Centrist Democrats are freaking out about progressives’ winning streak
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/25/progressive-moderate-democratic-party-battlegrounds-00975000Open linkView original on lemmy.world148
Comments37https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/25/progressive-moderate-democratic-party-battlegrounds-00975000Open linkView original on lemmy.world
The AIPAC whores are pissed.
They're so busy collecting corporate checks that they forgot to represent their constituents. No idea why people might swing to someone who actually wants to preserve the population that actually buys things.
Centrist Democrats are intentionally being obtuse about this because they work for the same billionaires the Republicans work for.
And Israel.
When you take out the culture war aspect of politics it seems pretty accurate. Culture war doesn't really affect billionaires monetarily, so they don't give a shit. It's just there to distract the masses emotionally on both sides like any good marketing or propaganda.
To a certain extent I think you’re correct. However, the result being that there are now people who actually want my parents dead because they’re lesbians is a problem that we need to solve too.
Yeah the elite are happy to fan the culture war because it doesn’t effect them, but the fallout from them doing so is now ANOTHER problem that absolutely needs to be fixed
Sure sure, it’s a well known maxim that politics that works in New York works across the nation.
Not that we shouldn’t have progressive candidates and boot out corporate chuckleheads, because we absolutely should - just that a progressive candidate in Kansas or Florida or North Dakota has a different set of challenges.
I’m saying don’t buy too much into the ‘Democrats in disarray’ narrative the Ellison-Murdoch news machine would love you to buy.
I feel like the big experiment in this election is Platner in Maine. If Platner can win in Maine, it shows that progressive candidates can work in rural parts of the country.
Imagine: having populist candidates trying to actually do something for the American people.
They can’t imagine it. That’s why they’re shitting their pants. these people didn’t get their jobs by actually governing, and now they don’t know how they’re going to keep them.
That gif goes hard.
I want more of it. Burn down their establishment politics and support for the billionaires.
Take over the party and help the people.
Wtf voting in primaries works??? I was told voting was a sham /s
This is such a wild article, it’s a monument to the arrogance and stupidity that lead to the DNC dropping every single wide open ball they have been thrown in my adult life
This is TERRIBLE news for US! The OBVIOUS solution is to FORGET the People VOTING for these Progressives and TRY to Entice the Death-Before-Dem MAGAS instead!
-Highly Paid Democratic Stragtegists!
I was listening to the Professional Left podcast (I think it was on there) and they mentioned something about asking some farmers who are being destroyed by Donvict - "well, why did you vote for him, after the first term?"
Their answer: they had no choice.
I mean, what can you even do with this level of cult behavior? Seriously, what harm are the Democrats going to do to farmers? Is it really all just about trans and "men in women's sports"?
I've listened to Sarah Taber talk about running for a North Carolina Commissioner of Agriculture and said she was able to get more Republican votes from rural areas than the suburbs.
It literally is. You can't vote blue if you have stronge conservative values. I had a coworker (unsolicited) tell me that essentially he would support anything he considered conservative (non-woke) even if it meant burning everything down and starting over. Not sure why he felt a conversation about baseball at a company dinner I was paying for as a company event needed to be redirected to political beliefs. But there we all were sitting there all being very uncomfortable.
The book "Dying of Whiteness" is fascinating and depressing look into this. Many people would rather personally suffer and die than let the out-group have something nice. They don't want healthcare for all because that means black people get it.
There are a bunch of voters so wishy washy that they go from voting republican to voting democrat from election to election (even post 2016!), and centrists' solution is to be just as wishy washy to attract them?
These people shift with the god damn wind. Don't be a weather vane, be a fucking hurricane.
I remember people talking about the Obama/Trump voter, or the Bernie/Trump voter like they're this sage source of wisdom and balance.
No, they're just someone who's too stupid to understand the issues and responds to charisma.
Stupid yes but you still need to reckon with them. Comments like this make it sound like you think we should just pretend they don't exist.
I think the point is that they don't exist in an ideological sense. They exist in the "ooo shiny" sense.
There is no point trying to attract them with policy or ideas, because they don't give a fuck about that. They will vote for whoever makes them feel better when they talk.
OK I agree with you then. Because I do think if the left wants to win it needs to expand beyond its current base. One of the reasons Trump succeeded is that low information voters perceive him as moderate. So I think there is a possibility the left could pursue a similar strategy where you maintain serious left policies but adopt a sort of moderate posture.
I think Mamdani is sort of the closest thing we've seen to this strategy, although obviously NYC is unique enough that you can't just copy it directly.
I don't think people perceived trump as moderate, people perceived him as "one of us". That's not the same thing (though interesting psychological research shows that most trump supporters probably desperately want to see themselves as average and moderate).
Mamdani was unapologetic, leading to support from the left, but he's also charismatic. So he almost certainly captured the obama-trump vote by virtue of talking good and looking good.
I think you're right that there are multiple dimensions to attracting these fence-sitters. But it is also true that voters generally express a desire for a more "moderate" candidate, and that they perceived Trump to be more moderate than Harris, despite all evidence.
Of course what they mean when they say these things on surveys is open to interpretation.
Good
I think when someone doesn't match their claimed ideology, they should be called Zombie Democrats.
... and there's plenty of Zombie Conservatives too.
Good.
I wish it was enough. It’s 50+ years of right wing leadership from here on out.
Moderates of any given political flavor is going to have a bigger base than far-left or far-right politicians so even though they're getting through the primaries the generals might be a blood bath when the moderates realize their voice isn't going to be heard so they sit this election out.
https://poll.qu.edu/images/polling/us/us06242026_ujrk36.pdf
Supporting genocide is no longer a moderate position.
There are way more Republicans that hate Israel. This poll has to be off.
You're the only one talking about supporting genocides right now.
I do agree with funding Ukraine to help prevent Russia's genocide of them and that seems to only be a moderate position these days.