Progressives (Liberals)

I don't know any of the people mentioned in the story. Never heard of them. And why are you using the lying, failing NY Times as a source?

And why are you using the lying, failing NY Times as a source?

Why are you responding to the one person we can all agree is a "troll?"

Why are you responding to the one person we can all agree is a "troll?"

Ommmmmmmmm

I believe that will continue, as will also the struggle between Biden and all the rest (or more accurately between him and the Sanders-Warren competition). Some weeks ago I forecasted a rapid decline in support for Biden, however that hasn't yet happened.

Biden’s Electability Advantage Will Be Hard to Shake Among Risk-Averse Democrats

Sometimes it feels like political writers (myself included) spend a lot of time trying to tell voters to think differently than they actually do. This is clearly the case with Democrats and their obsession with presidential “electability.” My colleague Eric Levitz and I have both written about how slippery the very concept is, with Eric sensibly concluding Democrats should “simply vote for whichever candidate they would most like to be president.”

But at this point, there’s really little evidence that the electability craze is going to fade, or will stop mattering as it becomes simply another sign of candidate preferences determined by other factors. In a new poll it conducted with Ipsos, FiveThirtyEight found fresh evidence this week that beating Trump is the top “issue” for Democrats watching presidential debates, even though the candidates spend most of their time talking about policy matters:

Quote:

In our FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll, conducted using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, we surveyed the same set of respondents both before and after the debate to find out what issue was most important in determining their vote in the primary. And what we learned was Democrats are most concerned about defeating President Trump — nearly 40 percent of respondents said this was their top issue. For reference, the next-most-common top issue — health care — was picked by just 10 percent voters before the debate and 11 percent after.

Other surveys (like Monmouth’s) that suggest a choice between candidates with significantly different odds of beating Trump show an even higher focus on electability, as Amy Walter noted last month in looking at Iowa:

Quote:

[T]he 2008 Democratic caucus exit poll, found that just 8 percent of Democratic caucus-goers picked “has the best chance to win in November” as one of the four personal qualities that mattered most in their vote. The top choice, at a whopping 52 percent, was “can bring needed change.” In 2016, “can win in November” came in fourth place at 20 percent, behind “right experience” (28 percent), “cares about people like me,” (26 percent), and “honest and trustworthy” (24 percent).

In 2004, “can beat Bush” (26 percent) came in a close second to “takes a strong stand” (29 percent). This year, the desire to beat Trump is even more intense. When asked [in a new Monmouth poll] if they had to choose between a candidate they agree with on issues but would have a hard time beating Trump, or a Democrat they don’t agree with but who’d be stronger facing off against the president, 72 percent of Iowa Democrats picked the candidate who could beat Trump.

In other words, Democrats are not in the mood to gamble on the general election outcome in order to address particular issues they care about or elevate politicians to whom they are attracted. And although many of us “experts” are skeptical about Joe Biden’s electability credentials, those doubts have yet to spread to voters, who consistently give the former veep high marks for his perceived ability to beat Trump, as Ron Brownstein recently noted:

Quote:

In this week’s national ABC/Washington Post poll, for instance, 45 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents picked Biden as the candidate most likely to beat Trump, far more than those who selected Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont (14 percent) or Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts (12 percent)….

Other recent polls in competitive 2020 states have found a comparable gap. In a Quinnipiac University poll of Texas Democrats released yesterday, Biden led both Sanders and Warren by five to one on the question of electability; in a Quinnipiac Pennsylvania poll from May, two-thirds of Democratic voters 50 and older picked Biden as the most electable—no one else drew more than 3 percent of them.

My own theory about Biden’s electability advantage is that while voters may have wildly different ways of measuring electability, the front-runner tends to do well in more of them than anyone else, in ways that have endured and may well continue to do so.

The most obvious is Biden’s consistent strength in head-to-head polls against Trump. You can remind people all day long that these are unreliable indicators of how a general election campaign will actually play out – but they won’t be able to ignore them. And Biden’s advantage here is significant. There is not a single poll in the RealClearPolitics database of 2020 trial heats between Biden and Trump in which Biden does not lead. His current lead in RCP’s polling averages is an enormous 11.5 percent (Sanders’ is 7.0 percent, and Warren’s is 5.2 percent, but both have trailed Trump in some surveys).

A second factor making Biden Mr. Electable is the widespread belief among pundits and voters alike that all things being equal proximity to the political “center” is a general election asset. The more we approach a three-candidate nominating contest in which Biden’s only real challenge comes from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the more Biden’s relative “moderation” will become evident. That may hurt him with some primary voters, but it could at the same time enhance his perceived electability.

A third factor some analysts focus on is the practical ability to win voters the party lost in 2016 – either to Trump or to third parties or to the living room couch. There’s at best limited evidence that Biden is more popular than other Democrats in the much-chewed-over white working class demographic (especially Obama-Trump voters). But he certainly talks about his focus on these voters a lot, which enhances the perception they are his people. And he certainly has conspicuous strength among African-American voters, whose fall-off in turnout was a big problem for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Biden does not look like a good bet to energize younger voters, but Trump might well do that for him.

And finally, Biden’s electability ace-in-the-hole could be simply his familiarity and likability, which at least one study has shown is the most important source of the belief in his electoral strength, as Brownstein explains:

Quote:

To [Third Way’s Lanae] Erickson the research points to a two-part explanation for [Biden’s] consistent advantage. Voters, she said, believe that Democrats must be united to defeat as formidable an adversary as Trump, and Biden—as a former vice president and senator with decades of experience—has the stature that they believe is necessary to coalesce the party. The logic, she said, is that “we know this person … He’s a known quantity who can unite. It’s the risk-averse way of thinking about things if you are worried that this [primary race] could get out of control.”

“Risk-averse” is probably the most important word to remember in assessing Democratic voters heading towards 2020. They still don’t entirely understand how Hillary Clinton managed to lose to Donald Trump in 2016, but they aren’t inclined to take anything for granted this time around. And that will make it difficult for candidates other than Biden to convince Democrats their other qualities are worth taking a bit of a risk. Sure, Biden could in theory blow himself up with some high-profile gaffe that undermines the very premise of his candidacy. But that’s not within anyone else’s control.

Allegations of spying, subterfuge and “red-baiting” as the left battles over institutions at the heart of the Democratic Party.

A group of far-left activists huddled in the basement of a labor union in Manhattan, aiming to upend a Democratic institution that they felt had grown stale.

The potential target was not an entrenched politician, or the local county party. It was a much closer ally: labor unions, including the one that was hosting the activists’ meeting earlier this year.

The plan did not go over well. The union, a branch of the Communication Workers of America, kicked the activists out. Labor leaders accused the activists of plotting infiltration. The activists, in turn, recently warned of union spies.

The dispute makes clear the growing ambition of New York’s activist left, which over the past year has notched a string of high-profile successes, from propelling Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s election to scuttling Amazon’s plans to build headquarters in New York City.

On the national stage, progressive forces are trying to push the Democratic agenda to the left, and challenge how party leaders respond to President Trump.

Emboldened by their successes, they are now preparing to take additional steps toward political and economic transformation — including by challenging groups that have long been in the populist vanguard of the Democratic Party.

The unions, in turn, have been forced to reckon with the shifting political landscape, and to decide what position they want to occupy within it.

While unions in New York and nationwide have often championed progressive policies, some have also opposed marquee issues for the left, including the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. No union endorsed Ms. Ocasio-Cortez in her insurgent congressional campaign last year.

Even as grass-roots labor activism has swelled in new sectors — including among video game makers and Uber drivers — established unions have often kept their distance because of funding shortages or reluctance to engage with workers outside of their formal membership.

At its heart, the debate is one between pragmatism and idealism, working within the system versus burning it down.

It is the same debate dogging the Democratic Party at large, but amplified by an only-in-New-York mix of vibrant activism, impenetrably blue politics and — unlike in the rest of the country — still-mighty unions eager to quell perceived threats to their clout.

“Given the political moment we find ourselves in, the idea that a leftist political organization would launch disruptive attacks on their ostensible allies in the labor movement is the definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face,” said Peter Ward, the president of the Hotel Trades Council, a union of hotel workers.

Activists countered that the labor movement had fallen out of step. Jeremy Saunders, the co-executive director of VOCAL-NY, a progressive activism group, said many union leaders seemed dismissive of the energy on the left.

“This growing left sees labor as its natural allies,” he said, “but is frustrated by some unions who too often side with those same politics and politicians who refuse to fight for justice.”

The current dispute involves the New York City branch of the Democratic Socialists of America and the plan it crafted at that basement meeting. The socialists, deeming the city’s unions overly reliant on insider relationships, prepared a “rank-and-file strategy” for their members to join unions and remake them from within.

The group also later published a blog post encouraging other chapters nationwide to follow suit.

Some backlash was immediate. But it exploded recently, after the group’s 37-page memo about its plan was reported by Politico, leading union leaders to accuse D.S.A. of sowing division.

In response, D.S.A. members — including State Senator Julia Salazar, the first member of the group to serve in the Legislature — said the union leaders were “red-baiting.”
[...]
To be sure, the labor movement is large and diverse. Some unions have aggressively backed progressive priorities. Activists and organized labor in New York have successfully pushed together for a $15 minimum wage and driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. D.S.A. still borrows meeting space from some unions.

Attempts to remake the unions are also not limited to outside activists: Internal factions within several unions have publicly challenged leadership.
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And youre selling lizzie short.