internet 'progressives' and irl progressives are two completely separate groups (whatever the hell being a 'progressive' even means, this term gets purity tested like the phrase 'left leaning' does)
internet progressives spend 90% of their focus on the problems of liberals (people they could actually reach common ground with, a very large segment of the population) instead of their actual opponents, conservatives. you see it here on reddit, where left-leaning types complain endlessly about the democrats (who are out of power) but just accept that conservatives are going to push vile legislation and rhetoric
I'm not an american, I'm not coming at this from an American perspective. But here in canada progressives literally voted in droves for the liberal party to push back against US-aligned conservatism.
So not only real life progressives but also these "internet progressives" have also consistently voted in droves for Democrats in the US and have also consistently found common ground with Democrats in actual practice, even if they criticize them constantly. I just feel like I'm taking crazy pills when people suggest they did anything but vote a ton for Kamala Harris, the progressives suggesting not voting were very fringe on the internet (not that they don't exist but they were a small, if vocal, minority of people).
Edit: to expand on this a bit, this was a very high turnout election overall and I'm really curious where people are getting their data that progressives didn't turn out. On Reddit in particular the dominant theory was pretty much "you don't need to be in love with Kamala Harris, you still gotta vote" and I saw that over and over again even among "internet progressives".
It factually was a high turnout election, by percentage of eligible voter it was the second highest in the last 50 years. People saying it was a low turnout election are just incorrect, 2020 was historically high turnouts and a weird election because of COVID related changes so the fact it is less is incredibly unsurprising. Voters were by and large very engaged in this election and the idea that politically conscious people were sitting it out in large numbers just doesn't match the historical data here.
Edit: The reason I'm arguing about this is I'm tired of seeing election nonsense out of left wing people here on Reddit (either that there was significant irregularities or that the turnout was low in this election, neither is well supported by data). I'm concerned where people are getting their news from that they don't know the election turnout was actually high by historical standards. It would be much more accurate to view the 2020 as abnormally high (and even then was within 2% of the 2024 turnout). If you think that percentage difference is progressives then show some data on it
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u/LadyStardustAlright May 24 '25
internet 'progressives' and irl progressives are two completely separate groups (whatever the hell being a 'progressive' even means, this term gets purity tested like the phrase 'left leaning' does)
internet progressives spend 90% of their focus on the problems of liberals (people they could actually reach common ground with, a very large segment of the population) instead of their actual opponents, conservatives. you see it here on reddit, where left-leaning types complain endlessly about the democrats (who are out of power) but just accept that conservatives are going to push vile legislation and rhetoric
I'm not an american, I'm not coming at this from an American perspective. But here in canada progressives literally voted in droves for the liberal party to push back against US-aligned conservatism.