i cannot fully agree with that and my position is based on the flipside.

Manchin has no issue voting against or blocking almost every position that are wildly popular with his voting base to instead please his donors.

I think, he knows, like more politicians now do, that actual voting records matter mean almost nothing now and it is more about rhetoric and grandstand regardless of what constituents want.

I tend to agree. For low info voters, defund the police just sounds like "get rid of the police", and very few people want to get of police entirely.

20% is actually a huge number imo. If 20% of Democratic voters identified as progressive I don't think their policies get near the representation in Congress based on their numbers. Or maybe they do, just they're representatives don't do **** to leverage their power.

I think progressives just want accountability.

In theory conservatives would also want accountability but it seems many people who identify with law enforcement or at least feel the system is safe for them tend to lean conservative. So..whatev I guess.

Oddly enough the more bodycam footage I see the more reform I think is necessary. I don't remember cops being as militarized when I was younger. They were pricks but it seems they're worse now.

The US Congress is where progressives go to die.

Until all outside money is removed we'll all live happily ever after in an oligarchy.

You would expect the percentage of progressives to be higher in NYC than in most of the rest of the country.

If 20% is really a huge percentage, or higher than you would have guessed, then it is a miracle that Bernie was as competitive in two Democratic primaries as he was, and it seems unlikely that any other progressive candidate for president will do as well unless there is a significant shift in the electorate.

Progressives aren't monolithic. I think there is a fair difference of opinion among progressives, especially regarding funding.

As you say, everyone says they want accountability, and some things like body cams should have been implemented 25 years ago. The question is what else should be done beyond the usual blah, blah, blah about training.

I agree that police seem overly militaristic in the U.S. That may be mostly an optical point, but it still matters.

Getting rid of qualified immunity is a popular talking point among progressives, but I think it would be tough to accomplish. Recruitment is an issue for a lot of police departments as it stands right now. It's just not a very attractive job. I suspect that it would be even harder for departments to fill their ranks without qualified immunity. And the harder it is to fill your ranks, the more you end up scraping the bottom of the barrel.

I assume that a lot of progressives would say: "Great, if getting rid of qualified immunity has the effect of shrinking police forces by 20-30%, all the better. I wanted to do that anyway. Most of the cops who quit (or don't apply) will be the bad apples. They care more about qualified immunity than the good cops."

I'm not at all convinced that the last two sentences are correct. I've never been in a violent altercation in my entire adult life, but if someone forced me to be a police officer, I would be quite concerned about qualified immunity.

Qualified immunity only kicks in if you're done something unconstitutional.

Cops were complaining about Miranda Rights and being unable to keep evidence from unlawful seizures as well and did just fine after merely being confined to acting legally.

I'm not much for QI or banning police unions. To me they're just neoliberal goals that will end up effecting other workers (especially government and/or government contract workers).

I would say citizen review boards and possibly even oversight from a different branch of government would be minimal. And of course training isn't just a talking point. They seem to draw their weapons all the time. It's nonsense. If they couldn't rely on weapons for most encounters they would tend not to escalate. Going hand to hand isn't fun. Spraying or electrocuting someone is easy.

Yes, but included under that broad umbrella are 1983 claims based on use of excessive force. I assume that preserving the defense for excessive force claims is what would matter most to your average cop.

In any case, it's worth remembering that, even when a QI defense fails and damages are awarded, the cop almost never pays the judgment. In 99% of the cases, the government pays.

I think for most people, they think "defund the police" means take funding away from the police, which means less police officers. Most people believe in law and order, and reject that proposition, especially when the reasoning amounts to the overly broad criticism that the police are racist.

If 20% of people wanted x it would usually mean that 0% of representatives wanted x.

+1

I think that you are right in how most of the general public hearing 'defund the police' thinks about it.

But i think most who say it (where it originated) mean it as 'stop the crazy amount of status quo spending on militarizing the police and in that specific line and approach'. It is a call to defund that path we are clearly on where cops become increasing big hammers looking for nails to hit.

What they want instead is a bunch of those funds to be diverted into other types of 'support policing' efforts that they think would yield better results for citizens and the cops, themselves.

I don't disagree much with your overall point, but I think the NYC mayor's race was a particularly tough fight for progressives. Probably their best candidate (Stringer) had a sex scandal and the DSA never actually found a candidate they liked enough to endorse. Yang entering the race also sucked up so much attention making it hard for any lesser known people. I think progressives can definitely win in NYC and even NY statewide with a candidate at full strength. I think Kirsten Gillibrand should be particularly worried about losing to a progressive.

I think saying progressives are a small contingent is true, in the sense that probably less than 20% of dems voting in a primary care a great deal about who is the most progressive or who the DSA/progressive leaders endorse. But that is probably true of every faction in the party and it does not mean a DSA backed candidate can't win statewide or NYC mayor. I would bet a decent amount of money at even odds that someone heavily involved with the DSA like Jamaal Bowman etc will win either NYC mayor, NY Governor or a senate seat by 2030.

Why? Progressives are not distributed equally (or anything close to equally) across all voting districts.

I agree with a good bit of this. AOC already has proven that a progressive can win in certain districts. And Buffalo just elected a socialist as mayor.

Wiley supporters trained most of their fire on Yang, but they probably would have been better off going after Adams. By targeting Yang, I think that they helped to deliver the election to Adams, and I doubt that Adams was the second choice for most progressive voters. I'm not sure who their second choice was, but I doubt it was Adams.

I never thought Springer had a chance. Even before the sexual harassment stuff, it was the wrong moment in history for an old white guy to be running for mayor in NYC based on his history as Manhattan borough president.

Yeah, I think I agree with you. My main point (that I think you agree with) is that too often people split the dem electorate into progressive vs non-progressive and pretend like those are static and unchanging election to election. But in reality there is no reason why a candidate can't be really popular with progressives and also at least hold their own with nonwhite voters over 50. In NYC it really might be as simple as "find someone who can do that." It didn't happen in the 2020 Presidential primary or this mayoral race and maybe has not happened yet in anything beyond district level in the post Obama era, but there is plenty of reasons to think it will as progressives are winning more seats at district level, smaller city mayor-ships etc.

This is a fair point and definitely correct. If you look at the election results, it seems almost certain that a lot of the people who voted for AOC in her Congressional race then turned around and voted for Adams. That implies the fluidity that you are suggesting.

True I guess, 20% just seemed like a decent number for NYC for some reason to me.

Hard to say. New York is one of the more left-leaning cities in the U.S.-- not as left-leaning as San Francisco, Portland, and a few other cities, but significantly left-leaning nonetheless.

How do the Progressives around here deal with the fact that each of those leftist enclaves you listed above are quickly becoming hellholes?

A key to a possible GOP takeover of Congress and the WH in 2022 and 2024 is to loop videos of the "peaceful protestors" in these Cities of Love and Peace.

If I have learned thing from following American politics it is that people now think the places where their political opposition is in majority are hellholes with no redeeming qualities.

A myth I suspect is likely perpetuated by politicians who use to bolster their base, as it is a convenient us and them rhetoric.

Not that long ago Portland was one of the nicest big cities in the country. Ditto Seattle.

San Francisco was once considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

New York was pretty much a hellhole in the 1970's until Koch and Gulianni cleaned the place up a lot.

Now it seems that pretty much anyone who can leave NYC is actually doing so.

lagtight,

I normally give you a break, but you have no idea wtf you are talking about.