Centrist Democrats need a 2020 reality check before it's too late

[Gagaloo911 12,959]

24 minutes ago, PoshLife said:

This is an opinion piece that ignores what happened just last year when just about 40 Democrats won in districts Trump had won two years prior. They were not liberal democrats; they were centrists. People like Cindy Axne, Abigail Spanberger, Jared Golden, and Collin Allred. Names most of you have never heard of because they aren't Twitter Popular. But they're the Majority Makers and they're why we now control the House of Representatives. They know what it takes to win in Trump districts because they've done it; The Guardian knows not. AOC knows not. You know not.

Poll after poll after poll - national and swing state (just last week in both Florida and Virginia) - have shown that Biden polls better against Trump than Sanders, Warren, or anyone else. Could that change? Of course. But this opinion piece ignores the actual facts and stats in exchange for their own baseless ideology.

Lmao the Dems in those swing districts didn't win because they were "centrist". For one, the Dems in 2018 focused almost exclusively on health care as well as putting a check on Trump. 

Coupled with Trump's incredible unpopularity, and the fact that the party in power historically loses in the midterms, explains how 2018 happened. Not because centrist Dems are popular or desired  If that were the case, what happened to those centrist Dems who lost their reelection bids for their Senate seats in 2018??

Anyway, good luck winning in 2020 with a centrist just like the centrist, establishment candidate won against Trump in 2016! 

[Marilyn MonHoe 11,011]

3 hours ago, Gagaloo92 said:

So, basically, centrist Dems trying all they can to get "moderate" Republicans or to persuade Republicans to vote for them is never gonna happen. They hate Dems and won't vote for one regardless of who it is. 

Rather than wasting your time trying to get someone who will never vote for you, persuade people to just come and actually vote. By having policy proposals that excite them and make them want to vote.

That give them something to vote for not just what to vote against. That's the only way a Dem is going to win. Through high voter turnout where voters have something to vote for. 

 

2 hours ago, Faysalaaa said:

I never see republicans being moderate to get the Democratic vote. Trump got alot of the black and Latino vote not by being a centrist, he got it by being radical. Hes radical but atleast he "offered" something (even if we know it was all a lie).

Centrists would rather try to sway moderate Republicans instead of the progressive left because they have more in common with those Republicans. It’s indicative of how far to the right the Democratic party has fallen in the past 40 years.

Honestly it’s pretty sad and disheartening to see.

[uo111 5,285]

49 minutes ago, PoshLife said:

This is an opinion piece that ignores what happened just last year when just about 40 Democrats won in districts Trump had won two years prior. They were not liberal democrats; they were centrists. People like Cindy Axne, Abigail Spanberger, Jared Golden, and Collin Allred. Names most of you have never heard of because they aren't Twitter Popular. But they're the Majority Makers and they're why we now control the House of Representatives. They know what it takes to win in Trump districts because they've done it; The Guardian knows not. AOC knows not. You know not.

Poll after poll after poll - national and swing state (just last week in both Florida and Virginia) - have shown that Biden polls better against Trump than Sanders, Warren, or anyone else. Could that change? Of course. But this opinion piece ignores the actual facts and stats in exchange for their own baseless ideology.

The people on this forum really hate Biden. To them Biden is polling in the negative teens and if a piece isn’t overly critical of Biden, it’s propaganda. 

I don’t even like Biden but I’m getting pretty worried that young ultra liberals are trying to destroy his reputation so that if he wins the primary, he will lose the general election against trump.

[REALITY 80,303]

17 minutes ago, uo111 said:

The people on this forum really hate Biden. To them Biden is polling in the negative teens and if a piece isn’t overly critical of Biden, it’s propaganda. 

I don’t even like Biden but I’m getting pretty worried that young ultra liberals are trying to destroy his reputation so that if he wins the primary, he will lose the general election against trump.

While I do agree that this forum unnecessarily hates Biden sometimes, I also think these "young ultra liberals" are not what will make him lose the general election. Obviously I can't speak for every progressive Democrat, but what I can say is that I'd literally have any of the Democratic candidates running in 2020 over Trump. I would like to think other people who support Bernie or Warren think the same.

If Biden gets the nomination and loses, that is not a testament to "the radical left". That is a testament to the fact that Democrats cannot see that the American people want change. The reason Trump won, upon a plethora of other things, was the fact that he was a candidate that promised a different kind of change than just the status quo that Hillary Clinton represented.

Bernie and Warren provide that change; they connect with voters. That is why we need one of them (probably Bernie) to win the nomination. If Biden does win, I'd do everything to back him up and support him, but I also wouldn't be surprised if he lost the general election. 

[Bt1 5,213]

8 minutes ago, M Monstre said:

While I do agree that this forum unnecessarily hates Biden sometimes, I also think these "young ultra liberals" are not what will make him lose the general election. Obviously I can't speak for every progressive Democrat, but what I can say is that I'd literally have any of the Democratic candidates running in 2020 over Trump. I would like to think other people who support Bernie or Warren think the same.

If Biden gets the nomination and loses, that is not a testament to "the radical left". That is a testament to the fact that Democrats cannot see that the American people want change. The reason Trump won, upon a plethora of other things, was the fact that he was a candidate that promised a different kind of change than just the status quo that Hillary Clinton represented.

Bernie and Warren provide that change; they connect with voters. That is why we need one of them (probably Bernie) to win the nomination. If Biden does win, I'd do everything to back him up and support him, but I also wouldn't be surprised if he lost the general election. 

I think it's more complicated than that. Why would u say Biden and Warren connect with voters, when Biden was ahead of them all the time in the polls? 

Or that "democrats" dont understand that americans want change? Biden wont win on his own. He needs to get the vote of the majority of american democrats. That's how a democracy works. 

[REALITY 80,303]

10 minutes ago, Florin said:

I think it's more complicated than that. Why would u say Biden and Warren connect with voters, when Biden was ahead of them all the time in the polls? 

Or that "democrats" dont understand that americans want change? Biden wont win on his own. He needs to get the vote of the majority of american democrats. That's how a democracy works. 

Biden has sort of the incumbent thing going for him. He's ahead in the polls because people think he has the "electability" factor and because people think that because he was Vice President, he has more experience. For the electability argument, personally, I don't think that's how you should view candidates. I've said this many times, but just look at the 2016 election. Hillary was 100x more "electable" than Trump, yet she still lost the presidency. As for him being former Vice President, while that certainly gives him more experience, that's not necessarily something you should just vote for him for. 

I understand how democracy works. However, the fact of the matter is that people want change. That's one of the main reasons Trump got elected. People didn't want the status quo that came with Hillary, they wanted change. They saw Trump as an unconventional politician (mainly because he NEVER was a politician to begin with) who was going to "drain the swamp" of all its corporate, greedy overlords, but that never happened.

As Trump's presidency has continued, I think people's desires for change have only escalated. Bernie connected with voters because of his policies. Even if Biden is #1 in the polls, again, that comes down to how "electable" he is. The majority of people actually support Bernie's plans and policies. 

[Chickens in Malibu 7,873]

I can't LMAO this thread enough

[ALGAYDO 35,507]

9 minutes ago, Chickens in Malibu said:

I can't LMAO this thread enough

Laugh all you want, but deep down you know that it’s true. 

[PoshLife 17,019]

1 hour ago, Gagaloo92 said:

Lmao the Dems in those swing districts didn't win because they were "centrist". For one, the Dems in 2018 focused almost exclusively on health care as well as putting a check on Trump. 

Coupled with Trump's incredible unpopularity, and the fact that the party in power historically loses in the midterms, explains how 2018 happened. Not because centrist Dems are popular or desired  If that were the case, what happened to those centrist Dems who lost their reelection bids for their Senate seats in 2018??

Anyway, good luck winning in 2020 with a centrist just like the centrist, establishment candidate won against Trump in 2016! 

You're partially right, in that Democrats in those districts ran on health care. But keep in mind their message was NOT Medicare for All. Their message was protecting and expanding Obamacare. Which candidate currently running do you think best reflects that same message? I'll give you a hint: it's not Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.

As a related news item, yesterday Joe Biden got an endorsement from Abby Finkenauer, a first-term Member of Congress who won a Trump district  in northeast Iowa campaigning on healthcare and other working- and middle-class policy concerns. I would take her word for who can win in Iowa over yours.

On the Senate: you're talking about people like Claire McCaskill, Heidi Heitkamp, Bill Nelson, and Joe Donnelly. That is a very small number of people who ran specific races in either very red states (North Dakota and Indiana) or purple states that Trump won (Missouri and Florida). On the other hand, moderate Democrats kept their seats in purple states like Minnesota (twice over), Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Montana, and we won a new seat in Arizona. You can't pick and choose your facts to create a pattern where there isn't one. You also won't convince me that Tina Smith, Amy Klobuchar, Joe Manchin, Tim Kaine, Bob Casey, or Jon Tester are particularly liberal. (Sherrod Brown is a special case.)

[PoshLife 17,019]

1 hour ago, uo111 said:

The people on this forum really hate Biden. To them Biden is polling in the negative teens and if a piece isn’t overly critical of Biden, it’s propaganda. 

I don’t even like Biden but I’m getting pretty worried that young ultra liberals are trying to destroy his reputation so that if he wins the primary, he will lose the general election against trump.

The problem is that so many young people believe everything they hear on The Young Turks or read on RT. Gagaloo92 is over here apparently convinced that liberal Democrats would have been just as successful in our Frontline Districts. Like, yeah, I'm sure someone like AOC or Ilhan Omar would have done a great job turning out the 15% of people in those districts who identify as super-liberal.

It's an uphill battle to get people to see reason sometimes.

[Gagaloo911 12,959]

44 minutes ago, PoshLife said:

You're partially right, in that Democrats in those districts ran on health care. But keep in mind their message was NOT Medicare for All. Their message was protecting and expanding Obamacare. Which candidate currently running do you think best reflects that same message? I'll give you a hint: it's not Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.

As a related news item, yesterday Joe Biden got an endorsement from Abby Finkenauer, a first-term Member of Congress who won a Trump district  in northeast Iowa campaigning on healthcare and other working- and middle-class policy concerns. I would take her word for who can win in Iowa over yours.

On the Senate: you're talking about people like Claire McCaskill, Heidi Heitkamp, Bill Nelson, and Joe Donnelly. That is a very small number of people who ran specific races in either very red states (North Dakota and Indiana) or purple states that Trump won (Missouri and Florida). On the other hand, moderate Democrats kept their seats in purple states like Minnesota (twice over), Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Montana, and we won a new seat in Arizona. You can't pick and choose your facts to create a pattern where there isn't one. You also won't convince me that Tina Smith, Amy Klobuchar, Joe Manchin, Tim Kaine, Bob Casey, or Jon Tester are particularly liberal. (Sherrod Brown is a special case.)

Yes, you are correct in that many of them didn't message on Medicare for All. That being said, taking polling as you have said before, Medicare for All is popular and a majority of Americans support it. Why else do you think so many of the presidential candidates at least initially said they supported it?

Furthermore, many of the progressive policies proposed by Sanders and Warren are popular all over the country and majorities support them, especially as they relate to tax rates on the wealthy. So that in itself flies in the face of what you're trying to argue that centrist policies are more popular than progressive ones or candidates are more likely to win by backing them. 

Additionally, looking back at the 2018 midterms, really the key reason why Dems won so many seats is because it had one of the highest voter turnouts ever for a midterm election. People who never voted before, or never voted in a midterm before, turned out. The Democratic base was excited and riled up, and people turned out for D candidates all over.

Dems win when people turn out, that's why more effort should be in exciting people and registering new voters to get them to actually vote. Not moderating themselves to win over Republicans 

Do you ever see Republicans talking about how they need to moderate themselves to appeal to Dems? Nope. And it certainly works out for them all the time. 

Which goes back to the main thesis of this article: that ALL Dems, centrist and progressive alike, should focus on broadening the base and getting new voters and non-voters excited to come out and vote for them. Not by appealing to people who are never going to vote for them anyway. 

In this way the article is actually trying to help centrist Dems. By giving them a strategy that will be more likely to get them to win in the first place. 

[rumours 45,521]

19 minutes ago, PoshLife said:

The problem is that so many young people believe everything they hear on The Young Turks

That is a horrifying thought. 
 

OT: As an independent, I’ll just say I hope they nominate someone who I could actually vote for. That’s all I’ll say. 

[Whispering 18,865]

If the younger generation of Democrats and Independents will show up and vote in numbers that compare to the older generations, that’s all it will take to win back the Senate and the White House. 

“Moderates” will show up to vote against Trump. 

[Whispering 18,865]

2 hours ago, Marilyn MonHoe said:

 

Centrists would rather try to sway moderate Republicans instead of the progressive left because they have more in common with those Republicans. It’s indicative of how far to the right the Democratic party has fallen in the past 40 years.

Honestly it’s pretty sad and disheartening to see.

That’s ridiculous. Moderates or centrists have seen enough elections to know how Republicans vote. They know that Republicans fall in line. 

This is some silly opinion piece that you’ve grabbed ahold of to try and criticize centrists. 

It’s going to take the full range of Democratic voters to beat Trump. Support your candidate and then vote against Trump in the General. All the rest of this is noise. 

[President Biden 5,898]

the last election was lost because minorities failed to show up. it has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with voter turnout

so try again.