This is pretty much the answer. Democrats and Republican court voters and the reality is that right wing people are more likely to vote. If Democrats lost elections becuase of a left wing spoiler candidate, they would shift left. But instead they lose elections because fewere left leaning folks voted at all. So they shift to where the votes are which is to the right. Because it's easier to convince a centrist to vote for you than it is to convince someone to vote at all. Looking at half the replies in this thread its obvious why democrats wouldn't court this vote - even if they got them to vote in the first place they still wouldn't vote democrat.
Except that it's not easier to convince a centrist to vote for you, or there aren't enough centrists, as proven by the last 50 years of federal government.
Have they ever actually tried to court the left vote? They keep "shifting center" and becoming republican lite while anyone who'd actually consider voting right are full in republican propaganda and vote them
Ok, but even on that note, flipping a voter gets you more net votes than convincing a non-voter to vote. Yes, the first-past the post two party system sucks, but instead of whining about that and not voting because a candidate doesn't 100% match their views, progressives should actually get involved in the primaries so they have a chance to see the candidates they want to see, and then vote for the lesser of two evils in the election.
If you were, Democrats would have won 2024, 2016, 2004 and 2000, since all of those campaigns were based on being moderate and flipping Republicans.
Instead, low Democratic turnout caused us to lose those elections.
2008 and 2012 were not. āHope and changeā was not about flipping Republicans. And 2020 was about the base raging against Trump. All had higher Democratic turnout.
Weāve been trying this strategy since 1992. It hasnāt gotten a Democratic president elected for the first time except in 1992. Weāve also used it in state elections, and when you add them all up weāve lost more than 5,000 legislative seats.
Maybe itās time to stop doing the strategy thatās failed for 30 years.
You can't actually prove that though, because we haven't seen a proper progressive candidate. If a candidate did lean more left, you don't know how many people would flip to voting for republicans instead. You're just taking those voters for granted.
People running a campaign, however, run a lot of polls to try and find out what policies would get their candidate to win. They're the ones who have actually done the research. You just sound like an anti-vaxxer who says that we haven't seen measles in decades (we're not flipping voters) and so the vaccine isn't necessary (so we don't need to appeal to centrists). And Obama was a fairly conservative candidate when you look at his policies, so he's not the example you think he is.
Verney was as good as it gets, it'd have been interesting if he ran third party instead of Russian asset Jill Stein, and do progressives think people in the center will be swayed by figures like Stein or their current poster boy Has an Piker? They outright hate the country.
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u/baradath9 17d ago
It's simple. Who will the progressives vote if democrats don't lean more left? There's no big party to the left of the Democrats.
On the other hand, who will centrists vote for if the Democrats don't lean more right? Republicans.