Originally Posted by
Levelfive
I'm pretty far left, at least by American standards, and I don't think any of the Democrats running are "right wing," or even "blue dog" level of conservative Democrat, unless I'm forgetting somebody (and if they're that memorable, then...). I think they all share or at least espouse core progressive ideals. Clinton was to the left as Mitt Romney is to the right: a smarmy, unctuous corporatist, both of whom gave off an "I'd tell you the truth but you're too dumb to hear it" vibe every time they talked, which, in fairness, is probably true, and she still won the popular vote. If she had focused some energy and smarter microtargeting at non-degreed white folks in a handful of states, she very likely could have picked up the 78k votes needed to beat Trump. The finer points of the current candidates' economic worldviews are completely irrelevant--even if a progressive dream baby wins the election, no one's abolishing capitalism any time soon.
A couple other things to note about these intramural battles for the soul of the party, where we try to parse out who we are and who's truer and what voters really want and which policy issues to highlight, and try in various and usually insufficient ways to explain Trump's win, none of which really hold up to scrutiny (it was economic anxiety! except, it wasn't; it was uneducated people! mmm yeah, but it was educated people, too) but we don't even have to hurl tea leaves at each other: since tv became a thing, we have voted in the most charismatic, and when no actual charisma is in play, we have voted in the one with "strongest" personality (and we're generally content and dumb enough to extrapolate "strength" from never apologizing--which means Republicans). This, and some status threat, is why Obama voters became Trump voters. This muck we drag each other into is ultimately pretty useless. Republicans have spent the last 4 or 5 decades convincing parts of the country that Democrats are the Poindexters who made you feel bad in high school and want to take your stuff and give it to brown people, which counts just enough in the right states, while we're busy squabbling about purity or some other nonsense that keeps us from even being in a position to enact any policy. I've said many times that Democrats keep bringing cupcakes to a knife fight--I don't have to like it, but Skroe is right; we need to get fucking smarter.