this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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United States | News & Politics
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They don't want a safe candidate. A safe candidate would be someone who takes broadly popular positions, like Medicare for All, a jobs guarantee, or public internet. They want centrist candidates, which the consultant class has convinced them is safe (and, coincidentally, never take positions that upset the donors), but centrism is the least safe position to take at this point. No one who is watching their wages stagnate while the cost of living skyrockets is thinking, "I hope this can be solved through incremental changes that don't disrupt that status-quo too much!"
They want centrist candidates and don't care if they're safe.
Yep. They want another billion in campaign donations, even if it ends in a loss.
I don't think they're even selling out. I think this is what they would be doing even if there weren't money in it.
Maybe. Most Democrat politicians and consultants are just intending to cash in when they return to the private sector, or launder bribes through a book deal. Those payoff opportunities dry up, if they govern properly and don’t favor capitalists.
I think there's legitimate self-delusion that keeps some of them believing the centrist is the safe choice. Some of them delude themselves into thinking that being centrist is a good idea because people don't like, "wokeness." Some of them convince themselves that if they're too progressive, the donors will abandon them and they won't have enough money to win. I think the old timers like Carvil legitimately think that centrism is the best strategy because they can't get past 1992. But yeah, I think deep down, they would all prefer losing with a neoliberal centrist than winning with an actual progressive, even if some of them won't admit it.
Yeah, they want to ride the edge and put forth the most conservative a candidate possible that still has a plausible road to victory (and the plausibility can be pretty thin). The last few candidates haven't been anywhere close to just lining up with the most popular issues (either within the Democratic party or the larger electorate).
It's just insane. People are so desperate for change that they're willing to vote for fascism, and the Democrats are trying to put run a moderate conservative. If they're not completely delusional, then they must believe the James Carvils of the party who are telling them they just have to wait for the Republicans to become unpopular again to take power. In the best case scenario, they'll win in four years, then lose in another 4 (probably to a more competent fascist) because people will see they're not doing anything for them.
Its zionism first, moderate conservative second.
I'm feeling deja vu from 2016. Hopefully the primary electorate has learned something that the establishment has not.
The problem is that the party has a lot of control over the primary; they can keep people off the ballot, they can decide who gets to debate, they can set a primary schedule that favors preferred candidates...The reason we got Biden in 2020 was because Barack Obama made a bunch of phone calls and got everyone who would have spit Biden's vote share to drop out. Progressives need to spend the next four years calling out this corruption and excising these people from the party at the state and national levels.
Yes, it's almost like overthrowing an established power is difficult. Who would have guessed.