View the original tweetstorm here
1) Recognize that HRC already maximized the anti-racist and anti-sexist vote as far as it will go
2) Ditto the pro-Nato, pro-immigration, pro-civil liberties and pro-BLM vote
3) This coalition will not be any bigger in 2020
4) The only path to victory is winning back PA, WI, MI, and OH. Restoring the lost firewall
5) How do the Democrats do this?
6) Voters in those state agree that Trump is an asshole and do not care about the other issues the Democrats ran on in 2016
7) They think it takes a thief to catch a thief
8) That it takes an asshole to fuck with the assholes who fucked them over
9) Trump will be judged by these voters on two questions:
10) Did he drain the swamp?
11) Did he bring American jobs back?
12) Middle America doesn’t care about Hamilton, flag burning, protesting or manipulating the electoral college
13) It just wants the jobs BACK and the corruption OUT
14) Good news Democrats! Trump will do NEITHER
15) For every Carrier he brings back, make a counter tracking the number of jobs in just those states going out
16) Criticize every single Trump appointment or policy that gives power to the elite at the expense of ordinary people
17) Hammer every single time he breaks those two promises and focus on just those two questions in every midterm ad
18) Those are the only two questions any 2020 candidate should talk about
19) THAT is how we beat Trump.
20) Otherwise this dick is there for eight years. Now time to hit back and do our homework!
I disagree with your #1, 2, 3. I think paulsimmons has made a compelling case that there are many thousands of “anti-racist and anti-sexist” votes to be had in those four battleground states. I think he’s right, and I think your 1, 2, 3 ignores his insight at our peril.
I fear that the Achilles heel of your #11 and 13 is that we won’t bring those jobs back either. The jobs we’re talking about AREN’T COMING BACK.
I think Donald Trump and Mike Pence are likely to be with us for 16, not eight, years.
I think our task is, therefore, to:
1. Ensure that democracy itself survives, at least in the currently blue states. I think there’s a non-zero (small, but not zero) chance that the union as we have known it since the civil war may dissolve.
2. Ensure that the rule of law and our constitutional freedoms survive. I think this is the most immediate area where we will end up fighting.
3. Ensure that over the next two generations, we roll back the red tide that has swept through America’s heartland and poisoned our culture with its toxic byproducts.
I think that we must do for our progressive agenda, over the next sixteen years, what the conservative coalition did for its agenda between the defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and the victory of Ronald Reagan in 1980. The latter began THIRTY YEARS of conservative domination of American society and politics.
Ultimately, this is the fundamental truth we must show “red” America — they have had their way, and their way has been an unmitigated disaster.
I don’t disagree with Paul Simmons. If you read him he says that work will take more than four years, which means converting swing voters who swung for Trump back to the blue team is more critically important to deny him a second term.
Ah but that’s not how politics work Tom. The jobs are his problem now! That’s what so great about this strategy, it’s McConnell esque. Just hammer him for failing to reverse something he can’t change and you erode his support with that base of voters. We don’t need an alternative that works-only to show that he is breaking his promise.
Nah. Trump can be beaten in four years with an air tight disciplined message. One that brings back just 1-2% of the WWC voters lost in those states. We spend zero dollars in TX, GA, NC, AZ, and spend all our money and energy organizing these states. We put an Ohioan in charge of the House minority, and we start making converts on the backs of his broken promises.
Remember we don’t need to defend Clinton anymore, so our task is not infinitely easier. Just attack him on the two issues he has already failed to deliver on and attack him on them repeatedly. Give no quarter. He will bring back zero American jobs and he will fail to drain the swamp. Democrats will do both if you entrust us with a unified government.
Obstructing his infrastructure proposal with conservative Republicans and letting Ryan bait him into signing Ryancare are tactical ways to help him bury himself with his own base.
Pence is a social conservative wierdo, Americans will never vote for that. The swing voters who voted for Trump were apolitical secular voters who just wanted the jobs back and the insiders punished. I really think that’s the lesson here.
The racist and sexist voters were already part of the GOP coalition, so were the religious wierdos. He still won the rich ones who like big tax cuts, so Hillary’s play to Republicans imploded. What he won that Obama lost last time was working class white women and some of their husbands who voted for him over the oursourcer in chief Willard Romney.
We run someone from the heartland with a record of fighting Wall Street and we win. Especially if we focus on these two metrics of his success.
Indeed, the work Paul describes will take more than four years.
I understand how politics works. I’m suggesting that the result of your #11 and #13 is that already-increasing vacillation will get worse and worse, precisely like the back-end of a rear-wheel drive car out of control on a slippery road. I suggest that whatever we gain in 2018 or 2020, we will lose again 2-4 years after that because we don’t solve the problem either.
We need to solve the problem, and the problem today is the “red” tide that has swept America’s heartland today. We might win elections, but we won’t change the culture. I’ve had enough of that.
We need to make America’s heartland blue again. We need school boards, town committees, zoning boards, and the rest that look more like Somerville (Joe Curtatone, Denise Provost, et al) and less like what they are today.
…which will go a long way toward accomplishing 4.
This isn’t about winning the right way, it’s about winning period. I refuse to allow Trump to win another election, so should all of us. And that means learning from the mistakes and recalibrating the message to an offensive one rather than a defensive one.
He is now in the hot seat and made a lot of grand promises and we should highlight each promise he breaks to undermine his credibility. And the more he acts like a normal Republican the better, the American people elected a conservative Congress despite their own preferences for a populist one since they now associate populist principles with Donald Trump the man, not the Republican Party. If we can prove the President fails to live up to the promises of the candidate, we can defeat him.
We cannot beat Trump without converting some Trump voters into Democratic ones in 2020. Repeat this as a mantra and figure out how to peel them away most efficiently.
…but I also know that roughly half of those who could have voted this year did not, so there is plenty of room to manuever in the turnout department as well.
Putting aside several disagreements, how do we drain the swamp and bring American jobs back?
1) Prove that Trump didn’t do those things
That’s all we need for the midterms and 2020. We don’t have to prove we will do anything, just prove he failed at his basic promises to these voters.
2) Start with Ourselves
Maybe having a Minority Leader who was raised by a single mom in a union household and still lives in his down and out hometown is better than a San Francisco multimillionaire daughter of a Baltimore mayor who raises plenty of money but hasn’t won any additional votes for a progressive house agenda in three elections.
Maybe having a DNC Chair who worked with Bernie instead of against him and is a POC and Muslim American who also understands WWC voters and how to deal with them.
Maybe elevating more progressive leaders like Nina Turner who believes in black lives matter and also wins police union endorsements. We need more bridge builders to bring the disparate communities left behind by our country and commonwealth together in common cause. Let’s elevate them and let’s elevate a message that cuts through these divisions and unites Americans behind our banner.
That will show we are committed to draining the swamp along with relying on small donors and fighting to restore public financing. Kicking lobbyists out of party leadership and staffing.
As for the jobs back I think committing the party to fair trade to stop the bleeding along with a real push for hard hat friendly/ shovel ready public works projects aligned with sustainable development goals and renewable energy is a win win for the climate and solidarity.
I think some selective bipartisanship will serve us well. I suspect people are sick of obstruction.
It will be much harder to automate service-sector jobs than manufacturing and retail jobs.
An example of what I mean is home care for the elderly. The demand for these positions is already high, and will skyrocket as the baby boom ages. These are positions that have until now been filled by women and minorities. They are also positions that are underpaid in comparison to their education and skill requirements — in Montgomery County MD the going rate is $22-25 per hour, for a position that requires at least a bachelors degree and also certification.
Flip Florida and Arizona, you’ve got 272.
Flip Florida and North Carolina, you’ve got 276.
Flip Florida and any one of PA, WI, MI, or OH and you’ve got 271+.
Flip Arizona, North Carolina, and any one of PA, MI, or OH and you’ve got 274+.
I’m not arguing that any of those paths are easier or more likely, but they are all plausible. Between now and then we’ll see Arizona gain more voting Hispanic citizens, Florida will evolve, and North Carolina will continue to gain educated workers from the Northeast. It’s entirely possible that a Democratic presidential candidate will be more attractive to retirees (AZ + FL), to white collar workers (AZ + NC), or to any other variety of voters necessary to swing non-rust-belt states.
I’m not arguing against trying to win back the love of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Ohio. I’m just arguing that it’s not necessary to win the White House.
I think that attitude is penny wise and pound foolish. It was suppose to happen this cycle and now Texiera can just say it will happen next cycle. Remember, I defended this notion and rejected the Thomas Frank criticism of Clinton as over the top.
But this freak election shows us that the map has been realigned, possibly permanently, and the demographic profile of the electorate we were running in was wrong. Our strategy should adjust our messaging to the voters that voted, not the demographics that continue to stay home. Frank comes across as a horses ass but his instinct was right and all the data people were wrong.
…and easily could have gone the other way. I think it is imperative we work on turnout, but that is not mutually exclusive with remessaging.
It isn’t the only way. It may be the easiest way, the most likely way, the best way. But it isn’t the only way. I just produced four different scenarios that get you to 270 without any more than one of the rusty four you mentioned.
There is no such thing as a permanent realignment. Never has been, never will be.
Our strategy should be to fight for just policies everywhere at every level of government — and to tell people that’s just what we’re doing. Between now and election day 2020 every single state will have (at least) one gubernatorial election, (at least) one US Senate election, two sets of US House elections, and (at least) one election for state legislature for each house (or the one NE body). We need to show up at every single one of those elections. Let’s not narrow down our strategy to four states a full three years out of the next cycle. Doing so would overplan and undermine an ability to be flexible.
Your comments seem focused on winning the last election and not the next one, as if the electorate and the issues are static. As a wise man once proclaimed, “Why oppose war only when there’s a war? Why defend the clinics only when they’re attacked? Why support the squats in the parks only when the police come to close them down? Why are we always reactive? Lets activate something. Let’s fuck shit up.”
The power of demagogues and cults is this: once you can get people to vote based on fear and resentment you can break promises with impunity. If America tanks over the next four year the resentment voters are just going to be more resentful. Nothing brings a cult together like a failed prediction.
There’s nothing wrong with bashing Trump etc as some of those tweets suggest. But that’s not party building.
If people know that the Democratic party is an organization which is grateful and loyal to the people who vote for it, people will be more likely to join. If the party takes people for granted while it caters to people who vote against their own interest it will be headed for some very hard times.
And many of them voted for Obama twice and voted for Trump this time. Attitudes that I continue to see like stomv saying we don’t need those states or Christopher and Tom continuing to equate appeals to economic solidarity with the bold faced racism of the Trump campaign are counter productive and will lead us to future failure.
Any autopsy that starts with blaming the voters is just a way to excuse a poor campaign and a regional coastal party that is at its nadir of political control in over a century.
Give the GOP credit. After 2012 they looked in the mirror and knew they had to bend on something, either racial or social issues or moving to the middle on economics to win back the middle class. Trump did 2/3 things. You can’t plausibly argue he is a sincere or committed culture warrior, and he pivoted enough against orthodoxy on trade and big business to look like a credible fighter for some middle class Americans. And he knew that doubling down on racism sans dog whistles was the best way to win the primary.
He did pivot after the general you just weren’t listening. He pivoted to an American First foreign policy that eschewed nation building abroad for more infrastructure at home and he talked a lot about draining the swamp to clean up government and bringing the jobs back by fighting bad trade deals. He spoke in broad spokes that resonated with an electorate tired of the old partisan laundry lists from either side.
He and Bannon were onto something when they said there is the party of the people and the party of Davos. Doubling down on Davos is not how we regain power, especially since Trump already gave a green light to lobbyists the the us open for business. It’s by showing he’s the real party of Davos and we are the real party of people. Otherwise, we’re fucked.
It’s time to reach voters where they are rather than lecturing them on where they ought to be. And can we ban the phrase they voted against their own interests? If you’re a white worker screwed over by trade and endless wars how is voting for Hillary in your interest? To prove you’re not a racist? That’s the weak tea that didn’t work. Time to show these folks why voting for us is in their interest instead of assuming their cultural betters know better.
I know I have not, and I’m fairly certain Tom hasn’t, equated economic solidarity to racism. In fact I believe I have multiple times said the opposite and pointed to Bernie Sanders as a model. Maybe we didn’t draw the line as brightly as we could have, but even DUMB aspects aside, Trump’s record is one of shafting the very people he was appealing to while Dems consistently fight for better wages and conditions and walk the walk. Yes, that includes HRC for, you know, her entire career.
This is literally all I’m saying. 6 6s for your comment. So stop fighting me on this and start joining me in the resistance! We need all the help we can get.
Screw 20 tweets we only need that one ^
Just repeat this ad nauseum! Without Hillary’s liabilities we aren’t on the defense for shit like NAFTA and emails anymore*. If he doesn’t bring back the jobs and fight for working people we call him out on every turn. If he hires lobbyists and hacks we hit him on it! Period. Just repeat this over and over again. Nothing else matters but this point. We stay in this one message and we win. We distract ourselves with nonsense and we lose.
*not even arguing either point, just saying that argument is now irrelevant going forward since it’s Trumps record that matters and not hers
If you’re a white worker screwed over by trade and endless wars, then you’re already in deep trouble. If that worker voted for a party whose bread and butter is exploiting foreign workers, buying cheap foreign steel to build shoddy and tacky buildings, and expanding those endless wars, then that worker has indeed voted against his or her own interests.
I remind you that the “endless wars” we’re talking about were begun by the political party that that worker just put back in power. The last “endless war” started by a Democrat was Vietnam, fifty years and three generations ago.
I think we need to connect to that worker personally, not politically. I think we need to bring food to that worker ourselves. I think we need help him or her repair his home, with quality labor and quality materials. I think we need to create a culture were that worker views us as the people who makes his or her life bearable.
I think that AFTER we do those things, that worker will start to pay more attention to what we believe and why. When that worker sees that his or her kids are doing better in schools, that the schools are better because we’re making them that way, that the black or Latino or Muslim or whatever kids are just kids — I think that’s how we change the culture.
I think most of today’s Trump voters are already lost. Reach out to them? Yes. Welcome them if they respond? Yes.
I think we need to keep a very firm grip on our values and priorities. Henri Nouwen was very clear that anybody who strives to be a healer (and that is surely what our role must be) must also keep a very strong rope tied around their waist to keep them from being pulled into the same maelstrom that is already drowning the victim.
That rope is what I find missing in your commentary lately.
I’m taking it for granted we don’t need me saying how awful I find all this to be. If I haven’t been clear I’ll repeat that I voted for and gave money to Hillary. I worked with Latinos on a local campaign who are now in danger of losing their safety in the refuge of this great country and being forced to return to a land where they could die. I’m coordinating with a Muslim friend who heeded my call (and many others) to run for office and helping her organize her campaign.
I’ve told my wife I love her and will defend her no matter what. I won’t be one of those Germans who abandoned their wife to the dogs. I had to comfort a relative who survived sex assault and feels demeaned that an assaulter is in the White House.
Trump is the worst thing to happen to this country in awhile, but he is a symptom and not the disease. The disease is our hallowed out middle class that hasn’t seen a real wage increase in 40 years. More education isn’t a solution to that when the price tag puts it out of everyone’s reach. Or when all the good jobs with or without a degree are getting outsourced and automated.
And I think our party has made great strides in creating the kind of country where the four races that were at my Thanksgiving dinner table can call each other family. My mom will have zero white grand kids and that’s something I celebrate (and look forward to contributing my share too) . Where my wife is my equal and not my property and where I can honestly encourage my friend Ruth to be a minister while asking her wife to run for office. I’m really proud of that, but we left a lot of our people behind. Even in “liberal” Massachusetts. It’s time we talk about them too.
To win 270 EVs, we don’t need WI, MI, PA, and OH. There are plausible paths to 270 without them. That’s a fact.
I’m not advocating for not trying to win those states. Hell, why write it again when I can just quote myself:
But your strategy is to hammer away at Trump for four years and then tell the Trump voters that they are voting against their own interests. Why would that work?
… but it would require some honest and painful due diligence, followed by a lot of grunt work.
Furthermore, there is a real need to do some case studies. For example, independent of the Presidential election, what were the flaws in Russ Feingold’s campaigns in Wisconsin that led to his losses in 2010 and 2016 (the first time as an incumbent)?
My provisional assessment is that it was a variant of what happened in the 2012 recall races, where progressive activists operated in an outreach capacity for Republicans. I haven’t had the time to get into the weeds yet, though…
…I’d like to know how progressives served as outreach for Republicans. Sure, they weren’t THAT offensive?! I’m still baffled by how it’s done elsewhere. It seems every time you say what we need to do I’m thinking that suggestion is the ONLY way I’ve ever seen it done anyway.
They come off to many people (not all of whom are working class or white, by the way) as arrogant and condescending, and they project beliefs on to outside cohorts that may not apply.
This pisses people off.
Consider all the grief that johntmay gets on this site. Whatever my differences with the specifics of his posts, he has legitimate concerns. When those concerns are met with indifference; when “The Democratic Party doesn’t care for me” is a simple statement of fact, entire populations are made available to the kind of demagoguery we saw in November.
Three points, specific to Massachusetts:
Clinton’s victory here notwithstanding, Trump still got 1,090,893 votes here.
Unenrolled voters still lead Democrats 53.98% to 34.18% (Republicans are 10.68%).
The legislative results of progressive disengagement from the ground is the primary reason that (borrowing from Chief Justice Taney) progressives have no rights that electeds feel bound to respect. As a result, particularly in the House, progressive approaches are often slapped down out of sheer political recreation, irrespective of the merits of said policies. That said, the House is much better on black issues, where that Body restored cuts in programs made by the supposedly progressive Senate in the last budget cycle.
I think that there is often a tendency to forget that politics – and I include advocacy – is an exercise in applied psychology, and the easiest way to create an enemy is by not respecting him as a person.
I’m interested in seeing how successful Trump was with Haitian voters in Florida:
What I do know that there was a statewide structured activist-recruitment and training effort operating on Trump’s behalf within Florida’s Haitian communities. It will be interesting to see how successful it was…
I’m sure none of us intends to be offensive, but there’s ample evidence the Democratic party DOES care about people in question. That said, I guess I do have to admit it’s difficult not to look down one’s nose a little bit when people act as if they are entitled to their own facts. I agree JTM raises valid points on issues, but it’s frustrating that he seems blind to the idea that we are hands down the better of the two parties on said issues, even if not perfect.
It’s not necessarily a given that the Commonwealth’s white working-class voters agree with you.
For example, here in Massachusetts:
If the Republicans can recreate their efforts of 1988 – 1990, conditions are ripe to:
(A) Insure Charlie Baker’s re-election, when the suburban white shoe Republican cohort comes home in 2018, and
(B) Elect enough trans-Worcester west and Norfolk/Plymouth/ Bristol/Essex County folk to the Legislature to sustain a Baker’s veto.
Then stuff gets interesting…
…but that doesn’t mean I understand it either. It seems working class whites broke for Trump nationwide, but why for a party/candidate historically not on their side?
A large portion of the “grief” that johntmay gets me from me is that he lies about me, misrepresents my comments here, misrepresents his own links, and is relentlessly hostile.
His legitimate concerns, so far as I can tell, are most emphatically NOT met with indifference — they are by and large shared by many or most of us here. He writes as though he is the first to discover that we have a wealth concentration problem, for example.
Meanwhile, he salts his legitimate concerns with boatloads of absolute rubbish. He argues against paying women the same as men for the same job. He denies that wage discrimination exists. He argues passionately against education, for crying out loud.
In my view, he comes to this site with an enormous chip on his shoulder loudly demanding that we knock it off. In that behavior, he most definitely does exemplify the behavior of a segment of the electorate. We can talk about how large or small that segment is.
Respect is a two-way street. You exemplify that in your behavior in person and in your commentary here. While I have not met johntmay in person, his commentary is the opposite. He demonstrates absolute contempt for anyone who disagrees with him, and expresses that contempt with months of lies and distortions.
I attempt to show respect and courtesy for pretty much everyone I encounter. I expect the same in return. I expect that from progressives along with everybody else. I do NOT get that from johntmay.