The Electoral College is biased against Democrats. Ditto for the Senate. The House is gerrymandered against us. And let's not even talk about the judiciary.
I suppose this is all true, though it turns out that gerrymandering has been mostly a wash this cycle. And yet, somehow this hasn't spelled doom for Democrats:
Democrats have controlled the House in four of the last ten congressional sessions and have controlled the Senate in five of the last ten. Here's the makeup of the federal courts:
Finally, since 2000 Democrats have controlled the presidency for 12 years (counting Biden), exactly the same as Republicans.
The Supreme Court is a big problem. No argument there. But Democrats and Republicans have been pretty even everywhere else in the federal government.
So what would it take to do better? Really, only two things:
- An acknowledgement that we aren't going to abolish the Senate or change the Electoral College or make Guam the 54th state or anything else that's pie in the sky.
- Move a little bit toward the center in order to attract votes from people in states like North Carolina, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, and so forth. This doesn't require abandoning any principles or making wholesale changes in our policy preferences. It just requires reining in a few excesses here and there to make us less scary.
I think a lot of people are (or should be) surprised at how even things are and how easy it could be for Democrats to produce a lasting electoral majority. It really wouldn't take a lot.
Tell that to AOC and the defund the police morons. Oh and the pie in the sky BBB insisted.
Why this is completely wrong: 41% of the electorate supported BBB. Less than that supports overturning Roe, lowering taxes on the rich, loosing environmental laws, getting rid of the APA, or any other Republican policy. And yet the Republicans are essentially 50/50 to get the Senate every election, and something like 48/52 to get the house.
You (and Kevin) need to explain why it isn't undemocratic that one party can win the legislature with 45% of the vote (or even 40%), but the other needs 55%.
UpperCut, Kevin Drum has addressed that issue repeatedly over many years, and many times very recently.
The problem with using a singe nationwide measure of public popularity to gauge the probability of success of any given proposed legislation is that the public doesn't vote in a single nationwide election for or against legislation; it's elected legislators who do that. Kevin's point in his second bullet item addresses that. We need to do better at getting and maintaining legislative majorities. In order to do that we need to do better at appealing to more voters in places where the vote is close. Those are the places where the "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" wing of the Democratic Party makes more enemies than friends.
We simply have to stop scaring away the crucial centrist voters who could contribute to electing secure legislative majorities.
AOC is one person from very left NYC and somehow she is the face of Dems across the country. Did Dems elect her to this position? Did voters? No, she's simply charismatic and media lords decided to capitalize on her.
The only way this "appeal to centrists" idea could work at all is if all elected Dems across the country coordinated to pretend they're running in the Deep South, and then they'd obviously lose their own primaries to people who didn't betray their actual voting base.
You can't win the support of people when the news sources they hear are profiting from demonizing you. The strategies of the 20th century have no bearing in our Internet enabled, cable news saturated, hyper-nationalized and polarized 21st century.
There are NO centrists, there are left of centers, conservatives and disinterested folks. That is the problem. If mush centrism worked we'd have President Kerry and President Gore. Centrism didn't work for Obama either, he compromised a ton and nope the conservatives didn't budge an inch.
No I don't mean go full blown wacko commie leftie but the white guys who blithely state that we should head to the center are calling for a ton of sacrifice for the rights of folks outside the White Male Patriarchy, and what happens is they then lose enough support from the voters outside Patriarchy that they fail to have a winning coalition.
To be fair, the fauxgressive left also wants to softpedal #idpol, on the theory that they can get Medicare4All piecemeal, first giving nationalized insurance to the workingclass, & later on to everyone else.
#OurRevolution is Huey Long redux, just subbing a knish-eating Brooklyn Jew for a muffaletta-eating Bayou scamp.
So 41% of the imagined electorate means they can grow their majority with it? Interesting math.
Why this is completely wrong: 41% of the electorate supported BBB.
This makes no sense whatsoever. We have no accurate gauge on how much of the electorate "supports BBB" and even if we did, we're a republic, not a town meeting.
Nina Turner is running against Shontel Brown, y'all.
Guess the Turners are reglazing their pool.
Insisters
I'm confident that in North Carolina, Florida, Iowa, and Nevada the democrat has moved "a little bit toward the center". Manchin does. And how does that work out for us?
Feinstein has always been very far toward the center.
The Right is always going to find ways to make our policy preferences look scary.
For example:
Policy Preference: Maybe we don't need an armed military response to every mediation in our community. Maybe we could provide more cost effective, higher quality responses by having more tools at our disposal.
Scary reaction: You want to get rid of all police everywhere and just have the Purge 24x7!
That scary reaction is NOT a reaction to your carefully crafted policy preference.
It's the reaction to the loud, obnoxious, and P.R.-oblivious wing of our party who shout such stupid slogans as "defund the police" over and over again, making sure they get the most coverage on all the news outlets including the non-Fox TV and newspapers.
He's a tool who doesn't care he's a tool so long as he gets air play. Basically, the only thing he's for is chaos.
Finkenauer is my one longshot donation recipient. Otherwise, it's all about Cortez Masto, Kelly, Mandela, Davids, & Spanberger.
You can look at the George Floyd protests through rose-colored glasses but if the response was better by Democrats then the 2020 elections are not very close. Forget the crime issue, which is politically charged by nature. More centrism would enable things like climate action, campaign finance reform, fixes to the tax system, and about a billion other things not as controversial
Given that you basically just need to moderate on guns, crime, and immigration, there’s a lot of open real estate left to do meaningful things. It’s like leaving money on the table
More importantly, I don’t know how you have the gall to complain about the centrism of a senator (Manchin) who won in a 70% Trump state with a D next to his name. Don’t you see the connection between his home state’s political preferences and his own? No one else would win there, and then Democrats would have 49 senators
+1
Wrongo kiddo. There's no compromise, voters have clearly rejected the mushy middle and picked their sides - there's few blue dog democrats because the voters don't want them anymore. Yes there are sensible Democrats able to win in harder districts but they are shying away from vital issues - see Senator Tester on voting rights.
Wrongo kiddo. There's no compromise, voters have clearly rejected the mushy middle and picked their sides
This is simply mistaken. There's compelling evidence that the "there are no swing voters left" meme popularized some years back isn't valid, and that in fact some 10-15% of the electorate is indeed comprised of persuadable voters. So-called normies.
And yes, there's also a lot of evidence cultural leftism scares them.
How are we supposed to assuage their fear of ‘cultural leftism’? Stop advocating that Critical Race Theory be taught at all levels in school? Stop giving welfare payouts to undocumented people? Stop persecuting Christians? Stop confiscating guns from law-abiding citizens? No prominent Democratic supports any of those things. ‘Cultural leftism’ is a phony issue ginned up by the right-wing propaganda organs. ‘Moving to the center’ is not the answer; some kind of mass deprogramming is.
… Democrat …
There is no mushy middle there is left of center and right of center and then the disengaged center. You cannot run the middle and win, 1990s old school hippy punching is a recipe for failure. You don't go wacko defund the police but you also don't go soft on voting rights or reproductive rights, suburban voters don't want wacko but they also don't want mushy do nothing middle.
Folks keep misinterpreting the data from polling - there's no coalition of BIPOC and the rural white voters scared by CRT and wanting "respect" for confederates. You have to pick one or the other, you can't win one over without ticking off the other.
There is no mushy middle ...
Yes there is.
But enough about Meghan Mc Cain's brainpan.
Do you have a citation? The reading I’ve done in political science has inclined me to think that there being ‘swing’ jurisdictions doesn’t entail there being swing voters. No doubt there are some, but the shifts in outcome are more likely due to shifts in higher turnout from one party to the other. I’m sure there are some Obama->Trump voters, but I suspect that their number is overestimated, due to the known bias of people to ‘remember’ having voted for the winner.
And the fact that there are voters who do not consistently vote one-party does not entail that they are ‘persuadable’. Some might be characterized as ‘throw the bums out’ voters who always vote the ‘out’ party. Some may be voting based on their personal circumstances, whether those have anything to do with government policies or not.
Ding!
The success of your opposition in comms is not an inevitable.
It is very much enabled by incompetent, self-regarding comms strategy as well as arch intellectualising and excuse making.
(and whinging on about how unfair reality is rather than addressing)
Prime exhibit, the Left concetrating hate and firepower on Manchin and Sinema rather than on the real fundamental issue - the opposition blocking minority and their own lack of success in moving out of core strongholds.
I think you misunderstand how US "democracy" works. There was never ever any hope of convincing a GOP senator to vote out of party. The cake was a baked when the citizens of Maine returned Susan Collins to the Senate and the NC Democratic candidate/rising star was found to be John Edwards 2.0, rejected by the voters as well.
Did Cunningham's wife have cancer?
Edwards, like Weiner (different reason), is on another level, as a philanderer.
I'm confident that in North Carolina, Florida, Iowa, and Nevada the democrat has moved "a little bit toward the center". Manchin does. And how does that work out for us?
Basically it's worked fine. Manchin has voted for Biden's various appointments, and also voted for the large covid package in the spring, as well as infrastructure. If we had two or three additional Manchins, we'd likely have gotten BBB enacted, too. More Manchins would indeed be helpful.*
*Matt Yglesias published a piece the other day giving pretty convincing evidence it was Schumer who screwed Biden on BBB, not Joe Manchin. Also, Manchin comes from literally the second reddest state in America. It's overwhelmingly likely a Democrat elected in North Carolina or Florida or what have you be to Manchin's left (although sure, maybe not as far left as you or I would prefer).
Scary reaction: You want to get rid of all police everywhere and just have the Purge 24x7!
It wasn't just a scared reaction to otherwise sensible proposals: hard left activists stupidly coined and then popularized the slogan "Defund the police" (and some of them indeed literally wanted to abolish police forces). It was a massive own goal by the left, and probably cost Democrats seats in Congress. Possibly in both chambers.
This completely misstates the problem.
The problem isn't that the Democrats, by largely abandoning many of the goals of large swathes of the Democratic party, can overcome gerrymandering and voter suppression to get slight majorities in the Senate and House. The problem is that Republicans, because of gerrymandering and voter suppression, can be ABSOLUTE LOONS and still get majorities of the Senate and the House.
This makes it impossible to achieve progressive (not Democratic) goals. Instead of having a base of 30% of the electorate and fighting for the sludgy middle 20-25% and occasionally getting majorities for truly progressive goals, the Democrats lose unless they get overwhelming majorities. Democrats must appeal to people that largely AREN'T DEMOCRATS.
This makes the country impossibly conservative. This is why Kevin Drum can even say things like "The Democrats need to abandon amazingly popular policies because less than 60% of the electorate supports it."
That's a truly undemocratic state of affairs.
Excuse making does not change election results.
And self deception about "amazingly popular" things.... well if such were really solidly amazingly popular, you would win rather more often. But it turns out they're "well kind of popular in an abstract way but not enough to change other vote preferences"
You misunderstand how "democracy" in the US works. The built in distortions of the popular vote make it well nigh impossible for a left of center candidate gain a working majority to actually govern. It is made worse by the active campaigns to cause young progressive to give up on voting entirely.
The restrictions on who can vote, when they can vote and who they get to vote for really are a built in advantage for conservatism right down to the mix of 50 states of the United States. There's a reason why there's too many sparsely populated rural states out west and a reasons why DC is the last colony in North America. If something is not done about this soon the unrest and violence will continue as folks are certain things are very wrong but unable to find an avenue with which to reform them.
The built in distortions of the popular vote make it well nigh impossible for a left of center candidate gain a working majority to actually govern.
This isn't remotely true. Joe Biden was a left of center candidate. He won the election. And has been able to govern and legistate. He's gotten two large spending packages through Congress, plus he's succeeded in getting a large number of appointments through the Senate. And a slightly better managed campaign on the part of Democrats might well have translated into an additional one or two Senate seats, which would have resulted in even more legislation. Plus, Democrats have nearly another year of congressional control left. They may yet get another bill or two to Biden's desk before the midterms.
I personally think Madisonianism sucks. But we're stuck with it, so we'd best try to make lemonade out of lemons. And fortunately there's ample real world evidence this is far from impossible even if, yes, sadly, no one's going to mistake America for Denmark anytime soon.
In no universe whatsoever is Joe Biden able to govern and legislate adequately in proportion to the problems at hand. He's been able to get a bunch of judges appointed but has been blocked by the right of center coalition from getting more substantive legislation accomplished. For starters we don't even have a frigging FY 2022 budget, we're still under a CR!!!!!
A lot of the Senate races we though would be close enough for upsets did not happen - now NC was a stupid own goal, the candidate imploded but I'm not sure a carefully curated and crafted message would have gotten us Florida, SC or Maine seats.
We can throw our hands up in despair about Madisonianism but it's so very wrong to simply oh well nothing we can do. There's a ton we should be doing to build the case for major reforms and incremental reforms - educate the populace that cares especially the youngsters and hope that we can fix things maybe not in our lifetimes but maybe theirs. I feel we owe it to the next generations to at least try.
In no universe whatsoever is Joe Biden able to govern and legislate adequately....
Ahh, goal post-moving. Well, okay then!
(Sure, in the parallel universe where America never left the British Empire and adopted the Westminster model, we'd no doubt have long ago enjoyed universal healthcare and gun control.)
Nevertheless, Lounsbury is correct that other preferences override policy agreement for many voters, and that is a particular problem for Democrats; because Republicans have captured so many single-issue voters. So some proportion of that support for progressive policies that poll-takers find, comes from people who will never vote for a Democrat because gun control, or abortion, or bathroom access for trans people.
Thank you, you stated the real issue very well.
The problem is that Republicans, because of gerrymandering and voter suppression, can be ABSOLUTE LOONS and still get majorities of the Senate and the House.
That's a problem, but it's one Democrats can't remedy. They can only change the things they can change. Running stronger and more competitive Senate candidates in Ohio and Florida is something that's feasible.
A mere dozen years ago Russ Feingold was completing his third term as Senator from Wisconsin. Beaten twice by that idiot and Putin tool Ron Johnson.
And likewise a few years ago Georgia had two Republican senators. What's your point? Wisconsin, like Ohio and Missouri, is a classic case of state that his home to a large number of non college-educated white voters. And in such places it's pretty clear that loudly amplified national cultural leftism doesn't play well. So, yes, Democrats would probably be advised to do some Sister Souljah stunts with respect to CRT. And come out squarely against Defund. And downplay gun control. And nominate a high quality candidate to run against Johnson. He's beatable.
I think you make a fine case, only the problem is that the Republicans and Fox News have reshaped from elections being a case of who would do a better job and enact policies that help the voters to a case of tribal identity. "Our guy may be an absolute loon and a thief," is the mentality they nurture, "but we can't let the other team win!"
It is antidemocratic. It is the sort of garbage nationalists have been using since ages, to encourage an identity apart from the rest of the populace, planting seeds of resentment and fertilising with fear that the ride will soon end, that if the Other Team wins, all privileges will be lost.
When will elderly liberals get the idea that it is impossible to NOT scare old White people in "in states like North Carolina, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, and so forth". That's basically asking 100 million people (or whatever number of vague left leaning people in America) to not do or say anything FOX/OAN can vilify. And they're very good about finding something and making it sound like the most damning news you ever heard.
Kevin, you know this and yet you keep returning to this bullshit centrist dream. FOX is the problem, as you've repeatedly noted, but what in the liberal playbook can solve it? You can't appeal to voters when all they hear about you is how evil you are. You can't shape what they hear about you while allowing capitalists to own media empires that profit off of engagement/outrage. You can't dismantle media empires/bubbles without a big change to either capitalism or free speech.
No one has the magic power to eliminate the "defund the police" slogan, remove CRT as a topic of discussion, or otherwise prevent the next culture battle. Not Biden, Sanders, Pelosi, AOC, nor whomever is in charge of CNN or MSNBC. Culture can't be moderated.
This^^^
+10
Sure. Just "move a little bit toward the center." Boom. Problem solved.
Looking forward to reading the details in the forthcoming Moving A Little Bit Toward The Center Bill of 2022.
Yes, actually, it would solve the problem at the federal level.
Also, Guam would send Republicans to the senate most likely.
Great. But can you help me out with my second point? What's going to be in the Moving A Little Bit Toward The Center Bill of 2022? Don't forget that it "doesn't require abandoning any principles or making wholesale changes in our policy preferences." It's just "reining in a few excesses here and there."
As I understand it this should be easy.
Yup.
Guam's economy is a singles-based stripperocracy by virtue of the US Navy presence there.
I though it was also dominated by dude ranches for Asians to play Cowboy with real guns.
Glibertarian Paradise.
I think Kevin was referring more to rhetoric than actual legislation.
It's a fool's task for Dems to "move towards the center". The "center", if you think of it as positions between the Democratic Left and the Trumpublican right wing, is moving towards the right too fast to ever be able to catch up! You can see the red shift (heh)!
A Republican-oriented voter won't vote for a Republican-lite with a (D) after his name. So the party has gained nothing there. Your "independent" voters - aka "undecided" or "decline to state" are low-info folks. "Messaging" is lost on them.
In my opinion, Dems need to start making noise about how awful the GQP has become. How it won't participate in governing at all, just sitting back and voting "NO!!!" on everything. How all Republicans are supporting the Big Lie and the Big Liar. Their vicious, hateful rhetoric and worse, racist, gun-totin' followers. All the stuff they want to take away, from ObamaCare onward. All the stuff Dems are trying to provide for, which Repubs won't even negotiate on, much less vote for.
How Republicans are trying to destroy democracy itself. And get those potential Democratic voters registered, make sure they can get to the polls, get absentee ballots, whatever. Work up the base. If non Dems decide it's time to hop on the bandwagon, great! The more, the merrier.
The GOP gave the Dems a tremendous gift on Jan 6th, but the Dems just don't have the guts to open the box and use it.
Perhaps they could hire the Lincoln Project.
"A Republican-oriented voter won't vote for a Republican-lite with a (D) after his name"
Well, they do in West Virginia.
Manchin only won last time by a few points, down from dozens. Do you honestly think he isn't toast next time? I want whatever mood elevators you're on, they sound awesome
The two most powerful voting blocks today are low information white voters (Trumpies) and youth-and-marginal-voters who are nominally Democratic but largely not heavily committed voters. The Demography-is-destiny philosophy of the Democratic thinkers says the first should be fading over time and the second will eventually become (essentially) class-conscious along ethnic and ideological lines and overwhelm the dying Trumpies. Thus the attempts to spur youth and POC involvement through "defund the police," Medicare-For-All, and other "transformative" policies aurrounding inequality. But the 2016 and 2020 elections and the economic malaise of 2021 show that demographic change [surprise!] Is not really pushing the Dems over the goal line and the transformative agenda quickly turns off plenty of non-commited voters. This, to the cynical delight of the increasingly unmoored GOP that can get rewarded for its treason with electoral opportunities because of voter disenchantment with the Dems' seeming inability to just make COVID and Inflation vanish with a snap of the fingers. The trumpies are as stupid and misinformed as ever but growing in power, and the Dems are more deflated and disunited than ever. It's not about policy and careful coalition-building, it's about aggressive messaging and building a narrative that builds on the current reality, not a perfect demographic utopia to come along in "just one more decade" when Hispanics "finally" realize how we're much better than the GOP.
I agree with Kevin's first point but disagree with his second primarily because the movable "middle" portion of the electoral population is a low imformation, low interest group. Unfornuately policy is almost irrelivent to this group. I guess the way to win in this environment is to scare the democrat base by pointing out how bad repubilcan control of Congress would be and getting the whole party to constantly repeat the same, very simplistic policy slogans. It clearly doesn't matter if the policy is doable or coherent as long as everyone in the party repeats is enough and it sounds positive. Learn from Reagan (not what her did but how he sold his campaign).
"This doesn't require abandoning any principles or making wholesale changes in our policy preferences. It just requires reining in a few excesses here and there to make us less scary."
OK. What specific excesses? Espoused by who exactly? There are certainly specific democrats who are significantly to the left of some moderate voters we'd like to win over, but the party overall and the party leadership are quite centrist I'd say. And why do you think whatever centrist moves you are imagining would be easy for Democrats to produce a lasting electoral majority. This isn't snark, I'd like to hear your response, cause I just don't see it.
The whole premise is ridiculous. Youngkin based half of his campaign on "critical race theory". Which Democrats were touting this as part of the platform? None, it was invented out of whole cloth by a rightwing operative. Should Dems preemptively denounce every fever dream Fox/Koch/dark money can come up with?
Seriously? Democrats should move more "to the center?" We've got Manchin, Sinema, Tester, Feinstein (decd.), Carper, Hassan, Coons, et al that are playing those parts pretty well in the Senate (and King is center, too, though not really a Democrat) already. And...
...really? Be less scary? How in heaven's name could Democrats ever be scarier than Republicans. And...
...what good would it do? With all of those elected centrists in the Democratic Party now it can't get anything done. How would electing more of them make any difference?
How far right are we expected to go, Mr. Drum? People like you have been saying this for 40 years now. After some initial success in the 1990's how exactly has that worked out for us in the end, sir? Not well, in fact. Is Joe Biden too liberal? He has bent over backwards to satisfy "centrists" in his own party, and it has gotten him and the party as a whole nothing but grief. Almost the entirety of the Democratic party's platform is widely popular, and almost the entire party itself is united on it -- except for two senators. Charts showing how meh gerrymandering has gone for Republicans thus far doesn't factor in the fact that every state gets two senators regardless of population, and it takes only one senator to hold the entire country hostage.
I, unlike you, live in a red state. You do not want the Democratic Party to move to the right to appease "centrists". Believe me. The Democratic party takes black people for granted and yet continue to do nothing on civil rights, voting rights, and on police reform. You even openly mock "defund the police" when the reality is that police departments across the country are paramilitary fascist organizations full of racists and other mentally unstable people we pay taxes to fund. They must be reformed and defunded if they refuse to comply, and many will refuse. I know Biden has tried, but the results are still the same thus far as they have been for years. The youth are a different story. They keep not showing up to the polls at all. This is easy to see. Why vote when neither party will do anything to help their situation, and both parties appear to openly mock them in the process? Also, how do you vote for anyone when you have to take PTO to stand in line for hours at a polling station? We need the PTO because we don't get separate sick days and need our PTO for when (not if) we get covid. Again, to Biden's credit, some minor solutions to this were in BBB, but they all were shot down and likely won't ever land on his desk in any shape, fashion, or form. That is if any of the bill lands on his desk at all.
Why are the Democrats polling so badly right now? It's easy to see, and none of it is about the Democratic Party's platform. It's about how a pandemic still rages, and an economy is out of whack and unfair for the majority of the population. We have a two party system, and how are voters to express their dissatisfaction in a two party system? Vote for the other side. If four years of absolute hell wasn't enough to convince non-fascistic people to not vote for Republicans then there's nothing we can do about it, really.
1+
Why was the four years under Trump "absolute hell"? Trump was embarrassing, but other than that things were pretty good.
Well, if you turned off all news broadcasts and never read anything off the Internet, and perhaps lived out under a rock like the Unabomber, things were fine. And when finally, something actually happened on his watch, he crashed and burned like a 767 MAX.
The Rona was uncontained under his watch.
& given a competent administration would have known in November 2019, at latest, what was happening & combatted it earlt, it is clear that El Jefe was content to run for reelection knowing a full year before that that his country would be suffering a Fake Chinese Plandemic. But it was killing the right people, see.
I don't remember any Democrats - certainly not any elected Democrats at any level of government nor any professional Democrats on the payroll of the Democratic Party's various committees, think tanks and groups - saying the phrase "Critical Race Theory" ever. And yet, somehow, that suddenly rocketed to the top of the agendas in Republican-controlled states, as well as featured prominently in 2021 elections in Virginia and New Jersey.
Somehow this leads me to believe that, even if every left-of-center voter behaves this year, Fox News and the GOP will still manage to find *something* happening in a Blue jurisdiction somewhere to terrify their viewers/voters.
+1
Bingo!
"Why are the Democrats polling so badly right now? It's easy to see, and none of it is about the Democratic Party's platform. It's about how a pandemic still rages, and an economy is out of whack and unfair for the majority of the population. We have a two party system, and how are voters to express their dissatisfaction in a two party system? Vote for the other side. If four years of absolute hell wasn't enough to convince non-fascistic people to not vote for Republicans then there's nothing we can do about it, really."
Very good point and Johnathan Chait basically wrote the same thing today. For a lot of people, life just sucks right now whether its due to the pandemic, crime, inflation, the cold winter, you name it and when people feel unhappy, in a two-party system, they take it out on the party in power or what they understand to be the party in power which happens to be the Democrats. It has nothing to do with policy or being more "centrist" or more "left wing" or what have you. Conversely, when times were good last summer, Biden was rewarded with good polling numbers. That's why there's always the hope, things turn around, his polling will get better for that very reason as simplistic as it sounds.
Jonathan Chait can suck it.
"Move a little bit toward the center..."
So really... bloggers, substackers, tweeters, and activists just need to sit down and shut up. Or, you know, we could stop pretending the actually represent the party at all. I might like reading the jabberwocking but that doesn't mean it represents anything but the views of one really nice man.
Otherwise, I'm still going to believe the following:
1. The US military is a terrorist organization.
2. Members of the US military both current and former (since 2002 at least) are war criminals.
3. Republicans are my enemy and evil. They should be rounded up into FEMA camps and reeducated / disappeared.
4. Well, you get the point.
So if whole bunches of people want to make Donald president again because I think all those things, they can go right ahead. If they need an excuse to enable evil, I am happy to provide it.
Good luck!
As a republican, I hoe you successfully spread your message far and wide and present it as the democratic viewpoint.
Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't appeared on Faux Newz already. "Librul Blogger 'Justin' proclaims The Democratic View!"
Well then you have your excuse for being evil. I gather you were looking for one.
What’s the Republican viewpoint? That Jewish space lasers start wildfires? The the US should support Putin’s desire to take over Ukraine? That liberals are pedophiles who kidnap children for sex and to harvest their blood to keep them young? That any violence that occurred on 1/6/2021 was really committed by FBI plants? That Trump had the election stolen from him and that he really won by “a lot” even in California? That Dr Fauci started Covid and is a modern day Dr. Mengele? That the Covid vaccine is really an attempt by Bill Gates to control humanity? That the press is the enemy of the people.
All of the above isn’t said by some guy on the Internet. It’s said by top Republicans. Your crazies control your Party and their ideas are taken seriously and catered to.
Oh, and I’ll remind you that the last Republican President thought people who fought and died for their country were losers and suckers. I didn’t hear anyone in your party censure him for that. So maybe the reality is that your Party and Justin have much in common.
All those theories are put forth by lunatics who I hope go away and no longer have any influence in my party. Trump is an idiot and I hope he goes away as well so real, sane republicans can lead the party. Please don’t confuse me with a Trump Republican.
It appears to me that your party is trying to purge itself of people like you. I never thought I’d see the day when a hard core Republican like Liz Cheney would no longer be recognized as a Republican in Wyoming. But here we are.
By lunatics, you mean elected representatives of the Republican party, right? And a large majority of its voters.
I dunno. The Dem presidents -- and thus the leading figure in the party in his era -- in living mempry are Jimmy Carter (deregulated stuff), Bill Clinton (deregulated more stuff), and Barack Obama (didn't prosecute those who supped luxuriously on the deregulation). Tell me again which party is unacceptably radical?
The problem with going all moderate -- by which I assume it is meant don't tax the rich or help the working class, since that is really what American politics hinges on -- is that you inevitably turn off the young voters who will increasingly bring more non-lead-poisoned sanity to our politics.
Nah. Hang on to your hats as Fox will surely get worse before it gets better. The young are coming and they have no taste for Trump and McConnell and their whites only approach.
The problem with going all moderate -- by which I assume it is meant don't tax the rich or help the working class, since that is really what American politics hinges on
This is 180 degrees wrong.
The "popuarlist" (ie, David Shor) view as to what Democrats should be doing very much encourages a lunch pail agenda that helps the non-rich (including the middle and upper middle classes). What it advises Democrats to do, rather, is ease up on left-progressive aspirational symbolic politics: the median persuadable voter is a fifty-something non-college educated person living in an unfashionable suburb of a mid sized metro like Grand Rapids or Madison. These people like the police. They like the military. They like America. They have no problem naming schools after dead white guys. They don't know anyone who uses "they" as a personal pronoun. They've never used "intersectional" in a sentence. They may indeed have benefited from white privilege, but they don't feel very privileged themselves when they're having trouble filling the gas tank. They're not personally aware of any animus toward immigrants, but they sure don't want the border left undefended.* They watch NBC News. Not MSNBC (nor Fox News). And so on...
(But they'd love to see politicians to stick it to big pharma, and they like health insurance that can't be taken away and decent pensions.)
*There are indeed a lot of white working class voters who are baldly anti-immigrant in their outlook. They're hardcore MAGA, and they're not persuadable. And so they're not worth worrying about.
left-progressive aspirational symbolic politics
Please name these specifically.
Almost all of the consequential progressive laws we currently live under, were passed during a period of uninterrupted Democratic control of the House, regardless of who occupied the White House.
I think Democrats need to move the Overton Window to the left -- get the public to support progressive legislation. Then, allow conservative Democrats (and confused people like Sinema) to find their own voice as "moderates" or whatever they want to call themselves, but use the force of public support to bully these folks into enacting progressive laws.
Moving to the center really just means “don’t change a thing”
Ok. Run on that.
Tell me, though, what is the point of electing more democrats? If they get majorities we don’t want them to do anything lest they risk losing the next election. So again… there is no particular point in electing them. We can keep this half and half dysfunctional government and get nothing done just as well.
It requires accepting the fact that the Constitution is designed to force compromise and incremental change. But progressives demand a revolution that will instantly give them everything they want now.
There have been exactly two economic revolutions in American history. One required a civil war to wipe out the base of an entire economy, and the other required the biggest economic downturn in history.
Since nothing comparable is in the offing right now, there will be no revolutions. But never underestimate the ability of a progressive to make the perfect the enemy of the good.
I don't think it's fair to say that the Senate is inherently biased against the Democrats. It would be more accurate to say that for the past few decades the Democrats have not been very good at attracting support from people who do not live in major metropolitan areas, which means they're not very good at attracting support in the low population states. My guess is that this mostly stems from Dem abandonment of the working class. Guys in hard hats used to be natural Democrats; they aren't any more, and until the Democrats figure out why they lost them and how to get them back, they're going to have a problem outside the big cities.
Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with Kevin's thesis with respect to Fox News (namely, that it has been THE prime mover in terms of ratcheting up political anger). I think he's right.
But the sense I get from some of the commenters is that you think this dynamic means Democrats are powerless to do anything about it. I believe that's false. We live in the political world that exists after Murdoch's arrival. So, yes, we have to deal with that reality. "Dealing with" doesn't mean "surrendering."
James Carville over at Vox making the same point KD's been making for years:
"Look, I’m a liberal Democrat. Always have been. But some of these people bitching about Manchin can’t see political reality straight. Six percent of adults in this country identify as “progressive.” Only 11 or 12 percent of Democrats identify as progressive. So let’s just meet in the middle and say something like 7 or 8 percent of the country agrees with the progressive left. This ain’t a goddamn debate anymore."
Of course! If Carville agrees with you must be right!
Before going down that road: When was the last time someone won an election by taking Carville's advice?
Any argument that works with "percent self identified whatever" is nonsense.