suffering several national crushing political defeats, the Democrats began to embrace big money too. This became essentially codified under Clinton and by the time Obama took office on a namby pamby hopey changey mildly populist campaign, the ship had mostly sailed. Organized labor was also subject to the same human nature (i.e., greed and lust for power) that any group of people are. Throw in the outside 'help' and the financialization/service-ification of the economy you mentioned and it got even harder to organize. Now that the Dems have totally embraced big tech and have taken to using its power to stifle messaging and organization attempts that are inconvenient to capital/oligarchy it's going to be even harder.
As far as Obamacare, it's interesting. Single payer was off the table from the get go, even a single payer OPTION. So of course the end result, while it did help many people, was a giveaway to the insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital conglomerate industries.
Future Dem candidates need to learn how to use a conservative tone, especially when talking about social issues, while touting more progressive economic messaging.
Plus, voters always want to blame someone/something for their problems (this is Trump's superpower). So, target corporate corruption and greed... for example, corporate ownership of private homes. Is that the sole reason home ownership is out of reach for a huge segment of the population? No, but, it is part of the problem and is a perfect target to pull in pissed off voters.
"Future Dem candidates need to learn how to use a conservative tone, especially when talking about social issues, while touting more progressive economic messaging."
The donors would go apeshit. A lot of consultants wou8ld lose their vacation homes. We are talking vacation homes, here!
"“As I always say to the left, what part of the peace and prosperity were you most upset with?” he asks. “Which part did you hate? Was it the income growth, the employment growth, the drop in welfare rolls, the drop in crime, the fact that America was respected around the world, peace in the Middle East? Which part did you hate most?""
The answer here would be in how the prosperity was distributed. Whose income grew? Whose employment grew after NAFTA?
And let's face it: NAFTA and most favored trade status for China are probably responsible for Trump.
"You think Clintonism can beat the GOP in 2028? We already saw this movie, and you didn’t like the way it ended the first time."
One point you don't address is Emanuel's argument that Obama's administration was basically Clintonism too.
"the Republican party is a right-wing party that works relentlessly to advance right-wing ends; the Democratic party is a centrist party that only sometimes tries to mildly slow the country’s drift to the right; the result is a country that moves right regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats win. People like to dismiss this with references to meaningless cultural politics, elite liberal language games and Pride flags flying outside of Raytheon and the like, but such symbols are just that, meaningless. In terms of policy we have two right-wing parties of varying extremity and so even modest center-left policy wins become impossible."
Maybe you don't share the definition of left-wing that the majority of Democrats share - I mean I don't know how you can look at FDR and LBJ and not see them as steering the federal government extremely to the left, so much so that we're still working out the contradictions between the bold new government involvement in the economy and the Constitution that's supposed to provide the rules for running our country.
At some point after The Great Society people saw that economic redistribution didn't have the desired effects, it did not resolve poverty or "lift up the working class" in any meaningful, durable way. So by and large leftists switched gears to the grand post-modern Post-Colonial project, where the primary leftist value is making sure no one ever feels like they are disrespected unless they are a regressive mouthbreathing chud conservative.
I'm sorry your movement got hijacked by a weird synthesis of Millenarian faith in the coming Reckoning sans a deity and therapy culture that requires everyone wear a happy face, I would be annoyed at that too. But have faith, I'm a weird classical liberal and "my" movement has been taken over by authoritarian loving hypocrites. It's a weird, sad world.
The Great Society wasn't aimed at lifting up the working class. Its (grandiose, but politics often is) goals were to eliminate poverty and racial inequality. Both of which were hot button issues in the early 60s. Poverty and racial inequality have both lessened in its aftermath. Both are far from being eliminated.