Is progressivism dead, Leo?

[Hardkill]

You argue that America will never be ready to move beyond neoliberalism and that it's a mistake to keep attacking centrism and centrists.

I get the point you're making, especially considering that Trump just got elected president again, how much the country will likely regress during the next four years under him, and the great long-term damage he will do to this country, affecting generations to come.

You say that Trump's second term will cause the federal courts to shift even further to the right and that this shift will likely remain in place for decades to come. Therefore, the federal courts may end up blocking and undoing every progressive legislation and executive order enacted during the next 3 or 4 decades or so.

Then again, I know you're still a progressive at heart and still advocate for promoting progressive policies wisely.

So, then should all progressives just completely surrender to both conservatism and centrism for say the next 10 to 50 years?

Should the Democratic party move back to the center or just stop moving more to the left??

Edited December 8 by Hardkill

[Raze]

Hillary and Kamala were centrist, how did that work out 

[aurum]

32 minutes ago, Raze said:

Hillary and Kamala were centrist, how did that work out 

Better than if they had been progressives.

[Raze]

12 minutes ago, aurum said:

Better than if they had been progressives.

Nope. Dan Osborn outperformed the democrats. Progressive ballot measures passed where Trump won. 

[aurum]

10 minutes ago, Raze said:

Nope. Dan Osborn outperformed the democrats. Progressive ballot measures passed where Trump won. 

That means nothing. 

[Leo Gura]

Progress has always been like dragging an old mule up a hill. Nothing really new.

Edited December 8 by Leo Gura

[Raze]

31 minutes ago, aurum said:

That means nothing. 

It means that populist progressive ideas are popular.s

Unless you can point to a progressive losing a general election, it’s just baseless speculation they’d do worse than Kamala.

[aurum]

35 minutes ago, Raze said:

It means that populist progressive ideas are popular.s

To a degree.

It's easy to agree with some populist, progressive ideas when you feel like you're being screwed. That doesn't make people progressive.

35 minutes ago, Raze said:

Unless you can point to a progressive losing a general election, it’s just baseless speculation they’d do worse than Kamala.

Cornell West.

Hard to lose an election when you're so unpopular you aren't even invited to participate.

The only baseless speculation is that a serious progressives is what people want. Centrists win all the time. Centrists have proof of concept, progressives do not.

I'm not saying it's impossible. But overall, this narrative that Kamala made a grave mistake by also trying to appeal to the center is dead wrong.

Edited December 8 by aurum

[Raze]

14 minutes ago, aurum said:

To a degree.

It's easy to agree with some populist, progressive ideas when you feel like you're being screwed. That doesn't make people progressive.

They don’t have to be, you just need them to vote for you

14 minutes ago, aurum said:

Cornell West.

Hard to lose an election when you're so unpopular you aren't even invited to participate.

The only baseless speculation is that a serious progressives is what people want. Centrists win all the time. Centrists have proof of concept, progressives do not.

I'm not saying it's impossible. But overall, this narrative that Kamala made a grave mistake by also trying to appeal to the center is dead wrong.

Third party candidates are irrelevant, unless a progressive is on one of the two major tickets we don’t know how they fair in general elections.

Centrists win because the primaries are rigged by massive dollar donations and party tactics to keep everyone else out. Even so progressives have won some seats.

Kamala did make a mistake as her appeals to the center clearly failed given that she made little ground with the center and ended up losing among the same demographics that Bernie sanders was doing well with.

[aurum]

2 minutes ago, Raze said:

They don’t have to be, you just need them to vote for you

How are they going to vote progressive with any sort of consistency when they are not progressive?

This is a fantasy.

2 minutes ago, Raze said:

Third party candidates are irrelevant, unless a progressive is on one of the two major tickets we don’t know how they fair in general elections.

Centrists win because the primaries are rigged by massive dollar donations and party tactics to keep everyone else out. Even so progressives have won some seats.

Kamala did make a mistake as her appeals to the center clearly failed given that she made little ground with the center and ended up losing among the same demographics that Bernie sanders was doing well with.

You can make whatever excuses you want.

At the end of the day, if progressivism were popular, they would be winning.

That’s the bottom line that progressives refuse to accept.

[Raze]

11 minutes ago, aurum said:

How are they going to vote progressive with any sort of consistency when they are not progressive?

This is a fantasy.

Because the candidate will offer proposals that will benefit them

12 minutes ago, aurum said:

You can make whatever excuses you want.

At the end of the day, if progressivism were popular, they would be winning.

That’s the bottom line that progressives refuse to accept.

Except we don’t live in a direct democracy, the system restricts how much the populations interests are reflected in elections. This is why we see growing discontent. Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it will succeed when powerful forces can use various tactics to squash it.

[Hardkill]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Progress has always been like dragging an old mule up a hill. Nothing really new.

No, I get that, but you've been saying that there has been a backlash against society due to the excessive amount of progressive attacks on neoliberalism and centrism.

So, do you think for the time being that progressives and Democrats should stop trying to run on a more progressive platform for the next few decades given where we are at and what's going to happen to the whole system even after Trump himself is gone?

Do you think that the Overton window will shift back more to the right?

Should the platform of the Democratic party as a whole move a lot more back to the center like during Bill Clinton's presidency in the 1990s or move somewhat back to the center, but still be liberal overall like during Obama's presidency?

Or should they just stick with being as left-wing as the party has become now and wait for another real chance to implement more of the same kind of progressive-leaning policies someday?

Or should the Democratic party actually keep incrementally shifting more to the left as time goes on in the hopes of being able to implement an even bolder progressive-leaning agenda whenever they get a real shot to do so in the future?

Edited December 8 by Hardkill

[BlueOak]

When things are hard admit it, and be the change candidate, then you have a large advantage.

In this case Democrats should have leaned into populism and change, at least in their rhetoric. Completely giving up their populism has given all that energy to Trump, it's been that way for years, and nobody on the American (center right) in the Democrats, has learned much. 

[Bobby_2021]

You can look at it any way you want. But populists are going to win more the not. 

Even conservatives celebrating the death of that ceo should be enough of a message of how much people hate the establishment of which kamala was a part of.

Yet you are so happy to balme the small minority of progressives as if they matter at all.

[aurum]

9 hours ago, Raze said:

Because the candidate will offer proposals that will benefit them

That assumes:

1) People care enough to educate themselves about the proposals

2) People are developed enough to see the value of the proposals

3) People are ready to embrace economic egalitarianism

4) People vote on policy

5) People are willing to look beyond culture war issues

6) People care about what's true

9 hours ago, Raze said:

Except we don’t live in a direct democracy, the system restricts how much the populations interests are reflected in elections. This is why we see growing discontent. Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it will succeed when powerful forces can use various tactics to squash it.

This is nonsense.

Tim Walz was basically Minnesota Bernie Sanders. If people wanted progressives so badly, they could have voted him in. Maybe he would have been president at some point.

And to the degree that the system is rigged towards the center, that's because most people resonate with the center.

Yes, it's a collective paradigm lock. But that collective paradigm lock shows you what people are actually interested in.

Of course, this could theoretically change in the future. Things are paradigm locked until they aren't, and then things change. Maybe we will have some sort of backlash to Trump and vote in a far leftist. But I won't be holding my breath for progressives to be dominating elections any time soon.

[Raze]

40 minutes ago, aurum said:

That assumes:

1) People care enough to educate themselves about the proposals

2) People are developed enough to see the value of the proposals

3) People are ready to embrace economic egalitarianism

4) People vote on policy

5) People are willing to look beyond culture war issues

6) People care about what's true

Yes, because as I said progressive policy proposals won in ballot measures. Democrats didn’t make their campaign focused on popular policy proposals, also they had many other issues that hurt them in other ways. What little progressive populist push they had is to thanks for them not losing even worse.

40 minutes ago, aurum said:

This is nonsense.

Tim Walz was basically Minnesota Bernie Sanders. If people wanted progressives so badly, they could have voted him in. Maybe he would have been president at some point.

And to the degree that the system is rigged towards the center, that's because most people resonate with the center.

Yes, it's a collective paradigm lock. But that collective paradigm lock shows you what people are actually interested in.

Of course, this could theoretically change in the future. Things are paradigm locked until they aren't, and then things change. Maybe we will have some sort of backlash to Trump and vote in a far leftist. But I won't be holding my breath for progressives to be dominating elections any time soon.

Except when Kamala initially began running and appointed Walz she was doing better in polls, only after she pivoted to the center did it fall.

Tim Walz was barely campaigning on his progressives ideas. All the focus was on Kamala who went on tour with Liz Cheney.

Most people according to polls agree with various progressive policy proposals like increasing the minimum wage and reforming healthcare.

Edited December 8 by Raze

[aurum]

25 minutes ago, Raze said:

What little progressive populist push they had is to thanks for them not losing even worse.

My dude, this whole election was a backlash to Stage Green, progressive values gaining too much ground.

The idea that pushing harder into Green progressivism would have been better is absurd.

Democrats don't campaign on progressivism because progressivism IS NOT popular or often even feasible. 

25 minutes ago, Raze said:

Except when Kamala initially began running and appointed Walz she was doing better in polls, only after she pivoted to the center did it fall.

Tim Walz was barely campaigning on his progressives ideas. All the focus was on Kamala who went on tour with Liz Cheney.

Most people according to polls agree with various progressive policy proposals like increasing the minimum wage and reforming healthcare.

She would have fell in the polls anyway. 

Don't blame it Liz Cheney. I agree they may have pushed that angle too much, but the idea that Liz Cheney was her downfall is equally absurd.

[Raze]

38 minutes ago, aurum said:

My dude, this whole election was a backlash to Stage Green, progressive values gaining too much ground.

The idea that pushing harder into Green progressivism would have been better is absurd.

Democrats don't campaign on progressivism because progressivism IS NOT popular or often even feasible. 

She would have fell in the polls anyway. 

Don't blame it Liz Cheney. I agree they may have pushed that angle too much, but the idea that Liz Cheney was her downfall is equally absurd.

It’s a backlash because they tried to support democrats thinking it would help their lives, but democrats did little economic populism and instead focused on identity politics, so they shifted to the populist right to try and get a change there.

Obama ran on a more progressive populist campaign than his actual administration.

If centrism was what works, Hillary and Kamala would have won, they were center left and pivoted further to the center, yet they lost.

Edited December 8 by Raze

[Hardkill]

23 minutes ago, Raze said:

It’s a backlash because they tried to support democrats thinking it would help their lives, but democrats did little economic populism and instead focused on identity politics, so they shifted to the populist right to try and get a change there.

Obama ran on a more progressive populist campaign than his actual administration.

If centrism was what works, Hillary and Kamala would have won, they were center left and pivoted further to the center, yet they lost.

Maybe the Democrats might’ve won if Harris ran more to the left, but you don’t know that for certain. 

Again, the primary obvious factors that cause Harris and the Democrats to lose were the explosion of unprecedented misinformation/internet brainwashing, Dems’ faulty media strategy in a fractious media environment world wide anti-incumbent over inflation and the establishment, racism, misogyny, xenophobia (especially after the historic immigration surge under Biden and the Democrats), Harris having run a very late and short campaign, and less party unity amongst Dems than we thought.

I don’t see how a much stronger and more talented candidate than Harris could’ve defeated Trump and his party.

The only way the Dems could’ve had a better shot was having a much better media strategy in this new Age media environment. 

[aurum]

1 hour ago, Raze said:

but democrats did little economic populism and instead focused on identity politics, so they shifted to the populist right to try and get a change there.

1) The democrats focused plenty on economics

 

2) Identity politics IS the heart of progressivism!

To be a progressive essentially just means you care about marginalized, oppressed groups and making things more equal for everyone. That’s it.

To do that, you necessarily divide people into different identity groups based on relative oppression. 

99% of the complaining about identity politics is just people who can’t handle the progressive value system. Ironically, you yourself are not appreciating what progressivism means when you say you should not focus on IP and just do economic populism. There is no economic populism without IP.

It’s like you want progressivism without all the things that actually make progressives. 

So the fact that people can’t handle IP is exactly the reason it’s incorrect that the dems needing to push even further left. 

1 hour ago, Raze said:

Obama ran on a more progressive populist campaign than his actual administration

He was still plenty centrist. And that should give you a clue about how unfeasible being a progressive is.

Consider the reason that leftists end up pivoting center at some point is because that’s what is feasible.