Editor’s note: The Liberal Patriot is pleased to welcome Henry Olsen as a regular contributor to the newsletter, publishing twice a month starting in the new year.
Both parties are in the grip of their primary voters but it hasn't historically been a major problem because the difference between political extremes and the median voter were not so large. But the left has radicalized whereas the right has moderated.
- The right is less ideological about free markets, even though they remain the "stand on your own two feet" party.
- The right is less socially conservative than in the past. As a social conservative, this distresses me but it does move the right closer to the median voter.
By contrast the left has thoroughly radicalized:
- "some women have penises"
- climate justice
- defund the police (the slogan has been laughed out of use, but the policy remains)
- anti-male rhetoric
- open borders
- DEI and a rejection of Enlightenment universalism and impartiality (obligatory disclaimer: which itself came from the Bible)
Thank you for this article. For 10 years as a member of a DEC in Florida, I learned and puzzled over these kinds of pre-primary and post-primary insider machinations to the point I wondered if Democrats were democratic at all. 𝗔𝗱𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗰𝗲𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 "𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿-𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀" 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝗱𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁. (I don't know how the GOP functions).
I began to lose my hope for the Dems in 2008 when I strongly supported HRC. Then Samantha Power called HRC a monster, in an interview in Scotland and had to resign from the Obama campaign-- but later Power was appointed UN ambassador by Obama. And then HRC was appointed Obama's Sec. State. Power and Clinton were then colleagues.
None of it makes any sense to a rank and file voter. And the fact that it doesn't is why even Yellow Dogs don't bother at the primary level--it's not about rank and file at all. It's insider party legerdemain. If Mr. Olsen's post did anything for me, it explained why with a lot of heart for all my life for DEMS, I've lost heart.
"Can Democrats Escape the Vice Grip of Progressive Primary Voters?"
Short answer: no
Not so short answer: Progressives are fundamentally clueless about human nature. They believe that if they feel something strongly, and if those feelings are shared with others in their circles, then everyone would feel that way if they humiliated them for not believing as they do. So they humiliate and insult: males are bad, white people are bad, baby boomers are bad, financially successful people are bad, police officers are bad, a Navy Admiral is bad, anybody who disagrees with them on any minor issue is bad.
That attitude persuades no one. It pushes people away instead. And in particular, it is a loser philosophy when it comes to moderate voters, centrist voters, swing voters, and Independents.....all of the people who actually determine the outcome of elections.
And to see this happening in our formerly beloved Democratic party is a real loss for us.
The Dem Primary process is purposefully more complicated, so it is easier to manipulate, by the Party powers that be. It is very, very early, but this year Gavin Newson appears to be the Chosen One, much in the same way Obama was, Bernie Sanders was not, and Kamala Harris was.
On paper, it is difficult to find a less appealing Dem candidate than Newsom. The list of CA "worsts" is nearly endless. CA has the highest official poverty rate (18%), the highest unofficial poverty rate (33%) and the highest energy costs. 40% of Californians are enrolled in Medicaid. This means, 4 in 10 Californians only have healthcare, because federal tax payers foot 90% of the cost.
CA has the lowest homeownership rate and the worst homeless problem. The state has some of the lowest US Blue collar and low skilled wages, despite the highest cost of living. Perfect weather and ocean vistas cannot stop both businesses and residents from fleeing. One study claims 25% of the state is now functionally illiterate, in any language.
And the above is just the tip of the iceberg. Wait until video brings CA despair to life. Imagine a spunky CA waitress with a short commute, because she lives 3 blocks from work in a dilapidated camper, sans running water, with her 3 children enrolled in horrendous public schools. Watch the kids walk to school avoiding not just needles and human feces, but junkies shooting up, open air oral gratification and the occasional child Prostitute or dead body.
None of the above will matter, because after the advent of Trump, the Dem Primary is largely a formality, manipulated to anoint the choice of a very small and select group of very, very Progressive Dems. And their dream of morphing the entire US into CA, will never die.
What often gets missed in these analyses is how tightly the Democratic Party’s ideological drift is tied to its geographic and financial center of gravity. The same urban cores that generate the biggest Democratic vote margins also produce the donor class that keeps the party afloat. The delegates come from the same places the money comes from, and both are overwhelmingly drawn from socially progressive, high-education metro enclaves. When the political, cultural, and financial infrastructure all sit on the same few square miles of blue America, it is hardly surprising that the party keeps elevating candidates who mirror those environments. This is not simply a primary-electorate problem or a delegate-allocation quirk. It is a structural feedback loop, one where the cities that deliver the votes also define the values and bankroll the campaigns. And it is exactly why the party is so often seen as the home of elites even when its rhetoric insists otherwise.
It would seem, since the Dems hate the rich and the money they spend to elect candidates, instead of taxing them, let's find a way to restrict them from voting or campaigning. Which is not possible to do, so it seems that the Dems are on their way to destroying themselves and taking the rest of us with them.
How does one miss your morals, worldview and belief were rejected in the last Nov election? No party does more harm to so many than the Dems. Unless they remain in power, all they do is set up the gullible and poosrest for lives of misery when they are not in charged.
I've run a few caucuses before we thankfully went to a regular mail in primary, and I recognise the weird lopsided vote share we gave to precincts that had more Democratic voters in the general election and no delegates to a candidate not achieving 15%. Luckily in every primary the candidate with the most voters won, locally, at county, state, and national.
What to think of the Democratic Party and it's direction at a national level I just don't know. Is it really far to the left? Certainly not so much economically, if they were they'd support immigration restrictions and tariffs. Antifa reminds me of a buncha dang Nazis more than anything else.
Sixteen years ago I got involved in politics in hopes of getting health care. Seems like we could have fixed things all the way by now.
I got involved in politics years ago as well, but hoping to improve education. I came to the same conclusion “seems like we could have fixed things by now”. It seems the status quo is meeting the needs of the powerful.
The progressives are a very boisterous, active group who never quit and whose lives seem to be consumed by politics. That is hard to fight when most people just want to live their life.
Since the only thing the Dems stand for is anything anti Trump to make any assumptions of what their policies or beliefs is hard if not impossible to discern.
However, with their big faces on media like Crockett and Newsome, we know that they have no clue but yet the Dems want to see them as their figureheads leading them, but to where. The salvation of the Dem party maybe that they restrict very few from voting in their primaries in many elections.
This mirrors my experience from the decade+ I spent living in CA during the late eighties through the early aughts -- except there it was the Republican party that couldn't overcome the radicalism of its supporters. They insisted on nominating whackos to run for governor -- and, therefore, were persistently locked out of the governorship. The only Republican governor of CA in recent memory was "The Governator" -- and he won on a widely split ballot in a recall election. I don't live there any more but, as an outside observer, it seems the problem now is the same as it was then...
The moderates and pragmatic progressives have a chance if all or most of the leading ones, whether they've been named as potential candidates or not, rally around one of their number they want to be president.
If, say, Whitmer or Beshear got the support of Moore, Shapiro, Gallego, Klobuchar, Kelly, Warnock, Emanuel, Buttigieg, Ossoff, Fetterman, Spanberger, Torres, and Auchincloss (and others who aren't coming to mind right now), they'd have a shot at defeating a left that's divided between Newsom, Ocasio-Cortez, Booker, and anyone else who appeals to true believers rather than independents and moderates.
The consistent and unrelenting exodus of D voters from the registration rolls---some going to Rs, some to Is---suggests that they do not believe this issue can be fixed.
Both parties are in the grip of their primary voters but it hasn't historically been a major problem because the difference between political extremes and the median voter were not so large. But the left has radicalized whereas the right has moderated.
- The right is less ideological about free markets, even though they remain the "stand on your own two feet" party.
- The right is less socially conservative than in the past. As a social conservative, this distresses me but it does move the right closer to the median voter.
By contrast the left has thoroughly radicalized:
- "some women have penises"
- climate justice
- defund the police (the slogan has been laughed out of use, but the policy remains)
- anti-male rhetoric
- open borders
- DEI and a rejection of Enlightenment universalism and impartiality (obligatory disclaimer: which itself came from the Bible)
Thank you for this article. For 10 years as a member of a DEC in Florida, I learned and puzzled over these kinds of pre-primary and post-primary insider machinations to the point I wondered if Democrats were democratic at all. 𝗔𝗱𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗰𝗲𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 "𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿-𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀" 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝗱𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁. (I don't know how the GOP functions).
I began to lose my hope for the Dems in 2008 when I strongly supported HRC. Then Samantha Power called HRC a monster, in an interview in Scotland and had to resign from the Obama campaign-- but later Power was appointed UN ambassador by Obama. And then HRC was appointed Obama's Sec. State. Power and Clinton were then colleagues.
None of it makes any sense to a rank and file voter. And the fact that it doesn't is why even Yellow Dogs don't bother at the primary level--it's not about rank and file at all. It's insider party legerdemain. If Mr. Olsen's post did anything for me, it explained why with a lot of heart for all my life for DEMS, I've lost heart.
"Can Democrats Escape the Vice Grip of Progressive Primary Voters?"
Short answer: no
Not so short answer: Progressives are fundamentally clueless about human nature. They believe that if they feel something strongly, and if those feelings are shared with others in their circles, then everyone would feel that way if they humiliated them for not believing as they do. So they humiliate and insult: males are bad, white people are bad, baby boomers are bad, financially successful people are bad, police officers are bad, a Navy Admiral is bad, anybody who disagrees with them on any minor issue is bad.
That attitude persuades no one. It pushes people away instead. And in particular, it is a loser philosophy when it comes to moderate voters, centrist voters, swing voters, and Independents.....all of the people who actually determine the outcome of elections.
And to see this happening in our formerly beloved Democratic party is a real loss for us.
The Dem Primary process is purposefully more complicated, so it is easier to manipulate, by the Party powers that be. It is very, very early, but this year Gavin Newson appears to be the Chosen One, much in the same way Obama was, Bernie Sanders was not, and Kamala Harris was.
On paper, it is difficult to find a less appealing Dem candidate than Newsom. The list of CA "worsts" is nearly endless. CA has the highest official poverty rate (18%), the highest unofficial poverty rate (33%) and the highest energy costs. 40% of Californians are enrolled in Medicaid. This means, 4 in 10 Californians only have healthcare, because federal tax payers foot 90% of the cost.
CA has the lowest homeownership rate and the worst homeless problem. The state has some of the lowest US Blue collar and low skilled wages, despite the highest cost of living. Perfect weather and ocean vistas cannot stop both businesses and residents from fleeing. One study claims 25% of the state is now functionally illiterate, in any language.
And the above is just the tip of the iceberg. Wait until video brings CA despair to life. Imagine a spunky CA waitress with a short commute, because she lives 3 blocks from work in a dilapidated camper, sans running water, with her 3 children enrolled in horrendous public schools. Watch the kids walk to school avoiding not just needles and human feces, but junkies shooting up, open air oral gratification and the occasional child Prostitute or dead body.
None of the above will matter, because after the advent of Trump, the Dem Primary is largely a formality, manipulated to anoint the choice of a very small and select group of very, very Progressive Dems. And their dream of morphing the entire US into CA, will never die.
Exactly. Why pretend all this down in the weeds 'voting' matters.
Interesting, did not know this difference between Republican and Democrat primaries. Could discourage the center left Democrat from voting.
100%.
What often gets missed in these analyses is how tightly the Democratic Party’s ideological drift is tied to its geographic and financial center of gravity. The same urban cores that generate the biggest Democratic vote margins also produce the donor class that keeps the party afloat. The delegates come from the same places the money comes from, and both are overwhelmingly drawn from socially progressive, high-education metro enclaves. When the political, cultural, and financial infrastructure all sit on the same few square miles of blue America, it is hardly surprising that the party keeps elevating candidates who mirror those environments. This is not simply a primary-electorate problem or a delegate-allocation quirk. It is a structural feedback loop, one where the cities that deliver the votes also define the values and bankroll the campaigns. And it is exactly why the party is so often seen as the home of elites even when its rhetoric insists otherwise.
It would seem, since the Dems hate the rich and the money they spend to elect candidates, instead of taxing them, let's find a way to restrict them from voting or campaigning. Which is not possible to do, so it seems that the Dems are on their way to destroying themselves and taking the rest of us with them.
How does one miss your morals, worldview and belief were rejected in the last Nov election? No party does more harm to so many than the Dems. Unless they remain in power, all they do is set up the gullible and poosrest for lives of misery when they are not in charged.
I've run a few caucuses before we thankfully went to a regular mail in primary, and I recognise the weird lopsided vote share we gave to precincts that had more Democratic voters in the general election and no delegates to a candidate not achieving 15%. Luckily in every primary the candidate with the most voters won, locally, at county, state, and national.
What to think of the Democratic Party and it's direction at a national level I just don't know. Is it really far to the left? Certainly not so much economically, if they were they'd support immigration restrictions and tariffs. Antifa reminds me of a buncha dang Nazis more than anything else.
Sixteen years ago I got involved in politics in hopes of getting health care. Seems like we could have fixed things all the way by now.
I got involved in politics years ago as well, but hoping to improve education. I came to the same conclusion “seems like we could have fixed things by now”. It seems the status quo is meeting the needs of the powerful.
The progressives are a very boisterous, active group who never quit and whose lives seem to be consumed by politics. That is hard to fight when most people just want to live their life.
Since the only thing the Dems stand for is anything anti Trump to make any assumptions of what their policies or beliefs is hard if not impossible to discern.
However, with their big faces on media like Crockett and Newsome, we know that they have no clue but yet the Dems want to see them as their figureheads leading them, but to where. The salvation of the Dem party maybe that they restrict very few from voting in their primaries in many elections.
Why explain these machinations when it's the DNC/billionaire donors who pick the candidate?
Or George Clooney.
Yeah, Clooney/Obama
One way to start is to spell it correctly.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/vise-and-vice-they-mostly-arent-the-same-thing
British and American English differences! Technically your version is correct. Good eye.
Last time I looked around, I wasn't living in Merrie Olde England. LOL
😂 It's a common screw-up. My bad, not Henry's!
At least you admitted it, which is better than a "progressive" would do. LOL
I watch too much EPL and if I start saying things like "maths" and sticking random 'u's in words, punch the clock on me.
What's EPL? The only Brit stuff I watched was Monty Python and Downton Abbey, which by the end began to turn into something out of Monty Python. LOL
This mirrors my experience from the decade+ I spent living in CA during the late eighties through the early aughts -- except there it was the Republican party that couldn't overcome the radicalism of its supporters. They insisted on nominating whackos to run for governor -- and, therefore, were persistently locked out of the governorship. The only Republican governor of CA in recent memory was "The Governator" -- and he won on a widely split ballot in a recall election. I don't live there any more but, as an outside observer, it seems the problem now is the same as it was then...
This is the "Democracy" and the "morals" that the Dems say is being destroyed by Trump. All I can say is, god, I hope so.
The moderates and pragmatic progressives have a chance if all or most of the leading ones, whether they've been named as potential candidates or not, rally around one of their number they want to be president.
If, say, Whitmer or Beshear got the support of Moore, Shapiro, Gallego, Klobuchar, Kelly, Warnock, Emanuel, Buttigieg, Ossoff, Fetterman, Spanberger, Torres, and Auchincloss (and others who aren't coming to mind right now), they'd have a shot at defeating a left that's divided between Newsom, Ocasio-Cortez, Booker, and anyone else who appeals to true believers rather than independents and moderates.
Have you been reading Beshear's X posts lately? I think he's now to the left of all your so-called moderate candidates.
The consistent and unrelenting exodus of D voters from the registration rolls---some going to Rs, some to Is---suggests that they do not believe this issue can be fixed.