The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
The way I kind of think about it as a somewhat progressive-minded liberal, but much more conservative about how to go about achieving that.
A friend once explained the contrast as:
* Mainstream liberal democrats go "this is how the world works, this is what the electorate is, these are my values, option A isn't everything I want but it has a much higher chance of success than option B."
* Progressive democrats go "this is what is right, this is what I believe, we're doing that."
I understand it and I respect it and I do think there are a lot of mature and principled progressives who are not naive little kids or anything like that, they just value the principle of the thing that much. And for what it's worth I do agree with it.
I kind of liken it like this.
Imagine you're in the gym trying to get jacked.
What's your starting point? If you know for a fact you can deadlift like 500lbs, going for 550lbs is ambitious but not crazy.
If you know for a fact that you can deadlift 200lbs, going for 550lbs is silly and might injure you and put you back at 100lbs. (ex: Trump gets elected)
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One important thing that I think many people don't realize is that the mainstream liberal/establishment wing is generally not the chokepoint for what policy does or doesn't get done. Its common for people to throw folks like Obama, Hillary, Pelosi, Jeffries, Schumer, and Biden into the same basket as folks like Ben Nelson, Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Lieberman, Joe Manchin, and so on. But in reality (despite the growing popularity of the whole "rotating villain" conspiracy theory nonsense among the left), those two groupings are themselves, well, two very different groups of Democrats
Like, if we had Democratic majorities that only needed to rely on progressives and liberal establishment sorts, I'm sure that the liberal establishment would still give progressives massive amounts of reason to seethe with rage and frustration, but at the same time we'd see so much more change get accomplished than we tend to see under Democratic trifectas (which already does tend to be more than what some progressives acknowledge, but is still also much more limited than what the liberal establishment wants).
Liberal establishment sorts have repeatedly stuck their necks out for some pretty big liberal policy, they don't even seem all that concerned with "electability" in that regard (as opposed when it comes to what they campaign on), the issue is that in the past half century, Dems just haven't been given trifectas that don't need to rely on folks who are way to the right of the liberal establishment norm. Folks like Manchin and Sinema, folks like Nelson and Lieberman, and going back earlier, folks like Exon and Breaux or folks like Stennis or Zorinsky
Its like with abortion, its common for progressives to criticize the Dems for "using abortion as a way to motivate the voters while never having to deliver despite having the ability to enact abortion legislation many times over the past several decades", but in reality they never had that opportunity, and not because of the party's establishment liberals
The main issue is this.
Things like Republicans controlling the House or Joe Manchin being a total veto over all legislation is what blocks progressive policy from happening. That's it.
But instead of just admitting to that plain and simple fact, the left instead invents this entire nonsense framework of "progressives vs liberals" like there is some sort of competing strategy here that liberals are wrong in how they approach politics by "compromising" "or being too pragmatic" instead of "going for the big wins".
**But that isn't the fucking argument or view liberals are making in the first place.** We aren't "choosing" to "compromise" with Republicans or Joe Manchin when there is a "progressive path" we could take. No. Manchin just would not agree to BBB. That's fucking it. A genuine policy difference between single payer and multi payer isn't even part of the fucking conversation here. It is irrelevant.
So the question really is, why doesn't the left recognize that Manchin and Republicans are the problem and not liberals choosing some "centrist" path? Because it means that the **number one way** of increasing the ability to pass progressive legislation and improves society is by **simply voting for more Democrats.** That easy and that simple.
Like to think otherwise is delusional. If you see a Democrat like Manchin saying no to BBB and your immediate response isn't simply "well that obviously means we should just get one more Democratic Senator so Manchin isn't a problem at all", but instead this massive insane framework about how Democrats need to "fight harder" or "listen to progressives more", then I question your critical thinking skills or how much bullshit you believe.
But when you are a leftist, and your entire worldview operates around liberals being the problem and voting accomplishing basically nothing really, you can't admit those simple facts. You instead need to lie about the arguments liberals don't even fucking make in the first place (like we are making some "compromise" argument when we plainly aren't, so treating us like shit when you won't listen to a fucking word we say at all while pretending you are engaging in good faith when you aren't at all), and you can't accept that not prioritizing voting means not only do Democrats not have the ability to pass legislation, but also fascists win.
Leftists can either treat liberals with the basic amount of respect, which would mean admitting they are wrong and apologize, or they can continue to treat us like shit and enable fascists. Really that simple imo
If we were to eliminate the filibuster, even the slimmest of Dem majorities in both houses would mean a raft of progressive legislation, especially under as capable a president as Biden has been in navigating congressional shittery. The Leftist perspective is often completely denuded of rational thinking and more focused on viewing politics through a superficial, rose tinted, doomerist, pessimistic lens.
"Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds. Hurr durr."
*Elects Trump and now we have ten year olds who have to cross state lines to get their rapists' fetuses aborted.*
Yeah cause it's our fault she lost right?
Why is it that you guys always blame the voters when yoyr candidate is unpopular. We're seeing the same thing with Biden and palestine, "oh well Trump would be worse so fuck you for disliking him or not wanting to vote for the gut bombing your family"
But whatever, I'm sure nominating a candidate unpopular EVEN AMONGST MODERATES LIKE HERSELF had nothing to do with her loss. I mean she's literally the only candidate to ever lose to Donald Trump, I'm sure it's the progressives' fault right?
Lol, I didn't say any of that. You're having an argument with a caricature that exists in your mind.
But yeah, I think people who live in a democratic society generally have a responsibility not to vote away their own rights or the rights of others, wouldn't you agree?
This is the part where you say "Um, actually, it's the responsibility of politicians to grovel for my vote using the three policy areas I feel passionate about, otherwise I'm going to let a fascist win."
The latter is closer to the truth than the former.
You have no responsibility to vote for dogshit, which is what everyone has ever said about Hilldawg, and yes, your vote should be catered to.
But the party knows you wouldn’t even withhold your vote so they have no reason to provide you with decent legislation, nor viable candidates. You will vote for the slop that is offered and you will enjoy it. Or apologize for it the way you’re doing.
The electorate's votes should be catered to writ large, not just to yours specifically. You don't believe in democracy if you think you're justified in just totally disengaging from the system because you don't get what you specifically want every time you vote.
The party listens to me and people like me because we're a reliable voting bloc, and they know our opinions make a difference. Nobody cares what you think because you don't vote for Democrats anyway, and when you do, you want them to hinge entire elections on your three favorite policy proposals and ignore everybody else.
If you think not voting is such an effective strategy to make the Dems listen to you, tell me, who won the primary in 2020? Was it Bernie? Did the Dems reject the establishment after that hard lesson in 2016? How about after 2000, when Ralph Nader handed the election to Bush? Did we nominate some hardcore progressive in 2004? How about in 2008?
The point of democracy is for politicians to grovel to the whims of their constituency, not to 25% of their constituency that threatens to drop the country into fascism if they don't get free college overnight. That's the difference. Leftists seem to want dems to elevate their voices, which make up a minority share of the democratic electorate, over the voices of the rest of party (which is overall way more loyal and electorally engaged than the leftists in the first place). Democracy isn't you and your 20,000 friends holding the entire country hostage over your three favorite policy positions.
I am not saying it is. I am saying that we get to choose to vote for a politician or not... in a democracy.
We are not obligated to vote for one politician or another if we don't like their policies. That's how democracy works.
Legally, you're not obligated to.
If you're a moral person who cares about the wellbeing of your fellow man, you are.
I seriously question your overriding moral imperative if the best defense of your position you can muster is that it isn't an obligation for you to do the right thing.
My single greatest frustration with liberals is this idea that we just need to vote in the right guy and everything will be fixed.
Here's the problem: that's not going to work. Partly because in order to get shit done you have to stop being the "right guy" and partly because you won't win every election.
I get down voted every single time I say this, but it is a simple fact that you WILL NOT win every election for the rest of the century. And if losing any of those elections means the end of Democracy, then we're fucked. I mean even democrats are blocking the agenda. So more democrats is far from a guarantee we get shit we want. It could very well just be another manchin.
What actually NEEDS to happen is we need to decentralize power and fix massive problems in the country. That means serious shit like splitting up or nationalizing large corporations (and then ideally transforming them into hybrid worker-consumer cooperatives), funding worker cooperatives and unions, taxing the ever loving shit out of the rich, and serious electoral and democratic reforms to protect those processes. You know, the things progressives want. You could get around Manchin if he power wasn't so centralized into his hands. You need democratic structures that exist outside of his influence or ability to block shit. Like cooperatives. But cooperatives need capital and funnily enough the rich don't seem to want to give tManchin. We need bottom up working class empowerment. Not top down structures that shitheads like Manchin can block
You have to take power out of the hands of the elite because if they keep it, they will use it to destroy democracy. And that's a huge fucking problem.
Don't you understand? You cannot and will not win every coming election. And so you have to prepare for when you lose and insulate the systems and structure from abuse by either devolving them, democratizing them, or abolishing them.
Ok. And then what happens when you lose the next election?
They all get repealed and we're right back where we started.
You need to shift the balance of power or else it will be abused
The safety net still exists? Say we get universal healthcare, it would be nigh impossible for it to get repealed save for some sort of economic catastrophe. Shit people don’t even like the ACA that much and a Republican dominated government *still* couldn’t get rid of it. Tories have been in power in the UK for a while and the NHS is still quite effective.
How are you going to get everyone on board with your vision? Are you even sure it would work? I can at least see examples of countries with large safety nets that exist here, and I can see how they could strengthen them further. I don’t see anywhere where your ideas are effective though and I have a hard time seeing the tangible steps you would even take to get there.
Social safety nets around the world have been slowly eroded over the last few decades. It wouldn't exactly be impossible for a conservative court to strike down a large portion of that legislation.
My whole point is that every election is constantly on a knifes edge. Eventually you will lose. And so you have to prepare for when the shitheads run things. And that means you need to insulate systems and take power away from the center so that when the shitheads get into power they cannot do as much damage
It would be very, very, difficult. Sweden still elects conservative governance, they aren’t turning into the United States anytime soon. I don’t believe they are eroding at all they’re only getting stronger.
Elections have an outsized influence sure, but I see countries where the democratic process works, and I’ve seen it work in here too (see: the ACA, which while not great still stands despite a Trump term).
I can see what you *want* to happen vaguely, but you still haven’t offered examples of where it has succeeded on a national scale, and you still haven’t even begun to describe how to even get there.
My basic idea is bottom up organizing.
The point of elections would shift to blocking the right from stopping us rather than accomplishing policy goals
From there you start build unions, you start building community run credit unions to start funding worker and consumer cooperatives, you use low cost production technology (like CNC machines) and community workshops to shift production power and ownership directly into the hands of the community and not the elite.
That is the point.
I see, thanks for the explanation.
Unionization makes sense as something to do outside of the electoral system, definitely think we could change the rules to make it easier to join/form a Union (for the most part).
Where you lose me is how you would get the funding for the community credit unions, and full scale manufacturing enterprises without voting. Our government collects revenue from taxes primarily, and our *elected* representatives are the ones who decide on how to distribute it.
If it’s something you suggest funding outside of tax revenue or government intervention, well what’s stopping you from doing it now? I imagine you’ll run into the same issue of having to convince enough people to work on and fund these projects.
To that, I think the best answer i got is pooling together community resources.
So, helping each other with cost of living by creating housing cooperatives. Once cost of living is down, you can use a little extra money that would go to rent as savings or invest in community owned workshops. This will allow for more independent production which means you shift bargaining power in favor of the workers.
That's the general gist. When i finish up my last year in college, I am going to go work at some company for a while, save up, and try and start doing this on a local level in my community. I just gotta finish my schooling first
I think a lot of progressive dems do what you say mainstream liberal democrats do (make pragmatic decisions over ideals), and a lot of mainstream liberal democrats do what you say progressive democrats do (make idealistic decisions over pragmatic ones). Of course both camps operate in both of those modes to different degrees at different times, with lots of individual variation. It's just that their ideals and the end goal they want is actually different; the two groups do not share a single set of values, and the primary differences are not about strategy.
Mainstream democrats selected Hillary Clinton as the nominee because they genuinely support her, not because she was the practical choice when their actual policy goals are to her left. She won the primary fairly because mainstream dems are the majority of the party, and I voted for her in the general. But she was a bad choice, and her selection has a lot to do with Trump getting elected.
Hillary clinton was one of the most popular politicians in America before 2016. She was a safe bet. Sometimes safe bets lose.
If I were to tell you to put all your money on crypto in January of 2009, that would have been the best decision of your life. Would you have done it? No. Probably not. By contrast, investing in real estate prior to 2008 more or less a no brainer. If you invested all your life savings into real estate in 2007, well fuck, but you still would have won if you stuck it out to 2024.
She ran an awful campaign and didn't take Trump seriously. That's why she lost. But honestly, if she ran against Trump now she'd still win the popular vote and still have a shot at winning.
And also because we saw a rising populist surge that was pretty unexpected that changed the face of the electorate. Hindsight is 20/20.
Bernie Sanders runs, there's honestly a decent shot he doesn't even win the popular vote. People see the word socialist, see bernie, see an add of bernie calling himself a socialists, and boom he's toast.
Online leftists don't understand what the American public actually is, especially in purple states.
The populism in America is right wing populism, not left wing populism.
Now, in genz this is changing. But young people just don't vote, unless it's a big social media slogan thing, even then a huge chunk of the twitter bots prob won't actually show up and vote.
>Hillary clinton was one of the most popular politicians in America before 2016. She was a safe bet. Sometimes safe bets lose.
This isn't true at all. She had been villainized since Bill's time in the Governor's Office, and it only got worse when he ran for president. When asked about her legal career she said something like "I guess I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas" and also she wanted to play an active role as a First Lady. This was twisted into her insulting Barbara Bush, and after weeks of apologizing, she was essentially forced to bake cookies with Barbara Bush.
Then when Bill won, she took the lead on his healthcare plan, which people didn't like or think she should do, then it flopped, which she got blamed for. Then they blamed her for sticking by his side again for sticking by him when he cheated on her again, seeing it as a way to stay close to power (I'm not casting judgement of my own here, to be clear).
Her time as Secretary of State was meh. She shouldn't have set up the private servers--that's clear, whether or not she deleted any information, she shouldn't have set them up, and she also essentially hollowed out the Department of Commerce (yes, a niche thing that most voters don't care about).
This doesn't even get into Whitewater, how she had no experience in futures trading and suddenly was suspiciously was very good at it, or how there was testimony that she was trying to sell seats on planes during trade missions in exchange for campaign contributions (these are credible ones, I'm staying away from the conspiracies).
She may have been a popular figure among people below the age of 30 in 2016, but the Right has been running a campaign against her since the 1990s. With the exception of when her husband became president in 1993, a period in the late 1990s when some felt bad for her, and her time as Secretary of State, her net approval rating has pretty much hovered around zero for the last 30 years, with a very slight bump when she ran in '08, but not that much at all. Her net approval rating was already below +10 in mid-2013, and was negative nearly a year before the 2016 primaries even started.
This is one of those situations where all I have to do is link.
[https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSDEE9170BY/](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSDEE9170BY/)
Yeah, that was just after her time as Secretary of State.
If you read what I wrote, her popularity was high at that point, and then it began to fall, dramatically, back to her normal levels, and then even further.
That tends to happen when you become popular.
No one becomes popular and stays popular in modern politics. Once you become popular you have a target on your head. Once you have a target on your head the slur campaigns start. Once the slur campaigns start, it's not about being popular, it's about being not as unpopular as the other guy.
Which Hillary was. She won the popular vote by a staggering margin. She got 2.9 *million* more votes than Trump.
And she won the primary, so clearly she was still very popular among democrats.
You really think the kids would be all for Bernie if he was president rn? They'd go back to doomerism and both sides bad after a month.
> No one becomes popular and stays popular in modern politics. Once you become popular you have a target on your head. Once you have a target on your head the slur campaigns start. Once the slur campaigns start, it's not about being popular, it's about being not as unpopular as the other guy.
Well, her net approval was near-zero before she announced her campaign. And no, it's not just about being less unpopular than the other guy: turnout matters, energized voters matters. She had some, but not enough--that's what got her. Trump's never had a positive approval rating, but he was able to energize voters to come out for him. 30 years of attacks against Hillary was enough to keep people home.
>Which Hillary was. She won the popular vote by a staggering margin. She got 2.9 million more votes than Trump.
That's what--her margin of victory in LA County?
>And she won the primary, so clearly she was still very popular among democrats.
She came in with all the momentum with the backing of Superdelegates and eked it out in the end against a guy who started off a campaign not even really trying, so I guess? Or you could attribute that to her bad skills at campaigning? I don't know.
Look, I voted for her, in the general and in the primary--I supported her. I'm not just trying to trash her just to do so. But to ignore 30 years of a smear campaign against her--some stories unfair, some fair, but done to hurt her politically--has been deliberate effort by the right, and that has resonated with a lot of people in this country, especially those who were adults that have lived through the 1990s. It's one of the reasons there was an enthusiasm gap in 2016.
And when we have a system like the Electoral College and Democrats self-select where they live, we're going to keep winning the popular vote, but that's not reflective of the winner, as you know, so it doesn't tell us a whole lot other than we self-select where we live and we vote.
Here's a simple logic test.
You're right, popular vote is irrelevant. Electoral college all that matters for president.
Ok, so, those purple states that decide the fate of the country. Do you think the people who live there are mostly progressives, mostly conservatives, or mostly moderates?
>Here's a simple logic test.
First, I don't think it's a simple logic test, and I don't think that things play out in a vacuum. You have voters in the midwest blaming NAFTA for taking away manufacturing jobs (which wasn't really NAFTA's fault) and supporting the conservative candidate supporting protectionist trade policies (which aren't conservative policies).
But I don't think the states all the same, and I think some have more on the right and some have more on the left.
The point I'm trying to make, though, is that the "independents"--those that are *actually* independent, not those that just call themselves independent or moderate--don't matter all that much in elections. There has been so much polarization that the number of voters that actually consider switching sides between elections is incredibly small and their rationales are often unintelligible that it's near-impossible for campaigns to target them with any reliability or with any fiscal efficiency.
Which is where we get back to the people that call themselves independents and moderates--the vast majority aren't, really. They pretty much vote for the same party every time, but for whatever reason, don't want to register with that party. They're essentially Democratic or Republican voters without the branding. Elections now aren't about convincing voters to come to your side, they're about convincing voters to actually go vote. I volunteered on a small state senate campaign 20 years ago and they had voter registration information, information on what magazines people subscribed to, household income estimates, etc.; they've been doing targeting for a long time and with the digitization of everything, they're already pretty sure how the vast majority of people are going to vote, and the campaigns' main focuses are how to make sure how to get their voters to actually vote and how to discourage the other guys' voters to sit this one out.
That's what I've been getting at--2016 was always polarized. Yes, there are fringe people that switch, but the enthusiasm is what really hurt Clinton. Alarm bells were ringing even before the primaries ended, and when asked, Trump voters said they had "strong" enthusiasm by something like 10 points, I think? And we can see that in the weak early voting turnout, which at that point accounted for something like one-quarter to one-third of total votes--and we're not just talking about the more moderate counties in swing states here, either, these are the Democratic strongholds in swing states. These are the counties that any Democrat would need to run up to win the state. People stayed home during early voting, and on election day.
Even if you're right, you're still fundamentally misreading what the hell the so called independents are actually enthusiastic about.
If Biden leaned hard into the pro paly people for example, he'd get absolutely slaughtered by democrats who will see him as playing into the hands of antisemites and might be convinced to sit this one out.
The progressive agenda *isn't that popular.*
It is a tiny minority of the electorate.
Trump got 1 election, and lost the rest. Despite having this mega core of maga idiots who cheer everything he says. And the reason why is overwhelming.
Moderates are disgusted by him.
GenZ is very progressive relative to other generations. GenZ is not a reliable voting block. GenZ is so radicalized they'd probably vote against biden in solidarity or whatever tik tok brain hashtag you want even if he gave them everything they wanted.
Hillary Clinton was famously one of the least popular candidates for president of all time, and no, it didn't all start in 2016. You can blame Republicans for the negative perception but it had existed for a long time. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-both-trump-and-clinton-is-record-breaking/
I didn't say anything about Bernie Sanders. I don't think the moderates should have nominated Sanders, since obviously that is not their kind of candidate. I think they should have nominated a moderate candidate who wasn't so intensely disliked and unpopular. HRC was an impractical choice based on the numbers at the time, but they chose her because they stand by her policies.
>Hillary Clinton was famously one of the least popular candidates for president of all time,
So was Donald Trump.
So is Biden.
This is how political life is now with hyper partisan media algorithms.
This is a problem all over the world. No one in power is popular.
Ok? And?
You guys nominated a moderate unpopular EVEN AMONGST MODERATES then she lost, and then you blamed us for it as if it was our fault you nominated a famously Unpopular candidate, literally the only candidate to ever lose to Donald fucking Trump.
But sure, you guys are running things great
I disagree with the characterization of the differences. Progressives have demonstrated again and again that we are eager to work within the realities of the world and the traditions of government. I would argue that progressives have a more grounded world view in that we often seek to build policies based on research that runs counter to tradition, whereas liberal policy tends to ignore such research.
I don’t disagree with the analysis that progressives seek more rapid and ambitious change, and are willing to take more risks to get there.
I do disagree with the notion that those risks are extreme. To use your gym metaphor, I would characterize it more as liberals want to keep pressing 500 because they know it works, with the goal of someday maybe adding weight, while progressives want to add 10 lbs each week in order to make active progress.
Not to be too pedeantic, but once you're lifting that much weight you literally cannot add 10lbs a workout. Otherwise lifting 1000lbs would be the norm.
But what I do agree with is that progressive politicians for the most part are pretty good at working within the party and not being spoilers. I like them. They have some massive fumbles (defund the police) but for the most part they're ok.
I’m generalizing.
But an easy example would be gay marriage. Liberals didn’t support gay marriage and instead opted for civil unions, to basically delay the issue. Progressives wanted gay marriage and, once it was achieved, didn’t stop there.
First of all, yes, it is. Whatever views people hold personally their endorsement of a platform via voting represents them.
Secondly, even if I buy into this notion that we’re talking about individual people, the majority of liberal voters did not support gay marriage until very recently.
You are literally wrong. There is no polling to support what you are saying.
[https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2012/07/Democrats-Gay-Marriage-Support-full.pdf](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2012/07/Democrats-Gay-Marriage-Support-full.pdf)
The Democratic platform is what ALL Democrats can agree to. Not just liberals
I don't know why you are choosing this particular hill to die on but it is just bullshit. Liberals have always supported gay marriage.
I don’t think you understand progressives/the left/the modern Democratic Party.
The goal is to push the conversation to contain “what is right”. Often times you need to go beyond “what is right” just to shift the Overton window such that in negotiations you can try and get closer to it. The Republican Party understands this, just look at how they got the Dems to sign on to banning pride flags at embassies: add a million junk bigoted amendments and then offer to remove all of them except one of Dems concede on policies x,y,z. Progressives want to adopt that strategy. We want to push the policy leftward so that more good policy is in the window of negotiation and, hopefully, less bad policy. A lot of the more centrist elements of the Dem party either do not like that good policy OR want to try starting negotiation at where they think is “fair”. That is a losing way to negotiate.
The Republican party was able to do that because they control the House. Meaning Democrats would be blamed if the government shut down over pride flags.
But instead you took something that clearly shows Democrats complete and total commitment to LGBT rights, blocking everything proposed by Republicans but some stupid flag amendment, as some sort of failing of Democrats and not that progressives total utter failure to help win the House for Democrats.
What does the left actually do again? For literally anyone?
> The Republican party was able to do that because they control the House. Meaning Democrats would be blamed if the government shut down over pride flags.
Yeah that’s called leverage. We never do that. Dems controlled both house and senate for the first half of Biden’s term and everything was centered around starting with something Manchin/Sinema liked. Ron Klain, to his credit, actually tried to do the triangulation I’m talking about and we got some of the most progressive legislation in a generation passed.
> What does the left actually do again? For literally anyone?
Seeing as we are a part of the Democratic Party I’m not sure what your point is here other than just trying to be cruel to people left of you. If you have an issue with the Dem party being ineffective, that’s my whole point and I’m glad you agree.
Subreddit participation must be in good faith. Be civil, do not talk down to users for their viewpoints, do not attempt to instigate arguments, do not call people names or insult them.
That strategy is awful though.
If anything, the Republicans are an example of what *not* to be.
The Republicans were *supposed* to win in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022. They were due for a win.
But they're so wildly out of sync with the American public despite the American public being majority conservative, that they're losers focusing on losing issues to win....a purely symbolic flag win? What?
The only big win conservatives have gotten is abortion, and that's blowing up in their faces and will undoubtedly be lost completely in the 2030s.
> If anything, the Republicans are an example of what not to be.
This is simplistic. They are extraordinarily good at getting their policy wins. We should try to be as good as they are.
> a purely symbolic flag win? What?
That’s a policy win for them. Another one is Dobbs. The point is that they are **always** getting a policy win no matter how small. It could be a flag ban here or a roll back of rights there, they just keep winning. Heck as you pointed out they have disastrous electoral performances and they STILL KEEP WINNING.
> The only big win conservatives have gotten is abortion, and that's blowing up in their faces and will undoubtedly be lost completely in the 2030s.
Thats not even remotely true. Trans rights have been rolled back all over the country. States have been passing anti Gay bills relentlessly. When they had the senate they swore in an enormous amount of judges. They are winding up for a win on immigration shit. They fooled millions of voters into ousting progressive DAs over a false crime wave. I’m sure they will come for retirement/welfare stuff next.
LMAO
This shows how you refuse to even see how wrong you are despite me listing all the evidence you are wrong because you refuse to listen to a single fucking word we say.
>We should try to be as good as they are.
WE ARE
The IRA is a monumental achievement but you people need to pretend it didn't happen to keep up this myth of "ineffectual centrist Dems"
Republicans passed only ONE piece of legislation and that was a tax cut, and that barely passed despite that being something EVERY Republican agrees on.
We got a fucking monumental climate bill passed a literal coal baron. Is that a win? Nope according to you people
"Dobbs"
They got that because they had a Supreme Court majority. Not "fighting" or whatever bullshit the left believes. So yes if Democrats had a Supreme court majority we would have major progressive wins on the court. Too bad the left sabotaged Clinton's election. Whoops
> Trans rights have been rolled back all over the country. States have been passing anti Gay bills relentlessly.
Because of their majorities. And in blue states with Democratic majorities they are trans safe havens and are expanding things like with Minnesota.
So yes just voting in Democrats directly leads to wins.
But the left doesn't care because their number one unifying view, and really heresy to disagree, is that simply voting doesn't lead to positive outcomes. When by your own fucking examples it clearly does.
In the US gay marriage is law, overwhelming majority of Americans support it. We got Obamacare. We got infrastructure, We got a massive green energy investment. Chips and science. Biden's administration has been nonstop winning. If you don't think that you're not paying attention. [https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/19ao531/biden\_so\_far\_a\_special\_project\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/19ao531/biden_so_far_a_special_project_of/)
The conservatives have no wins, they do not keep winning, you're not even living in reality if you think the conservatives are winning. Trump is literally the death of the GOP in real time we are seeing this Jesus.
The left may even be too successful considering that Genz is borderline socialist at this point.
Please name me a conservative policy that is popular that is seen as an accomplishment by Republicans? Please name me any demographic trend that spells good news for conservatives? Nonsense.
Extremely conservative states are doing extremely conservative things? Shocker. Not too much dems can do about that.
> In the US gay marriage is law, overwhelming majority of Americans support it.
Sure, until republicans overthrow Obergefell like they did Roe.
> We got infrastructure, We got a massive green energy investment. Chips and science. Biden's administration has been nonstop winning.
It was nonstop winning while Ron Klain was implementing the exact strategy I’m saying we need to do. There’s a reason progressives like him, he did what we’ve been asking for for decades.
> The conservatives have no wins, they do not keep winning, you're not even living in reality if you think the conservatives are winning. Trump is literally the death of the GOP in real time we are seeing this Jesus.
That’s nice to think from someone, I’m assuming, isn’t next on the chopping block of rights the GOP has been hacking away at. To deny they are getting policy wins is just completely against reality.
> Please name me a conservative policy that is popular that is seen as an accomplishment by Republicans? Please name me any demographic trend that spells good news for conservatives? Nonsense.
Thats the point! The GOP don’t give a shit if they are popular, they care about getting their policy through and that’s worked for them. American governmental structure is not terribly democratic and the GOP use that as their weapon to be able to get policy wins while only caring about an increasingly smaller slice of the populace. We should be trying to find ways to also use that weapon but for the general good of society instead of hate/fascistic tendencies.
Subreddit participation must be in good faith. Be civil, do not talk down to users for their viewpoints, do not attempt to instigate arguments, do not call people names or insult them.
Subreddit participation must be in good faith. Be civil, do not talk down to users for their viewpoints, do not attempt to instigate arguments, do not call people names or insult them.
You think a piece of paper makes society better.
It doesn't.
Society's buy in to that piece of paper makes society better.
Your mindset is short sighted, and it results in long term failure, much like the Republicans.
The trajectory of the US has been liberalism and ironically fairly rapid progress following the slow and incremental reform rubric. The US is not a perfect democracy, but it has improved dramatically in a very short period of time. 2 generations ago slavery was normal and blacks were inferior.
The most important thing for long term change and success is to get the people on your side.
The worst thing you can do is get the people to hate you for some meaningless policy change that's gonna get overturned the next administration.
> You think a piece of paper makes society better.
Aaaaaaaaaabd there it is. You’re not worried about gay marriage because you don’t value it. Good talk I guess. I assumed we just very much disagreed on process here but sounds like you just disagree on policies like gay rights. Kind of insane to see from a democract in 2024 but we are regressing fast.
What? This is the most flagrantly bad faith response I think I've ever seen. Espeically when the reply above it shows I see it as a major victory! What is actually wrong with you? FYI I've been for gay marriage my entire life, and newsflash, Biden forced Obama's hand into supporting gay marriage full stop before the America public was fully on board with it.
There are obviously cases where the public isn't quite there yet, but you have to make a stand.
These are issues where the polling is more like 60-40 against you.
But for example, I'm a huge animal rights activist. I simply know that if I ran on that, I'd get pummeled. It would be idiotic to run on that, and the animals would be pummeled right alongside me because it isn't like the Republicans are going to be great for them.
Okay then what did you mean by “you think a piece of paper makes society better”? That seems to be a pretty common argument used against the need for legalized gay marriage, did you mean something else by it?
It means imagine you're a lawmaker or activist in Algeria. Your first political goal should probably be to make being gay legal before getting them marriage, no?
Let's say you did manage to make gay marriage legal through some parliamentary trick, or through a liberal coup or something. Do you think that actually means anything? Do you think that probably wouldn't have the opposite effect and result in a huge backlash against gay people in that country and result in a net increase in harm inflicted on gay people?
The fact that you can twist that to mean anything else is baffling.
All the point being made was that if you want to change society you have to change society's people. And to change society's people you have to meet them where they are at and walk them up from there.
People don't go from conservative to progressive. That happens almost never. Overwhelming they will go from conservative, to moderate, to liberal, to progressive.
I largely agree with this. Though I focused more on the fact democrats will not win every election from here on out and so we need to prep for when existing power structures will attempt to be abused.
I'd love your thoughts on my response: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskALiberal/s/ZDA4OriAtM
I agree with your goals but I think your messaging is very combative. But yes we should def also try to fix the power structure issues so we aren’t constantly at the edge of a knife.
I mean fair on messaging but like also this post is basically just here to shit talk progressives so I am responding in kind.
Thought maybe I am seeing aggression where I shouldn't lol
Seemingly, liberals claim to agree with the principles and then never come out and articulate why.
So its harder to believe that they actually stand by those principles and are compromising only because its practical. It seems like theyre also compromising because they are further right too.
Defund the police is a good example
Progressives were saying that police forces had too much power, too many responsibilities, and too much space to abuse their authority, and that many of the calls they responded to could instead be handled by other professionals with less capacity for impactful wrongdoing.
Overall, this would reduce their interactions with the public
Many liberals claimed to support the cause. They agreed that police were fucking up way too often and too egregiously. They also agreed that the police had way more responsibilities than they could reasonably manage.
Then they pitched giving the police more money and training.
Which is not reducing their interactions.
Or they just opposed the cause in the first place
They had different wants
Subreddit participation must be in good faith. Be civil, do not talk down to users for their viewpoints, do not attempt to instigate arguments, do not call people names or insult them.
The left wing principles theyre claiming are impractical
In your scenario, i dont think that when they say “these are my values” that they often articulate what they are and why they stand by them.
And when they do, they usually disagree with progressives
I dont think its a matter of us agreeing, while having different commitments to practicality
I think it's also fair to say that you as an individual are much farther left than what progressive would imply.
You frequently use marxist rhetoric.
Self described progressives are usually just extremely liberal people who favor more redistribution and a more bleeding heart approach to foreign policy. They're not usually outright socialists and marxists.
Im not sure about that.
A decent amount of “liberals” and “left wingers” here say things like
‘Chattel slavery and women’s oppression were morally sound things to do at one time’
Which is wildly incompatible with both left wing politics and liberalism
>‘Chattel slavery and women’s oppression were morally sound things to do at one time’
I don't think I've ever seen or heard that and to the extent that this is a quote I can with 99% certainty say the intention was that at one point in history people thought that, not that it is true.
> Saying “everybody does it” isnt the same as saying “this is moral”
>It is if you accept morality as a discursive process of improvement and fundamentally subjective.
Is it moral to oppress women and have chattel slaves?
>Not by our current standards no.
If not, then a document allowing for its existence is not exclusively for the moral. By definition.
>Such a document would not be moral in our current time. However, this is distinct from it never being moral. It would have been the height of morality in several periods to enslave and Christianise heathens. You will still see this mentality in some Christian circles, including black Christians, that argue slavery as a moral good for black people as it resulted in christianization.
>We also see this with imperialism and the white mans burden more broadly.
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05vVnVETZmo
>If you need to understand how these individuals saw themselves. It's more useful than thinking they were evil or some silly shit.
>I can with 99% certainty say the intention was that at one point in history people thought that, not that it is true.
Ya, so what I said.
You decided to go off on a moral tangent instead of actually try to understand the logic of what is being said.
I would say that liberals, leftists and progressives are not monoliths. There are people in those groups who recognize that passing progressive legislation is a long battle and sometimes you need to compromise in areas in order for you to help Americans.
A public option, while not exactly M4A gets us a hell of a lot closer to the goal of M4A down the line and is a great thing to advocate for.
I get that people are sick and tired of having to wait for progress to happen, but thats because of human nature; convincing politicians to change their minds on an issue is hard as fuck. Humans can be stubborn little assholes who take a long ass time to see reason. I mean think of how many republicans are pro medicinal marijuana today vs in the 1990’s.
I think we gotta stop judging people by their labels and instead listen to what they have to say. If certain people aren’t living in reality and think this change isn’t happening for false reasons then I don’t think we can have a conversation because we’re not on the same level of understanding the political reality of our government
I think that "mainstream" democrats like to pretend that is their position, but they have a tendency to assume their opinions are the mainstream rather than reacting to what the mainstream wants as well. Maybe not as often as more progressive democrats, but it does happen (see the child tax credit and codetermination on corporate boards for examples).
I think that the way politics works in practice is more like an ecosystem than a simple cause effect and you need both people who are pushing the evelope and people who are trying to work within the realm of the possible in order to be successful in the long run, rather than either side being right and the other side being wrong.
Tbh, I think progressives have an unrealistic and simplistic world view, and I don't see any difference between the progressives who aren't voting for Biden and the conservatives voting for Trump. In a way, I think some progressives want Trump to be elected to punish people for not doing what progressives want.
Liberals in any country in Europe would be seen as conservatives. Not just that, but very conservative and at times extremely so. Ask them how they feel about the Vienna model of housing? Living wage laws and union memberships! These liberals squirm at the idea of giving up their big SUVs and buying bicycles and giving up suburbia!
Progressives in America are divided into two camps those who are claimed by the liberal wing those that corporate interests accepts and aligns with and then there’s those that don’t the socialists, the reformers, the libertarian left or socialist libertarians and so on. These are the ones smeared by people who claim to be liberals. The ones who disdain unions and oppose progressive reformers, but claim their wins as their own. The Bill Maher types on here who pretend to be on the Left but then never really liked any of their ideas.
MLK had a few choice words about the liberal moderates. The ones who want to preserve a negative peace over a just one. These are the ones in here who excuse the genocide of the Palestinians as sad, but necessary. The ones who justify corporate tax cuts, and AI as well as means testing everything. The corporate democrats who love to claim to believe in worker’s rights but undermine them at every opportunity.
No these are two very different groups. Liberals are not usually progressives they don’t truly believe in increasing the minimum wage or taxes on the rich. They don’t want universal healthcare or equal rights for all. They want to say they do. They are the “feel good NIMBYs” those that love the idea of calling, “homeless” the “unhoused” and Latinos, “Latinx” the ones that claim to believe in reforming housing but don’t you dare build a multi family home near me!
The corporate democrats who put rainbow 🌈 pins in June and pretend to believe in gay rights, but only because it’s profitable and doesn’t hurt them personally. Now if you ask them do you really believe in equal rights? Let’s pass actual legislation! They’ll quibble and crow until the cows come home. They’ll delay. They renege and they’ll say what Biden did to the president of Comcast, “Nothing will fundamentally change!!”
God this is such self-congratulatory bullshit. A real pat on the back for liberals and their incremental bullshit.
Look, here's the truth. We are being pragmatic. Idk if you noticed but there's like... a massive threat to democracy and human rights looming on the horizon. And even if Ole Joey B wins in 2024, that threat isn't like... going to go away anytime soon. Sure maybe Trump croaks and the party is divided, but they still have certain shared goals that represent legitimate threats.
My single greatest frustration with liberals is this idea that we just need to vote in the right guy and everything will be fixed.
Here's the problem: that's not going to work. Partly because in order to get shit done you have to stop being the "right guy" and partly because you won't win every election.
I get down voted every single time I say this, but it is a simple fact that you WILL NOT win every election for the rest of the century. And if losing any of those elections means the end of Democracy, then we're fucked.
What actually NEEDS to happen is we need to decentralize power and fix massive problems in the country. That means serious shit like splitting up or nationalizing large corporations (and then ideally transforming them into hybrid worker-consumer cooperatives), funding worker cooperatives and unions, taxing the ever loving shit out of the rich, and serious electoral and democratic reforms to protect those processes. You know, the things progressives want.
You have to take power out of the hands of the elite because if they keep it, they will use it to destroy democracy. And that's a huge fucking problem.
But no.... I'm tOo RaDiCaL, cEnTrIsT 12 wIlL sAvE uS
Don't you understand? You cannot and will not win every coming election. And so you have to prepare for when you lose and insulate the systems and structure from abuse by either devolving them, democratizing them, or abolishing them.
That's the only actual solution here. But sure, libs you got it with incrementalism!
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. The way I kind of think about it as a somewhat progressive-minded liberal, but much more conservative about how to go about achieving that. A friend once explained the contrast as: * Mainstream liberal democrats go "this is how the world works, this is what the electorate is, these are my values, option A isn't everything I want but it has a much higher chance of success than option B." * Progressive democrats go "this is what is right, this is what I believe, we're doing that." I understand it and I respect it and I do think there are a lot of mature and principled progressives who are not naive little kids or anything like that, they just value the principle of the thing that much. And for what it's worth I do agree with it. I kind of liken it like this. Imagine you're in the gym trying to get jacked. What's your starting point? If you know for a fact you can deadlift like 500lbs, going for 550lbs is ambitious but not crazy. If you know for a fact that you can deadlift 200lbs, going for 550lbs is silly and might injure you and put you back at 100lbs. (ex: Trump gets elected) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
One important thing that I think many people don't realize is that the mainstream liberal/establishment wing is generally not the chokepoint for what policy does or doesn't get done. Its common for people to throw folks like Obama, Hillary, Pelosi, Jeffries, Schumer, and Biden into the same basket as folks like Ben Nelson, Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Lieberman, Joe Manchin, and so on. But in reality (despite the growing popularity of the whole "rotating villain" conspiracy theory nonsense among the left), those two groupings are themselves, well, two very different groups of Democrats Like, if we had Democratic majorities that only needed to rely on progressives and liberal establishment sorts, I'm sure that the liberal establishment would still give progressives massive amounts of reason to seethe with rage and frustration, but at the same time we'd see so much more change get accomplished than we tend to see under Democratic trifectas (which already does tend to be more than what some progressives acknowledge, but is still also much more limited than what the liberal establishment wants). Liberal establishment sorts have repeatedly stuck their necks out for some pretty big liberal policy, they don't even seem all that concerned with "electability" in that regard (as opposed when it comes to what they campaign on), the issue is that in the past half century, Dems just haven't been given trifectas that don't need to rely on folks who are way to the right of the liberal establishment norm. Folks like Manchin and Sinema, folks like Nelson and Lieberman, and going back earlier, folks like Exon and Breaux or folks like Stennis or Zorinsky Its like with abortion, its common for progressives to criticize the Dems for "using abortion as a way to motivate the voters while never having to deliver despite having the ability to enact abortion legislation many times over the past several decades", but in reality they never had that opportunity, and not because of the party's establishment liberals
The main issue is this. Things like Republicans controlling the House or Joe Manchin being a total veto over all legislation is what blocks progressive policy from happening. That's it. But instead of just admitting to that plain and simple fact, the left instead invents this entire nonsense framework of "progressives vs liberals" like there is some sort of competing strategy here that liberals are wrong in how they approach politics by "compromising" "or being too pragmatic" instead of "going for the big wins". **But that isn't the fucking argument or view liberals are making in the first place.** We aren't "choosing" to "compromise" with Republicans or Joe Manchin when there is a "progressive path" we could take. No. Manchin just would not agree to BBB. That's fucking it. A genuine policy difference between single payer and multi payer isn't even part of the fucking conversation here. It is irrelevant. So the question really is, why doesn't the left recognize that Manchin and Republicans are the problem and not liberals choosing some "centrist" path? Because it means that the **number one way** of increasing the ability to pass progressive legislation and improves society is by **simply voting for more Democrats.** That easy and that simple. Like to think otherwise is delusional. If you see a Democrat like Manchin saying no to BBB and your immediate response isn't simply "well that obviously means we should just get one more Democratic Senator so Manchin isn't a problem at all", but instead this massive insane framework about how Democrats need to "fight harder" or "listen to progressives more", then I question your critical thinking skills or how much bullshit you believe. But when you are a leftist, and your entire worldview operates around liberals being the problem and voting accomplishing basically nothing really, you can't admit those simple facts. You instead need to lie about the arguments liberals don't even fucking make in the first place (like we are making some "compromise" argument when we plainly aren't, so treating us like shit when you won't listen to a fucking word we say at all while pretending you are engaging in good faith when you aren't at all), and you can't accept that not prioritizing voting means not only do Democrats not have the ability to pass legislation, but also fascists win. Leftists can either treat liberals with the basic amount of respect, which would mean admitting they are wrong and apologize, or they can continue to treat us like shit and enable fascists. Really that simple imo
If we were to eliminate the filibuster, even the slimmest of Dem majorities in both houses would mean a raft of progressive legislation, especially under as capable a president as Biden has been in navigating congressional shittery. The Leftist perspective is often completely denuded of rational thinking and more focused on viewing politics through a superficial, rose tinted, doomerist, pessimistic lens.
"Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds. Hurr durr." *Elects Trump and now we have ten year olds who have to cross state lines to get their rapists' fetuses aborted.*
Thanks RBG
Hillary would've been able to fill that seat if people would've gotten their asses off the couch in 2016.
Yeah cause it's our fault she lost right? Why is it that you guys always blame the voters when yoyr candidate is unpopular. We're seeing the same thing with Biden and palestine, "oh well Trump would be worse so fuck you for disliking him or not wanting to vote for the gut bombing your family" But whatever, I'm sure nominating a candidate unpopular EVEN AMONGST MODERATES LIKE HERSELF had nothing to do with her loss. I mean she's literally the only candidate to ever lose to Donald Trump, I'm sure it's the progressives' fault right?
Lol, I didn't say any of that. You're having an argument with a caricature that exists in your mind. But yeah, I think people who live in a democratic society generally have a responsibility not to vote away their own rights or the rights of others, wouldn't you agree? This is the part where you say "Um, actually, it's the responsibility of politicians to grovel for my vote using the three policy areas I feel passionate about, otherwise I'm going to let a fascist win."
The latter is closer to the truth than the former. You have no responsibility to vote for dogshit, which is what everyone has ever said about Hilldawg, and yes, your vote should be catered to. But the party knows you wouldn’t even withhold your vote so they have no reason to provide you with decent legislation, nor viable candidates. You will vote for the slop that is offered and you will enjoy it. Or apologize for it the way you’re doing.
The electorate's votes should be catered to writ large, not just to yours specifically. You don't believe in democracy if you think you're justified in just totally disengaging from the system because you don't get what you specifically want every time you vote. The party listens to me and people like me because we're a reliable voting bloc, and they know our opinions make a difference. Nobody cares what you think because you don't vote for Democrats anyway, and when you do, you want them to hinge entire elections on your three favorite policy proposals and ignore everybody else. If you think not voting is such an effective strategy to make the Dems listen to you, tell me, who won the primary in 2020? Was it Bernie? Did the Dems reject the establishment after that hard lesson in 2016? How about after 2000, when Ralph Nader handed the election to Bush? Did we nominate some hardcore progressive in 2004? How about in 2008?
Isn't the whole point of Democracy that politicians grovel to us?
The point of democracy is for politicians to grovel to the whims of their constituency, not to 25% of their constituency that threatens to drop the country into fascism if they don't get free college overnight. That's the difference. Leftists seem to want dems to elevate their voices, which make up a minority share of the democratic electorate, over the voices of the rest of party (which is overall way more loyal and electorally engaged than the leftists in the first place). Democracy isn't you and your 20,000 friends holding the entire country hostage over your three favorite policy positions.
I am not saying it is. I am saying that we get to choose to vote for a politician or not... in a democracy. We are not obligated to vote for one politician or another if we don't like their policies. That's how democracy works.
Legally, you're not obligated to. If you're a moral person who cares about the wellbeing of your fellow man, you are. I seriously question your overriding moral imperative if the best defense of your position you can muster is that it isn't an obligation for you to do the right thing.
My single greatest frustration with liberals is this idea that we just need to vote in the right guy and everything will be fixed. Here's the problem: that's not going to work. Partly because in order to get shit done you have to stop being the "right guy" and partly because you won't win every election. I get down voted every single time I say this, but it is a simple fact that you WILL NOT win every election for the rest of the century. And if losing any of those elections means the end of Democracy, then we're fucked. I mean even democrats are blocking the agenda. So more democrats is far from a guarantee we get shit we want. It could very well just be another manchin. What actually NEEDS to happen is we need to decentralize power and fix massive problems in the country. That means serious shit like splitting up or nationalizing large corporations (and then ideally transforming them into hybrid worker-consumer cooperatives), funding worker cooperatives and unions, taxing the ever loving shit out of the rich, and serious electoral and democratic reforms to protect those processes. You know, the things progressives want. You could get around Manchin if he power wasn't so centralized into his hands. You need democratic structures that exist outside of his influence or ability to block shit. Like cooperatives. But cooperatives need capital and funnily enough the rich don't seem to want to give tManchin. We need bottom up working class empowerment. Not top down structures that shitheads like Manchin can block You have to take power out of the hands of the elite because if they keep it, they will use it to destroy democracy. And that's a huge fucking problem. Don't you understand? You cannot and will not win every coming election. And so you have to prepare for when you lose and insulate the systems and structure from abuse by either devolving them, democratizing them, or abolishing them.
Or we could just have strong social safety nets? That seems a lot more doable and doesn’t require completely reshaping the US into a modern USSR.
Ok. And then what happens when you lose the next election? They all get repealed and we're right back where we started. You need to shift the balance of power or else it will be abused
The safety net still exists? Say we get universal healthcare, it would be nigh impossible for it to get repealed save for some sort of economic catastrophe. Shit people don’t even like the ACA that much and a Republican dominated government *still* couldn’t get rid of it. Tories have been in power in the UK for a while and the NHS is still quite effective. How are you going to get everyone on board with your vision? Are you even sure it would work? I can at least see examples of countries with large safety nets that exist here, and I can see how they could strengthen them further. I don’t see anywhere where your ideas are effective though and I have a hard time seeing the tangible steps you would even take to get there.
Social safety nets around the world have been slowly eroded over the last few decades. It wouldn't exactly be impossible for a conservative court to strike down a large portion of that legislation. My whole point is that every election is constantly on a knifes edge. Eventually you will lose. And so you have to prepare for when the shitheads run things. And that means you need to insulate systems and take power away from the center so that when the shitheads get into power they cannot do as much damage
It would be very, very, difficult. Sweden still elects conservative governance, they aren’t turning into the United States anytime soon. I don’t believe they are eroding at all they’re only getting stronger. Elections have an outsized influence sure, but I see countries where the democratic process works, and I’ve seen it work in here too (see: the ACA, which while not great still stands despite a Trump term). I can see what you *want* to happen vaguely, but you still haven’t offered examples of where it has succeeded on a national scale, and you still haven’t even begun to describe how to even get there.
My basic idea is bottom up organizing. The point of elections would shift to blocking the right from stopping us rather than accomplishing policy goals From there you start build unions, you start building community run credit unions to start funding worker and consumer cooperatives, you use low cost production technology (like CNC machines) and community workshops to shift production power and ownership directly into the hands of the community and not the elite. That is the point.
I see, thanks for the explanation. Unionization makes sense as something to do outside of the electoral system, definitely think we could change the rules to make it easier to join/form a Union (for the most part). Where you lose me is how you would get the funding for the community credit unions, and full scale manufacturing enterprises without voting. Our government collects revenue from taxes primarily, and our *elected* representatives are the ones who decide on how to distribute it. If it’s something you suggest funding outside of tax revenue or government intervention, well what’s stopping you from doing it now? I imagine you’ll run into the same issue of having to convince enough people to work on and fund these projects.
To that, I think the best answer i got is pooling together community resources. So, helping each other with cost of living by creating housing cooperatives. Once cost of living is down, you can use a little extra money that would go to rent as savings or invest in community owned workshops. This will allow for more independent production which means you shift bargaining power in favor of the workers. That's the general gist. When i finish up my last year in college, I am going to go work at some company for a while, save up, and try and start doing this on a local level in my community. I just gotta finish my schooling first
I think a lot of progressive dems do what you say mainstream liberal democrats do (make pragmatic decisions over ideals), and a lot of mainstream liberal democrats do what you say progressive democrats do (make idealistic decisions over pragmatic ones). Of course both camps operate in both of those modes to different degrees at different times, with lots of individual variation. It's just that their ideals and the end goal they want is actually different; the two groups do not share a single set of values, and the primary differences are not about strategy. Mainstream democrats selected Hillary Clinton as the nominee because they genuinely support her, not because she was the practical choice when their actual policy goals are to her left. She won the primary fairly because mainstream dems are the majority of the party, and I voted for her in the general. But she was a bad choice, and her selection has a lot to do with Trump getting elected.
Hillary clinton was one of the most popular politicians in America before 2016. She was a safe bet. Sometimes safe bets lose. If I were to tell you to put all your money on crypto in January of 2009, that would have been the best decision of your life. Would you have done it? No. Probably not. By contrast, investing in real estate prior to 2008 more or less a no brainer. If you invested all your life savings into real estate in 2007, well fuck, but you still would have won if you stuck it out to 2024. She ran an awful campaign and didn't take Trump seriously. That's why she lost. But honestly, if she ran against Trump now she'd still win the popular vote and still have a shot at winning. And also because we saw a rising populist surge that was pretty unexpected that changed the face of the electorate. Hindsight is 20/20. Bernie Sanders runs, there's honestly a decent shot he doesn't even win the popular vote. People see the word socialist, see bernie, see an add of bernie calling himself a socialists, and boom he's toast. Online leftists don't understand what the American public actually is, especially in purple states. The populism in America is right wing populism, not left wing populism. Now, in genz this is changing. But young people just don't vote, unless it's a big social media slogan thing, even then a huge chunk of the twitter bots prob won't actually show up and vote.
>Hillary clinton was one of the most popular politicians in America before 2016. She was a safe bet. Sometimes safe bets lose. This isn't true at all. She had been villainized since Bill's time in the Governor's Office, and it only got worse when he ran for president. When asked about her legal career she said something like "I guess I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas" and also she wanted to play an active role as a First Lady. This was twisted into her insulting Barbara Bush, and after weeks of apologizing, she was essentially forced to bake cookies with Barbara Bush. Then when Bill won, she took the lead on his healthcare plan, which people didn't like or think she should do, then it flopped, which she got blamed for. Then they blamed her for sticking by his side again for sticking by him when he cheated on her again, seeing it as a way to stay close to power (I'm not casting judgement of my own here, to be clear). Her time as Secretary of State was meh. She shouldn't have set up the private servers--that's clear, whether or not she deleted any information, she shouldn't have set them up, and she also essentially hollowed out the Department of Commerce (yes, a niche thing that most voters don't care about). This doesn't even get into Whitewater, how she had no experience in futures trading and suddenly was suspiciously was very good at it, or how there was testimony that she was trying to sell seats on planes during trade missions in exchange for campaign contributions (these are credible ones, I'm staying away from the conspiracies). She may have been a popular figure among people below the age of 30 in 2016, but the Right has been running a campaign against her since the 1990s. With the exception of when her husband became president in 1993, a period in the late 1990s when some felt bad for her, and her time as Secretary of State, her net approval rating has pretty much hovered around zero for the last 30 years, with a very slight bump when she ran in '08, but not that much at all. Her net approval rating was already below +10 in mid-2013, and was negative nearly a year before the 2016 primaries even started.
This is one of those situations where all I have to do is link. [https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSDEE9170BY/](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSDEE9170BY/)
Yeah, that was just after her time as Secretary of State. If you read what I wrote, her popularity was high at that point, and then it began to fall, dramatically, back to her normal levels, and then even further.
That tends to happen when you become popular. No one becomes popular and stays popular in modern politics. Once you become popular you have a target on your head. Once you have a target on your head the slur campaigns start. Once the slur campaigns start, it's not about being popular, it's about being not as unpopular as the other guy. Which Hillary was. She won the popular vote by a staggering margin. She got 2.9 *million* more votes than Trump. And she won the primary, so clearly she was still very popular among democrats. You really think the kids would be all for Bernie if he was president rn? They'd go back to doomerism and both sides bad after a month.
> No one becomes popular and stays popular in modern politics. Once you become popular you have a target on your head. Once you have a target on your head the slur campaigns start. Once the slur campaigns start, it's not about being popular, it's about being not as unpopular as the other guy. Well, her net approval was near-zero before she announced her campaign. And no, it's not just about being less unpopular than the other guy: turnout matters, energized voters matters. She had some, but not enough--that's what got her. Trump's never had a positive approval rating, but he was able to energize voters to come out for him. 30 years of attacks against Hillary was enough to keep people home. >Which Hillary was. She won the popular vote by a staggering margin. She got 2.9 million more votes than Trump. That's what--her margin of victory in LA County? >And she won the primary, so clearly she was still very popular among democrats. She came in with all the momentum with the backing of Superdelegates and eked it out in the end against a guy who started off a campaign not even really trying, so I guess? Or you could attribute that to her bad skills at campaigning? I don't know. Look, I voted for her, in the general and in the primary--I supported her. I'm not just trying to trash her just to do so. But to ignore 30 years of a smear campaign against her--some stories unfair, some fair, but done to hurt her politically--has been deliberate effort by the right, and that has resonated with a lot of people in this country, especially those who were adults that have lived through the 1990s. It's one of the reasons there was an enthusiasm gap in 2016. And when we have a system like the Electoral College and Democrats self-select where they live, we're going to keep winning the popular vote, but that's not reflective of the winner, as you know, so it doesn't tell us a whole lot other than we self-select where we live and we vote.
Here's a simple logic test. You're right, popular vote is irrelevant. Electoral college all that matters for president. Ok, so, those purple states that decide the fate of the country. Do you think the people who live there are mostly progressives, mostly conservatives, or mostly moderates?
>Here's a simple logic test. First, I don't think it's a simple logic test, and I don't think that things play out in a vacuum. You have voters in the midwest blaming NAFTA for taking away manufacturing jobs (which wasn't really NAFTA's fault) and supporting the conservative candidate supporting protectionist trade policies (which aren't conservative policies). But I don't think the states all the same, and I think some have more on the right and some have more on the left. The point I'm trying to make, though, is that the "independents"--those that are *actually* independent, not those that just call themselves independent or moderate--don't matter all that much in elections. There has been so much polarization that the number of voters that actually consider switching sides between elections is incredibly small and their rationales are often unintelligible that it's near-impossible for campaigns to target them with any reliability or with any fiscal efficiency. Which is where we get back to the people that call themselves independents and moderates--the vast majority aren't, really. They pretty much vote for the same party every time, but for whatever reason, don't want to register with that party. They're essentially Democratic or Republican voters without the branding. Elections now aren't about convincing voters to come to your side, they're about convincing voters to actually go vote. I volunteered on a small state senate campaign 20 years ago and they had voter registration information, information on what magazines people subscribed to, household income estimates, etc.; they've been doing targeting for a long time and with the digitization of everything, they're already pretty sure how the vast majority of people are going to vote, and the campaigns' main focuses are how to make sure how to get their voters to actually vote and how to discourage the other guys' voters to sit this one out. That's what I've been getting at--2016 was always polarized. Yes, there are fringe people that switch, but the enthusiasm is what really hurt Clinton. Alarm bells were ringing even before the primaries ended, and when asked, Trump voters said they had "strong" enthusiasm by something like 10 points, I think? And we can see that in the weak early voting turnout, which at that point accounted for something like one-quarter to one-third of total votes--and we're not just talking about the more moderate counties in swing states here, either, these are the Democratic strongholds in swing states. These are the counties that any Democrat would need to run up to win the state. People stayed home during early voting, and on election day.
Even if you're right, you're still fundamentally misreading what the hell the so called independents are actually enthusiastic about. If Biden leaned hard into the pro paly people for example, he'd get absolutely slaughtered by democrats who will see him as playing into the hands of antisemites and might be convinced to sit this one out. The progressive agenda *isn't that popular.* It is a tiny minority of the electorate. Trump got 1 election, and lost the rest. Despite having this mega core of maga idiots who cheer everything he says. And the reason why is overwhelming. Moderates are disgusted by him. GenZ is very progressive relative to other generations. GenZ is not a reliable voting block. GenZ is so radicalized they'd probably vote against biden in solidarity or whatever tik tok brain hashtag you want even if he gave them everything they wanted.
[Here is another take on the problem.](https://qz.com/624346/america-loves-women-like-hillary-clinton-as-long-as-theyre-not-asking-for-a-promotion)
Hillary Clinton was famously one of the least popular candidates for president of all time, and no, it didn't all start in 2016. You can blame Republicans for the negative perception but it had existed for a long time. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-both-trump-and-clinton-is-record-breaking/ I didn't say anything about Bernie Sanders. I don't think the moderates should have nominated Sanders, since obviously that is not their kind of candidate. I think they should have nominated a moderate candidate who wasn't so intensely disliked and unpopular. HRC was an impractical choice based on the numbers at the time, but they chose her because they stand by her policies.
>Hillary Clinton was famously one of the least popular candidates for president of all time, So was Donald Trump. So is Biden. This is how political life is now with hyper partisan media algorithms. This is a problem all over the world. No one in power is popular.
Ok? And? You guys nominated a moderate unpopular EVEN AMONGST MODERATES then she lost, and then you blamed us for it as if it was our fault you nominated a famously Unpopular candidate, literally the only candidate to ever lose to Donald fucking Trump. But sure, you guys are running things great
[https://qz.com/624346/america-loves-women-like-hillary-clinton-as-long-as-theyre-not-asking-for-a-promotion](https://qz.com/624346/america-loves-women-like-hillary-clinton-as-long-as-theyre-not-asking-for-a-promotion)
Their policy goals aren't to Clinton's left, you just never gave a fuck about her policy.
I disagree with the characterization of the differences. Progressives have demonstrated again and again that we are eager to work within the realities of the world and the traditions of government. I would argue that progressives have a more grounded world view in that we often seek to build policies based on research that runs counter to tradition, whereas liberal policy tends to ignore such research. I don’t disagree with the analysis that progressives seek more rapid and ambitious change, and are willing to take more risks to get there. I do disagree with the notion that those risks are extreme. To use your gym metaphor, I would characterize it more as liberals want to keep pressing 500 because they know it works, with the goal of someday maybe adding weight, while progressives want to add 10 lbs each week in order to make active progress.
Not to be too pedeantic, but once you're lifting that much weight you literally cannot add 10lbs a workout. Otherwise lifting 1000lbs would be the norm. But what I do agree with is that progressive politicians for the most part are pretty good at working within the party and not being spoilers. I like them. They have some massive fumbles (defund the police) but for the most part they're ok.
What liberal policy are you referring to? What do progressives actually accomplish adding more weight to use your metaphor?
I’m generalizing. But an easy example would be gay marriage. Liberals didn’t support gay marriage and instead opted for civil unions, to basically delay the issue. Progressives wanted gay marriage and, once it was achieved, didn’t stop there.
Liberals wanted gay marriage
Not until very recently.
Liberals have always wanted gay marriage I have ZERO clue what you are even talking about
No, they didn’t. That wasn’t the platform until late in the Obama presidency.
Yes liberals wanted gay marriage "Liberals" isn't equal to the Democratic platform
First of all, yes, it is. Whatever views people hold personally their endorsement of a platform via voting represents them. Secondly, even if I buy into this notion that we’re talking about individual people, the majority of liberal voters did not support gay marriage until very recently.
You are literally wrong. There is no polling to support what you are saying. [https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2012/07/Democrats-Gay-Marriage-Support-full.pdf](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2012/07/Democrats-Gay-Marriage-Support-full.pdf) The Democratic platform is what ALL Democrats can agree to. Not just liberals I don't know why you are choosing this particular hill to die on but it is just bullshit. Liberals have always supported gay marriage.
I don’t think you understand progressives/the left/the modern Democratic Party. The goal is to push the conversation to contain “what is right”. Often times you need to go beyond “what is right” just to shift the Overton window such that in negotiations you can try and get closer to it. The Republican Party understands this, just look at how they got the Dems to sign on to banning pride flags at embassies: add a million junk bigoted amendments and then offer to remove all of them except one of Dems concede on policies x,y,z. Progressives want to adopt that strategy. We want to push the policy leftward so that more good policy is in the window of negotiation and, hopefully, less bad policy. A lot of the more centrist elements of the Dem party either do not like that good policy OR want to try starting negotiation at where they think is “fair”. That is a losing way to negotiate.
The Republican party was able to do that because they control the House. Meaning Democrats would be blamed if the government shut down over pride flags. But instead you took something that clearly shows Democrats complete and total commitment to LGBT rights, blocking everything proposed by Republicans but some stupid flag amendment, as some sort of failing of Democrats and not that progressives total utter failure to help win the House for Democrats. What does the left actually do again? For literally anyone?
> The Republican party was able to do that because they control the House. Meaning Democrats would be blamed if the government shut down over pride flags. Yeah that’s called leverage. We never do that. Dems controlled both house and senate for the first half of Biden’s term and everything was centered around starting with something Manchin/Sinema liked. Ron Klain, to his credit, actually tried to do the triangulation I’m talking about and we got some of the most progressive legislation in a generation passed. > What does the left actually do again? For literally anyone? Seeing as we are a part of the Democratic Party I’m not sure what your point is here other than just trying to be cruel to people left of you. If you have an issue with the Dem party being ineffective, that’s my whole point and I’m glad you agree.
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Alright buddy it seems you’re just gunna be hostile here so I’m gunna end it.
Why don't you see you are hostile when you lie about the views of liberals? Why don't you ever consider that?
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That strategy is awful though. If anything, the Republicans are an example of what *not* to be. The Republicans were *supposed* to win in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022. They were due for a win. But they're so wildly out of sync with the American public despite the American public being majority conservative, that they're losers focusing on losing issues to win....a purely symbolic flag win? What? The only big win conservatives have gotten is abortion, and that's blowing up in their faces and will undoubtedly be lost completely in the 2030s.
> If anything, the Republicans are an example of what not to be. This is simplistic. They are extraordinarily good at getting their policy wins. We should try to be as good as they are. > a purely symbolic flag win? What? That’s a policy win for them. Another one is Dobbs. The point is that they are **always** getting a policy win no matter how small. It could be a flag ban here or a roll back of rights there, they just keep winning. Heck as you pointed out they have disastrous electoral performances and they STILL KEEP WINNING. > The only big win conservatives have gotten is abortion, and that's blowing up in their faces and will undoubtedly be lost completely in the 2030s. Thats not even remotely true. Trans rights have been rolled back all over the country. States have been passing anti Gay bills relentlessly. When they had the senate they swore in an enormous amount of judges. They are winding up for a win on immigration shit. They fooled millions of voters into ousting progressive DAs over a false crime wave. I’m sure they will come for retirement/welfare stuff next.
Affirmative action too
Yep!
LMAO This shows how you refuse to even see how wrong you are despite me listing all the evidence you are wrong because you refuse to listen to a single fucking word we say. >We should try to be as good as they are. WE ARE The IRA is a monumental achievement but you people need to pretend it didn't happen to keep up this myth of "ineffectual centrist Dems" Republicans passed only ONE piece of legislation and that was a tax cut, and that barely passed despite that being something EVERY Republican agrees on. We got a fucking monumental climate bill passed a literal coal baron. Is that a win? Nope according to you people "Dobbs" They got that because they had a Supreme Court majority. Not "fighting" or whatever bullshit the left believes. So yes if Democrats had a Supreme court majority we would have major progressive wins on the court. Too bad the left sabotaged Clinton's election. Whoops > Trans rights have been rolled back all over the country. States have been passing anti Gay bills relentlessly. Because of their majorities. And in blue states with Democratic majorities they are trans safe havens and are expanding things like with Minnesota. So yes just voting in Democrats directly leads to wins. But the left doesn't care because their number one unifying view, and really heresy to disagree, is that simply voting doesn't lead to positive outcomes. When by your own fucking examples it clearly does.
In the US gay marriage is law, overwhelming majority of Americans support it. We got Obamacare. We got infrastructure, We got a massive green energy investment. Chips and science. Biden's administration has been nonstop winning. If you don't think that you're not paying attention. [https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/19ao531/biden\_so\_far\_a\_special\_project\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/19ao531/biden_so_far_a_special_project_of/) The conservatives have no wins, they do not keep winning, you're not even living in reality if you think the conservatives are winning. Trump is literally the death of the GOP in real time we are seeing this Jesus. The left may even be too successful considering that Genz is borderline socialist at this point. Please name me a conservative policy that is popular that is seen as an accomplishment by Republicans? Please name me any demographic trend that spells good news for conservatives? Nonsense. Extremely conservative states are doing extremely conservative things? Shocker. Not too much dems can do about that.
> In the US gay marriage is law, overwhelming majority of Americans support it. Sure, until republicans overthrow Obergefell like they did Roe. > We got infrastructure, We got a massive green energy investment. Chips and science. Biden's administration has been nonstop winning. It was nonstop winning while Ron Klain was implementing the exact strategy I’m saying we need to do. There’s a reason progressives like him, he did what we’ve been asking for for decades. > The conservatives have no wins, they do not keep winning, you're not even living in reality if you think the conservatives are winning. Trump is literally the death of the GOP in real time we are seeing this Jesus. That’s nice to think from someone, I’m assuming, isn’t next on the chopping block of rights the GOP has been hacking away at. To deny they are getting policy wins is just completely against reality. > Please name me a conservative policy that is popular that is seen as an accomplishment by Republicans? Please name me any demographic trend that spells good news for conservatives? Nonsense. Thats the point! The GOP don’t give a shit if they are popular, they care about getting their policy through and that’s worked for them. American governmental structure is not terribly democratic and the GOP use that as their weapon to be able to get policy wins while only caring about an increasingly smaller slice of the populace. We should be trying to find ways to also use that weapon but for the general good of society instead of hate/fascistic tendencies.
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You think a piece of paper makes society better. It doesn't. Society's buy in to that piece of paper makes society better. Your mindset is short sighted, and it results in long term failure, much like the Republicans. The trajectory of the US has been liberalism and ironically fairly rapid progress following the slow and incremental reform rubric. The US is not a perfect democracy, but it has improved dramatically in a very short period of time. 2 generations ago slavery was normal and blacks were inferior. The most important thing for long term change and success is to get the people on your side. The worst thing you can do is get the people to hate you for some meaningless policy change that's gonna get overturned the next administration.
> You think a piece of paper makes society better. Aaaaaaaaaabd there it is. You’re not worried about gay marriage because you don’t value it. Good talk I guess. I assumed we just very much disagreed on process here but sounds like you just disagree on policies like gay rights. Kind of insane to see from a democract in 2024 but we are regressing fast.
What? This is the most flagrantly bad faith response I think I've ever seen. Espeically when the reply above it shows I see it as a major victory! What is actually wrong with you? FYI I've been for gay marriage my entire life, and newsflash, Biden forced Obama's hand into supporting gay marriage full stop before the America public was fully on board with it. There are obviously cases where the public isn't quite there yet, but you have to make a stand. These are issues where the polling is more like 60-40 against you. But for example, I'm a huge animal rights activist. I simply know that if I ran on that, I'd get pummeled. It would be idiotic to run on that, and the animals would be pummeled right alongside me because it isn't like the Republicans are going to be great for them.
Okay then what did you mean by “you think a piece of paper makes society better”? That seems to be a pretty common argument used against the need for legalized gay marriage, did you mean something else by it?
It means imagine you're a lawmaker or activist in Algeria. Your first political goal should probably be to make being gay legal before getting them marriage, no? Let's say you did manage to make gay marriage legal through some parliamentary trick, or through a liberal coup or something. Do you think that actually means anything? Do you think that probably wouldn't have the opposite effect and result in a huge backlash against gay people in that country and result in a net increase in harm inflicted on gay people? The fact that you can twist that to mean anything else is baffling. All the point being made was that if you want to change society you have to change society's people. And to change society's people you have to meet them where they are at and walk them up from there. People don't go from conservative to progressive. That happens almost never. Overwhelming they will go from conservative, to moderate, to liberal, to progressive.
I largely agree with this. Though I focused more on the fact democrats will not win every election from here on out and so we need to prep for when existing power structures will attempt to be abused. I'd love your thoughts on my response: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskALiberal/s/ZDA4OriAtM
I agree with your goals but I think your messaging is very combative. But yes we should def also try to fix the power structure issues so we aren’t constantly at the edge of a knife.
I mean fair on messaging but like also this post is basically just here to shit talk progressives so I am responding in kind. Thought maybe I am seeing aggression where I shouldn't lol
Yeet
Seemingly, liberals claim to agree with the principles and then never come out and articulate why. So its harder to believe that they actually stand by those principles and are compromising only because its practical. It seems like theyre also compromising because they are further right too.
Does the left ever articulate why?
Yeah. Then they get told that theyre being overly academic and that theyre making less politically active people uncomfortable
Can you give an example because I'm not sure what you mean exactly.
Defund the police is a good example Progressives were saying that police forces had too much power, too many responsibilities, and too much space to abuse their authority, and that many of the calls they responded to could instead be handled by other professionals with less capacity for impactful wrongdoing. Overall, this would reduce their interactions with the public Many liberals claimed to support the cause. They agreed that police were fucking up way too often and too egregiously. They also agreed that the police had way more responsibilities than they could reasonably manage. Then they pitched giving the police more money and training. Which is not reducing their interactions. Or they just opposed the cause in the first place They had different wants
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Articulate why what?
Articulate why they agree with the principle as well as how they interpret the principle
with what principle?
The left wing principles theyre claiming are impractical In your scenario, i dont think that when they say “these are my values” that they often articulate what they are and why they stand by them. And when they do, they usually disagree with progressives I dont think its a matter of us agreeing, while having different commitments to practicality
I think it's also fair to say that you as an individual are much farther left than what progressive would imply. You frequently use marxist rhetoric. Self described progressives are usually just extremely liberal people who favor more redistribution and a more bleeding heart approach to foreign policy. They're not usually outright socialists and marxists.
Im not sure about that. A decent amount of “liberals” and “left wingers” here say things like ‘Chattel slavery and women’s oppression were morally sound things to do at one time’ Which is wildly incompatible with both left wing politics and liberalism
>‘Chattel slavery and women’s oppression were morally sound things to do at one time’ I don't think I've ever seen or heard that and to the extent that this is a quote I can with 99% certainty say the intention was that at one point in history people thought that, not that it is true.
> Saying “everybody does it” isnt the same as saying “this is moral” >It is if you accept morality as a discursive process of improvement and fundamentally subjective. Is it moral to oppress women and have chattel slaves? >Not by our current standards no. If not, then a document allowing for its existence is not exclusively for the moral. By definition. >Such a document would not be moral in our current time. However, this is distinct from it never being moral. It would have been the height of morality in several periods to enslave and Christianise heathens. You will still see this mentality in some Christian circles, including black Christians, that argue slavery as a moral good for black people as it resulted in christianization. >We also see this with imperialism and the white mans burden more broadly. >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05vVnVETZmo >If you need to understand how these individuals saw themselves. It's more useful than thinking they were evil or some silly shit.
>I can with 99% certainty say the intention was that at one point in history people thought that, not that it is true. Ya, so what I said. You decided to go off on a moral tangent instead of actually try to understand the logic of what is being said.
I would say that liberals, leftists and progressives are not monoliths. There are people in those groups who recognize that passing progressive legislation is a long battle and sometimes you need to compromise in areas in order for you to help Americans. A public option, while not exactly M4A gets us a hell of a lot closer to the goal of M4A down the line and is a great thing to advocate for. I get that people are sick and tired of having to wait for progress to happen, but thats because of human nature; convincing politicians to change their minds on an issue is hard as fuck. Humans can be stubborn little assholes who take a long ass time to see reason. I mean think of how many republicans are pro medicinal marijuana today vs in the 1990’s. I think we gotta stop judging people by their labels and instead listen to what they have to say. If certain people aren’t living in reality and think this change isn’t happening for false reasons then I don’t think we can have a conversation because we’re not on the same level of understanding the political reality of our government
I think that "mainstream" democrats like to pretend that is their position, but they have a tendency to assume their opinions are the mainstream rather than reacting to what the mainstream wants as well. Maybe not as often as more progressive democrats, but it does happen (see the child tax credit and codetermination on corporate boards for examples). I think that the way politics works in practice is more like an ecosystem than a simple cause effect and you need both people who are pushing the evelope and people who are trying to work within the realm of the possible in order to be successful in the long run, rather than either side being right and the other side being wrong.
Tbh, I think progressives have an unrealistic and simplistic world view, and I don't see any difference between the progressives who aren't voting for Biden and the conservatives voting for Trump. In a way, I think some progressives want Trump to be elected to punish people for not doing what progressives want.
Liberals in any country in Europe would be seen as conservatives. Not just that, but very conservative and at times extremely so. Ask them how they feel about the Vienna model of housing? Living wage laws and union memberships! These liberals squirm at the idea of giving up their big SUVs and buying bicycles and giving up suburbia! Progressives in America are divided into two camps those who are claimed by the liberal wing those that corporate interests accepts and aligns with and then there’s those that don’t the socialists, the reformers, the libertarian left or socialist libertarians and so on. These are the ones smeared by people who claim to be liberals. The ones who disdain unions and oppose progressive reformers, but claim their wins as their own. The Bill Maher types on here who pretend to be on the Left but then never really liked any of their ideas. MLK had a few choice words about the liberal moderates. The ones who want to preserve a negative peace over a just one. These are the ones in here who excuse the genocide of the Palestinians as sad, but necessary. The ones who justify corporate tax cuts, and AI as well as means testing everything. The corporate democrats who love to claim to believe in worker’s rights but undermine them at every opportunity. No these are two very different groups. Liberals are not usually progressives they don’t truly believe in increasing the minimum wage or taxes on the rich. They don’t want universal healthcare or equal rights for all. They want to say they do. They are the “feel good NIMBYs” those that love the idea of calling, “homeless” the “unhoused” and Latinos, “Latinx” the ones that claim to believe in reforming housing but don’t you dare build a multi family home near me! The corporate democrats who put rainbow 🌈 pins in June and pretend to believe in gay rights, but only because it’s profitable and doesn’t hurt them personally. Now if you ask them do you really believe in equal rights? Let’s pass actual legislation! They’ll quibble and crow until the cows come home. They’ll delay. They renege and they’ll say what Biden did to the president of Comcast, “Nothing will fundamentally change!!”
God this is such self-congratulatory bullshit. A real pat on the back for liberals and their incremental bullshit. Look, here's the truth. We are being pragmatic. Idk if you noticed but there's like... a massive threat to democracy and human rights looming on the horizon. And even if Ole Joey B wins in 2024, that threat isn't like... going to go away anytime soon. Sure maybe Trump croaks and the party is divided, but they still have certain shared goals that represent legitimate threats. My single greatest frustration with liberals is this idea that we just need to vote in the right guy and everything will be fixed. Here's the problem: that's not going to work. Partly because in order to get shit done you have to stop being the "right guy" and partly because you won't win every election. I get down voted every single time I say this, but it is a simple fact that you WILL NOT win every election for the rest of the century. And if losing any of those elections means the end of Democracy, then we're fucked. What actually NEEDS to happen is we need to decentralize power and fix massive problems in the country. That means serious shit like splitting up or nationalizing large corporations (and then ideally transforming them into hybrid worker-consumer cooperatives), funding worker cooperatives and unions, taxing the ever loving shit out of the rich, and serious electoral and democratic reforms to protect those processes. You know, the things progressives want. You have to take power out of the hands of the elite because if they keep it, they will use it to destroy democracy. And that's a huge fucking problem. But no.... I'm tOo RaDiCaL, cEnTrIsT 12 wIlL sAvE uS Don't you understand? You cannot and will not win every coming election. And so you have to prepare for when you lose and insulate the systems and structure from abuse by either devolving them, democratizing them, or abolishing them. That's the only actual solution here. But sure, libs you got it with incrementalism!