True, they just don't get posted days after yet another school shooting. It's called being in touch with your world over just your base.

David Purdue is going to primary Brian Kemp for Governor of Georgia. Purdue is going to likely beat him.

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

I think it gets to one of the huge advantages the GOP has had over the last few years and is going to have for the foreseeable future. It is a game to them. The politicians and their voters enjoy this in the way that people enjoy sports. He did not send this out to convince his voters if anything. He sent it out the way a sports team makes a hype video.

As a liberal, I can tell you that we are tired. We are scared. And tired and scared people just don’t have the energy to keep this up. But the GOP base has nothing to “keep up.“ The same way you don’t need to keep up going to UGA games. It’s fun. It’s a game. No one of consequence ever gets hurt.

I am not entirely sure how liberals counteract that.

I supposed I agree. The "Lets go Brandon" thing is probably the best example of this. They see it as a weird inside joke that triggers liberals when I don't know a single liberal that finds it anything other than childish and overused.

I think that's a misunderstanding of where a lot of the GOP is. A lot of the radicalization that has happened is a reaction them being scared as well. They're just scared of different things. Some of it is the usual target of white people losing power, but it's a lot more than that.

I.e, my brother is enthusiastic about voting for anyone sane against Whitmer. He's not your typical wingnut, but to him the level of interference with people's lives that happened during the pandemic is unacceptable in any circumstance roughly this side of a world war, and almost anything else is preferable. There's a not-small amount of people like him. I don't think the sports analogy is really accurate. This kind of display by elected officials is more akin to virtue signaling.

More Americans died from Covid than both World Wars combined.

And what interference is he upset by? Having to wear a mask at Subway? I get the inconvenience but just the absolute softest generation we've ever had.

I think that's the point though. It's a wink and a nod to the shooter.

The whole thing is just culture war shit and masking insecurities. Trot out your inbred looking family holding guns because no one would fuck you in high school and you can't lift a 20 pound dumbbell over your head.

I don't know your brother, but there are a large number of people that, rightly or wrongly, don't feel personally threatened by Covid, so they aren't willing to do much of anything to mitigate the risk for themselves or others.

And far fewer than died from heart disease and/or cancer in the same time period.

My point isn't to debate the merits of the interference, I'm largely though not completely on the same side the board is on that point. The point is that it isn't a case where one side is scared of what's happening in our country and the other thinks it's just a game as was asserted. To a significant extent, people are scared about different issues, often diametrically oppose ones.

And no, it wasn't just about the masks. It was about businesses being shut down by executive fiat and similar actions. We're talking about one of the least soft people I know, who was quickly vaccinated and masked when it was requested and didn't complain about doing either. I would call most of this board softer from what I know of them. I'm certainly as soft as tissue paper in comparison to him. Softness isn't the issue. He's of the opinion that it's permanently damaging to culture, society, and individuals to restrict ourselves in these circumstances. Gets back to the whole 'living in fear' thing. There's the side that says we need to take actions a, b, c so that we don't have to live in fear and can get back to whatever 'normal' is; and then there are those like my brother who think it is paramount that we don't live in fear regardless of what those external situations and risks are because we lose an important part of our humanity if we allow ourselves to react that way to dangers.

I'm not nearly as far in that direction as he is. But the essential element here is that it doesn't even matter if he's 100% wrong, his motivation (and others like him) is decidedly not on the 'it's just a game' side. It's on the 'we can't let these people do this to our country without a fight' side. It's the same motivation albionmoonlight was talking about, just with a decidedly different assessment of the situation.

9/11 vs Covid is an interesting comparison here. The Patriot act was a reaction to single terror attack that killed 3000 people and had the GOP strongly supported suspending rights because of their fear of terrorism.

Cancer and heart disease aren't contagious. Government strongly regulates industry to prevent both. Foods must be labeled with nutritional information and is routinely inspected. Cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs which lead to cancer are highly regulated. Cancer causing chemicals are also banned. Maybe these folks are on the front lines to unban freon or get lead back in our gasoline. Haven't seen it though.



Not really. Outside of that early quarantine period where everyone was freaking out, most businesses were up and running quickly. Mandates and regulations were rarely if ever enforced. Outside of large events, I can't think of anything I wasn't able to do in 2020.

Businesses are also shut down all the time by the government over public safety concerns. Restaurants are closed for health code violations. Buildings are condemned over structural issues. We even force the closure of businesses when an ensuing natural disaster approaches.


The side he is on is terrified to head inside a Quiznos without a firearm. A side that graciously gave up their privacy after 9/11 out of fear of terrorism. Or a side having a national meltdown over slavery being taught in school and that a transgender person might take a shit in the stall next to them.

These people's entire existence is living in fear. Modern Republican campaigns boil down to scaring people into thinking terrorists are going to get them, someone with dark skin might move nearby, or the evil antifa people will be burning your town to the ground.


Do what? Seriously, what life-altering thing was he prevented from doing because of this? I live in one of the stricter states and was able to do essentially anything I wanted after the initial fervor died down.

No one was locked up in a camp. No road blocks set up. Martial law wasn't instituted. People were asked to wear a mask and not stand too close to people in public. And if they didn't do that, NOTHING HAPPENED TO THEM BECAUSE NONE OF THIS SHIT WAS ENFORCED.

If people are that worked up about the relatively mild restrictions placed during a once in a generation pandemic, wait till they find out some of the other stuff the government has restricted the past 250 years. Their minds will be blown away!

Two words....Jeffrey Toobin.

That guy is the rep for my district and I can't begin to say how much I despise him. But it's Kentucky they they love anything that looks like beating your chest and giving the middle finger at the same time, even if it's towards a funeral procession.

So much this. The "spirit of fear" thing is so ridiculous coming from the party that thrives on fear. Without fear, they have no platform.We had a deacon use that line about wearing in masks in the church building. This the same guy that open carries during service for fear of a gun man attacking the service. The math on the chance that someone would come into the service and start shooting is so small you would be more likely the whole congregation would win the lottery. Yet we had several members die of covid. I don't know how you reason with people like that.
Btw, this deacon and his family left the church. They started attending a local congregation that had a youth activity that became a super-spreader event.

This x1000

Great post.

I would wager that if these people traveled outside the country to a place where the police were in lock step with the government and the government was much more forceful about things they'd actually see an entirely different side of things and see what actual mandates look like. What we have here is 90% hot air and emotions.

I should have acknowledged in my post that not every GOP supporter falls into the "This is the best game ever!" box.

I do think that the people laughing as they all say Let's Go Brandon! to each other are the main energy in the GOP right now.

But there's, like, 30+ million registered Republicans in the country. So a lot of them won't fall into the same box.

They are the equivalent of someone blasting a personal stereo on the train. The right is basically arguing that there's nothing you can or should do about it in that situation and if it pisses you off then good.

Wow, talk about goalpost-shifting. World wars aren't contagious either which was your initial comparison. So are we talking about total deaths here, or are we not talking about that?

No, war was your comparison. You said that these kinds of restrictions would only be warranted for something like a World War. Just pointing out this was far deadlier and a much bigger threat to the average American citizen than either World War.

And I should add that there are civil libertarians who make good cases against some of these restrictions. The difference is they are consistent in their beliefs.

Good to see shit ain't changed at FOFC with the political BS back and forth.

You just have to follow along for the humor. I can't recall anyone whose views were significantly changed in this area, though a few at least attempt to see and respect the perspective of others, which is more than you see in most other places.

Devin Nunes to retire from Congress at end of the month-apparently did not like how redisctricting was going to make it difficult to win re-election. He is instead going to be head of Trump's Media and Tech group, which is already under federal investigation I think.


Merry Christmas!


https://www.latimes.com/politics/sto...nes-retirement

I get that there's special considerations with Nunes.

But I don't understand why most Congresscritters don't do the job for a couple of terms and then leave to go make $$$ in media/lobbying.

I guess so many of them are multi-millionaires going in that making millions isn't that attractive to them.

Like, but for the whole Devin-Nunes-ness of it, I'd just consider this a smart move by pretty much anyone.

Has he been doing much in Congress lately? Only time I hear about him is him suing people for making fun of him online. Irony of him being put in charge of a social media company that's going to pretend to be a "free speech" platform.

So Nunes is the guy that will go to jail when the Trump's get caught looting the company.

Because you can make even more money looting the treasury. And getting bribes, legal and illegal, for helping loot the treasury.

SI

I stand corrected, I didn't understand what you were aiming at there. It seems self-evident to me on the surface that Covid isn't a remotely close comparison to a world war and comparing the death numbers wouldn't even scratch the surface of actually doing a serious assessment.

To avoid more tangents, I should point out again that I said I mostly disagree with my brother on this, but even more importantly it isn't even about whether he or others who think the same way are consistent or correct.

To albionmoonlight's 'Let's Go Brandon' point, I'll just say that's something that's a lot more prevalent by all indications I see in the Twitterverse etc. than it is on the ground. I live in a fairly conservative area where there's still a fair amount of 'My Governor Is An Idiot' and Trump signs, and I've never heard a single person say that, never seen a single sign, shirt, hat, etc. referencing it. If I didn't know it was a thing from my online activities, I wouldn't know the phrase even existed.

The other issues you referenced in your post are largely ones that the right would hold your presentation of to be an absurd caricature of the way they see it. Yes, even the straightforward ones. We need to rid ourselves of the idea that our way of seeing the world is the only reasonable one.


Mine have been FWIW. There's multiple issues I think differently about because of people here.

There was a Fuck Joe Biden flag in my small Ohio hometown this summer and last night there was a Jeep at the bowling alley here in NY with a Fuck Anthony Fauci sticker across the back window.

Fuck Joe Biden I see a lot, along with the 'King George' stuff.

We had a truck pass us yesterday with a "Lets Go Brandon" flag flying from the back. Usually it's "Fuck Inslee" or just straight Trump signs/flags.

There is a big company sign on the interstate in my town that has a "Let's Go Brandon" sign.

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

The Let's Go Brandon thing is everywhere down here, shirts, stickers, flags, etc. Like more than 50% of the people in the shitty town where my in-laws live over Thanksgiving had a shirt. I don't see it as much in my purple-ish suburb but still see it plenty. I almost told a guy "Fuck Trump" at the grocery store last weekend but I wasn't sure if that would be grounds for the guy to shoot me in self-defense in Texas.

There's a Let's Go Brandon STORE about 20 minutes from me (seriously, that's the name of the store).

And MA ain't exactly Trump Central.

I like Biden having a chat with Putin over Ukraine. I'm assuming the EU/NATO is okay with the US taking the lead here.

But on the other hand, this really is in their own backyard and they should be capable of handling this themselves with US support (e.g. intel, logistics, weapons etc.).

I went to the Braves-Brewers playoff game, I heard let's go brandon chants from our section and several others at least 5 times in the first few innings. When the game got later and a little more exciting, people generally stopped.

Up in Elijay, there is an entire Trump 2024 store.

Think about how as a country we would shake our collective heads and mock that if it was in North Korea or Iran.

There were some fans that tried to get a chant going at the last WVU football game I went to, but it fortunately died out pretty quickly. There was also a kid that had to be 10-12 years old that was wearing a cheap, homemade shirt that said "Joe Sucks, Kamala Swallows" on the back and "Fuck Joe and the Hoe" on the front. There are several mandated reporters for child abuse in our group and we discussed whether it was worthy of a CPS referral.

I have seen that Trump store in Elijay. That is my trout fishing spot.

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

Not a lot of specifics in the article and wonder what more economic sanctions we can put on Putin. The question is what does Putin want and what we can appease him with without going too far.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/07/polit...ine/index.html

Cutting them off from SWIFT would be a pretty dramatic move.

So the commission studying the Supreme Court released its recommendations yesterday. The general consensus was that there are major problems with the perception of the legitimacy of the court, and that they can be exasperated by adding new justices willy nilly.



In other words, we know there are problems, we know that there probably should be changes made, but neither the president, nor enough congressional members are willing or able to make any changes, and clearly, at this point in time, one entire political party is quite content with the current status for at least the next 20-30 years.

Most frustrating thing to have come out of the 2016 election cycle. The complete and total inability of Dem voters to fail to realize the implications heading into it, and the willingness to ignore them and vote for a Giant Douche.

You're assuming Democrats in power want to change any of the things happening. I think they understood the implications, but they just don't care as long as their donors are taken care of.

Again, it isn't Democrats, it's a minority of Dems, maybe just a handful. Unfortunately, it only takes one Senator to keep Dems from doing anything.

That minority of Democrats controls the purse strings and messaging of the party. They also face no punishment from the party for going against the leaders of the party

Yesterday a slew of Democrats voted to sell tons of weapons to Saudi Arabia. Something the vast majority of the public opposes. A bank regulator nominee withdrew her name because a bunch of bank lobbyists didn't want it.

If the party gave a shit about democracy, corruption, or any of the stuff they pay lip service to and then ignore, they would go scorched earth on those issues like Republicans do.

It's basically two parties crammed together. There are, though, a lot of Dems that would vote for all of the things you would like them to pass.

Dems disappoint me all of the time, but the problem isn't the party as a whole, it's the smaller group that's blocking much of what the majority of the party tries to do.

It turns out, sadly, that this was not a semi-significant development. Whatever Meadows was doing by pretending to comply, it was not trying to get off what he saw as a sinking ship.

lol Democrats

Several dozen Democrats took down an amendment from AOC asserting a federal watchdog may investigate the intelligence community.Â*

This. There is merit to what Rainmaker is saying on some issues, but there's also the fact that you cannot go scorched earth successfully with a narrow majority/governing coalition. Compromises are painful, but not as painful as losing the majority if moderates switch parties or are replaced by moderate Republicans. Even a few more Senate seats would allow them to go tell Manchin/Sinema etc. to piss up a rope. They can't do that now. Maybe they still wouldn't even if they had a large enough majority to get away with it, but that's not the situation they have.

How do you propose Democrats gain a bigger majority if states are creating laws that prevent them from winning elections and the justice system is stacked with partisan judges who will side based on party and not the law?

We'll see next year how their strategy is working. I have a feeling some of you will be eating crow.

I don't expect their current strategy to work. What I'm saying is scorched-earth would almost certainly work *worse*. Midterms are going against them no matter what they do, but how hard and far they go against them is somewhat controllable. I'm not saying it's easy to get a larger majority. I agree with you that voting rights is an issue that they'd do best to ram through regardless. But overall, it's just reality that you have to govern in a moderate way when government is closely divided.

Manchin and Sinema are fucking the rest of the party. That I agree with. I just don't see the solution. Trying harder won't change the mind of Manchin or Sinema.

The new voting rights bill is popular among moderates. Same with taxing billionaires, negotiating drug prices, not selling arms to Saudi Arabia, rooting out corruption, and so on.

So the question is that if the goal is to make moderates happy as you say, why don't they pass bills that do that?

Unless this has nothing to do with moderates and everything to do with who bribes them.

Manchin and Sinema suck but they also provide cover for a lot of other Democrats who don't want to upset their wealthy donors.

Here are some Democrats gutting the prescription drug stuff.

Democrats, GOP reject adding Medicare drug-price plan to budget

Here's Democrats not allowing us to audit where our tax dollars go to within the CIA.

Several dozen Democrats took down an amendment from AOC asserting a federal watchdog may investigate the intelligence community.Â*

Democrats supporting the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia.

Senate backs Biden admin weapons sale to Saudi Arabia - POLITICO

Democrats fighting to provide tax cuts to the rich.

Democratic worries grow over politics of SALT cap | TheHill

All these are wildly unpopular with moderates who I'm told is the audience.

You're right, but even if every other person in the party aligned with your preferred policy goals, Manchin and Sinema would still stop it all from happening.

With Manchin and Sinema, they could pass a voting rights bill, most if not all of BBB, and some real climate legislation. It wouldn't be perfect, but it's just wrong to say Dems won't when most Dems will.

dola

SCOTUS let the Texas 6 week ban bill stand. They aren't even trying to pretend to obey precedent anymore, but until Roe and/or Casey are overturned, this is clearly unconstitutional.

double dola

Sounds like Manchin is going to kill the BBB. I'm not sure anybody hates Dems more than Manchin.

I think you're right on those issues not being popular with moderates, but how many people's votes are going to really be changed by CIA audits or selling weapons to Saudi Arabia? Those are the kinds of issues that people say they care about and then don't even consider when they vote. Taxes, prescription drugs could move the needle some, but how much? Is it enough to more than compensate for the donors you are talking about donating heavy to republican candidates instead? There are issues that Republicans don't follow their voters on as well, it's more a game of 'what issues do I have to support to get your vote' - you can always find significant departures.

The guy that has consistently voted against disaster relief aid asked Biden for a federal declaration of emergency today.

Fuck Rand Paul.

Random musing.

Went grocery shopping. Bread & milk were the same. Canned soup had a nice sale. I always look for OJ on sale. Sandwich meats pretty much same. Fruits and vegetables did seem a little more expensive but it is winter so not sure if its the seasonality or maybe shipping costs from Mexico. Ribeye was still around $14-$15 a pound (which has increased since pre-Covid) but I've not a big eater of red meat. Gas prices are relatively high but I've seen prices this high before.

Car prices are higher and there are less/no discounts compared to 2 years ago when I looked at cars. And of course, house prices are inflated.

It's a given that Powell will be increasing rates, question is how quickly/often. I think this is needed but not going to be good for many people.

Mid-terms traditionally aren't good for the party in power. Still somewhat optimistic that losses won't be too bad but the Dems won't hold both houses and it'll be a new reality for Biden.

Here is the really quite suspicious thing about this inflation. Beef prices are up, yet the cattle farmers are not getting any more per cow. How? It was the same with lumber. Lumber prices skyrocketed, but tree farmers and people who tried to sell timber were not getting any more than before. All the while corporations are reporting record profits. All of this smells rather fishy.

I work for a logistics company that does nothing but arrange shipments between customer & carrier, than take a percentage off the top.....their stock doubled over the last year. I think it's the middlemen that are fueling most of the inflation.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/12/us/ca...ics/index.html


It's a shitty way to do things, but this is probably the only way to stop the right from their bullshit at the moment. More left states need to start doing things like this. Not just with guns/abortion, but with elections, ect as well.

Pretty sure the Supreme Court doesn't care about judicial consistency or looking like hypocrites. Just a waste of time. Especially since California Dems will puss out anyway.

It's highly unlikely to make them stop. Much more likely to make them double, triple, and quadruple down on their efforts.

I really don't think there's much else you can do when a party is so obviously trying to weaponize the SC.

All of this is just priming the system for a civil war or succession. The more we divide ourselves, not just by extreme opinion but by law, the less we have in common or have reason to continue as a country. When one side wants to do things like abolish public education and install private Christian education as the standard, where does that leave the rest of us? It used to be conservatives made the argument for private choice in education; now they are emboldened to just say what they always wanted - no separation between (their) church and state and indoctrination of children to push off the changing culture as far as they can.

If we're going to have such divergent laws by state where one state completely prevents abortion while others openly court it, or vice versa for gun control/ownership, we aren't very far from just being separate countries. There's a point at which federalism becomes unwieldy or useless when there's very little common ground from which to work.

The united states of Europe

This sucks.

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

Yeah, that sucks.

This is why I vote Libertarian

Because it's the political equivalent of being a hipster? Because it allows one to aloofly claim a candidate would have followed through on all of his campaign promises because they're never going to win so no one can ever prove it wrong? (Never mind there would be no congressional support for any of these policies?) Never believe in anything because it will just disappoint you hurt nihilism?

I'm not following.

SI

And it's official. Manchin has killed BBB. Supposedly the plan is to temporarily shelve it so as to focus on voting rights, but Manchin said just yesterday that he won't support a carve-out on the filibuster without 10 GOP votes. I suspect the whole plan is to look like they are doing something and hope for the best.

That hasn't worked well previously, but oh well.

Listen, the BBB won't play well to moderates. Nor will helping on student loan debt. Or the child care tax credit. Or the other things 83 million people voted for.

What moderates care about is allowing folks in Congress to continue to participate in insider trading.

Pelosi, says lawmakers/Capitol staff shouldn't be prohibited from trading stock: "This is a free market, we are a free market economy, they should be able to participate in that."

— Mariana Alfaro (@marianaa_alfaro) December 15, 2021

No, they don't

Hoping for Dems to do good is like expecting Charlie Brown to kick the football. It's depressing that it's a quasi-viable strategy because about half the voting population seems to enjoy voting for Lucy.

SI

Imagine how pissed voters are going to be in January when that child care tax credit disappears without warning.

With the news they only extended the debt ceiling through 2023 so Republicans can shut down government and blow up the economy before the election, I'm getting the feeling the Democrats are trying to throw these next few elections.

Joke's, of course, on them as if they lose one or two more major elections in the next few years, there may not be many elections to raise money for.

SI

I may fully appropriate this analogy for my own personal and professional use.

They'll be rich enough that it won't matter.

The crazy thing is all their leadership went through the same thing under Obama and saw how that turned out. I would say they're dumb, but I genuinely think they'd prefer being ruled by Republicans. Likely better for their own personal wealth.

The Democrats need to either figure out how to get progressives and young people to vote or tack hard to the middle.

At this point what would a hard tack to the supposed middle look like? Calling Republicans socialists?

I see this differently. I fully expect the GOP to be running both houses in 2023 and I don't think it benefits them at all to blow up the economy a few months before the election.

Now I do think there's a small, but non-zero, chance that enough Dems get tired of being the responsible party in debt limit votes so that everything falls apart for a few days.

That's . . . impressive. Spend a year talking about BBB so that the GOP can paint you as the party of "Big Government Programs."

But then don't actually pass it so you don't actually improve anything.

It's like that time that Lions QB just ran out of the back of his own end zone. You had thought that you had seen peak ineptitude before that. But you just hadn't watched long enough.

They did. Biden had a ton of stuff he campaigned on that was wildly popular with moderates and progressives. Got him 83 million votes.

Yeah, this was supposed to be the coalition in the middle.

SI

That is not what got him 83 million votes.

Donald Trump is the best GOTV candidate in history, both for and against him.

But who is the "you" here? That's what I don't get with these comments. Do you really think Biden and most of the party doesn't want to pass the BBB?

"You" are the Dems.

The wording is really clumsy, even after I rewrote it a couple of times and couldn't come up with better. But it gets the sentiment across.

SI

Remember when there were whispers of expanding the supreme court after all this popular, centrist (sure, probably watered down) stuff got passed like voting rights, criminal justice reform, and a couple of infrastructure bills including one with climate legislation were all addressed? Good times!

SI

But, hey, don't worry - the Dems will get steamrolled for "not doing enough" and replaced by GOP reps who already have and will continue to crush access to the ballots, keep throwing people in for-profit prisons, and hand the rest of the middle class's money back to the wealthy while stripping away regulations. That'll show 'em!

Of course, many will continue to paint it as turd sandwich vs giant douche or whatever false equivalence choice. Never mind that one side is just (willfully?) incompetent while the other is actively trying to screw you. Definitely the same thing!

(EDIT: Or, hey, maybe I'm the idiot for thinking there's a difference. I guess, at least, the branding is different)

SI

You all can disagree with me, but I think a pretty solid argument that progressive policies win out in heavily urban areas, but not so much in the suburbs and mid-West, and that the 2018 gains and Biden's win were much more of a counter to Trump than because his ideas were wildly popular. Biden got votes that didn't trickle down to the congressional candidates because people wanted Trump out of office. He didn't have a mandate to make major changes - the Democrats lost congressional seats and you all are old enough to remember the series of events that led to the two Georgia senators being elected.

This article has some insight into the voting:Why did House Democrats underperform compared to Joe Biden?


What's the takeaway there? People like Biden? People don't like Trump? People like their local representatives? I'm not sure, but the margins in those states were all under 1.25% except Michigan. Unless some of the folks living in LA, NY, Boston, and Chicago want to redistribute across the country to swing more local elections, it looks like something has to be done differently.



It's all well and good for the Democrat president to win by millions and millions of votes, but if that margin is all coming from New York (+1.9M margin) and California (+5.1M margin), it is going to be real hard to have majorities in congress to do anything with it. Particularly in the senate. It isn't fair that California's and Wyomings's senators both get the same vote when California has 17+ million more voters, but that is the way it is drawn up.

So, I come back to saying that progressives and young people need to come out way, way more in force or the party needs to win back the middle. Their coalition doesn't work if there are a room full of progressives in safe seats from California, NY, Mass, etc. and the handful of folks in the swing states risk getting voted out of office if they have to choose between their constituents' jobs right now or the environment down the road. Using the pipelines as an example, whether you were for closing them or not, that issue got a lot of air time in 2020 in my market (SW PA). I'd personally rather see a more progressive agenda, but if the choice is to win progressives or win people from the middle, I would think winning people in the middle would net more voters by taking some away from the Republicans. As it is now, we get the worst of both worlds where both the progressives and the moderates are pissed off at one another and the Republicans will take over and set us backwards another 20 years until they break the economy enough again to get people to reconsider the democrats.

And that is just at the federal level.

Have some fun and take a look at most of the state houses and senates right now:Legislative Partisan Splits | Stateside Associates

These are the folks doing the gerrymandering and taking us further and further from democracy.

*Note that I am not trying to minimize progressive issues or agendas, just trying to be realistic about what I see is more likely to improve this situation over time.

Winning two Senate seats in Georgia seems to show those ideas were popular. It's what both candidates campaigned on too. Trump had already lost, so not really a factor.

The campaign promises Biden made were incredibly popular. Child tax credit, studen loan deferral/forgiveness, prescription drug price negotiating, $2000 stimulus checks, paid family leave, universal preschool, higher minimum wage, etc.

If all it takes is running against Trump, Hillary would have been President.

So every Dem wants what you described? Or just some Dems?

Perdue and Loeffler lost Trump voters in the runoffs because they didn’t go along with the big lie and both voted to certify Biden after the Jan 6 attack. Loeffler, in particular, changed her position that day as she was planning to oppose the certification that morning: Loeffler reverses on challenging Biden’s win after riot at Capitol - POLITICO


I was thrilled that Ossoff and Warnock won and the senate got to a 50-50 split (I imagine if either had lost, there would have been zero judicial appointments this and next year), but they didn’t ride in on a wave due to their positions. They ran good campaign, had weak opponents, had some fortunate bounces go their way, and both won super close run off elections. Meanwhile, the dems lost winnable races in Maine, Iowa, North Carolina and Montana and barely won Arizona and Michigan. They are going to need some of those stares to have Democratic senators if we ever want to see another Supreme Court justice appointed by a democratic president.

So under this theory, there is absolutely nothing a Democrat can do to win votes. Their votes are entirely dependant on if they're up against a bad candidate who screws up?

Hillary didn't have the benefit of the 4 years we endured under Trump...

I don't think policy matters a lot in terms of voters, but having a brand does. Nobody knows what Dems favor, so it's very hard to create a message to persuade voters.

You vote GOP for lower taxes, no abortion, and fewer regulations. You vote Dem for what exactly?