| Jaicee said: Very thoughtful and smart analysis! I do have one disagreement though: Regarding your first paragraph, I don't know that a Biden victory in the nominating contest depends on division among progressives. I mean look at how 2016 turned out. Progressives were united around a single candidate in Bernie Sanders and he still couldn't come within 14 percentage points of the party leadership's preference in the overall popular vote (which was 57% for Clinton, 43% for Sanders overall nationwide). It wasn't just about superdelegates. Progressives have a very basic-level problem. We appear to be just simply outnumbered overall. I mean I'm a left wing Texan. I'm used to being outnumbered politically. I can recognize what that looks like. I would also agree with you though that the overall balance of opinion in and around the Democratic Party may be headed in more of a left-leaning direction over time. Compared to the party's platform in 2012, the platform in 2016 had definitely made a qualitative shift leftward, and that may happen again in 2020. But we're not seeing those shifts matched in terms of which faction actually emerges victorious on a bigger scale than individual districts as yet. Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight group did an analysis of the primary contests since 2016 to date and found that party leadership-backed candidates defeated any progressive opponents they faced 89% of the time. You can even see at the chart the difference in the likelihood of candidates endorsed by say Bernie Sanders' Our Revolution group and the Justice Democrats, or even the Working Families Party, on the one hand and those endorsed by Democratic Party committees on the other (and there's rarely any overlap) winning. Emily's List has a good win rate (72%), but they don't decide endorsements factionally; they endorse "pro-choice, Democratic women", period, so that doesn't really count in terms of a factional argument. Same goes with Indivisible; they've got a pretty good win rate in terms of endorsements (65%), but they're not really a factional group per se either. I mean my preference would be Kirsten Gillibrand, whom I feel has reformed well in recent years and embodies my own worldview and priorities somewhat more than the rest of the prospective competition, but I think we both know she hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell. I'm just curious as to whether any progressive candidate does, and I don't think so. |
For starters, that Clinton-Sanders percentage is a lie, and you ought to know that if you paid attention. Many of his biggest victories were in caucus states that didn't have primaries, thus aren't counted in the vote total. Then when you consider that the media painted Hillary as a progressive when she decidedly wasn't, certainly not in spirit, and with countless supposedly progressive voices like Warren not supporting Bernie or in some cases even supporting Hillary (usually these were older feminists, but also several unions), and the news blackout surrounding his campaign, keeping him unknown, and the fact that all of this was due to interference by the DNC, I'd say that even after factoring in caucuses into what their votes would be in primaries (impossible to know, but lets say we could) that you'd still be underestimating Bernie's vote. That primary was about as legitimate with the DNC favoring their candidate so heavily as the general was with Russia interfering on behalf of theirs.
That said, we may have been outnumbered, my point is just that a lot of people hadn't really thought about progressive ideas before, and with the DNC and the media working to suppress Bernie, we weren't able to have a proper debate. There's been a bit of an awakening in this country since, as more people have asked themselves, "really though, why are we the only major developed country without universal healthcare, especially since we're the richest nation in history?", and asked themselves the same thing about other progressive ideas like why other countries have free college and we don't, other countries have maternity leave and we don't, the list goes on and on. Pew research and Gallup both have several polls noting a steady march upward in identification as "liberal" because more and more people are realizing the possibilities, and that the right is intellectually dead with no ideas to offer to solve any of our problems. I've read the 538 article you referenced, and even he concedes that the party wins 89% of the time partially because they back the person who is already likely the strongest, and that several of their candidates have progressive endorsements as well. Establishment and progressive are not mutually exclusive. The whole point of a "political revolution" is to change the establishment into a progressive one. It looks like we're having success in that endeavor, and give us a decade, and I think the transformation will be complete. You also have to keep in mind that we're being more practical and strategic about this, running and winning with progressives everywhere we can, but accepting moderates where that's the only option left. The Republican Party is an antidemocratic institution and our democracy will not be safe until it dies. As such, a big tent is necessary if we want to have the democratic infrastructure in place to elect a progressive government in the future. Bernie understands this, why do you think he endorsed Hillary? He saw the possibilities long before his base did.
I really don't see a future where America is a democracy and the Republican party still exists. Most of them are complicit in obstructing justice, leaving our electoral infrastructure vulnerable to Russian attack because they know Russia will help them win again, and in general doing everything they can to rig the democratic process so that they can't lose, rather than winning in an actually democratic way. Things are going to go down one of two basic ways. First, if the Republicans win, they'll rig everything so they can never lose again, Putin style, and we'll have a dictatorship. If they don't win, but don't collapse, they'll eventually win again and you still have the first scenario. The other way things go down is the Republicans not only lose, but straight up collapse. The party becomes irrelevant electorally for a few cycles while non-extremists either go to the Democrats or wander the political wilderness for a while. Eventually it disappears entirely, while either a new party pops up to replace it made of moderate Dems join former Never Trumpers, or the Democratic party splits and the Never Trumpers join the moderate wing. There's no time to build 3rd parties, no time to restructure the two party system to be more than two parties, and virtually no chance of a Macron style popup party coming from nowhere to win. It's Dems or dictatorship now. That means that for now, and probably for the next decade or so while the demographics line up, a marriage of convenience with moderates is necessary, however gross that might feel.
That said, if you feel comfortable with Gillibrand, then Dem unity is going better than I thought. I don't trust her farther than I can throw her. Her reformation is fake. She's about as progressive as Hillary, and is just putting on an act because she thinks her best bet is to have a record that is more anti-Trump than anyone. Her anti-Trump fervor is sincere, but her voting is not. I'd vote her over Trump though. Based on polls, Bernie has the best chance vs Biden. No one else comes close in polls that I've seen, and both of them are also the most competitive vs Trump in general election matchups. I think Biden v Bernie is progressives best chance, he's the consensus progressive choice. Warren burnt a lot of people by not endorsing Bernie in '16, and Kamala Harris is viewed similarly to Gillibrand by some as a fake progressive, they'd not be the best to unite progressives against Biden. Bernie's biggest sin is being blamed for Hillary's loss because he dared criticize her in the primaries. That and his age, but that doesn't hurt him versus Biden or Trump. But regardless who the consensus choice is, it's not like there's a separate progressive primary to build that consensus, and as such, the vote will be split by people who will vote Booker or Gillibrand instead of voting strategically. If Biden wins, it's as much progressives fault for not uniting around one candidate as it is moderates fault for picking one ahead of time. Of course, there's the possibility that a slew of moderates run too and chip away Biden's support, but even if they do, Biden has establishment support to get the endorsements needed to concentrate the moderate vote. There's a lot of variables, but I still think that while the odds are in Biden's favor, nothing is set in stone yet. No matter how it goes down though, don't disengage out of frustration. Democracy depends on it.
