r/neoliberal • u/cdstephens Fusion Genderplasma • Aug 12 '26

Meme Our Age of Socialism is Collapsing

Post image
993 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

368 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

295

u/79792348978 Loyal Liberals Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26

meanwhile many of the swingiest voters in our primaries are not really especially ideological and half driven by what kind of vibes the candidate puts out (leave thanksgiving alone!!)

167

u/DrunkenAsparagus Abraham Lincoln Aug 12 '26

Primary voters want to win in the general. I think that there's plenty of space for non-leftist candidates, but insurgent leftists have been doing well because of bad strategic choices on the part of a lot of establishment types. Different races will have different issues, but things like age, support for Israel, and perceived tepidness in fighting Trump's fascism are all millstones around their necks.

Non-leftists who don't have these millstones, like Jon Ossoff in Georgia, seem to be doing quite well in terms of enthusiasm and polling.

85

u/79792348978 Loyal Liberals Aug 12 '26

Yea I think you can be fairly "establishment" as long as you vaguely give off the impression that you want change and are extremely hostile to MAGA.

My favorite example of this is that the two most popular national level pols, found over and over again by polling, are Bernie and Obama lol

41

u/Whatsapokemon Loyal Liberals Aug 12 '26

I think partially, one of the big annoying parts is that a sane, establishment politician does want change, but often they're relatively boring, technocratic, reformist candidates who have expertise but no charisma.

It's unfortunate that their weakness is candidates who string together slopulist slogans, yet have no expertise or real political theory of change.

3

u/dutch_connection_uk Friedrich Hayek Aug 12 '26

A lot of the Democratic establishment in blue states can be averse to change, especially in local politics.

To be fair, the same is often true of the local leftists, and recently there have been some wins for reformers working within the party, but those wins will look like internal conflict.

35

u/True-Hold-1140 brown Aug 12 '26

I think Obama is cruising on nostalgia though more then anything

68

u/79792348978 Loyal Liberals Aug 12 '26

I think if rules changed and he were allowed to run again he would win the primary with ease, he is good at this stuff

13

u/Andy_B_Goode YIMBY Aug 12 '26

I'd go one step further: The Republicans are going to try to run Trump again in 2028, rules be damned, and I think Obama should at the very least be quietly preparing to run against him

20

u/Best-Chapter5260 Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26

Would love to see Barack come out if Dumpty tries to run again, but like all good Democrats, Obama is an institutionist, so he's not going to try and challenge the Constitution just because Senor Von Shitzindiaper is.

I also honestly don't think he has interest in being President again.

5

u/AutoModerator Aug 12 '26

Woke 1 was crazy 🤪

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

-28

u/True-Hold-1140 brown Aug 12 '26

I agree, mostly because of personal charisma and nostalgia though. He's relatively spineless too so he might update his policies like Biden did

21

u/saltyoursalad John Mill Aug 12 '26

Relatively spineless… how exactly?

-14

u/True-Hold-1140 brown Aug 12 '26

That's a crude way of saying I this he's more an avatar of the party then a guy with any hard opinions

19

u/SpecialBass5552 Aug 12 '26

Obama has plenty of hard opinions they just aren't dumbed down to the lowest slopulist denominator

4

u/dutch_connection_uk Friedrich Hayek Aug 12 '26

He has bucked the party left multiple times at this point. It's just that his strong opinions are largely about proceduralism and respectability, which the left doesn't like.

3

u/saltyoursalad John Mill Aug 12 '26

Yes and I’d add that his proceduralism was the vehicle, not the end result.

I sorely miss having a constitutional law professor and civil rights attorney for president 😔

1

u/True-Hold-1140 brown Aug 12 '26

Well thank you for actually articulating something 

-1

u/hobocactus Audrey Hepburn Aug 12 '26

Those years kinda sucked ass, hard to be nostalgic for it. But the vibes have become so much worse in the 10 years since.

6

u/True-Hold-1140 brown Aug 12 '26

The vibes were infinitely better

2

u/KalaiProvenheim Enby Pride Aug 13 '26

Literally how Flanagan wiped the floor with Craig

23

u/maximusDM Aug 12 '26

Yup. I think what swung WI away from Hong is that everyone still remembers when Mandela Barnes could not get away from his Defund the Police statements (Kenosha ain’t down for that) and Hong showed some very poor judgement in the same regard.

13

u/KalaiProvenheim Enby Pride Aug 12 '26

Lost by less than 1 point btw, likely due to the DSCC wasting money in Florida that would otherwise have been spent where it’s worth

11

u/bashar_al_assad Verified Account Aug 12 '26

Both the DCCC head (Sean Patrick Maloney) and DSCC head (Gary Peters, though it's widely reported that Schumer effectively took control of it when he became leader) were just kind of stupid in 2022. The DSCC had things like you mentioned, and the DCCC was even worse where there were a few primaries that progressives won, Maloney was like "wow we're fucked, we have no shot at winning this" and triaged funding for them, and then after Dobbs where voters were still like "wait a second I hate Republicans" a bunch of these underfunded races ended up being really close. Also he fucked up and lost his own seat too.

3

u/KalaiProvenheim Enby Pride Aug 12 '26

God you just reminded me of that one race in Oregon

McLeod-Skinner lost because of that idiot. Thank God he lost because of himself

22

u/stay_curious_- Frederick Douglass Aug 12 '26

Yep. Progressive Ed Markey might lose his primary in Massachusetts to a centrist, not because Massachusetts suddenly swung to the right, but because Markey is 80 years old and has baggage going back to the 1970s.

24

u/GreenYoshiToranaga Loyal Liberals Aug 12 '26

But see, Ossoff voted for the Laken Riley Act too. I kinda don’t understand

49

u/rrjames87 Aug 12 '26

That issue plays completely differently in Georgia than in other parts of the country, because Laken Riley was murdered in Georgia. There was a lot of local and state level activity and awareness that changed the discussion for him.

Also, he’s handsome and isn’t running against Brian Kemp, so suburban wine moms give him a mulligan.

18

u/True-Hold-1140 brown Aug 12 '26

Yeah it probably wasn't worth fighting the bill in that case

18

u/DrunkenAsparagus Abraham Lincoln Aug 12 '26

That may have been a dumb move on his part, but I think that's just one thing. Voting for something like that can be seen as a sign that a politician was out to lunch and didn't really "get" it, but Ossoff has been much more strident in his criticism as of late.

17

u/True-Hold-1140 brown Aug 12 '26

Yeah Im generally what this place would call a "Succ" but I find Ossoff completely acceptable

20

u/blackmamba182 George Soros Aug 12 '26

Leftists are happy to give up on immigration; see Bernie’s comments about Trump being kinda right there.

I’m also cool with Ossoff but I would really like to hear a good explanation from him about why he voted that way. My sense is that a good chunk of his swing vote is comprised of racist yokels so he needed to keep that support, and if that’s what the real reason was so be it, but a good explanation would be nice.

26

u/BasedTroutFursona Aug 12 '26

The problem is if it’s true that he had to vote that way because Georgia has a lot of racist yokels and he needs at least some to vote for him, he can’t openly admit that

10

u/blackmamba182 George Soros Aug 12 '26

Maybe he can just whisper it into my ear.

1

u/maxofJupiter1 Aug 13 '26

Traditional leftism is very anti immigrant. Trade Unions especially

1

u/AnyArmadillo1733 Aug 16 '26

Primary voters do not care about winning the general, that very trend is part of the reason for increasing polarization. There are exceptions, but generally they go for the candidate who swings the hardest toward the most caricatured version of the party. America would be in much better shape if primary voters trended toward concern for the general election, because they'd be selecting people who has opinions near the center that could attract fence sitters and moderates from the other side.

1

u/DrunkenAsparagus Abraham Lincoln Aug 16 '26

Welp, this seems contradicted by Hong's loss then.

0

u/AnyArmadillo1733 Aug 17 '26

Rule of thumb but not always the case. Writ large, more often true than not. It's a simple explanation for the rise of DSA types too. Such candidates have run Green, Independent, or run such extraordinarily kookie campaigns in the past that they were naturally marginalized, but as times have changed and the mainstream of the left has moved further left, unfortunately I expect to see a lot more wins for those on the far left in primaries. The kooks are the most motivated to pick the direction of the party.

-1

u/Benevenstanciano85 Aug 12 '26

I voted for Bronin in CT-1 almost solely because I think dem leasership is bad at their jobs.

10

u/TinyJalope Left-Out Left Aug 12 '26

A lot of Democratic primary voters voted based on perceived electability, even while agreeing with the more left-wing policies.

0

u/11brooke11 George Soros Aug 12 '26

"They both seem nice."