I said this in the replies but I was thinking about it more and want to say here: I think there are two problems. One is that thereās no universal definition of āliberal.ā Some people see liberals as radical leftists, and they donāt want to be seen as extremists and like a bunch of hippies, basically, so they say theyāre not liberal. But if you actually ask them about abortion, gun control, and lgbt rights, theyād have liberal positions. Then there are the actual leftists who see liberals as moderates or even conservatives, so they donāt identify as such even if, again, they actually ideologically align with liberals more often than not
The second issue is that āliberalā became a dirty word on the right and the left, so people hear liberals get shit on constantly and have a knee-jerk negative reaction to the term even though they could, again, actually hold some liberal positions. They just donāt want to be associated with the cringey libs who all their online buddies and the writers of South Park mock
My thing is that Kamala Harris ran the most progressive campaign ever and got 75 million votesāa loss of 1.5 points. Itās not like she got completely blown out of the water, so her campaign wasnāt unpopular, it just wasnāt enough in an environment with everything stacked against her and Democrats. A lot of people who voted her probably didnāt identify as liberals, but thatās the point: regardless of their label, they actually supported a liberal politician enough to vote for her. If theyāve convinced themselves that theyāre āmoderateā but actually vote blue in reality? K, Iāll take it, just keep voting for liberals lol. So I donāt think weāre as alone as it may first appear. But we (royal "we") should try to find ways to take the stigma away from the term "liberal" because Fox News basically won on making it a dirty word
