With Sanders or Warren we would have lost.

[luke32]

Pretty good opinion piece from the NYTimes on what would have happened if Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren had been the Democrat nominee:

"

The Biden Bump

If Democrats had nominated any candidate other than Joe Biden, President Trump may well have won re-election.

It’s impossible to know for sure, of course. But Biden won the states that decided the election narrowly — by two percentage points or less in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, current vote counts suggest. And there is good reason to believe other Democrats might have lost these states. Consider:

Nationwide, Biden is faring about 2.4 percentage points better than the average Democratic nominee for House seats, according to an estimate by Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics.

In several swing states — including Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina — Biden also did better than the Democratic nominees for Senate. (Arizona is an exception.)

In Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, the Democrats nominated a Bernie Sanders-style candidate — Kara Eastman, who backs “Medicare for all” and was endorsed by progressive groups like the Justice Democrats — for a House seat. She lost her race by almost five percentage points, while Biden won the district by almost seven points.

These election results are consistent with polls from over the past year that showed Biden faring better against Trump than other Democrats in hypothetical matchups.

By The New York Times

Why does this matter? For the past four years, Trump has dominated American politics. At times, he has seemed to possess magical political powers, winning the presidency despite rejecting the usual rules of politics and maintaining a roughly steady approval rating even as he was impeached and presided over a terrible pandemic.

In the end, though, Trump didn’t have magical powers. He instead became only the fourth elected president in the past century to lose re-election, after Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. That’s the good news for Democrats.

But there is also a large dose of bad news for Democrats. Despite Trump’s defeat, the Republican Party has retained its popularity in much of the country. A small but crucial segment of Americans chose to vote for both Mr. Biden and Republican congressional candidates.

This combination means that neither party has an obvious path forward. Democrats are almost certainly fooling themselves if they conclude that America has turned into a left-leaning country that’s ready to get rid of private health insurance, defund the police, abolish immigration enforcement and vote out Republicans because they are filling the courts with anti-abortion judges. Many working-class voters — white, Hispanic, Black and Asian-American — disagree with progressive activists on several of those issues.

But the notion that Democrats should simply move to the center on every issue also seems wrong. A big increase in the minimum wage passed in Florida last week with 61 percent of the vote. Several drug-decriminalization measures also passed. Expansions of Medicaid, a health-insurance program mostly for low-income people, have also passed in red states. ..."

[forveterans49]

It really makes me upset when people in the Democratic party want to stay moderate and centralist instead of striving for the progressive side. I wanted Bernie because he is a fighter and doesn't really have much in the way of owing favors to others. I like Biden but if he thinks he is going to bring thugs like Rahm Emmanuel on board, he can think again. We don't need conservative asses in the party again and again and again. I am sick of it! I want the party of FDR back. I want the rich paying their share of taxes so we can have good education for ALL kids and we can get Medicare For All. If the country won't vote for a Bernie or Warren, I am not very happy with this country. I want Democrats to grow a pair and progress upward and forward!!!!

[podfish]

It really makes me upset when people in the Democratic party want to stay moderate and centralist instead of striving for the progressive side.

maybe that's the wrong way to phrase it.
First off, if people actually want to stay moderate and centrist, well, it's probably because they are moderate and centrist.
I think your complaint is aimed at people who would prefer more progressive or radical policies, but settle for something that's moderate. And you're right, that shouldn't happen. But -- if people want particular policies they presumably want voters to approve them. It seems to be true that most people support progressive goals, but it's also true that given the squirrel of looters and rioters, they get distracted from the goal of justice. Given the threat of having their taxes increased, or government making them wear masks, they don't vote for people who will reform health care. There are ways to address that. One is to give them people like Bernie - and there are plenty of others - who unabashedly advocate progressive policies. The other is to be more pragmatic, working toward those goals but accepting less when it seems like pushing for too much means getting nothing. I'm convinced that Bernie's inability to win the primary shows he would have done worse in the general. I understand the arguments against it - there are many voters who didn't vote, but would if he was there, or would have jumped from Trump to him. If so, why didn't they do it in the primary? .. and that's just one case. It'd be lovely to have great policies implemented by a charismatic leader. But.. show me in history where that's ever happened and we can use that as a model in 2024.