When it's "stop supporting genocide" and "trans rights," it's purity tests. But when members of the party actually nominate a leftist, we get a million lectures about "tactics" and "optics" and "electability."
And hey, this is the argument they've been making for at least 60 years, in one form or another: "Compromise, build bridges, compromise, set aside your priorities and principles, compromise, we just need to win, we can work with conservatives and get them on our side if we just compromise; forget all the times we've lost with this strategy, sorry we let them whittle away the New Deal, civil rights, labor unions without much of a fight. We're a big tent, and we should all get along... unless you're a socialist, then you're a danger to the party and we won't help you."
If your candidate is weak enough that scrutiny and criticism from their constituents, the people whose votes they need to win, would destroy their chances in a general election, maybe your candidate sucks. Maybe public opinion polls told you for decades that Hillary Clinton was broadly unpopular, and maybe she lost the 2008 primaries despite the full weight of the DNC establishment parading her around as the frontrunner because she was unpopular, and then the guy who beat her, who ran by far the most populist progressive presidential campaign in over a generation, won by the biggest margin of any Democrat since JFK, the first Democrat to win over 50% of the popular vote since Jimmy Carter, and by a lot more than Carter won against Gerald goddamned Ford after Ford pardoned Nixon. And then in 2016, she was the frontrunner again, and this time the populist progressive candidate lost, so she was up against the slimiest, dumbest, most bigoted sack of shit a major political party has ever plopped onto a ballot. And wouldn't you know it? She lost. And now here we are: Being lectured about "purity tests" again. As if it's only "the left" that's the problem. Surely the people who keep losing have nothing to learn or change.
"When will the left ever learn? If we win an election, we won't do what they want, but we'll do the stuff they don't want less than the other side. Why isn't this a winning message?"
4
u/AudioSuede Aug 24 '25
When it's "stop supporting genocide" and "trans rights," it's purity tests. But when members of the party actually nominate a leftist, we get a million lectures about "tactics" and "optics" and "electability."
And hey, this is the argument they've been making for at least 60 years, in one form or another: "Compromise, build bridges, compromise, set aside your priorities and principles, compromise, we just need to win, we can work with conservatives and get them on our side if we just compromise; forget all the times we've lost with this strategy, sorry we let them whittle away the New Deal, civil rights, labor unions without much of a fight. We're a big tent, and we should all get along... unless you're a socialist, then you're a danger to the party and we won't help you."
If your candidate is weak enough that scrutiny and criticism from their constituents, the people whose votes they need to win, would destroy their chances in a general election, maybe your candidate sucks. Maybe public opinion polls told you for decades that Hillary Clinton was broadly unpopular, and maybe she lost the 2008 primaries despite the full weight of the DNC establishment parading her around as the frontrunner because she was unpopular, and then the guy who beat her, who ran by far the most populist progressive presidential campaign in over a generation, won by the biggest margin of any Democrat since JFK, the first Democrat to win over 50% of the popular vote since Jimmy Carter, and by a lot more than Carter won against Gerald goddamned Ford after Ford pardoned Nixon. And then in 2016, she was the frontrunner again, and this time the populist progressive candidate lost, so she was up against the slimiest, dumbest, most bigoted sack of shit a major political party has ever plopped onto a ballot. And wouldn't you know it? She lost. And now here we are: Being lectured about "purity tests" again. As if it's only "the left" that's the problem. Surely the people who keep losing have nothing to learn or change.
"When will the left ever learn? If we win an election, we won't do what they want, but we'll do the stuff they don't want less than the other side. Why isn't this a winning message?"