cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43473370
Feb 18, 2026
The newspaper spoke to 13 Democratic and independent voters including retirees from Indiana and Michigan, working people from states such as North Carolina and Nevada, and an unemployed voter from Iowa. The topic of discussion was the participants’ frustrations with the Democratic Party as it faces the Trump administration and the president’s aggressive deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) across the country.
“Spineless” was one word a participant had for the Democratic Party when asked to describe it. Another said the party appears “paralyzed” while a 46-year-old Latina woman from Nevada said Democrats in Congress are “sellouts and suckers.”
That’s why they’re going to get neoliberals or conservatives.
The ruling class knows what we want and they are intentional in denying it from us.
The consequence will of course be more corporate candidates.
Because ultimately people want our society to progress, get better, so that the quality of their lives can improve.
Holding back our progress isn’t healthy.
Reverting to less functional practices is dumb.
These are basically our political choices any time we vote on something that’s not purely about the methods we employ to achieve necessary tasks.
Evolve, remain stagnate, or devolve/regress.
This is not how you read a focus group.
This is a small 13 person group. These groups are waaaay too small to see how the general public feels about policies.
You’re supposed to use focus groups to get insight into WHY people might feel a certain way about a policy. Then you survey a broad audience to see if the sentiment exists at scale.
I’m all for more progressive policies, but I also do a lot of research professionally, and this article annoyed me. These are the wrong conclusions to draw from a little focus group.
I was looking for information about how the group was selected. It’s not in the Common Dreams article.
Common Dreams seems to be right up there with Jacobin and WSWS for unbiased news reporting. It’s one of the most commonly cited on Pravda News.
Ditto. That was my first question as well. Who was recruited?
Then I realized, that question is irrelevant, because little qualitative studies like this are not supposed to answer broad questions like this.
I imagine there is no malicious intent here. The author likely doesn’t have a background in research and doesn’t understand what information you can reliably pull from a focus group.
The author may be ignorant, but they probably spend a lot of time looking for stories that support the narrative they’re trying to push, and this is just another example.
Being right wing supporting wall street and the 1% more than the general population is not moderate.
USA has 2 right wing parties, where one is extreme and the other only less extreme.
By European standards the real moderates are the left democrats like Bernie and AOC etc.In other news, NYT focus groups prefer car mechanics that fix cars.
Which of the many links in the Common Dreams article is to the NY Times article it is based on? I tried quite a few and couldn’t figure it out.
Or, maybe, as I have been trying to teach people for years, the Democrats don’t represent the interests of the working class, but instead they represent the interests of the ruling class, with a slight twist of social progressivism.
Democrats are the enemy. Party politics are not the solution. We need revolution.
*Some D’s are enemies to the WC, not D’s are the enemy of the WC. Even some R’s can be WC allies, or can be in certain situations.
Please be careful with those absolutes. Thanks
No, sorry, I disagree, all politicians should be considered our enemies. Even the “good” ones are part of an evil system that limits the good they can do to the point of uselessness. We can do better. We need to.
It is STILL much easier to take over the Democratic party in THIS system using populism than to try to demolish it and hope for something better.
The proof is that it worked for MAGA.
I disagree completely. There is a huge difference: ruling class support. Ruling class support fascism because it benefits them. The ruling class will not support socialism.
It is impossible to reform the Democrats. They are fascist sympathizers. They are bought and owned by the ruling elite. Please, I am begging you, wake up. We need real change, not 99% Hitler.
