It’s the opposite; what doomed her was releasing a concrete plan to expand healthcare and reach M4A, rather than continuing to speak in general platitudes the way Bernie did.
Bernie also had a concrete plan. He wrote a bill, you may have heard.
Liz’s plan was unpopular because “let’s pass something else that’s not m4a and we’ll all pinkie promise to come back in 3 years and vote again on m4a” is a pretty fucking stupid idea.
We discussed this at length when it happened, which you certainly remember, and you’re trying to gaslight.
I think a major issue is there is a (purposeful?) muddying between progressiveness and representation which borders on tokenism at times. Like take the black panther movie. It’s clearly a good thing that black people can see themselves represented in a superhero movie. You only have to see the responses to be clear on that. But (and I’m not bothering to look it up so you can totally own me on this) were any of the producers black? Where did the money come from and where did the vast majority of the profits go? To white people, or to large corporations owned and run by white people.
Representation on it’s own isn’t progressive imo. It is a small part of racial justice which itself is a part of economic justice. That was the problem with obama. Hey we got a black president, racism is over! Well hold on the black president just bailed out the banks at the expense of black homeowners. The black president tried to cut social spending. The black president passed a right wing healthcare plan that left black families behind in a way M4A wouldn’t.
Like a company may say look how progressive we are, 50% of our board is women. But if those women are the same corporate assholes as the men what will that representation actually change?
I love the polls!
@NotBruceZ: you should also do a couple polls that ask the respondant to say/rank/scake how progressive they are, and then to estimate how progressive the rest of this forum is.
I’m not sure how to word the polls (or I’d do them myself, I guess) but I bet we’d find that most people here consider themselves to be some version of “pretty or very progressive,” but the real discrepancy would be in how people view the forum as a whole.
But regardless of what might truly be in Warren’s heart, can we concede that it’s possible for a person to honestly believe that taking incremental steps towards M4A would be the best policy and that that person could still be a progressive?
The problem with getting specific on something like healthcare during a political campaign is twofold: 1) people will disagree with you because it’s a big complicated thing with a lot of viable opinions and 2) it’s inherently dishonest because at a fundamental level it’s just wishcasting since if a deal got done it would look nothing like what you campaigned on.
It’s all risk and no reward, which is a great way to describe most of Warren’s really big fuck ups in her political career. Big unforced errors where she does something super risky with basically no upside at all.
The big two examples are obviously the DNA test and her healthcare plan, but I’m sure there are plenty more that just weren’t as big.
I used the 5-point Likert scale in the OP, but let’s break out the 7-pointer.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Somewhat agree
- Neither agree nor disagree
- Somewhat disagree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree
0 voters
I look at it and think that where getting into specifics hurt her is that she called a ton of attention to how tall the M4A mountain is. Not only are you right that her position was already a compromise it was also obviously impossible to get done and was pure 100% wishcasting… so it was a complete messaging disaster both ways.
Before Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy I’ll admit that I, as a content consumer, wanted to see a campaign with concrete policies… Warren taught me why that was bad in 2019 lol.
I feel like the common thread in those mistakes was a willingness to give an honest answer.
Nah. It’s not honest to give people this giant plan that has zero chance of getting done as proposed. The honest answer is to say that you’re in favor of the government taking over healthcare like exists in the rest of the world with running water. You have no idea what deal you’ll get because it depends on a whole bunch of factors that aren’t even under your control, and you should be honest about that too.
All the math around the wealth tax was bullshit too. Enforcement wouldn’t be 25% as good as her numbers would require if we had 65 senators, the house, the SC, and the WH… and she absolutely knows that. I didn’t mind that piece of dishonesty because I thought it was a good way around ‘how will you pay for it’… but it was definitely not in any way honest.
That wasn’t her starting bargaining position, though. She started out with “what Bernie said” and that wasn’t good enough.
She branded herself as the person who has a detailed plan for everything, so it really stuck out that she didn’t have a specific health care plan.
It wasn’t good enough because Bernie was in that lane splitting the voters for it to be fair. Either Warren or Sanders needed to not run in the 2020 primary. I can buy arguments for both of them individually being the standard bearer, but them running against each other was a disaster.
Neera knows the difference I guess
That is straight up insanity. Might as well post “fuck the left wing of my party” in her bio.
This is America. Progressives these days are Ronald Reagan and everyone to his left.
I mean you’re not interpreting that wrong. It’s the message she wanted to send and she sent it.
Agree. I guess I’m naively surprised she would be so obvious about it.
This is why so many people get super furious when people both sides the left vs the establishment. The two groups aren’t friends and the left really doesn’t owe the establishment a single moments mercy now that Trump is out of office. We should be on them from here on out. The 2022 primary season needs to be a bloodbath. It’s not even about ideology so much as it’s about a generational power transfer. The boomers and silents really need to go now. When this is over I hope we pass a mandatory retirement age for office holders instead of term limits.
And if we ever manage to get any real power we put in ranked choice voting and secede from the Democratic Party never to organize or associate with them again. What a bunch of assholes.
I mean anyone passingly familiar with her knows that’s her whole deal!
I admit it. I didn’t know who she was. I’m a terrible awful uneducated moron. She is clearly the most famous person on earth and me not knowing everything about her will be a shame I’ll take to my grave.
Can we move past me not knowing who she was now?