So...Biden won Michigan. Is the progressive movement just not as strong as it seems? I feel like questioning everything at this point because I'm feeling rather despondent about it all.
The proggressive movement is still strong, a ton of them just wound up voting for Biden. We need to not imagine the progressive movement as the majority of the party overthrowing our corporate overlords but the progressives make up about 40% of the Democratic Party, though that number goes up to 75% of we look at general values rather than specific identification. And in this particular election, a lot of progressives decided to go with Biden, who they think can win, rather than go with Sanders who hasn’t done a good job with outreach. The movement itself is still large, we still basically dominate the internet discourse, and we have the most popular policies. What we haven’t figured out is how to build bases. basically in this election, there wasn’t a single “progressive” movement, but instead several different camps, split between Sanders, Warren, Harris, Mayor Pete, Booker, and Castro. As those latter dropped out, Biden picked them up because Sanders didn’t modify his message. Which means that a lot of people supporting Biden are themselves progressive. We need to reach out to them more in the future.
The big mistake made in this election was trying to recreate 2016, rather than adjust to the new realities on the ground.
