I’m not going to add anything to this for now, but I think this article is worth the few minutes it takes to read and would welcome conversation.
Please share widely!
Warning from Progressive Policy Institute
Reality-based commentary on politics.
Well, look at that!
Look at THAT!
Pukes exploit cultural / race issues to divide and weaken our diverse democracy.
One cherry-picked quote:
Fidel Castro was a brutal left-wing dictator. Venezuela and Cuba are each authoritarian by any measure. I leave it to others to assess how “brutal” they are.
I’m dubious about this treatise.
I think it was more of an cherry orchard picked quote, given the rest of the quotes along the same lines, eh?
The piece is certainly a target-rich environment.
I don’t see much concrete guidance in the piece.
Nope, not much there to suit the conformation bias you seek
The point is we need to figure out how to message any socialistic tendencies we may have to get people to conjure visions of Scandinavia rather than those other countries.
All Fascists anywhere — from Dump to Puti Pu Putin — are enemies of democracy everywhere.
Ah, I see. So a demographic that is least likely to be be familiar with the historical events that CRT addresses have an unfavorable view of CRT.
This piece leaves unanswered the obvious question — what portion of those who have an unfavorable view of CRT actually KNOW anything about CRT?
“United we progress toward a more perfect union.” President Barack Obama
We can be smug about what people do and do not know or we can acknowledge political reality, and I know the former is very tempting. The ultimate message of the piece is very similar to what I’ve heard you say – winning in 2024 is an existential imperative.
Indeed. The rub is that “winning” — in the sense of getting more votes — is getting increasingly irrelevant as the fascist authoritarian seditionists take over vote-counting procedures at the state level.
I do not see compelling arguments in this piece for what Democrats should do differently in 2022 or 2024.
If the political reality is that enough fascist authoritarian white supremacist and willfully ignorant voters exist in states like Georgia and Arizona to block otherwise legitimate people from voting, then no amount of messaging is going to change the outcome.
Pretending that deplorable voters are anything but deplorable is a losing strategy. Michelle Obama’s famous “when they go low, we go high” aphorism was not successful at stopping the fascist authoritarians that now dominate the GOP.
I think that when a major political party has been transformed into a criminal enterprise — especially if the perpetrators are acting on behalf of foreign actors — then that criminal enterprise must be vigorously prosecuted. Criminals must not be allowed to manipulate the results of elections. Today’s GOP should be declared a criminal — and terrorist — organization. It should be made illegal to contribute to today’s GOP.
The nationwide fund-raising efforts based on the “stop-the-steal” lie are nothing more than interstate wire fraud.
We are well out of the conventional political arena, and pretending otherwise is is an extraordinarily dangerous delusion.
The progressive / unionist / anti-slavery party of Lincoln has devolved into the fascist / Limbo party of Dump. How low can they go? Stay tuned!
This article said absolutely nothing about catering to deplorable characteristics of certain voters. 2020 showed we can in fact win GA and AZ and I don’t believe we did it by surrendering to racism, etc. Declaring the Republican Party a racket isn’t going to happen either, so we need to beat them as badly as possible. All this article is saying is don’t go into certain states sounding like the most extreme elements of our base. Many of those in positions to count votes and validate elections are also elected officials, so of course we need to win elections to those offices too. Your position seems to be that we shouldn’t bother to vote because the jig is up, but that will only certainly make things worse.
I’m certainly not saying that we “shouldn’t bother to vote”.
We won in GA by very intentionally reaching out to minority voters. We did not surrender to racism there, and it appears that the firestorm of GOP activity in GA is a direct response to that — and to our victory.
If it isn’t possible to accurately name a criminal organization for what it is, then we have effectively normalized the criminal behavior that is obviously taking place.
My position is that we must enforce the rule of law. We must make it clear that no person and no party is above the law.
If we can’t or won’t do that, then it’s all just a badly refereed game.
I think we progressives must face the reality that our political position is similar to that of the conservative GOP in 1964 after the landslide loss of their nominee, Barry Goldwater.
The response of the conservative movement was to essentially ignore the presidential elections of 1968, 1972, and 1976 while they instead focused on changing American culture from the bottom up.
The result was Ronald Reagan’s “surprise” landslide in 1980.
It should be noted that skulduggery between the Ronald Reagan campaign, the GOP, and the Muslim extremists who ruled Iran at the time played a significant role in Mr. Reagan’s victory.
I don’t know if any of us have the luxury of ignoring the presidential elections of 2024, 2028, and 2032 while we pursue an analogous strategy. What was once the “conservative” wing of the GOP — so extreme that America rejected it outright in 1964 — is now viewed as “moderate” (cf. Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol).
America faces an existential crisis today.
This piece confirms that large swaths of America of 2022 are hostile to anything that challenges their biases and prejudices. The GOP has always pandered to this group, and continues to do all in their power to inflame and encourage its worst excesses.
I don’t see concrete proposals in this piece that have a significant chance of changing the outcome of the 2024 election that don’t also betray the fundamental values of the Democratic Party.
Pukes don’t believe in e pluribus unum (out of many, one) — America’s motto. Democrats do.
How does improving performance among white non-college voters betray the fundamental values of the Democratic Party?
“improving performance among white non-college voters” doesn’t betray the fundamental values of the Democratic Party.
I think it comes down to don’t let the “Squad” run the show, but I don’t see more moderate messaging as betraying values of fairness, etc.
More like keep the same donor/consultant friendly party that has been losing more and more for 30 years. Then blame the squad when they lose next time.
This article said absolutely nothing about donors and consultants. If anything it encourages an economic message that is more populist, but warns against cultural leftism. These are real voters who are being turned off to some of our messaging, but are still gettable if we tweak the messaging. When was the last time a squad type won the presidency?
Big money has always had the power to influence small minds.
To some extent, but we need to get out of our bubble and realize that there are plenty of people who are more culturally moderate without the help of any money. We keep falling into this trap of thinking if only people knew what we knew or had equal access to information everyone would surely agree with us. Heck, even I have been on the receiving end of such attitude on BMG from time to time!
Someone who believes that the 2020 election was stolen is not “culturally moderate”, they are delusional.
Facts are facts. The 2020 election was not stolen. The covid vaccines are safe and effective. Climate change is real and is happening now.
I categorically reject the premise that asserting these facts as facts is being in a “bubble”.
Too many Americans are unwilling or unable to face facts that they don’t want to believe. We do not help them or America by enabling and encouraging their delusions.
Neither we nor the article I linked is referring to denial of facts. Nobody is suggesting we fudge the facts you mention above. There are people who identify our party with extreme woke ideology, defunding the police, critical race theory, etc. I am strictly speaking of territory of opinion as to how to approach various issues.
Understood.
All kinds of lies are being told about our party.
A lie that has been repeated countless times right here on BMG is that the Democratic Party tells voters without college degrees that they don’t “deserve” a better life. Another lie is that the Democratic Party ignores “ordinary working class voters”. And so on and so forth.
I agree that lies about our party should be countered with vigorous assertions of the truth — of what Democrats have done, are working to do today, and will attempt to do tomorrow.
Let’s make a deal with the Pukes. If they stop lying about us, we’ll stop telling the truth about them. Deal? 🙂
Thanks, Adlai Stevenson! 🙂
Are they lies if the voters in question routinely agree with them by voting for the other party or when asked by pollsters? You’re a Bill Clinton fan, one of the genius things he and the DLC did, and what Blair and New Labour did in the UK, was ask the hard questions and figure out why voters deserted their respective center left parties. For both it meant moving to the right on some things like taxation, crime, and defense policy in comparison to the Foot and Carter/Mondale led parties that lost in landslides to Reagan and Thatcher.
This was the price they willingly paid for majorities that also expanded access to education, health care, and the economy for millions of people. I see parallels with our own time. I voted for Bernie twice, but am under no illusions anymore that he could have beaten Trump in either election. I’m staying with friends in AOC’s district and am having a great time, and judging by Covid protocols and visible racial and economic diversity, this is a much more progressive place than Boston. That said, her preferred candidates couldn’t even win her borough let alone citywide.
It was Eric Adams who won, and who represents the future of the national party. You can be tough on crime and tough on racist cops. Tough on developers and landlords while being open to new employers and new housing. Tough on guns without using stop and frisk. This used to be called triangulation and winning Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and locally winners like Deval Patrick, knew how to do it. We should go back to it. Biden will never win over the Squad and he doesn’t need to, his budget should meet the needs of Manchin and Sinema so that it passes and helps actual people in reality, rather than trying to win over far left progressives who live in a reality distortion field online.
I agree with all of the above.
Amen. I agree enthusiastically.
Dems should stoke the Puke schism between Dump and Turtle for control of the party that’s tearing them apart.
It took me a while to find anything to like in this pile of crap but I always try to stay positive so here’s half a sentence I can agree with “But most people don’t understand why upper-income Americans deserve big tax breaks like deducting the full amount of property taxes on their mansions”
Otherwise, yecch! Although, the way the authors pair Biden’s lack of popularity with the withdrawal from Afghanistan and link it to a necessity to look tough explains a lot of what we are doing in Ukraine.
The point is do we want to win places like WI, OH, PA, and MI or do we want to run up the score in places like MA, CA, and NY. We will still comfortably win the latter even if we focus on the former.
If one is familiar with playing Cricket in darts, the most certain way to win is to shut out ones opponent from scoring once one has established a lead. There is no chance that Democrats will lose Massachusetts, California, or New York. (95 EC votes, total) The election will be won, or lost, in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The national average for whites is 78%. Massachusetts is 80%, California 63%, New York 67%.
Ohio is 83%, Pennsylvania 82%, Wisconsin 86%, Michigan 81%. That’s 64 Electoral College Votes. 12% of the total and 24% of the number needed to win the election.
The Democratic Party won WI, PA, and MI in 2020. Ohio hasn’t been an important state for Democrats in a decade.
The 2020 election was decided by Georgia.
The GOP actions in Arizona, New Mexico, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and elsewhere are focused on seizing partisan control of the vote-counting process. No campaign strategy or messaging on the part of the Democratic Party will change that.
The most important issue for the 2024 presidential election is stopping the GOP from overturning valid election results in states with GOP legislatures and/or governors.
I think it’s more important to address the issues of 2024 than rehash the battles of 2016.
But surely we should try to replicate successes and learn from our failures? As long as Sherrod Brown is one of their Senators I have not given up on Ohio. Of course Dem strategy can change what the Republicans do in those states. If we win those races for key positions rather than they, that will go a long way to stopping their schemes. You once again act as though Dems aren’t also running and that the game is already lost.
I’m not suggesting that the game is already lost.
I’m saying that when we are talking with someone who believes that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, the right thing to do is to walk away. Further discussion is a waste of time.
Neither I nor the article is suggesting we can reach people living in a fantasy world. Those people are so far gone they definitely do not qualify as SWING voters of whom there are plenty and we CAN reach. I’m not sure how I’m not being clear on this.
I think the number of swing voters is vanishingly small.
I don’t think swing voters will determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.
The swing voter is a smaller and smaller minority of the overall voting population, but that makes them more rather than less essential. Biden owes his victory in WI, PA, and MI to voters who defected from Obama to Trump and back to Biden along with Romney voters in AZ and GA who have now voted for moderate anti-Trump Democrats in two presidential elections. GA you can make a credible argument for turnout trumping conversion, especially in the Senate runoffs, but the other four key states conform to those other trends and some reps like Lucy McBath owe their election to Romney-Biden voters. And those victories were exceedingly narrow. 72,000 voters switching sides would flip four of those states. This was true in 2016 and 2020. Meanwhile, Florida Latinos are increasingly leery of a party that has openly flirted with socialist candidates and campaigns. Time to rein in the left wing rhetoric (and let’s be real-Bernie is a New Deal social democrat and not a real socialist anyway) while emphasizing a blue collar policy agenda. Putting the brakes on big cultural changes combined with putting workers in the drivers seat on economic policy.
Youngkin’s win was largely on the backs of suburban moderates defecting back to a Republican they could hold their nose for, unlike Trump, against a moderate Democrat who made too many compromises with his left wing. Like McAuliffe, Biden will never enjoy the love of the left and like McAuliffe, the more he moves away from his moderate past the less likely he is to win re-election from the two key blocks of swing voters who are either socially moderate/fiscally conservative Romney types or socially conservative/fiscally liberal types like the much larger Obama/Trump contingent.
If we want to remain a viable national party we need to stop the bleeding in the suburbs and come up with ways to talk to rural folks about their needs and how we can help them. I know it’s frustrating. If life were fair it would be Republicans fighting to remain viable.
The reception you and John routinely get here when you offer friendly criticism of the Democratic Party is a big reason I no longer participate in this site. It’s also a big reason we will get creamed in November and Biden might only have a single term. There are 10-15% of voters who are persuadable. There are voters within the coalition who are deserting to the GOP. I think it’s important to figure out what they want and how to convince them to vote for us. Otherwise we will remain a coastal party.
Asserting that the Democratic Party believes that people who choose not to attend college do not “deserve” the attention of the party is not a “friendly” criticism, it’s just a lie.
Asserting that by striving to make higher education affordable for every American, the Democratic Party is turning its back on “ordinary” working class voters is not only a lie, it is a lie with an implicit dog whistle. I’m reminded of Mitch McConnell’s recent utterance about black voters.
The behavior of the Fascist authoritarian GOP in the last year rules out bothsiderism. A “swing” voter who chooses Donald Trump is choosing fascism. That’s a simple fact that we deny at our extreme peril.
I agree that we should offer a welcoming hearth to any voter who once supported Donald Trump and the fascist GOP.
The first step in that welcome is for that voter to choose which worldview they align with.
There is and should be no place in the Democratic Party for fascist authoritarian white supremacists.
My favorite explanation of Democratic party divisions came from Mike Dukakis, who tells a story of alley cats screaming, hissing and making loud noises all night long. When the neighbors went to check on the results of the carnage the next morning, they discovered that it was just alley cats making more alley cats. 🙂
“Twelve years of education is not enough anymore (to be middle class),” Biden said during a midday event on May 13 in Hampton, N.H.
Sixty-five out of 100 jobs today require more than a high school degree,” Biden said
So tell me, please, what is the Democratic answer to the 35% of jobs that do not require more than a high school degree but are no less essential to the American Economy?
How can a party choose to ignore the rights of 35% of the population to join the middle class because they do not have the formal education of a college?
My short answer is a vocational school in every district. It’s pretty ridiculous the Northeast Voke covers so much ground and has a waitlist longer than Harvards. Time for the southern urban half of the district to get their own voke. Time for a voke in every district in the country.
You want to talk about social justice? It’s high time for the trades to open up their ranks to more women and people of color. It’s time to use government bidding processes to reward the unions that already have and punish those that do not. Money talks and a good paying job without a degree is going to do far more for the dignity of the job holder than another handout or a McJob. Many of these trades have a higher demand than they have a supply of workers, so I do not buy the argument that only a college degree is the ticket to prosperity. It’s just not the lived reality of the kids I work with and their families.
I’m reminded of the late striker57 who always forced me to check my college educated privilege and remember that workers like him made our party into a winning majority in the last century and the path to a new majority runs through them again. Voices like his are totally missing in todays progressive movement.
Why do so many trucks I follow in the morning in Charlestown heading to the union halls in the Schraft circle have Trump and Walsh stickers? Or Trump and Lynch stickers? Is it because Marty and Stevie are racists or is it because they get that delivering jobs to their constituents matters as much as delivering votes on social issues and checking off litmus tests for the identity politics wing of the party?
My hero Tip was as liberal as they came on civil rights, foreign policy, and the like. He also delivered for his constituents and it’s because he remembered handling out shovel vouchers during the depression to out of work men. For a days work helping the community they’d get a days pay and the dignity of providing for their family. He never forgot those humble roots. It’s time for our party to regain its humility, it’s common touch, and it’s majority.
Not sure there is enough demand for a vocational school in literally every district.
Are unions really denying membership to women and minorities?
It’s been an ongoing issue in Boston construction in particular with a few articles outlining the issue. It’s less of a blatant discrimination and more of a need for both sides to make a conscious effort to reach out to one another. A lot of minority owned firms are not union for complex historic reasons and size reasons and a lot of the unions still tend to attract traditional demographics rather than the emerging majority minority Boston. It does seem both sides want to fix the problem, but it’s definitely a problem.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/06/business/economy/unions-race-boston.amp.html
Yes.
Voters across the world are choosing authoritarian populists over liberal democrats and it is incumbent upon us as the latter to ask why and to figure out how to stop it. Just as Blair and Clinton won back the Essex Man and the Reagan Democrat, we need to figure out how to win back Trump Democrats and keep Romney-Biden voters in the fold while preserving the Latino and black vote which has been slowly trending rightward the last few cycles. Calling Trump and his voters racists may feel good and may even be true, but as a strategy, it sucks and the study finding out why the original post brought up is really important and it would be wrong to ignore it and double down on the Helen Lovejoy strategy.
I have of course joined you in pushing back on the idea that we think only certain people deserve to be helped. I also think we are still obviously the better party for working people, though as usual our messaging could use some work.
Appreciate the support, but also hope you stay with us. I for one missed you and was very much hoping you would come back to participate in this particular thread.
Agreed. That’s close 40% of all voters. We are talking about the folks who voted for him once in either 16’ or 20’ and reject those lies. They are still gettable. It’s not a lot of people, but it’s more than the winning margin in the states that count.