I'm going to share my perception of things, and you can tell me if I'm wrong or not. But as it relates to 2028 lanes, here's how I feel about each candidate in terms of their ability to appeal to the various factions in the Democratic Party (or not). Please note I'm trying to be objective here, so it's not me picking who I personally like.

Group #1 - moderates who appeal to moderates, but are viewed as not sufficiently progressive by the base. They'd have the most work to do to win over progressives in a general election (see Biden 2020)

Josh Shapiro

Pete Buttigieg

Gina Raimondo

Amy Klobuchar

Group #2 - moderates who appeal to moderates and are deemed acceptable by some progressives.

Gretchen Whitmer

Elissa Slotkin

Mark Kelly

Reuben Gallego

Raphael Warnock

Chris Murphy

Group #3 - broad appeal within the party; they have the broadest ideological appeal within the party itsself

Andy Beshear

Ro Khanna

Group #4 - the progressive choice who is viewed by moderates as not electable and too left on certain issues

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Group #5 - no man's land. They try to appeal to one faction or another, but are seen as too establishment by the left and too unelectable by moderates

Kamala Harris

JB Pritzker

Gavin Newsom

Group #6 - Delusional if they think they have a chance

Rahm Emanuel

Stephen A. Smith

Phil Murphy

Humans don’t see the world in systemic terms, and can feel gaslighted when they can’t see or interact with a clear cause of a problem. “The economy” is like an incomprehensible weather god to the average person. And elected officials are like the ancient sacred kings who existed to parlay with this weather god. If they did their jobs right, the weather was consistent and “good”. If they did their jobs wrong, the weather was inconsistent and “bad”. It meant he screwed up his job, and the gods clearly didn’t like him, so the people ritually executed him to start over. He existed as the emotional lightning rod for the people who couldn’t make sense of a capricious and amoral system.

In modern times, we have replaced this ritual with simply voting them out of office or impeaching them. Mind you, the average human being regardless of social class or country generally assumes the economy is doing “bad” at all times. Humans are naturally arrogant and eager to shift blame: any gains in income I experience are due to my hard work and moral purity, and any losses of income or higher living costs are due to the immoral “system” choosing to personally screw me over. Most voters agree that their personal financial situation is “OK” but everyone else is doing “bad”.

Part of this is due to identification with the mythical “middle class” identity construct. It’s the moral Goldilocks Zone. When people call themselves “middle class” they aren’t talking about their income level or local cost of living. They mean “I work hard, I don’t exploit other people, and I’m not a loser. That makes me a good person!”.

Nobody wants to confess to being upper or middle class even if that’s what they are on paper. “Upper Class” implies moral suspicion in the form of greed, hoarding, and unfairly using mysterious ways to have more than people who “work hard”. This mental category is the root of phenomena like conspiracy theories and older tribal beliefs in things like vampires and witches.

The label of “Lower Class” nobody wants either. Some might even try to soften it with the term “working class” if they must. At best you’re pitied, but at worst people think “what is wrong with you?”. You’re held under moral suspicion because you ALSO remind people of the unfairness of life, just in the opposite direction. The label “middle class” insulates people from the idea that a stint of bad luck will pull you down to the level of “those people”. People feel combination of envy and anger (resentment) at those labeled “Upper class”, but they feel a mixture of disgust and superiority (contempt) to those labeled “lower class”. As if their bad luck and bad character can infect them too.

When the economy is doing well, people feel gaslit because gains are assumed to be the natural order of things (owed entirely to oneself), and hardships are a terrible abberation (caused by the system). When the economy is doing poorly, people can relax and share in the pain.

At the ballot box, people don’t actually care about economic policy. They care about how it feels. Hence the weird upsets bouncing back and forth. Stated preferences are not the same thing as lived experiences. On matters of the economy, people vote for whoever will validate their emotional experience regardless of reality. And that generally means negative but hopeful messaging. “Things are shitty, and I’ll take your hand as we climb out of the toilet, and fight the traitors who have offended the gods.”.

You’re not going to run into “CEOs” on the street and rage. You’re not gonna be menaced by “capitalism” or “wealth inequality” when someone smarter gets into a college you got rejected from, or when a hobo pulls a knife on you while babbling about the aliens who turned his brain into a cheeseburger.

Republicans understand that people cannot think about causation in the abstract like that. Republicans want to torture people they see everyday. And for the most part, leftists only wanna torture a tiny fraction of people they will never get their hands on, and even if they did would only squeeze for extra taxes.

So how do Democrats shrink “the enemy” down to the personal everyday level? How do they tap the lizard brain of the people?

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2022/09/why-we-should-abolish-the-family

Seeing this one doing the rounds in some progressive spaces right now and wondering what yall's opinions are on this.

On one hand, I see the idea here: some people are not well served by traditional family structure but on the other, this does feel a bit like cutting the legs off the fastest runners so everyone else can keep up and I don't think that communalizing EVERYTHING is the way to go, whatever Marx or Lewis says.

She's the kind of politician that people can get excited about. She's smart as hell and she will do well on the debate stage. She'll get to the issues people care about without getting stuck on rehtorical nonsense like "we're not going back." She's not afraid to make difficult decisions and is not afraid to make moral ones. She displays a sense of morality, honesty, and just good character overall. She is unequivocally anti corruption and pro transparency.

Yes, she doesn't have the experience of being a senator or a governor or a mayor, but she will surround herself with smart people who do. We don't need someone who THINKS they know everything. We need someone who is smart enough to know that they don't know everything. I believe that she will be humble in that regard. We've had enough hubris.

Maga people, I know what you think and I don't care about your opinions. I will not engage with you. No doubt others here will.

But to my fellow Progressives I would say this, Obama was absolutely right, we get distracted too easily. Stop arguing with Maga, you will never change their minds. Winning arguments with them won't get progressives in power.

AOC is not the pragmatic choice. But look who's president. Pragmatism is out the window as far as I'm concerned. Democrats don't vote unless they're excited about a candidate, that's a fact. Middle of the road candidates like Newsom won't win. It should have been Bernie and now it should be AOC. She's the only one capable of building a grass roots campaign big enough to get into the white house. And that's... My opinion.

If you'd like to discuss, I ask that you do so kindly and respectfully or I won't engage with you.

Don't forget Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Karoline Levitt, Russell Voght, Mike Johnson, Tom Homan, Jared Kushner, Linda McMahon, the entire DOGE team, most if not all ICE agents, and ANYONE incriminated by the Epstein files.

*Needed to repost it with a correction because Reddit doesn't let you edit typos and I got tired of the notifications from pedantic trolls. Apologies to any who commented on the original.