For example, let’s say Bernie Sanders was the nominee in 2024 against Trump. A lot of people on the internet seem to like him, even some conservatives. But would liberals fall in line and vote for him enough to beat Trump?
Bernie’s supporters always seem to attack the Democrats liberal base, do you think they’d sit home if Bernie or any leftist was the nominee.
Yes, but that’s keeping in mind that, contrary to popular belief among the types that go on Lemmy, most people aren’t ideological. They don’t care that Democrat A is this and Democrat B is that, they care about who they think will help their lives, ideology be damned. So, a lot of the people that socialists would call “libs” would vote for Bernie, BUT, most of those people think of Sanders primarily as “more liberal.”
People who are actively aware of the difference between neoliberalism and social democracy, I’m not sure. But I honestly think they’re a rounding error in US politics.
Yes. Democrats voted for Obama in 2008 and he presented himself as more progressive than Hilary.
No. And they’ve said as much.
“Clinton would not pledge to support Sanders if he won the 2020 Democratic nomination.”
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-sen-bernie-sanders-likes/story?id=68424746
“However – I do reject socialism as a economic system. If people have that view, that’s their view. That is not the view of the Democratic Party.” - Pelosi
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/15/politics/nancy-pelosi-socialism/index.html
It’s so sad to see this, especially knowing that while you can like or dislike Clinton and Pelosi, I doubt they are unware that Sanders is not proposing socialism. Socialism and social democracy are two very, vastly different things. And they for sure know this very well.
I sincerely hope that Sanders will found a new party soon, it will have 4 years to gain momentum. Will it win in the next election cycle? No, but it might actually get enough votes to win in 8 or 12 years. Just do it.
No. Liberals have always been closer to fascists than socialists. Look which way liberals in Weimar Germany went.
Lol wut?
The word “liberals” means something else in Germany than in the US. The closes analogy would be Democrats=SPD and Republicans=CDU, which are the two biggest parties. When Hitler took over, the CDU fell in line while the SPD resisted. The SPD then was also a lot more leftist than it is now. It’s pretty much centrist now and only slightly more to the left than the conservative CDU.
My headcanon:
Leftist: One who supports the general ideas of the Democratic party and supports the people at the head and their usual goings-on, voted Harris, enjoy the color blue.
Liberal: A Leftist, but they don’t think their party speaks for them enough, or aren’t extreme enough on certain issues they don’t think are represented enough, so they think the party has abandoned or doesn’t speak for them. These can be anyone from lgbtq+ activists to worker unions to Bernie Sanders. The idea that the left has left you, or whatever you stand for, and you are the liberal left.
Liberal(2nd definition): Someone who’s into traditionalist communist ideals, Lemmy calls them “tankies”. These tend to… not be what most people are talking about when they say liberal, despite arguments to the contrary.
Correct me if I’m wrong, this is in the context of the USA.
You got liberals and leftist mixed up
To throw one more into the mix:
“Left” and “Right” came from the UK parliamentary system where the representatives of the two major parties sat on the left and right side of the speaker of the house in the House of Commons.
It just so happened that the ones on the right had conservative values (keep things as they are, don’t spend what we don’t have, local economy first, preserve traditional values) while those seated on the left had liberal values (let’s make things even better, spend for the future, improve the global economy, make life better for all our constituents).
That was the starting point for what it’s all morphed into today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left–right_political_spectrum#Western_Europe
The left–right political spectrum is a system of classifying political positions, ideologies and parties, with emphasis placed upon issues of social equality and social hierarchy. In addition to positions on the left and on the right, there are centrist and moderate positions, which are not strongly aligned with either end of the spectrum. It originated during the French Revolution based on the seating in the French National Assembly.
You damn Brits can’t have that one for the National Museum!
In the context of Germany, “liberal” means being for capitalism unbridled by the state but still generally progressive policies culturally, with more rights for minorities and such. The corresponding party is FDP. So in some ways it’s the exact opposite of the US idea of “liberal”.
Someone considered “left” would be for more social policies and government control of capitalism (traditionally SPD), extreme left would be following tenants of communism, opposed to the US and friendly with Russia (The party The Left and the new Sarah Wagenknecht party)
Someone considered conservative or “right” would be against social policies and try to reduce control of capitalism (CDU) extreme right would be plain fascists (AfD), ironically also aligned with Russia now.
The Greens are a special case, since they were originally a single issue party concerned with environmentalism, but since the SPD has largely vacated their social policies since Schröder was chancellor, they have become more and more the new “social” party.
There are also a huge number of smaller parties that are unable to reach more than five percent, which is necessary to be included in the govenmental body of the Bundestag. Most of those are single issue parties (there is even a beer party). The FDP has become so unpopular that it might also share that fate soon.
To come back to your original point, there were no “liberals” when Hitler was elected. There were conservatives, socialists and communists. The conservatives aligned themselves with the fascists and the socialists and communists were outlawed and thrown into jail/executed.
The DNC will never let a leftist get past the primaries. They’d sooner lose, as they’ve shown us for the last 3 elections.
A lot of people don’t know the difference between establishment Democrats and liberals.
I know there is a difference, but…if the purpose of a system is it’s end result then is there a difference?
Maybe, but that’s not the question.
We know the answer to that from how Bernie was treated
Assuming Bernie could get on the ticket, I absolutely believe people would have voted for him.
The problem is of course getting him on the ticket.
You think liberals would vote for him?
Let me put it this way… Here’s the 2020 DNC primary donations:
You know when conservatives post pictures of counties being all one color thus showing significant voting support most people speak up about how land doesn’t vote and explain why those maps are kind of useless. Just food for thought.
my thought immediately when seeing this. interesting to see the geographic spread but misleading to frame it as more area = more popular
This is not colorblind friendly at all.
Yeah, that’s terrible color choice (I’m assuming, anyway, since Pete and sanders are presumably meant to be different colors)
It also lacks a key
You’re doing it too… terrible choice of first name vs last
man where’s yang
Liberals already tried to get Bernie on the ticket in 2016, but the DNC fucked us on that.
I think Liberals kept him off the ticket.
Liberal voters wanted Bernie. The DNC did not.
People are using liberal in two different ways here. Most Americans call anything to the left of Republican liberal. Most of Lemmy considers liberal to be center-right and leftist to be Bernie style liberal.
In this case, they were saying that the Democratic elites (liberals) didn’t want Bernie to win, while the true progressive left (leftists) did.
And 2020.
If they had believable policies, and realistic paths to achieve them, absolutely I would.
No question.
I don’t know, we should do this and find out.
I sincerely have no idea.
The narrative that a leftist couldn’t win is repeated so predictably and so often and by so many people that the whole idea has become sort of detached from reality, and there’s no telling what would happen if it was actually a possibility.
And particularly since the one thing I’d pretty much guarantee is that the concerted efforts on the part of the ruling class to prevent a leftist from running would be as nothing compared to what they’d do and say in order to prevent one from winning.
I read somewhere on Lemmy, the idea of running as a ‘Radical Republican’ and push leftist policies. Just focus on working class issues and nepo-wealth corruption in the business world. That might help win over the same disenfranchised that helped trump win.
I think democrats would, for the most part. Perhaps less enthusiastically, but since they hate Trump, I think it would not be a major issue.
The question is, how would low-information unaffiliated voters respond to having a socialist in the ballot? This is a difficult question to answer. Traditionally socialism is a bad word in US politics, albeit less so with younger voters.
Personally I don’t really buy the “Bernie would have won” stuff but there’s really only one way to find out.
I don’t think a Demo candidate can afford to have low enthusiasm amongst liberals, that’s their biggest base.
Except all the liberals insisted they would vote for Biden’s corpse before letting Trump win. What does it say about them if an actual progressive is the real dealbreaker?
True
Time travel?
the haters, the racists, the sexists, the homophobes, the gun fondlers, the diesel fume huffers, and the bible thumpers vote repulbican every. single. time.
too many democrats jump ship and stay home, vote for the no chance party, or republican if a candidate doesn’t support every little policy and issue they want or who supports something they don’t. even if the fate of the nation and democracy is at stake, they’ll abandon reason.
Yup. Idiots incapable of compromise, so they get nothing.
Sanders? Probably.
Someone else? Depends on their policies and what you mean by “liberals”. If you mean general center-left / Democrat base types, probably they vote for the DNC nominee. If you mean people devoted to Enlightenment Liberalism, it depends on how authoritarian the the candidate is.
