It talks about populism as a winning strategy. The article barely mentions whether Bernie would’ve won in 2016/2020 or not. Just a headline meant to get people to click, though obviously didn’t work with some of the posters here.
I wouldn’t have posted it if it was just about “would Bernie have won?” That’s something we’ve talked about ad infinitum here and not something Shakir or Klein think is relevant really. The article is just a transcript of Klein’s podcast episode with Shakir if you’d rather listen.
Thank you for posting that. I'm curious for your take. I'd say it's clear that Faiz didn't convince Ezra.
I think Faiz made lots of good points, as you do when discussing these issues. But he really, really didn't have a response to two important points:
1. Sure, describing the benefits of a policy can get people in a poll to say they love it. But those questions are hiding the downsides. The downsides, as it turns out, are highly unpopular. It's like saying, "we should all eat more steak. It's full of protein, it's easy to prepare and it tastes great!" When you frame it like that, how could you oppose it? But when you add, "oh, it's also high in calories, fat and cholesterol; it's expensive compared to other meat, and cattle farming is environmentally destructive," the picture changes, yes?
2. The Joe Manchin issue. Now, I've seen people dismiss this point as "we don't need WV anyway" which is fair at the presidential level but WV does have two Senators. Fine. The larger point is that it does not seem to be at all true that progressive candidates do well in non-liberal areas. Rather, the opposite seems to be true: people who live in purple areas want purple candidates. They don't want Bernie Sanders populism. Jared Golden was another name mentioned as a contrast to Bernie. Could be the same guy, but the voters are different.
Certainly the candidates think that tacking to the center is better than tacking to the left. It's weird for Faiz to attribute Manchin's success in WV to the way he connects with his constituents, and then ignore the fact that Manchin obviously thinks his constituents do not want Bernie Sanders policies for whatever reason. I mean, isn't that a real tension, if not full contradiction?
In general, Faiz's only response to this was "it's untested" at a national level. True. It's been tested at lower levels and the "tack center" view seems to be much better supported. But as you and I have discussed, it's true that we haven't tried it at a presidential level -- well, not exactly that. We've also discussed how it's hard to put up a risky, untested strategy when the stakes are so high. Each Senate seat we lose can take a long time to win back.
3. I guess the point is that it's always easy to find fault. Most of the progressive criticism of pragmatists is negative. It's, "you lost elections in 2000, 2004 and 2016 that you should have won" (we'll hold off on putting 2024 in there just yet). Yes, those elections were lost. Maybe Dems had a bad strategy. But what's the alternative? Ignoring the culture issues that seem to dominate the negative partisanship on the other side?
I don't watch Fox News, but my understanding from people who do is that culture war issues dominate there. And all the Trump people I interact with focus so much more on culture war issues than economic ones. Maybe that's just my crowd, but it's also true on this board. We get 10x the amount of anti-trans stuff from our conservative posters than any economic issue. We get a lot of cultural grievance of all stripes.
I get that you're aiming at the most persuadable 4-5%, but that's not much margin to work with. If we want to restore the Dem brand -- should that be necessary -- and start appealing more to the working classes in general, we're going to need more than 4%. And that means we're going to have to dive into the culture war stuff that seems to animate American politics so much more than economic issues.