Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Why Progressives Are Not Winning

 The far-left progressive wing of the Democratic Party is a curious one.  With an insurrection behind us, and with the Republicans going so far to the right as to openly display racist tendencies and acting more like the Imperial Empire every day. ANY Democrat should seem to be the better choice, right?  No.  They aren't.

Progressives have a real problem.  With progressive pundits now going after more moderate Democrats i.e., don't vote blue, both parties are the same and "Feel it in your bones the Democrats don't care about you" they are doing more right now to suppress the Democrat voters than the GOP ever could hope for.  With Rhetoric from progressive pundits like The Young Turks it leaves one scratching their heads wondering if they are really Democrats or if they are an arm of the right wing.  I personally would love to know if any conservative super-pacs are giving them money.  But we are not here to launch salvos against progressives lets dig into why they aren't winning their primaries or general elections.

Progressives when they launch these candidates and try to garner support for them, they seem to enjoy putting them in districts where their defeat is almost assured.  Then when they lose their primary, they blame the Democrats.  "How dare you not vote for them!!!"  "Why are you voting for a moderate???"  "The Democratic party doesn't like us!!!" "The Democratic Party is garbage!!!!" Blah blah and more blah.  The truth is that while their policies and agendas are perfectly fine and I myself back many of the progressive policies that have been put up the answer is; its is not the Democrat party, its progressives.

You cannot run a Progressive's in districts where the voters feel like they have nothing in common with the person.  For example, you cant run a progressive in the deep south like Alabama and Mississippi. They will never win.  Southerners love their religion and they love their guns.  You cannot run an atheist gun-hater and expect them to do well.  They wont.  If you have a moderate Democrat who shares the voters values that's who the Democratic Party is going to support and for good reason.  If you nominate a gun carrying, bible thumping Democrat (Yes, they do exist) that is who the Democratic Party is going to support. That is who they are going to put their money behind.  That moderate Democrat shares the values of those voters and there is more of a chance of success than there would be nominating an atheist gun-hater.  The problem with progressives is that they want to nominate and throw their weight behind candidates without doing the due diligence of finding out what values the voters have and would rather just throw someone out there who shares in THEIR values.  These progressive pundits DO NOT LIVE in the districts where these candidates are running.  Its the equivalent of taking a blind man who has lived in his 1 bedroom apartment for 40 years and can tell you where everything is and throwing them into a 7 bedroom mansion.  Its a recipe for disaster.

Nina Turner lost.  While I love Nina and think Nina would make a remarkable congresswoman, she lost to the incumbent. Nina lost not because she is incapable.  Nina Turner lost because voters had the choice of the incumbent whom they know, who has a history, and of course the Democratic party supported the incumbent because there is MORE of a chance of success with them than someone who the voters don't know and who doesn't share their values.  If Nina had run in a district where progressive policy is the norm, such as Oregon and even San Francisco Nina would have won by a landslide because in Oregon and California Progressives do much better.

Progressives have a problem.  One is the rhetoric and the bullshit they pull when they don't get their way.  They want their wing of the party to grow.  That is fine and it is doable.  But there has to be more strategy, more regional due diligence, and less throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks.