• pjwestin@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        Half of those people lost, and one of the winner’s reelection campaign was going so badly that he had to resign. Meanwhile, the, “far-left,” alternative to them had more favorable polling numbers in the last 3 elections. After the last 10 years, I’m not sure there’s any serious way to argue that the center-left are the only ones who have a shot of winning.

          • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            Sanders. His polling numbers were better against Trump than the last three Democratic candidates, but the party leadership organized to block him in favor of centrist liberals. Biden was the only one of those liberals who was able to eke out a win against Trump, and he was on track to lose worse than Carter lost to Regan when he dropped his reelection bid.

              • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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                4 hours ago

                A) Poll numbers are all hypothetical. Non-hypothetical poll numbers are called election results. In every poll, Sanders was beating Trump by more points than any of the Democratic nominees. We’ll never know for sure if Sanders would have won, but our best evidence showed he would have performed better than the Democratic nominee.

                B) Yes, a coordinated effort by the Democratic party blocked Sanders in 2016 and 2020. He couldn’t overcome this institutional opposition, so the Democrats’ preferred candidates won the primaries. One of those candidates lost in 2016, while the other won in 2020 but imploded before 2024. We are currently living with the results of the Democrats’ attempts to select a, “centre-left winger who actually has a chance of winning,” and it turns out those results are almost entirely losses.

                  • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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                    2 hours ago

                    In 2008. Barack Obama beat Clinton by running an extremely progressive campaign, which included homeowner bailouts, universal healthcare, and ending our foreign wars. He then abandoned all of those promises and governed as a centrist.

                    It’s also worth noting that, despite being a centrist, Biden’s platform was very progressive. In fact, Bernie Sanders helped write it. Unfortunately, centrists like Manchin and Sinema killed that legislation, even though it was very popular.

                    A better question is how many times has a purely centrist message won? Because I’m struggling to think of an example besides Bill Clinton.

      • liyunxiao@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        Liberals are not left wing, the left starts at the abolition of capitalism. Without that they cannot back up any concept of equality or equity.

        • Rhoeri@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          I think you’re confusing the left with far left idealists. “Right wing” and “left wing” are symbolic terms that once represented the right and left sides of the French National Assembly during the French Revolution.

          So the “left” is referencing democrats/liberals, not anti-capitalists.

          You might want to either co-opt a different term, or better yet- come up with something new.

          • liyunxiao@sh.itjust.works
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            7 hours ago

            No matter how much you liberals whine, you’re not left wing. The left starts are the abolition of capitalism, as equality and equity cannot exist under capitalism.

            As far as the origin of the term… That’s not how language works. It evolves over time. The liberals haven’t been included in the left since you people appointed Hitler after instigating more than a decade of institutional violence against communists.

            You’re not left wing, you’re the exclusive reason fascists have ever gained power.

                • Rhoeri@lemmy.world
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                  6 hours ago

                  Are you running an LLM with basically no tokens?

                  I have no fucking idea what that even means, but… HOLY FUCKING SHIT! In one paragraph. You acknowledge that history can change the meaning of a term, and in another, you blatantly accuse modern day liberals of being fascist because of shit that happened in the 1930’s?

                  That is some Olympic-level mental gymnastics! And god dammed hilarious!

                  You’re definitely trolling. There’s no doubt.