If Liberals are so smart why do they lose so goddam always?

[Berkut]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-HOIKCqNjw

This is an attempt to focus the discussion from the Biden thread more closely on the strategy and tactics of left wing politics.

Someone sent me this blog post, and I think it sums up a lot of what is being talked about at least around the internal battle within the left:

For Democrats, It's the Worst of Both Worlds

I think this is a good piece, and worthy reading for Languishites involved in the debates we've had around progressive strategy. I fall pretty solidily (although not entirely) in the "Centrist" wing.

Some good pieces (but really, read the entire bit, it's not that long):

If you're going to have your far left element play such a role in the public face of your party, you want to at least try to implement their radical agenda; if you're going to have the party be dominated by your ass-checking, risk-averse moderates, you'd want them to ruthlessly control the party's image for maximum electoral gain in a polarized country. But we get the worst parts of both, a party where the leftists are constantly publishing in The New York Times while the centrists get to make all the backroom deals

It's also true, though, that the left of the party has created a mental universe in which the very idea of limits and the need to moderate have been waved away. I come from a tradition with radical demands but which also recognizes that we can't actually get most of those demands yet, that we need to do a lot of organizing and persuading to get there. But so many leftist Democrats now insist that

• Their agenda is already popular with Americans
• You only need to juice turnout, not to change minds, evidence be damned
• If the Democrats only embrace a left-wing agenda, they'll sweep to power

For example. I'm a "let them all in" guy when it comes to immigration. Those are my values, and I do think that someday we'll have a vastly more open and humane immigration system. But someday is not today. Liberal views on immigration [color=var(--print_on_web_bg_color, #1a1a1a)]are deeply unpopular[/color] in this country right now. If Democrats run hard on mass immigration increases, they will lose more elections and the Republicans will be empowered to make the immigration situation even worse. I don't have any sort of simplistic schema for when you have to compromise and when you have to fight; it's complicated. But so many further-left Democrats I encounter presume that there's never any time when compromise is necessary and who view strategic calls for moderation as inherently bad faith, as the province of the wicked. It's a terribly unhelpful way to do electoral politics in our stupid system.

(Bold is mine)

[Razgovory]

Who said we were smart?

[The Brain]

Are they always losing?

[viper37]

They lose because religion is still a big issue in the US and lots of people who hate what the Republicans have become will vote for them anyway because this is what their Faith dictates.  Doesn't matter if they had good ideas, from their point of view, they will vote for the most religious party.  They may not be a majority, but just like the conspiracy theorists, they are in sufficient numbers to push the vote to the right side.

[ulmont]

Some good pieces (but really, read the entire bit, it's not that long):

You only need to juice turnout, not to change minds, evidence be damned[/font][/size][/color]
[/list]

The evidence* presented isn't convincing.  I will agree that past a certain point tools to juice turnout may also have the effect of increasing negative turnout (i.e., turnout of the other party).

However, when you consider that most "independent" voters are "voters of party X who refuse to tell a pollster that" - https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/independent-voters-partisans-in-the-closet-101931/ - it seems clear that juicing turnout is a viable strategy.

Further, the story of the "evidence" when you click through boils down to the assertion that "The only reason we won is that there were these very large swings toward us among college-educated white people in the Atlanta suburbs."

...note that it doesn't say there whether people switched their votes, or some people who voted in 2016 stayed home in 2020 while other people who didn't vote in 2016 voted in 2020.  Without separating those 2 cases, you can't assert that people actually changed their minds.

*Most political science evidence is trash.  The sample sizes are too small considering generational turnover, etc. etc.

[Barrister]

Variations of this topic come up on Bulwark Podcast all the time.  Remember these are almost all ex-GOPers (exception - they recruited Will Saletan formerly of Slate as an unapologetic liberal, but one who no longer felt comfortable at Slate).

The basic line is "Why are Democrats so bad at politics"?

[alfred russel]

Berkut, you need to look in the mirror.

When Biden took office, republicans were scandalized by Jan. 6 (plus the general aftermath of the trump administration) and some polls showed support for convicting trump. Today polling shows Trump would crush Biden in a new election, and the democrats seem poised for a historically bad midterm. This reversal has been in just 15 months and without any significant scandal. I can't imagine any conclusion except that the democratic gerontocracy badly misplayed their hand from the very beginning.

When i arguing they were making a tactical mistake at the beginning of February by leading with the trump impeachment before getting covid relief passed or key cabinet members in place, you so vociferously argued against me you mentioned i had a brown shirt. This refusal to accept any challenge to democratic leadership is a plague upon the party, and a big part how we ended up with this gerontocracy to begin with.

[Berkut]

My objections had nothing to do with my love for the Dem leadership, or my belief that if only they impeached Trump, then surely it would all be wonderful for Dems for all time.

I am very confident that if the Dems had gone with your plan of ignoring a insurrection in favor of letting Mitch McConnel tell them how they should start off their control of the Senate, we would not now somehow be better off.

But this argument is not going to be very interesting if it is just your personal pissing contest, AGAIN, so I will pass on engaging in it.

[alfred russel]

My objections had nothing to do with my love for the Dem leadership, or my belief that if only they impeached Trump, then surely it would all be wonderful for Dems for all time.

I am very confident that if the Dems had gone with your plan of ignoring a insurrection in favor of letting Mitch McConnel tell them how they should start off their control of the Senate, we would not now somehow be better off.

But this argument is not going to be very interesting if it is just your personal pissing contest, AGAIN, so I will pass on engaging in it.

And this is precisely what I meant--you lie and distort to defend a leadership that doesn't deserve your support. My suggestion was never that they ignore the insurrection, or that they let Mitch McConnell tell them how to run the senate. My suggestion was that they hold the trial after getting key cabinet members in place and make sure it wouldn't interfere with covid relief. That would avoid pressure of accelerating the trial unnecessarily to get to other senate business, avoid the optics of the top priority being prosecuting trump, and losing some of the honeymoon period that is advantageous to getting legislation passed.

That was not McConnell's plan. McConnell's idea was the entire trial was unconstitutional.

I dared to question the wisdom of leadership on the timing of senate business on tactical grounds and you make fascist allusions and make up that i'm copying the ideas of McConnell. And then after throwing fascist stuff my way, accuse me of a personal pissing contest that you aren't engaged in.

[Berkut]

[Josephus]

Liberals may be smart, but voters are stupid.

[Josquius]

You need a centrist face on progressive policies.

Research tends to show time and again if seperated from a context of being attached to a side, left wing policies tend to be very popular.

[Sheilbh]

I disagreed with AR on that - my view was there was no better moment and it was essential to put something on the record urgently.

In retrospect I think he was probably right and I was wrong about it.

[Sheilbh]

You need a centrist face on progressive policies.

Research tends to show time and again if seperated from a context of being attached to a side, left wing policies tend to be very popular.

So do right wing policies. It's just they don't match up with political parties in most western countries. People generally like a state that spends lots of money, but are incredibly hardline on things like law and order.

If there was an American or anywhere else equivalent of a "fund the NHS, hang the paedos" style party they'd sweep the board.

[Josquius]

You need a centrist face on progressive policies.

Research tends to show time and again if seperated from a context of being attached to a side, left wing policies tend to be very popular.

So do right wing policies. It's just they don't match up with political parties in most western countries. People generally like a state that spends lots of money, but are incredibly hardline on things like law and order.

If there was an American or anywhere else equivalent of a "fund the NHS, hang the paedos" style party they'd sweep the board.

Not sure I'd call law and order a right wing policy.
Hang the paedophiles sure (paedo is a word that gets my inner pedant riled up lately). But they also tend to be big on massive budget cuts to law enforcement.

I guess the key problem here is breaking through with anything more complex than 2 dimensional thinking - guy who says let's kill all the thievs will do better than someone with a plan to invest in policies to reduce crime happening in the first place.
This is a key reason conservatives, especially in their modern guise, tend to have an advantage over the left. Emotions and simple solutions to complex problems trump workable thought out plans to actually tackle problems.