Biden’s numbers among young voters have slid during his presidency from the high margins that helped him beat Trump. Several former supporters explain why.
There’s also the “perfect is the enemy of the good” problem that I’ve seen a lot of Progressives display.
They want a perfect, ideal candidate. They refuse to settle for anything less than perfection. The problem is that perfection isn’t attainable. If you name your “perfect candidate,” then someone will find a flaw with them. They then cease to be the perfect candidate anymore and must be ditched for the next “perfect one.” Meanwhile, the right just decides that their candidate is perfect regardless of any flaws (or perhaps because of what we’d call his flaws).
Progressives will often threaten to rage quit politics if they don’t get 100% of what they want right away. They don’t seem to realize that doing this gives power to the Republicans. So we take five steps forward, Progressives rage quit because we didn’t take twenty steps forward, Republicans take over, and we take ten steps backwards. Now, did rage quitting put us in a better position? Of course not. But the perfect is held up as the only allowed outcome and Good isn’t good enough.
It’s not “the perfect is the enemy of the good” for me anymore. It’s “good is no longer good enough to do anything meaningful.” It’s not anger, it’s despair.
I wonder what drives that kind of thinking? I am pretty sure I figured out at least by my second election if not first that the realistic choices are usually shitty and shittier. And I was politically a total idiot back then.
To be fair, one can argue that probably nobody really expects a “perfect” candidate. I imagine some are looking for a fairly good one, but find that the available options fall far short.
So it is probably more like “good is the enemy of the-sucky-but-not-criminal-fascist-traitor” lol.
Mind you I am a progressive but I’m also practical and see the long game, now that I’m middle-aged and finally getting a bit of a clue.
If we progressives want to pull the rank and file core DNC neoliberals left, we need a 20-50 year plan. We need to be working at the grassroots level to donate time and money to progressives at the local and state level, run for office ourselves even if it is just for a school board or city council post. We need to influence curriculums to tell more of the truth about unregulated capitalism, the benefits of socialized healthcare, organized labor, history. We need to discuss progressive ideas more in public discourse. We need to lobby for many things to get us out of the quagmire of regulatory capture, corruption, etc: oligopoly busting, campaign finance reform, etc.
And we need to focus on the elections of Senators and Representatives, because that’s where the power is at, really. The president isn’t going to get much done without Congress. And won’t get much done with them unless we have enough progressives instead of reagan-era conservatives in Democratic clothing (Manchin, Sinema, etc).
It took 50 years for the GOP to fuck everything up. It will probably take 50 to get it back in line.
That’s only as long as the GOP doesn’t get in power. If they do, they have told us they will increase the power of the executive branch which brings us closer to the autocratic model of governance that the original drafters of the Constitution were keenly interested in avoiding.
They will appoint partisan loyalists in key government positions which means brain drain and probably defacto repeal of various laws. Sort of like what happened with Ajit Pai in the FCC, the bullshit with USPS thanks to Louis DeJoy (remembering the decades of attacks on USPS by the GOP because if it ain’t privatized they cant get richer and oh it has to turn a profit despite being a fucking social service…), and the hobbling of the EPA under whoever that was.
I definitely agree about the long term plan. The Republicans excelled at this. I hate the goal, but can admire how much effort they put into things like overturning Roe vs Wade. During the 50 year span, they had many, many setbacks. They didn’t just throw in the towel, though. They changed their goals, being temporarily satisfied with small steps backward instead of running an entire backwards marathon. And as they did this, they got closer and closer to their goal until they hit it. (Of course, their goal has now shifted to include much worse things.)
Imagine if Progressives could harness this kind of planning for positive changes. As satisfying as it would be to elect a Progressive President with a Progressive Congress that would work together to make the courts Progressive as well, that’s not going to happen in 2024. Heck, it’s not likely to all happen in 2028 either.
We need to step back, assess where we are, where we want to be, and make a plan for how we get there. “Just only vote for Progressives” sounds good on paper until you realize that, in many areas, Progressives would be unelectable. What happens if the Progressive can’t be elected and the Progressive Congress doesn’t come to be? If the entire plan is “just only vote for Progressives,” then it will fall apart quickly.
If instead, the plan is “move the county one step to the left. And then another step. And then another step,” then we can make some real changes. Sure, they won’t come for years and it can be frustrating to wait, but this also means that change will come, it will be easier to recover from a misstep, and there won’t be as large of a backlash.
(On this last point, one of the things I’ve noticed is that society tends to have a momentum to it that’s hard to change. If you try to change society too quickly, a backlash can result that can roll back many of the changes. Slow steady changes can wind up taking root a lot more than quick sudden changes.)
There’s also the “perfect is the enemy of the good” problem that I’ve seen a lot of Progressives display.
They want a perfect, ideal candidate. They refuse to settle for anything less than perfection. The problem is that perfection isn’t attainable. If you name your “perfect candidate,” then someone will find a flaw with them. They then cease to be the perfect candidate anymore and must be ditched for the next “perfect one.” Meanwhile, the right just decides that their candidate is perfect regardless of any flaws (or perhaps because of what we’d call his flaws).
Progressives will often threaten to rage quit politics if they don’t get 100% of what they want right away. They don’t seem to realize that doing this gives power to the Republicans. So we take five steps forward, Progressives rage quit because we didn’t take twenty steps forward, Republicans take over, and we take ten steps backwards. Now, did rage quitting put us in a better position? Of course not. But the perfect is held up as the only allowed outcome and Good isn’t good enough.
It’s not “the perfect is the enemy of the good” for me anymore. It’s “good is no longer good enough to do anything meaningful.” It’s not anger, it’s despair.
I wonder what drives that kind of thinking? I am pretty sure I figured out at least by my second election if not first that the realistic choices are usually shitty and shittier. And I was politically a total idiot back then.
To be fair, one can argue that probably nobody really expects a “perfect” candidate. I imagine some are looking for a fairly good one, but find that the available options fall far short.
So it is probably more like “good is the enemy of the-sucky-but-not-criminal-fascist-traitor” lol.
Mind you I am a progressive but I’m also practical and see the long game, now that I’m middle-aged and finally getting a bit of a clue.
If we progressives want to pull the rank and file core DNC neoliberals left, we need a 20-50 year plan. We need to be working at the grassroots level to donate time and money to progressives at the local and state level, run for office ourselves even if it is just for a school board or city council post. We need to influence curriculums to tell more of the truth about unregulated capitalism, the benefits of socialized healthcare, organized labor, history. We need to discuss progressive ideas more in public discourse. We need to lobby for many things to get us out of the quagmire of regulatory capture, corruption, etc: oligopoly busting, campaign finance reform, etc.
And we need to focus on the elections of Senators and Representatives, because that’s where the power is at, really. The president isn’t going to get much done without Congress. And won’t get much done with them unless we have enough progressives instead of reagan-era conservatives in Democratic clothing (Manchin, Sinema, etc).
It took 50 years for the GOP to fuck everything up. It will probably take 50 to get it back in line.
That’s only as long as the GOP doesn’t get in power. If they do, they have told us they will increase the power of the executive branch which brings us closer to the autocratic model of governance that the original drafters of the Constitution were keenly interested in avoiding.
They will appoint partisan loyalists in key government positions which means brain drain and probably defacto repeal of various laws. Sort of like what happened with Ajit Pai in the FCC, the bullshit with USPS thanks to Louis DeJoy (remembering the decades of attacks on USPS by the GOP because if it ain’t privatized they cant get richer and oh it has to turn a profit despite being a fucking social service…), and the hobbling of the EPA under whoever that was.
I could go on but I’ve rambled enough.
I definitely agree about the long term plan. The Republicans excelled at this. I hate the goal, but can admire how much effort they put into things like overturning Roe vs Wade. During the 50 year span, they had many, many setbacks. They didn’t just throw in the towel, though. They changed their goals, being temporarily satisfied with small steps backward instead of running an entire backwards marathon. And as they did this, they got closer and closer to their goal until they hit it. (Of course, their goal has now shifted to include much worse things.)
Imagine if Progressives could harness this kind of planning for positive changes. As satisfying as it would be to elect a Progressive President with a Progressive Congress that would work together to make the courts Progressive as well, that’s not going to happen in 2024. Heck, it’s not likely to all happen in 2028 either.
We need to step back, assess where we are, where we want to be, and make a plan for how we get there. “Just only vote for Progressives” sounds good on paper until you realize that, in many areas, Progressives would be unelectable. What happens if the Progressive can’t be elected and the Progressive Congress doesn’t come to be? If the entire plan is “just only vote for Progressives,” then it will fall apart quickly.
If instead, the plan is “move the county one step to the left. And then another step. And then another step,” then we can make some real changes. Sure, they won’t come for years and it can be frustrating to wait, but this also means that change will come, it will be easier to recover from a misstep, and there won’t be as large of a backlash.
(On this last point, one of the things I’ve noticed is that society tends to have a momentum to it that’s hard to change. If you try to change society too quickly, a backlash can result that can roll back many of the changes. Slow steady changes can wind up taking root a lot more than quick sudden changes.)