Democrat Candidates Suddenly Shying Away From the “Progressive” Label, Keep Toxic Policy Positions
“Left-wing candidates from Pennsylvania to North Carolina to Missouri are shying away from the P-word on the campaign trail, in messaging and online fundraising, and even in media blitzes”
Has the term “progressive” become toxic for Democrats running for office? It’s beginning to look that way. Some of them are actively running away from the word in their campaign materials.
Why do you suppose that is?
Could it be because of defunding the police? Something else?
Hanna Trudo writes at The Hill:
Progressive candidates seek distance from label
They’re pushing for environmental reforms, embracing single-payer health care and calling for more government assistance. But increasingly, many are reluctant to call themselves “progressives.”
Left-wing candidates from Pennsylvania to North Carolina to Missouri are shying away from the P-word on the campaign trail, in messaging and online fundraising, and even in media blitzes, signaling an attempt to rebrand their wing of the party as Democrats debate how to win the midterm elections.
On paper, many mesh with Capitol Hill’s top leftists. Some support easing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and restarting discussions around “Medicare for All.” Others want to accept more Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russia’s invasion of their country. Most would like President Biden to use executive action to give Americans more aid across the board.
Their hesitation to be defined as such, however, is new.
“For those people who understand root terminology, to progress means to move forward,” said Dwight Bullard, a senior adviser for Florida Rising and a local NAACP leader. “To be a progressive is to be forward thinking or constantly in a push to improve.”
Now for the funniest part of the story. What do they prefer to be called instead of progressive?
While some high-profile contenders still use the moniker, others want to be thought of in different terms. Pennsylvania’s Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who’s seeking the party’s nomination for a coveted Senate seat, prefers a different word: populist.
He’s not alone.
Isn’t that a term most people associate with Trump? Has anyone pointed that out to these Democrats?
Guy Benson of Townhall notes that it’s not about the word, it’s about policy:
Ultimately, they can “rebrand” all they want. It’s not the word or label that is the fundamental problem, but rather the policies attached to whatever the word or label may be. As National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar points out, several Democratic Senate frontrunners in key races are from the progressive/name TBA wing of the party. No one knows how things will shake out more than half a year from now, but Republicans in places like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will certainly be eager to highlight some of the positions of leftwing candidates if they become general election nominees:
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, the early front-runner for the Democratic nomination for Senate, is a Green New Deal-supporting, single-payer health care-backing, cash-bail-opposing candidate championed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren. He started out with a sizable lead in the primary but is facing two opponents who are beginning to spend their own personal wealth on campaign ads. Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman isn’t calling himself a progressive in this campaign, but he was a 2016 Bernie Sanders backer and he supports Medicare-for-all.
The strategy of dropping the term “progressive” relies on a misguided belief that voters won’t see that a candidate’s policy positions align with people like AOC or Bernie Sanders.
People are smarter than that.
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Comments
Absolutely progressives are veering right for the election
Beto “butto” is now pro 2A since he is now running for Texas governor – who woulda thunk
Robert Francis O’Rourke is as phony as his Hispanic nickname.
To be fair, the classical progressives, the classical liberals, were closer to American conservatives then, than they are with evolution. Show me the fitness function!
“Shying Away from Progressive Label”
They may be shying away from the label, but they are no different in their character, conduct and policies than they were before.
It’s no different than a man who decides he wants to be called a woman. Nothing is changed but the name.
The Four Horsewomen of the American Apocalypse.
They change the name of the ideology more than some people change socks. Every time they back themselves into a corner we get a name change.
1. Wash
2. Wrinse
3. Repeat
At this point they smell worse than dirty socks. They need to work on #1..
There’s nothing populist about wanting to talk about sex with kids. There’s another p-word for that: Pedophiles.
The Democratic Party is the Party for pedophiles.
Trans (i.e. state or process of divergence)-social, or it was. NOW (pun intended), it’s simply social progress: one step forward, two steps backward.
“The Democratic Party is the Party for pedophiles.”
That’s why they nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Planning ahead.
So much lipstick has been applied that their pig now looks like it is carrying a redbird in its mouth.
It’s of a piece with their obsession with “messaging,” as if it’s simply not possible that people can be genuinely and immovably opposed to neo-feudal statism in the guise of socialism.
Trump was never called a populist by his core base. They are delusional idiots if they think this will sway the middle that voted for Trump to their side.
How stupid do you have to be to underestimate people so haphazardly?
Progressives will now hide behind a new label all the while claiming no past relationship to the label they left behind. The saddest part of this is that it seems to work.
The Ghost of Gosnell. It’s the wicked solution, right?
Libertarianism is a philosophy of optimal independence. Liberalism is a philosophy of divergence. Progressivism is a philosophy of [unqualified] monotonic change. Conservativism is a philosophy of moderation. We hold these truths to be self-evident… principles, principals matter. Oh, it’s for the People and our Posterity (i.e. from the first to last heartbeat, coherent neural signal).
Socialism (and Social Democrats) is the philosophy of self delusion followed by self destruction.
“D” is as poisonous as “Z”.
Do the Russians want to date AOC, too?
“Isn’t [populist] a term most people associate with Trump? Has anyone pointed that out to these Democrats?”
Well, you’ve got to feel for the lying bastards. They’re literally running out of words. They’ve adopted, shat on, and had to discard so, so many, that soon they’re just going to have to invent new ones! Like “cisnormative,” “heteropatriarchal,” or the nonsense company names Chinese scammers dream up to sell schlock on Amazon.
They adopted progressive only because they had throughly corrupted and befouled liberal, which they stole because they had completely besmirched socialist, which they adopted because they were tired of people calling them villains, thieves, and scoundrels.
What’s so deliciously ironic is that the one word they can never divest themselves of — Democrat — is the only one you need to beat their little shell game.
They are not Democrats, either… They are all DSoA hideouts in the Democratic Party.
Tesla Co-founder and CEO Elon Musk has purchased a 9.2% stake in Twitter, Inc, according to a Monday filing from the SEC.
that’s roughly $2.89 billion
I don’t call them Progressives , either. They are all DSoA socialists
??
What they call themselves is irrelevant. It’s that they support the progressive fascist movement ie the Democratic Party that matters. Their opponents should challenge them to reject the Democratic Party and join the Republican Party.