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.”
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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.
Removed by mod
The consequence will of course be more corporate candidates.
Expect the DNC and leadership to continue throwing anyone actually left of them under the bus from here on out.
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.Honestly with how some of the Democrat leadership has acted, it feels like they’re more of the same face of the same coin, just different lettering.
It’s like the more popular social democracy is becoming in USA, the more Democrats pull away from it.
They are trying to get some of the Republican vote, and by that they are failing as untrustworthy, and without real political goals and values.That said, Democrats are still the lesser evil, and with only 2 options, that’s where Americans have to go for now.
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.
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.
Yeah, same here honestly
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.
