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@anubis2814 @RustyBertrand election year is when they're paying close attention and likely to believe you are playing hardball. Always the best time to criticize. And if they lose, you've injected serious medicine for the next round. Do it consistently and often to keep the blowback more bearable long-term. We've been scammed for so long and so thoroughly that the harsh medicine is now like chemotherapy. We've painted ourselves into a corner and there is only one way out.
@Qbitzerre @anubis2814 @RustyBertrand
The problem with this line of reasoning that that the result of Clinton losing in 2016 was nominating and electing Biden. I've heard people saying that Democratic politicians losing will move the party left for about a quarter century now, and that still hasn't happened.
The real power base in the Democratic Party is where voters are delivering consistent wins in close elections, and that has been Georgia over the past four years. It's hardly a bastion of left-wing politics. Georgia has been the difference between Minority Leader McConnel and Majority Leader McConnel. Winning Georgia was a 32 Electoral College swing toward Biden.
If the left wing of the Democratic Party wants a bigger voice, then they have to deliver wins against Republicans in competitive races. Beating an incumbent Democrat in a primary and winning in a safe district doesn't move the needle. Flipping a swing district moves the needle significantly.
The right wing of the Republican Party has as much power as they do because they show up to vote for every election, every year, in every district.
Just to be clear, I am not defending Biden or saying he is above criticism. He is absolutely wrong on Gaza. Where we disagree is about the amount of leverage we have to push the party in any direction. A competitive primary won't give us a candidate who's right about Gaza because that’s not where the party is as a whole. Threatening to vote third-party will just get you ignored and the candidate looking for Republican votes to make up for the loss.
It sucks, but the only way to change it is to see it as a decades-long project of small wins and fight it out for the long-haul. Republicans have literally been doing that since the end of Jim Crow, and they've almost completed their victory.
@OmegaLimit @anubis2814 @RustyBertrand you are partially correct. It is a decades-long battle of small wins and losses. Nobody is ignored. They are discounted - until they are not. The attitudinal shift must become apparent. And Gaza is hardly the only issue on which Biden is regarded as repugnant by many.