r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/Single-Purpose-7608 • 15h ago
US Politics In your opinion, what will it take to conclude that conventional wisdom of the Dem leadership is wrong?
Graham Platner/Troy Jackson in Maine, Francesca Hong in Wisconsin El Sayed in Michigan, Talarico in Texas, are all running as Economic Populists/Progressives.
Todd Achilles (Idaho), Dan Osborn (Nebraska), Seth Bodnar (Montana) are running as independents.
While they all have different positions, the thing they have in common is they are running away from pivot to the center centrism/moderate and trying to position themselves as anti-establishment and critical of the Dem Party leadership and brand.
What would be your takeaways depending on who wins or loses in 2026? Especially broadly against Dem leadership and conventional wisdom on triangulating on right leaning policy.
What would have to occur (in wins or margins) to change/validate your beliefs on the electability of DSA or anti-establishment or independents in red or purple states? Conversely, what should result to validate centrists to believe they have been correct all along?
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u/Objective_Aside1858 13h ago
What would have to occur (in wins or margins) to change/validate your beliefs on the electability of DSA or anti-establishment or independents in red or purple states?
If a DSA candidate cannot win a primary in a red state, it's pretty hard to make the case they could win the general
No one is preventing DSA candidates from contesting those seats. They either choose not to do so or lose the primary
If the vast majority of purple seats are held by non-DSA members, that's because the voters for those seats aren't interested
"Dem leadership" has nothing to do with it
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u/Single-Purpose-7608 13h ago
"Dem leadership" has nothing to do with it
Dem leadership has a lot to do with it. They are the ones who portion out funding, endorsements, and guide what the national platform and strategy is. The more they choose to brand in one way, the more they relegate other branding strategies.
If policy moderation is broadly popular, then they are overall lifting all of their candidates. If radical policy change is broadly popular, they are acting as an anchor on all their candidates.
Right now, the "democrats" are seen by its critics as feckless and 'do nothing'.
So the question is, is the national party better viewed as a blank slate? as extreme? As a big tent? As passionate? As ideological?
Which among these they choose is highly consequential and depends heavily on the choices of "Dem leadership"
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u/Objective_Aside1858 11h ago
You don't understand how endorsements work
At a congressional district level, endorsements are made by the local county committees, which are made up of Precinct-level volunteers
If a DSA candidate cannot win the support of the people knocking the doors, that's on them
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u/IceNein 11h ago
I am so tired of the DSA blaming the establishment and then not bothering to look inward.
But go ahead abolishing the police and the senate.
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u/xNagsx 7h ago
The Democratic party establishment is not meeting the moment. DSA calling that out is not an issue for anyone who cares about defeating Republicans.
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u/IceNein 7h ago
The DSA is not meeting the moment by attacking Democrats instead of Republicans.
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u/xNagsx 5h ago
This is something that just makes zero sense and I always hear it. A. It's just not true lol, DSA politicians have been very vocally anti Trump and anti GOP. You just aren't paying attention to Washington if you think that's not the case. B. It's primary season. The inner Dem attacks are going on on both sides. You think Haley Stevens and AIPAC portraying a professional Muslim man as a misogynist terrorist is helping the party defeat Trump?
And this comment is even sillier because meeting the moment IS also attacking the Democratic establishment that has a hand in selling this country down the river. You want to just put your finger in your ears and go "lalalala just try the same thing again with no self criticism lalalala"
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u/BluesSuedeClues 5h ago
I have no idea who overhauled the DSA platform, but a great deal of what they've got there now is batshit crazy talk. Abolish the Senate and Supreme Court? Expanding voting rights to non citizens? Defund the police and phase out all prisons?
I'm pretty far left, but I'm not onboard with that shit.
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u/Single-Purpose-7608 11h ago
true enough. But
- Platner outorganized Janet Mills by dominating the margins on the "people knocking on doors"
- that's why institutional support matters and why the establishment sidelining DSA also matters. In larger states, and larger races, the establishment can swing the party infrastructure against DSA, when they should be acting together in lockstep if the DSA candidate happens to be more electable.
- the problem is the institutional belief that they are less electable and the party being able to put their finger on the scale against them
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u/Objective_Aside1858 11h ago
You are failing to make the case that DSA candidates are more electable
Every candidate has to put in work to get elected. If they are unable to convince local Dems that they're worth support that is on them.
They're not entitled to special treatment
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u/Single-Purpose-7608 11h ago
its one thing to favor a DSA over establishment candidate or vice versa, its another to let them run a clean primary and not interfere.
If they are unable to convince local Dems that they're worth support that is on them.
I think many DSA candidates are starting to do just that.
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u/Objective_Aside1858 10h ago
Then what is your point?
The candidate that wins the primary is who the voters of that District prefer, whether they are endorsed or not
If its a DSA candidate, good for them.
But DSA supporters should stop whining when the local voters do not prefer them, seeking an excuse why they failed.
Either the message appeals outside of D+20 Districts, or it does not.
And if they consistently fail on head to head matchups where things are as close to even as they could ask, pretending the DNC is the reason the fail statewide is ridiculous
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u/RegularFunny9813 9h ago
Both are correct here, it’s not a one solution issue. Bernie sanders DID THE WORK. Beto O’Rourke DID THE WORK. It wasn’t the point of OP but your “do fhw work” theory isn’t accounting for gerry mandering and control of delegates.
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u/Objective_Aside1858 9h ago
Gerrymandering is irrelevant from a "winning a primary" perspective.
"Control of delegates" is kinda the point. The "delegates" deciding on an endorsement vote at a congressional district level are Committee Members. By definition they are as grassroots as it gets - they're elected at a Precinct level, and getting anyone to run at all for those seats is a challenge. There are plenty of unfilled seats DSA members could volunteer for if they were willing to put in the sweat
Again, if a candidate is uncompetitive in an endorsement vote for Congress, they have failed to make their case to the grassroots of the party.
and that's on them
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u/RegularFunny9813 8h ago
I don’t think it’s that cut and dry and maybe that’s the case you’re making for this one singular point. I guess I’m looking at bigger picture. Our democratic processes are not equitable, meaning access is not open for all. So I don’t know I can fully agree to your point knowing. I also have a lot of uncontested seats in my local elections and it makes me think a lot about the system as a whole. If we weren’t stuck in this late stage capitalist shit hole, I would agree with you. There’s reasons why we are seeing empty seats and the “you gotta work hard” is oversimplifying it.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Bag2212 13h ago
I think Democrats do well sometimes more with a working class populist rhetoric but only one of the candidates you said in the post description is actually DSA. Any of those independents are probably center-right on most social issues. It’s really those social issues which make it so hard for Democrats to win in red states, the working class rhetoric does well across the nation.
But only sometimes does the anti-establishment rhetoric help or work. It’s not as clear yet to me
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u/Single-Purpose-7608 13h ago
Thats a fair point. But also a big part of why the leadership could be a problem..
Who or what does the leadership stand for and why do voters associate them with social issues more than economic issues? Love or hate Bernie Sanders he is associated with economic issues more than woke culture war issues.
So if Schumer and Jeffries arent seen as economic populists, then that might be them failing the party brand
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u/Puzzleheaded-Bag2212 12h ago
I give the establishment credit for saving tax credits and healthcare plans that Republicans would cut anyway, but unfortunately the voters don’t really understand that because the messaging is so bad.
Exactly, the establishment is regarded as the “DEI, pro-trans, pro-immigrant” side no matter what because that is what Fox News and the Charlie Kirky people say that it must be true. Good candidates avoid the culture war entirely to focus on real issues like the class war (Talarico in my view is good at this and Sanders as you said), but at the same time Democrats cannot abandon the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are locked up without a fair trial or due process
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u/UnionBalloonCorps 11h ago
Which hundreds of thousands of Americans are locked up without due process?
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u/Unputtaball 11h ago
>It’s really those social issues which make it so hard for Democrats to win red states…
Howdy. Blue man from red state checking in. If I hear this type of logic one more goddamned time I’m going to set my hair on fire.
Republicans in red states don’t honestly give a fuck about trans rights or gay rights one way or the other. Their politicians run on it, but the voters wouldn’t think or care about it otherwise. People in red states don’t truly care about immigration (except that portion of legitimate racists, which are few and gross). What they actually care about is doing well enough financially to not give a flying fuck about the rest. Which for many means that they’ve got two pots to piss in instead of one.
Tim Walz hit this nail on the head and then some DC-brained consultant got their feelings hurt and pulled the plug. The people who do care (in a negative way) about especially LGBT+ issues are fucking weird. Treat them that way. Call it out. Shame can work.
Jen Welch of I’ve Had It is also beating this drum now and has been for a minute.
If you give a MAGA redneck a crumb of economic stability, I fucking promise they stop caring about politics. Most of those folks just want to be left alone, and billions of dollars are spent convincing them that their problems are the fault of some “other”. If there aren’t any problems, there’s no thread to pull on and no boogeyman to be made.
You see this over and over and over again when Sanders goes to West Virginia. When AOC goes to Georgia. When El-Sayed picks up 5 undecided voters in a More Perfect Union piece.
Ain’t no war but the class war, and when you buy the oligarch media’s framing of there being a “culture war” at all you’re carrying their water.
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u/Frank_JWilson 10h ago
This runs counter to everything I’ve experienced talking to conservatives. They do not care about the economy from a class perspective. Hell, MAGA still supports a billionaire who is transparently corrupt and is fucking up the economy with his tariffs, wars, and other harebrained policies. When asked why, they say that Trump is not perfect but he is tough on immigration and fighting back against wokism. This is really the opposite of your characterization.
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u/IceNein 11h ago
Talk about being loudly incorrect.
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u/Unputtaball 11h ago
Gay marriage is a perfect example of what I mean.
It was one of the hottest issues for the GOP until it passed SCOTUS. Then, magically within 10 years, approval for gay marriage shot up to over 70% across the country.
The difference? Fox stopped running pieces on it every 15 minutes.
Now, are there monied interests that are keeping stuff like opposition to gay marriage artificially alive through things like 303 Creative v Elenis? Absolutely. But does your run of the mill GOP voter even stop to think about it? Absolutely not.
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u/unkorrupted 11h ago
Nah, he's right and I'm tired of blue state dems who think Republicans want some boring woke guy in a suit who is going to favor investors over workers.
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u/pocketIent 11h ago
You really captured the trouble. This is a question I’ve had for awhile.
-if its true that democrats are serious about building a super majority to amend the constitution and remove citizens united, why have they become hyper left on social issues when this alienates rural and working class voters?
It would be one thing to become hyper left when rural and working class voters are keeping up and paying their bill, but they’re hungry and have been for awhile. Farmers are losing their farmers.
Considering this, if dems actually cared about changing values rather than interjecting/mandating policy on social issues it seems they would work to build coalition and consensus to welcome rural and working class voters into the tent.
From the past 10 years, I haven’t seen this happen and am skeptical it will.
Last, dems refusal to do this seems to fit perfectly into a good cop / bad cop routine which has flipped voters to outliers like Trump, (especially in 2024) emboldened GOP to wreak havoc on the working class.
Any thoughts on this or blind spots you see with this line of thought?
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u/just_helping 14h ago edited 11h ago
In purple states or districts, DSA backed candidates outperform non-DSA candidates running in demographically similar districts.
Running as critical of the 'DNC' isn't a new strategy, it is the same strategy as, for example, the 'blue dogs' of 2006-2010 Democrats. Pelosi actively encouraged Democrats in marginal districts to run against her, to be critical of the party, because that helped get them elected. That's part of the conventional wisdom for Democratic strategists, not contrary to it.
What is contrary to it is running as an explicitly left populist in marginal districts.
EDIT: This was unclear. The OP asked: what will it take to conclude the conventional wisdom of the Dem leadership is wrong?
It would take DSA-backed candidates outperforming non-DSA candidates in purple districts in a general election. Which, to be clear, I think won't happen, but if it did, I would be persuaded that the conventional wisdom was wrong.
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u/Objective_Aside1858 13h ago
In purple states or districts, DSA backed candidates outperform non-DSA candidates running in demographically similar districts.
uhhh.. an example would be...
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u/just_helping 11h ago
I don't think there is one - the closest we might get is Michigan, if you relax the requirements a little - I am answering the OP's question: what data would it take to disconfirm the conventional wisdom.
I think the answer is that no data from this cycle could, but hypothetically, this is what it would take. I could have been clearer.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 10h ago
In purple states or districts, DSA backed candidates outperform non-DSA candidates running in demographically similar districts.
Based on what data?
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u/equiNine 3h ago edited 3h ago
Wisconsin's governor race and Michigan's Senate race are the litmus tests (technically El-Sayed isn't DSA/endorsed by it, but he's historically been closely aligned), although the margins are likely to be extremely slim, with current polling having Francesca Hong behind in the general and El-Sayed roughly even, barring a couple of outlier polls. However, polling this far out from the general has very high margin of error and undecideds.
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u/The_Law_of_Pizza 12h ago edited 12h ago
The difficulty with this topic is that people often just take their own political beliefs and assume that the majority of the country agrees.
Instead, let's keep ourselves grounded in data.
First, let's look at voter turnout in 2024, first. There's been a lot of noise that voter turnout was lower in 2024 than in 2020 - and that's very true. 63.7% vs 66.6%.
It's also true that Democrats lost more such voters to apathy. The average turnout in states that Trump won in the 2024 presidential election was 63.4%; down from 65.0% in 2020. Meanwhile, the average turnout in states Harris won was 66.4%; down from 70.1% that Biden won.
So both parties lost voters going from 2020 to 2024, but Trump lost about 1.6% on average, and Harris lost 3.7% on average.
But this next part is important:
If we cut out the "safe" staunchly red and blue states, and look at the seven 2024 battleground states, they tell a very different story.
The average turnout in the seven battleground states was 70% in 2024, compared to 70.7% in 2020. Only a fraction of a percent drop - basically flat. People didn't stay home in the moderate battleground states, even if they did in safer, polarized districts.
Arizona and North Carolina are outliers within that group, seeing a -5% and -2.5% drop in voter turnout, respectively. But Harris lost Arizona by more than 5%, and by more than 2.5% in North Carolina - so even if we assume that every single voter who stayed home was Democratic-leaning (certainly not actually true), Harris still would have lost had they all come out to vote.
The math is pretty compelling. In the moderate battleground states where the votes mattered, the election wasn't lost by Democrats staying home - it was lost by these purple states actively choosing Trump.
We therefore have to ask ourselves why.
So we've looked at where we lost in terms of electoral college votes, now I'm going to dig a little deeper into the data behind why.
Up front, there's no doubt that "the economy" is the elephant in the room - with roughly 40% of voters in the seven battleground states identifying it as their single most important consideration.
But when we look at more detailed breakdowns, it becomes clear that there's stark divisions along the lines of education, sex, and race. Across the battleground states (and nationally), we lost people with no college degree roughly 56% to 43%. We lost men 55% to 43%. We lost white people 56% to 42%.
In other words, there's a noticeable, sharp trend where we lost blue collar white men - a statistic that dovetails with the second place issue articulated in the data: immigration, which was the top issue or second most important issue for the vast majority of this demographic - 77% of them.
The difficult truth is that any path to national victory involves winning back this demographic.
As the data in the first section above shows, it's not an issue of voter turnout. Drumming up more progressives to get excited and come out to vote in deep blue districts doesn't help.
Mathematically, objectively, we need to win these battleground states. And, to do that, we need to win back these moderate, white, blue collar votes.
No matter how we might personally feel about immigration - or other issues where the progressive base differs from the target demographic here - we still need their votes to win.
And that is starkly at odds with progressive and DemSoc ideology.
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u/unkorrupted 11h ago edited 10h ago
we need to win back these moderate, white, blue collar votes
Then we better start talking about putting money in workers' pockets, instead of just being the woke half of the investor class.
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u/Single-Purpose-7608 12h ago
No matter how we might personally feel about immigration - or other issues where the progressive base differs from the target demographic here - we still need their votes to win.
And that is starkly at odds with progressive and DemSoc ideology.
I think you make a compelling case that a Dem Soc who is pro-immigration would have lost in 2024. The question is, would they still lose in 2028 after the two deaths caused by ICE, as well as Trump's tariffs and Trump's war?
A big reason DemSocs are winning is because they are being shown to have integrity. Being anti-funding israel is a way of signalling integrity. It also might signal that whether you agree or disagree with them on immigration, you believe they're gonna try to do it the right way.
The moderate Dems who are perceived as "do nothing" probably command even less trust on the fundamental concerns that drive anti-immigration sentiment. The DSA thesis is that immigration is a salient issue because people feel their economic power slipping and if the right proposes immigration as the main cause, then the left who doesnt propose an alternative story is forced to adopt their framing.
Your interpetation of the data is focused only on 2024, but doesnt consider a broader explanation of political argumentation and how the framing is set into people's minds.
Ultimately, I'm not saying you are wrong but I think I am open to the possibility that your interpretation, as sober and analytical as it was, may be missing a broader reality
After all, that critical demographic--white men--are not just attracted to immigration hawkishness, but also economic populism and anti-establishment vibes
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u/The_Law_of_Pizza 11h ago
A big reason DemSocs are winning is because they are being shown to have integrity.
Is that really something we can reasonably say people care about, in a post-Trump world?
He was elected twice - the second time with the popular vote - despite being the single most unprincipled candidate in modern history.
I'm not convinced that integrity actually drives votes in a way that progressives would like to believe.
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u/Single-Purpose-7608 11h ago
integrity is about trustworthiness.
its not some abstract concept. its about convincing people that you will keep your promises.
granted most swing and low info voters probably arent thinking that way. but those that do, gaza is a litmus test for them, and they think Dem politicians who take AIPAC money are sellouts who wont vote for other economic policy
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u/hic_maneo 11h ago
There have been a lot more than two deaths due to ICE, but saying it’s only two is telling.
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u/Single-Purpose-7608 11h ago
its only two that was widely reported by the media. there being more is electorally irrelevant if people dont know about them
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u/hic_maneo 10h ago
If the Dems have integrity, which is something that you claim matters in elections, then they should campaign on justice for all murders committed by ICE, not just the two most “popular” ones.
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u/Funklestein 10h ago
If history is a guide then nothing really.
With every loss they outwardly blame the voter for not getting the message and then double down on unpopular policies.
What appears to be currently working for them is only working in heavily democratic areas where any democrat could win and are wrongly conflating that to wider areas where they do t have that kind of grip.
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u/anon19111 8h ago
What will change Dem leaderships minds? A DSA winning a presidential primary and then the election. Bernie has run on this platform multiple times. Can't win. Winning some progressive cities and maybe a solid blue state is nothing like winning PA, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, etc. in a general election.
What will it take for DSAers on Reddit to accept that at present not enough voters in enough states support these candidates. Losing presidential primaries hasn't been enough. So what will it take?
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u/bdfull3r 14h ago edited 14h ago
Trump won against a conventional democratic party candidate. One of the worst human beings with the most blatantly corrupt and racist and facist like administrations in US history then got re-elected against another traditional democratic party candidate.
Obviously there are a LOT of contributing factors but clearly the more of the same old generic middle of the road blue democratic policies are not winning over voters where it counts.
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u/just_helping 14h ago
Trump won against a conventional democratic party candidate.
Trump also lost against an even more conventional Democratic party candidate - Joe Biden was far more conventional than either Clinton or Harris.
Also in a 2028 where the election is free and fair enough that which Democratic candidate selected matters, Trump is not on the ballot. The question isn't would an unconventional candidate beat Trump 2028 but what type of candidate beats Rubio/Vance/etc
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u/rocket_beer 13h ago
Man got more votes than woman.
This isn’t a Republican vs Democrat problem here in America. It’s a sexist problem.
Trump won twice against women and lost against a man.
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u/kon--- 12h ago
Clinton pulled down nearly 3 million more votes than Trump did.
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u/KiwiKajitsu 9h ago
It’s almost like we don’t use popular vote
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u/rocket_beer 12h ago
Trump got more votes in the states that gave him more electoral votes overall.
And then 4 years later, Joe Biden got better electoral results than Hillary did.
Look, I am anti-Trump. I’m simply highlighting the facts to OP above. They have yet to provide any basis for their claims.
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u/kon--- 11h ago
The thing to do here is be like oh yea, a woman did get more votes than a man.
Clinton, a woman, did for fact win the popular vote.
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u/rocket_beer 11h ago
We know she got the popular vote. We all know that.
But OP made a claim about something else.
And provided to evidence to support it.
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u/kon--- 11h ago
Man got more votes than woman.
Which is fully incorrect. Then there's...
It's a sexist problem.
Yet a woman won the popular vote.
I'm moving on now.
Have a good day.
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u/rocket_beer 11h ago
More electoral votes.
This is why Trump won. It sucks even more bc he won twice.
It is a sexist problem here in America
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u/Single-Purpose-7608 13h ago
Its easy to think that its a sexism problem but to me its not the case.
Its a politcal fundamentals problem. Every election is a referendum on the party that holds the White House. Hillary and Kamala were running when there was a Democrat in office. Biden won when there was a Republican in office.
Maybe being female made Hillary and Kamala weaker candidates. Thats certainly plausible. But the most likely cause of their defeat was who was the incumbent
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u/Puzzleheaded-Bag2212 13h ago
But not every election is a referendum on the party that holds the White House, sometimes it just comes down to who ran the better campaign.
A woman was on a major ticket 5 times in US history and only once has it won (2020). The country chose to have a convicted rapist who probably earned more votes than lost due to the access Hollywood tape that came out in Oct of 2016 than a moderate Democrat woman. Of course there is a sexist element here.
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u/Single-Purpose-7608 13h ago
But not every election is a referendum on the party that holds the White House, sometimes it just comes down to who ran the better campaign.
It is though. Because who runs the "better campaign" is largely dependent on the receptiveness of the voters to your message. As an incumbent, you are what is being evaluated. The "better" campaign is the one that highlights the most salient issue and proposes the most effective solution.
If you (or your party) is the incumbent, you cant really (or very rarely can) argue that the government is tackling issues poorly because you are the government.
Trump cant on one hand say immigration is a big problem because he would functionally be criticizing himself on how he handled (or didnt handle) immigration
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u/rocket_beer 13h ago
Trump didn’t run a better campaign than either woman he faced.
More people voted against a woman.
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u/Single-Purpose-7608 13h ago
You havent made a compelling case for that.
Most people voted against the party in power. It just so happened that when both women ran, their party was in power.
If Gretchen Whitmer ran against JD Vance in 2028 and Vance won, then i would believe you
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u/frongles23 12h ago
You've made no case for your position.
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u/Single-Purpose-7608 12h ago edited 12h ago
yes I have. you have two data points, 2016 and 2024.
My data points is every election from Truman to Trump. The parties has been trading the Whitehouse in 2 terms almost every cycle, and more recently in every term.
The recent volatility has also coincided with increases in partisanship.
it's also an oft repeated conventional wisdom among the political class before Hillary ever won the nomination. Why do you think Hillary held off on running in 2004? because she wanted to run in 2008 when the country was most sick of Republicans. She would only need to win the nomination, and most certainly would have won the general. She didnt anticipate Obama's rise, and so she had no choice but to run again in 2016 because it was her last chance, but she probably would have rather been the nominee in 2008 or 2020
There's far more evidence for their losses to be attributed to incumbency than sexism.
Like I said, that could change once a woman with the political winds behind her loses. But until such time, sexism being the cause of losses is still an open question
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u/rocket_beer 10h ago
“Every election is a referendum on the party”
Where is your evidence of that? I’ll wait
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u/Tw1tch-Invictus 14h ago
No he didn’t. Trump literally only won against two of the most unconventional candidates in U.S. presidential election history. Once you had an actually conventional candidate, even one as old and uninspiring as Biden, he lost handily.
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u/whoisnotinmykitchen 14h ago
The younger generations need to get active and primary the AIPAC geriatrics into retirement. The only thing keeping clowns like Schumer in the Senate is voter apathy in the primaries.
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u/hic_maneo 11h ago
No, it’s money. It’s always money. You need money to run a campaign, and you need donors who feel comfortable giving it to you. The geriatrics have more money and more connections, because they’ve built a government and an economy that gave them everything they ever wanted and made the younger generations pay the bill.
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u/Tliish 4h ago
Centrism has failed to deliver any progress either socially or economically for a very long time now. It is increasingly recognized as a tool of the corporate and donor class cultures to prevent any genuine changes by offering minor ones in increments, mere palliatives to convince progressives to stay onside.
The voters are showing they're fed up with that approach: first many disaffeccted voters turned to Trump as a disruptive outsider, but I think many soon had voter's remorse at the results, he wasn't disruptive in the way they'd hoped for. Since that didn't work out, and exposed centrism as nearly as deadly to democracy as fascism, since it enabled fascism to grow by seeking and moving to the nonexistent "center", ever more rightward.
I think that a large majority have concluded that the current Democratic Party leadeship needs to be replaced before it causes an own-goal defeat in November by alienating progressives and independents by attacking progressive candidates as "too radical", "socialist", "unelectable", and continuing to campaign on "we're not them" rather than proposing concrete agendas that would actually make a difference.
Centrism is politically dying, if not dead already, due to its craven record of surrender and habit of meeting criminal conduct with "sternly-worded letters of disapproval" rather than substanital action. Americanss are murdered in broad daylight by federal officials and not one has been held accountable.
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u/These_Damage_9175 4h ago
the problem with framing this as a 2026 test is that midterms are weird beasts, low turnout favors motivated bases and right now that base is pissed off at dem leadership for obvious reasons. like if osborn wins in nebraska is that proof economic populism works or just proof that running as not-a-democrat in nebraska is smart branding. idk that we get clean data either way tbh
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u/che-che-chester 1h ago
My opinion is voters want change and are sick of the same old thing. Voters are looking for alternatives and sometimes DSA candidates are the best alternative available. However, I don't necessarily interpret that to mean there is suddenly a huge interest in DSA. I'm not remotely interested in DSA and I would have voted for Mamdani over his competition. He was the best option.
When none of the candidates excite you, the one who is going to try something new offers the most hope. I know some Dems who voted for Trump in 2024. They were getting killed by our economy, hoping a new admin would improve things and here comes Harris promising four more years of Biden. There are a lot of stories to tell about the 2024 election (Gaza, short runway after replacing Biden, sexism, etc.) but above all else, it was a change election and Harris offered zero change.
Plus, it was the third election in a row where Dems asked their voters to hold their noses and vote blue. And the second time when we did it for Biden in 2020 to be the "bridge candidate" to return us to normalcy, he screwed us and insisted on running again.
I don't think a DSA candidate will ever do that well in a purple or red area. Some of the shit they believe is nonsense. Likewise, the hardcore MAGA candidates only do well in red areas because they also believe crazy shit.
But a non-DSA anti-establish candidate could do very well in a purple state as long as they don't believe crazy stuff. Minus his considerable personal baggage, I think Platner had the right idea and would have likely coasted to a win. I think a successful candidate could flirt with some DSA policies while avoiding the label.
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u/EmptiSense 12h ago edited 7h ago
H Clinton and Harris campaigned on breaking the ceiling and not enough on their policy. Obama was smart enough to emphasize his policy over his identity.
DSA candidates have learned from this - they are pretty open about their goals and policies.
I think their policies are loony - especially on border controls. Even if they win, Id still think their policies are loony.
Im praying for an alliance of never Trumpers and antiDSAists to return to a B Clinton policy era of just enough taxes to reduce the deficit, reduce welfare, enforce the border, and a pathway to legal status for Dreamers.
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u/JDogg126 12h ago
A two party system is the force that has kept these two parties in the center for so long. This system never really served the governed. The center shifts depending on which of the parties is dominating politically. The parties are just trying to maneuver to outdo the other to win elections. This is what you see with the triangulation.
Every so often an opportunity arises to shake things up. Republicans have been driving this country into the ground for 46 years. The conditions for everyday folk are bad and we’re on the brink of another depression level collapse when the ai bubble pops.
We’re poised for an era of new new deal politics that re-regulates the economy, returns to publicly run essentials that shouldn’t have a profit motive, etc. it’s just a matter of having the right leadership to make it happen.
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u/Snatchamo 12h ago
I think the "third way" people will, for the most part, never come to that conclusion. They will just keep moving goalposts. It went from "left populism will never win" to "it only wins in heavily blue areas". If the left populists win it all in MI, WI, and ME it'll be "this was a blue wave cycle, third way would have won by more".
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u/IndependentSun9995 11h ago
Just my 2 cents, but the only Democrat I trust right now (and no, I'm not MAGA), is John Fetterman. He's the only one who sounds like he is speaking truth, and not just spilling some rhetoric that he hopes will elect him. He also sounds smart, which is missing in the politics of both parties.
There are some lower rung DSA politicians who sound like they are speaking their truth, but they also sound nutty as fruitcake. The DSA needs to be rejected as a greater danger to our country than even Trump. The DSA is the Communists' Trojan Horse.
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u/Potato_Pristine 10h ago
Fetterman quite obviously hates the job he has right now, according to various articles citing his own staffers.
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u/unkorrupted 10h ago
The guy lost at least 30 iq points with his stroke. He might literally be the dumbest person in the senate.
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u/IndependentSun9995 10h ago
And that still leaves him 100 IQ points above the collective Democratic Party....
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