i always find this stuff kind of baffling--obama was a good candidate. he managed to do the same thing trump does: convince a fractious coalition that he can be trusted to advance their interests. the moderate wing of the democrat party has not produced a good politician in that sense for decades
Comments
But no doubt MY must be a special friend to have.
the reality is each party has its base and swing voters are generally low info/low propensity voters who are NOT coherent ideologically, there is no magic bullet to get them. there is no logic to any Obama/Trump/Biden/Trump voters.
They can boldly lie about their position in a manner where the center cannot definitively crack the facade but it is absolutely clear to the base that it is a lie.
*checks notes*
obama only left office eight years ago
she did absolute dogshit then, too
Not only do they not understand what transition is like for youth, but they fundamentally miss the entire point of youth sports.
But that's not what they mean by bigots are asking for, and not what the bigots will be happy with - which was the point.
He thinks he can horse trade away unimportant people's rights just the once and the whole thing will go away
Ivory tower shit
The main difference is that Obama was a near-unknown nationally before '08, whereas everyone ought to have known by '16 not to trust that spray-tanned shyster.
People like Kirk are asking for trans people to not be treated as people! That's what they mean by removing gender affirming care: they mean straight up abusive conversion therapy.
Here, anti-trans sentiment was spun up recently as part of an explicit project to roll back more rights. No one cared about the 50 athletes before that
Yglesias is simply a low vibe, non-intellectual.
Huge difference between those who think it’s immoral and those who knew it was politically unviable.
Promising no new legislation is the trick
I think the liberal wing needs to have more stretch goals for moderates to say “no change” to
No one trusts Newsome.
I'm familiar with the democratIC party. Is that what you're referring to?
Democrats don't seem able to seriously engage with the idea that a candidate's likability, charisma, etc. matter. Which is wild since it has never been more true.
Do you think the Dem coalition, following a summer of racial justice marches, COVID disruptions, massive job losses, etc wasn’t fractious?
Dude got 81 million votes. He did something right.
i don't even think trump is particularly hard to beat, the dems just insist on sending the likes of hillary and a brain dead biden to run against him
I would bet my house on it. It will be led, just like in 2020, by Black women voters (eg in SC) who see this county's racism & sexism for what it is.
We're all stunned that this country doesn't reject--out of hand-- a venal, corrupt, senile, racist con artist, but he clearly has significant appeal.
‘Nothing is going to change.’
The utter refusal to let an Arab-American give an approved speech at the DNC, which we had trouble seeing as anything but racist. So. Yeah… She couldn’t even pretend to give a shit about Palestine like Obama did.
Look at Bernie, AOC, Crocket, etc.
The centrists have no juice bc no one likes them
Yglesias, etc. are saying to actively ignore & alienate the left so as to increase the party's appeal.
They also might be overcorrecting based on 2024, esp given that the chaos of 2025 will probs generate a fairly different issues/priorities landscape for 2026/28.
Part of what doomed Harris was her 2020 primary campaign, & it's possible early 2025 takes could be similarly bad by 2028.
https://beyondchron.org/did-obama-kill-the-public-option-in-july/
"We know now—too late to do anything about it—that Holder never even really tried to investigate the banks."
https://www.cjr.org/the_audit/going_easy_on_holders_wall_str.php
Any stance Biden had that I liked was just a nice bonus.
We're in a new world here
Republican voters will believe their politicians over Dems, only 4-5% of them voted Dem in the last two Presidential elections.
…is it? November would say otherwise
Maybe “our whole team is going to work together to solve probs” is better?
Biden was VP because Obama was scary to them
the only interests they want to advance are those of billionaire oligarchs, same as the GOP
But the center exaggerates their influence in service of purging them, rather than balancing.
This is memory-holed and I actually think is very important for how 2023-2024 rolls out.
But *all* parts of a coalition, particularly a fractious one, need to accept they are one of many demos that the politician is trying to advance, placate and protect, you're not going to win every battle and the entire platform can't be about you alone.
ok dude
So, while more moderates supported Clinton and more liberal supported Obama, a lot of it was affective rather than policy.
Maybe for only 1996-2004 but even then Howard Dean was clearly different on policy?
I think we just collapse past intraparty differences because the conflict is less salient
He's just wrong about that. The rest of the wrong follows...
How are these two arguments even equivalent?
That said, we gotta pick a woman. Seriously, we gotta stop fucking around with these weirdos.
- as folks have observed, they have a small # of big donors they can convince personally
- trusting a politician to be secretly good feels like a bigger lift than assuming they're awful
- above all, the right is just more comfortable with lying 🤷♂️
He didn't deliver on his promises.
Which is mostly not his fault.
He appeared to understand the difference and that served well
Which as it turns out, was perfectly easy to accomplish. THEY are the obnoxious minority that isn't worth appeasing.
Do you not remember him refusing to support gay marriage?
Clinton and Biden were moderates too. Every Dem President for decades has been from the "moderate wing".
Also Silicon Valley tech fascists have their tentacles into him as well
He is the one who should be ostracized and kicked out of the coalition
His entire thing is pushing Democrats to the right…exactly as expected from controlled opposition