If this kills off any chances of AOC running in 2028, who’s the progressive white hetero male candidate to run, assuming we still have elections?
Again the electorate knows now that giving Dems power is not bringing Roe back. So why would people vote for Dems because of abortion.
I think you’re right lagtight!
I’ve posted before that the Dems make a lot more sense if you think of them as an organization the purpose of which is to raise money and distribute it to their attendant vampire corporations. Occasionally they try to win elections as a sort of side hustle. The Chair of the Democratic Party, Jaime Harrison, is a former corporate lobbyist who broke fundraising records in a race he lost to Lindsey Graham by 10 points. What does this tell you about the priorities of the party?
The real villain of the piece for me is Obama, who was the last time the Dems had a real functional brand, was swept into power on the back of the disaffected working class, and had total control of Congress. He could have made the Dems actually stand for something, instead he refused to take on any powerful interests and sold his supporters out. It was at this moment that the Dems embarked on this disastrous Suburban Strategy which, now that their racial coalition is disintegrating, leaves them without a coalition.
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For the Democratic Party, rear-guard action as the political opposition will not be enough. The party must also take a hard look at why it lost the election. It took too long to recognize that President Biden was not capable of running for a second term. It took too long to recognize that large swaths of Democrats’ progressive agenda were alienating voters, including some of the most loyal supporters of their party.
we had the cheney’s endorsements but it was that damn progressive agenda that pushed away centrists. need to push right…
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Democrats need to make it mind-numbingly simple imo.
“If you make less than $100k, I will give you a $5k check every year.” Period, the end. Then do it.
No complication, no graduated income brackets, nothing else. Make it so people don’t have to do ANY follow up work to understand it. When people ask, say billionaires will pay for it. Just like Trump did with Mexico and the wall. Except Democrats can actually make billionaires pay for it. Simple.
And don’t make it some convoluted deduction on tax returns, or people will never give you credit. Make it a literal check in the mail. Then blast it all over social media and talk about it nonstop on the campaign trail.
Add a couple more simple messages like this – preferably ones that give people ponies – and then repeat ad nauseum.
This is one thing Bernie (and to some extent, Trump) does well. He stays on message, and his message is concise. Most of the time, he talks about just a few things. Healthcare good. Billionaires bad. That’s a message that works when people have the attention span of a fly.
I don’t think perfect messaging would’ve been enough to win this time. I still think this was mostly about the environment. But it does matter.
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If Mark Cuban is carrying a skateboard this just might work.
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Obv never getting convicted but I’m here for it.
I shudder to think of the statistical horrors backing up his claim that real wages have been stagnant since the 70s.
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I agree 100%. Obama was a terrible president because he could have done a lot and ultimately did very little because he didn’t want to piss of people who wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.
Jon Stewart
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You can just run a TV celebrity for President.
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I started reading Jonathan Haidt’s book recently, and I think there are some interesting corollaries to politics. His thesis, essentially, is that smartphones and social media ruined the mental health of kids, starting roughly around 2012 when smartphones became ubiquitous and when social media took off. IMO, there’s overwhelming evidence that he’s correct. And it’s a trend that happened all over the world.
Anyway, that timeframe is suspiciously similar to some of the global trends we’ve seen in politics. The rise of fascism, disinformation, incumbents getting voted out, etc. Seems pretty clear to me that smartphones didn’t just break the brains of kids. Adult brains turned to mush too.
I don’t know if I’m making an actionable point here, but I think it really can’t be understated just how important it is that people are getting their information from absolute horseshit sources online. Like, I saw a bunch of stuff this cycle deriding republicans for appealing to the “terminally online” but… aren’t we all terminally online these days?
Again, I don’t know if there’s an easy solution to this, but I think democrats can’t keep hoping that people will stop inhaling bullshit on tiktok and read longform Ezra Klein articles instead. They won’t. Democrats need to find ways to reach people in this reality.
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Jesus Christ. There is close to zero chance AOC is ever getting the nomination let alone winning POTUS in America.
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The Democrats may never nominate a woman again in my lifetime.
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When does the Latino Elegy drop?
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I’ve read other viable explanations for this, there are a lot of things that correlate in similar time frames that don’t seem related to each other. That is a pretty popular one.
I have a hypothesis that would explain a lot of the last 4 years - to me it seems like people are getting actually stupider. Like, it is very clear to me as someone who is terminally online and occasionally forced to interact with the outside world. I first started noticing it from a few friends that got a little derpier in ways I couldnt explain, and then a broader trend I noticed online. I can’t really explain it very well, it’s like people are completely unable to hold 2 thoughts in their head at the same time, comprehend basic sentences of more than 100 characters, and seem completely unable to do make basic logical connections anymore like a=b=c, to a degree I never noticed in my life up until about mid ‘22 and getting worse.
I attributed it to covid secondary and tertiary effects - education was severely disrupted, that explains a lot of the reading issue but only among young people. social media brainrot, sure. again, mostly only young people. however, I read some interesting studies about long covid recently, and one was saying they had observed a 3-7 iq point score difference in patients who had been tracked since early in the pandemic and had contracted covid, with more severe illness correlating with higher cognitive decline. Severely ill/hospitalized patients experienced even worse decline.
~half a standard deviation in iq doesnt sound like a lot, but I think it would have a very significant and profound effect across society that explains a lot of what I think I’ve observed. it makes me very glad Ive been militant about getting vaccinated.