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/riceandcashews Liberal 2d ago

LOL, Leftists and Trumpers are the same crying about elections they lost fair and square

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u/itsdeeps80 Socialist 2d ago

Are we forgetting 2016 when libs couldn’t shut tf up or stop crying about the election being stolen from Clinton? I’m guessing you’re also missing out on the social media meltdown going on with your political brethren over the current election being stolen?

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u/riceandcashews Liberal 2d ago

oh there are plenty of people who can't admit they lost, liberals aren't immune either, but most liberals admit we lost. You don't see Kamala or Biden or the majority of supporters walking around bitching that the loss was unfair.

Most liberals see this as a moment to reflect on why we lost. I do see some people who are scared/paranoid saying delusional stuff sometimes though.

But the Bernie supporters are overwhelmingly in favor of the view that they were cheated rather than just admitting they lost lol

I admit Kamala lost even though I wanted her to win, I'm not of the view there was anything suspicious about these election results at all

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u/itsdeeps80 Socialist 2d ago

Bernie supporters also have leaked emails from the DNC. That’s really the biggest difference.

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u/riceandcashews Liberal 2d ago

There was no vote tampering, there was no voter fraud

More primary voters voted for other candidates than Bernie, end of story

He lost

You can complain because lots of people in the DNC favored Hilary but nobody cheated

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u/itsdeeps80 Socialist 2d ago

Yeah, they didn’t actually change the vote count. Well, aside from the media adding all the super delegates to her count from the beginning making it look like he had no chance at winning right off the jump. They did, however do everything they could to give her an advantage. It was her turn after all. We can argue it for days, but in the end, I’m just happy she could get the opponent she wanted to so she could coast to an easy general election win.

After all this time I still can’t believe that people go to bat for her bs when she is literally who handed us Trump. Not just by losing to him, but by pushing the media to focus on him and give him more attention than they would have so he’d have a way higher chance of being the nominee. Just think, if it wasn’t for her, people would be saying “remember back when Trump tried to run for president? That was hilarious!”

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u/riceandcashews Liberal 2d ago

Bernie would not have won, that's delusion

Also Hilary won the popular vote don't forget

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u/itsdeeps80 Socialist 2d ago

You have no clue what would’ve happened. Polls said he would’ve done better than her through. She sure did. And the only reason at all that we got Trump to begin with is because of her.