Sorry, I misread your comment, I think I read first “they” as “to” or something. I agree with you, deleting my comment.

Thank you for mentioning the ACA! It is a perfect example of the democrats campaigning on a progressive cause, and as a result mobilizing their base and beyond to support them enthusiastically. Progressive policies win, and adopting them, as the democrats at least tried in the obamna era, is a recipe for winning elections.

Now regarding fracking and the border wall, I really think you need to talk to Harris’ people and the current regime, because they have not gotten the memo that their support is reluctant. During their debate, Harris and Trump were yelling over each other to show who’s more pro-fracking. Four years ago such a climate change denialist stance would’ve been unthinkable for the dem candidate four years ago. That does not sound like reluctance to me.

Then the border wall. Please think back to how for example the Clinton and Biden campaigns talked about it. The messaging was very simple: the border wall is inhumane, this country was built on immigration, and even beyond that the wall would be ineffective for obvious reasons. The biden campaign was a bit more about the latter, but still. Now, Harris refers to undocumented immigrants as “illegal immigrants”, completely joins in on the false narrative that undocumented immigrants bring with them a lot of crime (which is categorically false, citizens by far outrank undocumented immigrants in violent crime per capita) and brags about her strong border policies. This is a core part of her messaging that came back in town halls, debates, and interviews. You cannot just ignore this or expect the electorate not to notice. Again, please think back to what the dem campaigns used to be like four and eight years ago. This kind of stance was rightly ridiculed and rightly vilified. Beyond just the messaging, there’s what the current regime is actually doing: the border wall is still being built (again: ridiculed and vilified, rightly so, and you know this), and there are more children in cages at the border than there were under Trump.

And beyond that, the republican candidate was able to position himself as the pro peace candidate next to “most lethal fighting force in the world” Harris! So on this the democrat messaging was actually even more right wing than that of the republicans! They are absolutely sprinting to the right, and denying so is completely ahistorical.

That is indeed what the chart indicates.

deleted by creator

Universal health care used to be something that was at least mentioned during campaigns, now not so anymore. Fracking, inhumane border policies to keep those crazed illegal immigrants out, explicit support for genocide; these are far right policies, and the dems are falling over themselves to support it. Every cycle they move further right.

These stats are about the policy preferences of the electorate, while OP is about the politicians. But your picture is a fantastic illustration as to why the democrats lost the election. It’s because they keep moving further right (look for example at their recent pro-fracking, pro-border wall, pro-genocide presidential candidate).

This is QAnon-level shit, but on the center right.

“we promise ;)”

Fair enough, all good. I’m leaving mine up because I think the point about the conflation of anti-zionism and anti-semitism being in itself antisemitic bears repeating.

They lost the election by running an essentially republican candidate. Fingers crossed for a progressive chair.

If you’re equating the Jewish people with zionism, or conflating being in favor of zionism as somehow being benevolent to the Jewish people as a whole, you are treating the Jewish people as a monolith and are yourself being anti-semitic. Zionism is perfectly compatible with anti-semitism (see for example all those anti-semitic christians who enthusiastically support zionism), and anti-zionism is in itself not anti-semitic (cf Jewish voice for peace).

So making “zionist” a slur has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with being anti-anti-semitic or not.

The same way I don’t think we should capitulate to framing “cracker” as a slur, or to framing “black lives matter” as a racist thing to say, I don’t think we should capitulate to framing things like “from the river to the sea” or “zionist” as antisemitic.

But, as a thought experiment, let’s indulge in this doublespeak trash. What is a good alternative? So far I’ve got:

• Israeli colonizers
• Jewish supremacists
• genocidal sacks of shit
• Israeli apartheidists
• Isreal expansionists
• Israeli warmongerers
• people in favor of the genocide and apartheid committed by Israel (in full, every time you need to say zionist)
• modern day nazis
• zionazis (technically not zionist!)

So all of this liberal crybaby nomenclature trash aside, I actually do think “zionist” is in itself a fairly useless term for the Israeli apartheid question (as Norman Finkelstein and Judith Butler do too). While one faction of zionism pursued the nakba and massacres from fairly early on, and while this faction has been quite successful, there are other notions of zionism which do not entail murdering children or colonizing a country. When Netanyahu and Chomsky can both legitimately refer to themselves as zionists, I think it’s clear that zionism is too broad a term to be useful in the current ongoing genocide and the ethnic cleansing that has been going on for the better part of a century.

The point that I’m making is that across the board, progressive policies are popular. And that does win elections, just look at Obamna’s and Sanders’ campaigns. That one state was just one extreme example of this fact.

they talk, but don’t act

The main messaging from the Harris campaign seemed to consist of:

• the economy is fine
• immigrants are fentanyl carrying criminals and we need to build the border wall
• fracking good
• war good (continued expansion of Israel, keep arming Ukraine instead of pushing for a diplomatic resolution, and let’s invade Iran next with the most lethal fighting force in the world)
• what, do you want a DANG CHEETO in the white house?

They don’t walk the walk of a pro worker party, but they sure as shit don’t talk the talk either.

Crumbling empire

Unless you’re a senator or a MOC, I don’t think her “do something” is directed at you.

This is reason.com, famously a libertarian propaganda mill. Safe to completely ignore.

You understand we’re talking about messaging here, and that most of the electorate does not read the policy pages. I guess you don’t actually otherwise I wouldn’t have to write this. The electorate sees the ads, the debates, and if they’re really engaged, maybe the interview. Compare those with Obamna’s interviews and so on. His were inundated with references to health care and the like. Hers with quaint stories about how she was a small business when she was growing up or some shit, and maybe uncritical support for apartheid.

No she hasn’t.

Name them.