Thanks for running my column with the latest episode of They Stand Corrected. News agencies are so caught up in their agendas that they hide or ignore big-picture realities. There is a real opportunity to build a broad coalition that will help shore up democracy.
"Blue Rose Research found that voters overall considered Vice President Kamala Harris “more ideologically extreme” than President Donald Trump."
This should send two messages to the Democratic Party leadership. One message is that we don't want the party too swing too hard to the left, but the other (and even more important) message is that we're giving the GOP too much power in defining our party and need to do a better job with defining ourselves to the public at large.
Why do I say that? Because in no reasonable universe was Harris "more ideologically extreme" than Trump. That's not even close to being true, and yet tens of millions of Americans were convinced otherwise.
A lot of what this column says is based on what the media does, and today's "mainstream" media is tilted heavily toward the right where no far right position is considered too extreme, but proposing something as reasonable as universal access to affordable health care is. I don't know what "Democratic Party leadership" can do about this. Harris had perfect messaging — I got her emails every day. But the media never amplified what she said, which was all stuff that should've resonated with voters. Instead they constantly demanded she respond to whatever Trump regurgitated that say and accused her of being evasive when she responded that she's rather talk about her own policies.
Messaging is only "perfect" if the message is actually successfully communicated to the intended recipients. I'm not sure what the party and our candidates can do about a hostile media environment, but it absolutely is something that needs to get figured out...somehow.
Most of the electorate support universal health care, reproductive rights, and taxing billionaires. These are not left positions but the moderate center, yet we have no center right politicians anymore.
I hear you. We're losing centrist politicians in general. Galvanizing support for moderate candidates, getting people to turn out for primaries, opening up primaries to Independents in states where they're currently barred -- all these steps could make a big difference.
I suggest that we stop using these stupid, meaningless, distracting names and focus on what people want. The things you are suggesting and many more. Tell voters what you are going to do in office and then do it (Mamdani is a tremendous example; If that guy keeps this up he will be nominated in 2028). Dems should be known by what they deliver/accomplish not what the media call them.
Exactly. Voters don't rate a candidate or politician by whether they are right, left or "centrist," but by whether they are willing to address issues people have to deal with every day — housing, education, health care etc.
What people don't grasp is that American politics for YEARS have been further to the right than many countries. Universal healthcare is a great idea...in theory. But how would it be enforced? How are you going to do that with the doctor and nurses shortage? That's before the specialists and subspecialist shortage. It shouldn't take 9 months to get into a GI doctor. I don't want to go to some quack or wait months if I break a hip the way some people do in foreign countries if they don't have private insurance too. This then lead to butchered surgery with a heck of a lot of complications for the wife of a friend.
Americans used to be able to do hard things. Why can’t we now? But to answer about the severe doctors and nurses shortage, that affects me personally already. Why not give grants, not loans, for medical education?
Ann, as someone with multiple rare diseases, I'm all for your idea. Apparently, if it's a disease/disorder that's 1:10, it's rare. Then I have the super-rare stuff with no actual known stats.
I'm a retired obstetrical physician. If I were starting over, I'd want free medical school, a decent but not exorbitant salary, a reasonable call schedule instead of chronic sleep depravation and keep the plaintiffs' attorneys off my ass!
As in most politics, I think the bottom line is voters. Why is there not greater participation in primaries? Why do millions not vote in Presidential elections? I wish that voting was not a party affair, but rather a vote for candidates and their platforms. Imagine a government of individuals, hopefully qualified, who have to answer for their positions and decisions instead of being answerable to a party system? No labels, no blame games. Decisions, platforms and voting.
Here in Ohio I keep saying that if the ballot only listed qualifications and not who the candidates were, the Democrat running for auditor — a CPA who rescued a Cleveland suburb in distress — would win 90% of the vote against a Republican who is only running for the office to stay in politics since all other avenues were shut down for him (He was really hoping to be appointed to JD Vance's Senate seat.)
You are right about the media but I don't believe the data you cite supports your conclusions. Most voters are not at all focused on policies. They want candidates they can relate to and whom they believe will be fighters for their interests. They never really get to whether the policies the candidates espouse are too far right or left.
I've seen some polls where if they present various policies divorced from left/right labels, 50 to 90% of people (depending on the specific issue) select the liberal/progressive stance. Even people who claim to be conservative are actually liberals. Just don't make them realize that.
I suspect that any candidate could win if they focused on rich versus poor/middle class rather than focusing on left vs. right. What do people agree on? They don't like inflation, they don't like Forced Birth laws, they don't like forever wars, and they want affordable healthcare and daycare. Easy platform for anyone to pick up. Just don't mention left/right or liberal/conservative. Not relevant.
We all know what the media SHOULD do, but we also know that the billionaire owned media is leaning further and further right and what's left of truly independent media (if there is any such thing) does not attract the necessary readership.
So…I don’t get it. Right now, the paradigm shouldn’t be right or left. What does too far right or too far left actually mean??? The paradigm should be democracy versus autocracy. Does too far right mean autocracy? Does too far left mean democracy?? That construct is the reason I subscribe to The Contrarian.
I'm so disappointed. This is a typical "mainstream" media take. No, voters are not sitting around looking for "moderates" or "centrists." That's a concept being pushed by the media, which is inappropriate in a political climate where everything is so tilted to the right that the "center" is essentially the most progressive members of the Democratic Party, and the so-called "centrists" are what used to be the right. Typically, pushes for "centrism" embrace a more corporate-favoring environment, and that seems very much at odds with what the electorate, which is focused on cost-of-living issues and finger-in-your-eye corruption and control by billionaires, wants right now. The average voter isn't interested in political consultants' and commentators' labels for candidates, but whether the candidate is talking about issues they care about.
Voters always say they want centrist, moderate candidates who will "work across the aisle" and find compromises with their opposition in order to get things done. But they also consistently say they want candidates who will fight harder against the same opposition they are supposed to cooperate with. I get the sense that what a lot of people mean by "cooperation" is "force them to capitulate." The surest way for an incumbent to lose a primary is to even hint at really compromising or cooperating with the opposition. As you say, that may be because most voters don't vote in primaries; but since that's how we actually choose candidates, I'm not sure what you think we should do about it. Bottom line, if voters consistently say they want something, they need to get their butts to the polls and vote for it, not once in a blue moon but every time.
Also, it always seems that it's only Democrats who are urged to "reach across the aisle," but Republicans are always praised for digging in their heels and not giving an inch.
What is so extreme about universal health care, taxing billionaires, stopping Tech Bros, having Congress actually accomplish something instead of bickering, an end to voting restrictions, ending mass incarceration, upholding the law and the right to due process, and not destroying the planet???
It is true, but most people don't know what those policies are because the legacy media never reports them. And for the many people who get all their news from Fox, all they ever hear about Democrats is weird, untrue "Culture war" things.
I'm sorry - in what ways has the Democratic Party "gone too far to the left"? What policies are "too extreme" that Democrats have proposed? Raising minimum wage for the first time in 17 years? Investing in renewable energy sources? Protecting voting rights? Trying to increase medical coverage for Americans, and reducing prescription costs? Affordable housing? This column buys into the same old story of "both sides-ism", and. that. is. NOT. true.
I feel that our “system” of nominating and electing politicians is broken and eliminating the very thing we desperately need right now - priorities and agreement. I am a registered Independent because I do not trust either the Republicans or Democrat party to represent and protect what I hold dear. The extremes control the narrative and system right now and that needs to change.
As for candidates running for office, we desperately need people who have integrity, who keep the interests of constituents first in mind, who have the ability to understand opposing views and discuss them, who have the courage to stand up for democracy, and who can relate to many generations, cultures and economic levels. I’ll be watching for them from either party.
In very conservative areas of the country voters make a bigger deal about who is a liberal and who is a conservative. This has been my observation as well as the common issues in elections: costs of gasoline, food, healthcare, education etc.
Thanks for running my column with the latest episode of They Stand Corrected. News agencies are so caught up in their agendas that they hide or ignore big-picture realities. There is a real opportunity to build a broad coalition that will help shore up democracy.
Feel free to weigh in over at theystandcorrected.substack.com!
"Blue Rose Research found that voters overall considered Vice President Kamala Harris “more ideologically extreme” than President Donald Trump."
This should send two messages to the Democratic Party leadership. One message is that we don't want the party too swing too hard to the left, but the other (and even more important) message is that we're giving the GOP too much power in defining our party and need to do a better job with defining ourselves to the public at large.
Why do I say that? Because in no reasonable universe was Harris "more ideologically extreme" than Trump. That's not even close to being true, and yet tens of millions of Americans were convinced otherwise.
A lot of what this column says is based on what the media does, and today's "mainstream" media is tilted heavily toward the right where no far right position is considered too extreme, but proposing something as reasonable as universal access to affordable health care is. I don't know what "Democratic Party leadership" can do about this. Harris had perfect messaging — I got her emails every day. But the media never amplified what she said, which was all stuff that should've resonated with voters. Instead they constantly demanded she respond to whatever Trump regurgitated that say and accused her of being evasive when she responded that she's rather talk about her own policies.
Messaging is only "perfect" if the message is actually successfully communicated to the intended recipients. I'm not sure what the party and our candidates can do about a hostile media environment, but it absolutely is something that needs to get figured out...somehow.
If no one hears the message because it's deliberately stifled, you can't make that judgment.
Most of the electorate support universal health care, reproductive rights, and taxing billionaires. These are not left positions but the moderate center, yet we have no center right politicians anymore.
I hear you. We're losing centrist politicians in general. Galvanizing support for moderate candidates, getting people to turn out for primaries, opening up primaries to Independents in states where they're currently barred -- all these steps could make a big difference.
Yet these positions are labeled as far leftist by MAGA and the media seems to accept and perpetuate that.
They are also portrayed as left positions by 'moderates' in the Democratic Party.
I suggest that we stop using these stupid, meaningless, distracting names and focus on what people want. The things you are suggesting and many more. Tell voters what you are going to do in office and then do it (Mamdani is a tremendous example; If that guy keeps this up he will be nominated in 2028). Dems should be known by what they deliver/accomplish not what the media call them.
Exactly. Voters don't rate a candidate or politician by whether they are right, left or "centrist," but by whether they are willing to address issues people have to deal with every day — housing, education, health care etc.
What people don't grasp is that American politics for YEARS have been further to the right than many countries. Universal healthcare is a great idea...in theory. But how would it be enforced? How are you going to do that with the doctor and nurses shortage? That's before the specialists and subspecialist shortage. It shouldn't take 9 months to get into a GI doctor. I don't want to go to some quack or wait months if I break a hip the way some people do in foreign countries if they don't have private insurance too. This then lead to butchered surgery with a heck of a lot of complications for the wife of a friend.
Americans used to be able to do hard things. Why can’t we now? But to answer about the severe doctors and nurses shortage, that affects me personally already. Why not give grants, not loans, for medical education?
Ann, as someone with multiple rare diseases, I'm all for your idea. Apparently, if it's a disease/disorder that's 1:10, it's rare. Then I have the super-rare stuff with no actual known stats.
I'm a retired obstetrical physician. If I were starting over, I'd want free medical school, a decent but not exorbitant salary, a reasonable call schedule instead of chronic sleep depravation and keep the plaintiffs' attorneys off my ass!
Alas, that makes too much sense!
I'm happy to see this; I consider myself liberal, but I'd rather see more plain Democrats than Democratic socialists running for office.
Well said!
What is a "plain Democrat?" Someone who can't connect and relies on focus groups to tell him/her what to think?
No; someone that is not extreme.
Define "extreme."
Someone who considers Israel genocidal, someone who supports Israeli extremists like Smotrich.
Seems a bit contradictory and unrealistically narrow.
As in most politics, I think the bottom line is voters. Why is there not greater participation in primaries? Why do millions not vote in Presidential elections? I wish that voting was not a party affair, but rather a vote for candidates and their platforms. Imagine a government of individuals, hopefully qualified, who have to answer for their positions and decisions instead of being answerable to a party system? No labels, no blame games. Decisions, platforms and voting.
Here in Ohio I keep saying that if the ballot only listed qualifications and not who the candidates were, the Democrat running for auditor — a CPA who rescued a Cleveland suburb in distress — would win 90% of the vote against a Republican who is only running for the office to stay in politics since all other avenues were shut down for him (He was really hoping to be appointed to JD Vance's Senate seat.)
This is a perfect example.
Australia has compulsory voting. Canada has a limited campaign season (37-51 days).
You'll get more participation with early voting, mail-in voting and making election day a national holiday.
You are right about the media but I don't believe the data you cite supports your conclusions. Most voters are not at all focused on policies. They want candidates they can relate to and whom they believe will be fighters for their interests. They never really get to whether the policies the candidates espouse are too far right or left.
I've seen some polls where if they present various policies divorced from left/right labels, 50 to 90% of people (depending on the specific issue) select the liberal/progressive stance. Even people who claim to be conservative are actually liberals. Just don't make them realize that.
Exactly. This kind of brow furrowing only interests consultants and commentators.
I suspect that any candidate could win if they focused on rich versus poor/middle class rather than focusing on left vs. right. What do people agree on? They don't like inflation, they don't like Forced Birth laws, they don't like forever wars, and they want affordable healthcare and daycare. Easy platform for anyone to pick up. Just don't mention left/right or liberal/conservative. Not relevant.
We all know what the media SHOULD do, but we also know that the billionaire owned media is leaning further and further right and what's left of truly independent media (if there is any such thing) does not attract the necessary readership.
So…I don’t get it. Right now, the paradigm shouldn’t be right or left. What does too far right or too far left actually mean??? The paradigm should be democracy versus autocracy. Does too far right mean autocracy? Does too far left mean democracy?? That construct is the reason I subscribe to The Contrarian.
I'm so disappointed. This is a typical "mainstream" media take. No, voters are not sitting around looking for "moderates" or "centrists." That's a concept being pushed by the media, which is inappropriate in a political climate where everything is so tilted to the right that the "center" is essentially the most progressive members of the Democratic Party, and the so-called "centrists" are what used to be the right. Typically, pushes for "centrism" embrace a more corporate-favoring environment, and that seems very much at odds with what the electorate, which is focused on cost-of-living issues and finger-in-your-eye corruption and control by billionaires, wants right now. The average voter isn't interested in political consultants' and commentators' labels for candidates, but whether the candidate is talking about issues they care about.
Voters always say they want centrist, moderate candidates who will "work across the aisle" and find compromises with their opposition in order to get things done. But they also consistently say they want candidates who will fight harder against the same opposition they are supposed to cooperate with. I get the sense that what a lot of people mean by "cooperation" is "force them to capitulate." The surest way for an incumbent to lose a primary is to even hint at really compromising or cooperating with the opposition. As you say, that may be because most voters don't vote in primaries; but since that's how we actually choose candidates, I'm not sure what you think we should do about it. Bottom line, if voters consistently say they want something, they need to get their butts to the polls and vote for it, not once in a blue moon but every time.
And the same people say that they want change, real change. Perhaps the pollsters need to work on their questions.
Also, it always seems that it's only Democrats who are urged to "reach across the aisle," but Republicans are always praised for digging in their heels and not giving an inch.
What is so extreme about universal health care, taxing billionaires, stopping Tech Bros, having Congress actually accomplish something instead of bickering, an end to voting restrictions, ending mass incarceration, upholding the law and the right to due process, and not destroying the planet???
I’ve read—many times—that the policies promoted by Democrats have broad popular support. Is that wrong?
It is true, but most people don't know what those policies are because the legacy media never reports them. And for the many people who get all their news from Fox, all they ever hear about Democrats is weird, untrue "Culture war" things.
I'm sorry - in what ways has the Democratic Party "gone too far to the left"? What policies are "too extreme" that Democrats have proposed? Raising minimum wage for the first time in 17 years? Investing in renewable energy sources? Protecting voting rights? Trying to increase medical coverage for Americans, and reducing prescription costs? Affordable housing? This column buys into the same old story of "both sides-ism", and. that. is. NOT. true.
I feel that our “system” of nominating and electing politicians is broken and eliminating the very thing we desperately need right now - priorities and agreement. I am a registered Independent because I do not trust either the Republicans or Democrat party to represent and protect what I hold dear. The extremes control the narrative and system right now and that needs to change.
As for candidates running for office, we desperately need people who have integrity, who keep the interests of constituents first in mind, who have the ability to understand opposing views and discuss them, who have the courage to stand up for democracy, and who can relate to many generations, cultures and economic levels. I’ll be watching for them from either party.
In very conservative areas of the country voters make a bigger deal about who is a liberal and who is a conservative. This has been my observation as well as the common issues in elections: costs of gasoline, food, healthcare, education etc.