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Originally Posted by SEC_Chick
I am going to wager, though, that Ds will not self reflect and realize that the country is really moderate or slightly center-right and will think that the answer is MOAR PROGRESSIVISM.
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I see a lot of Democrats doing a lot of self-reflection, and painfully aware that their turnout was matched by huge conservative turnout.
There are always going to be the Sanders types who insist that if Democrats just ran candidates from farther left, they would motivate lots of new voters who would make the difference. It failed for Sanders in the primary, but they will keep saying that. OTOH, other Democrats did not buy it from Sanders in the primary, and I don't see a reason to think that will change. ETA: We just had an election where Joe Biden, for Christsakes, was the Democratic nominee. Does that not demonstrate that Democrats do not leap to the idea that the answer is more progressivism?
If you are a progressive, though, the realization that the country is to your right does not make you any less interested in solving the problems that progressives want to solve, just as the right wing doesn't stop trying to push the country to the right just because they are a minority. Has any conservative ever said, hey, wait, the country isn't as conservative as I am -- maybe the answer is not moar conservatism?
However, unlike their counterparts on the left, progressives usually are more interested in specific issues (BLM, the environment, etc.) than in their identity as progressives. So they will keep looking for ways to address those issues. In the past, progressives were willing to compromise with Republicans to pass bipartisan solutions that were not what they wanted but were better or nothing. In recent years, Republicans who were willing to be their dance partners have gotten beaten by conservatives who are more interested in pwning the libs than in compromise. Susan Collins is one of the few Republicans in that mold left, and it's not clear that she is actually willing to cross her party on anything it cares about. So any issue that becomes politicized is one where bipartisanship is impossible. There is a lot of legislation around issues that are not politicized in this way -- an hour ago I was speaking at a conference about some examples -- but that's only possible when the battle lines are not partisan.
