That said, I would think Strangelove, myself and others would also argue someone like Schumer has failed and needs to go. We're not out here defending ineffectual, impotent centrism just because. We're arguing that moderates and centrists are going to be necessary for any successful coalition but that the key is the party as a whole needs to actually get s#!t done that improves peoples' lives or people are rightly going to continue ignoring them at best and despising them at worst.
Good thoughts and I'm of a similar mind. I'm not "progressives or bust!" by any stretch. My larger imagination is that any healthy system or organization needs a diverse coalition of voices that create tension. We need compelling voices pulling us along forward, as well as ones that are slow and hesitant to do away with things that have seemed to work pretty well, as well as ones that build bridges and translate amongst the others. Right now, there is no sane conservative voice, a massive overabundance of weak, entrenched, bought & paid for democrats only marginally left of Reagan, and very few populists and/or progressives that the DNC has only begrudgingly accepted and been more than happy to sideline and throw under the bus.
There's no one-size-fits-all strategy that makes any sense, but hoping that the power players leave the AOC's and Bernie's of the world out in the cold is certainly just as much a losing one if the end goal is actual progress moreso than just acquiring power.
Dan Osborn over performed expectations by more than any candidate in any election cycle since 2016. That's the kind of candidate that should be ran in deep red states with highly educated populations - like Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, Maine and Alaska, especially in blue years like 2026.
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Voters wanted a more moderate candidate and they saw Trump as being that way. This was largely because of ads from when Harris ran for President in 2020 when she took extremely unpopular positions in the Democratic Primary.
I also agree with Matthew Yglesias when he writes that Democrats need a
combative moderate.
Somewhere we're finding common ground, but I'd say this in response.
Bernie and AOC aren't attractive because of their progressive agenda as much as they're attractive because they're the only ones around who seem to actually have any amount of balls at all (at least to me personally). Democrats will inevitably be painted as extreme left regardless of their actual policy alignment as long as they continue to be feckless and their strategy in regards to 'conviction' is to not have any conviction at all.
Just as one example amongst plenty, take Kamala's campaign and the attack ads and jabs from Trump about how she supports taxpayers paying for trans prisoners to transition. Her camp did the best they could being silent, dancing around it, or responding with vague and/or empathetic platitudes, and it made her look weak and
more left-wing instead of anything even remotely in the lane of, "Look, first of all, only two people ever have gotten gender affirming surgery in prison and both went through several year long legal battles to end there. We can disagree on this, but the Supreme Court decided that prisons have to give necessary medical care to prisoners, and to not do so is unconstitutional, and federal and state courts like in California have decided that gender affirming care is included in that. I agree with and am glad for those decisions, and if you disagree with me, fine, but whether or not trans people get gender affirming care isn't up to me or to Trump, it's up to the courts, and the courts have made that decision. Just like Trump's administration also accepted the legal mandate to provide gender care in prisons when he was President, so will mine, because I respect and follow the law."
Bill Clinton, the pragmatic centrist and expert level triangulator that he was, probably said it best in 2002. "When people feel uncertain, they'd rather have someone strong and wrong than weak and right". Where's the echoes of the trenchant strong and wrong proverb in the DNC? Even Gavin Newsom is backslapping with the likes of Charlie Kirk these days.
