Nah not really. It's a bit mean spirited but they gave pretty valid reasons why they have these opinions.

A lot of "moderate" columnists in the New York Times panicking with the prospect the Democrats might nominate a progressive candidate instead of a centrist. They claim the Democrats could lose to Trump like McGovern etc. But as far as I can tell, Nixon had some 58 - 60% of approval, not some 40 - 42% like Trump, before the election, and the country is radically different nowadays. I don't think this logic holds when the voters are very polarized and tend to show up based on charisma and enthusiasm.

Look at the election of Trump himself as proof, or Reagan before him. Or the Dems fielding the most left-wing candidate anyone has ever fielded in Georgia (wanting to do away with Stone Mountain etc.) and coming up with 49% of the vote. That's like more than any other since the demise of the Dixiecrats decades ago. Besides, I don't think any of the top candidates, specially in the generals, won't come up with some compromise between progressive and centrist views (like Harris did saying private health insurance needs to be preserved in some form, and not abolished).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyEMMClRHmI

So Harris must have gotten a lot of angry calls from her establishment backers, because she's already walking back her position on Medicare For All. Now she's kind of flip-flopping as to her exact position. Everyone else understood the question and made quite clear in their answers that they understood it, but apparently Harris just misunderstood and actually is just saying that she would trade in her private plan for a public plan, and just uses the word "abolish" in casual conversation to refer to changes she makes to her personal life. Must be normal in her social circles to say you "abolished" your insurance plan when you get rid of it. I wonder if she "abolishes" other things, like if she gets a new car, does she "abolish" the old one? If she switches to a new phone company, does she "abolish" her old phone plan? Also, she must not have watched the first debate night, because they asked the same question then and Warren and de Blasio made it very clear what the question meant and what it meant to want to abolish private health insurance.

I'm really disappointed, because after her debate performance, I was starting to trust Harris, and her answer on getting rid of private health insurance was a big part of that. I was at least at the point where if she won the primary, I'd feel completely comfortable supporting her. Now I'm back to just Bernie and Warren for  candidates with an actual chance at winning the primary that I'd actually be passionate about supporting in the general.

The situation is different. As long as most people (at least most who participate in elections) feel as part of society and country, they are fine with moderates. People feel more or less OK with their situation and want leaders that finetune the system, not change it entirely. But if the situation changes and more and more people feel left behind, they elect differently. They might not elect at all, but if they do they are much more open to less moderate choices. So Andrew Yang is right on this: the effects of automation on the work situation has helped to elect Donald Trump. But that also means it could help to elect a Bernie Sanders.

The moderates don't actually fear that Democrats lose. They fear that the illusion that only "moderates" or "centrists" can be electable is shattered. As this means people will ask why should I compromise on the needs of this country, if it doesn't help to elect a democrat. The illusion starts to crack. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has beaten a moderate for instance.

Yeah, she seemed to have a focus on social justice progressivism rather than economic progressivism. I think a lot of people who began throwing their support her way didn't really interpret her response the way she does. It'll come down to her, Sanders, and Warren. I have the opinion that economic progressivism is way more popular than social justice issues in the US right now - despite guns still being an issue, and despite the border thing blowing up as an issue. We've been through a backlash phase against social justice issues, and that is mostly over now aside from some tired righties trying to hold onto the words "Libtard," "soyboy," and "SJW" as if being called a boy who eats beans and values human decency actually hurt their feelings =P. Libtard, half liberal and half retard is actually a much better insult but has fallen out of fashion in the past couple of years (like dickhead and gaylord).
On the other hand, the repeated failure of the far right to generate a backlash against economic progressivism has ignited the populace to heavily favour policies in environmentalism and US Medicare.

Warren or Sanders it is then.

I remember the same discussion happening in the EU elections thread. Are people really voting for pseudo-fascists because they feel left behind... or merely because they are prejudiced? See Die Linke versus the AFD in former Eastern Germany, for instance. Or blue collar workers shafting Corbyn in the UK to vote for Farage instead. Because, to them, the answer is as simple as a charismatic bigot with easy solutions, and will continue to be so.

I don't think there's any way around it except for more education and instilling what we call here "critical consciousness". There's no way to pander to these people because you can't turn back the clock to their racist beliefs, and also satisfy their outdated ideals of society and work (such as, no, coal and similar industries aren't coming back).

Education is always a good answer, as education gives real power into the hand of people. But as always, if you have rich parents, you have much better chances for good education. Tuition free college and student debt cancellation are steps in the right direction here.

But overall, and this is not only a problem in America, it is for most of the developed world: moderate politicians in all these countries have cozied up with big corporations and their interests. Thta may differ in the detail (which industry and how far the politicians are willing to go), but the general trend is there. As the world changes - and as Andrew Yang correctly diagnosed it is because of automation - more and more blue collar workers are left behind.

The right-wing tries to blame the immigrants, and it is the same around the world: Victor Orban in Hungary, Le Pen in France, the AfD in Germany, Trump in the US - they all blame the problems on the immigrants.

That's why I love Bill de Blasios comment in the first debate: "The immigrants didn't do that to you. The big corporations did that to you!"

It is not enough to say the right wing and their fear mongering about imigrants is wrong. You have to offer hope, a way forward, an option for change (see how that contains Obamas promises Hope and Change, which he didn't fulfill). But that means you have to kick the big corporations in the ass. Many centrists aren't willing to do that. So they cannot offer a way forward, they can only offer platitudes. Or war (you realize how many centrists talk in favor of military intervention as a "human" thing). So the alternative to Trump, Orban, Le Pen are politicians that are willing to take on big corporations. Like Bernie Sanders. But the centrists actually fear them, as they currently can present themself as the alternative to the right wing. If Lefties can be an established alternative, no one needs centrists anymore.

There is a joke I know: "A banker, a worker and an immigrant sit at a table with 10 cookies. The banker takes 9 cookies and says to the worker: The immigrant wants to steal your cookie!"

A lot of left wing parties in Europe and elsewhere make Bernie Sanders look like a corporate bureaucrat. None are gaining significantly in votes. The only one who came to power, in Greece, is fading fast and losing ground to the centrists. On the other hand, a lot of parties like the Greens in Germany, the LibDems in UK etc. are cosmopolitan parties who specifically apeal to immigrants and younger, highly educated voters and are often supplanting traditional alternatives to the left and even the more extreme parties I mentioned before.

If this argument against corporations etc. can't take off in Europe, there's zero chance it will in the US, where growth and wage growth are far higher than in Europe, with lower unemployment. I think you have severely overestimated the size of this "left behind" blue collar group and its electoral impact. In fact, poverty in Appalachia etc. is at an all-time low, nowhere close to the severe economic depression it suffered in the middle of the past century. It just so happens these people are in the same states where poorly educated Whites exist in large numbers.

Case in point, Maine and Iowa shifting strongly to Trump despite diversified economies in good condition. And Reagan, of all people being elected during the time information technologies were eliminating millions of clerical jobs in banking etc. And nowadays, according to polls, 68% of the American population disagreeing with the idea of breaking up large corporations and going against the free market.

https://nypost.com/2019/06/29/andrew-yang-scored-over-100k-new-twitter-followers-after-dem-debate/amp/
Following the debate Yang gained 100k followers, Harris 70k, and Castro 55k on twitter.

Since he's likely going to miss every debate and get forgotten now, I just wanted to plug Mike Gravel one last time. He was never going to win, but he deserved better. Here's a cool interview he did, where he talks about the establishment of a Legislature of the People, which is about what it sounds like, a legislative body that works as a more direct democracy than our representative democracy we currently live under. He also talks about being anti-war, pro Green New Deal, and says that one of his big issues is denuclearization. He notes that we're planning on spending $1.7 trillion(!) on renovating and expanding our nuclear arsenal, and that if past trends of double cost overruns with the military persist here, we could end up wasting $4 trillion on a weapon that would kill us all if we ever used it. The interview article calls him the Anti-Joe Biden. He's a really interesting candidate and it's a shame we won't hear more from him.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/06/mike-gravel-interview-2020-presidential-election