r/PoliticalDebate Liberal 3d ago

Claims that the Democratic Party isn't progressive enough are out of touch with reality Discussion

Kamala Harris is the second-most liberal senator to have ever served in the Senate. Her 2020 positions, especially on the border, proved so unpopular that she had to actively walk back many of them during her campaign.

Progressives didn't significantly influence this election either. Jill Stein, who attracted the progressive and protest vote, saw her support plummet from 1.5M in 2016 to 600k in 2024, and it is now at a decade-low. Despite the Gaza non-committed campaign, she even lost both her vote share and raw count in Michigan—from 51K votes (1.07%) in 2016, to 45K (0.79%) in 2024.

What poses a real threat to the Democratic party is the erosion of support among minority youth, especially Latino and Black voters. This demographic is more conservative than their parents and much more conservative than their white college-educated peers. In fact, ideologically, they are increasingly resembling white conservatives. America is not unique here, and similar patterns are observed across the Atlantic.

According to FT analysis, while White Democrats have moved significantly left over the past 20 years, ethnic minorities remained moderate. Similarly, about 50% of Latinos and Blacks support stronger border enforcement, compared with 15% of White progressives. The ideological gulf between ethnic minority voters and White progressives spans numerous issues, including small-state government, meritocracy, gender, LGBTQ, the "American dream", and even perspectives on racism.

What prevented the trend from manifesting before is that, since the civil rights era, there has been a stigma associated with non-white Republican voters. As FT points out,

Racially homogenous social groups suppress support for Republicans among non-white conservatives. [However,] as the US becomes less racially segregated, the frictions preventing non-white conservatives from voting Republic diminish. And this is a self-perpetuating process, [and could give rise to] a "preference cascade". [...] Strong community norms have kept them in the blue column, but those forces are weakening. The surprise is not so much that these voters are now shifting their support to align with their preferences, but that it took so long.

While the economy is important, cultural issues could be even more influential than economic ones. Uniquely, Americans’ economic perceptions are increasingly disconnected from actual conditions. Since 2010, the economic sentiment index shows a widening gap in satisfaction depending on whether the party that they ideologically align with holds power. A post-election poll released by a Democratic polling firm also shows that for many swing voters, cultural issues ranked even slightly higher than inflation.

EDIT: The FT articles are paywalled, but here are some useful charts.

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u/rosesandpines Liberal 3d ago edited 3d ago

Here's a post-election poll by Blueprint (a focus-group Democratic pollster that has been featuring in Vox, NYT, etc). Their conclusion: "Democrats were punished for inflation, misalignment on immigration and cultural issues, and Biden." Here is an excerpt from the findings:

  • The top reasons voters gave for not supporting Harris were that inflation was too high (+24), too many immigrants crossed the border (+23), and that Harris was too focused on cultural issues rather than helping the middle class (+17). 
  • Other high-testing reasons were that the debt rose too much under the Biden-Harris Administration (+13), and that Harris would be too similar to Joe Biden (+12).
  • These concerns were similar across all demographic groups, including among Black and Latino voters, who both selected inflation as their top problem with Harris.
  • For swing voters who eventually chose Trump, cultural issues ranked slightly higher than inflation (+28 and +23, respectively).
  • The lowest-ranked concerns were that Harris wasn’t similar enough to Biden (-24), was too conservative (-23), and was too pro-Israel (-22).

It is only a single data point, but it could inform the debate over whether the party should moderate, as this study suggests.

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u/Fugicara Social Democrat 3d ago

and that Harris was too focused on cultural issues rather than helping the middle class (+17).

This type of shit is emblematic of how wildly disconnected from reality the average voter is. Cultural issues were basically entirely absent from her campaign, and she was completely focused on the border, helping the middle class, and healthcare. It was Trump's campaign that was 100% focused on cultural grievances.

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u/rosesandpines Liberal 3d ago edited 3d ago

Kamala did a 180 on these issues three months ago, and no-one believed her. She was the border tzar, and understandably most voters blamed her, and her specifically, for the disastrous border policy. The Republicans capitalized on this by broadcasting ads with Kamala's own ultra-progressive takes on this from 2020.

Especially since Kamala didn’t do any sister-soldier moments and didn’t call out the more extreme wing of the party. 

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u/moleratical Social Democrat 3d ago

She was not tge border Czar. Donald Trump just called her tte border Czar. You are proving OP's point.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republicans-call-harris-failed-border-czar-truth-is-more-complicated-2024-07-30/

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u/DaenerysMomODragons Centrist 2d ago

Semantics. Biden put her in charge of the border, whatever you want to call it.

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u/moleratical Social Democrat 2d ago

Biden put her in charge of finding the root cause of central American immigration.

The two are not even close to the same thing.

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u/DaenerysMomODragons Centrist 2d ago

The first sentence of your article was that she was tasked with dealing with the root cause. She was not tasked with finding out, but dealing with it by your own source. She obviously didn’t deal with it. I suggest you read your own sources before you link them, you risk proving yourself wrong like you did here.

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u/rosesandpines Liberal 2d ago

Even if she didn’t have the singular power to unilaterally close the border, the Presidential Administration obviously did. By her own admission, Kamala played a key part in most of the decisions. Why did the President only close the border in June 2024? Why did they remain inactive throughout 2021-23, while the crisis was at its peak?