A strong performance by left-wing Democrats in primary elections came as a snub to President Biden: he wants centrist candidates who he believes have a better chance of winning in November’s midterm elections.
Instead, Democratic voters chose “progressives” for the vacant US Senate seats in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, seen as key to control of the chamber, while also rejecting a rare endorsement by Biden of a well-funded, sitting centrist congressman in Oregon.
Fake left, run right, has long been the way to get through the primary and election process for Democrats (the inverse for Rs of course). But what happens when the left part isn’t a fake and then meets the general population?
Both the Libs and Labor here in Oz seem rabid leftists to me. But of course I read your blog, Tim.
Still, I’ve already cast my vote, even though polling day is 21 May. I was wandering home from Greenslopes Hospital when a huge horde of pamphlet issuers began offering me how-to-vote instructions as I approached the polling booth. So I thought, why not vote early. And so I did.
The most important bit was to make sure the Liberal preferences didn’t offend my prejudices. But, in both the House of Reps and the Senate, they appeared to put the Greens last.
We know how it works out – middle class flight from rampant ignored-by-law-enforcement crime and junkies passed out in every street corner.
We’ve seen California.
As independents and centrists flee the Democrat Party, progressives get the candidates they want. Primaries tend to be low turnout affairs anyway, and if a third or so of your base has left, chances are the best organized will win, irrespective of whether they represent the best chance of winning in a general election.
These results will, if anything, move more people to the Republican Party, as Democrat candidates will be forced to publicly prove their ideological bona fides via progressive purity tests; defunding the police, abortion up to birth, restricting fossil fuels, CRT, etc., etc.
One would expect the members of political parties to be pretty ideologically consistent as they are in much of the world. That this was not the case in the US for so many years was an accident of the Civil War. However, that was 160 years ago and the big tent is about gone. Joe Manchin may be the last of the blue dog Democrats. As the parties become more consistent, the wackier elements of both sides become more prominent.
As it remains possible that neither party will hold the reins of power for long at the federal level and Washington just careens from one side to the other. However, it shifts the policy action to the states which may go more and more their own way. That won’t lower the screeching from DC about the injustice of them not being able mandate from on high.
Good to see the Dems going full retard.
I’d imagine they aren’t fussed as Dominion voting machines and voting mules will ensure a surprising amount of voters vote early and often – in multiple counties and even multiple states – they did it in 2020 and can do it again
I don’t even think it’s Biden’s ideology that’s really causing this. He’s an empty vessel who will do whatever his handlers tell him to anyway.
I think the real problem is that their incompetence and disdain for the citizenry has led to piss-poor polling research. It took a consulting firm paid for by Biden’s administration about 6 months to come up with the phrase “Ultra MAGA” to describe Trump voters. It backfired so marvelously that conservatives are printing that on T-shirts now.
A real leader doesn’t need focus groups and call centers to figure out what people want. You should already have an idea before you even enter the race. Some solid principles that don’t change at the drop of a hat wouldn’t hurt either.