"It wasn’t strategy that lost the election, but the lack of message."
December 31, 2024 2:25 PM Subscribe
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posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 2:41 PM on December 31 [27 favorites]
We're here on this site to share links and talk about said links, please do that!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 2:41 PM on December 31 [27 favorites]
The subtitle of the article is:
posted by Lemkin at 2:58 PM on December 31 [35 favorites]
Democratic digital strategists and creators argue that the party’s influencer outreach was too little, too late—and that without a coherent message, even the best strategy won’t matter.The body of the article contains:
“If Democrats are going to be the party of working people, they actually have to stand up to corporations,” says Rynn Reed, the founder of Creator Congress. “Political creators, much like elected representatives, have to answer for their public stances. The Democrats make that impossible when they give creators nothing to defend.”I read this as “selling shit in a can”.
posted by Lemkin at 2:58 PM on December 31 [35 favorites]
The reason Kamala should have gone on Rogan is that he has an enormous audience of people who are specifically not Dem-aligned.
That's just orthogonal to the claim people are making in this article that the Democrats should shovel resources at their own little constellation of party-aligned 'influencer' grifters.
posted by kickingtheground at 3:01 PM on December 31 [10 favorites]
That's just orthogonal to the claim people are making in this article that the Democrats should shovel resources at their own little constellation of party-aligned 'influencer' grifters.
posted by kickingtheground at 3:01 PM on December 31 [10 favorites]
It seems pretty clear that the Dems lost the election primarily because of inflation -- just like every single other governing party that's been up for election across the developed world in the last couple of years, regardless of their ideological position. In the U.S., France, and Holland, social democratic governments were supplanted by right-wing governments... and it may be about to happen in Germany, too. In Poland and U.K., the opposite happened. It's anti-incumbent fervor more than a matter of ideology.
But everyone who thinks the party should be pulled in a particular direction will continue to insist that the loss is because the party wasn't moving far enough to the left, or moving far enough to the right, or doing enough about X, or saying enough about Y.
It can be hard for many of us who view politics primarily thru an ideological lens to grasp that many, many voters do not. Nonetheless, that is the case.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:56 PM on December 31 [58 favorites]
But everyone who thinks the party should be pulled in a particular direction will continue to insist that the loss is because the party wasn't moving far enough to the left, or moving far enough to the right, or doing enough about X, or saying enough about Y.
It can be hard for many of us who view politics primarily thru an ideological lens to grasp that many, many voters do not. Nonetheless, that is the case.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:56 PM on December 31 [58 favorites]
The false narrative of economic anxiety. (Headline a bit deceiving, he does acknowledge economic anxiety is real).
posted by latkes at 4:01 PM on December 31 [8 favorites]
posted by latkes at 4:01 PM on December 31 [8 favorites]
Personally I think it's important to contextualize this election in the larger world: Whatever explanation we come up with should take into account the global trend toward fascism, the global rejection of incumbents. Trump doesn't exist in isolation.
posted by latkes at 4:02 PM on December 31 [12 favorites]
posted by latkes at 4:02 PM on December 31 [12 favorites]
Yes, Harris should've gone on talk shows where actual conversations occur, including Joe Rogan. I agree the "political creators" framing pushed by the DNC adds nothing and sounds like pure smoke screen. As Lemkin suggests the article pulls its punches on economic policy though:
America has a two party system enforced by first-past-the-post etc, with no "party of working people", just one party for the directly homocidal corporations, and one party for the merely exploitative corporations, who mostly want their working-age customers to remain alive.
In fact, the real electoral story is the predistribution vs redistribution distinction. Neoliberals, including both democrats and less crazy republicans, have intentionally rigged the class conflict game against the working class. As the working class partially figured this out, they'll vote for anyone who semi-charismatically presents themselves as not a neoliberal. These class conflicts go way beyond economic anxiety.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:04 PM on December 31 [26 favorites]
America has a two party system enforced by first-past-the-post etc, with no "party of working people", just one party for the directly homocidal corporations, and one party for the merely exploitative corporations, who mostly want their working-age customers to remain alive.
In fact, the real electoral story is the predistribution vs redistribution distinction. Neoliberals, including both democrats and less crazy republicans, have intentionally rigged the class conflict game against the working class. As the working class partially figured this out, they'll vote for anyone who semi-charismatically presents themselves as not a neoliberal. These class conflicts go way beyond economic anxiety.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:04 PM on December 31 [26 favorites]
This article is correct, but it's woefully incomplete. It's not just podcasters and public-facing social media like twitter/insta/tiktok etc.
There is a huge, huge, huge ecosystem generating fake-organic groundswells on semi-private social media, in facebook groups, whatsapp groups, text chains, and services you ain't heard of that has been micro-targeted to the genuine interests and developable prejudices of racialized groups, of national-affinity groups, of religious-affinity, hell of consumer-product-brand and sports-affinity groups.
It's cheap, and supported by a whole bunch of both republican regular & dark money and foreign $$. The philosophy appears to be throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.
Spending $1billion on Texts from Kamala, celeb endorsements on TV and ads saturating the airwaves/flyers, and phone-banks/door knocking ain't cutting it.
Dems need to work on this shit yesterday. They should have been working on it 10 years ago when it was used to help finally tip florida permanently R.
posted by lalochezia at 4:29 PM on December 31 [30 favorites]
There is a huge, huge, huge ecosystem generating fake-organic groundswells on semi-private social media, in facebook groups, whatsapp groups, text chains, and services you ain't heard of that has been micro-targeted to the genuine interests and developable prejudices of racialized groups, of national-affinity groups, of religious-affinity, hell of consumer-product-brand and sports-affinity groups.
It's cheap, and supported by a whole bunch of both republican regular & dark money and foreign $$. The philosophy appears to be throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.
Spending $1billion on Texts from Kamala, celeb endorsements on TV and ads saturating the airwaves/flyers, and phone-banks/door knocking ain't cutting it.
Dems need to work on this shit yesterday. They should have been working on it 10 years ago when it was used to help finally tip florida permanently R.
posted by lalochezia at 4:29 PM on December 31 [30 favorites]
Dems had a message and a platform, but they were drowned out by Russian-fed propaganda that was consumed and amplified by the right, but mainly by classically-defined "useful idiots" on the left, who both tirelessly helped Trump get installed.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:31 PM on December 31 [25 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:31 PM on December 31 [25 favorites]
It's less that the economy is bad and more that, when called upon to address the bad economy, the democratic party effectively said that the people were wrong, and that the economy was really good. If someone tells you they're hurting, you don't tell them they're not.
The democrats seem out of touch. I'm not sure trying to grow a vat full of liberal podcasters is the solution. "No enemies to the left" is a good place to start. I'd like to see them try that out for size.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:33 PM on December 31 [37 favorites]
The democrats seem out of touch. I'm not sure trying to grow a vat full of liberal podcasters is the solution. "No enemies to the left" is a good place to start. I'd like to see them try that out for size.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:33 PM on December 31 [37 favorites]
> the democratic party effectively said that the people were wrong, and that the economy was really good.
I recently lunched with a group of ex-work colleagues. They're all twenty years younger than I am, all fairly left wing but still working in a highly-rewarded industry. I'm retired and living adjacent to poverty. My friends were blissfully happy with the economy, and totally unaware of how a five dollar hamburger now costing ten dollars makes a big difference. Yes, the elites are disconnected from the rigors imposed on the non-elites by the current economy.
posted by anadem at 4:43 PM on December 31 [27 favorites]
I recently lunched with a group of ex-work colleagues. They're all twenty years younger than I am, all fairly left wing but still working in a highly-rewarded industry. I'm retired and living adjacent to poverty. My friends were blissfully happy with the economy, and totally unaware of how a five dollar hamburger now costing ten dollars makes a big difference. Yes, the elites are disconnected from the rigors imposed on the non-elites by the current economy.
posted by anadem at 4:43 PM on December 31 [27 favorites]
It's less that the economy is bad and more that, when called upon to address the bad economy, the democratic party effectively said that the people were wrong, and that the economy was really good. If someone tells you they're hurting, you don't tell them they're not.
People in this tread keep saying 'the economy is bad'. Major retailers didn't even discount Christmas stuff this year until after Christmas. What were the best black friday deals? $100 off a $1300 ipad? These are not the outcomes of a 'bad economy'. How much more expensive can housing and cars get?
I personally think the article is right: the republicans kicked the democrats ass on messaging, and the democratic party had nothing to counter with. Republicans turned silly missteps about a pet squirrel and a failed convention turned sorry sad dance party into national memes. Taylor Swift got stomped by Elon Musk in the political Q Score department. They owned democrats on the economy, with no plan to do anything about it. They made democrats campaign on being tough on the border and owning guns for godsake! Biden walked the picket line, yet union leadership endorsed Trump!
Biden (who I supported) held on too long, and now Trump isn't even President yet, but he set the latest budget policy and had a rally with a Chinese company about the purchase of US Steel. They are still wallflowers, with no plan.
It was Harlem Globtrotters vs the Washington Generals this year.
posted by The_Vegetables at 4:47 PM on December 31 [12 favorites]
People in this tread keep saying 'the economy is bad'. Major retailers didn't even discount Christmas stuff this year until after Christmas. What were the best black friday deals? $100 off a $1300 ipad? These are not the outcomes of a 'bad economy'. How much more expensive can housing and cars get?
I personally think the article is right: the republicans kicked the democrats ass on messaging, and the democratic party had nothing to counter with. Republicans turned silly missteps about a pet squirrel and a failed convention turned sorry sad dance party into national memes. Taylor Swift got stomped by Elon Musk in the political Q Score department. They owned democrats on the economy, with no plan to do anything about it. They made democrats campaign on being tough on the border and owning guns for godsake! Biden walked the picket line, yet union leadership endorsed Trump!
Biden (who I supported) held on too long, and now Trump isn't even President yet, but he set the latest budget policy and had a rally with a Chinese company about the purchase of US Steel. They are still wallflowers, with no plan.
It was Harlem Globtrotters vs the Washington Generals this year.
posted by The_Vegetables at 4:47 PM on December 31 [12 favorites]
Yes, Harris should've gone on talk shows where actual conversations occur, including Joe Rogan.
That presupposes she had anything useful to say.
When she went on The View and the ladies asked her what she would have done differently than the historically unpopular Biden, she said "not a thing".
I don't think the Rogan audience was going to get wood over that.
posted by Lemkin at 4:51 PM on December 31 [18 favorites]
That presupposes she had anything useful to say.
When she went on The View and the ladies asked her what she would have done differently than the historically unpopular Biden, she said "not a thing".
I don't think the Rogan audience was going to get wood over that.
posted by Lemkin at 4:51 PM on December 31 [18 favorites]
When she went on The View and the ladies asked her what she would have done differently than the historically unpopular Biden
He was historically unpopular because his party apparatus didn't raise a dang cup about anything positive they did. Advertising is real yall.
posted by The_Vegetables at 4:54 PM on December 31 [16 favorites]
He was historically unpopular because his party apparatus didn't raise a dang cup about anything positive they did. Advertising is real yall.
posted by The_Vegetables at 4:54 PM on December 31 [16 favorites]
Mediocre article that gets at some real things. This kind of article is almost always sourced from people who want their own piece of the pie and aren't getting it for whatever reason. That being said, this touches on some real issues without, in my opinion, getting to the meat of the issue.
The Democrats are run by people who are extremely old and out of touch, and critically, all came of age during the George McGovern debacle. It is not an exaggeration to say they still blame the dirty hippies for a lot of what they perceive as their problems.
From where I sit, the Dems are deeply lost. The article doesn't don't say who this is, but they have the best quote in the article:
“The floor has absolutely collapsed with the Democratic Party’s brand online,” says Brock. “People who don’t care about politics don’t like us. People who care about and work in politics don’t know how to represent us. We are seen as completely out of touch...
It's very real. The Dems are toxic. The incredible extent to which the party has "only enemies to the left" (the other best line in the piece) exposes how hostile they are to their own base, and that comes through. People see that reluctance to make real change or engage with the messiness of real lives, with people's suffering and anger, quite clearly. It is obvious to even casual observers that the reason Dems are skittish about everything is because at a fundamental level, they are apologists for corporate America, and it's our monopolized and nearly aristocratic capitalism that is the root of the problems regular people face. It is rank hypocrisy, and people are rightly contemptuous of Democrats because of it.
Here's the thing. I have family, family friends and personal friends who have been involved in Democratic politics forever. Officeholders, people work for officeholders, people who fill various sometimes critical roles on campaigns, whatever, from municipal level to state government to Capital Hill and (during Obama's term, the First Lady's office). I have personally probably made 10,000+ door knocks and phone calls in direct party campaigns and party adjacent operations. I have, in general, been much closer to this than the average Joe. So this is not idle speculation when I say that the people who hold real power in the party care more about keeping and maintaining that power than they do anything else. They are a small group of Ivy Leaguers deeply hostile to any kind of activism, distrustful of their own base, and so wrapped up in their egos that they can never fail in their own minds. It will always be the fault of the rest of us for not doing what we should or being who are supposed to be, which is wealthy donors who have no opinions of our own.
These people are actively fighting against AOC because they do not like what she represents, and that really says pretty much all you need to know about who they are.
Unfortunately, we live in a time when we desperately need better. The right wing in this country is actively engaging in broad spectrum psychological warfare. They are shaping the information space in incredibly far reaching ways, for example creating hostility to scientific consensus around vaccines and climate change. The Democrats are lost in a game of tiddly winks, trying to keep all the pieces of an obsolete establishment from ever changing. It's fucked up, it's dire, and it's incredibly depressing.
The worst thing about it is that there are so many really smart, talented people who care about making a difference in people's lives, and they are quite simply locked out, mostly because they might succeed at making a difference.
I'll still vote, I guess, but yeah, barely.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 5:00 PM on December 31 [99 favorites]
The Democrats are run by people who are extremely old and out of touch, and critically, all came of age during the George McGovern debacle. It is not an exaggeration to say they still blame the dirty hippies for a lot of what they perceive as their problems.
From where I sit, the Dems are deeply lost. The article doesn't don't say who this is, but they have the best quote in the article:
“The floor has absolutely collapsed with the Democratic Party’s brand online,” says Brock. “People who don’t care about politics don’t like us. People who care about and work in politics don’t know how to represent us. We are seen as completely out of touch...
It's very real. The Dems are toxic. The incredible extent to which the party has "only enemies to the left" (the other best line in the piece) exposes how hostile they are to their own base, and that comes through. People see that reluctance to make real change or engage with the messiness of real lives, with people's suffering and anger, quite clearly. It is obvious to even casual observers that the reason Dems are skittish about everything is because at a fundamental level, they are apologists for corporate America, and it's our monopolized and nearly aristocratic capitalism that is the root of the problems regular people face. It is rank hypocrisy, and people are rightly contemptuous of Democrats because of it.
Here's the thing. I have family, family friends and personal friends who have been involved in Democratic politics forever. Officeholders, people work for officeholders, people who fill various sometimes critical roles on campaigns, whatever, from municipal level to state government to Capital Hill and (during Obama's term, the First Lady's office). I have personally probably made 10,000+ door knocks and phone calls in direct party campaigns and party adjacent operations. I have, in general, been much closer to this than the average Joe. So this is not idle speculation when I say that the people who hold real power in the party care more about keeping and maintaining that power than they do anything else. They are a small group of Ivy Leaguers deeply hostile to any kind of activism, distrustful of their own base, and so wrapped up in their egos that they can never fail in their own minds. It will always be the fault of the rest of us for not doing what we should or being who are supposed to be, which is wealthy donors who have no opinions of our own.
These people are actively fighting against AOC because they do not like what she represents, and that really says pretty much all you need to know about who they are.
Unfortunately, we live in a time when we desperately need better. The right wing in this country is actively engaging in broad spectrum psychological warfare. They are shaping the information space in incredibly far reaching ways, for example creating hostility to scientific consensus around vaccines and climate change. The Democrats are lost in a game of tiddly winks, trying to keep all the pieces of an obsolete establishment from ever changing. It's fucked up, it's dire, and it's incredibly depressing.
The worst thing about it is that there are so many really smart, talented people who care about making a difference in people's lives, and they are quite simply locked out, mostly because they might succeed at making a difference.
I'll still vote, I guess, but yeah, barely.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 5:00 PM on December 31 [99 favorites]
Dems need to work on this shit yesterday. They should have been working on it 10 years ago when it was used to help finally tip florida permanently R.We know some Peruvian immigrants in Florida and … damn does non-English WhatsApp make Fox News look like journalism. I cannot believe nobody in the DNC is even trying to counter that, especially when things like transphobia and claiming Biden is a militant socialist were all distracting from policies which would meaningfully harm anyone trying to immigrate when many now-citizens have family or friends still trying to navigate that process.
posted by adamsc at 5:30 PM on December 31 [13 favorites]
The Democrats are run by people who are extremely old and out of touch, and critically, all came of age during the George McGovern debacle. It is not an exaggeration to say they still blame the dirty hippies for a lot of what they perceive as their problems.
It's no exaggeration to say that to anyone born after Joe Biden became a senator, George McGovern is every bit as relevant as the Teapot Dome Scandal, or the War of 1812. I know you're right to say this, and it only further illustrates why the decisions of the entrenched democratic establishment are so arcane and unrelatable to modern American voters.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:35 PM on December 31 [14 favorites]
It's no exaggeration to say that to anyone born after Joe Biden became a senator, George McGovern is every bit as relevant as the Teapot Dome Scandal, or the War of 1812. I know you're right to say this, and it only further illustrates why the decisions of the entrenched democratic establishment are so arcane and unrelatable to modern American voters.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:35 PM on December 31 [14 favorites]
The Democrats are run by people who are extremely old and out of touch, and critically, all came of age during the George McGovern debacle. It is not an exaggeration to say they still blame the dirty hippies for a lot of what they perceive as their problems.
I completely believe this. And find it depressing —what fraction of the American electorate would even recognize the name George McGovern today? (As kittens for breakfast said).
Something that makes me despair is how bad the Democrats seem to be at assimilating new information. It’s not a phase, as the goth kids say. The 21st century is not the 20th. We don’t have the same problems, and applying the old solutions makes no sense. Especially if the solutions are really just betting on another Clinton-style economic boom.
And you cannot campaign on staying the course when most voters think we’re headed in the wrong direction. Biden boosters often point to his industrial policies, but they honestly sound theoretical at best to voters who haven’t met anyone under 65 who’s had a good factory job. For many people, it’s like, ok well call me when my friends are all talking about moving cross country for one of those hot new semiconductor jobs, the way people flocked to booming industrial cities in the past, or when that infrastructure investment actually makes my internet faster, my rent and groceries cheaper, or my commute easier.
posted by smelendez at 5:47 PM on December 31 [18 favorites]
I completely believe this. And find it depressing —what fraction of the American electorate would even recognize the name George McGovern today? (As kittens for breakfast said).
Something that makes me despair is how bad the Democrats seem to be at assimilating new information. It’s not a phase, as the goth kids say. The 21st century is not the 20th. We don’t have the same problems, and applying the old solutions makes no sense. Especially if the solutions are really just betting on another Clinton-style economic boom.
And you cannot campaign on staying the course when most voters think we’re headed in the wrong direction. Biden boosters often point to his industrial policies, but they honestly sound theoretical at best to voters who haven’t met anyone under 65 who’s had a good factory job. For many people, it’s like, ok well call me when my friends are all talking about moving cross country for one of those hot new semiconductor jobs, the way people flocked to booming industrial cities in the past, or when that infrastructure investment actually makes my internet faster, my rent and groceries cheaper, or my commute easier.
posted by smelendez at 5:47 PM on December 31 [18 favorites]
drowned out by Russian-fed propaganda
The fake-left accounts I have mentioned before - as soon as the election was over their Genocide-Dems! Gaza coverage all but evaporated. It was no longer needed. They pivoted to Syria (Poor Assad, what a tragedy!}... and then Luigi.
posted by CynicalKnight at 5:53 PM on December 31 [15 favorites]
The fake-left accounts I have mentioned before - as soon as the election was over their Genocide-Dems! Gaza coverage all but evaporated. It was no longer needed. They pivoted to Syria (Poor Assad, what a tragedy!}... and then Luigi.
posted by CynicalKnight at 5:53 PM on December 31 [15 favorites]
The idea that the Democrats, and more broadly "the liberals", used to have some sort of media dominance that vanished is kind of weird. The NYT was working to get Junior re-elected back in 2004 by killing their own investigative reporting into his spying on US citizens and it's often held up as the epitome of the "liberal media".
The reality is, the Democrats never actually had any media of their own, nor really did or do liberals or leftists. There's a smattering of podcasts and whatnot, but nothing even slightly resembling the juggernaut of the right.
But I also think the article is right, in that there never really was a believable message. You can't blame inflation for the part where no one actually believes the Democrats are for working people, the only people to blame for that are the Democrats who keep attacking unions and cowering before corporate interests. They couldn't even get the Democrats to agree that a minimum wage increase would be a good idea.
The Republicans are corporate rule + bigotry. The rank and file voters might not care much for the first, but the second pulls them in.
The Democrats are corporate rule + ????? Nothing as far as I can tell. Just "we're not as bad as the Republicans", and that's never been the selling point they wanted to pretend it was.
I'm not even saying the Democrats have to turn leftward, though I'd like it, just that they have to actually have something to fill in that ?????
It could be corporate rule + civil rights.
It could be corporate rule + healthcare for all.
It could be corporate rule + steampunk and it'd be better than the current total lack of any differentiation that they have.
Obviously I'd like it if the Democrats would turn left and give up on the corporate rule part. Didja notice how much Luigi's murder of Thompson united so much of America? There's a huge rage against the rich and the corporations, I know I keep urging a left turn but guys, seriously, it looks to me like there's zillions of voters who are desperate for someone, anyone, to go major league Teddy Roosevelt on the corps. I liked Lina Khan, don't get me wrong, but she was hampered by almost no resources and an administration run by a guy from Delaware, the single most corporate friendly state there is.
But whether it's actually promoting economic victory for the workers and tearing down the oppressor billionaire class or just putting on top hats with gears glued on, the Democrats need something, anything, beyond "we're like the Republicans but not quite as bad".
Get that and THEN you can start worrying about building online presence and so on. But as long as the Democrats think "we're just like the Republicans only not as bad" is a great elevator pitch for their party, then they'll keep losing.
posted by sotonohito at 5:57 PM on December 31 [30 favorites]
The reality is, the Democrats never actually had any media of their own, nor really did or do liberals or leftists. There's a smattering of podcasts and whatnot, but nothing even slightly resembling the juggernaut of the right.
But I also think the article is right, in that there never really was a believable message. You can't blame inflation for the part where no one actually believes the Democrats are for working people, the only people to blame for that are the Democrats who keep attacking unions and cowering before corporate interests. They couldn't even get the Democrats to agree that a minimum wage increase would be a good idea.
The Republicans are corporate rule + bigotry. The rank and file voters might not care much for the first, but the second pulls them in.
The Democrats are corporate rule + ????? Nothing as far as I can tell. Just "we're not as bad as the Republicans", and that's never been the selling point they wanted to pretend it was.
I'm not even saying the Democrats have to turn leftward, though I'd like it, just that they have to actually have something to fill in that ?????
It could be corporate rule + civil rights.
It could be corporate rule + healthcare for all.
It could be corporate rule + steampunk and it'd be better than the current total lack of any differentiation that they have.
Obviously I'd like it if the Democrats would turn left and give up on the corporate rule part. Didja notice how much Luigi's murder of Thompson united so much of America? There's a huge rage against the rich and the corporations, I know I keep urging a left turn but guys, seriously, it looks to me like there's zillions of voters who are desperate for someone, anyone, to go major league Teddy Roosevelt on the corps. I liked Lina Khan, don't get me wrong, but she was hampered by almost no resources and an administration run by a guy from Delaware, the single most corporate friendly state there is.
But whether it's actually promoting economic victory for the workers and tearing down the oppressor billionaire class or just putting on top hats with gears glued on, the Democrats need something, anything, beyond "we're like the Republicans but not quite as bad".
Get that and THEN you can start worrying about building online presence and so on. But as long as the Democrats think "we're just like the Republicans only not as bad" is a great elevator pitch for their party, then they'll keep losing.
posted by sotonohito at 5:57 PM on December 31 [30 favorites]
The fake-left accounts I have mentioned before - as soon as the election was over their Genocide-Dems! Gaza coverage all but evaporated.
The real leftists I know have been silent about the genocide since the election because
1) they were all volunteering for election campaigns and needed a break after months of work
2) their protests were targeted and the target moved
3) they are students protesting at their college and had finals then left the University for the year
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:13 PM on December 31 [8 favorites]
The real leftists I know have been silent about the genocide since the election because
1) they were all volunteering for election campaigns and needed a break after months of work
2) their protests were targeted and the target moved
3) they are students protesting at their college and had finals then left the University for the year
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:13 PM on December 31 [8 favorites]
But as long as the Democrats think "we're just like the Republicans only not as bad" is a great elevator pitch for their party, then they'll keep losing.
I agree. I don't think problem is that the democrats have the wrong sales pitch; the democrats have the wrong product.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:13 PM on December 31 [14 favorites]
I agree. I don't think problem is that the democrats have the wrong sales pitch; the democrats have the wrong product.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:13 PM on December 31 [14 favorites]
I've come to believe that in modern (US) elections, there's not actually much a candidate can do to sway the election once it gets to the Red vs Blue stage.
People attribute every negative thing (real or imagined) that has happened to them "recently" to the incumbent party President, and take every positive thing as "business as usual" for government (or "not enough"). So, since people are generally entrenched in who they support in an election, if a Democrat sees bad things happening to them with a democratic president, they're less likely to vote for the democrat (or at all) the next time, and if a Democrat sees bad things happening to them with republican president they're more likely to vote against a Republican (i.e. for the Democrat) in the next election. Same thing happens to Republicans but in reverse.
Down-ballot elections seem to "not matter" because even if congress is supposed to be doing the work, any voter only gets to vote for a negligible amount of control in congress--congress's approval ratings are low overall, but again that's a silly measurement because people only get to vote for a negligible number of members. Also I'd bet the percentage of people who actually pay attention to what congress does is in the single digits.
My other 'hot take' is that the Democratic party is about 15 political parties in an ill-fitting trench coat and so they're never going to have a particularly strong message, since they don't all agree with each other on like 90%+ of it.
posted by that girl at 6:53 PM on December 31 [9 favorites]
People attribute every negative thing (real or imagined) that has happened to them "recently" to the incumbent party President, and take every positive thing as "business as usual" for government (or "not enough"). So, since people are generally entrenched in who they support in an election, if a Democrat sees bad things happening to them with a democratic president, they're less likely to vote for the democrat (or at all) the next time, and if a Democrat sees bad things happening to them with republican president they're more likely to vote against a Republican (i.e. for the Democrat) in the next election. Same thing happens to Republicans but in reverse.
Down-ballot elections seem to "not matter" because even if congress is supposed to be doing the work, any voter only gets to vote for a negligible amount of control in congress--congress's approval ratings are low overall, but again that's a silly measurement because people only get to vote for a negligible number of members. Also I'd bet the percentage of people who actually pay attention to what congress does is in the single digits.
My other 'hot take' is that the Democratic party is about 15 political parties in an ill-fitting trench coat and so they're never going to have a particularly strong message, since they don't all agree with each other on like 90%+ of it.
posted by that girl at 6:53 PM on December 31 [9 favorites]
> fake-organic groundswells on semi-private social media, in Facebook groups
yes I don't have much visibility into my christianist BIL's media but from what I've seen of it it matches what lalochezia said above perfectly.
>when called upon to address the bad economy
Truman ran on the "Do-Nothing Republican Congress" in 1948 and eked out a win. Biden was in the same boat this year, having lost the House like Truman did in 1946 (plus Clinton in 1994 and Obama in 2010).
In aggregate measures, the "economy" has never done better.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Cy2n compares 74% of age 15-64 people (blue line) with # of jobs (red), showing that the Clinton full-employment peak of ~2000 was matched just immediately prior to Covid (had Covid not hit Trump would have won reelection like Reagan in 2020) and through hook & crook (of massive deficit spending and friendly Fed stimulatory actions) the Biden economy even exceeded that employment level.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Cy39 is people on unemployment insurance / total workers, showing the economy has not been this favorable in my lifetime, by this measure at least.
But: What rented for $700 in my area now rents for $1400, and of course home unaffordability is through the roof with all-time high prices and 7% interest rates. Of course, no politician can run for office saying they aim to lower home prices.
ARRA and IRA were baby steps and were beginning to make a difference, but the brutal truth is that Harris winning last month but not taking the House and Senate would have been an economic disaster for the country simply because the GOP would re-run the obstructive playbook they used for Obama's 2nd term, or 2010-16 really.
This nation is fucked, and it's not going to get fixed.
posted by torokunai2 at 6:55 PM on December 31 [8 favorites]
yes I don't have much visibility into my christianist BIL's media but from what I've seen of it it matches what lalochezia said above perfectly.
>when called upon to address the bad economy
Truman ran on the "Do-Nothing Republican Congress" in 1948 and eked out a win. Biden was in the same boat this year, having lost the House like Truman did in 1946 (plus Clinton in 1994 and Obama in 2010).
In aggregate measures, the "economy" has never done better.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Cy2n compares 74% of age 15-64 people (blue line) with # of jobs (red), showing that the Clinton full-employment peak of ~2000 was matched just immediately prior to Covid (had Covid not hit Trump would have won reelection like Reagan in 2020) and through hook & crook (of massive deficit spending and friendly Fed stimulatory actions) the Biden economy even exceeded that employment level.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Cy39 is people on unemployment insurance / total workers, showing the economy has not been this favorable in my lifetime, by this measure at least.
But: What rented for $700 in my area now rents for $1400, and of course home unaffordability is through the roof with all-time high prices and 7% interest rates. Of course, no politician can run for office saying they aim to lower home prices.
ARRA and IRA were baby steps and were beginning to make a difference, but the brutal truth is that Harris winning last month but not taking the House and Senate would have been an economic disaster for the country simply because the GOP would re-run the obstructive playbook they used for Obama's 2nd term, or 2010-16 really.
This nation is fucked, and it's not going to get fixed.
posted by torokunai2 at 6:55 PM on December 31 [8 favorites]
Adding a bit--I think a presidential incumbent gets a leg up if they run for re-election because we have strong evidence of what they've done as president, but a 'new' candidate is a mystery against which all negative or positive assumptions can be applied as is useful.
posted by that girl at 6:56 PM on December 31
posted by that girl at 6:56 PM on December 31
The Democrats are run by people who are extremely old and out of touch,
I agree with this completely; AOC being frozen out for the sake of a 74 year old Gerry Connolly that I'm guessing most Americans haven't heard of. The Dems have people with high visibility but the long serving people that won't really rock the boat get promoted instead.
There's also the fact that for 30 years now, dating back to the odious Newt Gingrich, Dems have been relentlessly demonized as anti-American, traitors, monsters, etc and lied about continuously. With the massive apparatus on the right pushing this as well a lot of Americans seem to think the Dems hate America. It's crazy, and 2024 feels like the year disinformation finally came home to roost in an unprecedented way. I live in BC and in our recent provincial election a party packed full of wing nuts went from 2 seat to almost forming the new provincial government. Disinformation played a huge part in it, and the what is left of the mainstream press plays along. Where are the GOP in disarray articles right now? The role the press played in the debacle cannot be over stated as well.
I like the salient point the article made about the left but there are so many other things as well as people here have pointed out that it will be some time before it can all be threaded together, if ever.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 7:30 PM on December 31 [20 favorites]
I agree with this completely; AOC being frozen out for the sake of a 74 year old Gerry Connolly that I'm guessing most Americans haven't heard of. The Dems have people with high visibility but the long serving people that won't really rock the boat get promoted instead.
There's also the fact that for 30 years now, dating back to the odious Newt Gingrich, Dems have been relentlessly demonized as anti-American, traitors, monsters, etc and lied about continuously. With the massive apparatus on the right pushing this as well a lot of Americans seem to think the Dems hate America. It's crazy, and 2024 feels like the year disinformation finally came home to roost in an unprecedented way. I live in BC and in our recent provincial election a party packed full of wing nuts went from 2 seat to almost forming the new provincial government. Disinformation played a huge part in it, and the what is left of the mainstream press plays along. Where are the GOP in disarray articles right now? The role the press played in the debacle cannot be over stated as well.
I like the salient point the article made about the left but there are so many other things as well as people here have pointed out that it will be some time before it can all be threaded together, if ever.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 7:30 PM on December 31 [20 favorites]
If anyone has any ideas on how to get rid of 'I've done my 20 years of service I deserve to be promoted' attitude in America, I'm all ears. In 20 years, AOC will get her promotion.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 8:25 PM on December 31 [7 favorites]
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 8:25 PM on December 31 [7 favorites]
huge ecosystem generating fake-organic groundswells on semi-private social media, in facebook groups, whatsapp groups, text chains, and services you ain't heard of that has been micro-targeted
I just watched the documentary Bad Faith and they made it very clear how much the right-wing scooped up data from churches to do exactly that. When you combine that targeting with the loss of local news and the rise of Fox/Sinclair it's really clear how much rural white Christians are both siloed and targeted.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:45 PM on December 31 [17 favorites]
I just watched the documentary Bad Faith and they made it very clear how much the right-wing scooped up data from churches to do exactly that. When you combine that targeting with the loss of local news and the rise of Fox/Sinclair it's really clear how much rural white Christians are both siloed and targeted.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:45 PM on December 31 [17 favorites]
I offer up that the messaging around "democracy is on the line" also didn't pass the sniff test when what the Dems seemed to want to do in an environment when democracy was at risk was... pretty much nothing out of line with any other election. "Oh my god the world is ending, let's conduct business as usual" is a setup that makes me think you're full of it.
posted by axiom at 8:49 PM on December 31 [30 favorites]
posted by axiom at 8:49 PM on December 31 [30 favorites]
When you throw in a candidate that no one actually voted for, it really makes "democracy is on the line" sound fake. Not that I really know what else the democrats could have done, especially after Biden selected her specifically to take his place.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:52 PM on December 31 [5 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:52 PM on December 31 [5 favorites]
axiom Yeah, I mean I actually do think Trump is going to try to screw up democracy. But the Democrats didn't act like they cared much except for fundraising.
Right after Biden was elected the House passed HB1 to reinforce voting rights. And it sat forever and nothing happened. Then, shockingly, the Republicans suppressed the vote all they could. If only someone had predicted that and written then passed a bill in the House to stop it! Oh well, nothing to do but send a fuckton of texts demanding money.
On topic, while there are billionaires who are theoretically liberal, none of them are interested in starting up the liberal version of FOX or Newsmax or whatever.
And the Democrats reject and denigrate the people to their left doing startup media stuff. But the Republicans encourage their fringe to stir up shit, they never get into a thing where they shit talk their fringe, Alex Jones is a welcome and valued part of the Republican Party. Shit, they feted Limbaugh and awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
If the Democrats were serious about making up the media gap they'd never say jack about the "professional left" being bad, or disavow a single liberal or even leftist podcaster or influencer.
We've all seen how it works for the right. Assholes like Jones or Limbaugh say something "crazy", FOX reports on it, Republicans say it seems maybe a bit extreme but it's a fundamentally sound idea, and a few cycles later it's part of the Republican Party Platform and everyone in America is treating the formerly "crazy" thing from the Alex Jones or whoever as perfectly normal and an unremarkable part of the political landscape.
But if anyone on the liberal side starts making waves with a "crazy" idea for universal voter registration, or taxing the fuck out of billionaires, or whatever, the entire Democratic Party closes ranks and denounces them then pats themselves on the back for being the adults or taking the high road or whatever.
And now they wonder why they don't have an internet ground game. Gee, I wonder why.
posted by sotonohito at 9:48 PM on December 31 [40 favorites]
Right after Biden was elected the House passed HB1 to reinforce voting rights. And it sat forever and nothing happened. Then, shockingly, the Republicans suppressed the vote all they could. If only someone had predicted that and written then passed a bill in the House to stop it! Oh well, nothing to do but send a fuckton of texts demanding money.
On topic, while there are billionaires who are theoretically liberal, none of them are interested in starting up the liberal version of FOX or Newsmax or whatever.
And the Democrats reject and denigrate the people to their left doing startup media stuff. But the Republicans encourage their fringe to stir up shit, they never get into a thing where they shit talk their fringe, Alex Jones is a welcome and valued part of the Republican Party. Shit, they feted Limbaugh and awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
If the Democrats were serious about making up the media gap they'd never say jack about the "professional left" being bad, or disavow a single liberal or even leftist podcaster or influencer.
We've all seen how it works for the right. Assholes like Jones or Limbaugh say something "crazy", FOX reports on it, Republicans say it seems maybe a bit extreme but it's a fundamentally sound idea, and a few cycles later it's part of the Republican Party Platform and everyone in America is treating the formerly "crazy" thing from the Alex Jones or whoever as perfectly normal and an unremarkable part of the political landscape.
But if anyone on the liberal side starts making waves with a "crazy" idea for universal voter registration, or taxing the fuck out of billionaires, or whatever, the entire Democratic Party closes ranks and denounces them then pats themselves on the back for being the adults or taking the high road or whatever.
And now they wonder why they don't have an internet ground game. Gee, I wonder why.
posted by sotonohito at 9:48 PM on December 31 [40 favorites]
they are apologists for corporate America, and it's our monopolized and nearly aristocratic capitalism that is the root of the problems regular people face.
Let’s suppose this is true that that is the root of regular people’s problems. For what it’s worth, I 100% believe it is. The Republicans not only also agree with corporate America, but think they should have more of what they want, and don’t even apologize for it, one iota, and say it’s good, actually, but the real root problems are immigration, foreign competition, and regulation, and also that the government even exists and does anything.
It just seems a bit unfair to say one party’s problem is their shitty, unappealing solution based mostly on facts is worse than the other party’s shitty, seemingly appealing solution based on lies, but here we are. I suppose the fairest criticism you can make of the dems is failing to accurately recognize the game they’re in, which is advertising and brand management, unfortunately.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 12:44 AM on January 1 [8 favorites]
Let’s suppose this is true that that is the root of regular people’s problems. For what it’s worth, I 100% believe it is. The Republicans not only also agree with corporate America, but think they should have more of what they want, and don’t even apologize for it, one iota, and say it’s good, actually, but the real root problems are immigration, foreign competition, and regulation, and also that the government even exists and does anything.
It just seems a bit unfair to say one party’s problem is their shitty, unappealing solution based mostly on facts is worse than the other party’s shitty, seemingly appealing solution based on lies, but here we are. I suppose the fairest criticism you can make of the dems is failing to accurately recognize the game they’re in, which is advertising and brand management, unfortunately.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 12:44 AM on January 1 [8 favorites]
Anyone who thinks that 2024 was in some sense a loss "to the left" of the Democrats -- anyone who blames leftists for not voting for Harris, or blames Harris and the party for not inspiring people enough to vote for her -- is mistaken. That's simply not what happened. Progressives of all stripes showed up. To a substantial degree, the election was decided by masses of people with perceptions that simply don't map onto the mindset of politics-understanders like us. It's like trying to explain which food your cat preferred today in terms of the nutritional values of the choices on offer. And to extend that flimsy analogy, Trump is a form of catnip because it turns out that empty pathological narcissism, for the unprepared, can be a kind of blank slate: really easy to project oneself onto (especially if it comes from a white man, the Default Human of our politics).
This doesn't mean the problem is unsolvable, it means we have to think of it in completely different terms. Elections aren't going to be won by tacking to the middle and throwing trans people and immigrants under the bus, and they aren't going to be won by tacking to the left and talking a lot about universal healthcare and taxing the rich. Policy genuinely doesn't matter. Neither does "campaigning" in the usual sense; it's laughable to pretend that the Trump campaign was more effective or made better choices than the Harris one. All that really mattered was the information environment (which is now dominated by social media rather than "news" in the old sense, though the news also clearly favored Trump) and inflation (which as stated above made things difficult for every incumbent party worldwide). A much better use of the Democratic Party's funds than election campaigns would be to somehow out-propagandize the right in the social media world, though I don't know just what that looks like in practice.
Oh, and to be clear about other failures here, while I think Biden was a pretty great president in a lot of his policy (Palestine and immigration being the worst aspects, while the good ones included just about everything economic, not to mention withdrawing from Afghanistan, bringing drone strikes close to zero, and getting fairly ambitious climate stuff through this stagnant senate), none of that much mattered when he failed to privately prioritize putting Donald Trump, an extremely obvious criminal, into prison. Merrick Garland has so, so, much to answer for.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 6:02 AM on January 1 [30 favorites]
This doesn't mean the problem is unsolvable, it means we have to think of it in completely different terms. Elections aren't going to be won by tacking to the middle and throwing trans people and immigrants under the bus, and they aren't going to be won by tacking to the left and talking a lot about universal healthcare and taxing the rich. Policy genuinely doesn't matter. Neither does "campaigning" in the usual sense; it's laughable to pretend that the Trump campaign was more effective or made better choices than the Harris one. All that really mattered was the information environment (which is now dominated by social media rather than "news" in the old sense, though the news also clearly favored Trump) and inflation (which as stated above made things difficult for every incumbent party worldwide). A much better use of the Democratic Party's funds than election campaigns would be to somehow out-propagandize the right in the social media world, though I don't know just what that looks like in practice.
Oh, and to be clear about other failures here, while I think Biden was a pretty great president in a lot of his policy (Palestine and immigration being the worst aspects, while the good ones included just about everything economic, not to mention withdrawing from Afghanistan, bringing drone strikes close to zero, and getting fairly ambitious climate stuff through this stagnant senate), none of that much mattered when he failed to privately prioritize putting Donald Trump, an extremely obvious criminal, into prison. Merrick Garland has so, so, much to answer for.
posted by InTheYear2017 at 6:02 AM on January 1 [30 favorites]
And the Democrats reject and denigrate the people to their left doing startup media stuff. But the Republicans encourage their fringe to stir up shit, they never get into a thing where they shit talk their fringe, Alex Jones is a welcome and valued part of the Republican Party. Shit, they feted Limbaugh and awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The Democrats have a problem that the Republicans don't - they are formally the party of expanding rights and labor, but since the late seventies they have moved away from those positions in practice, so there's always 1. a sense of hypocrisy and 2. a problem keeping the base on side. Since the Democrats have become in practice the party of socially liberal capital, they struggle as as mass party. There is a contradiction between them and their fringe/the left, because the left is genuinely concerned with expanding rights and labor, and the core is not.
The Republicans don't have this problem because they are the party of white people and rich people. This is why they have no trouble with their fringe - their fringe is just about white people and rich people to the extreme. Their fringe is an intensification of their center. And they always have something to offer the base, because they can always give the white people some racism AND blame the results of helping rich people on people of color.
As a non-labor, non-expansionist party, they Democrats can only do two things: attempt to co-opt the right's positions and attempt to do culture war stuff, but not in a way that threatens capital. So they can do just what they have done - put some female, Black, queer etc faces in high places, promote movies, promote celebrities, but they can never tackle the underlying causes of poverty, racism, sexism and homophobia because poverty, racism, sexism and homophobia sustain capital. So people see them as hypocrites and tokenizers. But they can't do anything else, because their base is the type of affluent-to-rich people who don't really mind having a woman CEO or going to their gay friends' weddings but who would gnaw off a forearm before they would support real rises in wages or taxes. Now that hasn't worked, so they're campaigning on throwing immigrants and trans people under the bus in the hope of being a mini-right.
You can't be the party of working people if your entire power base and economic base is rich people, but the natural home for the rich is the GOP, so you're screwed. Unless, of course, you view politics as mostly a way to have a remunerative upper class career, which is why we have all these consultants and grifters who are doing very nicely as the party falls apart.
The Democrats sure did have the same problem as other incumbents globally, but they were never even going to come close to beating the odds.
Of course, eventually you end up like the UK - where the Tories have looted and screwed up everything so badly that there's genuinely not enough money to fix the problems even if there were political will - and then you're basically screwed. We're not at that point yet, but maybe we will be after another four years of Trump.
posted by Frowner at 6:03 AM on January 1 [27 favorites]
The Democrats have a problem that the Republicans don't - they are formally the party of expanding rights and labor, but since the late seventies they have moved away from those positions in practice, so there's always 1. a sense of hypocrisy and 2. a problem keeping the base on side. Since the Democrats have become in practice the party of socially liberal capital, they struggle as as mass party. There is a contradiction between them and their fringe/the left, because the left is genuinely concerned with expanding rights and labor, and the core is not.
The Republicans don't have this problem because they are the party of white people and rich people. This is why they have no trouble with their fringe - their fringe is just about white people and rich people to the extreme. Their fringe is an intensification of their center. And they always have something to offer the base, because they can always give the white people some racism AND blame the results of helping rich people on people of color.
As a non-labor, non-expansionist party, they Democrats can only do two things: attempt to co-opt the right's positions and attempt to do culture war stuff, but not in a way that threatens capital. So they can do just what they have done - put some female, Black, queer etc faces in high places, promote movies, promote celebrities, but they can never tackle the underlying causes of poverty, racism, sexism and homophobia because poverty, racism, sexism and homophobia sustain capital. So people see them as hypocrites and tokenizers. But they can't do anything else, because their base is the type of affluent-to-rich people who don't really mind having a woman CEO or going to their gay friends' weddings but who would gnaw off a forearm before they would support real rises in wages or taxes. Now that hasn't worked, so they're campaigning on throwing immigrants and trans people under the bus in the hope of being a mini-right.
You can't be the party of working people if your entire power base and economic base is rich people, but the natural home for the rich is the GOP, so you're screwed. Unless, of course, you view politics as mostly a way to have a remunerative upper class career, which is why we have all these consultants and grifters who are doing very nicely as the party falls apart.
The Democrats sure did have the same problem as other incumbents globally, but they were never even going to come close to beating the odds.
Of course, eventually you end up like the UK - where the Tories have looted and screwed up everything so badly that there's genuinely not enough money to fix the problems even if there were political will - and then you're basically screwed. We're not at that point yet, but maybe we will be after another four years of Trump.
posted by Frowner at 6:03 AM on January 1 [27 favorites]
It just seems a bit unfair to say one party’s problem is their shitty, unappealing solution based mostly on facts is worse than the other party’s shitty, seemingly appealing solution based on lies, but here we are. I suppose the fairest criticism you can make of the dems is failing to accurately recognize the game they’re in, which is advertising and brand management, unfortunately.When a plurality of voters dislike the substance of both party platforms you end up with whichever party is in control getting kicked out every election. I can't see Vance winning in 2028, so when is the streak going to end, 2032? 2036?
The essence of the shit in the can critique is that advertising and brand management are not enough to win an election unless you're in opposition and voters aren't blaming you for how much rent and healthcare cost at the moment.
To win re-election you'd have to make things materially better for people in ways that horrify centrist donors.
posted by zymil at 6:05 AM on January 1 [9 favorites]
They lost because of 1) kitchen-table issues, 2) misogyny, 3) misogyny, 4) stupid people being trolled about fucking Gaza, and 5) brand management. The Republicans are going to make kitchen-table issues worse. The cabal of shitbirds who run the Dem Party are, as many others have pointed out, only interested in feathering their own nest, BUT at the same time, they're absolutely correct that running an Ardent Progressive would get them slaughtered.
Kick them out (how, exactly?), then rebrand the party as a coalition focused on keeping fascists out of power: "you don't have to agree with everything here". Stick to kitchen-table issues; frame all social issues as what they are, which is wedges designed to drive the coalition apart. Relentlessly tag the Republicans as the grotesque clowns and psychopaths they are. Nobody over 60 allowed to run for office.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:20 AM on January 1 [6 favorites]
Kick them out (how, exactly?), then rebrand the party as a coalition focused on keeping fascists out of power: "you don't have to agree with everything here". Stick to kitchen-table issues; frame all social issues as what they are, which is wedges designed to drive the coalition apart. Relentlessly tag the Republicans as the grotesque clowns and psychopaths they are. Nobody over 60 allowed to run for office.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:20 AM on January 1 [6 favorites]
In a prior thread about trans rights, a mod stated that "politicians shouldn't / shouldn't be expected to openly support trans rights because it's a popular attack vector from the right" is a pretty awful hot take, so it's really fucking scary to see one of the site's usual transphobes going off about how the Dems need to start kicking progressives out of the party for going on the offense (or any serious defence, for that matter).
That's not democracy, that's just fascism with the serial numbers rubbed off.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 6:27 AM on January 1 [22 favorites]
That's not democracy, that's just fascism with the serial numbers rubbed off.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 6:27 AM on January 1 [22 favorites]
The idea that progressive leadership would be unelectable isn't supported by evidence -- not by recent evidence, anyway. Broadly, I think what we're seeing with the ongoing, otherwise inexplicable popularity of Trump among people who are probably not sexist klanspeople (that's a hell of a lot of sexist klanspeople, many more than I'm comfortable just acknowledging exist without a better argument) is a repudiation of the status quo, because Americans are straight up not having a good time.
I don't think what we're seeing, at all, is people on the left not voting. I think people on the left are voting for democrats, even though we don't see democrats doing very much for us, and I think liberals are voting for democrats, because they love this shit. What we're not seeing is the vast swath of people in the middle voting for democrats, or indeed voting for anybody.
I think liberals see that group and think, "Aha! They are just like us, if they but knew! If it wasn't for fucking Russia, and, and, and, it says here...Seth Rogen? Well, that can't be right...well, anyway...these people are just like us, dammit! We need more podcasters!!"
But I don't really think that group is very much like the liberals, and if they're more like the left, they aren't that much more like the left. I think they mostly just don't want shit to be broken anymore. They want to own a house, they want to earn a living wage, they want the things they thought this country was about them having. That's it. They won't vote for Trump, they mostly wouldn't dream of it, but they won't vote for us, either, because we aren't seeing them. Why would they bother to vote for us?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:49 AM on January 1 [8 favorites]
I don't think what we're seeing, at all, is people on the left not voting. I think people on the left are voting for democrats, even though we don't see democrats doing very much for us, and I think liberals are voting for democrats, because they love this shit. What we're not seeing is the vast swath of people in the middle voting for democrats, or indeed voting for anybody.
I think liberals see that group and think, "Aha! They are just like us, if they but knew! If it wasn't for fucking Russia, and, and, and, it says here...Seth Rogen? Well, that can't be right...well, anyway...these people are just like us, dammit! We need more podcasters!!"
But I don't really think that group is very much like the liberals, and if they're more like the left, they aren't that much more like the left. I think they mostly just don't want shit to be broken anymore. They want to own a house, they want to earn a living wage, they want the things they thought this country was about them having. That's it. They won't vote for Trump, they mostly wouldn't dream of it, but they won't vote for us, either, because we aren't seeing them. Why would they bother to vote for us?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:49 AM on January 1 [8 favorites]
Of the many takes I’ve seen on this recently, the one I’ve most appreciated was Adam Conover’s. He talks about how anti-democratic the Democratic Party and the nation at large has become. At this point, he says, the Democratic Party, in its interaction with citizens, does nothing but (1) ask you for money and (2) spend that money on media buys and political consultants. The average voter has no actual decision-making power within their party — they have become consumers, not citizens. Those who lead the party are unable to understand why this isn’t working, because their power and paychecks depend on not understanding it. He reflects on both the past (when people were actually sitting at spaghetti dinners in union halls with other people, making connections and decisions and exerting political power together), and a potential future (where we return to local organizing).
I thought this was an interesting take, and — though it’s not discussed in the video — it led me to think about how the other side still really does have in-person organizing and community connection in the form of churches, which bolster political power. I’ve been thinking about ways to contribute to local connection and organizing power — it feels like a better use of my energy than doomscroll and panic.
posted by ourobouros at 7:00 AM on January 1 [26 favorites]
I thought this was an interesting take, and — though it’s not discussed in the video — it led me to think about how the other side still really does have in-person organizing and community connection in the form of churches, which bolster political power. I’ve been thinking about ways to contribute to local connection and organizing power — it feels like a better use of my energy than doomscroll and panic.
posted by ourobouros at 7:00 AM on January 1 [26 favorites]
A New Year's laugh - my social media feed is practically solid with well-documented fundraisers posted by reliable known-quantity people for desperate Palestinians living in tents that are six inches deep in freezing winter rain, and yet you can go to ostensibly liberal places online where "fucking Gaza" is mostly a problem because it is used to fool people into criticizing the Democrats.
Fascism when it impacts Americans? Terrible! Fascism when Americans send billions to bomb a tiny population of trapped civilians into powder? Okay, I guess, let's not talk about it.
If there's any history left, so to speak, it will judge. Of course, we may all be out of runway.
posted by Frowner at 7:03 AM on January 1 [23 favorites]
Fascism when it impacts Americans? Terrible! Fascism when Americans send billions to bomb a tiny population of trapped civilians into powder? Okay, I guess, let's not talk about it.
If there's any history left, so to speak, it will judge. Of course, we may all be out of runway.
posted by Frowner at 7:03 AM on January 1 [23 favorites]
A New Year's laugh - my social media feed is practically solid with well-documented fundraisers posted by reliable known-quantity people for desperate Palestinians living in tents that are six inches deep in freezing winter rain, and yet you can go to ostensibly liberal places online where "fucking Gaza" is mostly a problem because it is used to fool people into criticizing the Democrats.
Over the last 14 months, I’ve gradually learned to stop mistaking Democrats for liberals (in any useful sense of the term).
Rather, they are Democrats. Their allegiance is not to any set of political principles but to a political party and its leader.
They have no fixed convictions on drone bombing or strike breaking or genocide. These things are bad when Republicans do them and a matter of indifference when Democrats do them.
Exactly like Republicans, they have an unexamined faith in the inherent goodness of their party’s leader and they become very angry when that faith is challenged.
Liberals may be registered with and vote for the Democratic Party due to expediency. But the more liberal they are, the more sickened they will be by the temporary alliance.
posted by Lemkin at 8:14 AM on January 1 [6 favorites]
Over the last 14 months, I’ve gradually learned to stop mistaking Democrats for liberals (in any useful sense of the term).
Rather, they are Democrats. Their allegiance is not to any set of political principles but to a political party and its leader.
They have no fixed convictions on drone bombing or strike breaking or genocide. These things are bad when Republicans do them and a matter of indifference when Democrats do them.
Exactly like Republicans, they have an unexamined faith in the inherent goodness of their party’s leader and they become very angry when that faith is challenged.
Liberals may be registered with and vote for the Democratic Party due to expediency. But the more liberal they are, the more sickened they will be by the temporary alliance.
posted by Lemkin at 8:14 AM on January 1 [6 favorites]
Of the many takes I’ve seen on this recently, the one I’ve most appreciated was Adam Conover’s.
You beat me to the punch on this. I think he nails the issue here. Actual face-to-face social networks need to be rebuilt and rank-and-file people need to take control of the party from the bottom-up. This would build solidarity and get issues people care about put front and center instead of perpetually being marginalized by the consultancy androids.
That said, I think there was a half-baked attempt at doing some of this after Clinton failed. I recall videos from Democratic party meetings where newcomers were saying to old-timers "You're part of the problem!" but, I think the old-timers got scared and did everything they could to marginalize those people and label them as smug, annoying, unrealistic, ineffective, DSA types or whatever.. This may have deflated people from trying to go further...but the impact may have been blunted by insufficient numbers to continue to push through. To get the numbers probably means building more of a meat-space social network so that it's not just 3 or 4 people finally making it into Democratic party meetings and eventually getting blown off, but tens or hundreds of people that can't be ignored who know each other and are working together and can keep the pressure up beyond a few months or one election cycle. This requires people supporting and caring about each other and doing things together so they know they have something in common and can trust each other.
But also for this to be truly effective at the national level it has to be a nation-wide movement too, which means the parallel to a nationwide organization like the Elks or what-have-you is also key. This way, you don't just have a few groups pushing their way into the Democratic party, but they can also support other groups doing the same elsewhere and know that they aren't standing alone.
posted by delicious-luncheon at 8:29 AM on January 1 [7 favorites]
You beat me to the punch on this. I think he nails the issue here. Actual face-to-face social networks need to be rebuilt and rank-and-file people need to take control of the party from the bottom-up. This would build solidarity and get issues people care about put front and center instead of perpetually being marginalized by the consultancy androids.
That said, I think there was a half-baked attempt at doing some of this after Clinton failed. I recall videos from Democratic party meetings where newcomers were saying to old-timers "You're part of the problem!" but, I think the old-timers got scared and did everything they could to marginalize those people and label them as smug, annoying, unrealistic, ineffective, DSA types or whatever.. This may have deflated people from trying to go further...but the impact may have been blunted by insufficient numbers to continue to push through. To get the numbers probably means building more of a meat-space social network so that it's not just 3 or 4 people finally making it into Democratic party meetings and eventually getting blown off, but tens or hundreds of people that can't be ignored who know each other and are working together and can keep the pressure up beyond a few months or one election cycle. This requires people supporting and caring about each other and doing things together so they know they have something in common and can trust each other.
But also for this to be truly effective at the national level it has to be a nation-wide movement too, which means the parallel to a nationwide organization like the Elks or what-have-you is also key. This way, you don't just have a few groups pushing their way into the Democratic party, but they can also support other groups doing the same elsewhere and know that they aren't standing alone.
posted by delicious-luncheon at 8:29 AM on January 1 [7 favorites]
A big part of the communications issue is jargon and the failure to understand and communicate the reality behind jargon.
We still talk about the “unemployment” rate as if it reflects the job market and people’s experience of it. However, the colloquial understanding of “unemployed” means “not working,” and doesn’t match the indicator called “unemployment.”
We should be talking about total labor force participation for ages 25-64, which shows the US a full 3 percentage points behind the EU average, and 8.5 points behind Japan. Labor force participation in the US has been declining for decades. It still not recovered from the pandemic drop.
But the political class would rather tut-tut about how the left doesn’t understand what the unemployment rate is than explain what the unemployment is and why it can be low even when people are broke and see lots of folks out of work.
posted by Headfullofair at 8:37 AM on January 1 [13 favorites]
We still talk about the “unemployment” rate as if it reflects the job market and people’s experience of it. However, the colloquial understanding of “unemployed” means “not working,” and doesn’t match the indicator called “unemployment.”
We should be talking about total labor force participation for ages 25-64, which shows the US a full 3 percentage points behind the EU average, and 8.5 points behind Japan. Labor force participation in the US has been declining for decades. It still not recovered from the pandemic drop.
But the political class would rather tut-tut about how the left doesn’t understand what the unemployment rate is than explain what the unemployment is and why it can be low even when people are broke and see lots of folks out of work.
posted by Headfullofair at 8:37 AM on January 1 [13 favorites]
One less-than-hot retrospective take:
For the Harris campaign to have won Michigan, the bare minimum would have been simply to maintain Biden's vote total from 2020 and add in a percent or so for natural population growth. That would have been enough to beat the Trump campaign's actual vote total in 2024.
Instead, they dropped votes. Harris got fewer votes than Biden. 60,000 lost Democratic votes in Wayne County by itself, in a state that Trump won by 80,000. And Trump's vote increase over 2020 was not all that substantial.
Republicans did not expand their electorate, but they definitely turned out their base. The Democratic campaign definitely did not.
Of course, Michigan stands out, too, because it's the more obvious place where a pivot on Gaza would have made a difference. The Democratic establishment--including Harris--did not take this basic step on Gaza to rally their base, and I'm fairly convinced they lost Michigan because of it.
If you look more broadly at the other swing states, you can see people staying home, too. Might have been more issues than Gaza alone! But the pattern where the establishment dumps on the left and perceived "leftist issues" is basically a seminar on how to lose an election at this point. The message in the numbers for the Democratic establishment types who collect all that money and run the campaigns is TURN OUT YOUR FRICKIN BASE YOU MORONS. Or, get out of the way.
As the late, great Molly Ivins had it, "you gotta dance with them what brung ya".
posted by gimonca at 8:53 AM on January 1 [10 favorites]
For the Harris campaign to have won Michigan, the bare minimum would have been simply to maintain Biden's vote total from 2020 and add in a percent or so for natural population growth. That would have been enough to beat the Trump campaign's actual vote total in 2024.
Instead, they dropped votes. Harris got fewer votes than Biden. 60,000 lost Democratic votes in Wayne County by itself, in a state that Trump won by 80,000. And Trump's vote increase over 2020 was not all that substantial.
Republicans did not expand their electorate, but they definitely turned out their base. The Democratic campaign definitely did not.
Of course, Michigan stands out, too, because it's the more obvious place where a pivot on Gaza would have made a difference. The Democratic establishment--including Harris--did not take this basic step on Gaza to rally their base, and I'm fairly convinced they lost Michigan because of it.
If you look more broadly at the other swing states, you can see people staying home, too. Might have been more issues than Gaza alone! But the pattern where the establishment dumps on the left and perceived "leftist issues" is basically a seminar on how to lose an election at this point. The message in the numbers for the Democratic establishment types who collect all that money and run the campaigns is TURN OUT YOUR FRICKIN BASE YOU MORONS. Or, get out of the way.
As the late, great Molly Ivins had it, "you gotta dance with them what brung ya".
posted by gimonca at 8:53 AM on January 1 [10 favorites]
Of course, Michigan stands out, too, because it's the more obvious place where a pivot on Gaza would have made a difference. The Democratic establishment--including Harris--did not take this basic step on Gaza to rally their base, and I'm fairly convinced they lost Michigan because of it.
Biden is a true believer in Zionism. Harris just did the math and figured she could better afford to tell liberals to eat shit on Gaza than call down the lightning bolts from AIPAC. And, much as I hate to say it, she probably wasm’t wrong.
posted by Lemkin at 9:13 AM on January 1 [4 favorites]
Biden is a true believer in Zionism. Harris just did the math and figured she could better afford to tell liberals to eat shit on Gaza than call down the lightning bolts from AIPAC. And, much as I hate to say it, she probably wasm’t wrong.
posted by Lemkin at 9:13 AM on January 1 [4 favorites]
Another angle here - people expect things to work too fast and thus give up too soon. It took about thirty-five years (let's say Reagan to Trump, which is being a little conservative, so to speak) to torpedo the Democratic party. There isn't one weird trick which will fix things, but the party is so focused around elections that they're perpetually looking for weird tricks, and if a program doesn't have magical instant results they torpedo it or at least cease to defend/expand it.
We sure do need local Democratic stuff, but it needs to be year round and ongoing, not just around elections.
posted by Frowner at 9:23 AM on January 1 [12 favorites]
We sure do need local Democratic stuff, but it needs to be year round and ongoing, not just around elections.
posted by Frowner at 9:23 AM on January 1 [12 favorites]
We should be talking about total labor force participation for ages 25-64, which shows the US a full 3 percentage points behind the EU average, and 8.5 points behind Japan. Labor force participation in the US has been declining for decades. It still not recovered from the pandemic drop.
This is not even sort of correct. The labor force participation rate has so many reasons why it could be lower than other countries, and it's been stable to slightly declining for a very long time. The main reason is that contrary to what you hear so often on metafilter, plenty of people in the US are able to retire and survive perfectly fine.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:30 AM on January 1 [2 favorites]
This is not even sort of correct. The labor force participation rate has so many reasons why it could be lower than other countries, and it's been stable to slightly declining for a very long time. The main reason is that contrary to what you hear so often on metafilter, plenty of people in the US are able to retire and survive perfectly fine.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:30 AM on January 1 [2 favorites]
@The_Vegetables what does retirement have to do with declining labor participation among 25-64 year olds?
posted by Headfullofair at 9:46 AM on January 1 [3 favorites]
posted by Headfullofair at 9:46 AM on January 1 [3 favorites]
Threads like this stand as a good example of why Democrats, as a party, have an increasingly hard time in elections. It basically comes down to the figurative size of the tent.
The Republicans have the luxury of living under a very small tent. That is to say, their core message is tightly focused and aimed at a more-or-less singular group who share a relatively specific set of values, and fueled by appeals to base emotion.
The Democrats, on the other hand, have been stuck trying to maintain a very large tent, covering more-or-less everyone not welcome under the Republican tent, from far left anarchists to Clinton-era moderates. It’s a massive churning crowd full of often-contadictory ideas, beliefs, stances, and passions. And each subgroup firmly believes that their ideas are the one true way to success, if only the assholes running the place would step aside. To use a tired term, it’s an incredibly diverse tent. But, it’s exactly this diversity that makes it nearly impossible for them to coalesce behind a message much more unified and emotional than “We aren’t the Republicans.”
The only thing Democrats have left to run on are abstract numbers, like the whole “No, really, the economy’s good! Look at these charts!” messaging that died under the onslaught of the Republican message of “Can you believe the price of eggs?!?!” Abstract facts rarely prevail over emotion, especially when those emotions are focused back at the ones presenting the facts (Doubly-so when the voters have been subjected to a decades-long anti-educational propaganda drumbeat.)
That’s not to say there’s no emotion under the Dem tent. There’s a ton of it. It just can’t be focused into a single unified and effective message because of how diverse those emotions (and the ideas underlying those emotions) are. Trying to embrace one group inevitably pisses-off another group, and trying to placate that group alienates others. Running the Democratic tent is akin to herding cats. And the result is, over and over again, a lukewarm, homogenized message, utterly devoid of passion. The McDonald’s burger of political thought.
And, I’m not sure how this can be fixed. Even in a parliamentary system, where these diverse groups would exist under their own discrete tents, you’re still left with the mess of building a coalition to defeat the unified right. You’re back to herding cats.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:04 AM on January 1 [8 favorites]
The Republicans have the luxury of living under a very small tent. That is to say, their core message is tightly focused and aimed at a more-or-less singular group who share a relatively specific set of values, and fueled by appeals to base emotion.
The Democrats, on the other hand, have been stuck trying to maintain a very large tent, covering more-or-less everyone not welcome under the Republican tent, from far left anarchists to Clinton-era moderates. It’s a massive churning crowd full of often-contadictory ideas, beliefs, stances, and passions. And each subgroup firmly believes that their ideas are the one true way to success, if only the assholes running the place would step aside. To use a tired term, it’s an incredibly diverse tent. But, it’s exactly this diversity that makes it nearly impossible for them to coalesce behind a message much more unified and emotional than “We aren’t the Republicans.”
The only thing Democrats have left to run on are abstract numbers, like the whole “No, really, the economy’s good! Look at these charts!” messaging that died under the onslaught of the Republican message of “Can you believe the price of eggs?!?!” Abstract facts rarely prevail over emotion, especially when those emotions are focused back at the ones presenting the facts (Doubly-so when the voters have been subjected to a decades-long anti-educational propaganda drumbeat.)
That’s not to say there’s no emotion under the Dem tent. There’s a ton of it. It just can’t be focused into a single unified and effective message because of how diverse those emotions (and the ideas underlying those emotions) are. Trying to embrace one group inevitably pisses-off another group, and trying to placate that group alienates others. Running the Democratic tent is akin to herding cats. And the result is, over and over again, a lukewarm, homogenized message, utterly devoid of passion. The McDonald’s burger of political thought.
And, I’m not sure how this can be fixed. Even in a parliamentary system, where these diverse groups would exist under their own discrete tents, you’re still left with the mess of building a coalition to defeat the unified right. You’re back to herding cats.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:04 AM on January 1 [8 favorites]
>what does retirement have to do with declining labor participation among 25-64 year olds
Labor Force Participation Rate - 25-54 shows the economy hasn't been 'declining' here for core age workers.
Elizabeth Warren (basically a moderate Republican driven to the Democratic side like Biden, the Clintons, and Obama) nailed the core issue with the economy 20 years ago now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two-Income_Trap
We can see this same dynamic operate in Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, UK, Japan, Korea, hell even communist China.
My parents were paying $300/mo for a decent 3 bedroom apartment in the SF Bay Area 50 years ago. Inflation says that should be $1900/mo but the actual rent now is $3200. That difference going into the landlord's pocket could be buying a lot of eggs at Safeway.
In the teeth of the late 70s housing boom (see The Two Income Trap, above) they were able to get a $63,000 house on CalVet financing. Here's a graph of the basic (interest-only) monthly housing cost to take out a new loan since the 1970s, in 2024 dollars . . .(note that the ~2005 peak was not actually that bad due to the ~2% teaser – or even negative amortization – rates buyers were taking advantage of, in the hopes of refinancing before the mortgage was reset/recast). The basic takeaway I get from this graph is just that housing is now 2X as expensive to buy as it was in the 1990s & 2010s easy times when price appreciation was flat as incomes rose.
College debt is of course another nail in the economic coffins we've put Gen Y & Z in. College was $1300/yr starting out for me, so adding 15 more hours on my campus job in the summer covered my tuition and books for the year.
posted by torokunai2 at 10:58 AM on January 1 [11 favorites]
Labor Force Participation Rate - 25-54 shows the economy hasn't been 'declining' here for core age workers.
Elizabeth Warren (basically a moderate Republican driven to the Democratic side like Biden, the Clintons, and Obama) nailed the core issue with the economy 20 years ago now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two-Income_Trap
We can see this same dynamic operate in Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, UK, Japan, Korea, hell even communist China.
My parents were paying $300/mo for a decent 3 bedroom apartment in the SF Bay Area 50 years ago. Inflation says that should be $1900/mo but the actual rent now is $3200. That difference going into the landlord's pocket could be buying a lot of eggs at Safeway.
In the teeth of the late 70s housing boom (see The Two Income Trap, above) they were able to get a $63,000 house on CalVet financing. Here's a graph of the basic (interest-only) monthly housing cost to take out a new loan since the 1970s, in 2024 dollars . . .(note that the ~2005 peak was not actually that bad due to the ~2% teaser – or even negative amortization – rates buyers were taking advantage of, in the hopes of refinancing before the mortgage was reset/recast). The basic takeaway I get from this graph is just that housing is now 2X as expensive to buy as it was in the 1990s & 2010s easy times when price appreciation was flat as incomes rose.
College debt is of course another nail in the economic coffins we've put Gen Y & Z in. College was $1300/yr starting out for me, so adding 15 more hours on my campus job in the summer covered my tuition and books for the year.
posted by torokunai2 at 10:58 AM on January 1 [11 favorites]
I think premise that strategists, commentators, and the online Democratic fandom -- that Democrats deserved to win because they're significantly or notably better for the country than Republicans -- is poor, and naturally leads them to try to solve the problem of how to most effectively trick the voters who don't know what's best for themselves. The people reading off the same script about "foreign disinfo" or "low information voters" that they learned after 2016 and accusing the large majority of eligible voters who didn't vote for Harris for whatever reason of being fringe ideologues are actively resistant to learning anything from political events.
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said "75 million people voted for Harris." The population of the country is 340 million. If I didn't know better, I'd assume it was a pro-Trump sticker. It frankly struck me as a bit self-pitying.
posted by jy4m at 11:51 AM on January 1 [5 favorites]
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said "75 million people voted for Harris." The population of the country is 340 million. If I didn't know better, I'd assume it was a pro-Trump sticker. It frankly struck me as a bit self-pitying.
posted by jy4m at 11:51 AM on January 1 [5 favorites]
the learning has just begun, since collectively we apparently have the memory of goldfishes
posted by torokunai2 at 12:03 PM on January 1
posted by torokunai2 at 12:03 PM on January 1
Thanks for the analysis Smedly, Butlerian jihadi. Your thoughts - much more directly informed by the principles than mine- fit very much with what I think. One case in point, which made me want to throw my phone across the room was an episode of Pod Save America with campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillion, Quentin Fulks, who’s the deputy campaign manager, and oversaw paid advertising, Stephanie Cutter, who oversaw messaging and communications. They talked about a few things but mostly they came across to me as apologists. Completely maddening was the blame placed on the coordinated hits they were taking from Trump's super pacs. This from a campaign that raised a billion dollars. Maybe that's their role but there was nothing about trying to reach voters on issues that matter to them, and maybe the campaign didn't reach voters because the messaging was out of touch. I too think the Democratic party is broken, tied to a system of party elites and seniority that makes the core of the party apparatus out of touch.
posted by bluesky43 at 12:23 PM on January 1 [4 favorites]
posted by bluesky43 at 12:23 PM on January 1 [4 favorites]
Democrats need to define the party more than ever, since nobody knows what Republicans are anymore and could use a hint. I suggest it blatantly describe a public-facing unity against the conservative envy authority guarding the trickle down. The flip side of public-facing is private-serving, making it clear to someone from birth upwards. The nauseating whine about Republicans being better for the economy is long disproved, confusing it for executive pay perhaps. Working class or blue collar labels are too narrow and don't deliver the votes. It should be a party that everyone identifies with who is threatened by unfair trade, pollution, graft, persecution, retirement and healthcare.
posted by Brian B. at 12:59 PM on January 1 [1 favorite]
posted by Brian B. at 12:59 PM on January 1 [1 favorite]
You don't get beaten by someone with Donald Trump's problems and hard ceiling on popularity for any one reason, but for a lot of reasons.
Inflation was clearly the most important thing.
But the Biden/Harris overconfidence that their messaging controlled the media and the youth were in the bag was a big contributor. If you mainly consume NYT, WaPo, NPR and CNN, you felt really good. If your leavening of that was Bloomberg and the WSJ, only marginally less hostile to Trump, you felt really good. If you were using athletes and entertainers as your gauge of what apolitical men under 40 were feeling Trump, you must have felt ecstatic.
posted by MattD at 1:34 PM on January 1 [2 favorites]
Inflation was clearly the most important thing.
But the Biden/Harris overconfidence that their messaging controlled the media and the youth were in the bag was a big contributor. If you mainly consume NYT, WaPo, NPR and CNN, you felt really good. If your leavening of that was Bloomberg and the WSJ, only marginally less hostile to Trump, you felt really good. If you were using athletes and entertainers as your gauge of what apolitical men under 40 were feeling Trump, you must have felt ecstatic.
posted by MattD at 1:34 PM on January 1 [2 favorites]
I think it's worth noting that Biden's 2020 win over Trump wasn't a big landslide. If not for the incredible chaos of that year -- some of which was certainly Trump's fault -- I am not convinced Trump wouldn't have won then too. And maybe this is because Trump is a unique event of some kind; I highly doubt for example that JD Vance, the apparent love child of Ted Cruz and Colin Jost, will get very far in the 2028 primaries. But I think it's also because the democrats just are not meeting this moment. The best they can hope for is that the republicans will be equally flat footed once Trump is no longer their candidate.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:08 PM on January 1 [5 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:08 PM on January 1 [5 favorites]
Feeling genuinely heartened that the vast majority of posters on this thread blame the actual people responsible for losing the election - the out of touch leaders of the Dems, their scolding “me or your lying eyes?” cronies and the remora fish consultant class leeching off of the party and only of few of the usual creeps blaming people who weren’t willing to support genocide, or are unwillingly to vote for anybody a Cheney endorses, or who weren’t willing to sacrifice trans people, immigrants, asylum seekers and other marginalized groups.
posted by youthenrage at 3:03 PM on January 1 [10 favorites]
posted by youthenrage at 3:03 PM on January 1 [10 favorites]
I remember driving in upper Michigan and someone said listen to this guy and it was Glen Beck just before he went to like 300 stations.
asking what I thought I thought the only reason you can listen to this is because you're driving 48 miles one way and back in a truck, plus one can listen on the internet. besides stating a few obvious obfuscation points about the gulf War and coming up with a few "ideas"of his own:
"well, he's just changing the narrative..."
"I KNOW ISN'T IT GOOD"
"...and using the same criteria with wooden yet nitrogen rich modulated voice."
never get in the goddamn truck.
posted by clavdivs at 3:12 PM on January 1 [4 favorites]
asking what I thought I thought the only reason you can listen to this is because you're driving 48 miles one way and back in a truck, plus one can listen on the internet. besides stating a few obvious obfuscation points about the gulf War and coming up with a few "ideas"of his own:
"well, he's just changing the narrative..."
"I KNOW ISN'T IT GOOD"
"...and using the same criteria with wooden yet nitrogen rich modulated voice."
never get in the goddamn truck.
posted by clavdivs at 3:12 PM on January 1 [4 favorites]
Thorzdad The Republicans have the luxury of living under a very small tent. That is to say, their core message is tightly focused and aimed at a more-or-less singular group who share a relatively specific set of values, and fueled by appeals to base emotion.
I think you're mistaken, and I think that may be what's really going to wind up ruining the Democrats.
The Republican tent is widening even while Trump preaches racism.
2016 Black Men voting Republican: 13%
2020 Black Men voting Republican: 19%
2023 Black Men voting Republican: 21%
2016 Black Women voting Republican: 4%
2020 Black Women voting Republican: 9%
2024 Black Women voting Republican: 7%
2016 Hispanic Men voting Republican: 32%
2020 Hispanic Men voting Republican: 36%
2024 Hispanic Men voting Republican: 54%
2016 Hispanic Women voting Republican: 26%
2020 Hispanic Women voting Republican: 30%
2024 Hispanic Women voting Republican: 39%
Trump stumbled into a winning formula that broadens the appeal of Republicans even while he openly and nakedly spews racism.
Minority voters are going Republican. On the surface that would seem to be an utterly impossible task to manage, how to keep the white supremacist base happy while also getting more people that base hates to vote for Republicans? And yet, Trump did it.
I've got a guess as to what made that possible for Hispanic voters: they could pretend that Trump just meant the bad illegal immigrants not them and voted based on culture war crap and/or the part where the Democrats have betrayed labor.
I've no idea what made Black voters go Trump, possibly the fact that his racism was mostly directed at Hispanic people and immigrants in general?
But the old idea that the racism of the Republican Party was keeping them from expanding their tent isn't working, and it doesn't take much of a shift in minority votes to get a Republican victory.
Maybe it's the ideologically narrow part of the tent that's letting the ethnic part broaden? Trump and the Republicans have really been focused on God, Trans people, and Guns, and there are a lot of Democratic voting Black and Hispanic people who are hyper religious, hate trans rights, and love guns who are much more ideologically in line with the Republicans except for the extreme racism keeping them out.
All this time we thought that to attract those voters the Republicans would have to turn down the racism and risk losing their core of white racists, but that's not what happened.
That's not just inflation, not over three Presidential elections. It's a trend.
posted by sotonohito at 3:16 PM on January 1 [16 favorites]
I think you're mistaken, and I think that may be what's really going to wind up ruining the Democrats.
The Republican tent is widening even while Trump preaches racism.
2016 Black Men voting Republican: 13%
2020 Black Men voting Republican: 19%
2023 Black Men voting Republican: 21%
2016 Black Women voting Republican: 4%
2020 Black Women voting Republican: 9%
2024 Black Women voting Republican: 7%
2016 Hispanic Men voting Republican: 32%
2020 Hispanic Men voting Republican: 36%
2024 Hispanic Men voting Republican: 54%
2016 Hispanic Women voting Republican: 26%
2020 Hispanic Women voting Republican: 30%
2024 Hispanic Women voting Republican: 39%
Trump stumbled into a winning formula that broadens the appeal of Republicans even while he openly and nakedly spews racism.
Minority voters are going Republican. On the surface that would seem to be an utterly impossible task to manage, how to keep the white supremacist base happy while also getting more people that base hates to vote for Republicans? And yet, Trump did it.
I've got a guess as to what made that possible for Hispanic voters: they could pretend that Trump just meant the bad illegal immigrants not them and voted based on culture war crap and/or the part where the Democrats have betrayed labor.
I've no idea what made Black voters go Trump, possibly the fact that his racism was mostly directed at Hispanic people and immigrants in general?
But the old idea that the racism of the Republican Party was keeping them from expanding their tent isn't working, and it doesn't take much of a shift in minority votes to get a Republican victory.
Maybe it's the ideologically narrow part of the tent that's letting the ethnic part broaden? Trump and the Republicans have really been focused on God, Trans people, and Guns, and there are a lot of Democratic voting Black and Hispanic people who are hyper religious, hate trans rights, and love guns who are much more ideologically in line with the Republicans except for the extreme racism keeping them out.
All this time we thought that to attract those voters the Republicans would have to turn down the racism and risk losing their core of white racists, but that's not what happened.
That's not just inflation, not over three Presidential elections. It's a trend.
posted by sotonohito at 3:16 PM on January 1 [16 favorites]
I would hope that this, the first popular vote loss in 20 years to the Republicans, would help do in the "We can't be progressive post Reagan" dead enders after a dead end campaign that, from recent posts, didn't bother to properly campaign in cities (Operation Dunkin-kirk). And yet the reflex from these people is to insist that the small minority still holding tightly to values like "Maybe we shouldn't role play as the Vichy French Government as people are listed for rounding up" are the real problem.
We've done it their way! We've done these campaigns their way for fucking ages now. They are at best a coin flip but the circumstances of two of the three dem presidential wins since the millennium turned involved the economy being a smoking crater and people dying in massive numbers (Katrina and COVID). And as listed above, they're not taking criticism from the outside anymore, so course correction seems unlikely.
Ah, but I see I should probably join the party and help to change it from the inside. Like AOC, who carried water for the Genocide Agnostics during the election and then was promptly shanked when she wanted to move up into Oversight.
posted by Slackermagee at 3:26 PM on January 1 [14 favorites]
We've done it their way! We've done these campaigns their way for fucking ages now. They are at best a coin flip but the circumstances of two of the three dem presidential wins since the millennium turned involved the economy being a smoking crater and people dying in massive numbers (Katrina and COVID). And as listed above, they're not taking criticism from the outside anymore, so course correction seems unlikely.
Ah, but I see I should probably join the party and help to change it from the inside. Like AOC, who carried water for the Genocide Agnostics during the election and then was promptly shanked when she wanted to move up into Oversight.
posted by Slackermagee at 3:26 PM on January 1 [14 favorites]
> racism of the Republican Party
I haven't thought this through at all but my hot take is racists are fine with you if you think and act white, like e.g. Justice Clarence Thomas. They're just not big on "diversity", "urban culture", or having other nationalities/cultures shoved down their throats (e.g. 'Happy Holidays' vs. 'Merry Christmas')
posted by torokunai2 at 4:18 PM on January 1 [1 favorite]
I haven't thought this through at all but my hot take is racists are fine with you if you think and act white, like e.g. Justice Clarence Thomas. They're just not big on "diversity", "urban culture", or having other nationalities/cultures shoved down their throats (e.g. 'Happy Holidays' vs. 'Merry Christmas')
posted by torokunai2 at 4:18 PM on January 1 [1 favorite]
Interesting that quite a few people in this thread are still pushing the 'there's no real difference between the Republicans and Democrats' line. I guess we'll get to find out in a few weeks. Hope it's good for you.
posted by tavella at 5:34 PM on January 1 [3 favorites]
posted by tavella at 5:34 PM on January 1 [3 favorites]
sotonohito: I wouldn’t declare the Republican tent widening too much - one thing to remember is that looking at percentage point swings can be misleading when turnout is disproportionately down. 2016 was similar since millions of Obama voters didn’t vote for Clinton, but the few who switched to voting Republican were a minority of the group which simply didn’t vote. If you look at the data, most groups are within a few points of where they’ve been for the century so far, especially in 2004 – the Hispanic male shift is big enough to be real – but the main message I take is that it mattered most that almost half of Hispanic voters said their finances were worse off than 4 years ago, and the brief Harris campaign didn’t credibly address that. I’d bet Bush’s former advisors are wishing they could run his play trying to win over those voters permanently without the extremely-open racists getting in the way.
posted by adamsc at 5:36 PM on January 1 [6 favorites]
posted by adamsc at 5:36 PM on January 1 [6 favorites]
The incredible extent to which the party has "only enemies to the left" (the other best line in the piece) exposes how hostile they are to their own base, and that comes through.
But is the left the actual base of the Democratic party? The largest single bloc of Dem voters are moderates, per the Pew Center.
It is obvious to even casual observers that the reason Dems are skittish about everything is because at a fundamental level, they are apologists for corporate America, and it's our monopolized and nearly aristocratic capitalism that is the root of the problems regular people face.
It is obvious to you, and everyone you know, perhaps. You may think most people also view the Dems as capitalist stooges, and view capitalism as the source of all their problems. It's not at all clear that this is in fact the case.
My other 'hot take' is that the Democratic party is about 15 political parties in an ill-fitting trench coat and so they're never going to have a particularly strong message, since they don't all agree with each other on like 90%+ of it.
That's a better take, I think. All the ranting and raving about what "the Democrats" are doing wrong presupposes a monolithic, unitary party that doesn't actually exist.
The Democrats have a problem that the Republicans don't - they are formally the party of expanding rights and labor, but since the late seventies they have moved away from those positions in practice, so there's always 1. a sense of hypocrisy and 2. a problem keeping the base on side. Since the Democrats have become in practice the party of socially liberal capital, they struggle as as mass party.
But Biden actually bucked this trend. He has been, quite decisively, the first post-neoliberal Dem president. He championed protectionist trade policies against China, massive support for domestic manufacturing, massive support for infrastructure, massive support for green energy, massive support for environmental justice, and the strongest support for organized labor in about half a century... plus more student loan debt forgiven, by orders of magnitude, than any president in history.
And somehow he never seemed to get an ounce of credit for any of it from the left.
It's more clear to me than ever that most people, across the political spectrum, form their political opinions on the basis of vibes rather than facts.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 5:41 PM on January 1 [19 favorites]
But is the left the actual base of the Democratic party? The largest single bloc of Dem voters are moderates, per the Pew Center.
It is obvious to even casual observers that the reason Dems are skittish about everything is because at a fundamental level, they are apologists for corporate America, and it's our monopolized and nearly aristocratic capitalism that is the root of the problems regular people face.
It is obvious to you, and everyone you know, perhaps. You may think most people also view the Dems as capitalist stooges, and view capitalism as the source of all their problems. It's not at all clear that this is in fact the case.
My other 'hot take' is that the Democratic party is about 15 political parties in an ill-fitting trench coat and so they're never going to have a particularly strong message, since they don't all agree with each other on like 90%+ of it.
That's a better take, I think. All the ranting and raving about what "the Democrats" are doing wrong presupposes a monolithic, unitary party that doesn't actually exist.
The Democrats have a problem that the Republicans don't - they are formally the party of expanding rights and labor, but since the late seventies they have moved away from those positions in practice, so there's always 1. a sense of hypocrisy and 2. a problem keeping the base on side. Since the Democrats have become in practice the party of socially liberal capital, they struggle as as mass party.
But Biden actually bucked this trend. He has been, quite decisively, the first post-neoliberal Dem president. He championed protectionist trade policies against China, massive support for domestic manufacturing, massive support for infrastructure, massive support for green energy, massive support for environmental justice, and the strongest support for organized labor in about half a century... plus more student loan debt forgiven, by orders of magnitude, than any president in history.
And somehow he never seemed to get an ounce of credit for any of it from the left.
It's more clear to me than ever that most people, across the political spectrum, form their political opinions on the basis of vibes rather than facts.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 5:41 PM on January 1 [19 favorites]
Well, you see, it's a popularity contest.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:35 PM on January 1 [1 favorite]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:35 PM on January 1 [1 favorite]
Voting Dem isn't for and can't get you progresive policies, its for slowing down neocons and neoliberal policies. That is a good reason to vote dem, its also why notoriously, voting is the least effective way to get your way -that is by design.
Each of the three past Dem presidents had a 2 year trifecta. Row v wade? put to a vote once, never tried again, never just rape-and incest. Public option or universal healthcare, never even voted on. Voting rights votes in dem senates? Nah. Dreamers? You get the point. Democrats out of power are allowed to talk progressive if they choose, but in office they will vote for R cabinet, they will impose non-constitutional self-restraints like blue slips, parlimentatirans and filibuster, and they will always have a few spoilers. If they even bother to propose or vote on your issue.
The best those 6 total years of democratic trifecta got you was the Republican Healthcare plan, and a bill that susidizes and facilitates fossil fuel expansion.
Republicans are the revolutionary party that brings about policy change, (bad direction). They cut taxes that never get fully uncut. They hobble govt spending that never gets fully restored. They pack the courts that Dems leave open.
Its not Pro-wrestling or Harlem Globetrotters level of rigged. Its more like hiring two different car mechanics to screw you over. Its not collusion, its ruling class self interest.
So you can vote for the "carrot-and-stick plus tolerate and tokenize " party or you can vote for the "we need a bigger stick and how dare you give those people any carrots" party.
To have nice things, you need a different political economy and probably a workig time-machine.
No reason to believe Republicans will volunarily let go of power now. You might was well vote for the guy who had to run against Saddam Hussein or Putin.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 6:46 PM on January 1 [10 favorites]
Each of the three past Dem presidents had a 2 year trifecta. Row v wade? put to a vote once, never tried again, never just rape-and incest. Public option or universal healthcare, never even voted on. Voting rights votes in dem senates? Nah. Dreamers? You get the point. Democrats out of power are allowed to talk progressive if they choose, but in office they will vote for R cabinet, they will impose non-constitutional self-restraints like blue slips, parlimentatirans and filibuster, and they will always have a few spoilers. If they even bother to propose or vote on your issue.
The best those 6 total years of democratic trifecta got you was the Republican Healthcare plan, and a bill that susidizes and facilitates fossil fuel expansion.
Republicans are the revolutionary party that brings about policy change, (bad direction). They cut taxes that never get fully uncut. They hobble govt spending that never gets fully restored. They pack the courts that Dems leave open.
Its not Pro-wrestling or Harlem Globetrotters level of rigged. Its more like hiring two different car mechanics to screw you over. Its not collusion, its ruling class self interest.
So you can vote for the "carrot-and-stick plus tolerate and tokenize " party or you can vote for the "we need a bigger stick and how dare you give those people any carrots" party.
To have nice things, you need a different political economy and probably a workig time-machine.
No reason to believe Republicans will volunarily let go of power now. You might was well vote for the guy who had to run against Saddam Hussein or Putin.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 6:46 PM on January 1 [10 favorites]
tavella Not that I've been saying that, but I think you're misrepresenting that position.
Of course the Democrats and Republicans are different, and I'm pretty sure almost everyone here would agree that the Democrats are better than the Republicans.
But... They are also similar in many important ways.
Foreign policy, for example. Both parties are aggressively warmongering, imperialist, genocide supporting, democratic government toppling, and love undeclared wars. And, of course, both are competing to see which can be the most fanatically devoted to Israel.
There are differences (and important ones) on the foreign policy front too. Republicans now love Russia and as a result of that hate Ukraine and want it to fall to Russian aggression, while the Democrats are generally more opposed to Russian aggression.
But when people say they're not seeing a lot the same from both parties they're not really wrong or even hyperbolic. On many important issues they're united: Israel. Capitalism. American exceptionalism. American imperialism. Warmongering. The War on Drugs. The War on Terror. More funds for police. More police militarization.
On many important fronts they're different. For example, while the Republicans are virulently and devotedly anti-LGBT, the Democrats are only softly anti-trans and mostly kind of at least accept the idea that the LGB part of LTBT should have civil rights.
So no. Not identical. But the same on several critical issues that are of great importance to many people and a large number of people are pretty upset about the worse areas of similarity.
Artifice_Eternity And somehow he never seemed to get an ounce of credit for any of it from the left.
It's more clear to me than ever that most people, across the political spectrum, form their political opinions on the basis of vibes rather than facts.
While I agree with your conclusion, I think while you may not be wrong wrong about the first part you're exaggerating a bit.
It's absolutely true no one on the left was falling over themselves to praise Biden. Not because of any irrational anti-Biden sentiment but I think in large part because the issue seems so obvious to people on the left and Biden's efforts fell so short of the ideal mark that it just doesn't seem praiseworthy.
No one praised him for admitting that the climate was a big deal just like no one praised him for putting on his pants. It's one of those "well, duh" sort of issues. OF COURSE anyone who's not totally bonkers wants to decarbonize, it's nice that he recognized that but whether its his fault or not the bills that got through weren't really sweeping. Like, yay?
posted by sotonohito at 6:52 PM on January 1 [8 favorites]
Of course the Democrats and Republicans are different, and I'm pretty sure almost everyone here would agree that the Democrats are better than the Republicans.
But... They are also similar in many important ways.
Foreign policy, for example. Both parties are aggressively warmongering, imperialist, genocide supporting, democratic government toppling, and love undeclared wars. And, of course, both are competing to see which can be the most fanatically devoted to Israel.
There are differences (and important ones) on the foreign policy front too. Republicans now love Russia and as a result of that hate Ukraine and want it to fall to Russian aggression, while the Democrats are generally more opposed to Russian aggression.
But when people say they're not seeing a lot the same from both parties they're not really wrong or even hyperbolic. On many important issues they're united: Israel. Capitalism. American exceptionalism. American imperialism. Warmongering. The War on Drugs. The War on Terror. More funds for police. More police militarization.
On many important fronts they're different. For example, while the Republicans are virulently and devotedly anti-LGBT, the Democrats are only softly anti-trans and mostly kind of at least accept the idea that the LGB part of LTBT should have civil rights.
So no. Not identical. But the same on several critical issues that are of great importance to many people and a large number of people are pretty upset about the worse areas of similarity.
Artifice_Eternity And somehow he never seemed to get an ounce of credit for any of it from the left.
It's more clear to me than ever that most people, across the political spectrum, form their political opinions on the basis of vibes rather than facts.
While I agree with your conclusion, I think while you may not be wrong wrong about the first part you're exaggerating a bit.
It's absolutely true no one on the left was falling over themselves to praise Biden. Not because of any irrational anti-Biden sentiment but I think in large part because the issue seems so obvious to people on the left and Biden's efforts fell so short of the ideal mark that it just doesn't seem praiseworthy.
No one praised him for admitting that the climate was a big deal just like no one praised him for putting on his pants. It's one of those "well, duh" sort of issues. OF COURSE anyone who's not totally bonkers wants to decarbonize, it's nice that he recognized that but whether its his fault or not the bills that got through weren't really sweeping. Like, yay?
posted by sotonohito at 6:52 PM on January 1 [8 favorites]
Punches left
"Why isn't the left supporting us?"
Punches even harder, joins in with the right
"I just don't understand why the left isn't TEAM BIDEN 4EVA!"
Biden loses, moderates start agitating to drop defending marginalized people because it's a "wedge issue" and get the slightest pushback
"You see, this is why no one wants to support your rights, you ungrateful little rat bastards!"
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 5:02 AM on January 2 [9 favorites]
"Why isn't the left supporting us?"
Punches even harder, joins in with the right
"I just don't understand why the left isn't TEAM BIDEN 4EVA!"
Biden loses, moderates start agitating to drop defending marginalized people because it's a "wedge issue" and get the slightest pushback
"You see, this is why no one wants to support your rights, you ungrateful little rat bastards!"
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 5:02 AM on January 2 [9 favorites]
voting is the least effective way to get your way -that is by design.
Except when you're voting for fascism. Then it's a very effective way to get what you want.
All these voting-has-never-been-about-deciding-national-policy apologies are just misguided and harmful as those we-live-in-a-republic-not-a-democracy excuses that get tossed around on the right.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:23 AM on January 2
Except when you're voting for fascism. Then it's a very effective way to get what you want.
All these voting-has-never-been-about-deciding-national-policy apologies are just misguided and harmful as those we-live-in-a-republic-not-a-democracy excuses that get tossed around on the right.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:23 AM on January 2
Sorry about the lack of messaging, we thought this shit was supposed to be self-evident.
posted by Brachinus at 5:46 AM on January 2 [2 favorites]
posted by Brachinus at 5:46 AM on January 2 [2 favorites]
And somehow he never seemed to get an ounce of credit for any of it from the left.
Because all the really good parts of his platform--the parts that would have directly benefited individuals--got stripped out in order to appease moderates like Manchin!
2021 Biden was a big fucking deal and was really exciting. But then he couldn't get done what he fucking promised to do.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:44 AM on January 2 [3 favorites]
Because all the really good parts of his platform--the parts that would have directly benefited individuals--got stripped out in order to appease moderates like Manchin!
2021 Biden was a big fucking deal and was really exciting. But then he couldn't get done what he fucking promised to do.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:44 AM on January 2 [3 favorites]
Thank you for the Conover piece linked above. I've been noodling around on the connection between the loneliness problem, being treated like a consumer of the Democratic party (I was using that language about the political donation texts I got all year), and why the Dems generally don't have the guts to do big stuff. Anyway, Conover did the work on it and tied it up for me so helpfully. Now I'm thinking again about what local orgs I need to get into for community building.
posted by Emmy Rae at 6:46 AM on January 2 [4 favorites]
posted by Emmy Rae at 6:46 AM on January 2 [4 favorites]
Honestly, Biden largely seemed to regard his presidency as a victory lap; perpetually a day late and a dollar short, he seemed to resent any suggestion that he should do...well...anything. This is one thing when it's a person who's worked at the same grocery store for thirty years and just wants to hit retirement age. It's another thing when it's the president.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:53 AM on January 2 [3 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:53 AM on January 2 [3 favorites]
And somehow he never seemed to get an ounce of credit for any of it from the left.
Biden does deserve a lot of credit for things like how he treats Indian Country and supporting the work Deb Haaland has done as Secretary of Interior. He has pushed on student loan forgiveness (after being yelled at about it A LOT) and I have been surprised to see him to continue to pursue it even amid setbacks. I can't really tell how much of the lack of credit is because the administration is bad at media or if it is because a lot of media thinks news consists entirely of 1) polls, 2) explaining what ideas are floating across the pit of muck that is Donald Trump's mind and 3) deep dives into what caused the latest aggrieved white man to shoot a bunch of people.
Personally, it's hard to cheer for the genuinely good things Biden does because I think about Palestinians and Gaza a huge amount every day (just as a human being, it's not related to my job or community or anything) and the sight of Biden and Blinken honestly makes me sick to my stomach, knowing the power they have to stop the genocide and the fact that they choose not to.
posted by Emmy Rae at 6:56 AM on January 2 [8 favorites]
Biden does deserve a lot of credit for things like how he treats Indian Country and supporting the work Deb Haaland has done as Secretary of Interior. He has pushed on student loan forgiveness (after being yelled at about it A LOT) and I have been surprised to see him to continue to pursue it even amid setbacks. I can't really tell how much of the lack of credit is because the administration is bad at media or if it is because a lot of media thinks news consists entirely of 1) polls, 2) explaining what ideas are floating across the pit of muck that is Donald Trump's mind and 3) deep dives into what caused the latest aggrieved white man to shoot a bunch of people.
Personally, it's hard to cheer for the genuinely good things Biden does because I think about Palestinians and Gaza a huge amount every day (just as a human being, it's not related to my job or community or anything) and the sight of Biden and Blinken honestly makes me sick to my stomach, knowing the power they have to stop the genocide and the fact that they choose not to.
posted by Emmy Rae at 6:56 AM on January 2 [8 favorites]
After surviving four years of Trump along with a global pandemic where hundreds of thousands of Americans died, I was expecting Biden's presidency to be nothing short of transformative. And he just didn't live up to the moment. And even worse, most everything he did accomplish is about to be undone as soon as he leaves office because he couldn't even do the one fucking thing eveyone elected him to do: keep Trump out of office.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:22 AM on January 2 [6 favorites]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:22 AM on January 2 [6 favorites]
"No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly."
– H. L. Mencken in a Sept 18, 1926 column.
posted by torokunai2 at 9:14 AM on January 2 [2 favorites]
– H. L. Mencken in a Sept 18, 1926 column.
posted by torokunai2 at 9:14 AM on January 2 [2 favorites]
After so many years of expecting more from the democratic party, I think I'm done with them and am going to focus solely on doing something, anything, no matter how small for and with vulnerable people.
I dont know if it's appropriately proportional, but I fucking hate the democratic leadership so so so much. There are a zillion reasons noted above, all interesting, but ultimately their complete cowardice in the face of the coming vengeance storm is unforgivable. Their sycophancy (hello Garland, hi Schumer, what's up 900 year old Durbin) is despicable. How many more goddamn +80 year olds do we need 'leading' (ie pretending to lead) running that party (and I said "that party" because its no longer one I can support).
At this point, all I'd like to see if them fight against the tide. Just fucking fight, losing a fight of what is right would suck, but not fighting at all (and worse joining the fascist side on issues) - I just hate that so much.
Perhaps if the coming vengeance storm is bad enough, we will see a new left side of the spectrum party rise, but if the storm is really really bad, it wont really matter.....
posted by WatTylerJr at 10:33 AM on January 2 [4 favorites]
I dont know if it's appropriately proportional, but I fucking hate the democratic leadership so so so much. There are a zillion reasons noted above, all interesting, but ultimately their complete cowardice in the face of the coming vengeance storm is unforgivable. Their sycophancy (hello Garland, hi Schumer, what's up 900 year old Durbin) is despicable. How many more goddamn +80 year olds do we need 'leading' (ie pretending to lead) running that party (and I said "that party" because its no longer one I can support).
At this point, all I'd like to see if them fight against the tide. Just fucking fight, losing a fight of what is right would suck, but not fighting at all (and worse joining the fascist side on issues) - I just hate that so much.
Perhaps if the coming vengeance storm is bad enough, we will see a new left side of the spectrum party rise, but if the storm is really really bad, it wont really matter.....
posted by WatTylerJr at 10:33 AM on January 2 [4 favorites]
I admit I'm considering going independent on my voter reg after all of this. There's probably not much point in doing that or going to that level of effort, I'm just that annoyed enough to consider it.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:36 AM on January 2 [1 favorite]
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:36 AM on January 2 [1 favorite]
Those saying that the ardent progressives picked up by moving to the left would not have been enough people to hold up the flagging numbers are correct, but they're missing the point in suggesting that's the only opportunity available by moving left. One could basically slot people more or less into three groups (which, yes, overlap, but it's still a useful investigatory classification):
And that's why there are, say, AOC/Trump voters, because each of them seem like candidates which will, if nothing else, try to effect change. You might (as I do!) think that the specifics of the change matter more than the bare fact that they constitute a change, but clearly for a lot of people "they're going to change this broken system" is a much easier argument to digest than delving into the particulars of what change is necessary.
But how, you ask, is this a left/right thing rather than a pure message-shaping thing? Because there's no real way to frame centrism as a change-oriented position (Obama kind of did, on the basis AFAICT of saying "change" charismatically a lot). The basic premise of centrism is that changes are extremes and extremes are bad. So you're not picking up a lot of those unallied voters with that as your message.
So why do Democrats take such a weak position? There are two big reasons, I'd say. First: ardent ideological centrists are rare, but they're disproportionately represented in the political-consultancy and donor class, who by and large are not dissatisfied. Second: Democrats assume (to their peril!) that the first two groups I described are the only ones out there and that you can GOTV yourself out of being a minority. Because if you game-theory up a solution to the question "how do I get the largest vote share, assuming a party captures exactly those voters whose ideology they are closest to?", the easy-to-determine answer is "infinitesimally closer to the median voter's preferences than your opposition", or in other words, slightly closer to the political center than the opposition. But voters are not spherical cows (or vectors of ideological positions)! A significant number have no fixed ideology at all, and centrism has nothing at all to say to those folks.
posted by jackbishop at 10:51 AM on January 2 [16 favorites]
- Politically active party faithful: from tradition, allegience, or other reasons, they are bound to a party and not an ideology, and they vote for that party no matter what.
- Politically active ideologues: hold to one or multiple specific political positions, and vote for whatever party is closest or stay home if nobody is. Ardent progressives are in this group, as are hardcore racists (who notably switched partisan allegiance in the 60s, when their party stopped representing their ideology). In the last election, single-issue Gaza abstainers were a significant (but still not large enough to matter, I don't think!) bloc of this sort.
- People who are not politically active: this is the group everyone ignores to their peril, partially because their desires are so inchoate. While this group certainly shades into the previous two, so that you could have Democrats who aren't paying much attention or people who hold conservative views who mostly don't vote, generally abstention from politics means not much political allegiance or sophistication, and often a pretty rudimentary idea of how really complex political systems like the economy or foreign policy actually work or how policies matter. This group is driven more by the tenor of messages than their details.
And that's why there are, say, AOC/Trump voters, because each of them seem like candidates which will, if nothing else, try to effect change. You might (as I do!) think that the specifics of the change matter more than the bare fact that they constitute a change, but clearly for a lot of people "they're going to change this broken system" is a much easier argument to digest than delving into the particulars of what change is necessary.
But how, you ask, is this a left/right thing rather than a pure message-shaping thing? Because there's no real way to frame centrism as a change-oriented position (Obama kind of did, on the basis AFAICT of saying "change" charismatically a lot). The basic premise of centrism is that changes are extremes and extremes are bad. So you're not picking up a lot of those unallied voters with that as your message.
So why do Democrats take such a weak position? There are two big reasons, I'd say. First: ardent ideological centrists are rare, but they're disproportionately represented in the political-consultancy and donor class, who by and large are not dissatisfied. Second: Democrats assume (to their peril!) that the first two groups I described are the only ones out there and that you can GOTV yourself out of being a minority. Because if you game-theory up a solution to the question "how do I get the largest vote share, assuming a party captures exactly those voters whose ideology they are closest to?", the easy-to-determine answer is "infinitesimally closer to the median voter's preferences than your opposition", or in other words, slightly closer to the political center than the opposition. But voters are not spherical cows (or vectors of ideological positions)! A significant number have no fixed ideology at all, and centrism has nothing at all to say to those folks.
posted by jackbishop at 10:51 AM on January 2 [16 favorites]
Extremely well said.
posted by Gadarene at 11:06 AM on January 2 [2 favorites]
posted by Gadarene at 11:06 AM on January 2 [2 favorites]
knowing the power they have to stop the genocide
if they had done that, they would have lost the election by a much higher margin.
Trying to skate a thin line was impossible with anti-Dem propaganda from both sides pulling the country as far away from them as possible. This is why Netanyahu extended the war. This is also why Russia and China pushed their anti-Israel theatrics so hard. Have they said anything Gaza post election?
posted by CynicalKnight at 12:11 PM on January 2 [2 favorites]
if they had done that, they would have lost the election by a much higher margin.
Trying to skate a thin line was impossible with anti-Dem propaganda from both sides pulling the country as far away from them as possible. This is why Netanyahu extended the war. This is also why Russia and China pushed their anti-Israel theatrics so hard. Have they said anything Gaza post election?
posted by CynicalKnight at 12:11 PM on January 2 [2 favorites]
Not sure what an article discussing Israeli voter preferences has anything to do with American politics? That said, it does an excellent job emphasizing that genocide isn't just limited to the extreme fringe there, but is the majority position by a wide margin.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 12:15 PM on January 2 [8 favorites]
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 12:15 PM on January 2 [8 favorites]
Biden is a true believer in Zionism. Harris just did the math and figured she could better afford to tell liberals to eat shit on Gaza than call down the lightning bolts from AIPAC.
Lemkin -- i don't think Harris is a hardcore Zionist but she is, in fact, married to a hardcore Zionist and it would be unusual for that not to have affected her actions and even beliefs on the subject.
posted by adrienneleigh at 12:37 PM on January 2 [4 favorites]
Lemkin -- i don't think Harris is a hardcore Zionist but she is, in fact, married to a hardcore Zionist and it would be unusual for that not to have affected her actions and even beliefs on the subject.
posted by adrienneleigh at 12:37 PM on January 2 [4 favorites]
This is also why Russia and China pushed their anti-Israel theatrics so hard. Have they said anything Gaza post election?
In addition to posting a link to polling results from Israeli voters, you leave this comment re: reasons the Democratic Party lost the election. Is there a reason you've made this contribution to the discussion. How do these elements speak to the topic?
posted by ginger.beef at 12:48 PM on January 2 [3 favorites]
In addition to posting a link to polling results from Israeli voters, you leave this comment re: reasons the Democratic Party lost the election. Is there a reason you've made this contribution to the discussion. How do these elements speak to the topic?
posted by ginger.beef at 12:48 PM on January 2 [3 favorites]
Of the many takes I’ve seen on this recently, the one I’ve most appreciated was Adam Conover’s.
I found it dishonest where it wasn't incoherent, personally - which was rather disappointing given whom it was from. From my standpoint, he basically tried to make history fit his thesis, instead of the other way around - for example, playing up union democracy while ignoring that it was often bent to racist ends (and that racism and bigotry has always been a major flaw in American unionism.) Hell, the most recent major example of "bottom up" union democracy was...the Teamsters ousting Hoffa, and we all saw how that turned out. He also avoids talking about things like why the base of the American Legion and VFW collapsed (it had to do with how the organizations treated Vietnam vets, creating a gap in membership as the WWII vets died off.)
But what made me laugh was him railing about the rise of things like direct mail...only to talk up the power of the NRA, one of the kings of direct mail. Beyond the false equivalence between comparing a political party to the NRA, Conover ignores how the NRA works - like the fact that the gun ranges they list recieve NRA funding (and there are a lot of ranges that only exist today because of that subsidization.) Taking NRA money means toeing the NRA line which is part of the way the NRA establishes top down message control.
(And the reality is that after years of scandal, along with infighting within the gun rights community, the NRA isn't doing so hot, as they bleed members - part of why they found Russian money so attractive.)
But the part that incensed me was when he got to his summation and argued that the election showed that GOTV efforts don't work - but the way we saw areas that did recieve them outperforming those that didn't showed that they do work to sway opinion (they weren't enough, but that doesn't mean they don't work.) So his argument there doesn't even hold up.
The thing is, I'm pretty sure he knows this all, which is what makes his argument disappointing. I do think he has a point about the collapse of civic participation in the US - but trying to paint it as The Man keeping the working class down instead of the result of societal shifts paints a false picture of the issue, as well as making it harder to actually deal with those issues.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:40 PM on January 2
I found it dishonest where it wasn't incoherent, personally - which was rather disappointing given whom it was from. From my standpoint, he basically tried to make history fit his thesis, instead of the other way around - for example, playing up union democracy while ignoring that it was often bent to racist ends (and that racism and bigotry has always been a major flaw in American unionism.) Hell, the most recent major example of "bottom up" union democracy was...the Teamsters ousting Hoffa, and we all saw how that turned out. He also avoids talking about things like why the base of the American Legion and VFW collapsed (it had to do with how the organizations treated Vietnam vets, creating a gap in membership as the WWII vets died off.)
But what made me laugh was him railing about the rise of things like direct mail...only to talk up the power of the NRA, one of the kings of direct mail. Beyond the false equivalence between comparing a political party to the NRA, Conover ignores how the NRA works - like the fact that the gun ranges they list recieve NRA funding (and there are a lot of ranges that only exist today because of that subsidization.) Taking NRA money means toeing the NRA line which is part of the way the NRA establishes top down message control.
(And the reality is that after years of scandal, along with infighting within the gun rights community, the NRA isn't doing so hot, as they bleed members - part of why they found Russian money so attractive.)
But the part that incensed me was when he got to his summation and argued that the election showed that GOTV efforts don't work - but the way we saw areas that did recieve them outperforming those that didn't showed that they do work to sway opinion (they weren't enough, but that doesn't mean they don't work.) So his argument there doesn't even hold up.
The thing is, I'm pretty sure he knows this all, which is what makes his argument disappointing. I do think he has a point about the collapse of civic participation in the US - but trying to paint it as The Man keeping the working class down instead of the result of societal shifts paints a false picture of the issue, as well as making it harder to actually deal with those issues.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:40 PM on January 2
Conover ignores how the NRA works - like the fact that the gun ranges they list recieve NRA funding (and there are a lot of ranges that only exist today because of that subsidization.) Taking NRA money means toeing the NRA line which is part of the way the NRA establishes top down message control.
That's a good point - the NRA's political activity is to the right of its membership. In the past I think I've seen polls showing a majority of NRA members support basic gun control measures that NRA leadership vigorously opposed by buying members of congress.
However, I thought his point was more about the accessibility of feeling like a member. You join and there are actual activities to go to and things to be a part of. The Democrats I helped elect barely even answer my emails and phone calls. My senators (one I like and one I find pathetic) are both Dems. I found out from my local paper that they would be at a community event in my town a few years ago. They know where I live and they have my contact info, they could certainly have emailed me themselves to tell me I could meet them, or make the event bigger, or anything like that. No contact from them and by the time I heard I couldn't make the event. That's a level of keeping their distance that is totally unreasonable in an elected official.
posted by Emmy Rae at 2:45 PM on January 2 [2 favorites]
That's a good point - the NRA's political activity is to the right of its membership. In the past I think I've seen polls showing a majority of NRA members support basic gun control measures that NRA leadership vigorously opposed by buying members of congress.
However, I thought his point was more about the accessibility of feeling like a member. You join and there are actual activities to go to and things to be a part of. The Democrats I helped elect barely even answer my emails and phone calls. My senators (one I like and one I find pathetic) are both Dems. I found out from my local paper that they would be at a community event in my town a few years ago. They know where I live and they have my contact info, they could certainly have emailed me themselves to tell me I could meet them, or make the event bigger, or anything like that. No contact from them and by the time I heard I couldn't make the event. That's a level of keeping their distance that is totally unreasonable in an elected official.
posted by Emmy Rae at 2:45 PM on January 2 [2 favorites]
But the part that incensed me was when he got to his summation and argued that the election showed that GOTV efforts don't work - but the way we saw areas that did recieve them outperforming those that didn't showed that they do work to sway opinion (they weren't enough, but that doesn't mean they don't work.) So his argument there doesn't even hold up.
I have read about this too, but I just think there's gotta be a better way to spend a billion dollars than more, more and more ads. I gotta go to work and stop talking, but I just think that people feeling some type of ownership and investment in the Democratic party would make this all less expensive and more effective. If you see ads AND you know your neighbor works and believes in the party, that digs a lot deeper than seeing ads on tv, then turning off the TV to get the mail where you get a shiny half sheet saying the same thing.
posted by Emmy Rae at 2:53 PM on January 2 [5 favorites]
I have read about this too, but I just think there's gotta be a better way to spend a billion dollars than more, more and more ads. I gotta go to work and stop talking, but I just think that people feeling some type of ownership and investment in the Democratic party would make this all less expensive and more effective. If you see ads AND you know your neighbor works and believes in the party, that digs a lot deeper than seeing ads on tv, then turning off the TV to get the mail where you get a shiny half sheet saying the same thing.
posted by Emmy Rae at 2:53 PM on January 2 [5 favorites]
However, I thought his point was more about the accessibility of feeling like a member. You join and there are actual activities to go to and things to be a part of.
The thing there is that Conover winds up conflating political parties with various civic groups - something that I found to be dishonest. Unions, fraternal organizations, community outreach and interest groups - they all are not political parties, and equating them is engaging in false equivalence. The spaghetti dinners and drinking halls he waxed poetic about weren't run by the political parties, and it wasn't the parties singularly that caused them to collapse (though they played varying roles depending on the organizations.) Also, the era of pure bottom up control of these organizations existed approximately never - there were always strong top down controls, particularly in the unions as union bosses have always been A Thing in American unionism for good and ill.
(I will also say that his pining for the old beer halls and bars rubbed me the wrong way, as I've heard enough stories about how places like the VFW were where the Greatest Generation went to drink the PTSD away.)
The collapse of civic organizations isn't just about the political parties, but about changes in our societies, as well as how those organizations navigated them (or failed to - again, the way the Legion and the VFW treated Vietnam vets sowed the seeds of their collapse, for one example of such.) Fixing civic participation means addressing those issues - and that means being honest about them.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:48 PM on January 2
The thing there is that Conover winds up conflating political parties with various civic groups - something that I found to be dishonest. Unions, fraternal organizations, community outreach and interest groups - they all are not political parties, and equating them is engaging in false equivalence. The spaghetti dinners and drinking halls he waxed poetic about weren't run by the political parties, and it wasn't the parties singularly that caused them to collapse (though they played varying roles depending on the organizations.) Also, the era of pure bottom up control of these organizations existed approximately never - there were always strong top down controls, particularly in the unions as union bosses have always been A Thing in American unionism for good and ill.
(I will also say that his pining for the old beer halls and bars rubbed me the wrong way, as I've heard enough stories about how places like the VFW were where the Greatest Generation went to drink the PTSD away.)
The collapse of civic organizations isn't just about the political parties, but about changes in our societies, as well as how those organizations navigated them (or failed to - again, the way the Legion and the VFW treated Vietnam vets sowed the seeds of their collapse, for one example of such.) Fixing civic participation means addressing those issues - and that means being honest about them.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:48 PM on January 2
Is there a reason you've made this contribution to the discussion
The Democrats received 6,285,500 fewer votes than 2020. Specifically targeted anti-Dem social media content, much of it created or sponsored by Russia/China, exploited pro Palestine activism - among other activist causes and social groups - to help achieve this result. This is highly relevant to the discussion because it implies progressive spaces can easily be poisoned with sabotage propaganda going forwards, permanently.
It's even more relevant because, as we just learned from the Middle East, getting the extremes of your enemy to wipe out the moderates is only step one of hybrid conquest. Step two is getting them to attack you. If there is popular uprising in the US over the next four years, the probability of it not being manipulated behind the scenes to self sabotage is pretty low.
posted by CynicalKnight at 6:42 AM on January 3 [2 favorites]
The Democrats received 6,285,500 fewer votes than 2020. Specifically targeted anti-Dem social media content, much of it created or sponsored by Russia/China, exploited pro Palestine activism - among other activist causes and social groups - to help achieve this result. This is highly relevant to the discussion because it implies progressive spaces can easily be poisoned with sabotage propaganda going forwards, permanently.
It's even more relevant because, as we just learned from the Middle East, getting the extremes of your enemy to wipe out the moderates is only step one of hybrid conquest. Step two is getting them to attack you. If there is popular uprising in the US over the next four years, the probability of it not being manipulated behind the scenes to self sabotage is pretty low.
posted by CynicalKnight at 6:42 AM on January 3 [2 favorites]
And somehow he never seemed to get an ounce of credit for any of it from the left.
Agreed. We're living in a new age where doctrine matters more to voters, and words are more real-authentic-true than practical performance, the latter being an indignation because of the compromises. The dissociation from political achievement or progress will likely be a rear view hallmark of this era.
posted by Brian B. at 6:48 AM on January 3 [1 favorite]
Agreed. We're living in a new age where doctrine matters more to voters, and words are more real-authentic-true than practical performance, the latter being an indignation because of the compromises. The dissociation from political achievement or progress will likely be a rear view hallmark of this era.
posted by Brian B. at 6:48 AM on January 3 [1 favorite]
This is highly relevant to the discussion because it implies progressive spaces can easily be poisoned with sabotage propaganda going forwards, permanently.
If there is popular uprising in the US over the next four years, the probability of it not being manipulated behind the scenes to self sabotage is pretty low.
Suppose in addition to making those statements you provided data to support the statements. Even suppose (and I don't think this is possible at this time, but suppose) you could point to a number of voters who simply didn't vote, or voted 3rd party, with conclusive evidence to show they made their choice due to a diet of foreign media manipulation. You really want to put that forward as the, or even a, primary reason the Democratic Party lost the recent US election?
I'm tiresomely dogmatic at this point and I've already had a comment mod-deleted for tone (for the record I told another MeFite to fuck off, I did not say fuck you, and I'm not happy about the editorialized deletion though I accept that the tone is not necessary in this space). I'm sorry if I have misconstrued your point, but I vehemently disagree with any variation of "The Democratic Party lost the vote because of the (misinformed/propagandized) progressives"
posted by ginger.beef at 7:54 AM on January 3 [6 favorites]
If there is popular uprising in the US over the next four years, the probability of it not being manipulated behind the scenes to self sabotage is pretty low.
Suppose in addition to making those statements you provided data to support the statements. Even suppose (and I don't think this is possible at this time, but suppose) you could point to a number of voters who simply didn't vote, or voted 3rd party, with conclusive evidence to show they made their choice due to a diet of foreign media manipulation. You really want to put that forward as the, or even a, primary reason the Democratic Party lost the recent US election?
I'm tiresomely dogmatic at this point and I've already had a comment mod-deleted for tone (for the record I told another MeFite to fuck off, I did not say fuck you, and I'm not happy about the editorialized deletion though I accept that the tone is not necessary in this space). I'm sorry if I have misconstrued your point, but I vehemently disagree with any variation of "The Democratic Party lost the vote because of the (misinformed/propagandized) progressives"
posted by ginger.beef at 7:54 AM on January 3 [6 favorites]
Repeating from another thread: Stein got less than .5% of the vote in most every battleground state, which wouldn't have been enough to flip any of them. This is evidence that leftists did turn out to vote for Harris.
I find it difficult to believe that a difference of 6 million popular votes (which do not win elections) between Harris and Biden -- a little less than 8% of prior Biden voters -- is better explained by leftists withholding their votes than good old American racism and sexism or low information voters upset by inflation.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 8:05 AM on January 3 [5 favorites]
I find it difficult to believe that a difference of 6 million popular votes (which do not win elections) between Harris and Biden -- a little less than 8% of prior Biden voters -- is better explained by leftists withholding their votes than good old American racism and sexism or low information voters upset by inflation.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 8:05 AM on January 3 [5 favorites]
a little less than 8% of prior Biden voters
Which is why it's a bad idea for any liberal to pivot left in a general election, or to step into the spotlight of the opposition's messaging. The base should be smart enough to know the drill already. Trump pivoted left and grabbed Biden voters. Democrats failed to paint the former as the next Franco or Putin, which is an enduring mystery to me because he owned it. So it came down to poor messaging of what is at stake as much as any religious attitude of weak voters.
posted by Brian B. at 9:04 AM on January 3
Which is why it's a bad idea for any liberal to pivot left in a general election, or to step into the spotlight of the opposition's messaging. The base should be smart enough to know the drill already. Trump pivoted left and grabbed Biden voters. Democrats failed to paint the former as the next Franco or Putin, which is an enduring mystery to me because he owned it. So it came down to poor messaging of what is at stake as much as any religious attitude of weak voters.
posted by Brian B. at 9:04 AM on January 3
Left and right in this context is a risibly oversimplified dichotomy.
Change vs no change captures it better, and this could happen from the "left" as much as from anywhere else (except for from Joe "nothing will fundamentally change" Biden and the status quo Democratic donor and consultant classes).
posted by Gadarene at 10:13 AM on January 3 [2 favorites]
Change vs no change captures it better, and this could happen from the "left" as much as from anywhere else (except for from Joe "nothing will fundamentally change" Biden and the status quo Democratic donor and consultant classes).
posted by Gadarene at 10:13 AM on January 3 [2 favorites]
Which is why it's a bad idea for any liberal to pivot left in a general election, or to step into the spotlight of the opposition's messaging.
This doesn't follow. An argument that follows is that pivoting to the right didn't lose Harris many votes, but I haven't seen evidence that it gained her many votes either. I think for many voters, this is less a left/right conflict than a status quo/something different conflict, with the Democratic party representing the status quo -- with which many people are dissatisfied -- during an inflationary period in opposition to a populist perceived as a political outsider.
As for poor messaging from the Democratic party: absolutely.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 10:21 AM on January 3 [3 favorites]
This doesn't follow. An argument that follows is that pivoting to the right didn't lose Harris many votes, but I haven't seen evidence that it gained her many votes either. I think for many voters, this is less a left/right conflict than a status quo/something different conflict, with the Democratic party representing the status quo -- with which many people are dissatisfied -- during an inflationary period in opposition to a populist perceived as a political outsider.
As for poor messaging from the Democratic party: absolutely.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 10:21 AM on January 3 [3 favorites]
Suppose ... you provided data to support the statements
Here are a few examples.
ThisAmericanLeft 65k followers
SallyHatesCapitalism 24k followers (Just recently changed to private)
blackleftiss 69k followers
Titocomrade 44k followers
SocialistAlternative 16k followers
There were at least six other accounts I had found in the past that were apparently deleted post-election. That's just on Instagram and just searching for obvious keywords like "left" "marx", "socialist". I can only imagine what's been happening on more loosely regulated platforms like TikTok.
These types of accounts share one or more of the following traits:
- pre-election, zero anti Trump content and scathing anti Harris content
- post-election, zero pro Gaza content
- pro Stein content and, before he switched, pro RFKjr content.
- pro Russia/China/North Korea and anti Taiwan/Ukraine content
Contrast that to these accounts, some of which have plenty of incendiary content but don't seem exhibit those biases.
MarxistMischief 8k followers
Eco_Socialist 16k followers
BigDawgSocialism 81k followers
socialismconference 4k followers
posted by CynicalKnight at 10:24 AM on January 3 [1 favorite]
Here are a few examples.
ThisAmericanLeft 65k followers
SallyHatesCapitalism 24k followers (Just recently changed to private)
blackleftiss 69k followers
Titocomrade 44k followers
SocialistAlternative 16k followers
There were at least six other accounts I had found in the past that were apparently deleted post-election. That's just on Instagram and just searching for obvious keywords like "left" "marx", "socialist". I can only imagine what's been happening on more loosely regulated platforms like TikTok.
These types of accounts share one or more of the following traits:
- pre-election, zero anti Trump content and scathing anti Harris content
- post-election, zero pro Gaza content
- pro Stein content and, before he switched, pro RFKjr content.
- pro Russia/China/North Korea and anti Taiwan/Ukraine content
Contrast that to these accounts, some of which have plenty of incendiary content but don't seem exhibit those biases.
MarxistMischief 8k followers
Eco_Socialist 16k followers
BigDawgSocialism 81k followers
socialismconference 4k followers
posted by CynicalKnight at 10:24 AM on January 3 [1 favorite]
This doesn't follow.
It's not an argument, just boilerplate politics of messaging, emphasis and tone. I note the historical dangers of trying to win same side voters during the general.
posted by Brian B. at 10:32 AM on January 3
It's not an argument, just boilerplate politics of messaging, emphasis and tone. I note the historical dangers of trying to win same side voters during the general.
posted by Brian B. at 10:32 AM on January 3
Specifically targeted anti-Dem social media content, much of it created or sponsored by Russia/China, exploited pro Palestine activism - among other activist causes and social groups - to help achieve this result.
Okay, so what messages did Democrats use to counter that social media content? This thread is about messaging after all. How did Democrats respond this activism?
The answer is: they didn't.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:18 PM on January 3
Okay, so what messages did Democrats use to counter that social media content? This thread is about messaging after all. How did Democrats respond this activism?
The answer is: they didn't.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:18 PM on January 3
Socialist Alternative is a political party that has been around for a while and has elected a member to the Seattle city council. While their ideas might be influenced by nefarious actors, they themselves seem to at least at one point have been actively involved in local politics.
posted by tofu_crouton at 1:19 PM on January 3
posted by tofu_crouton at 1:19 PM on January 3
And socialism conference is a big tent conference that even, say, New Yorker writers attend.
posted by tofu_crouton at 1:20 PM on January 3
posted by tofu_crouton at 1:20 PM on January 3
(oh I see that you were classifying socialism conference as a "good account." I guess if you are going to search every account with the word socialism in it, you might have an easier time of establishing validity if you knew more about the big basic socialist groups in the U.S. and who funds them and who is a member.)
posted by tofu_crouton at 1:22 PM on January 3
posted by tofu_crouton at 1:22 PM on January 3
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