The incumbency effect is indeed weakest for the newest incumbents, but if that were it then the effect would have hit people with various positions on policies randomly. Instead the ones who stood for things like M4A and a livable minimum wage got re-elected and the ones who didn't didn't. And that was also true for non-incumbents.
That doesn't make any sense. A voter has the choice of voting for a candidate whose
party 'stands for' things like M4A and a livable minimum wage, vs voting for the other party / staying home. Withholding their vote for a candidate whose party supports their desires vs one who doesn't (and never will) is irrational (then again, what evidence do we have that 'progressives' are rational?).
And remember, even if that pattern hadn't held, you would at best have an argument that policies & goals don't matter, not one for the original claim I was countering: that going left harms Democrats' chances. Even if the evidence didn't actually point in the opposite direction, that wouldn't conjure up any pointing in that direction.
Nonsense. What matters is that Democrats
as a party have certain overall goals and policies that aim to achieve them. Individual policies may or may not be supported by individual members depending on a variety of rational reasons - and does not indicate that they 'failed to lean left'. It's not that policies and goals don't matter, but insisting that Democrats must be all in on the most radical 'progressive' policies in order to avoid 'harming their chances' will itself do more harm than good.
We have already seen the middle get squeezed as politics gets more partisan, and continuing to do so will only make things worse. The Republican party is in crisis now due to following that path. If Democrats do the same they risk losing the advantage.
Not necessarily; I don't know the statistics of what really happened in this case but it's possible for one group to "stay home" while another group more than makes up for it,
Dragons aren't
necessarily visible, so it's
possible I have one in my garage right now - but not very likely. You haven't even looked at the statistics, yet you assert
without evidence that 'progressives' withholding votes for 'those who have failed to lean left' caused them to lose. But with the exception of one candidate, all of them leaned left. So what you are really asserting is that they didn't lean left
enough for 'progressives'. OTOH, you haven't considered the likelihood that moderates (particularly those who lean right) might not vote for candidates who lean
too far left.
and Trump appears to have been uniquely good at drawing out voters against himself regardless of what their voting behavior in Trumpless years might have been. However, that would just mean the "staying home" crowd was a stubborn fringe too small to usually affect the big picture anyway, and I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about most Americans.
And yet when the argument suits it, you
are talking about them. Most eligible Americans (67% of them) did vote. That means they voted either for Democrats or Republicans. Those candidates that lost did so because more voted for the
other side. Therefore most 'progressives' (assuming there are more than just a 'stubborn fringe') must have voted for the Republican candidate in seats that a Democrat lost. IOW, these 'progressives' are actually republicans.
Most Americans, even most Republicans, are in favor of M4A, along with comparable alternatives like a "public option". Most Americans, even most Republicans, want a livable minimum wage.
That may be true, but the Republican
party doesn't support it and never will. If republicans really want that they need to vote Democrat. Did they? No.
Most Americans don't want us to still be hanging around in foreign "wars" that seem to serve no purpose. Most Americans want politicians not to be allowed to take bribes. Most Americans want higher tax rates on the rich. Most Americans want more money invested in various domestic programs and less in the military. And it goes on down the line, one issue after another, with the leftier position practically always being the more popular one.
Most Americans voted Democrat, but that doesn't mean they all support the most 'leftier' position.
Or one who isn't a Democrat partisan; one who picks policies one issue at a time without thinking of the bigger framework they fit into or insisting that the DP must really want their preferred ideas even when it really hasn't been acting like it.
In our political system you vote for one party or the other. There is no third alternative. Perhaps you don't like everything your party is doing or all the positions of you local candidate, but you do know where the party is going as a whole. You either vote Democrat or Republican, and if you don't vote you are giving it to the opposition. That's not partisanship, it's just how the system works. It's not 'partisan' to support a party that doesn't align precisely with you desires, it's pragmatic.
But also, yes, there is also the point that left & right isn't really the best spectrum along which to analyze American politics anyway; populism & its opposite is. And populism is mostly more easily aligned with leftiness
Not really.
Populism
Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasise the idea of "the people" and often juxtapose this group against "the elite"...
By the mid-20th century, US populism had moved from a largely progressive to a largely reactionary stance, being closely intertwined with the anti-communist politics of the period. In this period, the historian Richard Hofstadter and sociologist Daniel Bell compared the anti-elitism of the 1890s Populists with that of Joseph McCarthy...
Some mainstream politicians in the Republican Party recognised the utility of such a tactic and adopted it; Republican President Richard Nixon for instance popularised the term "silent majority" when appealing to voters. Right-wing populist rhetoric was also at the base of two of the most successful third-party presidential campaigns in the late 20th century, that of George C. Wallace in 1968 and Ross Perot in 1992. These politicians presented a consisted message that a "liberal elite" was threatening "our way of life" and using the welfare state to placate the poor and thus maintain their own power...
The Tea Party's populism was Producerism, while "the elite" it presented was more party partisan than that of Occupy, being defined largely—although not exclusively—as the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama
In the US, populism has consistently pushed politics to the right,
away from policies that benefit 'the people' and towards enriching the Elite. It is closely associated with racism, sexism and xenophobia. While it is said that populism attracts those who want more for 'the people' than 'the elite', it's really about not wanting to share with others. They don't want 'more for everyone', just 'more for
me'. So it's no wonder that the Democratic party doesn't satisfy such people.
