ClashAndBurn

I have a feeling Ossoff will still win but the result may be a lot closer than polling indicated. Democratic counties are not hitting the benchmarks they need to be. KLB is cooked though. That race seems pretty much done enough to stick a fork in

The Jews are extremely livid at him for this take too. Saying he's made them less safe in America. And they've even been raging over what Kamala said too.

Well neoliberal triangulator extraordinaire Pete Buttigieg was technically gifted the win in Iowa in 2020 and got the most delegates. Bernie barely winning a plurality of voters there didn't really change anything meaningful in the trajectory of that primary season, with Biden coming in fifth place in the very next state, only to win the entire thing extremely convincingly (unfortunately). I'm just telling you, that triangulating on culture war issues is exactly what the Democratic nominee is going to do. Kamala was wishy-washy on the issue, sure, but she didn't even go as far as to say that she agreed with trans sports bans. Even Newsom was already triangulating when he was going on his own podcasts and being chummy with Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon, agreeing with them about the need to keep girl athletes safe from those roughhousing biological boys. I think the fundamental problem is that the liberals can throw trans people under the bus all they want, but voters won't trust that they're being genuine in doing so. Meanwhile, Beshear is probably the one I'd trust the most on the cultural issues, even though he unfortunately is unelectable due to a plethora of other reasons.

Arguably no elected official from any of those cities would really have anything special that would allow them to connect to Middle America any better than Kamala Harris would. Do you truly believe JB Pritzker, a billionaire governor, would have what it takes? He's probably less bad than Newsom, at any rate, but after the Skydance merger he personally allowed to go through, that's not really a high bar Generally they follow the exact same neoliberal policy prescriptions though. Obama campaigned as a hope and change candidate and governed as a neoliberal. If you're looking for meaningful differences, then maybe they're more willing to capitulate to the right on culture war issues. So I guess if we need to follow Third Way's doctrine that Dems need to triangulate on trans rights or abortion to pick up conservative voters in the Bible Belt, then yeah. Maybe we should just nominate Joe Manchin or something for 2028 at that point

Again, Obama was from CHICAGO which is about as close to a coastal elite as you can get in the Midwest (and even still, again, the dude came from Hawaii). Clinton won only because of Ross Perot ratfucking HW Bush, and even before him, Carter only won because Gerald Ford was an unpopular successor to a criminal president. Not being "from the coasts" doesn't make Democrats somehow less terrible or more able to get elected. In fact, those 60s Democrats were basically the last time Democrats even got elected to office on the merits of their own ideas (and even then, there's stolen election conspiracies surrounding the 1960 election) rather than how terrible their opponents are. Obama won purely because Bush tanked the economy and lied us into illegal, costly wars; and then he governed on a basis of Third Way neoliberalism and triangulation after lying his way into office. He's the leading reason people don't trust Democrats anymore, along with Clinton's embrace of NAFTA.

Biden sucks, and I consider him one of the most evil presidents to ever be elected, but... he was elected. Every other Democrat we've put forward has sucked too bad, whether it's a Tennessee Democrat like Al Gore or a coastal elite like John Kerry, Hillary or Kamala. Even Obama who was from Hawaii found his political home in Chicago, which is just as much a deep blue silo out of touch with middle America (the rest of Illinois) in the same way that NYC and LA are. No one cares about flyover country Democrats, which is why I see them becoming limited to only being a regional political party locked to the coasts in the 2030s like what Scotland and Quebec have. Joe Biden was also told twice that the country did not want him to be president and yet here we are where the only presidential elections Democrats have won since most of this forum have even been alive are the ones where Joe Biden was running at the top of the ticket. And at the end of the day, what does it say that the Democratic Party can produce NO BETTER OPTIONS than a candidate who has been completely rejected twice? AOC has a ceiling of 15% and honestly can only go down from there, not up. Middle America won't vote for Pete because they don't want to imagine a gay president having gay sex in the White House. Beshear can't ride to the White House on the name of his father the way he did to the Kentucky Governor's Mansion.

I think that culturally, Philadelphia is considered separate from the rest of the state in a similar way to how Georgia has Atlanta and... not-Atlanta. So Shapiro isn't considered a coastal elite the same way that Kamala and Gavin are and a mayor of Philadelphia would probably have a hard time getting elected governor like how we're seeing with Keisha Lance Bottoms down here. Pennsylvanians also aren't looked at with disdain by the rest of the country the way Californians are either, so there's that too.

Well, I just mean that if coastal Dems need to stick to their coastal silos for midterms, that by extension would pretty much mean that they suck too bad to run for President too and may as well not even try. That leaves you with a pool of mediocre candidates from flyover country that may poll well within their respective states (with the exception of Buttigieg who has zero appeal whether you're polling him in Indiana or Michigan), but have zero chance of translating to national success. The only Democrat to even have consistent success at the top of the ticket in the current millennium was a coastal Dem from Delaware running as VP and then for President.

In that case, none of them should even be bothering to run for president either. That pretty much disqualifies everyone being talked about except for Buttigieg (who can't win as a gay man), Beshear (nepo baby with zero charisma), Ossoff (who isn't running) and Shapiro (who also isn't running).

Younger ones, perhaps. But from what I can tell, the older ones that actually vote resent the Palestinian cause for what they view as superseding domestic issues and blame it for Trump being president again. So by extension there is a lot of resentment moment towards Arabs and especially Dearborn throughout the state.

Would you say this about AOC, who has actually been rejected by her fellow Dems and told to stay away from the campaign trail in swing states far more than Kamala has?

To be frank, @Communion I would never suggest Vindman would be polling better. In fact, I merely think that his losing the primary is a net good purely because it means that suburban wine moms aren't dumping endless piles of money into a race that he'd be losing probably even worse than Val "OFFICER DOWN!" Demings However, that money isn't really being circulated to other races. For example, Keisha Lance Bottoms is basically left twisting in the wind against the most evil gubernatorial candidate this state has seen since Eugene Talmadge (who was LITERALLY friendly with the KKK).

Where has the left actually done well where Democrats weren't already winning by double digits? If nothing else, if hasn't been a widespread phenomenon. Darializa, Claire Valdez, and Melat Kiros are just three progressive nominees out of a smorgasbord of normie Dems that won their primaries. Which just shows that the Democratic Party's actual base isn't looking for substantial change. They are happy with the direction the party was going in when it failed to win the presidency twice and almost flopped a third time in the middle against the exact same fascist wannabe dictator.

From the primaries, progressive candidates mostly flopped while Normie Dems thrived. Polling shows this trend continuing, where leftist candidates like Abdul El-Sayed and Angie Nixon are struggling even amidst strong blue wave level numbers for Democrats across the country. Granted, no Dem was expected to win in Florida, and Nixon wasn't really on anyone's radar, with everyone expecting Vindman to romp in the primary and become a massive money pit due to Ukrainegate. But El-Sayed underperforming, and Kat Abughazaleh failing… Moskowitz and DWS romping… the Left Tea Party just never really manifested. Unless you're talking about blue districts that became bluer, which doesn't really help you with flipping the House.

Polls aren't really representative when Republicans just simply are not responding to them and giving them a massive oversampling of Democrat voters