this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
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[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 6 points 11 hours ago

The vast majority of Democrats are center-right. That's not moderate.

[–] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 5 points 11 hours ago

Get disgruntled voters to vote again, drive up turnout, maybe the Dems will win.

Try to convert brainwashed fascists to fasc-lite: absolute recipe for continued failure.

The DNC wants the Dems to be the Washington Generals.

[–] MetalMachine@feddit.nl 9 points 16 hours ago

Well, democracts mostly act like the other side of the coin of republican. And it's not hard to understand why when you see PACs and millionaires funding both.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That’s why it isn’t working.

We don’t want moderates. Moderates aren’t the ones that will get Civil Rights, campaign reform, rein in monopolies, get rid of Citizens United, health care for all, etc. Moderates just half-ass “solutions” that keep stuffing more money in the already wealthy’s pockets while ineffectively trying to get bakeries to make wedding cakes for gay couples. We need actual liberals and progressives, not Republican-lite.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Fuck, so many signs, so many failures for so many years...

Say what you want for Republicans but they plan and play long term and they play it well. So many small losses, but every hundred losses, another quiet, hidden step forward to eroding democracy... Fox news, the Republican state TV channel, winning a lawsuit enabling them to call themselves a news organization while lying, hell, since Reagan...

The US has been sliding in this direction for 4-5 decades now, look where you've gotten yourself, it's embarrassing...

[–] Cataphract@lemmy.ml 2 points 13 hours ago

I think this is simplifying and twisting narratives. Republicans didn't plan for Trump, but the evangelicals and extremists rolled with it (just like progressives and antifa would've rolled with someone like Bernie). Besides an authoritarian take over of elections, the republicans don't seem to be putting anyone electable up on a podium lately.

I doubt any of us are privy to what the Democrats plan and play long term, if anything they've been more effective at controlling their party if we're looking at them through the lens of being moderates. If you think they're "failing".... it's in the eyes of a citizen and not what their donor's interests are which is the priority of the party.

I am interested to learn about how the rest of the world is handling the "news" issue though, I see a lot of media coming from other countries (like UK and Australia) which follow the same format of fox so figured we were all fucked when it comes to actually vetting what can be labeled as a news source.

[–] Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 17 hours ago

Every potential convert you were ever going to turn happened election day 2020.

[–] AmericanEconomicThinkTank@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Democrats now are where Republicans were in the 80s

[–] finitebanjo@piefed.world 5 points 17 hours ago

TBF the parties swapped in the 1960s and finished polarizing in the 90s so in the 1980s some rebublicans were pro immigrant and pro union.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act was passed by the 99th United States Congress and signed into law by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on November 6, 1986. The Immigration Reform and Control Act legalized most undocumented immigrants who had arrived in the country prior to January 1, 1982.

[–] nickiwest@lemmy.world 7 points 23 hours ago

This is correct. They've "moderated" their views so many times over the years that they are only distinguishable from Reagan Republicans because of their stance on abortion.

And people are even calling for Dems to be more "pro-life" in order to further appeal to "moderates." It's absurd.

[–] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago

There's no such thing as meeting Nazis in the middle. That's called "becoming a Nazi".

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago

Democrats Are Already “Moderate.”

I'd say quite a few of them are conservative bordering on reactionary. You just can't see it for all the MSNBC talking heads that insist Henry Cuellar is the far left of the political spectrum and anyone beyond that is a Tankie posting from a North Korean IP address.

[–] TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 day ago

The whole moderate thing was an attempt to appeal to Republican voters. They live in a personality cult echo chamber now, it would serve no purpose except catering to ghost. The fact that they are still thinking within a system that has been fundamentally corrupted is why they are doomed to failure.

[–] SleafordMod@feddit.uk 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In the UK, our politics are currently similar. Our centre-left party is Labour, who are in government, but they're losing popularity. Keir Starmer, the leader of Labour, has made Labour more moderate. They've lost some voters to the Reform party (populist right) but they've lost even more voters to parties that are left of Labour (Lib Dems and Greens).

There's a left-wing Labour politician called Andy Burnham who has criticised Labour's direction, and he said something which I think can apply to the US too:

If I look at the world right now, and you think of the populist right, whatever we may think about what they’re doing, they are putting big things on the table... Well, we have to do the same the other way, never pandering to them, but put big ideas on the table.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Our centre-left party is Labour

I'll spot you that Corbyn was centre-left back in 2015. The current Starmer government is indistinguishable from the Tories (in no small part because a bunch of the New Labour Starmerites are literally just Tory transplants) who occasionally stake out positions to the right of Farage's fascist Reform platform.

But hey, at least you've got "Your Party" now. As soon as they stop suing each other, anyway.

never pandering to them, but put big ideas on the table.

Part of the problem with modern politics is that its so tied up in the News/Social Media cycle that running on "the same old idea that was as good then as it is now" is seen as bad politics. You can't just come out and day "We should hire more doctors for the NHS and pay their lowest level staff better wages" or "We need strong labor unions in the country again in order to claw back surplus value from the employer class" because that's old boring socialist slop. You can't even have a Mamdani-esque "We're going to have government run grocery stores that trade basic staples at cost of production to fight inflation" without being heckled as a radical marxist who flunked economics.

None of that gets the national media jazzed up. The only way to get people (in national media) excited is to talk about the latest Tech-Thingy and insist New Tech is going to be the panacea for all your problems. And then, every time a New Tech thing comes out, you pivot to that and insist its going to bring about the cost cutting (ie, lower wages and higher capital costs) reform everyone secretly desires.

That's the only thing that qualifies as a "Big Idea" in the eyes of national media reporters. So that's the tail our political dogs are told to chase. Forever. Nevermind that it never seems to fucking work, save to enrich a few special interests in the tech industry.

[–] SleafordMod@feddit.uk 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah I get depressed when I see the news or politicians mention AI, as if it will solve every problem. I think LLMs can genuinely be useful but we should be realistic about them.

You mentioned Mamdani. I think what's interesting about him is that he is polling well - he could win the election, even with his big ideas. So maybe there is an appetite for big ideas from the left. Which I guess is why there have been quite a few people interested in Your Party (but yes, whether they can stop bickering and function together is yet to be seen).

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[–] dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 78 points 1 day ago (11 children)

Bill Clinton tried triangulation (read: being more right wing) and the republicans tried to impeach him. Obama was right of Reagan and the republicans…tried to impeach him. If the GOP is going to fuck with democrats no matter what, let’s just elect some truly revolutionary people. I mean people who make Bernie Sanders look like Mitt Romney. People who make Cornel West look like Paul Ryan. We should be running people who start at “if your net worth is over $100 million you get to line up against the wall” and need to be negotiated down from there.

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