What did Democrats do wrong?

[wareyin]

Just because Cuomo ran as an independent after not getting the nomination doesn't suddenly mean he "wasn't a Dem". By that standard, Teddy Roosevelt wasn't a Republican. And Cuomo had supporters who were generally moderate Democrats for whom Mamdani was too left. Obviously, the party establishment is unlikely to undermine its own candidate once he gets the nomination, so asking for examples of that is kinda weird, and I don't understand your point.

Hold on, running as an Independent doesn't mean he wasn't a Democrat? Are you kidding?

Cuomo lost the Democratic primary to Mamdani and then chose to run against the actual Democratic nominee as an Independent. By definition, he was the opponent of the Democratic party in that race. You don’t get to count a guy trying to defeat the Democratic nominee as an example of "the Democrats telling you not to vote for Mamdani." It was a hijack attempt by a guy who couldn't accept a loss.

Look, first of all I think people put WAY too much stock in the race for NYC mayor, a position which has basically zero to do with anyone outside of NYC. That said, a candidate and his base trying to win a general election after losing the primary isn't an "establishment Dems told you not to vote for the progressive" moment. It's just a sore loser trying to claw back power.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

I love this restaurant analogy. Tell us more about how the only way to get better choices is to never criticize them and hope they just improve on their own.


And yet somehow they managed it: https://www.politico.com/live-updat...timately-rejects-mamdani-endorsement-00636312

I figure that this out would not technically count as "telling voters not to vote for Mamdani" since Schumer didn't actually say those words, but yes.

 

[dirtywick]

i mean, intentionally positioning yourself as the least worst candidate truly is a bad strategy.

 

[wareyin]

I love this restaurant analogy. Tell us more about how the only way to get better choices is to never criticize them and hope they just improve on their own.

Oh yes, bad yelp reviews are famous for getting restaurants to improve their offerings.

 

[wareyin]

i mean, intentionally positioning yourself as the least worst candidate truly is a bad strategy.

It does assume that voters can understand that picking the absolute worst candidate will be...worse. That obviously overestimates voters.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Hold on, running as an Independent doesn't mean he wasn't a Democrat? Are you kidding?

Nope.

You don’t get to count a guy trying to defeat the Democratic nominee as an example of "the Democrats telling you not to vote for Mamdani."

You ask for examples of people telling us not to vote for Mamdani, but we don't get to count anybody who told us not to vote for Mamdani. Got it.

It was a hijack attempt by a guy who couldn't accept a loss.

...who was a Democrat.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

i mean, intentionally positioning yourself as the least worst candidate truly is a bad strategy.

It's brilliant if you can assume that voting is a zero-sum game and that voters only consider their position on the political spectrum when making their choices. But if that assumption is incorrect you're going to lose and never see why. The only solution you'll have is to think you aren't least worst enough, until you find yourself sharing a campaign stage with Liz Cheney.

We've gotta hit rock bottom soon, right?

 

[dirtywick]

i think that it was a bad assumption that the progressive votes are safely secured if we shift more right on some of these social issues to attempt to appeal to moderate conservatives as the least bad choice was a bad argument when conservatives were suggesting it throughout this thread. that hasn't changed, for two reasons. one, they were already pretty moderate on these social issues, the right wing propaganda machine painted them as left wing extremists. two, the progressive left vote wasn't safely secured, they do actually want some candidates that represent them and aren't an auto vote. just bad assumptions

 

[wareyin]

Nope.


You ask for examples of people telling us not to vote for Mamdani, but we don't get to count anybody who told us not to vote for Mamdani. Got it.

...who was a Democrat.

Oh, ok. Except Cuomo was, by definition, not a Democrat in that race. I'm failing to see how "independent" and "Democratic candidate" look the same to you.

 

[wareyin]

It's brilliant if you can assume that voting is a zero-sum game and that voters only consider their position on the political spectrum when making their choices. But if that assumption is incorrect you're going to lose and never see why. The only solution you'll have is to think you aren't least worst enough, until you find yourself sharing a campaign stage with Liz Cheney.

We've gotta hit rock bottom soon, right?

Voting is a zero sum game though. And until people can understand that, we're going to be stuck with short sighted children telling everyone not to vote for the Dem candidate then acting all surprised that the Rep candidate won at least partially through the dedicated efforts of those short sighted children. It will be the Dem or the Rep that wins, and efforts against one are efforts for the other, by definition.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Voting is a zero sum game though.

No, it really isn't. It should be, but it isn't. Voting has an activation energy. Before you choose whom to vote for, first you have to choose to vote at all. Reality isn't going to "understand" that it needs to be the way you expect.

 

[Donal]

You’re complaining that progressives were "attacked" in primaries while they were busy attacking everyone else. That’s just a primary.

Yes, however, up until 2020, it was heavily discouraged to primary incumbents. Nancy Pelosi herself was very vocal that the Congressional leadership and the DCCC would not be weighing in on primaries until the last few years. And suddenly, she decides they did need to step in. And bring in her billionaire friends like Sam Bankman-Fried and Mark Andreesen.

Once Mamdani won his primary, who told you not to vote for him? (Assuming you are even an NYC resident which I seem to recall is not the case.) Trump. Come on, man.

Who did Schumer and Gillibrand endorse? Who in party leadership told Cuomo to not run? When Cuomo took an unprecedented step to beat the Democratic candidate, who stepped in?

More importantly, you’re still trying to frame this as the party "failing" to win you over, despite claiming that you actually did vote for them. We can't see who online anonymous posters really voted for, but we can see them telling everyone that the Dems are horrible people for trying to appeal to centrists and even right leaning independents in addition to those on the left in order to prevent the guy who staged a ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ coup from being handed the reigns!

And they did ◊◊◊◊ to stop him in the intervening years. If they thought Trump was so awful, why were they going to cocktail parties with him? Why weren't they treating him like the threat he has been? Why did no one party leadership drag Cuomo for seeking his advice on the mayor race? Why are they still begging for money from the same people that publicly blast actual Democrats and give more money to Trump?

Politics isn't a retail transaction where you wait for the perfect product.

Ain't that the truth. But can we at least expect something better than we're getting? Yes, crawling toward authoritarianism is better than barrelling into it at light speed. But is that really what we're accepting?

It is a choice between outcomes. By spending the year amplifying the idea that the party didn't "earn" your vote,

As opposed to "you owe the party your vote"?

that they were too nice to a larger group of voters than yours,

If they were really larger, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

that they were absolutely horrible people who are somehow beholden to every donor,

Not every donor. Only the really rich ones that donate more money to Republicans.

you helped create the exact outcome we have now: a government run by the very billionaires you claim to hate.

"Pointing out racism is the real racism!" That's how you come off.

You didn't move the party to the left.

Obviously

You just moved the entire country to the right.

The ◊◊◊◊ kind of wife-beater logic is that? First off, no, that didn't happen. Second, if those folks really have that kind of power and influence, shouldn't the Democrats be listening to them more?

Was the "moral" victory of your gripes worth the actual defeat of every policy you care about?

Was the "civility" you'll sacrifice others to maintain worth it?

 

[Donal]

So...a candidate in that race who wasn't a Dem in that race told people to vote for him and not to vote for the Dem candidate, and we pretend that this is a Dem effort to suppress the progressives, right?

And where was the support from the rest of the party for Mamdani? Schumer never backed him. Jeffries gave the most mealy mouthed technically an endoresement you'll ever hear. Gillibrand made disgusting comments about Mamdani being a Muslim. Tom Suozzi is still red-baiting to this day. When Kathy Hochul shows more political savvy than you, something went very wrong.

 

[wareyin]

No, it really isn't. It should be, but it isn't. Voting has an activation energy. Before you choose whom to vote for, first you have to choose to vote at all. Reality isn't going to "understand" that it needs to be the way you expect.

No, it really is. There are 2 choices. One will win. That is the reality.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

No, it really is. There are 2 choices. One will win. That is the reality.

That's not what zero-sum means.

Let's try putting it another way. Let's say the Democratic party does something foolhardedly socialistic and earns itself a vote from a single dishonest purity testing progressive, but loses the votes of five earnest, hard working, right minded centrists. Even if no one votes Republican, team blue is still down by four votes, right? The sum is not zero.

That can go the other way, too. The Democrats can gain votes, without Republicans being involved at all, just by doing more of what people want. Don't you think it might be valuable to figure out what that may be?

 

[dirtywick]

Beware of ‘anti-woke’ liberals: they attacked the left and helped Trump win | Jan-Werner Müller

So-called ‘reactionary centrist’ pundits proclaimed that there was a global ‘vibe shift’ in favor of the right. They were wrong

www.theguardian.com

guardian article making the opposite case, it was actually the reactionary anti woke centrists that handed trump the win

 

[wareyin]

Yes, however, up until 2020, it was heavily discouraged to primary incumbents. Nancy Pelosi herself was very vocal that the Congressional leadership and the DCCC would not be weighing in on primaries until the last few years. And suddenly, she decides they did need to step in. And bring in her billionaire friends like Sam Bankman-Fried and Mark Andreesen.

Who did Schumer and Gillibrand endorse? Who in party leadership told Cuomo to not run? When Cuomo took an unprecedented step to beat the Democratic candidate, who stepped in?

And they did ◊◊◊◊ to stop him in the intervening years. If they thought Trump was so awful, why were they going to cocktail parties with him? Why weren't they treating him like the threat he has been? Why did no one party leadership drag Cuomo for seeking his advice on the mayor race? Why are they still begging for money from the same people that publicly blast actual Democrats and give more money to Trump?

Ain't that the truth. But can we at least expect something better than we're getting? Yes, crawling toward authoritarianism is better than barrelling into it at light speed. But is that really what we're accepting?

As opposed to "you owe the party your vote"?

If they were really larger, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Not every donor. Only the really rich ones that donate more money to Republicans.

"Pointing out racism is the real racism!" That's how you come off.

Obviously

The ◊◊◊◊ kind of wife-beater logic is that? First off, no, that didn't happen. Second, if those folks really have that kind of power and influence, shouldn't the Democrats be listening to them more?

Was the "civility" you'll sacrifice others to maintain worth it?

You're complaining that it’s "discouraged" to primary incumbents? That’s how every political party on earth functions! They protect their seats. You can’t claim the party is a weak, failing product while also painting it as an all-powerful machine that "suppressed" progressives. When progressive candidates win with the actual voters, they win the primaries. When progressive candidates win or even come close to winning those primaries, that moves the party to the left. Instead, progressives went with the ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ plan of helping MAGA win the general, which moved the entire country to the right.

As for your "civility" comment, give me a break. While progressives were busy purity-testing the only party that could stop Trump, the rest of us were trying to protect the people who are actually suffering under this administration. ICE is literally murdering Americans in the street thanks to the far left working to help MAGA. Hell, they spent years helping MAGA frame the only people who could stop the GOP, and now that Trump won and put his billionaire friends directly in charge of the government, they want to pretend they're worried about billionaire donors? Please. Your moral victory is a death sentence for the policies and people you claim to care about.

 

[wareyin]

That's not what zero-sum means.

Let's try putting it another way. Let's say the Democratic party does something foolhardedly socialistic and earns itself a vote from a single dishonest purity testing progressive, but loses the votes of five earnest, hard working, right minded centrists. Even if no one votes Republican, team blue is still down by four votes, right? The sum is not zero.

That can go the other way, too. The Democrats can gain votes, without Republicans being involved at all, just by doing more of what people want. Don't you think it might be valuable to figure out what that may be?

In a presidential election, there is exactly one seat. There is no "partial power" for having high turnout but losing. Whether the winner gets 50.1% or 90%, they get 100% of the executive power. That is a zero-sum outcome.

Your "five centrists" example actually points to a real failure of both the Democratic and the Progressive strategy. There are far more centrists and moderately right-leaning independents than there are far-left progressives. If it’s a numbers game, the logical move is to attract that larger, more reliable block of voters rather than chasing a small group that is notoriously fickle and prone to throwing the baby out with the bathwater unless they get everything they want.

Harris tried that, but that strategy didn't work. I think part of the reason it failed was the far left joining tactics with MAGA to convince not only those centrists and right-leaning independents but also voters on the left that either "both parties are the same" or that "Dems are horrible people beholden to billionaire donors." (Of course, the far left did this while ignoring that electing Trump gives power directly to billionaires.)

In a two-party system, if you aren't helping your side (or the party closest to your ideal) win, you are helping the other side (or the party furthest from your ideal) win. Period. That's a zero sum game.

 

[bruto]

Unless you're perhaps a radical libertarian or sovereign citizen, the restaurant analogy is a bit porous. If we do not like any of the restaurants, we can choose not to eat out.

 

[dirtywick]

in what way did harris try and chase the progressive left but them throwing the baby out with the bath water?