By undercut I meant that some single-issue voters on Gaza let the perfect be the enemy of the good and decided to sit this election out. We have the worse of the two candidates on many, many issues, including Gaza, partly as a result of their choice. As a multi-issue progressive voter who cares deeply about climate change, gun control, v…
By undercut I meant that some single-issue voters on Gaza let the perfect be the enemy of the good and decided to sit this election out. We have the worse of the two candidates on many, many issues, including Gaza, partly as a result of their choice. As a multi-issue progressive voter who cares deeply about climate change, gun control, voting rights, civil rights, bodily autonomy, democratic institutions, Ukraine, AND peace in the Middle East, I am saddened and frustrated that our work is now so much harder, if not impossible, on all those issues.
But my point was actually that the Left does have an outrage-fueled ecosystem like the Right, but unlike the candidate of the Right, who pushed the outrage buttons effectively, the candidate on the Left did not. This was partly her centrist strategy that failed, and partly IMO the fault of the left-leaning media coverage, which focused all Gaza all the time, while other progressive issues got lost. The result of both failures is that the better candidate also lost. WE lost.
All of us on the Left lost the outrage battle to the Right, but not because we have less to be outraged about. We need to do better! In the future, I’d like to see more variety of progressive policies from the Democrats to play to justified outrage on the Left and I’d like effective use of the alternative outlets on the Left to support rather than undermine the better candidate… there are plenty of good policies to choose from, including climate action, gun control, Medicare for all, etc. that actually have majority support and underlying justified outrage for fuel.
Let’s use them for good… let’s use them to win so we can use power for good, including pushing the better candidate to do more on the issues we care about…
if we get the chance, after this catastrophic loss to the forces of fascism.
By undercut I meant that some single-issue voters on Gaza let the perfect be the enemy of the good and decided to sit this election out. We have the worse of the two candidates on many, many issues, including Gaza, partly as a result of their choice. As a multi-issue progressive voter who cares deeply about climate change, gun control, voting rights, civil rights, bodily autonomy, democratic institutions, Ukraine, AND peace in the Middle East, I am saddened and frustrated that our work is now so much harder, if not impossible, on all those issues.
But my point was actually that the Left does have an outrage-fueled ecosystem like the Right, but unlike the candidate of the Right, who pushed the outrage buttons effectively, the candidate on the Left did not. This was partly her centrist strategy that failed, and partly IMO the fault of the left-leaning media coverage, which focused all Gaza all the time, while other progressive issues got lost. The result of both failures is that the better candidate also lost. WE lost.
All of us on the Left lost the outrage battle to the Right, but not because we have less to be outraged about. We need to do better! In the future, I’d like to see more variety of progressive policies from the Democrats to play to justified outrage on the Left and I’d like effective use of the alternative outlets on the Left to support rather than undermine the better candidate… there are plenty of good policies to choose from, including climate action, gun control, Medicare for all, etc. that actually have majority support and underlying justified outrage for fuel.
Let’s use them for good… let’s use them to win so we can use power for good, including pushing the better candidate to do more on the issues we care about…
if we get the chance, after this catastrophic loss to the forces of fascism.