No. of Recommendations: 6
They should focus on supporting progressive candidates by not opposing them in primaries.Perhaps, but that doesn't really address the question. That's a tactic, not an actual vision or goal or policy aim.
What's the thing that should be the top priority of the Democratic priority - the thing that they most want to do?
For the last decade or so, if you had to fill in the blank for "The top priority of the Democratic Party is ______________," you would probably have filled in either "climate change" or "protecting minority rights." I think that's a big reason why the national brand is in trouble and why they're losing support in the working class - while most voters agree with the policy of fighting climate change and protecting minority rights, they do
not prioritize those issues. They always prioritize the economy, and recently have prioritized immigration and crime issues. There's a misalignment of priorities, not position.
Up until 2010, you would have filled in the blank with "health care" - which
matched voter priorities, since voters
did assign high importance to health care reform. But once the Democrats
got their health care package passed, it ended up taking the issue of the "to do list" and more into the "must protect" list (like Medicare and Social Security) - which makes it hard to use as a forward-looking vision of the future.
It sure seems like the Democratic Party is trying to snuff out the progressives before they get out of the cradle.A lot of people in the Democratic Party aren't progressive. Historically, the majority of Democrats self-identified as moderate or conservative - it's only a recent phenomenon that liberals have been even a bare majority of the party. So there is a sizable faction in the Democratic Party that doesn't believe that it would be good for the party to become more progressive. That's one of the reasons why the Party is somewhat split these days, and is perceived as lacking a coherent vision for moving forward - because there is genuine disagreement within the party about the best way forward. Which is why progressive candidates draw primary opponents, like Mills entering the primary against Platner - and will continue to do so.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/467888/democrats-iden...
