General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: In 18 years since Naders run, what has been accomplished by attacking the Dem party from the left? [View all]DanTex
(20,709 posts)But since then the party has moved significantly to the left. Yes, the 2006 takeover of the house was again based on building a moderate coalition rather than going hard left (hmm, I wonder if there's a pattern here). But Obama governed to the left of Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton ran to the left of Obama.
I mean, we had Cornel freaking West on the platform committee. Hillary's platform was well to the left of Obama's in either 08 or 12. And yet the Green Party increased its vote totals this year. Which means that Green voters are not rational human beings who care about progressive policy. Of course, we already knew that, because if the were rational, they wouldn't be voting Green in the first place.
Here's the situation. Neither Jill Stein nor Susan Collins are our allies. Jill Stein is, first of all, a nutcase, and secondly, she has proven time and again that she prefers Republicans to Democrats, which is why she works so hard to help get them elected. As for Susan Collins, she may be less horrible than the GOP as a whole, but if she actually wanted to stop the damage Trump was doing, she'd switch parties.
Still, I think it would be great if the Dems got some Stein voters or some Collins voters to come vote D. I don't really care which ones. But I'm not a Dem politician, I'm a progressive posting on a message board. And the things I post online have utterly nothing to do with why Green or Republican voters vote the way they do. So I'm not going to stop criticizing people who deserve being criticized.