You may have noticed that in recent weeks, the Biden administration has been rolling out a hell of a lot of new regulations. Earlier this month it wasĀ big student loan reformsĀ and aĀ massive improvement in how public lands are managed, then this week we hadĀ better pay and working conditionsĀ for working Americans,Ā minimum staffing ratiosĀ for nursing homes, and evenĀ improved service on airlines.
Thatās not only because itās an election year, though Joe & Kamala certainly do like to point out that where the Other Guy rages (andĀ wants to raise inflation!) theyāve been busy making Americansā lives better. But the bigger reason is that the administration wants to get new rules finalized prior to May, toĀ keep them from being tossed out in the next CongressĀ via the Congressional Review Act, which Donald Trump and his cronies used to reverse a bunch of Barack Obamaās environmental regulations.
. . . The requirement that coal plants find a way to eliminate 90 percent of their emissions by 2032 effectively accelerates the end of coal for power generation, which was inevitable anyway. Roughly 70 percent of US coal plants have already closed, and last year,Ā coal generated only 16 percentĀ of electric power, a new record low. In addition to the emissions rule,Ā three other final rulesĀ alsoĀ impose strict new limits on mercury, coal ash, and pollution of wastewater,Ā to put an end to the environmental degradation caused by coal.
. . . The other option, obviously, would be for utilities to meet coming demand with renewables, as administration officials pointed out when previewing the new rule. Thanks to the IRAās hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives, carbon-free power generation, including battery storage,Ā already beats the cost of building new gas plants.Ā Going forward, the administration is confident renewables will be the far more cost-effective and reliable way to meet increasing demand by 2032, when the emissions limits fully kick in.
Thatās going a lot further than I said. There are definitely left wing and right wing populists (i.e. Bernie and Trump) but most Americans arenāt policy wonks and donāt care a bit about left vs right political philosophy. These arenāt centrists because they arenāt on the line at all. However, a whole lot of those Americans have begun noticing that their money is somehow being taken by a tiny minority with obscene levels of wealth. These are the people that either sit out elections, or vote for a āreformā candidate. Trump, disingenuous as he is, effectively ran against the political establishment of both parties in 2016, while Hillary ran as a competent manager of the status quo.
What happens when the Democratic party runs after so called centrists with an establishment candidate is that they make right wing populism more attractive than left wing, and thatās where Trumpās base comes from. Itās not unique to America or post 2k politics, itās how fascism always gets a foothold. Itās all just 1930s Germany all over again. Itās really not a dynamic that is well illustrated by a one dimensional line from left to right. A lot of voters that get categorized as the extreme right are the most conducive to populist left wing politicians. A Bernie Sanders gets a far better response from them than a Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton ever will.
Actually it is true, but I canāt find the study at the moment. Itās specifically about House races, which I do admit are a bit different from the Senate or Presidency. Two seemingly contradictory things are actually true. Progressives do tend to lose in redder districts more than establishment candidates, but they also tend to perform better when measured against typical outcomes for that district. The resolution to that contradiction is that the establishment fiercely fights to keep progressives out of districts that Democrats might win so, the average district progressives run in is more republican than the average district establishment candidates run in. Whatās true in almost every race is that progressives do better at outperforming local historical outcomes in almost any district. Whether that gets translated into a better win/loss ratio is dependent on which districts progressives get to run in.
Here are a few of links I did come across when looking for that study. They donāt address it directly, but they do illustrate how the press struggles to map election dynamics to the left-right spectrum.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/12/how-to-turn-red-state-blue-purple-alaska-politics-2018-216304/
https://publicconsultation.org/redblue/new-study-finds-people-in-red-and-blue-districts-largely-agree-on-what-government-should-do/
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2018/05/09/purple-districts-elect-most-extreme-legislators-driving-polarization
Sounds plausible.
For local races, maybe. Senate and President, you have to win over the moderate behemoth.
Like Trump?
What the liberals and the media decry as āpolarizationā is contradictory to that assertion. It also masks the real behemoth which is Americans who think the government is controlled by money and that their needs are irrelevant.
Itās also contradicted by the fact that, right before every election, Democratic politicians consistently move their rhetoric to the left. Just look at all the sudden activity from the Biden administration. Well, not Hillary, but most.
BTW: If itās the moderates really deciding elections, why is nobody lecturing them? Why all the attention on a group that doesnāt matter (until liberals need a scapegoat)? This is just the liberal version of the fascist rhetoric āOur enemies are always both strong and weakā. Progressives are both critical and irrelevant, as needed.
What passes as centrism in politics is actually pro-corruption or pro-corporation. The fact is that left leaning policy is what wins over voters, even those that donāt consider themselves leftist. Furthermore, the Democratic establishment knows it and cynically uses it.
No one is lecturing Progressives. People are lecturing Leftists. Leftists have the numbers to give Republicans the win, since elections are so tight nowadays. But leftists donāt have the numbers to win primaries or dictate policy positions without playing a game of brinksmanship. āGive us our demands or weāll let the fascists winā is the only play that Leftists have because theyāre a small minority. And itās a shitty move, which is why theyāre being lectured.
Yes but not when itās coming from Leftists.
People are unbelievably, irredeemable stupid. See āAffordable Care Actā vs āObamacareā. See āI dunno why, I just donāt like the vibes of Hillary/Warren/Harrisā. See ādespite all the stats saying otherwise, I believe weāre in the middle of a CRIME EPIDEMICā.
And for the record, Trump did win over the moderate Republicans. Moderate Republicans are generally okay with extreme positions as long as their core demands are met. Democrat moderates need much more convincing.
Leftists range from progressives to communists, the vast majority of which are progressive in the US. You are trying to draw a very fine line here between two groups that almost completely overlap. In any case, you are wrong about nobody lecturing progressives.
Not if you exclude those that identify as progressives. If you include progressives, then the lie becomes the idea that leftists donāt show up. You keep making that assertion, and itās absolute fiction. There is no evidence whatsoever that a significant portion of those politically engaged enough to identify as leftists donāt show up for Democrats. What happens is that when the establishment fails to work with and reach out to progressives, they also fail to reach the fed-up Americans who have checked out of politics completely. Leftist/progressive policies are what drive engagement with many Americans who donāt identify as leftists.
Is this supposed to be an argument against leftists using brinkmanship? āItās your only weapon so you better not use it.ā I think your framing is nonsense, of course, but taken at face value it doesnāt really make the case you want it to. Also, the biggest factor hurting progressives is the myth that they canāt win in the general. Exit polls were crystal clear that Democratic voters favored Sanders on policy, but thought he couldnāt beat Trump. Polling on Biden vs Trump and Sanders vs Trump was nearly identical BTW, but you would never know that from the media coverage. Incidentally, Iām wondering if you are aware of how AOC unexpectedly beat Pelosiās protege. She didnāt focus on moderates, she focused on unlikely voters. Leftist policies are the key to grassroots outreach to disaffected (non)voters.
The āpeopleā you are talking about are the ones buried in the right wing media bubble. There is less than a 10% swing in approval ratings for Obamacare and the ACA.
Iām personally not big on the āVibesā of Hillary/Warren/Harris either, and Iām guessing that indicates Iām sexist or something? Warren at least has a leftist bent, even if she is cynically an establishment tool. Iāll take AOC/Porter/Omar please.
You might be a bit behind on the news, but itās recently surfaced that there were some major changes in how the FBI collects crime statistics that easily account for most of the drop Biden has been bragging on. Still, you are right that there is no evidence of a real āCRIME EPIDEMICā nationally. Still, we are not talking about people that are likely to vote for Democrats here.
There is no such thing as a moderate Republican. All the worst things done by the first Trump administration were driven by and perfectly consistent with āmoderateā Republican policies and rhetoric. Even January 6 was just the next logical step in Republican election rigging. Aside from the spectacle, it wasnāt much different than the Supreme Court putting W in office.