• SwingingTheLamp
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    6 months ago

    You’d think so, but the history of the past 30 years shows that they’d rather lose, if it means maintaining the neoliberal economic order. As such, the DNC works entirely within a reductive paradigm under which they can only move in one dimension, right or left within that order. If they move one way, they’ll lose voters on the opposite flank, so they do the calculation and find that it’s better to move rightward.

    Of course, there’s good evidence that Bernie Sanders would’ve attracted a lot of voters who consider themselves Republican. To fit that into their paradigm, though, it would require that voters make a huge, discontinuous leap from right to left, which doesn’t parse. It makes sense though when you consider that those voters don’t see themselves as right or left, but rather felt like Sanders spoke to, and cared about, their (working-class) issues. (It’s also the rigidity of this paradigm which made Democrats rage about “Bernie Bros” in their party refusing to vote for Clinton, which in actuality wasn’t a thing.)

    The neoliberal economic order is very lucrative personally for our representatives, so good luck trying to get them to break from it.