> Republicans abandoned people who are in favor of abortion. Republicans abandoned liberal Republicans like Bill Weld. Every party abandons people.
Sure. My point is that the party made this choice deliberately. Trying to pin the blame on Joe Manchin, who is doing yeoman’s work holding onto a key part of the old FDR coalition, is disingenuous.
> Democrats consistently hold majority views on a wide range of policy issues and consistently have more votes in national elections.
The views of the party leadership and donor base and closely affiliated NGOs do not have consistent majority support. For example, Dems have basically allowed NARAL, etc., to be the voice of the party on abortion. But a strong majority of Americans oppose second trimester abortions, which are guaranteed by Roe, and a quarter of democrats identify as “pro life.” That’s more than ones who identify as “very liberal.” The party used to get that, carving out a space for folks like Manchin in WV and Tom Daschle in SD.
> Gerrymandering so that urban centers lose their voting power and other election rigging techniques is what is holding back Democratic policies.
Republicans have won the Congressional popular vote slightly more than half of the time since 1990. They’re about to do it again. Gerrymandering doesn’t affect that.
Even in the electoral college, it benefitted Democrats not only throughout the 1960s-1980s, but as recently as 2012. Obama would have been able to win a second term even if he lost the popular vote.
> The Democratic Party should not abandon its highly popular core principles to cater to the deranged apportionment that the U.S. has.
Democratic leaders and donors are deeply confused about what those “core principles” are, and who is in their coalition. The coalition is one of urban liberals who vote democrat for ideological reasons, and minorities and immigrants who vote Democrat out of self interest. My parents are the type of immigrant who turned Virginia blue. They care about Obamacare. They’ll accommodate some things the urban liberals want to get that. But that doesn’t mean they agree with college educated urban white people about what kids should learn in schools.
The fact is that a big chunk of the Democratic coalition has social values closer to Republicans than to liberal Democrats. Moreover, those are the party’s marginal votes in states like Arizona and Nevada and Georgia. Urban Democrats should live in that reality.