I read about half of that. Up until the Obama point. I just don't care anymore, dude. You're replying to facts with your opinion. Al Gore was considered a political centrist. I don't care if you don't like the article, or you couldn't get past the pay wall, or you think being environmental made him far-left, it doesn't change reality. I don't care if you've already explained that, "When in office, [Obama] acted left. He ran center relying on hope and yes we can." It's just not true; his platform and his campaign promises were much more progressive than his administration. It's not debatable. You're just wrong.

I don't really care if you read the sources or not. The facts don't change just because you choose to remain ignorant of them, and I'm not reading 18 paragraphs of your unsubstantiated opinions just so you'll click a link. Learn to admit when you're wrong or don't. I can't make this my problem anymore.

Yeah, that's why I did that.

Fair enough, you are correct. Still bullshit to think that all of those voter would automatically go to clinton, but I will delete the bad information.

Your ignorance is stunning. Your entire knowledge of Al Gore is that he was pro-environment, and, "environment = left-wing," but you have no understanding of his role within the Clinton administration, like promoting NAFTA or Welfare reform. I don't even know why this is a debate, as you're just factually wrong; here's the NY Times calling him fiscally conservative in 2000. Here's the LA times reflecting on his centrist platform in 2004. The idea that he ran as a progressive is nonsense.

I have no idea what your point is about the Obama administration. You seem to be saying, yes, all of his policies were progressive, but they don't count because Bush was unpopular. Not sure what the logic is there, but at least you're tacitly admitting you were wrong when you claimed he his campaign was vague, so that's something.

You also seem to think that bringing up people's past policy positions is some kind of dirty trick I'm playing (which would explain why you have such a poor understanding of history), but for the record, yes, Hillary Clinton's 25 year record as a centrist was relevant to her 2016 campaign. I don't know what to tell you, if you have a decades long record as a centrist, then run as a centrist with a centrist running mate, people will think you're a centrist (true of Gore and HRC).

I went back and read the bits I skimmed, and yeah, I was right, you just repeated yourself. Maybe edit yourself a bit, especially when you don't know what you're talking about. But, for the record, your premise is obviously faulty; if you vote for them when they move to the center, the takeaway isn't going to be that it's safe to go to the left, it will be that it's safe to go to the center. But either way, it doesn't matter, because the geriatrics that run the party are so haunted by Regan's legacy that they will never go left, no matter how often they lose trying to gain the center.

Anyway, still very telling that you won't address the fact that Ross Perot played a huge part in the 1992 election, but I'm sure you'd have to Google, "Who is Ross Perot?" first. But thanks for, "today's explanation," really funny stuff!

Bill Clinton: After successive Dem losses Bill figured out "it's the economy stupid", aka center policy, not leftist policy.

Perfect example of being willfully obtuse; 19% of the popular vote went to a third-party millionaire that year, but you're pretending it didn't happen.

Gore: You think Gore was centrist? Lol that's a first for me

I'm sure it is new to you, but yes, he was considered a centrist since his 1988 run. He picked Joe Lieberman as his running mate, did you think that was progressive?

He ran on broad "hope" and "yes we can" and having energy, hoping the ambiguity would be enough considering Bush's disastrous wars.

First off, "Yes we can," was his campaign slogan, but, "Hope," came from artist Shepard Fairey. Second, he actually had very detailed progressive policy proposals and campaign promises, including Universal Healthcare, homeowner bailouts, Wallstreet regulation, codifying Roe, and abolishing warrentless wire taps, and that's just off the top of my head. If you thought his platform was vague, you weren't paying attention.

So what did Hillary learn from the last 6 years of Obama? She learned that the left never shows up.

And then she traveled to 1965 to tell herself to become a college Republican? And then 1992 to tell herself to support her husband's gutting of Welfare? And then to 1996 to call black children, "Super Predators?" She didn't learn anything from Obama. She was always a centrist, and you're just making stuff up to try to craft a narrative.

Biden learned from Hillary that you don't stick your head out left on anything. Not one thing. And he was running against an incumbent, so once again when you do that you run center. And he won.

Biden has been in politics 20 years longer than Clinton, I don't think he was looking for notes from her. And, again, despite being pretty centrist (hawkish, tough on crime, strong labor support, mixed record in segregation because he's 400 years old), he did stick his neck out for the left. The BBB was a huge progressive wishlist, and he's still trying to get some student debt relief.

And what were the results? Lost the House of Representatives for years 3 and 4.

President's usually take a loss in their first midterm after the, "honeymoon," wears off, and in 2022, polling was predicting a huge, "Red Wave," that never happened. The Democrats narrowly lost the House, but the results were generally considered a disappointment for the Republicans.

Anyway, I skimmed the rest of this, and it's not worth going over. It basically seemed like a retread of everything you've already said, and that's mostly ahistorical nonsense tied together into a loose narrative with the confidence and understanding of a freshman that just finished POLI SCI 101. Instead, I'll just leave you with this study from the Pew Research Center that indicates people on either ends of the political spectrum are more likely to vote and donate to campaigns than people moderate views. So, looks like it's the center, not the left, that doesn't show up. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Going to the center is why they are losing. Jimmy Carter was a centrist who tried to distance the party from the New Deal. He was wildly unpopular, which is why Ted Kennedy primaried him from the left. Kennedy lost the primary but Carter lost the presidency. Mondale and Dukakis were both moving to the center as well, and they both failed to beat Regan and Bush, respectively.

Clinton was the only centrist to win, and that probably had more to do with the fact that Ross Perot took a huge portion of the electorate (19%) than anything else. Gore and Kerry were another set of centrist losers, followed by Obama, who was a centrist President but a progressive candidate who won the primary by going to Hillary's left. Hillary was a historic loss, and while Biden is a considered a centrist, he's also very pro-labor, and ran a progressive platform against an incredibly unpopular president.

You're absolutely right about what's happening; the Democrats are going to the center to find voters. But when they go further from the left, it costs them voters, so they go even further towards the right to try to get new votes, which costs them more voters, over and over again in a feedback loop that, frankly, you could only get stuck in by either being completely incompetent or deliberately obtuse. You need to start blaming the party for losing voters, not the voters for being abandoned by the party.

Every headline about this man is either, "Trump unveils proposal for concentration camps," or, "Trump claims he invented waffles, poops pants at PA rally." There's no in between.

Slightly further away in the sequel trilogies, but slightly closer because it was a prequel.

In the lead up to the release of Episode 1, the Sci-Fi channel ran some bumpers of fans waiting in line arguing with each other. One of them said something to the effect of, "Given that this is a prequel, and that we know the universe is expanding, shouldn't the crawler read, 'A slightly less long time ago in a Galaxy slight less far away...'" 25 years later and that still pops into my head sometimes.

Well, first, let's look at the last 6 elections. In 2000, Al Gore ran a centrist campaign and lost. 2004, John Kerry ran a centrist campaign and lost. 2008, Barack Obama ran a very progressive campaign, promising universal healthcare, Wall Street reform, homeowner bailouts, closing Guantanamo...he wound up governing from the center, but he ran far to the left (by American standards). Even in 2012, the center of his reelection campaign was dealing with wealth inequality, and he won despite being called a communist. In 2016...well, we all know what happened there...and 2020, Biden, ran on a very progressive platform and strong support for labor (and he was actually surprisingly committed to it, especially student loan forgiveness).

But election results have many factors and are open to interpretation, so let's look at some data, specifically from 2016. Clinton and the Democrats' strategy was to go to the center to pick up moderate Republicans, but the data shows they failed spectacularly. Clinton picked up about 4% of voters who identified as Republican by going to the center, while Trump picked up 5% of Democrats by going far-right. Clinton got 42% of Independents, Trump got 43%. Even in the target demographic, people with mixed political views (AKA moderates), she got 42% to Trump's 48%. And even if she'd won the center, it's not clear that it would have helped much, as there's relatively new data that shows that moderates are less likely to get involved in politics, including voting. In short, 2016 is a case study in why centrism is a losing strategy.

It's also worth noting that, overall, Americans are not centrist. Sure, if you ask them if they like socialism, the results are pretty devisive, but if you ask them about progressive policies, they're all for them: raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations, single-payer healthcare, and even Universal Basic Income enjoy widespread support across the country. Shrinking away from these policies in favor of more moderate positions simply doesn't make sense.

I broke this down in another comment, but there's really no evidence that this moderate strategy will work. Democrats win when their base turns out, and they lose when their base isn't motivated. Watching Harris campaign with Liz Cheney doesn't motivate the base. They may pick up some moderate voters in PA (though, again, it didn't work in 2016, so there's no reason to think it will work now), but it's not going to matter if she loses Michigan because of a hard-right position on Israel.

There's also the fact that this, "centrist liberal," strategy worked exactly once in 1992 (and that may have had more to do with Ross Perot than anything else), but now there's an entire pundit and strategist class built around it. Most of these people don't mind losing elections if it means they can keep their jobs.

Those are the vibes that I've been getting in the last month and it's scaring the shit out of me.

Thank you, this is a spectacular example of how Democrats use faulty logic and bad faith arguments to defeat themselves. I'm going to break it down for everybody so we can all understand why they keep losing.

The Harris campaign must pursue those voters in order to win. They are the voters who live in battleground states.

This is confidently stated as fact, but not only is there no evidence to support this statement, there's strong evidence against it. This is, at its core, the same statement that Chuck Schumer made when predicting a Democratic sweep in 2016:

"For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia. And you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin."

Not only did this strategy fail spectacularly in 2016, we're watching it fail in 2024; Harris has recently dropped in all crucial swing states. The only thing backing up this argument is its proponents' self-confidence (or self-delusion).

Moving on:

Pursuing a hard-left strategy the way everyone on lemmy wants is a guaranteed loss.

Here, we leave behind false assertions and move into bad-faith arguments. Notice how the user completely ignored the voters I mentioned (her base) in order to pivot to what they think is an easier target: Lemmy users. Sure, if Kamala Harris came out in support of the abolition of capitalism, she'd lose, but no (or at least no one serious) is saying she'd win if she did.

What people are actually saying is much more tangible and and reasonable: sharpen your criticism of Israel and increase your Palestinian outreach if you want to win Michigan; don't just talk about the middle-class, get your working-class base out with transformative social programs (like Biden proposed in 2020; stop hanging out with Liz Fucking Cheney, for Christ sake. These are all criticisms the user sidestepped by creating a false dichotomy between the, "hard-left," and Harris' current strategy.

Finally:

This is the problem with the non-proportional EC makeup. Unfortunately it’s not going to change any time soon because the party who wins got there on the old system.

This is unrelated, but incorrect. The Democrats have won the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 elections; they would abolish the Electoral College in a heartbeat, but it would require a constitutional amendment, which they'll never get passed. It has nothing to do with the fact that, "the party who wins got there on the old system."

Anyway, this is how the Democrats continuously fail. First, they convinced themselves that the only way to win is to get centrist voters, even though evidence doesn't bear that out. Next, they dismiss criticism of this strategy as, "far-left." Finally, if they lose (which is looking alarming possible this election), they will blame leftists for not supporting them strongly enough, thus allowing them to continue the same strategy next election without self-reflection...assuming there is a next election, which no longer feels like a given.

Dathon has a look on his face that says, "The makeup team says I can't eat anything because it'll ruin my prosthetics, but fine, I guess you'll just have your lunch right in front of me."