Stacey Evans “reach across the aisle” strategy got it’s ass kicked by Stacey Abrams full tilt “leftist outreach to excite the base of the democratic party while spending money on registration and getting out the minority vote” here in georgia. She had just under 3/4 of the vote.
and this isn’t California, or Vermont, this is yellow dog, dixiecrat GEORGIA.
Ms. Abrams victory is impressive, and I sincerely applaud her efforts. The reality checks: The DNC supported Evans unequivocally. Ms. Abrams won among 20% of Georgia’s eligible voters (Dem registered voters that actually vote). I would love for her to win in Nov, but she will be be flying solo as far as the DNC goes. Either way it is a total win-win from the DNC point of view: “That poor little negro girl lost because of Republitards” - pbbbbt. Or if she wins “Woooooo hooo, We Shall Overcome”. Either way the DNC sits on its corporate money to support the “right kind of people”.
My estimates are less than 1% identifiable progressive out of 7,383 seats state legislative seats and 535 national plus that President. That’s still like 70-80 people, and maybe you’d like to think that’s a lot of people. Certainly if they were all in a room together or if you were hosting a talk show you could get a lot of progressives together. But let’s not forget the 800-lb gorilla riding the elephant in the room.
Agreed. Of course, it’s not something written into law. There can be other parties. There are others, in fact. They just seem to get no attention, to the point where folks pretend they don’t exist. The Green Party should really try to poach from the Dems’ sitting congressfolk.
“Crony capitalism is just capitalism” is a phrase that you’ll see thrown around in socialist circles fairly regularly.
“Let’s regulate capitalism so that it doesn’t suck so much” is basically the social democrat position. The socialist argument is that capitalism’s suckitude is innate.
Essentially all of the establishment Democrats still proudly self-identify as Liberal.
The Berniecrats tend to identify as progressives (although some of the establishment centrist Dems occasionally try to coopt that label). Some of the Berniecrats see “progressive” as a subset of liberal, some of them see it as moderate socialism. By international standards, most of them are social democrats, fairly centrist.
The folks to the left of the Berniecrats strongly reject the label of liberal, and instead identify as assorted varieties of socialist.
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American liberalism, as represented by the establishment Dems, is not particularly distinct from international or historical liberalism. It was originally an ideology of the capitalist middle class, and it largely still is.
There is ideological continuity; a focus on individual civil liberties, an endorsement of capitalism and a disinclination to empower the working class beyond support for minimal and paternalistic social welfare programs.
There’s also a tendency to neglect or deny the role of class conflict, and instead endorse a “marketplace of ideas” debate-based theory of politics. This brings with it a belief in the importance of forms and procedures as a means of preventing tyranny; hence all the pearl-clutching about violated norms under Trump.
See the bit at 2:05 in this:
The basic dynamics between the factions really haven’t changed that much.
Maybe not that small a number, although it is true that if I stay inside a sufficiently well sealed echo chamber I am likely to greatly overestimate the percentage of the population that thinks just like I do.
Meanwhile…
surely this is why you have a second amendment?
Indeed. It kind of ticks me off when Bernie goes around calling himself a socialist, when he’s actually a social democrat. I’d describe myself as one, for the most part, but with much more American views on free speech and the right to bear arms than most European social democrats, and less idea that the government should be interfering in people’s personal lives for their own good. (provide support when people need it, but don’t assume you know better than someone else how they should live their lives, what kind of relationships they should have, what kinds of drugs they should do, etc. Thats why I’m a little uncomfortable with some progressives who seem to be fine with social engineering as long as they’re the ones doing it.)
They should look at what the UK’s Liberal Democrats did in the 80s and 90s and start focusing heavily on local politics. Areas that are voting for Green candidates at the local and state level are more likely to successfully vote Green at the national level.
The stupid American meaning has kind of poisoned that word in the US, which is why I try to describe it more as a social democrat without the social engineering.
There is still a very strong correlation between economic and social ideology in the USA, though:
More axes gives more detail, but even the single axis version provides a decent portrayal of the overall picture.
You can see at a glance that my graph is miscalibrated to the right; there’s a substantial floor effect on the left margin. But it isn’t hard to project what the shape of the distribution would have been if the graph had more room to breathe.
That graph is colour-coded into Clinton/Trump voters, but it represents the entire electorate, not the candidates. Those blue dots in the far bottom left were anarcho-communists holding their noses while casting an extremely reluctant vote for Clinton.
If you ran the same survey in a candidate-free manner, I expect that you would find the same picture: that is, authoritarian socialists are very few and libertarian socialists are very common.
In the USA, nobody calls themselves a leftist. I don’t know where you’re getting these terms. People here refer to themselves as Democrats and Progressives, all under an umbrella term liberal. You have good points in the article, but this straw mannish setup of left vs liberal doesn’t work with actual reality.
Your terminology is a bit dated; I suggest talking to some millenials.
In the Twitterverse, pretty much everyone to the left of the corporate Dems identifies as some variety of “left”. And the folks to the left of Bernie actively reject the label “liberal”.
The GEORGIA democratic power brokers supported Evans - those folks buy that outreach to disaffected moderate republicans is the way to win. I’m pretty sure the DNC has voiced no opinion or put any money into either campaign during the primary season.
As for what the DNC will do in the general election, it’s anyone’s guess. Many “strategic” Democrat supporters here in Georgia, make a practice of voting for the most moderate republican in primaries, because we assume that the state would elect a republican. I have been convinced this year that practice has led to an inflated imbalance in GOP primary turnout that has kept the DNC from investing in the state in general elections. This year it may have been helpful that the GOP candidates were pretty much all trying to hate gays, browns and taxes and love jesus and guns more than the next guy. There literally wasn’t a viable moderate republican.
In the last primary election the democratic party had 300,000 fewer voters than the GOP. In this primary the democrats had 50,000 fewer. I think that number is what the DNC should be looking at, but time will tell. I can guarantee that if the DNC fails to invest in this race here, they will never get another dime from me. I will keep my politics money local or give directly to national candidates instead.
I wonder if he mostly does it so that his political opponents can’t smear him as a secret socialist…kinda like making fun of yourself to ward off bullies.
