Woodchopper wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 5:40 am
In terms of history you're going to have to go back 44 years for the last non-centrist Democrat who won a presidential election.
And how many left-leaning candidates have they put forward? Obama won as a progressive, but governed at the center right, contributing much to the disillusion of many of the people he inspired to engage with politics while campaigning, and potentially to the election of Trump.
The Republicans have been pursuing a truly radical program since the 80s, much to the detriment of ordinary people in their country. Far from holding the center, the Democrats, as a block - individuals can be exceptions, have retreated from traditional pro-Labour positions, and offered no real counter-narrative to the Republican story that free-market economics is basically the way forward, despite the copious evidence that this is rubbish (even leaving aside climate change). Basically, the Democrats have put forward 'centrists' who would have been described as right-leaning a few years before, and who often lose anyway. Even so, the Democrats have allowed themselves to be painted as out of control far-left by the Republican media apparatus. Indeed, far from countering this narrative, the DNC tacitly endorses the nonsense by worrying about whether they've gone too far left, and criticizing the own moderate left-leaners. This is not a 'safe' strategy, because
at best it's slower defeat.
With Sanders the Democratic party has, not only a real opportunity to win in the short term, but also to reverse the trend of the last 40 years and retake the actual center ground which is rapidly retreating into the distance.