Yes, and to be fair, i think his failure wasn’t due to a lack of desire. Biden is an institutionalist, past the point of logic and reason. My understanding is that they can procedurally remove the filibuster without a super majority at the beginning of each session, but he failed to consider eliminating it until late in his presidency. He also still refuses to entertain expanding the court; I know he couldn’t do it, but if they had any sense at all, they’d be running on it. He has to much, “respect,” for these institutions to do anything to change them, even as they crumble in the face of fascism.

There was literally only one serious opponent, and his name was Dean Phillips. He couldn’t get ballot access in all 50 states, and the Democrats drove him out of politics afterward.

I was about to downvote until I saw the community.

I mean, realistically, they’d adopt leftist talking points and then abandon them after they won, like they did in 2008.

Tim Kaine. A pro-Wall Street centrist.

I don’t think you can point to one specific thing that got Biden elected. Covid mismanagement was a huge part of it, but student debt relief and other progressive proposals that Bernie pushed the campaign into played a big part as well. Even with Covid, I think there’s a good chance that Biden would have lost if he’d run the same kind of centrist campaign that Harris and Clinton ran.

The party that ran a populist message won. When their economic situation is dire, people turn to populist leaders. When there’s no populist movement in the left (usually some for of socialist/labor movement) they turn to right-wing populism (fascism). Democrats spent the last 12 years stamping out any kind of pro-labor movement that started in their party in favor of neoliberal centrism, and now their losing to right-wing facism.

Edit: Oh, just saw the shit you added! You know, when a physicist finds out that their experiment contradicts their hypothesis, they have to admit their theory is wrong! They don’t just run the exact same experiment again in 8 years and expect a different outcome. That’s why physics is a real science and political science isn’t!

I mean, yeah, I think that’s unironically who they want to listen to. They’re waiting for someone to tell them why the choices the party made were actually good and smart and how all the left punching they did was actually justified. I’m not sure they’re going to get it, though; even the Pod Save America guys sounded on the verge of some self-reflection. But who knows, maybe they’ll blame Russian disinformation campaigns again and put their heads back in the sand.

I’m just so fucking tired of hearing why the policies that I and most of the country want are unpopular from people who can’t win a fucking election.

Yeah, except progressive positions are broadly popular. Raising billionaire and corporate taxes? Popular. Single-payer healthcare? Popular. Universal Basic Income?Popular. Bernie Sanders? Still pretty fucking popular!

Meanwhile, how popular was the flaccid centrist platform the Democrats put up this year? Is Kamala gonna be president? Are they gonna keep the Senate? Is the house looking good? No? Then maybe it’s time for all the popularity experts in the Democratic party to shut the fuck up.

Democrats aren’t progressives. Maybe if they were, they wouldn’t lose all the time.

Oh, I get to blame it on anything I like? Really? Then I’m going to blame it on Democratic party that was actively working against Sanders, a coordinated effort to anoint Biden after he won South Carolina, an actively hostile media, and a billionaire who spent his on money on anti-Bernie ads. There were more headwinds against Bernie in those primaries than there were against Hillary, Biden, and Kamala in the general. Stop pretending that it was just, “people picked Biden,” FFS.

You’re right, I forgot that Bloomberg was still in and running a campaign entirely designed to block Bernie. Nothing says, “Democracy,” like an oligarch entering an election and using his personal wealth to undermine another candidate, right?

Except it wasn’t just him and Bernie. It was also Warren, so the progressive vote was spit, while the centrist vote was coordinated around Biden. Nice try though!

I think you’re forgetting the part where Clinton paid off the DNC’s debts and became it’s only financial lifeline, for which DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz abdicated control of party to Clinton’s team long before she secured the nomination.. Or that the AP controversially called the primary for Hillary just before California voted, giving voters the impression the primary was over before voting finished. Or that the DNC argued in court that they had no obligation give Bernie a fair, democratic primary. Or that Representatives Ford and Smith admitted the party did coalesce around Biden in 2020 to block Bernie. Or that polls had Bernie beating Trump by a wider margin than Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020.

Yeah, it only voters were smart like the Harris campaign, who ran the exact same strategy Hillary ran in 2016 and lost by even more. That was the smart move, right?

So this aged great, huh?

Because he’s fucking right. Maybe the Democrats should start listening to people who are fucking right for once.

I’ll also add that you need to primary basically anyone that has been in politics for more than 15 years. There is just too much, “common sense,” in this party that is just wrong. In 2016, it was smart to run a centrist campaign that tried to move moderates away from Trump, and it failed. In 2024, they ran the same fucking campaign, and it failed.

There are well intentioned people that somehow still think that the 1992, third-way strategy will deliver gains through incrementalism, and it’s just not going to happen. Primary them, so that they at least have to contend with the new political realities. Trump picked up working class voters across across all demographics, not just the white working class. Everyone wants change; offer real change.

Then it sounds like the center really fucked up, doesn’t it?