Ahh yes, labeling the progressives a problematic ‘shadow party’ for wanting . . . checks notes popularly supported human rights . . .
We’re so selfish for wanting a functional and supportive society.
What gets me is that were seeing rising hate crime numbers, resurgences of certain groups being extremely targeted, and the amount of random acts of violence the trans community suffers, and this papers response is to placate the voters who think those issues aren’t very important.
And two is what they call the cultural radicalism of the modern progressive movement, which they dub the “shadow party,” and that they argue is alienating working class voters on four key issues: race, immigration, transgender rights, and climate. (emphasis mine)
Their point isn’t that it’s wrong to want what the progressives want, merely that it’s presently alienating working class voters and making it more difficult for Democrats as a party to be effective at getting any of their goals accomplished. Frankly, I agree with that assessment, and I’m pretty progressive. I think the problem is that we’re advocating for too much change, too quickly. I know that sucks to hear, because in most cases we’re talking about fundamental human rights, but I do think that’s a major barrier we’re running into.
Take gay and transgender rights for example. Back in the 80’s/90’s, the fearmongering cry around gay rights was that “this is just the beginning,” and “soon they’ll be saying you can marry your dog,” and “this will destroy the nuclear family as we know,” blah, blah, blah. Obviously, none of this is true, but to a conservative or conservative-leaning independent who is old enough to remember that time, when they hear a progressive today argue that “gender is just a social construct” and “it takes a village to raise a child” and “trans women are women,” it really does sound like a certain amount of that old fearmongering was correct—maybe it didn’t predict the future exactly, but close enough, this shit’s crazy! And that contributes to the myth that there’s a “gay agenda,” because it makes it seem like there’s a long-term plan at work that’s being enacted gradually in order to sneak it’s final, horrible form in under people’s noses.
And that sucks, because I know plenty of people are sick of waiting to be treated the same as everybody else and morally speaking they shouldn’t have to wait. But I increasingly see that it’s not just conservatives that are opposed to some of what progressives are lobbying for. I know plenty of Democrat-voting Black and Hispanic people who are nonetheless (albeit quietly) opposed to gay and transgender rights, or who are suspicious of Asians or Arabs, due to COVID and 9/11. I know legal immigrants who are staunchly in support of Trump-style immigration policy, because they don’t think it’s right that people sneak into this country when they took the long, laborious, legal route. There was even a poll I read not long ago that indicated about 25% of Democrats aren’t in favor of completely legal abortion (e.g. they’re fine with it under certain circumstances, but don’t think women should be allowed to use it as a form of birth control outside of those circumstances).
The article is saying that by catering to it’s Far Left progressives, the Democratic party is hamstringing itself in terms of its effectiveness, and thus limiting its ability to get anything done, much less what the progressives want. It’s a pragmatic argument, I think its correct. It sucks, but that’s the way it is.
Part of that is the democrats fault for only placating the left with issues that are free and don’t threatent current power structures. Like letting people use any bathroom they want, or allowing the LGBTQ communities to be part of the Military. When it comes to the progressive economic policies, M4A, Federally legal weed, or Lawmaker stock trading bans, they drag their feet because these things challenge the profits of their donors and their status quo. Those first two have have over 65-70% of popular support since the study the libertarian foundation did that proved M4A would save money. I’d also argue all those hard policies would have an immediate and profound impact on literally every prospective voter. They used the progressive movement and only conceded what they thought to be strategically necessary.
I definitely agree the Democrats are doing that, but if they weren’t and were instead advocating for all the things progressives want, that would still be alienating some working class voters, so the authors’ argument remains the same.
Sadly, I don’t see a way around this that actually gets progressive causes greater backing from anyone. We literally just have to work on changing the culture via education and patient advocacy and discussion. If anything, the tack of some activists makes things worse, because their solution is to be more aggressive, which just makes those on the fence more skittish about all this stuff.
I agree doing simply everything the progressives want, especially quickly would alienate a lot of voters, and I don’t see eye to eye with elected progressives on everything, but I suppose I do more so than any other group in congress, low bar I know. I just kind of wish the progressives got like one nice decisive win with some of the popular policies that would immediately help people, specifically things like M4A or legal weed. I know I’m no pollster I just feel like it’s a layup in terms of getting voters.
Cannabis legalization has been doing fairly well, actually. It’s already legal in half the states in the country. Slowly, but surely, I see this becoming federal law relatively soon. And even if it doesn’t become federal law, if it only remains illegal in a handful of states, I’d say that’s already a decisive win.
Medicare for all is a much harder sell and still doesn’t have the publicity it needs to gain traction. But this is always the case with progressive policies. Gains are small and slow, but build momentum with time. Personally, I’m looking forward to a future congress making abortion legal again, this time without a nod from SCOTUS. I always said if SCOTUS ever did overturn Roe, it would simply galvanize the public to demand it actually gets codified into law. We’re already seeing Republicans suffer for this, and I have full confidence we’ll get back to nation-wide legal abortion well within my lifetime (and I’m already half-dead).
One of the reasons the Right has resorted to drumming up conspiracy theories is that they know they can’t win on arguments against modern issues Leftists are bringing up, not in the long term. So, they try to distract their base from said issues and have them focused on bullshit that doesn’t actually matter. This won’t work forever though. It’s a stalling tactic at best.
I know it can seem grim sometimes, but keep the long game in mind and remember that in free societies (and yes, the U.S. still qualifies) there’s a natural bias towards progress.
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This paper really said “We need to be the middle ground between total climate disregard, and barely averting most of the ecological crisis”
Yeah, that’s where they lost me. Climate breakdown is the most important issue that our species has ever faced. It’s literally an existential crisis, and they’re shrugging and talking about it as if it’s optional.
We really need better science communication on what climate change is, and less propaganda about it.
Science education won’t work when people are propagandized to disbelieve scientists
Yeah, that’s the second part of my statement…
Ah gotta love being told that my existence is a political liability
From the authors who predicted an emerging Democratic majority comes…“why we were wrong before but you should totally believe us this time”
On the one hand, this:
“Democrats,” they write, “need to look in the mirror and examine the extent to which their own failures contributed to the rise of the most toxic tendencies on the right.”
Is something party leadership will never even think of doing.
On the other, don’t tempt the party with this:
And two is what they call the cultural radicalism of the modern progressive movement, which they dub the “shadow party,” and that they argue is alienating working class voters on four key issues: race, immigration, transgender rights, and climate.
Here is where the party will listen. Moving to the right out of political expedience? Abandoning vulnerable minorities? Letting donors dictate environmental policy? And progressives get hosed? May as well ask if they want cocaine and oral sex.
Democrats will continue to ratchet toward the right until they can no longer win elections by doing that. There’s no incentive for them to run anything but the most corporate friendly democrat thats just a little less corporate friendly than actual fascists. Thats literally how they secure donors, by promising things like ‘nothing will fundamentally change’.
Ratchet effect in full force
They occasionally sprinkle in human rights for the appearence of still being on the left, but a cursory look as Israel, especially now, should let you know that there’s more to the story than basic human rights.
It’s not difficult for power structures to concede things that never challenged their hold on material power. Pro LGBT doesn’t threaten the American or Isralie defense industry or Cultural status quo that upholds that defense industry.
Yes it’s great we have those human rights, but to assume that means the people behind it were doing it for any other reason that to preserve their hold on power by appeasing masses of people in the least expensive way possible for them is like assuming Apple adopting usbc and RCS had nothing to do with Europe. The parts of the government that gave us those rights did so specifically because they’re not going to try very hard to meet any other demands from people toward the left, and they still need those people to win.
Democrats will continue to ratchet toward the right until they can no longer win elections by doing that.
I mean, that’s pretty much what happened with West Virginia.
So why is political representation so skewed that the “left” party needs to confine itself to the middle of the spectrum? That sounds like something to discuss.
It’s not complicated. The reality is that most Americans just aren’t socialists. They’re not fascists either–at least not yet–but voting blocks that have been reliably Democratic for the last fifty-ish years (since the GOP adopted the Southern strategy) are only in the party by default. Black families have historically been relatively conservative, as have Hispanic families. That the Democrats are left of the only other major party only makes it the party of Marxists and anarchists for want of an actual left party, since the alternative for the young generation of leftists is to essentially not participate in the political process at all.
It’s a consequence of first-past-the-post elections and the way campaigns are funded, but the result is that the Democratic party includes elements that are genuinely right of center, but it can’t risk alienating them because right of center represents the majority of the country’s population. If the Democrats were to lose the Marxists on its far left flank to a true left party, the GOP would just win every national election. Similarly, if the Dems lost its conservative labor wing in the Rust Belt, same outcome. In a parliamentary government, or if FPTP were eliminated, those two wings would be separate parties and form a coalition to govern (and the fascists on the right of the GOP along with more traditional conservatives like Romney would similarly be separate parties). Since we don’t have that, the two parties basically have to try to stay as close to the ideological center within their own caucuses as possible, because any deviation in either direction hemorrhages voters and loses elections.
The shadow party responsible for the rot at the heart of the DNC is AIPAC.
You’re right and these clowns are just deflecting. I can’t believe they actually wrote that American Democrats support any far left ideology. I snort laughed.
Listen, the only way donors are going to be combated is by destroying Citizens United. The only way real establishment change is going to happen is by a ratification by the people. Thats what Jan 6 was about, unfortunately those people wanted bigot shit. All of this shit will change, when the civilians on the left become corned in this constant rightward shift.
Show me a universe where anybody even marginally left of center doesn’t prefer to pick a fight with people ideologically aligned with them over the actual fascists.
No, seriously, please open a portal there, I want to move.
And hey, I give far left people a lot of crap for being into that kink really hard, but the liberals and centrists will do the exact same thing unless they have their own party to go be ideologically confused in.
As a side observation, I am constantly baffled that we are almost eight years into this nonsense and the centrist Dem establishment still hasn’t realized that there is no way to politically align with the fascist right. You know what their platform is? Whatever it takes to oppose the Democrats. If they advocated for giving machine guns to every citizen tomorrow Trump would call them child murderers immediately.
It’s not about the policy, it’s about being in power (for the leaders) and screwing with the people they instinctively don’t like (for the base). It took five minutes of being online in 2014 to figure this out. How is this still a mystery to these guys?
