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sundin13 on 17 March 2020
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Eagle367 said:
sundin13 said:

Thats how government works, bro. This isn't a dictatorship. Especially when you don't have Congress, you need to negotiate to get people on board. Depending on where your policies lie, often that means pivoting towards the center. The exact same thing would happen under a Bernie presidency, assuming he actually got anything passed.

As for the rest, it is up to the voters and our representatives to hold him accountable. Again, if the progressive wing of the party is as active and as powerful as they are at their best, Biden and the party will be forced to the left. If the progressive wing of the party doesn't fucking show, then they aren't going to be around to have a voice at the table.

That's demonstrably not true. Republicans never move to the center. They just keep dragging the Dems to the right. That's why the population is much more to the left than both parties. Conservatives who aren't establishment are more left than they realise and so are the liberals and moderates. The simple reason why democrats move to the "center" which is actually the right is because the Democrats don't really care and are more right wing than they say. Also there is a difference between negociating and just completely conceding to whatever the other party wants.

I can guarantee you a Bernie Sanders admin won't be like that and "move to the center" aka move to the right. Obama didn't even try fighting for these things in any real way and Biden won't either. Pelosi didn't negotiate with trump and use the military budget to do anything good for example, she just approved it as is. Republicans never do that for left policies. It shows you the republicans are actually conservatives while democrats are much more right wing that they portray themselves as.

I would agree that the trend is less prominent in Republicans than Democrats, but to say that they never move toward the center I think is overstating things. One of the reasons why basically nothing actually made it through Congress is because Trump couldn't get all of his party on board for the far right things he was proposing. This government has just been so dysfunctional and unable to negotiate that they largely just gave up on many of the things that they couldn't figure out, or attempted other less cooperative methods (which are also generally less impactful and less able to stand the test of time).

That said, a good chunk of the reason why this trend is more prominent among Republicans than Democrats is because, again, Democrats have a tendency of eating their own. When Trump was elected, the party became the party of Trump. While our diversity is often our strength, it can also be a weakness because you have certain elements directly challenging the ideals of party unity.

Additionally, as previously said, if Bernie does not move towards the center, he would simply get nothing passed through congress. M4A simply isn't going to happen in its current form right now when the dems don't have Congress, and even if they did, many don't support such a radical (relatively) bill.