I think it's because a lot of people fell into the fallacy of perfection/absolutism, and are thus single mindedly focused on a goal without even thinking about how to get there. Add to that a level of entitlement towards instant gratification and... well... here we are.
A lot of messaging from Dems is “We will explain the factual details of this issue, and when we’ve made you care about it you will vote for us.” But you can’t talk people into caring about stuff they don’t care about. You have to start with what’s important to them.
Just a guess: they have as much infighting but their message of fear and hate is better at unifying against things so they vote as a bloc. When it comes to actually building something they do worse at unifying.
I have been thinking about this and I think part of the issue is that the left cares about issues. The right cares about winning. When you care about issues and DON'T understand incremental progress, it's easy to develop purity culture which gets exploited by social media reactions. (more)
So the idea of a big tent from the center to far left SHOULD work in theory. But leftists feel "I care about THIS ISSUE and THEY DO NOT so I can't work with them, fuck them." They don't understand that you have to win before you can legislate. That's the gap we have to bridge.
I've been a liberal all my life, voted blue no matter who etc, but at this point I think Democrats losing a few lower stakes elections and having to move left in later election cycles to earn votes would have been better than what we've done, which is self-select for laziness in our electeds.
This is why I urge people to focus on groups like Run For Something. Their 2018 alum (like Maxwell Frost) are just now starting to hit the national stage. If we install a generation of progressives in state/local NOW, then the gerontocracy can be pushed out.
Agree, but my point is that we shouldn't solely accuse leftists of coalition-breaking over ideology because, if we had withheld votes years ago during lower-stakes elections or voted for more progressive candidates in primaries, we wouldn't be in our current predicament.
Oh, I totally agree. There's a generation that exhaled when Obama won and didn't realize that they needed to build from the ground up. Progressives really only seemed to realize from 2018 onward that they needed to win locally to build a power base from the ground up.
we need incremental progress like student loan debt forgiveness program for Pell Grant recipients who start a business that operates for three years in disadvantaged communities lol
Incremental progress on a fed level is the only way legislation passes. To take faster steps, activists need to focus on county/state legislation/protections that can build ground-up national support. It took 30 years to go from "don't ask/don't tell" to codify LGBTQ marriage in 2022
gay marriage wasn't even really codified, it took obergefell v. hodges. half the time it's the judicial and not the legislature that makes this progress
Because it's much easier to burn down than build up. Building up takes legislation, which means layers of passes and approvals. Burning down is "install shitty person at this agency to withhold budgets" or "overshoot EOs so people leave and the agency is hobbled by the time this is resolved"
I mean one could definitely argue that both the addition of DOGE and new draconian laws on immigration, trans people, and the press are "building up" in the sense that they are either establishing a new agency (regardless of whether they say DOGE is an agency or not) or tightening control
I keep thinking about AOC telling Gaza protestors "do you want to try and work with Harris or Trump?" and that's exactly the point. Hyperfocus, whether by issue or local community, can only be done when the broader government can be moved incrementally. But too many don't understand govt process.
We were told the vote blue no matter who people would hold Biden’s feet to the fire and push him left… then they get mad at the left for protesting his complicity in genocide. The democratic establishment sent Cops to attack the protestors. They are in favor of cop cities and inhumane immigration
Policy. They serve the oligarchy, same as the republicans, at the expense of the working class. They are all in on protecting capitalism even if it means working with fascists to achieve that goal over any moves towards socialist policy. The Democratic Party and core base has much more in common
But they always coalesce because they care about winning. Their seasoned vets (McConnell) understand this is path to power, their clownish assholes just like to see people get hurt. That's why it's so important to vocally protest local at-risk GOP right now, you have to scare the shit out of them.
Demographic exit polling showed that unity didn't happen. You had too many fractured sub-groups mad at each other, many actively campaigning to NOT vote. Combined with global incumbency disadvantage (which really hits low-info "price of egg" voters) and the math added up. It was a total own-goal.
I heard about a study that the far-right is more effective than using propaganda than the far-left, because propagandizing leftist views, which often boil down to economic arguments, is much more difficult than propagandizing & weaponizing the rightist read meat of culture war. Messaging is hard?
And to clarify, I am mostly talking about the electorate. Progressive elected officials, as several ppl have pointed out, often go out of their way to try and build coalitions w liberal and even centrist Dems. (And then they fall out of favor w progressive voters, and the cycle continues.)
I mean if you an actual answer here it's to step outside the US bubble
See all the countries where you have socialist, liberal, conservative and reactionary parties competing with each other and coalitioning with each other too
WILD to see Americans talk about this stuff like they know anything
One of the key parties in Britain is a Social Liberal party
I guarantee no American has the faintest clue what that even is, at best they'll think they're Social Democrats despite Britain already having a SocDem party
Canada has a "liberal" party that has social liberal and neoliberal wings, and a "new democratic" party that has social democratic and hard socialist wings
Those intra-party factions struggle for dominance even when the parties are cooperating in the House, as they have for this whole Parliament
repubs all hate the same things: everything that is not white, rich, cis-het, wealthy and nominally "Christian", so they all vote together in hate.
Dems all hate different things, so we fight for what we support. 🤷🏼♀️
because those right wing voting blocs aren’t grassroots. they exist because they are propped by adf, heritage foundation, koch brothers, fox news, meta etc. the infrastructure that holds those coalitions on the right together cannot be recreated by progressives because it would hurt capital. 1/3
and further preventing those coalitions from forming is that the dnc proved this election that they would rather lose than do good things that will hurt capital (like stopping arms exports to israel) 2/3
in the eyes of die hard dem voters and dem pols, the job of voters is blindly vote blue no matter who because do you want the fascists to win? voters asking their elected representatives to do things for them is brash and impolite. these are not people progressives can ally themselves with. 3/3
Except "progressive elected officials" dont build coalitions. They often form their own clique a la Tea Party from the 2010s and spend all day damaging Democratic progress.
I'm curious, is there convincing evidence that Right > Left at coalition-building among the electorate? And how do you control for the media env as a factor in that?
Yes, the 2024 election cycle, when the republicans not only managed to hold on to their base, but peel off unprecedented support from major national labor unions, which had previously been Democratic strongholds for decades.
Weren't those labor leaders generally reacting to polls, though, and attempting to curry favor with Trump? Do we consider it a coalition if it's held together not by its policy platform so much as fear of retribution by an unrestrained executive power?
But union membership is also near an all-time low and Democrats have been losing working-class voters since Clinton’s embrace of deregulated global trade. So it was always a matter of when, not if, enough of those dwindling unions would flip to a Republican who said the right things.
I don't buy the working class voter rhetoric. Many people who identify as working class voters simply aren't. They are small business owners, and others in that sphere.
Often college educated voters are not working class then those who purport to be in that bloc.
By "working Americans," I'm not talking about blue-collar or white-collar, or college-educated or not. I'm referring to the majority of Americans whose paychecks haven't really grown since the 1980s.
It seems to me that the answer to your larger question is that there are two major left wing groups in America: neoliberal pro-corporate Democrats who largely control the party, and working-class Democrats and progressives who have been alienated since the 1990s.
This. and further, the former aren't actually broadly all that popular, but have access to *huge* streams of money, which is the only thing that matters in this country
For everybody saying the reason is that liberals and leftists are not natural allies in the first place, well, neither are free-market libertarians and Christian nationalists. Yet one group votes as a bloc and the other doesn't. That is my whole point. Why?
Liberals cannot stand the idea that there are people who base their politics on a higher level of morality than their own. They hate being reminded of their unlimited support for genocide and thus hate leftists far more than conservatives who make them feel morally superior to the world.
Because Leftists insist that every single liberal is literally Margaret Thatcher. They do that because they're always attempting to sway squishy progressive liberals over to their side, bolstering their ranks and resources.
The right doesn't have that problem as much, precisely because the sides can't easily recruit each other's members. But it's still a thing—just look at how there's basically no libertarians these days. All got scooped up by the alt right and neoreaction.
If it helps at all, from our perspective this is "trying to convince potential allies that our ideas have merit" and "pointing out that our shared goals are impossible to achieve if we keep electing politicians hostile to them."
It is the leftist version of the old "do you like freedom? Then you're a libertarian!" tactic from the 2000s Internet.
And it's deeply frustrating, because it means that leftists and liberals cannot actually have a useful dialogue, as you keep trying to win through this definitional level.
Perhaps the right is all about the who gets to define hierarchical & patriarchal politics. Supported by a spectrum of people who believe there can only be one daddy at the EOD deciding who the “enemy” is. It’s the base of a pyramid scheme with deep roots. There’s never been true left anywhere. Yet.
Factions of the left/middle aren't interested in power for power's sake, but decentralizing it, so they squabble about ideology and policy, means & method. The right's main goal is only power, so the C-Nats, financebros, techbros, militias, supremacists all happily use each other to gain it.
Groups that see everything in black and white find it easier to agree with each other than groups who have to navigate shades of grey all day every day.
Easiest answer I’m aware of is better organization bought with better funding.
The right has a pipeline from academia to cushy think tank or a position of power as long as you toe the line. I recommend the Know Your Enemy podcast.
The right is soaked in money. The ideological left, less so.
Free market libertarians tend to be white, male, neo-feudalists. They have significant Venn overlap with Christian nationalists who tend to be white, male patriarchalists. They want to advance white men & keep POC, LGBTQ+, & women in "their place." They believe freedom = dominating others. Allies.
The right believes the end justifies the means. That informs all their choices.
On the left you have some that believe that but most do not. The means is the point, but different groups have different means. I think this is the core of why the left is so fragmented.
They keep their eyes on the prize.
Have you noticed that they NEVER threaten not to vote?
They know the goal is to get and keep power. They'll figure it out after that.
The big problem is that liberals, especially in power, think the system works, that change is a threat to established power and would rather defer to conservatives than take big swings. Leftists have been punching bags for over a century and resent the hollow nature of the liberal agenda
Leftists are often very focused on purity of ideology and can be insular bc there's often cops/feds trying to destabilize orgs and it's difficult to form a coalition that's sold you out time and time again while telling leftists to be more practical, while libs alienate the voting base
Leftists have also been held captive by liberal agendas in the US and I think now is when the left needs to leverage the moment to extract concessions but Dems have fought hard to keep the left from the table and given more to the right to keep the left populist agenda away
And for all the differences on the right, their *governing* ideology is exactly the same: “fiscal conservatism.”
Contrast that with the side that’s supposedly more similar: half the Democrats are also “fiscal conservatives” while the others are diametrically opposed to it.
No, they definitely are Democrat, because “Democrat” isn’t an ideology, it’s a party, and it holds no independent principles. Neither is “Republican” an ideology.
The ideology is “fiscal conservatism” and it’s in both parties. Neither party means “good guys.”
US money-cult Christians are not really Christians at all. They use a lot of the same words, but they don't follow any of the teachings in the New Testament at all. They believe things like rich=good, poor=judged, charity=weak - all things Jesus was against.
They're natural allies of anyone rich.
Harris was committed to continuing a genocide, ran to the right of Trump on immigration, abandoned trans people, and brought Nazi war criminal Dick Cheney onto her campaign. She is a right winger, like most liberals, and the left doesn't like right wingers. She is on the same side as Trump.
I have a theory the coalition on the right is in parallel while the left is more linear.
Distinct goals on the right can be promoted side-by-side w/o clashing. (Like econ views and Christian nationalism)
The left shares most goals so we fight over space on the same road.
It's easier to build coalitions when your organizations are all corps run from the top down.
But I think you still gloss over the fact that liberals and leftists (and those in between) don't have entirely compatible goals, and so the question is what coalitions btw them are allying to accomplish.
It's my experience that if the fractures in coalitions don't implode internally, either external pressures or leadership fights and struggles over power, including patriarchal and racist assertions, will do the work for the state.
Yes, there are many undemocratic groups among liberals and leftists too. But I think (and I could be wrong) there is a lot less money, and such groups are highly dependent upon rank and file volunteering their time and energy to be effective than comparable groups on the Right.
Most coalitions that aren't just non-profit meta-bureaurcracies do so within a year. If they don't, they get infiltrated, or their leaders, arrested. It's just history, including modern day history.
It's not unfixable! But it's not easy, either. If it was, we'd already have done it.
Leftists will murder each other over minor points of ideology so good luck building a broad front with them. Ideological purity. “Biden is as bad as Trump”
I think part of it is the rightwing has fewer coalitional blocks and those blocks are not necessarily opposed to each other (one can like low taxes and also fear/loathe minorities)
But for the leftwing, there are differences between Canadian and French universal healthcare which matter to them
This covers it, IMO. What disagreements there are in the GOP are easier to elide because none of these people actually care about anything but money and power. The broad left has the structural disadvantage of actually caring and believing in ideals.
That's the opposite of true - the real truth is that they are all committed to white supremacy as a means of maintaining capitalist hierarchy. They have an overriding ethos.
the secret here is that "free market libertarians" aren't real. there are like six of those guys in the entire country, the rest of them are just Christian nationalists who like drugs
Because those groups are natural allies even if it doesn't seem like it on first glance. They are both far right wing groups for which the Venn diagram overlaps in a lot of key areas. Liberals are pro capitalism and leftists are not. Liberals will always side with capital, including fascists.
For 50 years, the American right's created a massive industrial propaganda machine whose blood is oil, gas, & beer money, designed to funnel every non-liberal into a booth to vote for Republicans. Liberals have spent the same time blaming leftist for every one of their own losses.
They're united on the principle of white patriarchy. There is no such unifying principle for leftists and liberals. The only supposed alliance was because liberals were facing irrelevancy in the 1930s, and pretended to be social democrats to stave off socialism.
Honestly I think a big part is what sources/experts/leaders each relies on matters. A lot of that wing has the self-image of being an A+ student, which is built both on study but also mannerism. Learn and follow the lesson, but don't always ask if the lesson was right in the first place.
The primary ideology and goal of liberalism is to protect capital & capitalists (like conservatives) which is inherently at odds with those who want capital mediated or ended bcuz it's destroying their lives. A wonderful primer on how it has been done before: https://midwestsocialist.com/2020/10/30/organizations-in-movement/
Freemarket libertarians wanna cook meth in their underground bunker with their 12 year old wives. They're just gonna pick whichever side makes that easier
specifically we've seen a lot of people who made their whole deal atheist libertarian aligning hard with christian nationalists because in both cases what they claim to have as priorities are not their actual priorities
Do leftists not vote in bloc with libs? Leftists are very consistent Democratic voters. Pew research compares them to faith and flag voters in terms of consistency.
Most whining about leftists not voting Dem is simply not backed by data.
Keep in mind I say the following as a leftist who has voted in every single election which I've been eligible to vote: The issue is less about which way leftists vote and more that a portion of leftists will abstain from voting when they believe "both sides are the same."
Leftists have about 85% participation by volume, according to a 2021 Pew research study that broke down voters by ideological demographic, tied for the highest demo with evangelicals.
The biggest obstacle to Dem electoral victory, frankly, is that there aren't more of us.
Could it be that it’s easier to agree on what you’re against? Once you start trying to make policies to actually improve things it’s harder to agree on specifics.
For leftists, it's life-or-death where as for libertarians, it's not. Leftists see other humans as a fellow cousin -- no one is free until we are all free -- whereas libertarians and CNs both believe in hyperindividualism & can agree on that. And I think a lot of time, so do liberals.
I think you’re taking contrived identities at face value a bit.
They have the same donors/backers and they both serve capital and then they pour out chum for their base but I think they often vote as a bloc because they aren’t truly oppositional. Or at least not where it matters.
So-called libertarians and white
nationalists are united in their hatred of every minority. That’s the common thread in cutting welfare programs, ending civil rights enforcement, repealing 14th amendment rights, promoting “school choice,” etc.
as a life-long lib turned recent leftist, don't worry, I have the answer: liberals believe decades of propaganda that we have to make our demands smaller to appeal to a rightward-moving center driven by conservatives, ignoring the obvious desire for change since Obama's 2008 election.
Most people see your question and think, Why don't leftists vote with liberals? My question is, Why don't liberals want what leftists want, and if they do want the same things, why aren't they willing to fight for it?
I hate to bring back 2016 or 2020 but I saw so many say they love Bernie's policies but they didn't think he could win so they voted Clinton/Biden in the primaries. They feel like they need to preemptively make a sacrifice to the center to legitimately be engaged in politics.
Yes. I wanted Warren in 2020, and there's a reason one of the rallying cries was "She's electable if you fucking vote for her." A lot of people think a lot of other people will opt out of 'vote blue no matter who' if the Who is progressive, so they just give up.
The way of breaking this cycle is to start small. Prove that these candidates can win in Portland and Seattle and New York and San Francisco. Enact the policies on smaller scales and when they're successful, they will become mainstream.
case in point, the person I quoted in the below post wrote a WaPo op-ed claiming that progressives aren't electable even though that conclusion is not at all within the scope of his data. here he is saying that Democrats, if faced with a conservative electorate, should always just move right.
In a lot of ways we're stuck in this self reinforcing cycle of leftist rightfully bailing on voting, leaving the Dems with a panicky base/leadership. Who naturally do shit leftists don't like, who sit out, etc, etc. It sucks and I don't see a way out unless non voters get interested.
Liberals SAY that they want what leftists want. This really IS the core of the problem. Leftists didn't co-opt the discourse of neoliberals in order to maintain power...it was neoliberals who took up the various banners of progressivism and then continually voted to appease the
"centrist" voters for decades because they called it coalition building that are the problem. It really is pretty simple -- liberals vote a lot like conservatives when they're worried that progressive or socialist policy will require something from THEM.
Because libertarians and Christian nationalists are different justifications for the same goal: systems of high stratification/control in the private sphere enabled by a state just powerful enough to stop outsiders from disrupting this private control. Liberals and leftists DON'T have the same goal.
Liberals want a more modest private sphere stratification, softened by state interventions. Leftists want to REPLACE private sphere hierarchies with a flat provision of important services from the public sphere. These groups only appear to have aligned goals in contrast to the right's extremism.
Short-sightedness. Sanctimoniousness. A lack of emotional maturity as it pertains to realistic goals and standards. I don’t, either, honestly, and I wish I did.
I’m still trying to wrap my brain around people not wanting people to die, and abstaining from voting which is going to result in dying.
As I see it, Centrists, MAGA, Nazi, Liberal, Republican, Democrat, Libertarians, and Christ. Nationalists are just different flavors of extreme right. The difference is how blatantly they express this, with the Centrists being the most deceptive. So there's no common ground with progressives.
Also, you can't really compare the left, which has a static set of ethics, with the right, which has an interchangeable array of fashy tropes, which they can easily joggle around in order to team up with another group.
but it's just call anyone whose not advancing the platform word for word a MAGAt, block them, and keep being morons producing the outcomes they think they're preventing lmao
y'all are as dumb as Republicans, you just got conditioned by nicer people. Y'all need to realize that
It's important to remember that free market libertarians don't really believe in free markets or liberty. They say they do but they only mean when it benefits them personally. Christian nationalists have no real patriotism, nor do they obey or imitate Jesus.
You know the discussion over voting for Hitler because you like the economic plan or national pride, not because you're genocidal? And how if you vote Nazi you are a Nazi, whether you really believe in the whole platform or just some of it?
That's why lot of people couldn't vote for Biden-Harris.
This would make sense if we were talking about Kamala's economic policies. But we weren't. We were talking about her "I am literally a Nazi supporting genocide" position.
respectfully Michele Bissacco, the phrase “doesn’t share EXACTLY my same ideology,” is referring to voters who oppose burning innocent children to death and a candidate who supports burning innocent children to death, right?
The parties aren’t the same, but they are beholden to the same people (billionaires).
It should have been very clear cut that the moment indiscriminate bombing began, support should have ended. The only reason I could imagine why it didn’t is money.
That name calling is part of my argument that it's mainstream Democrats who suck at coalition building. It's not leftists who are unwilling to form alliances. It's you guys who think you're right about everything and anyone who doesn't buy what you're selling is an idiot.
I think we already have socialism…. And I see what’s happening right now as a dismantling of socialism in America… Which makes me out of place with both groups since my definition of socialism is different… and I think it can co-exit with other economic ideas.
If your definition of socialism doesn't exist in the same reality as the general consensus definition of socialism, then what even is the point of using words?
But that has nothing to do with socialism as defined by Marx and Engles or even Pierre Leroux. That's just socialist ideals applied to a single school system.
Everything I've read indicates that our legislatures (including both parties) are more responsive to the donor class than the voters. I think this leaves voters feeling unhappy and under served. Justice issues -- economic, social, environmental, etc -- come at the expense of the donor class.
because libertarians and nationalists are not fundamentally opposed. liberals are fundamentally opposed to leftist ideology. they like to make it sound like a small difference of opinion but they will drop everything and start playing dirty in a way they never do vs the right.
also liberals will gladly work with nationalists if the alternative is a leftist winning, see macron for an example. and the canadian liberals helping the conservatives sometimes.
The answer is religion. Not because everyone on the right is faithful, but because even those who aren't have this common touchstone (often a weekly meeting) to bring them back to their mission and the importance of unity.
Similar themes helped unify the Civil Rights movement once upon a time.
I'm an Exvangelical, and it's incredibly plainly clear to me that this is the answer. The faith of most on the right keeps them in lockstep even when they have misgivings, and it's also what makes it so easy for them to get drawn in by disinformation. They practice taking their leaders' word for it.
I truly wish the left had more religious and ex-religious commentators to explain some of the right's policies and "next moves," because having grown up in the church, it all makes a lot more sense to me than it does to my friends who were never part of it.
People Right of center are more easily capable of holding seemingly contradictory views because collectively they are all in favor of a single idea with different labels: hierarchy.
In contrast plurality can take many different forms in ways that are much harder to reconcile with each other.
I would argue both groups are natural allies, as Christian nationalists are, at their core, concerned with accumulating wealth and power the same way libertarians are. The differences between them are largely superficial, and can be set aside for their shared class interests.
I'm reading all the replies and it's starting to bug me that most if not all answers is leaving completely unchallenged the extent to which things are emergent properties of first past the post voting and the two party system it results in, like groups under umbrellas that seemingly don't make sense
I used to say America had two political parties: "Fascists" and "the other parties in a trenchcoat"
since then it's been revealed that America has two parties "Fascists" and "The rest of the Fascists, except they vote Dem so I don't get why progressives don't like them"
It's because the latter two at least agree on many issues. Economic and a few social ones. They don't need to be buddy buddy, but they know one isn't going to screw the other. Liberals and Socialists however only agree on a few issues and differ vastly.
Liberals and Socialists on Economic issues are on two different coasts. Liberals still want our current system either with variance on amount of regulations. Socialists want to destroy Capitalism and replace it with the working class to control all economic aspects and businesses.
Free market libertarians & Christian nationalists both support hierarchy & domination. American libertarians conception of “liberty” is without consideration given to equity so by default upholds existing hierarchical structures. It’s ego-centric & encourages decreased empathy.
Genuinely stumps me, it’s not an exclusively American phenomenon. See it in the UK too. Flippantly put it down to one side being determined to force an agenda bit by bit vs the other letting perfect be the enemy of good. But that is simplistic, there must be be a long read somewhere explaining this
Right now the right is united around destroying everything, liberals and leftists are split between insiders who want to maintain institutions and outsiders who think they need to be radically overhauled
On the right the rank and file has some actual purchase on leadership. We're not making many more white cis het heads of household anymore and they need all of them we have left. So when they decided they wanted Trump they couldn't tell them no. When the same thing happened on the left,
leadership looked at it and said, well, I guess we're not the Party for young and working people, actually we're the Party of black Southern social conservatives and Jewish fascists. Democrats have multiple possible coalitions, they have the luxury of choosing their voters.
Which would be great, except they aren't actually incentivized to win. For leadership to stay in place all they have to do is seem like they can win, which is why there's such a wild drive to overstate their popularity.
You are asking why people without principles have little difficulty compromising. The answer is that they don't have anything to compromise. They don't actually believe in all that much besides dog-whistles and buzzwords (especially with the word 'free' in them) - their actions are proof of that.
I'm pretty familiar with Pentecostals - they were great examples of that Chesterton story where Father Brown talks about how you can find justifications for anything in the Bible. Not much in the way of actual principles though (with a very few notable exceptions).
They like militancy, maybe that counts as a principle. Seems more of a fetish though - they get really excited about the old testament 'Yahweh as a war god' sort of scriptures.
Because literally all libertarians care about is low taxes and they’ll take all the other crap with it. All Christian nationalists care about is their RW agenda that screws all but white cis men and they’ll take all the other crap with it.
Right-libertarianism and Christian nationalism have some major core elements in common, like:
— reverence of market forces
— extreme authoritarianism with shallow anti-authoritarian pretenses
— white supremacy
They are, though, because they both believe in control. The notion that free market libertarians are actually concerned with freedom or whatever has always been a fig leaf. They're all about capitalism, and so is much of prosperity gospel focused Evangelicalism.
Libertarians and Christian nationalists are quite united on capitalism (I don't think you can really find a "socialist" Christian nationalist...)
Socialists and liberals fundamentally disagree on capitalism, so it is a lot harder to coalesce on policy, as one side is always making a hard concession
In a way: the areas where the Libertarian and Christian nationalist disagree are largely personal, and they can leave each other to their own devices (i.e: "let me have my free market; you can have your church")
The parts where socialists and liberals disagree are on essential policy decisions
Not that I think this is a good reason for infighting: coalition building is all about finding the right concessions to allow the coalition partners to all meaningfully advance. I just think that the policy schism is more evident (and meaningful) for the left than it is for the right.
It's far more than simply "not being natural allies". The central beliefs of Christian Nationalists don't meaningfully conflict with that of free-market libertarians. Not in the way that liberals' beliefs conflict with progressives and anti-capitalists.
That's the thing, Libertarians and Christian Nationalist DO have lots of goals in common. Liberals and Leftists don't have goals in common. Leftists want policies that will change things at a SYSTEMIC level. Liberals don't want ANYTHING to change, especially if it affects them in any way.
Anger and hate. The right are angry and hateful and don’t know why. Rather than look for the real reasons, which are complicated, human nature gravitates toward the simple, so their rage can be harnessed very easily by con-men and grifters promising simple unrealistic answers.
Yeah the Hillary gambit was probably the single greatest mistake of the last 20 years and we are still paying for it. (To be clear, I voted for her, but I would have voted for anybody without an R next to their name.)
And this comment section is a perfect example of why coalition building is just so hard. I'm not laying blame on any one faction, just pointing out how it seems impossible to find some purchase that let's a coalition form. The Right finds some way to make it work, I'll never understand how
Well that's one reason why coalition building doesn't happen. The Right will surround and support the most odious person on the planet. The Left cannot even agree on their take on Hillary. That's the difference. I'd have voted for Bernie, many of the Bernie folks wouldn't vote for Clinton
They were betrayed by stupidity. And still, who was given the Chair of the Oversight Committee? AOC? No. A white man in his 70s with cancer because it was his turn. Like Hillary. Never learn.
That particular white guy is actually a very good representative and just as equal. I'm not trying to be nasty here but calling out the rep having cancer is ableist and reductive. Call out his shoddy policies, which in this case you can't he's a solid person for the spot.
I don't agree with the criticisms here of her or her candidacy nor with the take that Bernie could have won. I think the base problem was and is our societal misogyny and with Harris add racism
Strong disagree. USA is different but not insanely different to other western countries and female leaders aren't a thing. They have had female leaders in India and Pakistan as well
And the last popular liberal president was a black guy which was a bigger deal
Thank you. I've been saying this for months a bigger problem than liberals and leftists are willing to admit is their own internalized misogyny and racism.
The Right has been really good at doing blind allegiance how matter what shitstain they put on the ballot. The Left are not very good at this. And perhaps that is a reflection of the type of person attracted to either ideology
That's part of why "Vote blue no matter who" is so evil, the DNC relies on their voters to fall in line no matter who they put up, which enabled them to think they could force Hillary on us. The "lesser evil voting" strategy fails to take into account that you're still actively supporting evil.
I suspect some of the answer lies in how we in the US do politics. One big rock in the middle of the road is the gross amount of money in our elections, and less regular, facilitated access to them!
This might be zooming out too far, but I think the progressive project faces less evolutionary and historical head winds. Overcoming in-group/out-group dynamics, and building a world that is welcoming, decent, and prosperous for all requires leaps of imagination we haven't collectively taken yet.
simple: our electorate actually has very few progressives in it; the democrat party as a whole is a center-to-center-right party in terms of *global* politics. it only seems left because the overton window has shifted extremely far right in this country.
and then from there answering your question is simple logic: the democrats are invested in preventing the left from organizing in this country because they're opposition to them. why would a center-right party be buddy-buddy with leftists? they're political opponents.
"i meant the populace!" As Above, So Below. if the politicians make it clear anyone left of center is unpalatable and unacceptable, it makes it hard for those politics to gain any traction anywhere downstream. why work together when you know your end prize is "get ratfucked by dems constantly"?
They literally had a sabotage Bernie Sanders so he couldn't win knowing he was on a trajectory to beat Clinton. And had a better chance of beating trump
I assume you're asking this question in good faith. And it's because of the right wing only cares about power and all of these talking points are just a way to mobilize people to achieve that goal
The left is different and it's actually informed n hold the party accountable n has different beliefs
The left sees democrats as a bigger obstacle to progress as they are the party. That's supposed to be about progress. But all they really do is suck the energy out of the left and distract them
Speaking in generalizations about a blobular ill-defined Liberal community doesn't lead to sound conclusions. I think we are better off looking at officials, and help reach out to the unpolitical. Many neolibs are content and safe, so they can ignore activism. When they feel fear, they will care.
Again, democrat registered voters hate your ideas as much as they hate mine (fiscal conservativism, internationalism) but neither are inconsistent with moderate agendas so we need to backpedal on our concerns & focus on things like getting business campaign money out of elections & anti-inflation.
They fall out of favor with progressive voters because they didn't really "build a coalition", they just offer their support to Centrists while getting nothing in return, an incredibly stupid thing to do when time and resources are so limited
People who are good at grassroots organizing on the left tend to get arrested or shot. See: MLK, the Black Panthers, the organizers of Ferguson, Cop City, etc.
Part of this is trying to reinvent the wheel every generation because it's hard when you have no money and your leaders are in jail or dead
The other part is that liberals are OK with abandoning liberal values, and use their power to attack the coalition. We don't support human rights in Gaza, approve massive federal budgets for cops and do the bare minimum on desperately needed institutional reforms, where's the compromise here?
this is easy. it's because the left/socialists/whatever have a coherent political ideology while the right / maga / libs do not and thus are able appease each other on the basis of nothing more than "misplaced anger" and domination.
At the risk of oversimplifying, the right is selling repressive simplicity, the left is selling complexity, which is a tougher sell (because it requires, to borrow a phrase from Richard Rorty, "increasingly complex adjustments to novel stimulation").
Hate is easy and free (in the sense that it asks nothing of yourself and limits personal risk) while compassion involves complex and often risky (emotionally, mentally, intellectually and sometimes physically) elements. It asks sacrifice without obvious payoff.
FWIW throughout modern political history (think 19th C onwards) the political left has generally been much more fractious than the political right. It’s why there are so many different flavours of communism & so many Communist International Parties.
I wasn’t able to find, they may have taken it down, but an old friend wrote an incredible article on the history of internal structure of the Democratic Party that is a great 101 on this. TLDR: after the 60’s uprisings, the Democratic Party dramatically restructured itself to be less democratic…
After attempts to push the party left, they wanted to centralize power away from the base. If you want a stark contrast, go pull up the bylaws of your local Democratic Party and compare to your local Republican Party. I can almost guarantee you the local members have WAY more control for the R’s..
Furthermore, a lot of what used to be local Democratic Party organs were cut out all together and placed under nominally private NGO’s (think all the strategists and NGO’s we read about who “advise” on strategy that no one within the D party elected). The structure of the party itself is made…
To prevent the progressive voices from ever having a left wing “tea party” movement. They don’t have to capitulate to their base, many local and regional party officials are appointed from above. Again you can compare that to local Republican Party branches to see how differently things are run…
So now multiple generations of progressive organizers have gone through the same cycle, you must move right to be accommodated by the party, a grassroots movement to push it left is made effectively impossible. The few successes (like AOC) are treated with contempt and denied DNC funds…
TL:DR, party structure matters, party primary rules matter, party funding allocation matters, and we simply don’t have a big tent left-liberal party in the US. We have a big tent right-wing party and a centralized-centrist party. And both are violently opposed to even most moderate progressivism.
A bit more seriously, one answer is that US has always had a conservative/revanchist block, and it's really hard to mobilize and sustain a diverse progressive counterweight given racial/ economic cleavages and sheer physical distance in a continental empire
It’s not for any reasons of inherent suitability. It’s decades of organizing elites + building a separate information/media ecosystem which has now become dominant. It’s 50+ years of organizing work & institution building w/ copious financial backing from Koch’s and Murdoch.
Leftist are often anti-or-counter institutional, liberals rely too much on governing institutions&too little on cultivating liberal-left civil society institutions. Funders on the left are also too controlling. They don’t seed things and let them grow.
They give w/strings & according to fads. They don’t let organizers lead. All of this can and should change. There’s no magic. It’s money & organizing & institution building.
Progressive Funders don’t invest in relational organizing, political education, or capacity for long term institution building. They want short term wins and KPI’s.
Not disagreeing with what you said but reflecting that the left does have to deal with an inherent asymmetry in the amount of money available. The right also successfully organized through conservative churches. Destruction of unions part of the story.
You’re right. Destruction of unions, especially unions as civil society/political orgs rather than primarily clientalist contract negotiators is for sure part of the story.
Do you know how important ladies auxiliaries were to the abolitionist movement? The answer is it would not have had much money without them. No reason not to cultivate that line at present.
Well, after a number of years being told that the class revolution will fix everything and that identity politics based on gender and race need to take a back seat to the revolution...usually put forth by trust fundie white males...I'm tired of it.
The organizers of the Ferguson protests were shot and burned in their cars. That’s why. When we protest, we get kettled and tear gassed. Meanwhile, cops are attending right wing protests. Our cops are right wing white supremacists
I think it breaks down to Conservatives being willing to swallow a bad pill in order to get to the good one no matter how much damage it does while Liberals tend to want to get to the good pill while causing as little harm as possible.
We need to learn that goals often require sacrifice.
I think the most straightforward answer is that liberals (ie normy Dem types) are perennially focused on reaching right in (hopeless, I’d say) efforts to pull GOP voters into the Dem tent (see: $$$ for police rEfOrM, laken Riley, should-we-abandon-trans-ppl)
And this constant rightward focus means liberals are both 1) punching left and blaming leftists for what they perceive as undercutting this rightward expansion of their tent, and 2) abandoning core principles of the actual progressive left to such a great extent that it breaks the coalition
My theory is that the more extreme left side scares what I guess are liberals and the extreme left seems to function on purity IE they are unwilling to compromise on anything. That seems to be the big divide from my own observation. Fear of the new vs. the unwillingness to be practical.
In my observation, it's the "extreme left" that is always having to compromise and being told they have to compromise while "moderates," just by virtue of calling themselves that, feel they already hold positions that should be considered the compromise by their very nature and they won't budge.
Just to be clear I didn’t mean “extreme left” as some kind of derogatory statement. Just what “normal” people see them as. My own family for instance. They’ll never vote Trump but I’ve tried for years to get them on board with even basic stuff like raise min wage to no avail.
But one common thing I’ve seen in them is that they are scared to change much of anything. So yeah sadly the further left people the only answer is probably compromise over and over with them to inch them where you want to go. And no I don’t like it. But I’m also not a poli sci person
I do know one thing. No one actually wants some big Revolution and those that claim they do haven’t thought through what a “bullets everywhere” Revolution would mean.
I think it's because the basis of leftists is anticapitalism, and the core or liberals is a more kind, if critical, view or capitalism. But we did menage to fight together quite well during the whole anti-fascism thing.
I do think it is more of an "American Leftist" problem, in a way +
+ because, at least in Brazil and the UK, it seems that leftists tend to vote for liberals if the choice is that or conservatives.
There, they have had liberals and leftists joining forces to elect "barely a progressive" if that meant defeating conservatives such as Bolsonaro and the Tories.
I'm not saying it's an inherently wrong "American-ness" that is the issue, but it seems the USA leftists are more particular to "protest voting" candidates like Jill Stein even in the face of fascism.
I think it's more an issue of the 2party system taking leftists as hostages, causing this response.
My reductive and uneducated opinion is because there's a vanishingly small 'center left' political wing. Most people we think of as 'liberal' are slightly right of center on most issues, and are thus the natural enemies of the far-but-not-radical left progressives. The DNC is a house divided.
I am there. I am Social Democrat and have spent two decades arguing for "Dem Enter" in leftist circles, but the Democratic party operatives routinely only makes gestures to the mythical "moderate" "fiscal conservative" "pro cop" white voter. I am staying outside until the election.
it's my crank theory Willow so take it w salt, but to me it's the same reason blue-vote types stand all in the way at Trader Joes; we don't flock well. We like the ideals of society but our individualism (which red voters fancy about themselves) makes us harder to organize.
I've been thinking lately that the ascendancy of right-wing ideology is because it puts a framework around saying "It's okay to only care about yourself/your family," whereas left-wing is inherently asking people to care about other people, which is apparently a tall order!
Yeah, and there's a lot of different types of people to care about. People peel off and vote conservative if they're any one of more racist or homophobic or transphobic or more likely think poor people are lazy than they are interested in the hard work of building a different system.
The opposition forces put forth against the right are all straightforward transparent (e.g. no nazi FB groups so they call it something else) whereas the forces against progressive movements organizing and rallying messages are the opposite (billionaires and PE neocons buying news media orgs).
Honestly, I don't either, but I know some portion of it is "Outside propaganda encourages right-wing people to bond together, encourages left-wing people towards infighting"
I also think that “conservatism” asks for nothing - while anti-conservatism requires action(s). And everyone thinks their actions are the most important. That requires constant negotiation and coalition building, which is… difficult.
I think it’s much easier to describe hate and fear than it is to describe care and compassion; hate only asks you to “protect yourself” while compassion requires a willingness to accept possible harm. Compassion requires selflessness, even at personal loss, while hate defines selfishness as virtue
Every Group X is. We can't think zero-sum; there's enough food/housing/health/freedom to go around. Don't say "what about me"; say "what about everybody".
Love your neighbor. Who's your neighbor? Everyone.
One group is in immediate and targeted danger for specific kinds of bigotry. It’s not enough to say “everyone needs love,” our neighbors are being deported
I'm afraid, it has to do with these 2 things. "The only thing definite is that your definitive statement will be false in a nontrivial scenario." And "Simple minds demand simple solutions that are usually simply wrong." Intelligent people reject the simple slogans that rally the stupids.
I’ve done some successful climate organizing and I think it’s a mix of
- most people resist change, even if they end up liking the result
- lefty messaging often gets lost in the weeds
- hostile ruling class and media
- generations of culture and propaganda to work against
- suburbia bad for meetups
The most successful leftist org in the country may be NYC DSA. 100% of their electeds since 2020 have remained in office. It’s easy to gather people there, knock on doors, gain visibility, etc
I don't have an answer either, but in Portugal, ppl who traditionally voted for one of the two extreme left parties voted for the extreme right in last election, making them the 3rd top party in the country.
I think the answer is somewhere in how extremism and hate brings them together somehow?
Which is ironic, and I can't fully make sense of it or express myself, but I feel like the only unifying thing for this people is hate and a lack of morals. They don't connect because they share values. They connect because they are against the values of the other side. Not sure if that makes sense
Comments
Our coalition is bound loosely together by ideals.
There was nothing like that in the other direction.
See all the countries where you have socialist, liberal, conservative and reactionary parties competing with each other and coalitioning with each other too
WILD to see Americans talk about this stuff like they know anything
I guarantee no American has the faintest clue what that even is, at best they'll think they're Social Democrats despite Britain already having a SocDem party
Those intra-party factions struggle for dominance even when the parties are cooperating in the House, as they have for this whole Parliament
Dems all hate different things, so we fight for what we support. 🤷🏼♀️
Often college educated voters are not working class then those who purport to be in that bloc.
And, yeah, it'll happen in your replies too.
It's an attempt to try and redefine terms and concepts in a way that's advantageous, like when the Soviets rebranded Stalinism as "Marxism-Leninism"
And it's deeply frustrating, because it means that leftists and liberals cannot actually have a useful dialogue, as you keep trying to win through this definitional level.
The right has a pipeline from academia to cushy think tank or a position of power as long as you toe the line. I recommend the Know Your Enemy podcast.
The right is soaked in money. The ideological left, less so.
On the left you have some that believe that but most do not. The means is the point, but different groups have different means. I think this is the core of why the left is so fragmented.
Have you noticed that they NEVER threaten not to vote?
They know the goal is to get and keep power. They'll figure it out after that.
Contrast that with the side that’s supposedly more similar: half the Democrats are also “fiscal conservatives” while the others are diametrically opposed to it.
The ideology is “fiscal conservatism” and it’s in both parties. Neither party means “good guys.”
The “New Dem” faction is also explicitly fiscally conservative. They hold the power in the Dem party.
“Fiscal conservatism.” GOP unities under it, Dems fractured by it.
They're natural allies of anyone rich.
Can you read my story and donate a small amount?
I apologize for reaching out this way 🙏🩶❤️🩹🇵🇸
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reactionary_Mind
Distinct goals on the right can be promoted side-by-side w/o clashing. (Like econ views and Christian nationalism)
The left shares most goals so we fight over space on the same road.
But I think you still gloss over the fact that liberals and leftists (and those in between) don't have entirely compatible goals, and so the question is what coalitions btw them are allying to accomplish.
It's not unfixable! But it's not easy, either. If it was, we'd already have done it.
But for the leftwing, there are differences between Canadian and French universal healthcare which matter to them
No, but as said in my previous post, they have a shared hatred to rally around. That supersedes all else.
https://bsky.app/profile/ositanwanevu.bsky.social/post/3lj5zmokg4c2m
Most whining about leftists not voting Dem is simply not backed by data.
The biggest obstacle to Dem electoral victory, frankly, is that there aren't more of us.
They've been told since the dawn of time that the world owes them because they were born.
It seems lazy, but that's the answer.
They have the same donors/backers and they both serve capital and then they pour out chum for their base but I think they often vote as a bloc because they aren’t truly oppositional. Or at least not where it matters.
nationalists are united in their hatred of every minority. That’s the common thread in cutting welfare programs, ending civil rights enforcement, repealing 14th amendment rights, promoting “school choice,” etc.
I’m still trying to wrap my brain around people not wanting people to die, and abstaining from voting which is going to result in dying.
the election for most people was establishment vs anti-establishment (as much as they're fucking morons for electing Shrek for draining the swamp)
Trump gave the people what they wanted
Dems tell the people what to want
Do the math lmao like this shit ain't hard
Trump was the "we're tired of the bullshit" vote
Dems were "the bullshit works and everyone who disagrees is fascist" vote
this shit is obvious if you talk to anyone outside your BS
y'all are as dumb as Republicans, you just got conditioned by nicer people. Y'all need to realize that
Alliances are easy when you're feckless.
That's why lot of people couldn't vote for Biden-Harris.
But they also the same people too paralyzed with anxiety to go outside and meet someone for coffee.
Macron and En Marche love it in France, because insipid liberals can still get elected on the basis that they're not fascists.
just to be clear.
#NotToBeRude
😐😐😐😐😐
https://www.axios.com/2025/02/26/west-bank-judea-samaria-name-change-gop
It should have been very clear cut that the moment indiscriminate bombing began, support should have ended. The only reason I could imagine why it didn’t is money.
That attitude why you lose
Similar themes helped unify the Civil Rights movement once upon a time.
In contrast plurality can take many different forms in ways that are much harder to reconcile with each other.
since then it's been revealed that America has two parties "Fascists" and "The rest of the Fascists, except they vote Dem so I don't get why progressives don't like them"
Liberals support a hierarchical worldview based on capital and accumulation of capital
Commies think that's the problem.
They're absolutely horrific principles, but they do definitely believe in them.
Meanwhile leftists and liberals have less in common, than liberals and Republicans.
— reverence of market forces
— extreme authoritarianism with shallow anti-authoritarian pretenses
— white supremacy
Socialists and liberals fundamentally disagree on capitalism, so it is a lot harder to coalesce on policy, as one side is always making a hard concession
The parts where socialists and liberals disagree are on essential policy decisions
The “centrist” fiscal conservatives vote as a bloc with the republicans, which breaks the “progressive” coalition which then of course, can’t.
How do you not see this.
2. We have empathy and don’t squash everyone’s viewpoint down to ‘strongest wins’
3. We aren’t selling hate.
#3 is probably the most important. If you can make voters hate your opponent you can win.
And the last popular liberal president was a black guy which was a bigger deal
bruh
she won the primary, a woman beat your macho manly man fair and square, get over it
The democrats have shifted further to the right
They literally had a sabotage Bernie Sanders so he couldn't win knowing he was on a trajectory to beat Clinton. And had a better chance of beating trump
The left is different and it's actually informed n hold the party accountable n has different beliefs
And they're compromised by the fascists
https://readsludge.com/2025/02/24/dccc-scores-massive-palantir-and-spacex-lobbyist-cash-haul/
Elected progressives making coalition with *fiscal conservatives* is exactly why the coalition fails. That’s why it fails.
The electorate is only at fault for voting for these Dems who keep making a failing coalition.
Part of this is trying to reinvent the wheel every generation because it's hard when you have no money and your leaders are in jail or dead
If you say you have an open mind and you got hundreds? A couple thousand? Responses, you learned something, right?
A bit more seriously, one answer is that US has always had a conservative/revanchist block, and it's really hard to mobilize and sustain a diverse progressive counterweight given racial/ economic cleavages and sheer physical distance in a continental empire
Who pays @brooklynmarie.bsky.social $400k/year to run a podcast talking about democracy and the Tanton network?
Progressives have several billionaires doing everything possible to keep us split
We need to learn that goals often require sacrifice.
I do think it is more of an "American Leftist" problem, in a way +
There, they have had liberals and leftists joining forces to elect "barely a progressive" if that meant defeating conservatives such as Bolsonaro and the Tories.
I think it's more an issue of the 2party system taking leftists as hostages, causing this response.
*though that's what we need now
Also - too many far lefties just interested in advocating for Group X, instead of just being in favor of making
Love your neighbor. Who's your neighbor? Everyone.
Yes, everyone matters, but there are vulnerable populations being targeted.
there has been legislation pushed through bipartisan means over decades and centuries that disproportionately impact marginalized communities.
The fact that we allow “fiscally conservative Democrats” to even be in our coalition is the problem, and then we actually put them in leadership.
There’s no other problem but this one thing.
- most people resist change, even if they end up liking the result
- lefty messaging often gets lost in the weeds
- hostile ruling class and media
- generations of culture and propaganda to work against
- suburbia bad for meetups
I think the answer is somewhere in how extremism and hate brings them together somehow?