They're already moving right. I don't think a lot of Americans fully understand how radicalized their politics have become over the past 20 years or so. Even your most radical leftists, like Bernie, is pretty moderate when compared to politicians in other developed democratic countries. Harris isn't very progressive to begin with, she's just infinitely better than Trump which makes her look like the best candidate in history.

Harris is doing multiple campaign events with Liz. Fucking. Cheney. A warmongering, anti-LGBT, anti-choice neocon. Remember when she threw her own gay sister under the bus to try to win an election (which she lost anyway)? I do. Now I personally haven’t decided if Harris is right to use Cheney like this, but it doesn’t feel great to a base voter like me who remembers 9/11 and her family’s Iraq hawkery. The Cheney family used to be universally reviled on the left, and this effort is doing a fair amount to rehabilitate her reputation with some dems, and I’m not thrilled about that.

I’m voting for Harris, without a doubt, but she is already moving to the right, at least as a political strategy. FFS she has already promised to put a Republican in her cabinet!! If she goes any further in that direction she’ll be at a serious risk of losing some dependable progressive base voters. But as some other comments have mentioned, if she wins there’s no reason to believe she won’t continue rightward.

If Harris wins, expect Democrats to move right. It's pretty much what they do...

Democrats have filled the void left by Republicans shifting further to the right. This is the end result of Clinton's triangulation of the 1990s

~~If Harris loses,~~ expect Democrats to move right

If Harris loses, I don’t expect the Democratic Party to exists as a meaningful political presence in a couple years, because I anticipate aggressive and violent persecution of any and all people who don’t vociferously support Trump in any and all regards.

Adding to this: All politicians will always go where they think the votes are. Of course there's some nuance to this. Trump doesn't think he has a chance in Hell of winning a state like NY or CA. Sure, he'll do some appearances, but everyone knows it's a lost cause. Same w/ Harris and the red flyover states. But if polling shows there are votes to be had and the campaign is willing to "shift" their stance, they will go after it. Every. Time.

I keep seeing people post and/or suggest on Lemmy that the US is overall more liberal than our national representation would suggest. If that's the case, why is the national polling still so damn close!? If I'm not mistaken, national polling reflects the hypothetical popular vote - i.e., no Electoral College bullshit. I even got into a pretty good discussion not too long ago over how voters can pull the Democratic party back to the left - by holding their collective nose and voting for the "left" candidate and holding the party's feet to the fire if they keep sliding right. At this point, any vote that isn't for Harris helps Trump get reelected. Regardless of what anyone thinks will happen in a Harris administration, we all pretty much know what will happen in a second Trump term.

Yes, the Dems have been pulled to the right by the GOP and the nature of the Electoral College, but an argument can be made that they've been pushed as well by apathetic, otherwise liberal, voters not voting. I get it. Every time I walk in the ballot box, there's a growing part of my brain that wants to vote for the craziest MF'er on the ballot in the hopes that all this nonsense will just burn down so we can start over. So far, the other side of my brain is still winning that argument. I did not enjoy voting for Biden. I won't enjoy voting for Harris. I didn't really enjoy voting for Obama the second time. But I'll still do it because the alternatives (including the "burn-it-down" one, for now) are worse.

Democrats will move right no matter what happens.