politics

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.

The consequence will of course be more corporate candidates.

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.

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.

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.

The number one thing I want is a law and order candidate. I want somone that will fucking throw the book at everyone and anyone in leadership that's corrupt and dirty.

Nothing else will matter until criminals and child rapists are held accountable.

We need a massive restoration campaign for public trust in our institutions and they can only happen by locking up all of the criminals.

Telling me to move on and unite so we can move forward is no longer an option. We're past the point of policy disagreements, these motherfuckers are literal child rapist and accepting bribes in broad daylight.

I think it's true that folks increasingly want progressive candidates, but I'm not sure a focus group of 13 people is really a definitive look at public opinion. Focus groups are good at getting at underlying reasons for why people might prefer A over B, but they aren't good for determining the number of people who prefer A over B.

But the headline did get me to click and read more, so there's that.

Moderates have failed us. I can't say I 100% support leftist candidates as I'm not a leftist, but since Mamdani's win, I feel they are a much more viable option than the status quo.

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.