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 was big student loan reforms and a massive improvement in how public lands are managed, then this week we had better pay and working conditions for working Americans, minimum staffing ratios for nursing homes, and even improved service on airlines.
That’s not only because it’s an election year, though Joe & Kamala certainly do like to point out that where the Other Guy rages (and wants to raise inflation!) they’ve been busy making Americans’ lives better. But the bigger reason is that the administration wants to get new rules finalized prior to May, to keep them from being tossed out in the next Congress via the Congressional Review Act, which Donald Trump and his cronies used to reverse a bunch of Barack Obama’s 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, coal generated only 16 percent of electric power, a new record low. In addition to the emissions rule, three other final rules also impose strict new limits on mercury, coal ash, and pollution of wastewater, 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 IRA’s hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives, carbon-free power generation, including battery storage, already beats the cost of building new gas plants. 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.
That’s going a lot further than I said. There are definitely left wing and right wing populists (i.e. Bernie and Trump) but most Americans aren’t policy wonks and don’t care a bit about left vs right political philosophy. These aren’t centrists because they aren’t 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 “reform” 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 that’s where Trump’s base comes from. It’s not unique to America or post 2k politics, it’s how fascism always gets a foothold. It’s all just 1930s Germany all over again. It’s 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 can’t find the study at the moment. It’s 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. What’s 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 don’t 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 “polarization” 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.
It’s 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 it’s the moderates really deciding elections, why is nobody lecturing them? Why all the attention on a group that doesn’t matter (until liberals need a scapegoat)? This is just the liberal version of the fascist rhetoric “Our enemies are always both strong and weak”. 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 don’t 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 don’t have the numbers to win primaries or dictate policy positions without playing a game of brinksmanship. “Give us our demands or we’ll let the fascists win” is the only play that Leftists have because they’re a small minority. And it’s a shitty move, which is why they’re being lectured.
Yes but not when it’s coming from Leftists.
People are unbelievably, irredeemable stupid. See “Affordable Care Act” vs “Obamacare”. See “I dunno why, I just don’t like the vibes of Hillary/Warren/Harris”. See “despite all the stats saying otherwise, I believe we’re in the middle of a CRIME EPIDEMIC”.
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 don’t show up. You keep making that assertion, and it’s absolute fiction. There is no evidence whatsoever that a significant portion of those politically engaged enough to identify as leftists don’t 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 don’t identify as leftists.
Is this supposed to be an argument against leftists using brinkmanship? “It’s your only weapon so you better not use it.” I think your framing is nonsense, of course, but taken at face value it doesn’t really make the case you want it to. Also, the biggest factor hurting progressives is the myth that they can’t win in the general. Exit polls were crystal clear that Democratic voters favored Sanders on policy, but thought he couldn’t 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, I’m wondering if you are aware of how AOC unexpectedly beat Pelosi’s protege. She didn’t focus on moderates, she focused on unlikely voters. Leftist policies are the key to grassroots outreach to disaffected (non)voters.
The “people” 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.
I’m personally not big on the “Vibes” of Hillary/Warren/Harris either, and I’m guessing that indicates I’m sexist or something? Warren at least has a leftist bent, even if she is cynically an establishment tool. I’ll take AOC/Porter/Omar please.
You might be a bit behind on the news, but it’s 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 “CRIME EPIDEMIC” 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 “moderate” Republican policies and rhetoric. Even January 6 was just the next logical step in Republican election rigging. Aside from the spectacle, it wasn’t much different than the Supreme Court putting W in office.