When are the Dem elites going to figure it out?

 Special election primary in New Jersey.

Learning all the wrong lessons

 

Bingo

 

I keep trying to tell them

 

Why does the punditry keep saying Dems need to move to the "center" (further right) in order to win more often?  Are they hoping if they say it enough it will be true?  It hasn't been true in decades - if it ever was.

For future reference

I once read a paper showing that Republican elites were consciously destroying the environment in order to line their pockets because they believe that it's too late to save the earth, so they'll get what they can until it's over.  I have not been able to find that article, even though I think I posted a link to it some years ago.

So, with that in mind, I'm going to post this in hopes I can find it when I need it.  I've long said that the idea that the Democrats lose because they don't go far enough to the right, or they cater to the progressive wing of the party, is bunk.  They haven't yet tried to go further left, which is where, I believe, their success lies.  

Here's a study implying that...

 The trick will be if I can find it.

What will it take to give Dem pols courage?

 

Democrats need to get it out of their heads that they must move toward the center or the right in order to win elections.  

Let my children go

I get frustrated, as I think most progressives do, with the timidity of our politician and leaders. The timidity is often defended as “realism.” The “public” isn't ready for that yet. And while that is probably true for my demographic and Fox viewers of every age, it is not true for the rest of the population. If you are reading this, you already know that Data for Progress has the receipts. Americans are overwhelmingly progressive on nearly every important issue.

And yet, “progressive” politicians are constantly making speeches and commercials reassuring the Baby Boomers that we aren't going to change things too fast.

[...]

We appease the political sensitivities [of] a generation – mine, the boomers – as if it were their future we were talking about. It is not. It is the future for the overwhelmingly progressive generations coming behind us whom we have stymied in every election, in every airing of political priorities and, of every debate about “what’s good” for America.

[...]

There have been encouraging developments in Minnesota: Progressives voting for progressive politicians and those politicians voting for progressive policy priorities! What a concept!

The highlights:

• The Minnesota legislature passed a budget that invests in education, healthcare, and infrastructure.
• The legislature also passed bills that protect the environment and promote clean energy.
• In addition, the legislature passed bills that make it easier for people to vote and to register to vote.
• Investing $1.5 billion in early childhood education.
  [...]
• Increasing funding for public schools by $1 billion.
• Expanding access to healthcare by expanding Medicaid and creating a public option for health insurance.
• Investing $1 billion in clean energy and energy efficiency.
• Making it easier for people to vote by expanding early voting and same-day registration.

[...]

In a country where progressives had the US House, Senate, and White House for two years, we achieved precious little to suggest that progressives ruled the country. Minnesota has shown us how it’s done.

[...]

And yet, we tiptoe around these issues like the kids at Thanksgiving not wanting to upset the grandparents by telling them that they’re atheists!

Why be so tentative about universal Health Care? Why be so tentative about aggressive green energy and climate change goals? These are things that need to happen and will happen and the sooner we do it, the happier we will ALL be, and the better a country and world we will leave to our kids!

   cmhmd @ Daily Kos

Let yourself be encouraged where you can

Early primaries could give you hope.

State Sen. Doug Mastriano appears to have blown up GOP plans in Pennsylvania.

A far-right election denier and a leading force in the effort to overturn the 2020 election results, Mastriano is viewed by many Republican operatives as a liability in a critical swing state, likely headed for a thrashing in the suburbs in November. Some state Republicans are considering publicly supporting the Democratic nominee, Josh Shapiro, while the Republican Governors Association may not even put money into the race.

[...]

Everything about Pennsylvania’s swing state electorate suggests Mastriano is a dead man walking.

[...]

The most surprising thing about Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s demise on Tuesday was not that he lost, but that he admitted it.

  Politico

Trump is reportedly telling his preferred candidate, Mehmet Oz, to just claim victory. Which is what Trump did in 2020.

In North Carolina, Trump’s support pulled Bo Hines, a 26-year-old who came out of nowhere, to a House primary victory. The endorsement was a show of Trump’s force, but some Republicans view Hines as a vulnerable general election candidate, and the endorsement infuriated some local Republicans who have toiled in the party vineyards for years.

[...]

But that isn’t as important for Trump, politically, as burnishing his win-loss record and nurturing adherents to his own cause. Ultimately, the outcome in November doesn’t matter.

[...]

In Idaho, where Trump’s endorsed candidate in the gubernatorial race, Janice McGeachin, lost badly on Tuesday, Trump’s needless intervention did nothing other than fuel an intraparty civil war. Same story in Georgia, which holds its primary next week.

[...]

For Trump, the win-loss record in the primaries has become something close to an obsession. But it is designed to be a game that Trump cannot lose. As one Trump adviser said, even a primary loss is not a “loss-loss.” That’s because he’ll get another crack at it in November. He can always endorse a nominee then.

  Politico

He's been bragging about his win record in Ohio where all of his endorsed candidates won. But that was Ohio. And for most of those 22 races, he endorsed whoever was running ahead in polls or had no challengers just before the voting started. Obviously, so he could brag about his endorsement record.

[T]he Trump-backed effort to unseat incumbent Gov. Brad Little was a fairly good test of Trump-ism, its flop a demonstration of Trump’s limits. Trump’s vehicle in Idaho, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, was far from a perfect candidate. But she had some credibility by virtue of her office. And she knew how to make a splash, using her power to issue executive orders, including banning mask mandates, when Little traveled out of state.

It wasn’t enough. In a state where Trump beat Biden by 30 percentage points and carried all but three counties in 2020, Little was crushing McGeachin when the race was called.

And it’s just a warmup. Next week, in a much higher-profile contest in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp is widely expected to finish first in the primary, ahead of Trump-backed Sen. David Perdue.

[...]

Trump’s endorsement is still the most coveted currency in Republican primary politics. His preferred candidate in an open gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, Mastriano, won. But sitting governors have brands of their own and a familiarity with voters that may matter more than outside intervention — even from the former president. In a party dominated by Trump, it’s an office even Trump is having difficulty figuring out how to crack.

It could be that Trump endorsements for congressional seats works because people aren't as familiar with congressional aspirants as they are with their governors.

As for the Democrats, progressives raked in the wins in recent primaries.

John Fetterman was expected to win the Democratic Senate primary in Pennsylvania for so long that it could be easy to overlook how big a win it was for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

And the evening got better after that.

In Oregon, first-time candidate Carrick Flynn, who had the support of the leadership-aligned House Majority PAC, conceded to Andrea Salinas, a progressive state lawmaker endorsed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), in the open 6th Congressional District. In the state’s 5th District, moderate incumbent Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) was trailing progressive Jamie McLeod-Skinner by a wide margin with 46 percent of the expected vote in.

[...]

In North Carolina, two progressives, Nida Allam and Erica Smith, went down in open seat House primaries. But even with those losses — and even if the results in Oregon and Pennsylvania turn — it will go down as a good night for the left.

[...]

Next week comes another big test for the left — and one where internal polling suggests progressives are in a strong position. That’s in Texas, where supporters of Jessica Cisneros are rallying around the revelation of a Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, in an effort to unseat Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), an anti-abortion Democrat.

This kind of thing makes you wonder about Democratic leaders and pundits claiming that progressives are bringing down the party, and that's why Joe Biden is losing support. I keep wondering if they haven't got it backwards: maybe Democrats are souring on Joe because he's not progressive enough.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Dem establishment behaving like Republicans -- in Nevada this time

On March 6, a coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America took over the leadership of the Nevada Democratic Party, sweeping all five party leadership positions in a contested election that evening. [Judith] Whitmer, who had been chair of the Clark County Democratic Party, was elected chair.

The establishment had prepared for the loss, having recently moved $450,000 out of the party’s coffers and into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s account. The DSCC will put the money toward the 2022 reelection bid of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a vulnerable first-term Democrat.

[...]

[After the results were in, Whitmer] got an email from the party’s executive director, Alana Mounce. The message from Mounce began with a note of congratulations, before getting to her main point.

She was quitting. So was every other employee. And so were all the consultants. And the staff would be taking severance checks with them.

[...]

The mass exodus of party staff, despite the rhetoric around unity, wasn’t a shock, Whitmer told The Intercept. “We weren’t really surprised, in that we were prepared for it,” she said. “But what hit us by surprise and was sort of shocking is that for a slate that claimed that they were all about unity, and kept this false narrative of division going on throughout the entire campaign — in fact they kept intensifying that — that’s what was surprising about it, was the willingness to just walk away, instead of working with us.”

[...]

The [2016 Bernie] Sanders campaign focused on organizing tens of thousands of young Latino voters in the state, with the goal of activating people whom the party hadn’t bothered with before. And it worked: In the 2020 cycle, after investing heavily in Nevada, Sanders won a commanding victory in the Nevada caucuses.

[...]

Progressive groups like the Clark County Left Caucus, of which Whitmer was chair, and local DSA chapters had been organizing for Sanders across Nevada since 2016. They used their momentum, and the state-level delegates they picked up during the caucuses, to continue activating progressive pockets in the state with a focus on local office. Progressives led by the Left Caucus won a majority on the state Democratic board this summer, a sign that their momentum was growing even without a candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket to get behind.

[...]

During the presidential race, the conflict between the Sanders element and the Reid machine had been kept below a boil partly as a result of the personal relationships at play. Sanders’s 2020 brain trust was significantly made up of former aides to Reid who remain on good terms with the former majority leader.

[...]

But when the Sanders campaign ended, the establishment was ready to maneuver against [the progressive Democratic Socialists].

[...]

After years of Republican control, Democrats now hold the governor’s mansion, the state Senate, and the state House, as well as both U.S. Senate seats. [...] Instead of finding a way to work with the newcomers, the Reid machine is setting up an independent shop. Reid declined to comment.

  The Intercept

And they'll lose those two seats in 2022 if they do.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Centrist Democrats wasting no time

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.