Voters perceived Harris and Dems as too liberal? Harris and Dems are too liberal. Until 100 days before the election, Harris supported the de facto legalization of drug dealing and use, so felony convictions would not trigger deportations.
Harris has supported the banning of fracking, EV mandates, and the end of ICE.engines in 10 years. She demanded transgender surgery, at taxpayer expense, for convicted prisoners and the undocumented, as well as young children.
Kamala authored legislation that removed incarceration, as possible punishment, for thefts under $950 in CA, per instance. The next time it takes 20 minutes to buy toothpaste at CVS, because it is locked up like nuclear material, thank Harris. Harris has championed bail reform, and en mass, early prison release. As a DA in SF, she refused to charge the death penalty and to charge minors as adults, even for the most heinous crimes.
Reps, actually, did a very poor job, of describing just how liberal Harris has been, her entire career. She viewed he SF DA and CA AG jobs as mostly ceremonial. Harris was, by far, the most liberal Presidential candidate in US history, before Dems opened the border, and waved in 10 million, unvetted migrants. Dems do not have a perception problem. They have a policy problem.
The canary in the coal mine is Seth Moulton. Democratic congressman from MA, so a safe district. He got a lot of pushback from the Left for saying he didn't want his daughters to be run over by transgender athletes. Local officials in his hometown of Salem engaged in a witch hunt and were supported by other officials including the governor. There is talk of a primary challenge. If that gains traction, the entire premise of this substack is in question.
You're 100% right. Consider the fate of the "Progressive DA" movement in the bluest of blue cities of the bluest of blue states. These people are reviled in the safest districts, and 'progressives' want to go national with this shit?
We actually have three major parties in America: Republican, Democrat, and Progressive.
Republicans are united.....mostly against Progressives.
Democrats will continue to be the losers until progressives decide it's more important to win than to feel "right." You can see this in progressives' takes on the election. They never say they were wrong. They just blame Trump voters for being "low information" or "uninformed." Blaming the loss on "messaging."
The Democratic Party is a holy mess. And progressives are seeing to it that it remains that way.
Four since MAGA is a different thing than the GOPe. What we need is populist fusion like in the days of William Jennings Bryan. In a policy sense, Trump and Bernie Sanders 1.0 have more in common with each other than either has with Hillary Clinton or George Bush.
The party's problem is that, while the average Dem is moderate, the progressive wing wields massively outsized influence over even moderate politicians. The party's average preference is not, in fact, its preferred or revealed preference. This is because leadership continually panders to the left. Harris is the quintessential example of this. I was a huge supporter of hers in 2019 when she entered the race as a candidate. My thought was that she could add a strong, moderate voice and possibly bring some sanity to the increasingly crazy ideas around law enforcement.
I was quickly disabused of this notion and left disgusted with a person who, being former law enforcement, had to know her new views were 1) total BS and 2) likely to end up with more people of color being killed in preventable violent crime. She was also a terrible candidate and was a complete liability as VP.
Her campaign appeared to be to try and void her earlier stances and pretend they never happened. Worse, she then became Ms. "I am former law enforcement." That was literally disgusting.
Long story short...she was never going to convince voters of her return to being a moderate after her stint as a progressive without calling out the party's insane wing. Her unwillingness to make this commitment and her previous very progressive stances left most swing voters confident she would run as a progressive. I did not vote for Trump but could not bring myself to vote for her.
This was exacerbated by Biden, who ran a transitional, moderate candidate who was going to return things to normal.... only to become a progressive on issues like the border (I say this as someone who wants more immigration, and my big gripe is that his idiotic pandering has caused a massive backlash), trans females playing female sports, supporting Lina Khan as she began her chaotic campaign to address whatever it was she was trying to address, joining team "transitory inflation" and then trying to run again when it was or should have been obvious he was not fit. Remember the entire "Biden is the next FDR?" Guess what...a sizeable portion of those voters who did not show up in 2024 or who flipped to Trump were likely swing voter types disgusted with Trump but willing to give a moderate Dem the benefit of the doubt...the so called double haters ended up swinging hard for Trump in 2024. My guess is stuff like the FDR thing played into their decision.
The entire project was a complete debacle, and the inability of Democrat leadership to see how they were empowering the individual they claimed was an existential threat to democracy is unforgivable.
Bill Clinton won a second term because he governed as a moderate after winning while claiming he would be a moderate. The Dems, who as a party amplify and spend most of their energy pushing ideas that even moderate Dems find questionable, need a candidate with a credible moderate record (as Biden was in 2020 when he won) but who then also avoids the Warren, Sanders, AOC's of the party and governs in a manner consistent with his promises.
I know there will be a lot of the "But Trump did..." type comments. And I agree that Trump does a lot of bad things. But guess what, no one is surprised when he does these things. The guy may lie constantly about specifics but he governs in a manner that is not really surprising to anyone. Both Reps and Dems know what they are getting with him. The reason he can get away with so much is because America is slightly right of center and the Dems message (and true preferences in terms of how they expend political capital) is very far from the center...It may not be right or fair but reality is like that.
Democrat Representatives in the House, including most of the women, have consistently voted in favor of prioritizing the demands of trans activists over the rights of girls and women. My Democrat friends will tell me that these politicians "don't represent" the priorities of most Democrats. LOL!!
Liberals aren't the left flank. The 95 House members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are the albatross. Legacy media is full of people who are much farther to the left of progressives, such as being in the Free Palestine cult, and they're managed by spineless progressives.
I would also add that when the media asks them or they are in a congressional hearing, they turn into attack dogs for the most progressive issues. They don't even listen or seem concerned about the American people. Rather, they childishly try to discredit witnesses, change the subject, or outright mock people (Plaskett, Crockett, AOC, Goldman, DWS, and Raskin ) They seem disgusted they might have to hear another viewpoint and don't seem especially interested in learning about or solving problems that affect the whole country. The censorship hearing stands out here. They never voice their opposition and always vote for the most progressive bill. That's why people don't buy what they sell. They seem to revel in mean girl tactics, not governing.
Im a center right Democrat and am not all all sure that I’m staying with the party but there’s no where yet to go. I agree with the overall point here, but this piece is predictably in the let’s blame Harris camp of post mortems - which to date have been generally devoid of value. So I thought she was an attractive candidate, did,not make any bad missteps, has several spectacular moments, crushed him in a debate, and essentially doubled the chances of winning over those of Joe Biden after his debate performance. She was handed a sack’of s**t in late June and did as wel, or better with it than anyone else would have. There is no conceivable way she could have shifted the country’s perceptions of’Democrats in 3 months.
It's interesting how people can see things so differently. I saw a candidate that refused to discuss policy, who didn't do a presser for six weeks and then refused to answer questions but went with the 'joy.' I saw a candidate that thought celebrities had sway, i saw a candidate that almost exclusively focused on "Hitler" and abortion. I saw a candidate that blew the softest of softballs. I saw a candidate who didn't address either inflation or immigration with specifics, the two #1 issues for voters. I saw a candidate getting asked yes or no questions and when she was finished answering five minutes later I had no clue what she said. She spent billions, and had media cheerleaders promoting her. She didn't give me a single reason to vote for her.
It's not a "flank." It's the faction that is going to execute a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party. People who prioritize economic growth, the rights of the working class, and patriotism over climate absolutism, unchecked immigration, and abortion now have a natural home in the Republican Party (itself the subject of a hostile takeover by Trump). The liberal "flank" will argue (rightly, in my opinion) that the Democratic Party needs to stand for a definite set of distinct values rather than seek to find messaging that tells voters they believe in the same things as Trump does, only better. Of course, the principles of the liberal faction will doom the Democrats to the electoral wilderness for years, but a new centrist party may well emerge on the scaffolding of the Trump Republican populist party. The liberal elitist Democrats and the traditionalist conservative elitists can form their own ideologically pure parties to nip at the centrists from the two extremes.
This is largely correct. The Democrats have paid the price for the Progressives' constant prattle about "white privilege", "sexism", lack of belief in individual effort as leading to success, etc., etc. But, that leaves the primordial question of how to get elected but to do so without dropping the fast-eroding possibility to seize the "Lampedusa moment" on climate change, to make the engineering changes that can be made to save more or less the current standard of living, which the voters clearly demand. If it comes crashing down on us in ways that can't be mitigated (including mass climate migration as well as environmental disasters), that will really be the end of democracy and the standard of living. I don't have a magic solution for this (other than to find a Roosevelt to sound the Call to Arms, as he did in 1940-41), but I am disturbed by sweeping the climate issue up into the general problem of far-left activism as a detriment to the Democrats. Time is of the essence.
I agree with you, and as most economists recognize, the closest thing to a "silver bullet" to accelerate the inevitable transition away from fossil fuels in a gradual, non-disruptive way, is by taxing carbon emissions. This runs counter to "economic populism," but would be more politically acceptable if explicitly coupled with funding of other programs such as Social Security and cuts in other taxes.
Also, someone with good sense should really try to speak to the NYT, WAPO, CNN, Fox, and MSNBC. They make Democrats look horrible with their singular focus of identity issues.
"Past research from More In Common has shown that Progressive Activists hold much more left-wing views than the public at large on several issues as well. For example, nearly everyone in this faction says they have “no doubts” about the prevalence of white privilege and sexism in America. Compared to the average American, they are also three times more likely to say that people’s outcomes result from “luck and circumstance” (75 percent vs. 25 percent), almost three times more likely to be “ashamed to be an American” (69 percent vs. 24 percent), and far more likely to say they are proud of their political ideology (64 percent vs. 43 percent).
Progressive Activists are also among the most politically engaged groups in American society, meaning their views are more present (and often louder) in public life than those of other groups. In a highly polarized country like ours, voters may necessarily attribute this faction’s policy preferences and moral attitudes to the party closest to them on the ideological spectrum."
Bingo.
And those more loud and engaged progressive activists dominate the media and other institutions of influence... and so the people have been bombarded with this messaging and narratives branding the Democrat party.
And one more thing. I live among so called moderate Democrats that would never oppose the woke ideology and many would wield it as political fodder. It was lazy and weak (and probably immoral) of them to do so if they never really supported it. Sorry, they don't get amnesty for making a pact with the devil.
Your math is a bit odd. " On average, respondents gave Harris a score of 2.5 and Trump a score of 7.8, putting Harris closer to the left flank than Trump was to the right."
2.5 and 7.8 means Harris is 2.5 points from the far left and Trump is only 2.2 points from the far right, which does not appear to match your description.
"But the study also found that many voters believed the views of the Democrats’ most liberal wing—a faction More In Common refers to as “Progressive Activists”—reflected those of the average Democrat as well."
So my question is how does the Republican party get away with not being tarred with some of the more extreme views of its activists?
It’s a fair question. I think it’s in large part because Trump is the party’s standard-bearer, and voters actually don’t view him as all that ideological or ideologically conservative. He has taken firm steps to distance himself (at least rhetorically) from the unpopular parts of the party’s right flank, including on abortion bans and Project 2025. I think if the GOP had nominated a social conservative like, say, Mike Pence, they would be paying a steeper penalty on that stuff.
Additionally, as the Third Way and Gallup surveys have shown, America is a center-right country, so there is probably slightly more tolerance for the excesses of the right than those of the left.
Voters perceived Harris and Dems as too liberal? Harris and Dems are too liberal. Until 100 days before the election, Harris supported the de facto legalization of drug dealing and use, so felony convictions would not trigger deportations.
Harris has supported the banning of fracking, EV mandates, and the end of ICE.engines in 10 years. She demanded transgender surgery, at taxpayer expense, for convicted prisoners and the undocumented, as well as young children.
Kamala authored legislation that removed incarceration, as possible punishment, for thefts under $950 in CA, per instance. The next time it takes 20 minutes to buy toothpaste at CVS, because it is locked up like nuclear material, thank Harris. Harris has championed bail reform, and en mass, early prison release. As a DA in SF, she refused to charge the death penalty and to charge minors as adults, even for the most heinous crimes.
Reps, actually, did a very poor job, of describing just how liberal Harris has been, her entire career. She viewed he SF DA and CA AG jobs as mostly ceremonial. Harris was, by far, the most liberal Presidential candidate in US history, before Dems opened the border, and waved in 10 million, unvetted migrants. Dems do not have a perception problem. They have a policy problem.
The canary in the coal mine is Seth Moulton. Democratic congressman from MA, so a safe district. He got a lot of pushback from the Left for saying he didn't want his daughters to be run over by transgender athletes. Local officials in his hometown of Salem engaged in a witch hunt and were supported by other officials including the governor. There is talk of a primary challenge. If that gains traction, the entire premise of this substack is in question.
You're 100% right. Consider the fate of the "Progressive DA" movement in the bluest of blue cities of the bluest of blue states. These people are reviled in the safest districts, and 'progressives' want to go national with this shit?
We actually have three major parties in America: Republican, Democrat, and Progressive.
Republicans are united.....mostly against Progressives.
Democrats will continue to be the losers until progressives decide it's more important to win than to feel "right." You can see this in progressives' takes on the election. They never say they were wrong. They just blame Trump voters for being "low information" or "uninformed." Blaming the loss on "messaging."
The Democratic Party is a holy mess. And progressives are seeing to it that it remains that way.
Four since MAGA is a different thing than the GOPe. What we need is populist fusion like in the days of William Jennings Bryan. In a policy sense, Trump and Bernie Sanders 1.0 have more in common with each other than either has with Hillary Clinton or George Bush.
The party's problem is that, while the average Dem is moderate, the progressive wing wields massively outsized influence over even moderate politicians. The party's average preference is not, in fact, its preferred or revealed preference. This is because leadership continually panders to the left. Harris is the quintessential example of this. I was a huge supporter of hers in 2019 when she entered the race as a candidate. My thought was that she could add a strong, moderate voice and possibly bring some sanity to the increasingly crazy ideas around law enforcement.
I was quickly disabused of this notion and left disgusted with a person who, being former law enforcement, had to know her new views were 1) total BS and 2) likely to end up with more people of color being killed in preventable violent crime. She was also a terrible candidate and was a complete liability as VP.
Her campaign appeared to be to try and void her earlier stances and pretend they never happened. Worse, she then became Ms. "I am former law enforcement." That was literally disgusting.
Long story short...she was never going to convince voters of her return to being a moderate after her stint as a progressive without calling out the party's insane wing. Her unwillingness to make this commitment and her previous very progressive stances left most swing voters confident she would run as a progressive. I did not vote for Trump but could not bring myself to vote for her.
This was exacerbated by Biden, who ran a transitional, moderate candidate who was going to return things to normal.... only to become a progressive on issues like the border (I say this as someone who wants more immigration, and my big gripe is that his idiotic pandering has caused a massive backlash), trans females playing female sports, supporting Lina Khan as she began her chaotic campaign to address whatever it was she was trying to address, joining team "transitory inflation" and then trying to run again when it was or should have been obvious he was not fit. Remember the entire "Biden is the next FDR?" Guess what...a sizeable portion of those voters who did not show up in 2024 or who flipped to Trump were likely swing voter types disgusted with Trump but willing to give a moderate Dem the benefit of the doubt...the so called double haters ended up swinging hard for Trump in 2024. My guess is stuff like the FDR thing played into their decision.
The entire project was a complete debacle, and the inability of Democrat leadership to see how they were empowering the individual they claimed was an existential threat to democracy is unforgivable.
Bill Clinton won a second term because he governed as a moderate after winning while claiming he would be a moderate. The Dems, who as a party amplify and spend most of their energy pushing ideas that even moderate Dems find questionable, need a candidate with a credible moderate record (as Biden was in 2020 when he won) but who then also avoids the Warren, Sanders, AOC's of the party and governs in a manner consistent with his promises.
I know there will be a lot of the "But Trump did..." type comments. And I agree that Trump does a lot of bad things. But guess what, no one is surprised when he does these things. The guy may lie constantly about specifics but he governs in a manner that is not really surprising to anyone. Both Reps and Dems know what they are getting with him. The reason he can get away with so much is because America is slightly right of center and the Dems message (and true preferences in terms of how they expend political capital) is very far from the center...It may not be right or fair but reality is like that.
Democrat Representatives in the House, including most of the women, have consistently voted in favor of prioritizing the demands of trans activists over the rights of girls and women. My Democrat friends will tell me that these politicians "don't represent" the priorities of most Democrats. LOL!!
If the liberal dems are the left-flank albatross, what is the elite media? The super duper albatross?
Liberals aren't the left flank. The 95 House members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are the albatross. Legacy media is full of people who are much farther to the left of progressives, such as being in the Free Palestine cult, and they're managed by spineless progressives.
This on progressives.. Lack of patriotism 😡
almost three times more likely to be “ashamed to be an American” (69 percent vs. 24 percent),
I would also add that when the media asks them or they are in a congressional hearing, they turn into attack dogs for the most progressive issues. They don't even listen or seem concerned about the American people. Rather, they childishly try to discredit witnesses, change the subject, or outright mock people (Plaskett, Crockett, AOC, Goldman, DWS, and Raskin ) They seem disgusted they might have to hear another viewpoint and don't seem especially interested in learning about or solving problems that affect the whole country. The censorship hearing stands out here. They never voice their opposition and always vote for the most progressive bill. That's why people don't buy what they sell. They seem to revel in mean girl tactics, not governing.
Im a center right Democrat and am not all all sure that I’m staying with the party but there’s no where yet to go. I agree with the overall point here, but this piece is predictably in the let’s blame Harris camp of post mortems - which to date have been generally devoid of value. So I thought she was an attractive candidate, did,not make any bad missteps, has several spectacular moments, crushed him in a debate, and essentially doubled the chances of winning over those of Joe Biden after his debate performance. She was handed a sack’of s**t in late June and did as wel, or better with it than anyone else would have. There is no conceivable way she could have shifted the country’s perceptions of’Democrats in 3 months.
It's interesting how people can see things so differently. I saw a candidate that refused to discuss policy, who didn't do a presser for six weeks and then refused to answer questions but went with the 'joy.' I saw a candidate that thought celebrities had sway, i saw a candidate that almost exclusively focused on "Hitler" and abortion. I saw a candidate that blew the softest of softballs. I saw a candidate who didn't address either inflation or immigration with specifics, the two #1 issues for voters. I saw a candidate getting asked yes or no questions and when she was finished answering five minutes later I had no clue what she said. She spent billions, and had media cheerleaders promoting her. She didn't give me a single reason to vote for her.
Doesn’t sound like you had any reasons to start with. In any case we simply disagree. No point in any other discussion
It's not a "flank." It's the faction that is going to execute a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party. People who prioritize economic growth, the rights of the working class, and patriotism over climate absolutism, unchecked immigration, and abortion now have a natural home in the Republican Party (itself the subject of a hostile takeover by Trump). The liberal "flank" will argue (rightly, in my opinion) that the Democratic Party needs to stand for a definite set of distinct values rather than seek to find messaging that tells voters they believe in the same things as Trump does, only better. Of course, the principles of the liberal faction will doom the Democrats to the electoral wilderness for years, but a new centrist party may well emerge on the scaffolding of the Trump Republican populist party. The liberal elitist Democrats and the traditionalist conservative elitists can form their own ideologically pure parties to nip at the centrists from the two extremes.
This is largely correct. The Democrats have paid the price for the Progressives' constant prattle about "white privilege", "sexism", lack of belief in individual effort as leading to success, etc., etc. But, that leaves the primordial question of how to get elected but to do so without dropping the fast-eroding possibility to seize the "Lampedusa moment" on climate change, to make the engineering changes that can be made to save more or less the current standard of living, which the voters clearly demand. If it comes crashing down on us in ways that can't be mitigated (including mass climate migration as well as environmental disasters), that will really be the end of democracy and the standard of living. I don't have a magic solution for this (other than to find a Roosevelt to sound the Call to Arms, as he did in 1940-41), but I am disturbed by sweeping the climate issue up into the general problem of far-left activism as a detriment to the Democrats. Time is of the essence.
I agree with you, and as most economists recognize, the closest thing to a "silver bullet" to accelerate the inevitable transition away from fossil fuels in a gradual, non-disruptive way, is by taxing carbon emissions. This runs counter to "economic populism," but would be more politically acceptable if explicitly coupled with funding of other programs such as Social Security and cuts in other taxes.
Also, someone with good sense should really try to speak to the NYT, WAPO, CNN, Fox, and MSNBC. They make Democrats look horrible with their singular focus of identity issues.
"Past research from More In Common has shown that Progressive Activists hold much more left-wing views than the public at large on several issues as well. For example, nearly everyone in this faction says they have “no doubts” about the prevalence of white privilege and sexism in America. Compared to the average American, they are also three times more likely to say that people’s outcomes result from “luck and circumstance” (75 percent vs. 25 percent), almost three times more likely to be “ashamed to be an American” (69 percent vs. 24 percent), and far more likely to say they are proud of their political ideology (64 percent vs. 43 percent).
Progressive Activists are also among the most politically engaged groups in American society, meaning their views are more present (and often louder) in public life than those of other groups. In a highly polarized country like ours, voters may necessarily attribute this faction’s policy preferences and moral attitudes to the party closest to them on the ideological spectrum."
Bingo.
And those more loud and engaged progressive activists dominate the media and other institutions of influence... and so the people have been bombarded with this messaging and narratives branding the Democrat party.
And one more thing. I live among so called moderate Democrats that would never oppose the woke ideology and many would wield it as political fodder. It was lazy and weak (and probably immoral) of them to do so if they never really supported it. Sorry, they don't get amnesty for making a pact with the devil.
Your math is a bit odd. " On average, respondents gave Harris a score of 2.5 and Trump a score of 7.8, putting Harris closer to the left flank than Trump was to the right."
2.5 and 7.8 means Harris is 2.5 points from the far left and Trump is only 2.2 points from the far right, which does not appear to match your description.
"But the study also found that many voters believed the views of the Democrats’ most liberal wing—a faction More In Common refers to as “Progressive Activists”—reflected those of the average Democrat as well."
So my question is how does the Republican party get away with not being tarred with some of the more extreme views of its activists?
It’s a fair question. I think it’s in large part because Trump is the party’s standard-bearer, and voters actually don’t view him as all that ideological or ideologically conservative. He has taken firm steps to distance himself (at least rhetorically) from the unpopular parts of the party’s right flank, including on abortion bans and Project 2025. I think if the GOP had nominated a social conservative like, say, Mike Pence, they would be paying a steeper penalty on that stuff.
Additionally, as the Third Way and Gallup surveys have shown, America is a center-right country, so there is probably slightly more tolerance for the excesses of the right than those of the left.