this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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Leopards Ate My Face
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I mean... trying to win over moderate, independent, and anti-Trump Republican voters seems like a reasonable approach given the way the current voting system works.
If anything, it seems that Biden and the DNC fucked us by not having a primary. Biden should have committed to a one and done. She may have fucked us by accepting the nomination without a primary, but I honestly blame Biden for that far more.
I do agree that Kamala didn't help the situation all that much. But I still don't see how she really fucked us.
It consistently failed to win elections
It was how Biden won his election, so... it has won elections. It was just a bad strategy for Harris.
Biden ran to the left of Sanders in 2020
That's absurd, of course he did not.
Id honestly appreciate if you could educate me on this. My understanding is that Biden never even supported socialized healthcare. I'm a bit surprised to hear anyone say he was left of Sanders.
So, apologies for the source as this is one of the right-wing "it's too much money!!!" type articles.
That said:
But the big hallmarks
Public option
Expanded Medicare Enrollment
Expanded Federally Funded Rural Health Care
are all socialized health care policies.
He didn't govern to the left of Sanders once in office. But back at the height of COVID and with Sanders coming out as the frontrunner in polling, he campaigned to the left of Sanders.
Hardly the first time he's pulled this trick, either. As Obama's VP candidate, he openly advocated for everything from public housing to student debt relief to expanded Medicaid. As Senator, he regularly championed expansive public programs for alternative energy and high speed rail, for public works in areas with high unemployment, and for public intervention when pharmaceuticals or insurance or food costs spiked. Then he rolled it all back the moment the polls closed.
How many elections must they fail to win before it finally becomes obvious that, no, it is not a reasonable approach.
And to really drive the point home, how much did Obama go to the right to win? Or how much did he run on actually trying to improve this fucked country?
I'm a bit confused, are you saying Obama was not center left and occasionally right leaning? I would have sworn he relied on market-based solutions for healthcare, supported for free trade agreements, aggressively used executive military power and drone striked the shit out of the middle east, and the maintained many Bush-era tax rates. He even had a beer with a cop who arrested a black man trying to get into his own house as an "apology" for stating the cop acted stupidity (the cop did) during his first term. So, he went to the right during his actually presidency. Am I mis-remembering these things or something?
I'm clearly pointing out how Obama's campaign breaks your assertion that you have to go right to win, despite the Democrats losing every election this century when they tried to go to the right.
Obama explicitly campaigned to the left by advocating for policies to make thing better, hence that whole last bit. Whether his presidency veered more towards the right is immaterial to the point at hand.
Also, how much of your paragraph is related to the campaign and isn't just you trying to find any excuse why your a argument doesn't hold water? Because we're not talking about the presidency, that's you moving the goalposts. This is about the campaigns that were run (and lost!) by democratic candidates despite your incorrect assertion that campaigning right is necessary to win.