This is another dodge.

I did not say progressives are centrists. I said Rehmet won as a progressive Democrat, inside the party, which is evidence for improving the party from within.

It is certainly not evidence that Democrats should stop pushing back against a left that attacks basically everyone to the right of dem-socs.

Even Mamdani undercuts your point.

He’s an actual dem-soc, but even he has tried to build a broad coalition, not just declare war on everyone to his right (despite getting called a bootlicker for his approach). He got support from progressives within the party and, after proving himself electable, eventually some more mainstream Democrats endorsed him too. And I hope he stays popular and his policies work, so support for progressive policies grows from there.

But Mamdani’s process highlights exactly my issue with leftists who attack everything to the right of dem-socs. Mamdani is doing politics - even going so far to have friendly meetings/calls with Trump. Too many other leftists would rather practice the type of purity politics that only shrinks their ability to influence reality, then complain that dems are the ones who need to “do something.”

With friends like these…

You’re collapsing progressives and leftists and just making my policy positions up in your head because otherwise your point falls apart.

A progressive Democrat winning a red seat inside the party (as in working with and within the party like Rehmet did) is not proof that Democrats should “stop attacking the left.” It’s proof that better Democrats, even progressives in the party, can win and don’t need to resort to attacking their own potential coalition partners in the rest of the party.

Also, if you have to rewrite my position as “I support genocide and hate everything that tries to upend the status quo” to answer me, you’re not rebutting me. You’re constructing a straw man.

😂 Leftists out here pitting the Dems into a two-front war because Dems didn’t provide a post-pandemic Marxist revolution with a 50-50 Senate, then trying to say they should be winning more elections if they want support. Hysterical.

They did just in just the last 12 months expand a liberal supreme court majority in WI, have the first statewide wins in GA against incumbent republicans since 2006, flip a TX state senate district where Trump had won 58-41, and flip the FL state house district where Mar a Lago is.

But leftists:

Biden-era Democrats: passing child cash payments, drug-price negotiation, insulin caps, the biggest climate bill in US history, and the biggest federal gun-safety law in decades. With a 50-50 Senate and an obstructionist opposition.

Obama-era Democrats: passing ACA, Fair Sentencing Act, Dodd Frank, creating CFPB, etc. With only like 70 days of having 60 votes in the senate.

Leftists: dems pass nothing.

Question for you: do you think Palestinians should thank you for rejecting imperfect Democrats and helping to hand the presidency, house and senate to the party whose members openly support fewer restrictions on Israel?

But keep rejecting them to preserve your sense of superiority, I’m SURE that’ll help the most vulnerable more than keeping Republicans out of power.

Let’s have a moment of silent gratitude for all those US leftists who preserved their personal sense of moral superiority by not voting or voting third party in the 2024 election. Where would we be without them?

And yet the leftists accomplish nothing other than empowering the right through their weaponized political ineptitude. They are not fit to gatekeep liberals from political action.

spoiled rich crooked babies who refuse to do the hard work of leading… and then they repeatedly lose and try to blame everyone else

That line fits Hasan pretty well, actually.

His whole model is to deride institutions while depending on other people to do the institutional work he looks down on. He can bless the handful of candidates who pass his purity test, but that is not the same thing as building power. In U.S. politics, elected officials need a broad coalition around them, and the way Hasan operates his platform subverts that.

So even when his preferred progressives win, what then? If there are fewer Democrats overall (because people like Hasan don’t discourage voting third-party or abstaining from voting in general), then progressives have fewer coalition partners, and smaller voting blocs to work with, so those wins come with less leverage, not more, and the country slides farther to the right.

Bernie Sanders understands this, which is why when Hasan tried to draw Sanders into criticizing Newsom, Sanders did not indulge it. Same reason Sanders was so friendly with Manchin: he knows what compromises need to be made to maximize chances of enacting progressive policy.