2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Dear Hillary [View all]dreamnightwind
(4,775 posts)When a Democrat works on policies that favor the wealthy, or military adventurism, or domestic surveillance, or fracking, or offshore drilling, or supports a drug war which is really a way to target and incarcerate the disgruntled proletariat, or any number of policies our base doesn't actually support, us Democrats might wag our heads in disapproval, but it's our person doing it, so we pull the punches, and those who don't are accused of not being supportive of our politicians. Examples of this are all over this site, everyday. When a Republican pushes these policies, however, we are properly outraged and fire up, and we put up a hell of a fight. So many of these policies slide through without much of a fight when a Democrat is pushing them.
So it isn't just that I don't trust our corporate Democrats (I certainly don't), it's also that I don't trust us Democrats to be activated on policy issues when our corporate Democrats are triangulating us out of everything we supposedly believe in. We failed that test miserably in the past 6 years or so, accepting policies which would have been entirely unacceptable had a Republican been driving them.
I don't think it's better to lose, but I do think the dynamic of not challenging our own means there is even less benefit to a corporate Democrat than one would naturally expect.
Also fully agree with the point you made above, by focusing just on winning we often are not even remotely involved in advocating progressive reforms, which are mysteriously "off the table" and not talked about, despite their popularity when the issues are polled. And if we won't do it, nobody will.