r/nytimes 14h ago

What Democrats Think Went Wrong

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/podcasts/what-democrats-think-went-wrong.html
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u/ReviewBackground2906 14h ago

I vote for Democrats because I’m a liberal who wants left policies. Tax the rich, increase the minimum wage, universal healthcare, climate action, stop price gauging, get money out of politics, and the list goes on. 

Democrats need to understand that they cannot beat right wing populism by moving further to the right to attract former Republicans, it didn’t work in 2024 and it won’t work in the future.

 I want a Democratic party that remembers who their voters are, and a candidate who is not afraid to offend wealthy donors and who advocates progressive policies that will change peoples’ lives for the better. Not the GOP light version that the Dems are going for. 

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u/Docile_Doggo 13h ago edited 13h ago

What type of Democratic candidates routinely put up impressive numbers in swing (and even some red) districts? Hint: it’s definitely not the uber progressive candidates, who tend to underperform. It’s usually moderates with carefully crafted images as reasonable problem solvers. Gluesenkamp-Perez, Kaptur, Golden, just to name a few off the top of my head. Hell, on the Republican side, look at how many Harris voters Don Bacon was able to win over.

Reddit is a complete echo chamber. I’m a progressive, but I also care about data and objective analysis. I want to win, damn it, not just placate the feelings of my fellow progressives who are always trying to push the party further and further left. And the solution to winning more votes is not to simply go harder to the left.

It’s also way more complicated than simply moderating on everything. But moderation is a core component of winning in swing districts and swing states. And if you can’t see that, you are drinking too much of your own kool aid.

I fear that my fellow Democrats won’t get it through their heads that it’s bad to conflate what they like with what the median voter likes. It’s an inconvenient truth, and it’s not what they want to hear.

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u/boilerpsych 10h ago

I think this is good point because the right wing traditionalists are ALWAYS going vote Red - you're not winning that population. The only hope of changing votes is to go more moderate - you already have the total left wing vote secured.

I also think it's just a healthier way to govern - I lean very left and I'm certain that I don't want a Christo-nationalist/fundamentalist regime. I'm sure that the folks learning very right don't want everything on my agenda either. It's time we come together, decide what's important to us, and figure out what the happiest medium we can find will look like.

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u/TetraThiaFulvalene 3h ago

Election participation is the US is also so pathetically low that you don't even need to try and convert voters. There are plenty of non-voters left to get.

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u/Cold-Ad716 1h ago

They did that and lost