I keep thinking about Democrats vs. Republicans and why some things that seem so obvious to me are just as obviously not widely accepted among my fellow liberals. We all agree that Trump is a racist, a buffoon, a narcissist, and a vindictive prick, but too many of us spend all our time being performatively outraged about this so that we can avoid dealing with the real flashing red siren Trump represents: namely that lots of people vote for him anyway. Let's say that again: despite the fact that even a lot of his supporters understand just how appalling Trump is, they'd still rather vote for him than for a Democrat.
Why? I was brought up to believe in evolution, quantum mechanics, and the median voter theorem. However, the usual interpretation of the MVT is that a winning candidate is the one closest to the median voter. This implicitly assumes that the comparison is a positive one: the winning candidate is the one who has the most in common with the median voter.
I've always thought it's the other way around: we vote more against the party (or candidate) we hate rather than for the party we like. The median voter theorem still holds, but my version tells us that the losing candidate is the one who's closest to what the median voter hates. This is a little different from the usual MVT since what we like and what we hate aren't necessarily mirror images.
Are you with me so far? The upshot of this is that for a Democratic candidate to win, he or she needs to convince voters to hate Republicans more than their opponent convinces them to hate Democrats. In a nutshell, negative advertising works. The dark side is more powerful than you know.
So if Trump is as bad as we think—and he is—liberals should be aghast that a fair number of centrists hate us even more than they hate Trump. How can this be? It's unsurprising that Trump has a base, since both parties have a base that hates the other side with a passion. But in that middle ground, what is it about liberals that scares so many relatively moderate folks into voting against us even if it means voting for Trump or one of his spear carriers? And how have Republicans been so successful in demonizing us? Is it solely messaging? Certainly Fox News has a lot of influence. Or is it also related to our actual policy positions on emotionally-laden topics like immigration, guns, wokeness, and so forth?
God knows I've made it clear that I think Fox News is responsible for a lot of this. But all of it? That strikes me as unlikely, and it hardly matters anyway since Fox News isn't going anywhere. Like it or not, the plain reality is that lots of non-insane people find us really scary. On the mirror side, the kinds of scariness we throw at the Trumpies just isn't hitting the mark. Centrists already know Trump is a racist, a buffoon, a narcissist, and a vindictive prick. They already know this, but they've decided that even though he's a son of a bitch, at least he's their son of a bitch. They know no such thing about liberals.
Life should be good for liberals right now. The Republican Party has gone insane and is led by a guy who makes Ted Cruz look like George Washington. We should be kicking their asses all over the place. But we're not. We've tossed away the chance of a lifetime.
Figuring out what our problem is requires lots of dispassionate, clear-eyed thinking in response to a simple question: What is it about us that scares so many people? I sure wish that weren't in such short supply.
We did kick their ass in 2020. The amount of seats and the Presidency just ended up closer because exurban/rural voters are over-represented in Presidential and Senate elections.
So, the response is effectively "we won if you pretend the game is Aussie ruggers and not American football."
Winning means winning actual seats, not fantasy "if we had my fantasy game in place" competitions.
It is one thing to say "I would have won if you had spotted me 10 points"
It is another to say "I would have won if the rules had not given you a 10 point head start. Rules that the majority would like to change, but the people with the 10 point head start refuse to change"
In sports betting, when two even teams play, the home side opens with a three point spread. Much the same applies to America's two-party monopoly system of government: the GQP, as the home team of the lamestream media, has the three point edge -- but with suppressive measures in certain demographically-unfriendly states & depopulation of other robustly GQP states, the Republiqan preliminary favor goes up to 4-to-7 points.
Consequently, I would argue the Senescent Pepe Maximo of Delaware, in beating El Jefe Superheroico de Maralago by 7 million votes overall & 306-232 electorally, is basically Eli Manning taking down the undefeated Patriots in 2007.
It's not a 10 point lead. It's how the "game" is played. You and Brett are talking about a score to a game that was never played.
8 reasons why Stacy Abrams is the Arnold Rothstein of the 2020 election
By Chris Cillizza
Though despite the built in problems of the Electoral College, Biden did win and the Dems did win the Senate albeit by razor thin margins .
To a great extent that victory validates the median voter theorem. Democrats didn't prevail with Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg or Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket. No, they won under the banner of Scranton Joe.
The point is that we won in actual support from voters, but didn't win as much in terms of seats because the system disproportionately favors rural conservatives in getting elected. They can win with fewer of them, while more of us Democrats have to vote just to get the same result.
Not true. We did kick Trump's ass or rather Joe Biden did. But we lost on the congressional vote in the sense that lots of Biden voters still voted for GOP parliamentarian candidates. It is true that we face an uphill battle but the results in the House in particular were unimpressive even so.
Because lots of Biden voters were Republicans.
But Democrats are constrained by facts....
They are constrained by bad political instincts and intellos iinflected politics iwth over-weening self-regard.
Facts have little to do with the political inccompetence (as reflected in "we won if you count by a game that is not the game played" reponses supra)
Also true.
This this this this this. This is it, and the only it. Everything else is bullshit. And how it plays out on the ground is evidenced by recent articles in WaPo and Washington Monthly on Democratic pols and candidates in red areas grinding it out person by person, with zero national support. National Democrats spent $90m on an impossible race against McConnell, instead of $10m on the race and $80m creating a statewide, ground level Democratic presence. Stupid doesn't cover it. Arrogant, narcissistic, entitled, grotesque get closer.
Mr.Drum, this is the answer to your question. It's not issues, or identity. It's presence. Pure and simple. Nature abhors a vacuum, and when you cede the field as national Democrats have since Clinton, you can't be surprised when the forces of evil rush in to take it. It's child's play to demonize an absence, impossible when people can see, hear, and know a person and presence. Retarded national Dem tactics and strategies have put us in a deep hole from which there's no easy way out. There's no magic bullet or one and done. And Lounsbury nails exactly how and why we are where we are. Period.
Further - when you diagnose the problem, which is done, but then hand over the solution to the same retarded, overeducated idiots with "[zero] political instincts" and "over-weening self-regard", not only will you not get effective solutions., you will make the problem worse, cause these people are f*****g morons. These idiots will cripple in with their power points and YalePrincetonHarvard management consultant creds and convince the smartest people in the room that they have all the answers when they don't know s**t.
So again Kevin, there's your answer. Democrats are hated because they let the wrong people create a national and local - and accurate - perception of a party unconcerned, dismissive, and uncaring about people's real, everyday lives. Policy don't mean shit when you treat people on a human, personal level like they don't count, where you can't be bothered to show up. Cue Fox, and the deed is done. It's enraging.
The party, despite non-member Bernie Sanders's contention that the Democrat National Committee is an all-powerful machine of lockstep malevolence, cannot control for individual giving & the fervence of hostility to the Rebel Turtle of Lewlvole.
Yes, the donation total for Mc Grath was an abomination* in light of the fact even an eighth of that kicked into Maine or North Carolina overcomes Gideon's carpetbagging or Cunningham's teabagging, but that wasn't the party machine in DC saying, "We must only beat Mitch". Individual voters & donors, especially the small dollar ones that the Bernies & Lizzes & Sandies adore, have agency.
Anyway, this is moot for me since I give mostly to endangered but probable winning candidates like Davids, Spanberger, Underwood, Kelly, & Cortez Masto, plus my homestate hope Mandela Barnes. My only longshot donations are for Beto & Abby Finkenauer.
*This reminds me: saw a tweet from Pennsylvania hopeful John Fetterman from the wake of TERRIBLE CANDIDATE JON OSSOFF getting his shit absolutely wrecked by Karen Handel -- "imagine spending 40 million to run behind Hillary". (Credit where due: at least Shrek didn't call the felonious former FLOTUS by her #OurRevolution slander, Shrillary.) You would think a wise political mind like Fetts, now that he's running to join ( ( ( Georgia's Senior Senator ) ) ) in DC would have scrubbed his tweets of bashing of the Democrat Party of which he claims to be a member, & for the nomination of which he is contending, but, well...
I have to agree that the current Democratic party leadership has neglected grassroots organizing in favor of paying its favored consultants to run TV ads.
Another factor is that the mainstream media, which everyone thinks of as at least a little liberal, is slanted towards conservatives when it comes to economic issues, Sure Fox News is a cesspool, but the NY Times and WaPo add to the sense that the Dems are "out of step" because they favor the 1% when it comes to economic policy.
I don’t think there are as many “centrists” as Kevin (or I used to) thinks there are. If there were, why would the Republican Party be purging itself of anyone not loyal to Trump and why would it be electing lunatics in their place? There must be some people who we perceive aren’t lunatics who actually are.
For one thing, they need to win their primaries. Centrists are scarce in Republican primaries. And party officials, even if not elected by the public, hang around so much with partisan-minded idealogues that they won't be centrist types either.
Now, when the general elections come around, centrists will show up and will make some difference. That's why some counties could vote for Obama in 2012, Trump in 2016, and then Biden in 2020. What kind of Democratic Party rhetoric do we think will work best in counties like that?
It’s not that the people being purged are “centrists” (see Liz Cheney) it’s that they are not Trumpian lunatics. Republicans are clearly not worried about alienating “centrists” in a general election.
I think some of them are worried. They dare not make too much noise about it yet, though.
I don’t think there are as many “centrists” as Kevin (or I used to) thinks there are.
My sense is it's just the opposite. There are more persuadable, centrist voters than people have assumed, at least since that study was published some years ago (must be 15 years at this point) that everyone and his brother starting interpreting as "there are no swing voters."
I think there's little doubt swing voters are smaller as a share of the electorate than forty years ago years ago. But there are still a lot of them. Most of the analysis I've seen suggests 15% or so of all voters are functionally persuadable.
One piece of evidence of their importance is how Republicans typically run elections, and the fact that they win pretty often. I know this must sound wrong to a lot of progressives who think: Republicans mostly engage in extremist messaging that appeals to the base. Well, yes, they do some of that. But a lot of their messaging to my eyes looks precisely like it would if they thought along the lines Kevin is suggesting: scaring centrist, "normie" voters who, by definition, tend to be of the low information variety.
why would the Republican Party be purging itself of anyone not loyal to Trump and why would it be electing lunatics in their place?
Fear of primary challenges. To put it another way, most GOP operatives would very much like to have more freedom to operate than they currently do. But they let an unhinged lunatic become the very, beating heart of their party. And they're now paying a price.
There don't have to be too many of them. A person who always votes republican is worth one vote, and a person who always votes democratic is also worth just one vote. But a person who generally votes but sometimes votes for one party or the other is worth two votes. Those are high-value voters, and while its easier to turn out a partisan than to appeal to one of them, ceding them to the other side means losing.
There don't have to be too many of them.
Indeed, especially in a 50-50 nation.
The fact that there are people who don’t vote consistently for one party doesn’t mean they are ‘persuadable’ in the sense of being won over by verbal appeals about policy or program. Some people will vote for the incumbent, some for the challenger, some for the familiar name, some for the fresh face. Some, data says, will vote for the taller candidate. Some will weigh experience, some will be attracted to the outsider. Some will favor the affable candidate, some the sharp tongue. “People are complicated” (Daniel Kahneman).
The fact that there are people who don’t vote consistently for one party doesn’t mean they are ‘persuadable’ in the sense of being won over by verbal appeals about policy or program.
If what you're saying is there's no guarantee a specific appeal will net you all (or even many) persuadable voters, I agree. If what you're saying nothing works with respect to persuadable voters, this seems pretty plainly wrong. AFAIK there's a lot of research with respect to things like candidate quality, messaging, the effectiveness of negative campaigning and so forth.
Calling party-switching voters ‘persuadable’ is assuming facts not in evidence - that their votes can be gotten by speaking for policies and programs. Maybe we could call them ‘attractable’; everything in my comment after the first sentence lists things that will bring some of them to your candidate. So I didn’t come close to saying ‘nothing works’. Oh, and research says negative campaigning works, but not by getting you more votes - by discouraging some that would have voted for your opponent. So you can influence these voters, but becoming more ‘centrist’ will not influence many.
There is too much emphasis put on (R) and (D) monikers by voters
Trump was a (D) until what 2016?
HRC was a Goldwater girl
Liz Warren was a registered republican
Each side touted these so called switches as a means to attract voters
But in reverse that doesn't happen?
As a registered (I) voter I split my ticket. I DO voter republican at the local level because they propose some good policies.
The crop of republican candidates here in NC for the upcoming mid terms is by any stretch of the imagination is very bad. I will probably vote MOSTLY (D) this time around.
Trump knew how to "play the room". That is fading quickly though. Folks like Madison Cawthorne are now having trouble raising campaign funds because they don't come close to Trump in bravado.
The DEMs have few rock stars on their roster, that will generate excitement to the get out the vote crowd.
Yet republicans are also shooting themselves in the foot by acquiescing to Trumps support me or else rhetoric.
They are diminishing themselves by trying to out do Trump.
I firmly believe we are on the cusp of the creation of a truly powerful Independent party. I hope I live long enough to see it.
Calling party-switching voters ‘persuadable’ is assuming facts not in evidence
I'm not sure where you're getting the idea there's no evidence of the existence of viable strategies (nominate high quality candidates; do exhaustive, quality polling wrt policy/issues; use the results of said polling to fine-tune political messaging; be attentive to the electoral ramifications of legislative agenda; focus on molding media narrative;) to persuade voters to vote for you.
None of this stuff is easy. Nor can it guarantee results, especially when the structural picture is highly unsatisfactory. But, sure, it can make a difference, and Democrats even more so than Republicans have to improve their game because of the inefficient manner in which much of their base is distributed.
per·suade
/pərˈswād/
verb:
- cause (someone) to do something through reasoning or argument
- cause (someone) to believe something, especially after a sustained effort; convince.
+1
I disagree with Kevin's core thesis. People vote for Trump because he's the natural culmination of the mentality that has been commonplace in America since the days of FDR: the president IS a king. Or at least a man who can solve America's problems if only he wants to badly enough.
Why do Trump Republicans devote so many resources to portraying the president as a senile old duffer who prefers to stay in his basement? Because few Americans trust such a man to keep America exceptional. Or make it great again, to coin a phrase. They look to a man like Trump, warts and all, who'll take on the Chinese and the Muslims and the BLM terrorists and the illegal immigrants. A man who sticks up for the military and the police and the local sheriffs.
There weren't enough voters who thought like that in 2020 to save Trump, but his party did amazingly well. So well that they've decided they'll get away with rigging the '24 election. What ought to scare people, but apparently doesn't, is that so many Democrats seem willing to let them get away with it while doing nothing but wring their hands and wail about how unfair the electoral system is.
Counterpoint: the feckless Democrat Party is winning the redistricting battle, Stewart Rhoades is in jail pending trial for seditious conspiracy, & Mike Pence's deputy chief of staff just sang like a canary for the J6 committee.
Is the MVT premised on the idea that there exists a significant number of voters near the median to sway elections ? I have been fascinated with the DW-NOMINATE analysis -and- changes of the electorate that seem to suggest that the size of this median has dwindled . Following link shows a picture of this -- It suggests 'The Center will not hold'.
https://i0.wp.com/serialmentor.com/dataviz/boxplots_violins_files/figure-html/dw-nominate-ridgeline-1.png?ssl=1.
I have been fascinated with the DW-NOMINATE analysis -and- changes of the electorate that seem to suggest that the size of this median has dwindled
It has dwindled. Substantially so. LBJ got, what, 63% of the popular vote? Nixon won all but one state in '72. Reagan did nearly as well. Those days are long gone (for now) because nobody with a "D" or "R" next to their name on the presidential ballot is going to drop below 45%-47% of the two party vote vote. Because most of us are functionally Democrats or Republicans (that is, we nearly always vote the same way). So presidential elections are dependably close!
But "dwindle" doesn't mean "disappear" and we're still left with a good sized chunk—maybe one in seven voters, maybe one in six—who regularly vote for either/both parties, and who tend not to follow public policy or political debates very closely.
Opinions exist ALWAYS on a spectrum. There will always be a group of voters who are close to the ideological borderline and can be made to flip by individual candidates. The number is smaller now than it used to be but they will never disappear.
Their importance of course wanes as their numbers go down. If the group is small enough it might be more effective to do get out the vote stuff--in which case you want to motivate the core of your base and take the moderation out of your campaigning. The GOP has clearly switched to that model, the Dems are caught in the middle (i.e. GOTV works great for Bernie or AOC but not for Manchin).
I've said this before and I'll say it again.
Center voters want safe neighborhoods in which to raise their families. They want safe public schools to send their children to. They want reasonable energy bills.
Democrats have spent way too much time on social justice and fringe movements while ignoring the basic wants of voters. Voters want something done about homelessness, they want more housing, the want people who can't behave locked up or shipped out. They want the lights kept on. They want fairness, but not riots downtown.
Keep ignoring what middle of the road voters want and the party that's promising them action wins. Why did so many Latinos vote for Trump, who hates them? They're tired of BLM riots, homeless people camped out in their neighborhoods, and problem kids being kept in schools ruining education for everyone else. Middle voters are tired of people who can't get their shit together and tired of people who can't behave, they're siding with authoritarians who promise to fix things.
Democrats are ineffective and unrealistic about human behavior, the only reason people do vote for them is because they hate Republicans more.
+1
Great observations. I agree. That's the problem.
Yes, by god. That damn Obamacare social justice fringe movement. It doesn't matter what actual Democratic policies are; they're all socialists and communists anyway. Lock those people up! Ship those people out!
Art-
Well said
But I would add something else. They want an IDENTITY that is separate from (R) or (D) designations.
We are at our core liberal on social issues, conservative on fiscal issues, and try to maintain aloofness on foreign affairs. Rereading the Constitution shows this to be true. We are willing to help but government has to be the "help of last resort".
Already we are seeing (I) or non-affiliated voter registrations surging.
We are a people in search of a candidate and platform. While we respected people like Ross Perot, with his folksy charm and success as a business man we were afraid that had we voted for him in any great numbers one of the other parties would have prevailed in what we consider to be a landslide.
Take the (D) and (R) out of the equation and change the narrative to this for instance:
"Great Britain, Germany,. Japan, Italy and other countries have been enemies of ours in the past, but we changed them. Now we look to them as trusted allies. The world has changed and we much change along with it. We need to COPY their healthcare systems because they have proven to be better and at a much lower cost than our for profit medical system. They are not communist
s countries, nor socialist. They have freedoms, just like ours. We can do better and we can do so by dropping the term democrat or republican from our language. Nixon proposed national healthcare, Mitt Romney GOT a state wide healthcare plan passed as Governor of Mass. We need to recognize these programs without the added moniker of (R) or (D) in front of them."
Give people a place to go politically and they will
"We are at our core liberal on social issues, conservative on fiscal issues."
This is the precise opposite of what we are.
Yup.
Given the rise of Haw-Haw Hawley, J.D. ANTIVAXXX, & the rest of the Nat-C'ism movement, we are clearly a frustrated white ethnostate pining for a Hueylongian, Lestermaddoxian selective safety net. We want no abortions (of white babies), guaranteed basic income (for white adults), & a thumb on the backs (of nonwhites who don't tow the line, even after Andrew Yang, Candace Owens, Briannah-Joy Gray, Tulsi Gabbard, & Herschel Walker have told them what fruits will come of line-towing).
I think the fact that we beat the crap out of Germany, Japan, and Italy then provided BILLIONS to them shows who we are
That we discriminated against blacks for centuries then elected a black man president shows who we are
That we looked askew at gays then had candidates running for president and are now in Cabinet positions shows who we are
That we gave women the vote and have had women candidates and have an elected female Vice President shows who we are
Some of todays politicians like Monty points out - HeeHaw Hawley, Mad Man Madison Cawthorne and Ron DeathSantis are flashes in the pan that were promoted by Trump who, is also a flash in the pan. The bulk of both parties are made up of people like Romney, McConnell, Durbin and Leahey
If you give the voters a path to go into that shows them to NOT be idiot Trump supporters, or extremely liberal and you would do well. The anti Republican and anti Democrat factions of the main parties are anomalies IMHO - fueled by ignorance of the Boomer and subsequent generations
The U.S. is getting MORE educated and YOUNGER each decade
Safe neighborhoods, better schools - community policing, better education, more homeless shelters - all Democratic programs opposed by Republicans.
Reasonable energy bills. You mean government subsidies of oil companies? Or getting cheap energy now vs. our children paying the price? That is pandering. Oh, and Democrats did such a terrible job on energy vs. Republicans? Do you have data?
Problem kids who are kept in school and ruining education for everyone else. Yeah, they should be put. ... somewhere. To do something, um good. I'd love to hear your solution, and see if it actually differs from Democratic positions or Charles Dickens stories.
I vote for Democrats because they at least try to do the right thing. They are human an make mistakes.
Also true...
The problem is that Republicans will insist help to people must be "need based", then condemn said program for helping "those people" and not "you".
+1
Who in the center, or even the fauxgressive left, actually wants to provide for more unit construction in which to house the unhoused?
Even supposed YIMBIES like Mattyglesias are full of shit on that count.
You're repeating the same, incorrect, talking points from the GOP and Fox news. 1) Democrats just passed a 1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package and a 1.9 trillion COVID relief deal and have been fighting to pass another 3 trillion BBB bill. All of these designed to address exactly the types of issues you say "Centrist" voters want. Dems also passed the ACA, support unions, are pro workers rights and on and on.
And "social justice and fringe movements"? Social justice isn't a fringe movement for the people who don't have it. It's a matter of life and death.
+1
Oh, he knows he is; he's just trolling you.
I guess the message needs to be, "Democrats are effective and realistic about human behavior."
Lockbox Redux.
It's actually 'lockbox'. The air quotes add a certain frisson, doncha know.
Oh God, yet more idiocy from the if-I-state-bromides-my-conclusions-must-follow from the know-nothing brigade. Let's look at this bit of twaddle, for example:
Of course, that explains it! No wonder Texas is dominated by Democrats! TL;DR: you're not doing yourself any favors here, Art. I suggest you switch-up and consider other, less offensive tactics.
+1
It's nothing about us, it's entirely messaging meant to cultivate the insular fairyland of the social conservative mind. This is how political conservatism works and it's been working this way for centuries. It's why the Middle East is the way it is, it's why Russia is the way it is.
Every once in a while they overdo it, it goes out of control and some freakazoid seizes the initiative leading to revolution or chaos.
It's motivating the fairyland, where nothing is real. To act against that you have to focus exclusively on how nothing they have is real, and that everything they do is harm and foolishness. You cannot allow an inch of seeming common ground because they will cling to that and twist it out of all recognition.
What they do is intended to cause misery and damage and then exploit the misery and damage they've caused. There is no trace of good or value in this, there is no common ground.
Do they hate liberal politicians or do they hate liberal media? Or do they just hate people they know who have liberal ideas?
“what is it about liberals that scares so many”
And is it really that they are afraid? I don’t think that’s it. They aren’t afraid at all.
In many ways I am a moderate guy. Except when it comes to US warmongering. I have little interest in any of the social welfare suggestions supported by the left. I don’t think the poor, homeless, and criminal classes are innocent victims of white hate. I think they are what happens in an economic system where skills and abilities are required to survive. They don’t have any. Way more often than not, it’s their own damn fault.
This is what moderate people think about US society. Liberals want to take my money and give it to these idiots who don’t deserve any help.
Now you and I can argue if that view is correct, but that’s not the point. This is, I think, the reason why liberals “scare” median voters. How would you fix that? I don’t know.
I agree with Art Eclectic comment:
"Center voters want safe neighborhoods in which to raise their families. They want safe public schools to send their children to."
That's right.
"They're tired of BLM riots, homeless people camped out in their neighborhoods, and problem kids being kept in schools ruining education for everyone else. Middle voters are tired of people who can't get their shit together and tired of people who can't behave..."
Yep - that's exactly right. Socially dysfunctional losers make life miserable for everyone around them and the lefty liberal solution to that problem is simply not compelling.
it must be really nice being white
What is your solution to "socially dysfunctional losers"?
Have you ever really talked to one, with compassion? You might find out that they are just like you, but did not have the background, skills or pure luck to succeed. And if you only talked to one, you are not getting a significant sample.
Sure, there are people without background or skill who have succeeded. But they are 1:1000, where people with background OR skill will be 500:1000. You can't then say the 499 additional people who are not successful without background or skill are to blame because they did not try hard enough.
He _is_ one of those socially dysfunctional losers.
Maybe, but I’m harmless.
Nevertheless, I consider your odor offensive. Maybe if you stopped soiling yourself you'd be fit for polite company.
And if pigs had wings ...
At least I haven't murdered anyone.
I'll give you that one 🙂
I have a few of these in my extended family. My brother is already dead and I could recite a litany of his bad decisions and stupidity. He had 3 kids and they are probably worse. The two young women have already 3 kids each with guys who’ve been in and out of jail. Those kids are probably already beyond help.
There are some 500,000 kids in foster care in this country at any given time. That means there are probably another million plus dysfunctional adults to go along. Then you have your prison population and ex-cons. These people are mostly all lost and it really doesn’t matter how they ended up that way. I’m not a social worker and not particularly interested in all their lies and excuses.
But I still support a basic social welfare system and vote for democrats. I just don’t think the political class has a clue how to fix these problems and they really ought to just admit that.
Yeah, it's hard to convince stupid racists that greater cooperation helps them.
KD - your theory fails because the two sides are not the same.
I vote against Republicans because of what they say and do. Those who vote against Democrats do so because they hate a liberal strawman concocted by Republican candidates and the media; a scary "other" boogeyman coming for your guns in taco trucks.
Also - you say "both parties have a base that hates the other side with a passion". This is also a false equivalence! I don't hate conservatives, I don't want them to die of covid or suffer in poverty. I oppose them, but I don't hate them. But many of them hate me, and tell me so, because of who I am or what I believe (or what they assume I am). They look forward to the day they can shoot liberals with impunity. Not the same thing!
+1
I think Mr. Drum is talking about "media voters" not conservatives. Of course conservatives hate you. They hate everyone.
median voters.
Can we stop calling them "conservatives?" There's nothing conservative about hate. There's nothing conservative about the modern GOP. You're talking about right-wing extremists, no conservatives.
Listen, if wanting a fuckable Green M&M isn't conservative, I don't want to be right...
I'm considering the hypothesis that the real active sorting going on is the critical vs the non-critical thinkers. Yes, sadly, intelligence is not an indedpendent trait as far as this thing goes.
Generally agree; though I think fear dominates the political thoughts of most of those on the right; hate comes from the most extreme wing. The right-wing propaganda machine foments both.
+1
We don't all want to dance on the graves of our political opponents, those who hate us not for what we are, but for what they label us. Many benefit from Democratic policies despite being loudly opposed - just like the "Republicans" for whom they voted.
Different constituencies are frightened of different things. Appeal too much to the hatreds of the median voter and Democrats run a risk of alienating their progressive base in the primaries. #thanksbernie
I don’t think Democrats’ actual positions are scaring off voters, because democrats don’t have well defined positions on most of this. Michael Bloomberg has clear and unpopular opinions on a lot of things, but the party can’t control him. The issue is that Fox can easily come in and say “all the democrats want to open the borders and ban guns” and that just fills the void where the dems’ actual position should be. You and I know that’s not what dems would actually do, but that’s because we spend too much time following the news.
+1
I think the vast majority of the problem is not that people hate actual Democratic policies. It is that they hate what they *think* Democratic policies are.
I firmly believe that if you explain the Democratic and Republican positions in a non-political way to voters without them recognizing their tribe's mandated position, the Democratic positions would win in a landslide.
The problem is that most people (including many left-leading media) are distorting the positions to make Democrats look bad. In extreme (but not uncommon) cases, media is outright lying with the sole purpose of making people terrified of Democrats, with negative overall effect on the well-being of the country - not even a zero-sum game.
"our actual policy positions on emotionally-laden topics like immigration, guns, wokeness, and so forth"
What about our policy positions on these topics is *actually* frightening to a conservative, never mind a median voter?
That we want a path to citizenship, which I think maybe Republicans from 20 years ago accepted?
That we want a universal background check for buying guns, that the NRA accepted a few years back, and 80% of voters want?
That we want to acknowledge that there are institutional roadblocks to minorities?
That we want a woman to have a right to decide about abortions, something that fundamentalists had no problem with 40 years ago?
Nope.
Are they terrified of Obama stealing all your guns, of Mexican rapists coming after your daughter, of abortions up to delivery, of "those people" rioting and looting in your back yard? Of course. I am terrified of those things. But I know they are 99% lies, so I don't vote based on them.
Many conservative voters believe the lies, and vote based on them. I think polls demonstrate this.
IMHO most Trump voters do not in fact acknowledge how bad Trump is. If someone hated Trump but feared Democrats more, would they put up a huge TRUMP flag? Not a Republican flag, or a Stop Democrats flag, but a Trump flag. They dismiss the facts about his behavior, or add false details that justify it. Or say it is just personality, not policy. I think if you asked a Trump voter to list his faults, they would not get past 2 or 3, because of ignorance, denial, or apathy.
One more thing - Kevin says centrists know "Trump is their guy". What has he actually done to prove that? Please name something that you would give Democrats credit for if they could do something similar but have not done.
+10
Wants and fears....
Art's excellent comment goes to wants.
When Hillary was campaigning in MI, she was wondering why autoworkers didn't back her (linked to Obama) since Obama bailed out the auto industry. There response was that Trump made them feel proud. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Bill was a better retail politician in his day because he "felt their pain".
Republicans do a much better job at playing to people's wounded pride.
Here are some other rants...but appealing to people's wounded pride and giving them someone else to blame goes far....
Why do attacks against governance work? Simple, local roads have pot holes and cities and towns fund themselves via tickets and fees. The same people who hate those also vote against raising enough taxes to keep things running. The big government programs they rely on--become wallpaper--just part of the background,
Why do attacks against education (funding) work? Simple, many people don't see their kids going to college, or getting a job after college, or worse yet, moving away if they go to college. And if their kid can't go to their top college--it's all "those people's" fault. Beside, I didn't need a college education--why should my kid need one!!!
Certification circus. Keep raising costs to break into business. Some regulation is needed, but fees keep going up and certifications needed keep going up too.
"With Reagan, we're standing tall," as one disaffected auto worker told G. Ferraro. In 1984. I think your hypothesis needs a little work. I can't even begin to parse what this mush-mouth really meant.
It means we kicked the crap out of Grenada.
Voters want the safer alternative. That's why they end up voting for so-called conservatives.
Voters support the idea of change that Democrats propose. That is shown in poll after poll. But as soon as Democrats have a chance of putting it into law, voters get scared. What if doing something about homeless people puts a large number of homeless people in my area? What if doing something about climate change costs me my job or causes my taxes to go way up? I know the Democrats say my taxes won't go up, but I don't have the pull that rich people do to make sure that doesn't happen.
I mean Trump is terrible but was life so bad for ME when he was in office? And with Republicans in at least I'll probably still have my job and lower taxes. Maybe that's the safer way.
And that's how Trump gets re-elected.
You can't make policy without winning elections.
Because the Democratic party is still a big-tent coalition of centrists, labor, immigrant, minority groups and far-left progressives, and care about governance and policy, Democratic politicians still have to speak in a kind of vague, hermetic politicalese to cover their bases and this comes off as triangulating and inauthentic to a lot of white voters today. Republicans only need to repeat one kind of message -- burn everything down to own the libs. And wave a gun around while you're saying it.
Sure, it's being blunt. It's also being a fascist. But that's always been the Achilles heal of liberal democratic politics -- the demagoguing authoritarians can always attack it as ineffectual and inauthentic.
+1
You seem to be positing a question that you yourself have already answered, kevin. It is racism (and sexism, antisemetism etc) + fox news + completely immoral, craven politicians. I'm certainly on board with targeting median voters and optimizing democratic messaging, but here's the thing: we've done that. Republicans simply lie and spin up fake stories about liberal excess no matter what dems do. Biden, the most median-voter -targeted dem imaginable, is portrayed as deranged, senile, child-molesting rapist controlled by the far left commies. CRT theory is spun out of whole cloth as a nationwide brainwashing of our children to hate white people and ...do something. Do I think the phrase "defund the police" was stupid and counterproductive? Sure. But there will always be some activist and further left members of the party who will do the shit that further left activists do. In the end, politics in the US has become a hate driven PR war on the right, and it works. A little more message coordination to try to make the racists think we libs ain't really so bad is never going to fix that. As others have said, if Bezos or someone spent 10 billion or so created the equivalent liberal media/propaganda empire the GOP has, maybe in 10 or 20 years that would do it. Maybe.
Given what Bezos has done at WaPo, I think at best he wants to be Pitbull's lovechild with Al Neuharth. More likely, though, he's a slightly less blood-sucking Peter Thiel with a bit less charisma than Rupert Murdoch.
yeah, if bezos was interested in doing it, he would have done it. i just threw his name out because he has the money and already owns wapo. i have no illusions he's a progressive savior by any means.
The late Fred Hiatt presumably had a large part in adding rightwing pundits to the op-ed page. Whether or not those changes were encouraged or demanded by Bezos, those changes matter more than other bad choices, as in the Metro Local Living sections.
But placing news of prosecutions of January 6th rioters in Metro is a real mistake, when that reporting should be in the A section. It allows many to claim that the legal actions aren't proceeding as they should.
The wingnuts on the editorial page predate Bezos purchase of the Washington Post - they have alway had a percentage of the editorial page devoted to wingnuts -- there were Clinton haters galore on the page in the 1990s when it was run by Meg Greenfield and Fred Hiatt simply continued the practice of affirmative action for privileged white guys. I remember seeing columns by James Kilpatrick, Bob Novack, Charles Krauthammer and others in 1980s-1990s.
I remember them & think that some of the current ones are much worse. And Kilpatrick was - despite his usual views - became a strong supporter of Joe Giarratano - quite unusual at that time. And there were at least some columns by Colman McCarthy (but his antipet rants were a negative). Never a fan of Novack or Krauthammer, but the latter was some level better than several current ones. I might have had considerably less time to devote to The Post then, but none of those are as offensive as I find Hyatt, Thiessen, & others now.
From another angle it kinda looks like an aging America that's looking to protect what equity it has. They're pining for the days when their little bottoms were in the air over the Sears Christmas Catalogue, oblivious to all the scary stuff that was going on all around them.
Kevin, I would question the idea that the Median Voter Theorem still functions as it perhaps once did in American politics. Political scientists have discussed at length how the contemporary Republican party has moved far to the right of the typical voters and gotten away with it and remained very powerful. This trend happened long before Trump came on the scene, though he dramatized the trend. Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson discuss this in their recent book Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality. Why not communicate with these authors and ask them if they agree with you that the secret of Republican success is that Democrats scare moderate voters? I would love to hear what they say on this. For sure, a far right and antidemocratic Republican party is a real problem for American society, and we on the left need urgently o figure out how best to defeat that party. So a conversation on this topic is worth having.
+1
Thanks for the mention of Hacker/Pierson; I want to have a look at that.
Funny how the data and charts obsessed Kevin *never* provides any support for his claim that the average voter is a late-middle-aged white man from Orange County who finds liberalism icky.
Kevin only supports a fauxgressive like Katie Porter because her #OurRevolution-adjacent, Warren Democrat self falls on the anti-#idpol side where Kevin resides.
I think Democrats have a tricky problem. They have to energize and mobilize the base which is pretty progressive right now as well as appeal to the people Art Electric and others have described here. I think it can be done and last year the Biden team did a reasonable job of doing it.
How did Democrats win in Georgia ? My guess is that it was a multi year ground game that among other things put a large emphasis on getting out the vote, particularly black vote, but it was very much tailored to Georgia voters.
This is hard work but must be done elsewhere.
All that said, we are in a very peculiar moment. The putative leader of the GOP incited and supported insurrection. Indeed, he always made it clear that he would not respect the results of a democratic election. That this did not disqualify him from leading that democracy suggests that something is qualitatively different now. How did we get here ? I don't think you can blame this just on Bernie or Liz or AOC scaring median voters. It's going on elsewhere in the world right now too.
+1
It's the wokeness. That is what is turning most people off. And I am not saying this as a troll. I'm saying this as a "sensible" Republican (i.e. not a Trump Republican) and someone who is open to ideas from commenters on this blog.
The ideas that the far left puts out regarding racism, immigration, crime, etc. are so far off from the average voter that voters do, indeed, find those ideas scary and unrepresentative. I know many of you fellow commenters will immediately call such people racist. That's part of the problem. To liberals, it seems like being racist is the ultimate sin and they view racism as a false dichotomy. You're either racist or "anti-racist". In fact, there's a scale of racism. There's a difference between burning crosses with Klan and committing the sin of cultural appropriation (something only liberals find offensive) by wearing a sombrero on Cinco de Mayo. If racism is a scale of 0-10, most voters are not zero. Liberals should recognize that. More importantly, they should understand how the average voter will react to when someone who is a 1 or 2 gets lumped in with someone that is a 9 or 10. Especially when to reach that 0 (in the mind of liberals') you need to adhere to ever-changing language and ideas that only a very small percentage of the country is in tune to.
I don’t know, “everyone needs to be comfortable with the amount of racism that I, a white middle aged white conservative man, am comfortable with” sounds *exactly* like what a so-called sensible conservative voter would have said in 1964. *shrug*
Sorry for the extra “white”, there’s no edit button. I hope a simple typographical error won’t detract from the point.
So, in your mind, a Caucasian wearing a sombrero at a Cinco de Mayo party is as sinful as being a member of the Klan and burning crosses in front yards?
And your comment inadvertently demonstrated another example that causes divisions between liberals and the average voter. You're implying that anything from 1964 is wrong. How do you think a 60 or 70 year old voter is going to react when some "kid" half their age implies their thoughts aren't valid or relevant because they may have lived their formative years in 1964?
Yep, you _were_ being a troll with your initial comment. And you're trolling now. FOAD, you dishonest troll.
Well, IMO the folly begins with your assertions that a) that all the voting ideals you’ve enumerated are representative of the “average” voter b) that anything to the left of what you’ve described are “fringe” ideas.
To wit, I am not Mexican so my opinion on wearing a sombrero on Cinco de Mayo is that I wouldn’t do it. Further, I never implied that *anything* from 1964 is “wrong”; your ostensibly “sensible” position would likely fit right in with centrists who opposed the ‘64 Civil Rights Act. To flip your thought experiment on its head, how should I, a Black progressive voter in his 30s, react when my views about culture are constantly called “fringe” and “far left”? Is the implication that I should defer to your life experience?
Oh, this one knows full well what it's doing, if you hadn't noticed before. It takes pleasure in going as close to the edge of a deniable FU as possible. Which is why I kick it to the curb whenever it shows its rudimentary face.
You're putting words in my mouth. I never said anyone to the left of me is "fringe" or "far left". That's obviously not the case and I never said as much. But if someone accuses someone else of being racist for wearing a sombrero at their office Cinco de Mayo party I will certainly call that fringe. Again, I'm just pointing the kinds of things Kevin was alluding to and how the far left is so at odds with most of America. 95% of America (my estimate, no I can't cite a poll) would never have it cross their mind that some liberals would think wearing a sombrero is offensive.
Hmmmm .... the timestamps are certainly consistent:
Queue the troll whining about how it's no fair pulling quotes in a different subthread from the very same post.
What? Honestly no idea what you're talking about.
About that year: it was the last time that I found 2 traditional Republicans for whom I could cast a vote; Matthias & Shull.
1960 was one thing; 1964/1965 was when the changes took effect.
So, do you stand with Gov. de Santis's spox in proclaiming that this weekend's Orlando Nazi rally was a Lincoln Project falseflag op to smear nonracist GQP?
I have no idea what you're talking about. I've been on a cruise until yesterday and didn't have access to news. Regardless, I'm not sure what your question has to do with my comment.
Like FOXnews & the dead Washington State trooper.
??
If you're befuddled at this late date with Monty's comedic stylings ... maybe this isn't the place for you.
Uh, no. Just no. It's denying the part racism has played in the collective past on up into the present is what's got the thinking woman's knickers in a twist. "You're allowed your own opinions; you are _not_ your own set of facts."
And that's what you and yours want that the rest of us find highly objectionable.
Feel free to disagree with anything and everything I said. Just trying to give you insight (based on my own opinions and my observations of friends and family like me) on why the average voters (i.e. us) find liberals so objectionable.
Chuckle. You're in the _minority_, troll. And with that last little bit of incredible - and incredibly lame - offensive debate tactic, I demand an apology. I don't think you realize just how incredibly damaging your rude behaviour is to your purported cause.
But isn't that always the case with trolls, racists, and racist trolls?
Have a great day.
Too bad you people in the minority who are intent on ruling or ruining in any event are here to make it not so. So why don't you just go away if you're not going to apologize for your insults?
That would make the day a whole lot nicer for those who have enough respect for others not to try cute debate tricks.
For the sake of argument I will grant your point that "the far left" says things that are scary and dismissive of your's and other's opinions by labelling them racist. That said I think it's fair to say that the far right has far more say in the GOP than the far left has in the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party nominated and elected Joe Biden. The GOP nominated and elected (once, only once) Donald Trump. Why can't you and others recognize the difference ? Donald Trump incited an insurrection to try to overthrow the results of the last election but you're worried that someone somewhere on the left has unfairly labeled you a racist ? This is very hard to understand.
I completely agree with you. Trump is a disgrace and I'm sad that he and his ilk have temporarily commandeered our party. I voted for him the first time hoping, like many, that he would "become presidential". He didn't. Although, I do agree with many/most of his policies during his term. I think anyone involved in the insurrection should be locked up. I'm not sure why you're insinuating I think otherwise. I wouldn't vote for Trump again. (Unless maybe Dems nominated some radial liberal.) But that doesn't negate how I feel about the far left.
This is exactly correct. I actually talk to a fair number of conservatives and somewhat moderates and it comes back to that seemingly all the time. Wokeness is arrogant, dismissive, and sometimes just plain nutso and it absolutely kills the Dems.
Since you refuse to give any examples, I can only conclude that the only reason you're hear is as an exercise in the attempt to redefine the meanings of quite common words. FOAD, troll.
Why does this seem to be such a common response from the left whenever anyone questions the effects of "wokeness"? You just insult everyone and then bury your head in the sand and ignore the issue.
Chuckle. Why does it seem to be such a common response from right-wing reactionaries to shun specifics?
I'll tell you why: it's because trying to have it their own way with the language is all they've got. Still waiting for my apology, BTW. Which brings to mine another unlovely characteristic of the breed: Atticus is, of course, a welsher.
You need specifics on what woke means? If you're really unclear, go watch some Bill Maher videos. He sums up woknesses and how it hurts the dems pretty well.
What did I _just_ say about reactionary right-wing trolls and their attempts to try to own the language? No, you don't get to decide that 'woke' means any mention of, say, the Tulsa race massacre. Now, I know I'm going to get an apology for your juvenile debate tactics, troll. But I can point them out (see what I mean about specifics?) while simultaneously demonstrating that your content of your character is inferior to mine.
I gotta jump in. I am not a Republican -- and have been known to scream into my phone, "I wouldn't be caught DEAD in the Republican Party!" -- but what Atticus says needs to be listened to. It feels to me like so-called woke folks have no idea how the other half lives, or rather how they think. It may be that every "woke" issue is correct on theoretical or optimal grounds. But you seem to have no idea what it sounds like to the median voter. Before you rip me apart just consider: I more or less concede the correctness of your position, but I want you to consider how your language and attitude comes across to folks who haven't sat through a graduate seminar on these issues. I have family members -- academics -- who can be absolutely infuriating in their smug and weasely ripostes to what I would call common-sense prosaic objections to overlefty rhetoric.
It's harder, of course, to criticize black activists on these grounds (I, like the median voter, am white), but I would just point out that the Black community itself is not majority "woke". We saw shocking numbers of voters-of-color opt for Trump, and we may see more of that over time. Not everything need resolve down to "racism" as adjudicated by annoying left-wing activists. Who is most hated in America today? Isn't it the Left, because not only does the Right hate them, but so does the Middle and the Liberals too! (In my case despite actually agreeing with them!)
Know your enemy. Contemplate the moral landscape he inhabits. What is heroic in this moral universe? How does he construct his moral guidelines? Everything from old Westerns to my impersonation of a cool kid in junior-high -- these help me clarify what appeals to Middle America. Then use this knowledge -- this way of being -- to demolish the Rightist agenda ON ITS OWN TERMS. Apart from Bernie Sanders, the left doesn't seem to know how to "talk American".
Shorter Kevin Drum: We can pull voters away from the Republicans by... being *exactly* like the Republicans, just (maybe) without the overt racism and sexism.
You haven't been a liberal for years.
Depends on who you listen to. I describe myself as I've described myself for years: an Eisenhower Repbulican. Yet somehow, without changing my views one bit on various topics, I've become a 'liberal'.
This is a nation of 330 million people, diverse in ethnicity, religion (including the increasingly popular None), culture, mother tongue, gender identity and preference, and anything else that you can think of. There just isn’t any such thing as a ‘median voter’, and Republicans have not built their strength on appeals to that mythical being. Rather, they have stitched together a ragtag coalition of single-issue voters - ‘gun-rights’ absolutists, abortion opponents, ‘Christian’-theocracy supporters, white supremacists, and laissez-faire capitalists. There’s overlap, but these constituencies don’t need to have anything it common, they just have to know that the Republican candidate will always be the one that supports their obsession, and to believe that the evil Democratic candidate wants to take their guns, force them to have abortions, persecute Christians and take all their money to give to those people. Beyond that, there are voters whose votes have little to do with issues - maybe they vote based on personality, or looks, or similarity (real or perceived), or tribal identity.
I think rank-and-file Democrats who vote issues, more often consider multiple issues - equal justice, voting rights, economic inequality, health care, housing, gun control, police reform, immigration reform, climate change - that makes energizing them a little more challenging. I think RZM is right, that each region/state has unique characteristics and will need to be met where they are.
White lower-income Republicans don't hate liberals and Democrats because they're scary, they believe liberals and Democrats are scary because they are the hated "others". It is a basic human instinct to stick together in tribes or clans and hate members of other tribes or clans. Republican politicians have deliberately tried to divide Americans, that is make intra-national tribes or clans, on the basis of race and religion. This has been going on since Goldwater and has gradually intensified.
Once these instincts are aroused, hatred has little to do with rationality - people believe anything bad about the "others", whether they are another nation or another political/social faction within a country. Republicans and Fox News arouse their followers on various issues, but these issues are not randomly selected, they usually fall back on some aspect of race or religion.
Kevin says Democrats must cause swing voters to hate Republicans, but what would the basis of this hatred be other than what Republicans have already used, that is race and religion? What else can arouse basic instincts? One obvious answer is to get people to hate billionaires and other plutocrats and there are plenty of rational reasons for this, but it just hasn't worked. This may be because of another basic instinct, which is to venerate and follow leaders. How such leaders are selected is often mysterious, but in the case of Trump his support of racism and religion (however obviously he is insincere about religion) has apparently been critical.
Going after billionaires doesn't work with any voters except some on the left, and going after GOP racism and sexism works primarily with voters already in the Dem caucus.
Go after corruption. The GOP are not Boy Scouts. They operate as an organized crime family. They break laws, norms of democracy, standards of truth and decency. They see themselves as a class above any accountability and far apart from the middle class they pay occasional lip service to.
Dems have trouble making the case. Too often they leave it for the media (who spend more time investigating Hunter Biden). They need to make a better case and make it stick. It can be done. I posted this in another comment, but Labour in Britain are getting much more mileage against B. Johnson out of a relatively smaller scandal than anything Trump ever did. Keir Starmer:
https://twitter.com/lionelbarber/status/1488187564800499715?s=20&t=1mCTYOhumhhjQWtvtemJCQ
Starmer was brilliant. I would hope that a similar attack would succeed against TFG; he has earned it as much and more than BoJo; both have behaved execrably. But remember, Trump had to pay out $25 million to victims of the ‘Trump University’ scam, which occurred before the 2016 election, and 46% of voters didn’t care. Maybe a conviction for tax evasion would sway a few, because all of us ‘little people’ pay taxes, but you have to paint it as elitism, as Donnie Two Scoops arrogantly claiming entitlement to privileges that we lesser folk are not.
I wonder if Drum has heard of Rachel Bitecofer and Strikepac? She is trying to do exactly what Drum says we need here (and I agree with him). That is, it's not enough to talk about what an insane, fascist buffoon Trump is. We need to rebrand the entire Republican party as the insane, fascist party it has become, and she has a plan for that. Would love to hear Drum's thoughts on he approach. https://www.strikepac.com/
Glenn Youngkin may have avoided direct association with trump, but he didn't mind sharing his stage with Virginia's "trump in heels," gun-toting Amanda Chase. Let's see if the wins her primary & then loses in the general election.
Not quite on topic: I would expect a lot of primary wins by batshit crazy GOP candidates this summer. Could that contribute to Dem success (or limit Dem losses) in November? There is some precedent of too crazy GOP candidates losing winnable races.
Where is Todd Akin?
I don't think MVT is how I would frame it. But on the D reluctance to go negative -- that is, just tell it like it is -- I agree.
Do Republicans give a damn about what the median voter thinks? If so, the evidence is clearly lacking. The GOP has gone radical to extremes that were unimaginable not too many years ago, the end result of years of practicing the politics of division.
Do Democrats care about the median voter? Clearly many (though not all) of them do. Joe Biden won not by demonizing the other party but in part by talking of bipartisanship and a vision of America that embraces everyone (though not TFG). Other D presidents practiced the same politics of unity. But when Biden gave a strong speech to kill the filibuster (a tool used by segregationists), he got pushback by centrists in his own party like Dick Durbin, who sided with McConnell in saying the president's rhetoric went too far. With friends like that, it's damn hard for a Dem to speak the truth.
I think the Dem problem is TOO MUCH concern about the median voter, a failure to speak the truth about what is going on in plain sight, to avoid any risk of offending the average joes and janes in the middle.
Speak the truth and they'll say the Dem went too far. "Segregationists"? "A basket of deplorables"? Holey moley, they've lost their mind!
Dems tend to retreat from the confrontation that our times call for. It's somewhat understandable, but self-defeating. Dems need to speak in direct and passionate language about the misdeeds and threats of the GOP. They need to strongly defend the D record (the biggest problem with the recent Biden press conference was his defensiveness and failure to sell, sell, sell his accomplishments).
The median voter needs to hear it, because often the ones making the most forceful case are who they listen to, and Dems too often are silent.
Being passionate and persuasive (and truthful) should not be so hard. Dems have surrendered rhetoric for messaging, and the danger of not wanting to risk offense is a failure to confront the threats the country faces. These are not times for the risk-averse.
An example of a passionate and persuasive speech. Dems could learn something from Mr. Starmer.
https://twitter.com/lionelbarber/status/1488187564800499715?s=20&t=1mCTYOhumhhjQWtvtemJCQ
"The Florida governor and the mainstream press have had a rocky relationship that he has often worked to his advantage."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/31/us/politics/desantis-media.html
"If Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida somehow becomes the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2024, two factors will help explain why: his mastery of his party’s hostile relationship with the mainstream media, and his relentless courtship of Fox News."
So there you go. The media are the problem.
Democrats spend too much time countering - or at least trying to - idiotic claims such as the one that students identifying as "furries" have necessitated that schools place litter boxes in the halls.
Hard to believe that even the most manic anti-vaxxers or those decrying the nonexistent teaching of CRT in K-12 classes believe this nonsense or that it is effective.