In the UK, our politics are currently similar. Our centre-left party is Labour, who are in government, but they’re losing popularity. Keir Starmer, the leader of Labour, has made Labour more moderate. They’ve lost some voters to the Reform party (populist right) but they’ve lost even more voters to parties that are left of Labour (Lib Dems and Greens).
There’s a left-wing Labour politician called Andy Burnham who has criticised Labour’s direction, and he said something which I think can apply to the US too:
They aren’t moderate they are where the far right was in 2000
Tell that to older gay people
I grew up in a gay family so I know all about this subject. I can argue that the democrats continuously moved farther right while using a few social justice issues as a smokescreen.
Bill Clinton tried triangulation (read: being more right wing) and the republicans tried to impeach him. Obama was right of Reagan and the republicans…tried to impeach him. If the GOP is going to fuck with democrats no matter what, let’s just elect some truly revolutionary people. I mean people who make Bernie Sanders look like Mitt Romney. People who make Cornel West look like Paul Ryan. We should be running people who start at “if your net worth is over $100 million you get to line up against the wall” and need to be negotiated down from there.
We can dream
We can do more than that.
Exactly. The next president should be very progressive - free health care for all, expand public services, get the 800 billionaires, millionaires and corporations to start paying taxes, increase teachers salary and minimum wage, make associate degrees free, no more bailing out industries/companies, get rid of monopolies, make paid pto mandatory of minimal 3 weeks. Call it project 2029 and create the manual for it now so that it’s actualized on day 1. I can dream can’t I? Maybe in 40 years this will be possible….
I voted for Obama in 2008 for exactly this reason, that was his platform. Then I watched from my hospital bed in 2010 (partial colonectomy due to diverticulitis) while they (the House and Senate) voted it down. I don’t know if he/they was/were corrupted by pharma money after the fact, or if he/they ever intended to follow through to begin with.
In the book Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, he quotes Obama where he makes the excuse that having Medicare for All would leave 3 million insurance workers out of a job. That would be like stifling the proliferation of electric lighting because of the impact it would have on the whaling industry.
Amen! I want Democrats to do all the things that Republicans accuse them of doing. I want them to do this because being reasonable is not winning brownie points with these people. The next president should tell America to get ready for a new national flag; we’re adding 3 more stars for Puerto Rico, Guam, and Washington DC!
I don’t view Democrat leadership as moderate at all. “Centrist”, just means Republican policies that boil the frog.
There are only two parties in that stupid place, what the hell would they think being diet right would do?
Make them money
No fucking shit, everyone knows this, even the democrats know this, most of them are just bought and paid for
I remember having mad respect for Biden for announcing his intention before 2020 of being a one term president.
It sickens me how much the Democrats dropped the ball.
Biden doesn’t get enough hate. If he had allowed real primaries, the Democratic candidate would have won easily. Trump won again because right wing Democrats fight harder against progressive Democrats than they do against Republicans.
That’s assuming the Democrats would even allow fair primaries. That shit has been rigged since forever.
True story
Exactly.
US Democrats are very conservative under their thin coat of identity politics. They would be considered way to the right of most European conservative parties.
They’re even shedding that after loosing in 2024. Slowly was doing it during the election but then once lost immediately threw trans people and minorities under the bus for the dems incompetence
I don’t think this is actually true. Perhaps on some very specific issues but as a whole I’d say no. They are certainly to the right of left wing parties but many conservatives in Europe have also shifted right in recent years.
I’ve seen leftist Americans say that Bernie Sanders would be considered a right wing conservative in Europe. These people have no idea what the political landscape actually looks like in Europe. Some still believe Europe is a soc-dem Valhalla, because we have healthcare here. But many centrist parties have shifted right in Europe even in the Nordics. For example the center left Danish Social Democrats have implemented hardline asylum policies.
Correct. Most people who say this are focused on healthcare and other social safety net issues. When you look at LGBTQ+ rights, or racial discrimination, or even abortion, Democrats are further to the left of lots of European parties. It can be a slog to get a European to admit they even have racial issues at all.
So obviously I can’t speak for all European countries, but I find it hard to see in what way the Dems would not be at least center-right here
yeah but center right isn’t more right wing than European conservatives. Parties like AfD, PVV, RN, Vlaams Belang are more to the right of European conservatives. Those are straight up fascists. Dems would still be considered liberals in Europe and I mean the old classic liberalism not the weird definition Americans use who think liberalism is a left leaning ideology like progressivism. And liberals are mostly center right to right wing in Europe.
Name a country in Europe where abortion, being gay are illegal or racial discrimination is so bad they have to overcorrect it with laws?
Russia
I disagree look at actual laws and policies, the rural and less educated areas might be loud but they don’t hold any power. Stares at Roe v Wade in the US.
Democrats generally support roe v wade so this is a poor example.
The difference is in the US the rural and uneducated people do hold the power.
Yeah they “supported” it so much it was overturned great clown logic.
That also was my point about the dumb dumbs having actual power in the US, so swing and two misses.
I never said they were competent. But I don’t think there’s much question that they genuinely support abortion rights. If you believe otherwise, the ruling of a court with a supermajority controlled by the opposing party is very poor evidence. The Democratic appointees all voted to preserve it.
It’s worse than that, in my opinion. The Dems feign incompetence to keep the game of distraction going. It’s like WWE to keep us all blaming our neighbors while they take away more of our rights a little at a time. They let Rowe v. Wade get overturned on purpose so they have something to harp about in the future.
Obama suspended habeus corpus which goes back to the frigging Magna Carta: all they need to do is call you a terrorist or a traitor and they can just disappear your ass. Rhetorical side note: how can Julian Assange have committed treason if he wasn’t an American to begin with?
Moderates? Maybe 30 years ago. As they shift the Overton window they stay in lockstep with Republicans as they shift to the right, filling the void left by Republicans. Policy wise they sit somewhere between GW Bush and first term Trump
Well things change, I guess supporting genocide is moderate these days.
“Modest”?
No, we have better language to use
Useless
Disingenuous
Paid actors
Servants to the ruling class
Inside traders
Purposefully weak
Blatantly dishonest
And the list could go on and on…
Controlled opposition.
Tell that to the NYT.
“Clever people say that once you become exactly like your opponent you will win elections!”
And even that wouldn’t work because this opponent would likely just move further right. Not sure there’s anywhere to go anymore, but they’d try.
Status quo has got to go.
Hey hey ho ho
Democrats and Republicans are two halves of the one party state in America
The “leadership” of the Democrat party sits to the right of several disparate further left factions. Because they don’t embrace any specific leftward direction, they are juggling half baked compromises instead of leading anywhere. Bold policies that would be approved of by one further left group are opposed by others, so they can’t go left without losing support somewhere. Staying where they are makes them moderately disagreeable for every one of the factions that can support and vote for them, so they are unpopular across the board. They are all but trapped not far enough to the right to contend for Republican votes, and not far enough left to propose anything truly different.
I see the candidacy of further left individuals (mostly at the local level for now, but this will move fast if the “leadership” collapses further) as the first serious mechanism to break this stalemate. Popular figures from city or state government aim for national positions frequently, so expect anyone standing out with how well they run things at the local level to make that pivot.
A similar thing is at play on the right. Christian fundamentalists, war hawk neoconservatives, the alt right, the would-be fascists, select business interests, nationalists, libertarians, and others are constantly battling over policy. At this moment about 70% of them are trying to ride Trump’s popularity and apparent effectiveness at making changes to get whatever is most important to them done before it’s too late. If the Republicans gain seats in 2026, that surface level unity will become even more significant, but once Trump is out of the picture, infighting is all but certain to resume on the right, and we’ll see weaker, “keep everyone happy” politicians take center stage again.
If both those processes play out with the right timing, we may get a true leftist running against a Jeb tier Republican in 2028 or 2032.
Quite an editorial about-face for Jacobin isn’t it.
…no?
Democrats are the furthest thing from “moderate”, they are on the extreme center. The idea that liberal centrism can’t be extremist is damaging. Supporting endless proxy warfare in Ukraine, genocide in Gaza and austerity at home are all irrational, extremist positions that the Democrats (and most liberal parties in other countries) believe in.
Get out of here with that Russian propaganda crap. Only 1 country is using Ukraine for a war and it’s Russia.
thank you for identifying this guy. His response to you clinched it.
Supporting peace isn’t “Russian propaganda”, 78% of Ukranians want a negotiated end to the war. If you want to keep fighting Russia then send your own damn troops and quit forcing Ukranians to die over an inter-imperial pissing match that’s killed almost their entire fighting age male population.
Personally I hope Ukrainians do what they want - if a majority of them really do want a negotiated end to the war then they should do that.
I bet most of them probably want Russia to ultimately leave Ukraine though, and if they want help in achieving that, then I think we should help Ukraine.
Oh, I’m sure the Ukrainians would love peace. too bad the Russians just want to wipe them out, so peace isn’t really an option for them
