Opinion: Centrist Democrats should stop blaming progressives for Harris's loss (Los Angeles Times)

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Whether to use he/she pronouns in emails wasn’t a factor in the Harris-Trump race.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=&w=916
From left to right: Commentator James Carville, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Massachusetts), and Quentin Fulks, the deputy campaign manager for Vice President Kamala Harris's 2024 campaign. (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images; Bruce Boyajian/The Washington Post; Melina Mara/The Washington Post)


By Perry Bacon Jr.
Los Angeles Times

Center-left and establishment Democrats are trying to marginalize the party’s left wing in the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss last month, in some ways mirroring what moderates — including Bill Clinton — did in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

The bashing of progressives started almost immediately after the election — and hasn’t stopped since. Commentator James Carville said Harris could “never wash off the stench” of left-wing rhetoric such as “defund the police.” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Massachusetts) said: “Here we are calling Republicans weird, and we’re the party that makes people put pronouns in their email signature.” Quentin Fulks, who was Harris’s deputy campaign manager, said party activists too often force Democratic candidates to apologize, particularly hurting them with male voters, because, according to him, “men don’t like people who apologize.”

I hope this effort is unsuccessful. It’s based on a false premise. The Democrats’ biggest electoral problem isn’t its less-powerful progressive wing, but rather a centrist establishment that clings to power while constantly losing elections and major policy fights. And, as happened in the 1990s, a rightward move by Democrats on policy could hurt some of the most vulnerable people and groups in American society.

As election analysis, these takes aren’t particularly strong. Whether to put he/she pronouns in emails wasn’t a factor in Harris’s race against Donald Trump. The “defund the police” slogan was most prominent in 2020 — a year Democrats won the House, Senate and the presidency. Harris didn’t issue a big apology during her campaign. (Election results aside, politicians and anyone else in America who does something that they regret should apologize. I am disappointed I have to use space in a published article in 2024 to note that it’s plenty manly to say, “I’m sorry.”)

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/05/centrist-progressive-democrats-election-recriminations-blame/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3fd5e5a%2F6751e48de179af1b45e7176a%2F5972a8e29bbc0f1cdce864e4%2F18%2F59%2F6751e48de179af1b45e7176a