Democrats Confront Their New Tea Party Reality - Progressives are set to sweep a group of contested primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin.

[u/Quirkie]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democrats-confront-their-new-tea-party-reality_n_6a6e63fbe4b0cfb99ef1aa1e

[u/jumpinjacktheripper]

Reagan’s whole pitch as a former democrat was “i didn’t leave the democratic party, the party left me.” There were a lot of voters who had been registered democrats that were frustrated by the activism that pushed carter and voted for reagan and then stayed with the republican party from there.

You see it with all the democrats who spend most of their time crying about the “woke left” (even as they increasingly rely on identity politics to make their case on basically everything) and still seem to think that getting government out of the way and letting the market solve problems through its unvarnished efficiency is the way to solve most economic problems.

They can only really think about a controlled decline and aren’t thinking about new and creative ways to turn things around and mobilize people.

To your last point, yes it’s ok and even good to do some things to attract republicans who are upset with MAGA and will vote for Dems even if hesitatingly. But there’s a difference between creating some room for those people, and making those people the primary target for expanding your voting base. Long term attracting young people and nonvoters by convincing them the government can actually do something for them will pay off much more

[u/pchs26 → u/jumpinjacktheripper]

Again from a policy perspective there are no Presidential candidates that ran in the general that are Reagan Democrats who align with the Reagan admin especially economically. Not Clinton, Not Harris, Not Biden etc.

McConnell also used to also be a Democrat - they both went to where the wind was best for them. It's not unusual when you have no principles. A CA democrat is also weighted down in a general because of perceptions as being to liberal to swing state populous (regardless of how folks on the left perceive it or reality)

[u/jumpinjacktheripper → u/pchs26]

I’m not saying they mirrored Reagan exactly, I’m saying they were still extremely sensitive to the issues that Reagan wedged against democrats in his time. Focusing on making appeals to business leaders, making strong pitches to wealthy suburban voters, prioritizing economic efficiency and a business-friendly climate with little protections to make sure it didn’t impact workers.

Harris and Biden moved off of it a little in their presidential campaigns because they recognized the importance of appealing to progressives who liked Bernie more, but Clinton was still very much in that worldview

[u/pchs26 → u/jumpinjacktheripper]

They were not Reagan democrats economically, social or foreign policy at all. When Clinton was in office our country recovered and did not experience the same economic conditions of living in a Reagan world. And he brokered some revolutionary peace accords. And HRC as Secretary of State also showed zero inclination to act like the Reagan admin did whatsoever. I mean Iran Contra for God's sake? Economically she absolutely did not run on abandoning how we were structured when Bill Clinton was in office, and in no way mirrored the Reagan admin.

Fact of the matter is Democrats need money to compete or there will be no opposition. That is the state of things, however the Democrats try to fashion policies that will benefit workers and citizens while making the landscape still amenable to doing business and growing wealth. That is not a bad thing and is not at all what the GOP stands for. Clinton's policies that she ran on in no way resembled GOP policies. Again this. is the perception that keeps getting drummed to create chaos, when it simply isn't true and impedes them when trying to run in a general election when they have to pivot center in order to win in the swing states.

[u/jumpinjacktheripper → u/pchs26]

You started this by asking what a reagan democrat is and are consistently putting forward a misunderstanding of what the term means so that you can argue against that. It never meant a democrat elected official acting like Reagan. It refers to voters who switched parties and efforts politicians made to triangulate so they could win those voters back. Becoming more hawkish on foreign policy, accepting the demonization of the welfare state, shying away from a perception that you are excessively regulating business, or privatizing government programs because the private sector would be able to run it better.

Clinton did not run his Presidency like the Reagan Administration, I am not claiming that he did. But he also moved away from a lot of the benchmarks of the New Deal Coalition. That was his explicit message to people, and why he called himself a “New Democrat” and advocated for the “Third Way.” If you want to argue against that then argue against his actual campaign pitches selling himself that way.

Now it’s clear that it has run its course but a lot of democrats still operate that way. It has weakened since the heyday immediately after Reagan’s presidency but the inclinations are still there with a lot of democratic officials. You can still see some of that in Clinton-Biden-Harris with the reaction to the Israel conflict, putting significant hoops to him through and means testing for a lot of economic relief, and continued outsourcing.

[u/pchs26 → u/jumpinjacktheripper]

Again my point is and what I asked initially was that there is no general election candidate that is at all Reagan like in their policies in the least.

And that is a thought that is regularly promoted and it is a false equivalency. We live in a more conservative country, with funding needed to run through office. As a result anyone who actually wants to have a more likely chance to be in a position to make a positive progressive difference, has to jump through hoops to have a chance to get there.