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Look, I'd love for that to be true, but it just isn't. Biden will win by being a boring centrist, because that's who he is and that's who will win a general election (generally speaking).
With the GOP going completely off the rails the easiest path to victory is to simply go middle of the road and pick up all those independents/centrists and conservatives with brains. Progressives will vote Biden regardless because Trump (or any Trump wannabe) is too terrifying of a reality.
This country has never shown it has some giant progressive silent majority - Bernie would know, he bet and lost on that materializing in his own presidential runs.
I don't see Democrats running hard on progressive policies until either the GOP starts running moderates again (forcing Democrats to pickup votes elsewhere) or young people prove they can be a force at the ballot box.
All this is not to shit on what Biden has achieved, because he has done things for progressives, but I don't see him suddenly switching to anything resembling a "strong progressive agenda" because it will just give his GOP opponent ammo to claim "see he's radical too". Biden will be the most boring, normal politician he can, while highlighting how bad things will get if his extreme opponent gets into office, and that's probably the smartest thing to do.
nonsense. The dems pulled the dirtiest tricks to kneecap bernie - including ALL of them dropping out on super Tuesday. They battled bernie harder than they fucking did trump. Don't spread garbage like this
This was, of course, documented in the Wikileaks e-mails, whose contents were largely ignored by the mainstream media.
They never disputed the contents either.
Wikileaks selectively leaks emails to push whatever narrative they want, including leaving off timestamps to make you think emails were sent before they were. The RNC was hacked too, but we didn't see those emails. There's one corrupt country that hasn't ever seemed to be attacked by Wikileaks. I wonder what all this has in common?
speculation
Spin
Bernie had a surprising turnout, and the Dems had to pull all the stops to prevent him from being the front runner. Meaning something in the ballpark of a quarter of Americans who actually bother to vote were supporting him. Far from a majority, but to your point, it's a big and growing political force.
But I think the point stands that they aren't likely to swing a general election. Progressives (those that actually vote at all) are almost certainly going to vote for Biden regardless how how much he panders to them. This election will be decided by a fairly small number of centrists and moderate Republicans that may have been alienated by Trump who happen to live in swing states.
Unless, of course, Biden does something monumentally stupid and pisses off the progressives so bad that they are willing to risk another Trump term and vote 3rd party, which seems unlikely.
The way people vote and the policies people actually want enacted are very different. If you're talking specifically about how people vote, there's a lot you can infer as to why they vote the way they do, but if we're talking about actual policy - if people voted for policies instead of politicians, the vast majority of americans are very progressive. This is the point I was disagreeing with the commenter on.
The polls bear it out time and time again - people want progressive policy, but are afraid to vote for progressive politicians, and hedge their bets on the "safe" candidate.
This, so much.
It's so, so exhausting to keep on being told that "voters don't want progressive policies because they don't vote for progressive candidates" when the same people saying that are also the ones working the hardest (and spending the most money) to defeat progressive candidates by presenting them as 'risky' and doing their best to get voters to vote for the candidates backed by more money.
I would love to see American voting switch to Ranked Choice Voting. I'm tired of hearing the parties leverage voters' fear of splitting the vote into compromising on a vote that 'can win'- that pattern wags the dog far too much for my liking.
It's also frustrating to watch the Dems fight against taking up policy that young people say they want because "young people don't vote". It's as if people won't vote for you if you keep on promising not to do the things they want
Please don't assume I'm entitled or an idiot, and I do vote.
I vote consistently for Democrats in the general because they're the least-bad option. I participate in the primaries. I am trying to help, try not to shoot the messenger.
With that said, this was a pitch-perfect example of jumping to the wrong conclusion and being a jerk about the thing you imagined (even though I am not it). I should be allowed to express frustration over what I see as self-defeating behavior, and sure enough you volunteered to exemplify it by turning what could have been a constructive exchange into a shitty one. Do better.
grok
I've yet to see any evidence that there was some orchestrated agenda against Bernie. Sure, all the moderates probably did drop out so that moderate Biden could win against Bernie. What's wrong with that? Isn't that sort of implicitly how it works and should work? They made a choice that sacrified their own candidacy for the sake of advancing their policy goals (through Biden).
Nor have I seen any evidence that the DNC orchestrated some sting against Bernie in 2016 - the most that ever came out of that leaked trove of DNC emails were some DNC staff saying they wanted Hillary to win - not that they were going to take any action to make that happen.
I was a bit disappointed and wanted Bernie, but you're right that there wasn't really anything wrong with them doing that.
Not only that, but it showed that they aren't like the crabs in a bucket Republicans who failed to do the same because of their own egos and allowed Trump to ascend to the nomination through a series of plurality wins.
In my opinion, it shows they aren't dumb fascists and actually put the party and their country ahead of their own power and self-interest.
We can go even further and assume the democrats were all purely working in good faith, with the end goal of helping people. Even if that were the case, the idea that americans don't want progressive policy is still garbage and is completely trashed by polling. The polling alone disproves the commenter's completely contrafactual claim. It's demonstrably wrong on several levels.
regardless, the DNC could just overrule the results of the primaries if they wanted to and it'd be above board. It's completely legal. Biden could win 100% of the vote in every primary and they could put forward some random dude from Kentucky as their candidate and it would be "how it works". I disagree that that's how it should work.
Sad but harsh reality, it's not pretty but just how democracy functions under FPTP-voting with zero campaign finance subsidy available. If you can't pick up popularity in one of the two big parties you're shit out of options in the current system - designed by wealthy romans for the benefit of wealthy romans. If not allowed to evolve the great experiment is doomed at the whim of the super rich whenever enough lose their minds into fascism.
But they already do that, so why care?
I voted for Biden in hopes that
The clown show would be over
We would get one nice progressive win.
He gave me half of what I wanted. So I guess partial victory.
If the independent litmus test were "do you find some of Trump's policies acceptable?" then sure, I would agree with you. But that's incorrect. Republicans embracing full-blown insanity has taken them out of the running for many independents, leaving them only with whomever the Dems decide to nominate.
So in that sense I suppose you're right--when one of the choices is always hate-fueled insanity, many independents become de facto Dems.
I think we may have found out that's a risky strategy in the general election in 2016. It's as if having a choice between a status quo centrist and republican crazies isn't good for turnout- when the American Dream is increasingly regarded to be a cruel joke by young voters and the result is such low turnout that if 'did not vote' had been a candidate it would have won, maybe it's time for the Dems do some soul searching here.
I don't see him switching either, and in any case it doesn't make sense for him to run away from progressives to avoid being called radical- after all, they're calling him radical anyhow and it's unlikely they'd stop doing that
To the extent that running to 'the center' is seen as just appeasing Republicans in trade for no benefit to anyone but those Republicans (I think it is seen that way by a lot of younger, left and independent voters), I take the view that the one thing the Democrats must do (if they do nothing else) is keep on pressing hard on antitrust enforcement and restoring unions and labor protections and promoting environmental protection. If they don't, I expect a lot of stupid protest votes going to the green party or other splitter factions set there to split the democrats and lower the bar enough for the GOP to heave a fascist boomer into the white house where they will finish the job of dismantling American democracy