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Not that any leftist/progressive was expecting good takes from Pod Save America, but listening to that makes it clear the DNC fully intends to repeat their mistakes of 2024. The only realistic path they have to a 2028 presidential election victory is some surprise candidate winning the primary over the wishes of the DNC like Obama did. Obama and Mamdani (NYC mayor being very different from a presidential election, of course) are recent examples of that happening, so it's not impossible, but the Democrats badly needed that in 2016, 2020 (sure Biden won, but it was embarrassing that beating Trump was a challenge at all), and 2024 as well. And this interview confirms the old guard is just as entrenched as ever.
The leftist/progressive position (at least the more practical leftist) is not that the Democrats are good, but that getting elected outside of the two-party system is infeasible and they aren't welcome in the Republican party, so the only remaining option is to try to co-opt the Democratic party. Which outside of a few exceptions (Mamdani, "The Squad") has not seen a lot of success.
What do you think the mistakes of 2024 were? Personally I'd go with:
(2) and (3) seem pretty accurate. I'd disagree strongly on (1): the Democrats' failure in 2024 was in no small part because they failed to communicate their successes to the electorate. Unless you were watching closely, the Biden administration appeared to be merely keeping the government going and not rocking the boat. Policies on the left can be sold as popular. People on the left regularly claim polling shows their policies are popular as long as you don't use use language pattern-matching to existing right-wing attacks on them. The problem is the Democrats either don't try or aren't good at it. And they try to fight any candidate that is good at it like Mamdani.
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Ok but progressive politics are deeply deeply unpopular in America overall. When progressives get nominations in swing districts, they lose even in blue years. Democrats tend to do best with blue doggers or white candidates preferred by the ultra-moderate black wing.
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Well, if the Trump admin can’t pull its shit together it’s possible that any successor will be tainted and the Dems can stumble into a narrow win with a bland-but-inoffensive candidate, similarly to the 2020 Biden campaign. But, yeah, that’s not exactly a “strategy” worthy of the name.
There was a brief moment after the 2024 election stretching into early 2025 where it looked like the DNC might actually learn something. Alas, it seems the one thing they’re good at is avoiding information that may upset their existing power structure. Their current top prospects are Gavin Newsom and, uh, Harris again. It’s still a long way to go to 2028 but both of those choices (practically anyone from California, honestly) are electoral suicide.
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