Blackbeard

Blackbeard, 4 days ago (edited 16 hours ago)

Statistically speaking and based on findings from House races, it’s a sound strategic move:

If winning more seats is the top priority, the preponderance of evidence suggests that nominating moderate, centrist candidates in districts where Republicans have a chance of winning is the more effective strategy, with the caveat that a contemporary moderate is substantially more liberal than the moderate of two decades ago.

Most — though by no means all — scholarly work supports the view that moderate candidates in competitive districts are more likely to win.

It also might be part of the reason he won in 2020:

The data [from Pew] suggests that the progressive vision of winning a presidential election simply by mobilizing strong support from Democratic constituencies simply did not materialize for Mr. Biden. While many Democrats had hoped to overwhelm Mr. Trump with a surge in turnout among young and nonwhite voters, the new data confirms that neither candidate claimed a decisive advantage in the highest turnout election since 1900.

Instead, Mr. Trump enjoyed a turnout advantage fairly similar to his edge in 2016, when many Democrats blamed Hillary Clinton’s defeat on a failure to mobilize young and nonwhite voters. If anything, Mr. Trump enjoyed an even larger turnout edge while Mr. Biden lost ground among nearly every Democratic base constituency. Only his gains among moderate to conservative voting groups allowed him to prevail.

Blackbeard, 3 days ago

That’s a totally fair response to the argument they’re presenting, and no doubt they’re framing it that way because they’re looking out from inside the corporate media establishment, but think of the way the Democratic Party sees it. From their perspective, there’s still scant evidence that progressive voter mobilization (vis a vis a progressive candidate) will overwhelm the downside of conservative voter mobilization in the other direction and against a progressive candidate. For that evidence they’d need to look to Congressional downballot races which are more fluid and open to experimentation. The evidence of progressive voter mobilization doesn’t show up there either. So while your argument makes intuitive sense, from a strategic perspective there are still significant risks if it doesn’t pan out the way you’re proposing.

Blackbeard, 3 days ago

So I don’t necessarily disagree with your chart, but it’s neither statistically relevant nor comprehensive enough to draw any kind of firm conclusion. It’s really just a grossly oversimplified snapshot that includes people from all over the country, and it doesn’t correct for any other confounding variables. The source I linked in my first comment is much more comprehensive.

Progressive policies are broadly popular. Running on things that are popular tend to get you more votes. People like it when you do stuff for them.

Yes, I get that from an intuitive sense and based on scattershot polling. It’s a great sound byte, but it’s just a sound byte. You’ve not provided evidence of any of those propositions, and per my original response to you, the party is looking for electoral evidence, not intuitive suppositions.

The only evidence I’ve seen to the contrary is a NYT opinion piece that cites centrist think tanks and random people’s opinions. I didn’t see anything in there that looked reliable or compelling.

No offense, but the only “evidence” you’ve provided to support your assertion is a jpeg with 16 names on it, so I find your retort conveniently dismissive. They’re not “random people”, some of them are academics, and many of them are actual progressives. But fine, if you prefer that I be held to a higher evidentiary standard than you are, here’s what I can cobble together:

Combining a regression discontinuity design in close primary races with survey and administrative data on individual voter turnout, we find that extremist nominees—as measured by the mix of campaign contributions they receive—suffer electorally, largely because they decrease their party’s share of turnout in the general election, skewing the electorate towards their opponent’s party. The results help show how the behavioral and institutional literatures can be connected. For our sample of elections, turnout appears to be the dominant force in determining election outcomes, but it advantages ideologically moderate candidates because extremists appear to activate the opposing party’s base more than their own. (note: this was cited in my NYT source, so I assume you missed it)

Following previous literature, we use campaign donations to estimate the ideological positions of non-incumbent candidates. We f ind that in primary elections more extreme candidates receive more votes, and are more likely to win, than moderate candidates. However, the differences between extremists and moderates are small. More importantly, we show that the “reward” to extremism in the primary is swamped by an opposing reward to moderates in the general election. In general elections moderate candidates tend to receive more votes, and win more often, than extremists. (this one was, too)

I examine how the nomination of an extremist changes general-election outcomes and legislative behavior in the U.S. House, 1980–2010, using a regression discontinuity design in primary elections. When an extremist—as measured by primary-election campaign receipt patterns—wins a “coin-flip” election over a more moderate candidate, the party’s general-election vote share decreases on average by approximately 9–13 percentage points, and the probability that the party wins the seat decreases by 35–54 percentage points. This electoral penalty is so large that nominating the more extreme primary candidate causes the district’s subsequent roll-call representation to reverse, on average, becoming more liberal when an extreme Republican is nominated and more conservative when an extreme Democrat is nominated. Overall, the findings show how general-election voters act as a moderating filter in response to primary nominations. (this one as well)

My results support the notion that voters abstain due to indifference and imply that candidate positioning has a large effect on voter turnout and third party voting. Nonetheless, my results indicate that the candidates can best compete by adopting centrist positions. While a candidate can increase turnout among his supporters by moving away from the center, many moderate voters will defect to his opponent. (this one, too)

Using ideology measures derived from campaign contributions, we find that unsuccessful challengers in the U.S. House are generally more extreme than those who win, but ideological extremity is not a disadvantage to those seeking to represent an extreme constituency. More importantly, our existing political institutions may actually serve to mitigate the already high levels of partisan polarization in Congress.

And this source goes into a great amount of detail to address the “progressive paradox” that you’re highlighting, whereby progressive policies are ostensibly popular but progressive politicians less so. It suggests that how you frame progressive policies matters a lot to whether or not it’ll reach a receptive audience.

So yes, based on the evidence I can find the popularity of progressive policies does not translate into progressive victories. The Party is interested in electoral success, and if progressive politicians repeatedly fail to mobilize enough turnout to win elections except in the most ideologically pure districts, the Party is going to consistently hedge toward moderation on a national stage.

Blackbeard, 3 days ago

Again, you’re intuitively correct. I actually agree with what you’re saying, and I acknowledge that the current landscape is changing the fundamentals in a way that we can’t fully understand just yet. But from an institutional perspective, there’s going to be a bias against unproven strategies until evidence emerges that the risk of backfire is low. It’s more “the devil you know” and all that. The testing ground for the electoral effectiveness of progressive voter mobilization is downballot. Until consistent signs of success emerge in downballot races, the Party is simply not going to take a risk on the national stage. And I’d counter that if downballot success isn’t happening, then there’s something underneath your argument that might be missing. If there’s some kind of underlying fundamental that’s missing from the puzzle, it might be phrased like this (I’m reworking your last point):

In the current polarized environment, mobilizing one’s own base is should be more effective than appealing to the center, so much so that even if you’re promoting broadly unpopular policies, it can still win against someone who has failed to adapt. But young and progressive voter turnout is consistently low enough that this positive effect is dampened.

I’ll admit it’s a chicken-and-egg argument, in that you can’t test progressive mobilization without first putting forward a progressive candidate, which isn’t going to happen until progressive voters mobilize, and so on. But I think the Party’s major, overwhelming fear is that progressive voters won’t show up even if you give them what they want, and then the electoral damage would be overwhelming. To put a bit of punctuation on it, my state (North Carolina) has a persistent Republican supermajority in the Legislature which many locals are tying directly to the leftward shift of the party at the national level. The more leftward the Democratic Party goes on social/cultural issues, the redder North Carolina gets, especially in the past few years. We had a Democratic trifecta as recently as 2010 and they’ve so thoroughly baked in Republican control that I don’t anticipate Democrats taking control of either house (or the judiciary) through the end of my life, which is crippling for centrists and progressives of all stripes.

Blackbeard, 4 days ago

DEI made the front fall off.

Blackbeard, 4 days ago

The mod already answered a similar question:

If someone pumped the gas and was posting dozens and dozens of pro or anti Trump stuff? Yeah, I think I’d do the same. We did have quite a few pro-Trump posts as he was winning primaries, which made logical sense. I’m also planning on megathreads in July and August for both conventions.

Blackbeard, 4 days ago (edited 15 hours ago)

‘there’s too much anti-biden coverage here’ is an agenda-based determination itself.

Why do you consistently infantilize the things people are arguing? Nowhere has jordan said “there’s too much anti-biden coverage here”, or anything even approaching that.

edit: You did the same thing here. You keep twisting the argument being presented into something facially ridiculous rather than engaging with what other users are actually saying.

Blackbeard, 4 days ago (edited 15 hours ago)

Yeah, and you infantilized something he’s reiterated in like 6 or 7 different ways to “there’s too much anti-biden coverage here”. Those two are not equivalent, and you omitting the second part of the sentence proves that you know it.

I don’t think I misrepresented him at all

You did. You took:

the people on Lemmy who support Biden in general, but also give him lots of criticism because of his support for Israel. That’s a normal person. They say I like good things, and I don’t like bad things. I don’t pick one team and then only say the good things about that team and only the bad things about the other team.

…and turned it into “It’s ok to criticize Biden so long as you still generally support him”. Those two arguments are not in any way the same.

Why do you keep doing that? Why can’t you engage with the words as they’re written in black and white?

Blackbeard, 4 days ago

Either it was something he wrote or it wasn’t, but I don’t care to argue with you if it was fair of me to single out that one comment or if he didn’t really mean it.

No, if he didn’t really say it. There you go again.

He took issue with Ozma’s repeated posting of anti-biden articles because he ‘had an agenda’ that was not reflective of the overall coverage of Biden. It was only too many posts because it was allegedly not representative of overall coverage, e.g. ‘too many relative to positive coverage’. Tell me where i’m screwing that up, I want to know. If it was simply ‘too many posts’ then fucking say so, but it seems pretty clearly about the perspective ozma was pushing.

If the disproportionate content itself were the determining factor, the ban would have happened 11 months ago. It’s not the content, it’s the admission that the behavior was intentionally provocative. You reiterating that as “there’s too much anti-biden coverage here” is a misrepresentation of what’s been clearly stated. There’s too much anti-Biden coverage here from this single user who has explicitly admitted to being an agitator. Anti-Biden coverage from anyone else is obviously fair game, because there’s shitloads of it.

I’ll wait for you to explain it to me, then, because to me the gist of that statement is ‘it’s normal to critique biden, but i find it suspicious if they also aren’t saying good things about him’. I’ll permit that I did exaggerate it to make a point, but the thrust of his argument is absolutely represented in my re-framing.

Yes, you did exaggerate the point, and it’s again because you got so caught up in his example that you missed the point of the example. The suspicion, again as it’s clearly written in black and white, is in the dishonesty:

“They say I like good things, and I don’t like bad things. I don’t pick one team and then only say the good things about that team and only the bad things about the other team. That’s bad faith. That’s dishonest.”

It’s clearly the same point jordan is making, and in both cases you’re glaring at the leaves of the trees and refusing to see the forest.

Because explaining why someone’s statement or argument is problematic requires restating it in a way that shows the problem clearer. If I just copy-pasted his comment into mine I wouldn’t really be engaging it, it’d just be parroting it.

Yes, restating it. Not strawmanning it.

Blackbeard, 3 days ago (edited 15 hours ago)

Agitation isn’t against the rules as far as I can see, and I’m of the opinion that agitation is an essential part of political activity.

1. Rule 3 says: “Engage in good-faith and with respect!” Rule 5 says: “This community aims to foster discussion.” Rule 4 says “no trolling.”

If the behavior in this context is not itself against the rules or bannable, then what is the standard that makes it so? If I said “i think people are too mean to Biden”, and I then exclusively post pro-biden articles (lets say the same number of times as Ozma), have I also broken the rule? Wouldn’t I still be agitating for some perspective? Or would I have to post a certain number of good things? Or is it just a number of posts generally? Or can I admit that I have a bias but i’m required to balance my negative contributions with positive contributions?

What I said: “It’s not the content, it’s the admission that the behavior was intentionally provocative.”

What you responded: “If the behavior in this context is not itself against the rules or bannable”

• It’s not the content. It’s the behavior
• If the behavior is not against the rules.

Do you see the disconnect? I can’t help but think you’re trying very hard not to read what other people are writing to you.

Edit: Apparently I’m not the only one who noticed.

Blackbeard, 3 days ago

No one claimed that.

Blackbeard, 3 days ago (edited 15 hours ago)

So no, you don’t see it. You’ve ignored too much of what I’m saying for me to be interested in putting energy into another reply that you’ll refuse to engage with.

Have a good one.

Blackbeard, 3 days ago

That’s not what he said.

Blackbeard, 2 days ago

You are wildly mischaracterizing what I actually think, to the point where you’re saying things I strongly disagree with (e.g. voting is the only thing that matters, any dissent against Biden is forbidden) and then attributing them to me.

My god welcome to the club. I gave up after he did it something like 4 times in a row to me. Strangest style of argumentation I’ve ever seen, incessantly whacking at strawmen that don’t exist. Glad you can see it too, I thought I was starting to lose it.

Blackbeard, 5 days ago

the poll found that the war in Gaza is not the top voting issue for most young Americans

Much to OP’s chagrin.

Blackbeard, 5 days ago (edited 20 hours ago)

It’s not, but it comes down to the purpose behind the exorbitant, relentless, many-hours-per-day effort. Posting like that is aimed at achieving one of the following options:

1. Vent
2. Stimulate Discussion

The two are mutually exclusive, and the community tagline is “Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!” Plus rule 3 says: “Engage in good-faith”, which as others have very clearly articulated, is very much not the case for OP.

Your mistake is in assuming people are blocking ozma for their content, as opposed to their behavior.

Blackbeard, 5 days ago (edited 20 hours ago)

I’ve seen a few people complain about how “everything is anti-Biden, so I blocked them.”

No, you haven’t. You’ve seen people clearly articulate their concerns, and you strawmanned them into saying something they didn’t actually say. You infantilized their arguments into something you could dismiss out of hand.

And yes, they do. They directly respond to and address ozma’s behavior. You only have to dig into mozz and ozma’s history for a few minutes to see how much time and effort mozz has dedicated to trying to get ozma to show an ounce of good faith, to no avail.

edit: Here’s more context.

And blocks in other communities pointing to the behavior, not the content.

Blackbeard, 5 days ago

Nowhere near the top of the list in Michigan.

Blackbeard, 5 days ago

No, it’s not just “not the top of the list”, it’s nowhere near the top of the list.

Is it enough to tip the scales? Maybe. Does he “need to address” it? I mean, yes. That much isn’t news to anyone in the country, even Biden, which is why he publicly endorsed the recent cease fire proposal.

What, in your opinion, would “addressing” it entail?

Blackbeard, 5 days ago

…and for years thereafter.

Blackbeard, 7 days ago (edited 4 hours ago)

The President cannot unilaterally increase the minimum wage, which is spelled out in the Fair Labor Standards Act. Only Congress can amend that law. Biden’s Executive Order went as far as he’s legally allowed to go.

Blackbeard, 7 days ago (edited 3 hours ago)

I agree. I don’t know which is more interesting, that the progressive standard-bearer unilaterally executed one of the most egregious civil rights violations of the 20th century, or that progressive voters have completely forgotten that he did.

Blackbeard, 7 days ago

That’s quite literally not what I said or implied.