Analysis shows as Centrist Dems move right, the more they lose

[MJHolland 12,725]

Just now, Gagaloo911 said:

 

Literally go look for yourselves at the Democratic Congressional races, you can see that centrist Democrats fared very poorly and either lost or barely squeaked by a win, meanwhile progressives all won their races by substantial margins. Progressive policies succeeded across the country and Americans overwhelmingly support them. 

Maybe if there were candidates who actually fought for these popular things in more swing districts instead of running away from them like the Democrats did in Florida from the $15 minimum wage who believed it would hurt Biden (he lost anyway), then we could see whether progressives fare equally well in such places.

In fact, Beto O'Rourke's 2018 Senate bid where he essentially ran as a progressive would suggest yes given he almost did it, meanwhile this year didn't even come close with a centrist

Also, Obama ran as a progressive in 2008 and arguably 2012 too and he won decisively.

These data points certainly indicate your arguments to not be the case.

 

 

OKAY, BUT...

Progressives tend to runs in very liberal districts. And centrist/conservatives run in competitive/conservative districts. 

There's little this study does to prove that progressives would win in swing districts. There's like... 4? 5 data points used in the analysis? 

I also question how the researchers defined "swing districts". VA-10, my home district, is listed here. It hasn't swung red in an election (midterm or presidential) since 2012. Clinton won it by +10% and Biden expanded upon that margin... Wexton, the incumbent Dem, wasn't in danger and also didn't campaign on progressive issues AT ALL. 

[MJHolland 12,725]

4 minutes ago, Gagaloo911 said:

See my previous post above where I address this.

I did, and you really didn't (at least convincingly). I already responded to it. 

[Othon 34,299]

24 minutes ago, President Biden said:

This is assuming AOC’s win in solid blue NYC is equally as challenging as Conor Lamb’s win in Pittsburgh (fun fact, it isn’t! AOC’s district is like 75% Democrats).

 

Nice cherrypicking tho

The study is literally about races in swing districts.

Read before you post. 

[MJHolland 12,725]

I think I read the graph wrong, oops

I still standby my argument that correlation does not equal causation

Each of these districts are not equal in their "swinginess". It's still very plausible that Dem candidates move to the right as their districts become more conservative, but you would also expect the Dem vote share to diminish as their districts become more conservative. 

I mean, look at VA-7, which is Richmond suburbs. It is SO conservative, and Spanberger herself just warned that progressive policies almost made her lose (I think that's really dramatic but still). I agree in that case, though, that she had to move to the right to retain that seat.  

The jury is still very much out. It makes little sense for candidates to move more left as their districts go right, especially considering party polarization still on the rise. 

 

[MJHolland 12,725]

Just now, OG Gaga Stan said:

The study is literally about races in swing districts.

Read before you post. 

See my post right above this

And please correct me if I'm wrong maybe I just don't understand??? 

[Othon 34,299]

Just now, MJHolland said:

See my post right above this

And please correct me if I'm wrong maybe I just don't understand??? 

Here's another version of this data:

[MJHolland 12,725]

Just now, OG Gaga Stan said:

Here's another version of this data:

I think I read it wrong rip me 

[caulixtla 2,170]

This looks like cherry picking. I can do that too: Bernie Sanders did not get the youth vote to come out in force during the primary this year: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/opinion/bernie-sanders-young-voters.html

However, I’m willing to look at an experiment: How well did Howie Hawkins do in Maine? Since Maine has ranked choice voting, people could vote for Hawkins without having to worry about increasing Trump’s lead. If there really are all these progressive voters who just were scared of helping Trump by voting for anyone except Biden, then we should see that in the Maine vote.

If Hawkins does better than 5% in Maine’s first-round voting, that would be strong evidence that there is a large number of progressive voters out there who we need to tap. If not, it might be better to veer to the center in general elections.

Right now, I don’t know Maine’s numbers. But that’s a good case to find evidence for far-left policies that translate in to real votes. (EDIT: Hawkins got only 1% of the vote, and Biden got over 50% of the vote, resulting in Biden getting a first round win. But I want to see final figures from sources which breaks it down by district, to see if Hawkins was even able to get enough votes to give the presidential races more than one round of voting.)

In terms of the $15 minimum wage winning in Florida, what about the “Uber can continue to not pay their drivers living wages” proposition which passed in California (there were two other results with propositions in CA which were definitely not progressive) Sure, you can say that’s because of corporate spending, but if there are so many progressive voters out there, surely they’re all smart enough to avoid corporate propaganda.

 

[Gagaloo911 12,959]

5 minutes ago, caulixtla said:

This looks like cherry picking. I can do that too: Bernie Sanders did not get the youth vote to come out in force during the primary this year: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/opinion/bernie-sanders-young-voters.html

However, I’m willing to look at an experiment: How well did Howie Hawkins do in Maine? Since Maine has ranked choice voting, people could vote for Hawkins without having to worry about increasing Trump’s lead. If there really are all these progressive voters who just were scared of helping Trump by voting for anyone except Biden, then we should see that in the Maine vote.

If Hawkins does better than 5% in Maine’s first-round voting, that would be strong evidence that there is a large number of progressive voters out there who we need to tap. If not, it might be better to veer to the center in general elections.

Right now, I don’t know Maine’s numbers. But that’s a good case to find evidence for far-left policies that translate in to real votes.

In terms of the $15 minimum wage winning in Florida, what about the “Uber can continue to not pay their drivers living wages” proposition which passed in California (there were two other results with propositions in CA which were definitely not progressive) Sure, you can say that’s because of corporate spending, but if there are so many progressive voters out there, surely they’re all smart enough to avoid corporate propaganda.

 

Not really. Look below for yourself, comparing progressive candidates and centrists alike in Republican-leaning and swing districts for this particular analysis.

It clearly shows candidates who support and actually fight for progressive policies do better. Not sure what else needs to be demonstarted to show that when it's being replicated across the country and centrist Democrats all over had a very hard time winning.

Politics should be about changing strategy when yours is shown to fail, and the bottom line is the Democrats' strategy at the Congressional level anyway was a dumbsterfire of a failure, LOSING seats in the House when they should have been winning seats.

7 minutes ago, OG Gaga Stan said:

Here's another version of this data:

 

[MJHolland 12,725]

9 minutes ago, OG Gaga Stan said:

Here's another version of this data:

This is a nice correlation, but still doesn't prove causation. Let's take a look at those who lost:

IA-1 — TBH I'm devastated by this race. Full disclosure I donated to her. But to be fair, she lost by a small margin, and this is an Obama-Obama-Trump-Trump district. I think there is more at play (i.e. racist republicans) than M4A

MN-07 — no clue how this is a swing district when it has an R+12 environment 

FL-27 & FL-29 — Two more very narrow loses by freshmen Democrats in Obama-Trump districts in a state Trump carried in 2020 by a wide(ish) margin. Who is to say that it was M4A that sealed the deal? 

SC-01 and OK-05 — Both R+10 districts.... are we really going to pretend M4A does well in these districts? Same with NM-02

[MJHolland 12,725]

9 minutes ago, Gagaloo911 said:

Not really. Look below for yourself, comparing progressive candidates and centrists alike in Republican-leaning and swing districts for this particular analysis.

It clearly shows candidates who support and actually fight for progressive policies do better. Not sure what else needs to be demonstarted to show that when it's being replicated across the country and centrist Democrats all over had a very hard time winning.

Politics should be about changing strategy when yours is shown to fail, and the bottom line is the Democrats' strategy at the Congressional level anyway was a dumbsterfire of a failure, LOSING seats in the House when they should have been winning seats.

 

There's literally no evidence that losing Dems would have won if they had supported M4A.

Almost all incumbent Dems that lost in 2020 were in deep red districts and/or in states that Trump carried easily. Literally all by one............ 

This is honestly way less convincing than you think it is haha. 

[caulixtla 2,170]

13 minutes ago, Gagaloo911 said:

Not really. Look below for yourself, comparing progressive candidates and centrists alike in Republican-leaning and swing districts for this particular analysis.

 

That may be a cherry picked analysis. There are only 16 representatives being looked at. There were 435 representatives up for election. Also, some of the figures in the table worry me: Katie Porter’s does not represent a Republican +3 district. She represents a Democrat +5.4 district (i.e. they gave Clinton a 5.4 point lead in the 2016 presidential election).

I will call this cherry picking until I see:

* How did all 435 districts do?

* Of the winners and losers, who did and did not support medicare for all? This may have to be three way: Yes, No, Did not mention

* What was the real partisan lean of each district? Partisan lean here is how much the district voted for and against Clinton in 2016. Or how much the district voted Democratic for the representative in 2018? (actually, we should look at the correlation without the “support medicare for all” factor between partisan leaning and results, using 2016 Trump-Clinton figures for “partisan lean” to minimize dependent factors, then see how the chart changes once we add “supports medicare for all”. And the study really would need to look at all 435 elections, so we need to wait for final results first.)

These figures are definitely interesting, but there’s not enough data here (and concerns I have with the data; e.g. I don’t see Katie Porter representing a +3 Republican district; we are in 2020, not 2012 nor 2014) for us to come up with any good conclusions. Sure, if can cherry pick 16 out of 435 data points, we can probably make the data say all kinds of interesting things which have little to do with reality.

[Gagaloo911 12,959]

14 minutes ago, caulixtla said:

That may be a cherry picked analysis. There are only 16 representatives being looked at. There were 435 representatives up for election. Also, some of the figures in the table worry me: Katie Porter’s does not represent a Republican +3 district. She represents a Democrat +5.4 district (i.e. they gave Clinton a 5.4 point lead in the 2016 presidential election).

I will call this cherry picking until I see:

* How did all 435 districts do?

* Of the winners and losers, who did and did not support medicare for all? This may have to be three way: Yes, No, Did not mention

* What was the real partisan lean of each district? Partisan lean here is how much the district voted for and against Clinton in 2016. Or how much the district voted Democratic for the representative in 2018? (actually, we should look at the correlation without the “support medicare for all” factor between partisan leaning and results, using 2016 Trump-Clinton figures for “partisan lean” to minimize dependent factors, then see how the chart changes once we add “supports medicare for all”. And the study really would need to look at all 435 elections, so we need to wait for final results first.)

These figures are definitely interesting, but there’s not enough data here (and concerns I have with the data; e.g. I don’t see Katie Porter representing a +3 Republican district; we are in 2020, not 2012 nor 2014) for us to come up with any good conclusions. Sure, if can cherry pick 16 out of 435 data points, we can probably make the data say all kinds of interesting things which have little to do with reality.

Look, I agree that more analysis can and should be done and I welcome that. Also, a certain degree of skepticism is healthy. But just looking at what we know now based on actual election results, we should be able to agree on the fact that centrist Democrats up and down the ballot had a hard time winning, with not an insignificant number losing their races, just as progressive candidates all won theirs by significant margins with no trouble.

That's not cherrypicking, it's just reality. And based on that, a reasonable takeaway is that voters clearly prefer candidates who strongly advocate for progressive policies and the issues they care about, and that toeing the line and running away from those things is a surefire way to lose your race in many places around the country now.

[HorusRa2 5,005]

53 minutes ago, caulixtla said:

This looks like cherry picking. I can do that too: Bernie Sanders did not get the youth vote to come out in force during the primary this year: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/opinion/bernie-sanders-young-voters.html

However, I’m willing to look at an experiment: How well did Howie Hawkins do in Maine? Since Maine has ranked choice voting, people could vote for Hawkins without having to worry about increasing Trump’s lead. If there really are all these progressive voters who just were scared of helping Trump by voting for anyone except Biden, then we should see that in the Maine vote.

If Hawkins does better than 5% in Maine’s first-round voting, that would be strong evidence that there is a large number of progressive voters out there who we need to tap. If not, it might be better to veer to the center in general elections.

Right now, I don’t know Maine’s numbers. But that’s a good case to find evidence for far-left policies that translate in to real votes. (EDIT: Hawkins got only 1% of the vote, and Biden got over 50% of the vote, resulting in Biden getting a first round win. But I want to see final figures from sources which breaks it down by district, to see if Hawkins was even able to get enough votes to give the presidential races more than one round of voting.)

In terms of the $15 minimum wage winning in Florida, what about the “Uber can continue to not pay their drivers living wages” proposition which passed in California (there were two other results with propositions in CA which were definitely not progressive) Sure, you can say that’s because of corporate spending, but if there are so many progressive voters out there, surely they’re all smart enough to avoid corporate propaganda.

 

Considering how many of "progressives" on GGD literally do nothing but attack the rest of the left on here on behalf of the moderates, its really not a stretch that they arent bamboozled by propaganda. 

[SpadesToStart 3,853]

16 hours ago, Gagaloo911 said:the Democratic party doesn't need to pretend to be Republicans since Republicans are never gonna vote for a Dem anyway.

Exactly. The fact that SO MANY people still voted for Trump despite the objectively bad job he’s done as president shows this. Dems won the presidency through high turnout of young people, progressives, and minorities, not by a coalition that  flipped moderate conservatives.