Democrats Are Already “Moderate.” It’s Not Working.

I’m done with this. Moderates/Centrists killed the Democratic Party. Reagan raised the debt to a ridiculous height, Clinton gave us a surplus after which he had an opportunity to fulfill the promises to the working and middle class –  but instead, swayed by moderates and centrists ( looking at you Rham Emmanuel ) bullied by his Wall Street donors,  and fooled by the ever rightward goalpost of Republicans he caved. 

Which, after NAFTA and the suffering of decimated  communities, the Centrists’ deregulation that led to the banking collapse,  the Centrists’ influence on Obama to limit help to the actual people who would have kept the banks going through payment on loans,  Moderates ~~threw~~ catapulted the working and middle class into Trump’s lap.  

Straight line. 

And they are going to do it again. 

You need someone charismatic with a vision and the will to force that vision through. Not a cowering milk toast who has no commitment for fear of offending someone. 

FDR wasn’t perfect, he pissed a lot of people off – but he actually saved Capitalism by reigning it in.

Edit: typos 
 

The Dems need to use data from everywhere (housing, food, labor, what their constituents say), as the way to move forward. This means not taking/pandering to billionaires. Bernie and AOC can teach them. But DNC has to step the fuck back and do the right thing for once.

YEAH, we should only listen to Bernie (who got less votes then Kamala in his own super progressive district) and Hasan (who doesn’t even want to tell his supporters to vote D)

We might turn off millions of voters with that hard stir left. But we will harvest 2 dozen votes from communities whose entire identity is complaining and “no true scotsman” attacks on left wing politicians cause they hate people in power

Here’s the thing about moderate dems that the jacobin isn’t going to get and neither will the author that was part of the uncommitted campaign – they actually turn up and vote.  

The far left are their own worst enemy for power.  In a good chunk of the country the only way they’re able to even grasp at the levers is to try to grab enough of the party apparatus that the moderates don’t have a choice – banking that they’re going to vote for the Democrat.  Which sometimes works and sometimes blows up spectacularly.

Anyone that was willing to play with fire during the 2024 election, I just don’t care about your opinion.  Same with the 2016 Stein voters.  Sure they felt bad afterwards, but they got right back on their bs in 2020 and 2024.  

Notice how very rarely are Republicans ever pressured to be “moderate”? They have completely flown off the rails.

“Moderate” Democrats are rightwing fascist enablers. Why would I support them?

The poison in American politics is not Moderation. It is centrism.

Moderates have beliefs that do not fit neatly into either of the two available buckets. If the Republican Party calls for the execution of all Hispanics as a response to illegal immigration and the Democratic Party calls for open borders, a Republican moderate may be the voice in the room calling for the focus to remain on legal and ethical solutions for ejecting illegal immigrants.

A centrist doesn’t have ideals, they do not have beliefs. Their only goal is to find the mid point between whatever is being offered. They have taken “the truth must be somewhere in the middle” and made it a foundational belief. If the GOP calls for the execution of all Hispanics and the Democrats call for the execution of no Hispanics, the centrist will demand the execution of half of all Hispanics, and consider this the enlightened position to take.

Just keep on moderating harder, that will work this time. Surely.

Just ask the galaxy brains in this thread.

>Watch the highlight reel of some of the highest-spending advertisements of Democrats in swing seats in 2024:

>* In Ohio, Sherrod Brown sells “the most conservative border bill in decades,” backed by border agents, and points to a fentanyl law bearing Donald Trump’s signature. When hit on transgender inclusion in sports, he doesn’t sermonize; he notes Ohio already banned what the ad alleges and says local leagues should decide — citing Republican Gov. Mike DeWine.
* In Texas, Colin Allred stands with law enforcement and border officials who say, “Colin’s got our back” and insist that Allred will be tougher than Ted Cruz on crime and the border.
* In Montana, Jon Tester boasts that he pushed Joe Biden to expand oil drilling and says “no way to Democrats wanting to give people more money without requiring anything in return.”
* In New Mexico’s 2nd, Gabe Vasquez talks about hiring twenty thousand border agents and cracking down on cartels, with law enforcement as witnesses.
* In Pennsylvania’s 7th, Susan Wild said it outright: she “broke with Democrats” to crack down on cartels and worked with both parties to hire thousands of border agents.
* In New York’s 17th, a police officer endorses Mondaire Jones in an ad saying he “voted for more border patrol agents.”
* In Arizona’s 6th, Kirsten Engel’s ad has a law enforcement official saying she will “fully fund police” and work with both parties on border security.

>The 2024 record is straightforward: frontline Democrats campaigned largely as moderates. Border and police funding, fentanyl crackdowns, oil drilling permits, law-enforcement endorsements, bipartisan validators. The ads show badges and sheriffs. And yet the coalitions barely moved. It feels like talking into a headwind.

>We reach for easy fixes because the alternative is a kind of vertigo. It is simpler to believe that swapping positions here and there unlocks the electorate than to sit with the possibility that the crisis is larger than message — that the map is unkind, that political identities have devoured localism, that the emotional weather is set somewhere offstage and rarely shifts on command.

>It is comforting to explain losses as a failure of will or discipline on our side; it is harder to admit that much of what we can do, we already do, and the returns are thin. Because what remains is not a fix but a fog.

Why is this still being said? I’m not sure how many elections it will take for people to learn.

A leftist candidate isn’t winning a Texas election. We literally have evidence for this, Beto lost as soon as he opened his mouth on the second amendment.

Nina Turner lost in Ohio not once, but twice to a moderate Dem.

Jamaal Bowman got primaried by a moderate recently.

Plenty of examples to go around. The thought that we must go further left is wishful thinking. Voting for and having these sorts of candidates is a privilege found in safe blue cities and areas like NYC, Chicago, LA. These candidates would never win an election in places like Texas, Florida, and Georgia.

We need more Democrats in congress, not the same amount but farther left. It’s a numbers game, not an ideological one. Sadly all we get is insane cope like this article and the illusion that AIPAC is the sole reason why they’re winning rather than more voters.

We’re sending immigrants to concentration camps and focusing power on the executive. Our SCOTUS is corrupt, trans people are about to be oppressed. All of this stops as soon as we get majority, not once we have a socialist candidate winning. It’s time to be real, we need people that win elections and progressives aren’t it.

With how far to the right this country has gone over the past 40 years, we need a big hard push to the left to even get close to the center.

But perhaps they should try being even more conservative? Surely that earn them the votes they need. /s

The sad truth is that the Democrats have failed in their bid to become a “better” business party because the Republicans have shown that businessmen prefer a party that has no ethical considerations at all. The Dems tried to win over the monied class and they failed because the monied class sees absolutely nothing to gain by not going full tilt fascist.

Democrats are conservative, not moderate for the most part.

Then why do they keep winning?

If that is true, why are there democrats turning into independents or Republican and not many politicians switching from Republican to Democrat or independent?

We really need to make changes to facilitate a true multiparty system in the US. Get rid of first-past-the-post and implement ranked choice voting. Give us space for more than two parties and we’ll start seeing more collaboration and cooperation in our politics.

Need to atleast shift left economically if not socially.

All liberals are about to be radicalized whether they like it or not. Trump essentially declared war yesterday and told all the generals in attendance that if they didn’t like it they would be fired. So buckle because big brother is coming for you.

We are just idiot schoolchildren who cannot grasp a simple lesson.

The Democrats’ platform is dictated by the members of the party. If the Democratic platform isn’t progressive enough, it’s because the members of the party want them to focus on so-called centrist issues. The reason Democrats don’t push these “progressive” platforms is because there isn’t enough support within the party to do so. That’s called politics.

The idea that we should swing into wildly leftist ideas on the off-chance that it’ll get the people who continually sit out elections to join the team is just stupid. They could join the team NOW and help shape what being a Democrat means, but they won’t, mostly because their views are unpopular in the main but also because it’s easier to just sit and bitch about how it’s not YOUR fault YOU can’t be bothered to be involved.

Again, your choices are these: support the party that will listen to you, or support the party that views you as an enemy combatant in your own country. I wouldn’t have thought this would be a difficult choice, but here we are.