Not voting means the party has to start offering policies to entice you back.
Blindly supporting means the party can start offering policies to entice those who don’t vote for them (conservatives).
That’s true in a democratic system, sure. But what I think the electoral entryists lose sight of is the real incentive of a politician isn’t necessarily to win election. The real incentive of a politician is to build political capital within the party/government in order to pursue an objective. And that objective isn’t necessarily going to be a popular one.
Case in point, look at the UK Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour Right very deliberately and explicitly tanked their own chances to win in 2019, because they didn’t want the policies that Corbyn was championing. The fact that Corbyn had brought in an enormous number of new, enthusiastic left-liberal voters was considered a problem to solve not a benefit of his campaign strategy.
Consequently, when Corbyn lost to Johnson, New Labour spent the next years systematically weeding out all of the new left-liberals introduced to the party in the prior cycle. They consolidated support around Starmer by shrinking participation not by expanding it.
The modern Democratic Party is engaged in a similar project. The goal is not to entice anyone into the party. It is to establish the Dem Party as the only viable alternative to Trump and demand voters approach the liberal(ish) party on its own terms. The Dems exist to cater to the donors first and then to the corporate media and then to the celebrity class.
Tell me again which moves the overton window?
The only thing that moves the Overton Window is consolidation of control over the local media.
Leftists quite literally need to get control of the airwaves and democratize the engines of journalism and information commerce. Anything else is a fool’s errand.
You aren’t going to beat FOX News at a propaganda contest by being a Silent Majority. All you’re going to get is BlueMAGA blaming you when they lose, while MSNBC calls you a bunch of Putin Bots and TikTok degenerates.
That’s true in a democratic system, sure. But what I think the electoral entryists lose sight of is the real incentive of a politician isn’t necessarily to win election. The real incentive of a politician is to build political capital within the party/government in order to pursue an objective. And that objective isn’t necessarily going to be a popular one.
Case in point, look at the UK Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour Right very deliberately and explicitly tanked their own chances to win in 2019, because they didn’t want the policies that Corbyn was championing. The fact that Corbyn had brought in an enormous number of new, enthusiastic left-liberal voters was considered a problem to solve not a benefit of his campaign strategy.
Consequently, when Corbyn lost to Johnson, New Labour spent the next years systematically weeding out all of the new left-liberals introduced to the party in the prior cycle. They consolidated support around Starmer by shrinking participation not by expanding it.
The modern Democratic Party is engaged in a similar project. The goal is not to entice anyone into the party. It is to establish the Dem Party as the only viable alternative to Trump and demand voters approach the liberal(ish) party on its own terms. The Dems exist to cater to the donors first and then to the corporate media and then to the celebrity class.
The only thing that moves the Overton Window is consolidation of control over the local media.
Leftists quite literally need to get control of the airwaves and democratize the engines of journalism and information commerce. Anything else is a fool’s errand.
You aren’t going to beat FOX News at a propaganda contest by being a Silent Majority. All you’re going to get is BlueMAGA blaming you when they lose, while MSNBC calls you a bunch of Putin Bots and TikTok degenerates.