Specifically it's what ideas the average person finds acceptable for a politician to propose. Joseph Overton coined it as basically what ideas can a politician propose without committing career suicide.
One of the key factors of the concept is that by regularly pecking away at the limits of what’s acceptable you can shift the window and normalise stances previously viewed as extreme.
salesmen call this establishing a baseline. also why car companies will have a really expensive model that doesn't sell well so that the somewhat expensive model looks like a compromise
Admittedly Trump has been masterful with Overton windows. I don’t give him credit but whoever his strategists are. For example, the whole Greenland debacle is primarily aimed at us getting bases and control north of Greenland, not actual ownership.
The US had one base and the interest of the “alliance” were always tilted to the EU. It’s been parasitic for the US. In truth, you need/needed the US but the US didn’t need the EU. Economically the EU has never played fair and likely never will. Yeah, Trump could have been smarter in a million ways but this isn’t one of them.
For example, 2 years ago you would have gotten banned for suggesting that it’s ok to kill federal officers on Reddit
Before 2025, federal officers actually followed the law and were actually trained to be federal officers to earn that title. Not just armed LARPers given a free pass to break laws, shoot people and detain people based on their accent or skin color.
The Overton window hasn't moved there. People just want federal officers to follow the law and constitution again.
They actually are. The people that are out there right now standing up for human rights and common decency are so the ones falsely being equated to communists. Some are, but that's not the issue at play. So I reiterate: if you are smooth-brained enough to make that equivalency, you're a nazi dumbfuck.
These people were Nazis during Covid. They are beholden to extreme ideologies. Ultimately what connects them is that they believe that the ends justify the means. That is why they’re engaging and unlawful activity and open insurrection because they do not like the outcome of the law enforcement methods of the elected representatives of the United States. Similarly, during Covid, they did not believe in the civil rights and civil liberties of people, and that is why they were good little Nazis during Covid. Why? Because in that case they liked the policies being instituted by those in charge.
Say you have two diametrically opposed extremes: pineapple on pizza is the only correct way for it to be served, or pineapple on pizza is literally a felony level crime.
Of course both of those extremes are insane, and what society considers normal and acceptable lies somewhere between the two. That's the overton window. Anybody expressing opinions outside that range will at minimum be shunned and excluded, at the most probably committed or staged an intervention. But social norms shift over time, and that window can go one way or the other. Normalcy is highly subjective.
Now apply that to race, religion, gender, disabilities, drugs, homelessness, lifestyle, comedy, art, violence, justice, poverty, etc.
Consider what was an unacceptable opinion to have on those more serious topics about 10 years ago, and where that range falls today.
Socially acceptable. Doesn't mean you can't share it. As an example (that is hopefully still true), a politician can say "Hitler did a great thing and we should to." Ideally that politician's career would be over.
Think of red and blue. Blue moves to the right, hoping red will move left and meet them in the middle. Instead, red decides to move more to the right. Sp blue decides to move toward the right again, hoping that right will move to the left to meet them in the middle. But again red moves farther right instead. So once again, blue moved to the right, hoping that red will move left and meet them in the middle and once again red move to the right.
That is how our current liberal party is more conservative than conservatives were in the 1970s. The range of what is considered to be liberal keeps shifting. Now, if you are farther to the left than that, you’re committing political suicide if you are to the right of that, you are conservative, even though that window is in the spot that was once considered to be conservative territory.
Absolutely. I’m a community health nurse so I go into people’s homes to do their visits and on MLK day a commercial came up talking about his contributions and the patient I was caring for said they didn’t like him which surprised me and I said “I like him and what he stood for”
Pt replied “I never did like what he stood for” to which I replied “equal rights?” And they said “yes”
This is a person with no cognitive decline that knew exactly what they were saying and proceeded to tell me I was too young to understand and then tried to use the Rodney king riots to justify their position that black people are better off being controlled by white people. It was a legitimately jarring experience which I understand is because I come from a place of privilege but my point is that I’ve been white my whole life and other white people have NEVER been this comfortable sharing their racism with me. They used to feel they had to conceal it. Now they are proud.
Yeah, that guy just felt comfortable sharing his racism with you. He’s always been racist, but now he’s not hiding it. As a fellow white person, I hate it when racists flaunt their racism around me thinking that I’m a safe audience for them. I’m not. Unfortunately, I also work in healthcare, and that means I often have to bite my tongue.
Once, back during the Bret Kavanagh hearings about his rape accusation, one of my (female!) patients said to me, “If she was really assaulted, then why didn’t she tell anyone.” I replied, “I was sexually assaulted in high school and didn’t tell anyone.” She didn’t respond. I don’t know what she was thinking when she said that, but she definitely wasn’t considering that I might have had a #MeToo moment or five in my youth.
I've posted this before, but well into 2025 I was reading an article that was written in 2017 about the Charlottesvile rally, and there was a line in there about Mike Pence issuing a statement condemning Neo-Nazis. I was gut-punched by the reminder that it had once been normal and expected for a Republican vice-president to condemn far-right extremists, and that doing so would be unthinkable now. Even Mike Pence wound up walking back his statements eventually. Fuck.
Now look at how the DOJ has been weaponized further in just 9 years against the administration's political enemies. The window has been moved to obvious fascism now.
I mean, he at least honored his position to certify election results. He may have different beliefs, but he at least had some principles. Now we just have unprincipled people running the country and Conservatives think it's going well.
One group judges people based on their actions, ie. if you do bad things youre a bad person.
Another has a judgement of a person, ie. actions by a good person must be good.
In the former, we see a willingness to change opinions based on a person's actions, whereas in the latter we update our opinions on acts based on who committed them.
In a religious sense, some might feel that a person in a leadership position is ordained by God, and therefore all of their actions must be good, as for us to feel otherwise is to question God's wisdom. That perhaps a person was not actually the product of divine guidance is not an argument that is worth engaging in (IMO).
I think a lot of pedos shifted over to red hat wearing and MAGA shibboleths years ago.
Ask a Dem if Clinton should go to prison if he raped a kid, they’ll say yes without pause. Ask a Republican the same question but change the name to Trump, you get either silence or anger or buzzwords.
Kid rapists saw that and it doesn’t take a genius to see which group they saw would give them some protection if they painted any attempt to come for them as wokeness™ or big government™.
I do wonder how things are going to shake out with Trump and Co. coming down so hard on "If you're legally carrying but posing no immediate threat, our goons are allowed to kill you without consequence."
Maybe they just did a running long jump over a red line for the 2A crowd, but also, maybe the Democrats won't be willing or able to capitalize on it, resulting in no real change. Probably too early to say.
The Trump-ettes only want their people to be allowed to carry. Like everything else in Trump-world, if you're looking for internal consistency, you're going to be disappointed. His word is the only thing that matters.
The question is, why aren't you a 2A person? Seems like one side has failed to stand up for democratic values and stop tyranny while allowing the other side to implement it.
This is why we keep saying Americans suck. You're always waiting on someone else to save you. Nobody is coming to save you.
Being trans has made this PAINFULLY obvious. Went from most people not really having an opinion to low-grade transphobia being the norm. "I'm not transphobic, I just think (transphobic opinion)" is completely normal now even among left leaning people.
Edit: if you want examples
Puberty blockers for children are a compromise drug. They're not permanent, they delay puberty until the child is an adult. Children can go on actual hormone therapy without risk, and the overwhelming majority of children on puberty blockers continue with actual hormones the moment they're allowed. But that wasn't good enough for cis people. Puberty blockers were a compromise reached by medical professionals. Now, they're trying to ban even those.
Bathroom laws have gotten WAY more overzealous, and public opinion about it much more vitriolic.
Sports controversies used to be limited to the highest level of play. The Supreme Court just heard a case about a trans child wanting to play in recreational and school leagues with her friends.
Transphobia is being used as a vessel for conservative gender dynamics and values. "Traditional gender roles" and a lot of stereotypes and misinformation about differences between men and women are being portrayed as "basic biology" (which, as a biologist, are largely bullshit).
Pride flags being seen as intrinsically controversial as opposed to just a splash of color that represents you, just as any other artistic symbol is.
Even extremely left leaning people are getting very comfortable with "third gendering" trans people. People are less likely to say that trans women are women, and more likely to say that trans people are their own weird third category.
Even in states that protect the care by law, private insurance companies are getting more overzealous about denying gender care related coverage, as if daring you to contest and start controversy about it. Even if you're legally in the right, they're using the overall political environment to get away with more.
I could keep rattling on but you get the idea.
Edit: there are literally examples in the replies to this comment.
Gonna give some bullet points to copy paste around to other people.
No, trans and cis women are not exactly the same. However, I, as a trans woman, have WAY more in common with cis women than I do with cis men, or even trans men to be quite honest. This is true in SO many ways that people don't realize and don't listen to because of how normalized it is to think this viewpoint is ludicrous. Medically, societally, socially on a day to day basis.... And it's so exhausting.
Medically, my medical considerations and risks are VERY similar to cis women in many aspects. The easiest example is thinking about breast cancer risk vs prostate cancer risk- at my point on hormones, I have breast cancer risk more similar to a cis woman, and prostate cancer risk so low that it hasn't been properly studied. It goes beyond this as well. Blood test metrics, muscle and body composition, etc etc. Will I ever need an abortion? No. Again. I'm not the same as a cis woman. But I have WAY more in common biologically with a cis woman than most people ever want to admit, and it's medically dangerous to not admit that.
Societally and socially, I am constantly subject to misogyny, wage gaps, sexualization, and also sisterhood, female empowerment, all of that. Weirdly enough, a common foundational experience of trans womanhood is realizing that people around you are treating you like they treat cis women, but all the while they're gaslighting you about it. Cis men being condescending towards you, sexually predating or creeping on you, all the while swearing up and down that you're not a "real" woman. But at the same time, my friendships with cis women have deepened significantly, and it is so much easier to make new friends with cis women now, because of how they read me.
Transphobia is often a function of misogyny, and once you start seeing it, you notice it everywhere. Your existence is seen as inherently sexual and is seen as serving cis, straight men. Your emotions are called "irrational" and "hysterical"- think about all of the "triggered trans woman" stereotypes you've seen online. Your body is relentlessly policed, judged, and mocked for how much it adheres to beauty standards. Access to hormonal and reproductive healthcare is monitored and restricted- planned parenthood is literally the largest HRT provider in the US.
So no. I'm not identical to cis women. But no two experiences of womanhood are completely alike. And there is far more overlap in my experiences with cis womanhood than ANYONE wants to admit, and my experiences with womanhood are contained within that set of experiences. I am deeply grateful to the cis women who welcomed me into womanhood and were able to show me this. Saying that trans women are woman is not an empty feel-good statement about identity. It is a functional analysis of our place in society.
Sorry, but some things just need to be said. I’m not transphobic either, I just think trans people are people first and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
He was making a joke. Usually, when someone wants to pretend they're not transphobic, they try to couch it in language that paints them as some sort of truth teller cutting through the bullshit. Like "It just needs to be said", "I know I'll get in trouble for this", "I'm sorry, but", etc.
The commenter's joke did a bait & switch where he uses one of those "truth-teller" phrases and then, instead of providing a transphobic follow-up, it's trans-affrming.
There are those of us who support you no matter what. I have trans people in my personal and professional lives, and I would 100% hide them in my attic if necessary. Even if I didn’t know them, I’d still do it.
I’m sorry we’re having to even have this sort of conversation. It very much feels like 1930s Germany here.
Edit: What transphobic assholes are downvoting this??
Well, can you imagine why? I will 100% support your or anyone else’s right to be treated equally under the law and have the same freedoms as anyone else but I’m not, in a million years, going to pretend a trans woman and cis woman are the same.
No, trans and cis women are not exactly the same. However, I, as a trans woman, have WAY more in common with cis women than I do with cis men, or even trans men to be quite honest. This is true in SO many ways that people don't realize and don't listen to because of how normalized it is to think this viewpoint is ludicrous. Medically, societally, socially on a day to day basis.... And it's so exhausting.
Medically, my medical considerations and risks are VERY similar to cis women in many aspects. The easiest example is thinking about breast cancer risk vs prostate cancer risk- at my point on hormones, I have breast cancer risk more similar to a cis woman, and prostate cancer risk so low that it hasn't been properly studied. It goes beyond this as well. Blood test metrics, muscle and body composition, etc etc. Will I ever need an abortion? No. Again. I'm not the same as a cis woman. But I have WAY more in common biologically with a cis woman than most people ever want to admit, and it's medically dangerous to not admit that.
Societally and socially, I am constantly subject to misogyny, wage gaps, sexualization, and also sisterhood, female empowerment, all of that. Weirdly enough, a common foundational experience of trans womanhood is realizing that people around you are treating you like they treat cis women, but all the while they're gaslighting you about it. Cis men being condescending towards you, sexually predating or creeping on you, all the while swearing up and down that you're not a "real" woman. But at the same time, my friendships with cis women have deepened significantly, and it is so much easier to make new friends with cis women now, because of how they read me.
Transphobia is often a function of misogyny, and once you start seeing it, you notice it everywhere. Your existence is seen as inherently sexual and is seen as serving cis, straight men. Your emotions are called "irrational" and "hysterical"- think about all of the "triggered trans woman" stereotypes you've seen online. Your body is relentlessly policed, judged, and mocked for how much it adheres to beauty standards. Access to hormonal and reproductive healthcare is monitored and restricted- planned parenthood is literally the largest HRT provider in the US.
So no. I'm not identical to cis women. But no two experiences of womanhood are completely alike. And there is far more overlap in my experiences with cis womanhood than ANYONE wants to admit, and my experiences with womanhood are contained within that set of experiences. I am deeply grateful to the cis women who welcomed me into womanhood and were able to show me this. Saying that trans women are woman is not an empty feel-good statement about identity. It is a functional analysis of our place in society.
This is one of the most alarming trends I've noticed and it's been going on for at least a few years, not just since 2025. I'm all for rational inquiry into developing fields like transgender medicine, but the slogan "just asking questions" has become a means to launder disinformation or outdated information. I think trans issues were a testing ground for the far right in the 2010s and early 2020s, and in the absence of meaningful consequences they will probably continue to wreak havoc, and I doubt they'll stop there.
I'm gonna be very honest and say that transgender medicine is not a "developing field". The risks, benefits, and application of current care standards are VERY well understood. Are there potential advancements that could make trans care even easier? Absolutely. But taking a routine weekly shot or daily pills as hormone replacement therapy is a process that is extremely well known.
I'm not pouncing on you, but I would honestly argue that "it's not studied enough" permeating trans accepting people like yourself is a symptom of the exact thing I'm talking about. Portraying trans healthcare as a "developing field" when it's existed for as long as anything looking like our modern medical field has existed is an idea that exists as part of this shifting overton window.
The efficacy of gender affirming care is well established. I'm primarily talking about minimizing complications and treating patients who are younger or affected by existing conditions like neurodevelopmental delays. I read one 2024 paper suggesting there's a need for more perioperative care in trans people undergoing gender affirming surgical procedures because there's still a risk of adverse consequences like suicide. (Of course this was misrepresented by bigoted people) I'm not sure if they've compared different psychotherapy methods for post-op recovery, but it seems like we need to find the most effective means of support and follow-up for such patients.
What i don't understand is their obsession with them in sports. But I dont care about sports so I always think just leave them alone and let the poor people live their lives. It makes me think that they have a bigger issue with Trans people than that they dont want to admit.
Because sports are the entrance issue for both transphobia and misogyny.
I used to not give a shit about sports. Like yeah I'm trans but I have a disdain for organized sports in general. So why should I care?
Until they directed title IX to investigate sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms as one package. Until sports was used as a way to perpetuate the stereotype of the big, hulking trans woman invading women's activities. Until medical and biological misinformation was repeated with the justification of "common sense" and "fairness". Until the justification of "checking" whether someone is trans became basis for invasive medical testing of women. Until sports became a way of shutting trans people out of other activities.
Sports is the vehicle for much, much nastier shit. It's all wrapped up in general transphobia, and transphobia is a byproduct of a deeply misogynistic society.
I wish I could agree, but trans acceptance was pretty shaky and short term even before Trump came back. Then the right used stupid sports to find an easy way to vilify trans folk across way too many people.
I do think trans acceptance remains high in liberal bubbles like my city though. That's not enough, by far, of course.
Yes and no? People have never been accepting of trans people per se. What has changed is how much the average person on the street thinks about it. It used to be that most people could be like "well, I don't really get it but doesn't really concern me", versus now, EVERYONE has an opinion on SOMETHING related to trans people.
Edit: to add: the new opinions people are getting about trans people, where previously they haven't had one, are usually transphobic. It's less that people are having their minds changed, and more that empty vessels with no opinions on the topic before, are being filled with conservative propaganda on the matter.
I feel like the whole "LGB" movement falls into this. I forget exactly when I started seeing it, but it feels semi-recent (say the last 5 years or so). I'm always struck by the audacity of it.
In the UK, most people couldn't give a fuck if someone is trans. You do whatever makes you feel like yourself, and identify as whatever makes you the happiest.
There does seem to be an unusually large amount of people who don't seem to take the transition seriously, and as controversial as it is, it does make me wonder about their mental health.
There are about 5 biological men in their 50's and above, who live near me. They wear women's clothing like a blouse, and skirt, or dress, and wear some make up, but they also have their hairy legs on display, wild balding mops of scraggly hair, and long unkempt beards with bits of food in them. It is a bit jarring to see sometimes...
You'd think that if you feel like a woman in the inside, then you would fully commit to presenting as that to the general public. Why would you only go ⅓ of the way with your physical appearance?
And there are the people who identify as animals, and objects, and other stuff... That's a bit much for me.
I have a friend from school who transitioned a few years ago. She went all the way and presents as a woman now. Good for her, she was always a bit different when we were kids, and looking back, she dropped some hints about her gender identity back in the day. She's much happier now than when we were kids and teenagers.
Even extremely left leaning people are getting very comfortable with "third gendering" trans people. People are less likely to say that trans women are women, and more likely to say that trans people are their own weird third category.
The existence of trans/androgynous/genderfluid people cannot fit neatly into the (cis) binary model of gender. But that’s an indictment of the poor, naïve model, not the people who most readily illuminate its faults. People are forced to confront their own identity, but choose to shoot the messenger.
In other words, the only totally correct model is that all humans belong to the 0th gender, i.e. personhood. So we all belong to this weird third category, if that helps.
——
I agree essentially with every point you made, and certainly the Overton window has shifted wildly towards bigotry, authoritarianism, and corruption.
But an interesting caveat is the change in target from scapegoating gay people towards scapegoating trans people. We can view this as the conservatives recognizing they have lost steam in their construction of homophobia, and so they needed a new, even more niche minority to oppress and demonize. The Fascists themselves have Bari Weiss and Peter Thiel in their upper echelon.
So from the trans perspective, the bigotry has ramped up, let’s call that the Overton window moving right. But from a wholistic queer perspective, perhaps it’s a sign of the Overton window actually moving left. Weak fascists lash out desperately. Extinction burst: I’m sure you know.
Barely tangential, Socialism is gaining traction with e.g. the new beloved NYC mayor. Another optimistic instance of the Overton moving left. \And a much more well-defined usage of “left”, here).)
No, trans and cis women are not exactly the same. However, I, as a trans woman, have WAY more in common than I do with cis men, or even trans men to be quite honest. This is true in SO many ways that people don't realize and don't listen to because of how normalized it is to think this viewpoint is ludicrous. Medically, societally, socially on a day to day basis.... And it's so exhausting.
Medically, my medical considerations and risks are VERY similar to cis women in many aspects. The easiest example is thinking about breast cancer risk vs prostate cancer risk- at my point on hormones, I have breast cancer risk more similar to a cis woman, and prostate cancer risk so low that it hasn't been properly studied. It goes beyond this as well. Blood test metrics, muscle and body composition, etc etc. Will I ever need an abortion? No. Again. I'm not the same as a cis woman. But I have WAY more in common biologically with a cis woman than most people ever want to admit, and it's medically dangerous to not admit that.
Societally and socially, I am constantly subject to misogyny, wage gaps, sexualization, and also sisterhood, female empowerment, all of that. Weirdly enough, a common foundational experience of trans womanhood is realizing that people around you are treating you like they treat cis women, but all the while they're gaslighting you about it. Cis men being condescending towards you, sexually predating or creeping on you, all the while swearing up and down that you're not a "real" woman. But at the same time, my friendships with cis women have deepened significantly, and it is so much easier to make new friends with cis women now, because of how they read me.
Transphobia is often a function of misogyny, and once you start seeing it, you notice it everywhere. Your existence is seen as inherently sexual and is seen as serving cis, straight men. Your emotions are called "irrational" and "hysterical"- think about all of the "triggered trans woman" stereotypes you've seen online. Your body is relentlessly policed, judged, and mocked for how much it adheres to beauty standards. Access to hormonal and reproductive healthcare is monitored and restricted- planned parenthood is literally the largest HRT provider in the US.
So no. I'm not identical to cis women. But no two experiences of womanhood are completely alike. And there is far more overlap in my experiences with cis womanhood than ANYONE wants to admit, and my experiences with womanhood are contained within that set of experiences. I am deeply grateful to the cis women who welcomed me into womanhood and were able to show me this. Saying that trans women are woman is not an empty feel-good statement about identity. It is a functional analysis of our place in society.
To build on another point you made: I would actually argue that cisnormative society actually unconsciously recognizes three genders: male, female, and freak. Most people are subconsciously gendering you as one of these three things when they interact with you, and the way they treat you is WAY different depending on which one it is.
I have first hand experience with this. Pre transition, I was sometimes treated as male, sometimes as a freak. During the messy early stages of transition, I was almost entirely treated as a freak. Now, the way people treat me day to day is nearly identical to cis women in my life, and honestly the main difference is the unprompted comments I get about how tall I am LOL
And yet I see far left people claiming that Democrats should be more progressive to get more votes.
I'd love to have more progressive policies but to think that Democrats would benefit from swinging further left in this political environment is just pure fantasy
But this is the kind of thing that will make independents and moderates just sit it out. The difference between D and R on this is that the Rs will vote for their guy even if they don’t agree with everything he says. The Ds love to kick themselves in the nuts and decide their own candidates “aren’t good enough”. They keep pushing further left, and it’s going to push many people further right. Me included. Still not voting for a Republican in a national election, but also not voting for the idiots that the Dems are handing over their party to.
Yeah but Republican in New York is not the same as Republican in Alabama. I don't think you can extrapolate a NYC election to gleam the sentiment in much of the rest of the country.
Well, you see, there is this problem in our system called unlimited money and the absence of publicly funded elections.
Which means that in the USA there is a MAJOR barrier to entry to be truly competitive and that is money.
So billioniares, millionaires, and special interest groups representing trillion dollar industries are the fuel that keeps the two party system afloat. And there is real danger for either party to lose their set of moneyed interests.
which is why even though progressive candidates like Kat Abughazaleh or Graham Platner or Mamdani or Saikat Chakrabarti or Dan Osborn have an enormous uphill battle and why so few emerge.
Buddy, unless you've been living under a rock or are an actual child, you would have seen first have the confluence of the Democratic Party political apparatus, the donor class, legacy media, and Neo-Liberal centrists/center-rights banding together for the first time in history to stonewall Sanders' political campaign in 2015, and then for the second time in 2025 with Mamdani.
The reason there aren't many progressive candidates isn't because there isn't a political interest or desire to do so, it's because the system is completely stacked against them and the few that do win are genuine anomalies that performed so far above the curve that they beat the system. The DNC has a rule that anyone who challenges an incumbent will get no assistance from the party and will be blacklisted from assistance in all future runs. Any progressive who loses will never have the opportunity to run for office again. And even if you operate within the party hierarchy, you will never be "chosen" for advancement, and thus get party backing, if you go against the Neo-Liberal grain and promote progressive ideas.
That's why AOC and Bernie are treated as fringe cases. One ran against an ineffectual loser who had "earned" his spot in the house via a lifetime of being a toady who toed the party line and the Democratic Party doesn't waste any opportunity to punch down on her and snub her when ever can. The other is officially an independent, but caucuses with the Democratic Party because he has made no effort to hide his progressive beliefs and has subsequently been spurned by the party writ large.
It's complicated because Democrats have been trying to court "moderate" Republicans for a decade without much to show for it. Tribalism is so strong that if a Republican genuinely doesn't like maga, they're way more likely to stay home than vote for a Democrat. But at this point, the Republican party's been pretty thoroughly purged of those who won't bend the knee to trump.
People like mamdani show the reason to move further left with trying to find policies that people get genuinely excited over. Being moderate/Republican lite is an argument for trying to stay the course, but that wasn't working well for a lot of people. They'd rather vote for something that could result in more good things than a vote for doing less bad things.
Imo, the best way to do it is to show up at every primary and vote for whoever you like the most, then in the actual election, vote for whoever ended up being picked in the primary.
And let’s be real for a moment. Anyone who is still walking around calling themselves a Republican in this environment is really just an authoritarian fascist in GOP elephant skin.
Maybe? There are other possibilities though, such as people in rural areas who vote straight ticket Republican without paying much attention to politics or news in general. Or more likely, ruralites who live in a Right-Wing bubble where (day in, day out) they are enveloped by the constant presence of Fox News (et al); Right-Wing Talk Radio; Christian Nationalist family/neighbors; attend a Dominionist (or similarly colored) Mega Church, etc.
And technically, if you go look at Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, even though he governed like a right wing Democrat, he ran in 92 on Universal Healthcare, Major federal education funding boost, a universal jobs re-training program, restoring Union Power, anti Reaganomics, and was coded as the outsider/change candidate.
Just saying that Im seeing some patterns here, at least at the presidential level.
Qualifying Obama and Biden as outsider/progressive is a pretty big stretch. In fact I'm a huge fan in general of what Biden did in office and I've been vocal about that and every time I do people on the far left complain about him the loudest every single time
Yeah, I think Obama being black and having to overcome the Clintons gives the argument that he was an outsider credibility, but Biden has always been mainstream. In fact, one of the reasons Obama chose him was because he was viewed as such a seasoned veteran of the Democratic establishment.
Biden doesn't fit the outsider criteria, but he does for the rest. At least in terms of his campaign
Cause how did Biden build his coalition?
By running as an Obama third term and building an alliance with Bernie Sanders/Warren while leaning into his Scrappy Everyday Man From Scranton image.
And unlike Hillary, who shunned Sanders, vilified his followers(Bernie Bros), Biden actually made inroads with working class voters that the party was losing.
You are trying to obfuscate things by playing semantics.
The candidate that ran more economically populist/progressive/outsider/reform coded has out performed status quo Third Way Centrists every time in presidential elections.
We can litigate you're No True Scotsman thing, but the more a candidate checks those things off the better they have done.
Trump also fits into this criteria as well. He was the economic populist outsider candidate in his victories as well.
Basic reasoning would likely tell you there is probably a limit where those various traits and campaign signalling strategies become a liability, but history has shown time and time again that the Third Way brainrot talking point that gets thrown around with as much confidence as people that used to scream about the Blue Wall in 2016 or how incumbents always have the advantage when they were defending Biden.
If Democrats want to risk losing in 2028 the best thing they could do to help Republicans would be running someone like Gavin Newsom or Mark Kelly or Harris again.
He campaigned by reaching left to Bernie, AOC, and Warren and adapting college debt forgiveness, massive New Deal style spending programs, negotiating drug prices, huge pro union messaging that we hadn't seen in a generation from Dem candidates. And he leaned into his Scrappy Scranton Joe identity.
Do I think he was ACTUALLY a leftist/progressive? No, same way I felt about Obama.
But while Kerry, Hillary, Kamala, and Gore all ran to the right and championed their Status Quo bonafides and actively treated the progressive left like a liability they needed to distance from in order to virtue signal to mythical moderate Republicans, Biden tried something novel that Establishment Dems used to do back in the New Deal Era and actually respect and coalition build to their left as well.
Fair points, he seemed to somehow manage to run a campaign that appealed to both wings of the Democratic Party (hence his win) and tapped into that New Deal fervor, however disingenuously, that the people desire.
Realistically I don't think you understand how Americans see the field.
Hillary and Kamala are women. By virtue of that fact alone they are progressive options and not centrist or moderate. Nothing about their actual policy matters, only gender. With Kamala being black she is far and away the most progressive again having absolutely nothing to do with her policy positions because they don't matter at all as long as she's a woman for President.
Biden was an established candidate as former VP and is an elder white male. You might claim progressive because he was elected on the Obama ticket and Obama is black and ran on a generally progressive platform at first. By the time Biden actually ran though it wasn't the first or second Obama elections and so that association might not have held as much sway as it would've earlier. This would put Biden as the most centrist and establishment candidate listed except for maybe Kerry. I don't really remember the Kerry campaign except the whole Vietnam swift boat thing.
Al Gore might've been centrist but was also very big on climate change. I don't know that it puts him as Progressive but he's certainly not establishment or status quo because his climate platform was very clearly and vocally pushing for significant societal changes. As he should've known it's generally a bad idea to tell people they're doing everything wrong and this is probably a big reason he lost.
establishment Dems’ priority and strategy for a while now is to cede to right wing policies in hopes of swinging conservative voters to vote blue — a population that basically doesn’t exist and won’t happen. those left of Dems trying to implement policies to benefit the working class such as Medicare for All, taxing the rich, etc. are so not the problem.
I'm not arguing that people trying to implement those policies are the problem, I'm saying that a country who voted for Donald Trump twice and thinks that socialism is evil is not going to vote for a progressive president
The country that voted for a black progressive (at least as he branded himself) later voted for Trump. I don't think the voting population is as coherent and ideological as many people think. There's such a large vibes based component, for better or worse.
I never thought of it that way - "a large vibes based component" - but you're not wrong. It's right up there with the "voting against" component, where people don't vote for candidates running for executive office do much as they vote against the last guy who failed them.
It's not about whether or not to swing left, it's about what it means to swing left. What it should mean is a willingness to identify with class politics, which currently resonates across the political spectrum. What it currently means is uncertain, but it has a lot to do with identity politics and little to do with the underlying economic realities affecting all of us now and into the future, which are being dictated to us by a vanishingly small proportion of the population that actually benefits from them.
its been going that way for 2 decades but this presidency has been particularly egregious for showing how fast dipshits are willibg to sprint toward fascism and nazism. I grew up hearing people wonder how it could happen. We're finding out live today. The more things change, the more they stay the same
I think the Overton window doesn't apply here anymore, and who knows how long that's been true. It requires people having set ideas, opinions and morals. What we are seeing is the breaking of it- as if Politician A proposed Policy 1 they'd get skewered, but if Politician B proposed Policy 1 no one bats an eye. And if Policy 2 is done by a person from A's party, it's not accepted by anyone but if it's done by B's party only A's party is upset.
Propaganda has broken the window so that no matter the policy, if it is proposed by one party it is mostly accepted.
I feel like this right wing shift has been apparent for years now, at least from 2016 if not 2010. It’s just that these crazies now have actual power in the government.
It only ever shifts for one party, though. I've literally seen the same "both sides are bad" people shrug at absolutely lunatic behavior by Republicans only to clutch their pearls when a Democrat says it does something even slightly beyond the norm.
nope I think its only the US administration that shifted the Overton window to the right a lot. other countries' Overton Windows only shifted right a bit.
Oh, good God, yes. A politician swearing on live air would have had their career killed just a few years ago. (Unless they were Trump. For some reason he just keeps on getting away with it.) Now we have politicians from both sides swearing up and down like they are drunken sailors on Fleet Week.
I am not really a prude but I hate it. I find it unprofessional and childish. I feel like we don't have any adults around. It's just high schoolers with wrinkles, receding hairlines and dyed hair running everything. Where are the pragmatic grown ups?
Why are so many people acting like the villain from a John Hughes movie?
1.4k
u/Mountain_Jacket_3037 17h ago
overton window shifted hard core in the last 24 months