Also, the other thing is, you need to beware of echo chambers.
Just because you and all your friends think Harris is a centrist, that does not mean that that is a common view. How often do you listen to people who don't agree with you, politically? I have to do it fairly regularly, and the average American is far more likely to think that Biden and Harris are both far-leftist extremists than they are to think they're middle-of-the-road.
Yes. That's right. To a lot of Americans, Biden and Harris are so far left that they are terrifying.
I know life-long Democrats who believe that. Who think that, in retrospect, sure, Trump was bad but Biden and Harris are just as bad, in the opposite direction. They're faced with what they see as a choice between two dangerous extremists, in opposite directions.
They're wrong, but you will never convince them of that.
And there are two important things to remember about them:
There are a lot more people like that then there are people who think of Biden or Harris as centrists. (The people in America's political center sure as fuck don't think Biden and Harris are centrists.)
Centrists vote far more regularly than leftists. Therefore, they have more power per person, because politicians know they have to have them on board to win. Leftists are nice to have, but undependable, so a politician who wants to be elected has to favor the centrists over the leftists.
If we want US politics to move left, we need to do two things:
Vote in every election. Far left in primaries, Democrat in general elections, to prove we are a voting bloc worth listening to.
Build on-the-ground relationships with people who don't already agree with us, and do active community building, harm reduction, and other stuff like that in our own communities. People don't change their ideology based on logic and national debates. They change their ideology based on relationships, stories, and seeing how stuff works in their own communities.
ellievsbear
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2087
turnnoffyourmind
