Opinion
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The progressive dream is dead

Rick Newman · Senior Columnist
Fri, November 8, 2024 at 9:37 AM EST 6 min read

Bernie Sanders didn't run for president in 2024. But he was a specter haunting the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris and probably contributed to her drubbing by Donald Trump.

Democrats are in shock and disarray as they try to figure out how their candidate lost to a convicted felon with a long history of demeaning women, minorities, Muslims, and other important voting blocs. It shouldn't be that surprising. For the last decade, Democrats have been trying to span a chunk of the electorate that ranges from the super liberal to center-right. The rubber band isn't that flexible.

Democrats who court America's most liberal voters - typically dubbed "progressives" - alienate the moderates and mild conservatives they need to win national elections. There's no single explanation for Harris's loss, which came after President Joe Biden displayed his infirmity to a primetime TV audience in the June debate and withdrew, forcing Harris to run a truncated campaign. But Harris's baggage as a Bernie Sanders acolyte touting monstrous amounts of government overreach surely helped turn off centrist voters she desperately needed and failed to capture.

Harris's 2019 presidential campaign was a huge factor in her 2024 sequel. In 2019, she backed trendy progressive ideas, including the Green New Deal (GND) and Medicare for All (MFA). The GND was a sweeping effort to remake the energy and transportation industries to address global warming, enact social justice, provide universal healthcare, and subsidize millions of jobs. MFA was a government health plan that would cover everybody and eliminate employer-sponsored plans many people were happy with. Both were laughably impractical because they would cost umpteen trillion dollars and massively disrupt major chunks of the economy.

Backers of both plans characterized them as vision statements rather than serious legislative efforts. Fine. But the vision was dreadful. It was a utopian fantasy in which the government steps in to correct wealth and income inequality while solving global warming and the healthcare affordability problem along the way. Valid causes. Terrible approach. Americans vastly distrust government and think the only thing worse than a capitalist oligarchy is more federal bureaucrats fanning out to solve problems.

Those progressive ideas caught on because Sanders tapped a nerve. His 2016 presidential bid was surprisingly successful. Sanders, who identifies as a socialist but ran as a Democrat, seemed like a fringe candidate when he launched his 2016 campaign, but he drew large crowds, received millions in small donations, and won 40% of the delegates in the Democratic primaries. Hillary Clinton won the nomination, but Sanders revealed that there's a solid group of voters open to massive wealth redistribution and an even beefier government hand in the economy.

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Dora Hates You

Um, Progressives out performed in the previous three elections. This was about the economy and not some movement.

Democrats will retake congress in two years.

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I was right.

Yeah this is another cheerleader for pulling the Dems further right. Problem with trying to pander that far right is that the right wing voter will vote for for actual right wing candidate and in the end you'll just lose the left leaning voter.

Dems could recover by remaking the party as a popular working and middle class party like they once ostensibly were. Give up the pop stars and Hollywood bullshit and start talking about how young workers are being forced into being permanent renters, a dozen damn eggs cost $8, but the CEO just bought their 10th corporate jet.

You can buy 10 different versions of the same gray SUV, but it will cost more than your parents paid for a house. Capitalism has run out of resources and it's feeding on itself.

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Nothing screams cuck like flying a flag with another man's name on it.

Wish that was true. But, as evidenced by the prog stupidity on this forum, progs are too dumb to retreat from their insanity.

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I :heart; Q

As the squad recedes into insignificance!!

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Romans 8;18-32 John 3;16-18; Ecl. 10-2

We have entered the era of revolutionary defeatism.

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Nothing screams cuck like flying a flag with another man's name on it.

Edited: 11/08/2024 at 09:44 AM by RustyTruck

I think the left is through being polite at this point.

The progressive dream is just going to have to stoop to their level.

No more pulling punches



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The Incredible Disappearing Fraud!


Edited: 11/08/2024 at 05:37 PM by fishkller

Even winter ain't quite what it seams. All the shit the MAGAts have dropped everywhere certainly is real and must be acknowledged. But it's a chapter of our nation's story, not the ending and all that shit will be the fertilizer that makes the next chapter green and strong.

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"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.