He did it the way the current Dems do it - he enacted policies that created good outcomes for people, but that people are completely incapable of connecting the dots on. People don’t like social security because it is a set of policies that result in the creation of retirement income sources, they like it because they get a check in their hands.
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When Obama gave them Obamacare and stomped two pretty stong R opponents. This is the point.
Kamala’s branding was “opportunity economy” which really doesn’t mean anything to anybody. I was starting to get a visceral reaction every time I heard her say that because it seemed like something a bunch of consultants came up with in a room and high-fived each other and then ran the entire campaign on it. On multiple occasions here, while we were live watching various big events (convention speech, debate, etc.), I asked why she wasn’t listing out a bunch of things they’ve done and will do.
This just feels like triangulation, only for pop culture instead of policy. Maybe if Kamala goes on Rogan and then does a few Kick streams with Nick Fuentes she can peel off some incel Neo-Nazis? I don’t have a better idea, but those people are not going to vote for the diet coke version of what Trump and the alt-right are selling.
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Their achievements were real but very technocratic, the typical voter would never be able to understand their policy achievements because they just don’t think like that. They don’t talk about what they will do for the same reason - the big impactful things that that might do that people will really appreciate and understand (more government direct subsidies, transfers, and payments to households) are things that their donor class tells them are third rail deal breakers.
What makes you think it will be democratic (actual democratic, not sham votes)? I don’t see any reason to think it will be. The older generation of Trump voters (including 96% of registered Republicans) are completely fine with voting for an authoritarian strong-man who had already attempted to violently overthrow one democratic election. Then the younger generation clearly don’t have any qualms about authoritarianism, they seem to love it. Hanging out outside the Trump campaign watch party on election night really shook me. The number of young men and women who were gleefully running around supporting Trump wearing t-shirts with his mugshot and pictures of him with his bloody ear was completely soul crushing. These aren’t rednecks or people without degrees. This are buttoned up young professionals and college students. I don’t see any stopping this train. And once Biden hands over the keys, they will all support whatever retribution the Trump White House and Republican Congress go for. They will see it as fair and just, too! They have fully bought into the idea that Trump was wrongly prosecuted and will be cheering for even the most violent, authoritarian methods of retribution. The supposedly decent conservatives either won’t pay attention, because they don’t pay attention to any media that will honestly report what’s going on, or they will just blame the Democrats whom they already believe are authoritarian monsters because of 40 years of right-wing propaganda.
I’m not in a very good place rn, if you can’t tell.
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The Biden admin was the most pro-labor, pro-working class one the Dems have had since Carter, loads of union endorsements, etc. Didn’t help. Sherrod Brown is on old-school, labor-friendly Dem, he got blown out by a car salesman. Possibly the Dems haven’t gone far enough and/or they’re not messaging it in a simple enough way for voters to understand. The other terrifying possibility is that this just isn’t what median voters want in 2024.
a lot of people think that since abortion got outlawed while Biden was President that he was the one responsible for it. people are dumb
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The Dems don’t offer any solutions to the problem on a federal level. The idea that it’s a “winning issue” for them presumes voters are complete and utter morons(might be true) who actually think Kamala or Democratic congresscritters are going to do something about it.
These people belong to the algorithm now. Good luck to Democrats as we have entered the Idiocracy phase. Unless they take my advice and run Matt Damon for president its so over.
It’s terrifying. My only advice is to take care of yourself and your loved ones the best you can and try and ignore this mess. There is literally nothing stopping the worst people in our country from doing whatever they want for the forseeable future. Our only hope is that they are more benevolent or lazy than we think.
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+1. I think part of the problem is that the Democratic Party has an ingrained self-image as a party of well-educated smart people. That sounds good, but it’s pretty bad. For one, many Americans are dumber than average and working class people are even less book-smart than average. Many minorities who are a key component of the coalition aren’t well-educated. It’s hard to build a durable coalition with people who suspect that you look down on them, especially if they’re sort of right about that.
The more concrete problem is that smart people are generally more ideologically extreme because their intelligence allows them to build out a consistent structure of beliefs rather than just believing some mish-mash. To be sure, in most groups the very smartest person will be anomalously moderate on the issues, but in general smart people are extremists. People like this are allergic to the implicit contradiction of including “but” in a sentence, which makes it easy to bait them into disastrous positions. Trans sports is a perfect example. The correct position is: “People with gender dysphoria really suffer. LWe should empathize with them and demand that they are treated with respect and decency if they choose to transition. BUT that doesn’t mean we can ignore the biological realities of testosterone and athletic competition and allow trans athletes to compete in leagues that were meant to provide a fair playing field for cis women and girls. It’s a tough situation, but all we can do is try to navigate it with common sense and compassion.” Regardless of whether that is the morally correct thing, a viable political party has to be able to say it, and, not only that, anyone who disagrees has to be a fringe, outcast figure. Politicians know to say something like this, but regular liberals are vehemently saying the opposite, voters are smart enough to understand that the politician is probably just pandering.
I picked that example because it’s the most uncomfortable, but there are lots of others. Mainstreaming Latinx/BIPOC/other weirdo vocabulary; low-key generalized skepticism towards men and white people; destigmatizing all sorts of anti-social but nonviolent offenses; the idea that socialism as a label shouldn’t be toxic. Smart, educated people have to accept the leadership of the dumb, ignorant folks who their party is supposed to be for. Once in a blue moon, the smart people can get away with using their positions to force through an unpopular position on something like climate change, but you can’t do it all the time, or your voters will all quit.
Democrats have been able to defy this logic for a long time because minorities voted for them out of the correct belief that the GOP is extremely racist. But that’s starting to lose traction. Every plan for buying off the stupids with free checks or propagandizing them more effectively is just a symptom of the fundamental problem.
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Maybe if we are lucky there is a special place in hell for people like Joe Manchin, the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bidens, RBG, Anthony Weiner, and a whole host of other complete and total cowardly ghouls who got us here.
There are always going to be fascists. Always. Blaming them for this mess is ignoring the fact that there were a million offramps along the way for the Dems and they refused time and time again to take any of them. And they did it for their own power and enrichment under the guise of “norms”.
The Dems have taken for granted all of their voters. Young people, women, POC, the working class and on and on. They have offered nothing except empty promises time and time again. Is it shocking these people didn’t show up and/or switched their votes to someone who actually will do a lot of what he says? Not really.
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Not living in reality. On the one hand, yes, Obama “only” implemented Romney’s healthcare plan when he came in on a D wave. On the other hand, even Massachusettsans were so opposed to what he was doing that that they used the death of a freaking Kennedy as an opportunity to send in a sub-replacement level R to kneecap the bill as the final touches were being put upon it.
America is a declining (from
extremely lofty heights) center right country that likes to swing back and forth every couple of years. Even monumental, historic fuckups like the Iraq War + overseeing the Great Recession only result in a wipeout for a cycle or two. So results are largely out of the control of the parties but what they can do is keep their ears to the ground to see what messages are resonating at the moment and then send a charismatic leader in to parrot those thoughts back to the electorate, preferably in an “authentic” manner.
The End.
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What’s funny is 65 plus is the only age demo that broke towards Harris compared to 2020.
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Average voter: I can’t afford groceries at the store. Inflation sucks.
Response: Actually, here is the correct definition of “inflation.” As you can see from the correct definition, inflation rates are now good! Hopefully this helps you understand why things will never get better.
What the average voter hears: I can’t afford groceries. Your solution to this problem is to reframe the current situation as “good.” I still can’t afford groceries.
It doesn’t really matter to the lowest quintile that wages rose faster than the top quintile when they were already drowning and are still drowning. The fact that people somehow still miss this is perplexing. It isn’t good at the bottom, and nothing is noticeably better for many people at the bottom. Pointing to these quintiles is irrelevant statistical chicanery.
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If you mean I’m not living in reality I totally disagree. On one hand they have told us for 9 years that we are facing an existential democratic crisis. On the other hand they did literally nothing to stop it when they had the chance. Do you think people are too dumb to see this?
The Obama example is another obvious one. He wasted his entire political capital and a supermajority on Romney’s health care plan. That is at best extreme political incompetence. Again do you think anyone is buying that electing Democrats will acommplish things like codify Roe, solve the Supreme Court, improve the ACA, or any of the other things they run on? You would have to be a moron of the highest order.
Either the Dems are liars or incompetent(probably both) but either way it’s obvious there aren’t enough voters still falling for it anymore im 2024.
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Also, a clip got posted recently of some college girl saying she’s voting Trump because he said “I won’t sign a national abortion ban”. I guarantee she’s not the only one stupid enough to think that statement means “I am the candidate that’s in favor of abortion rights”. (also, Narrator: He gleefully signed the national abortion/IVF/contraception ban the millisecond it crossed his desk.)
Newsflash: Trump is lightyears better at politics than the Dems. That verbage is almost certainly purposeful to trick people.
Ezra Klein’s post portem.
I still think Ezra Klein is probably the best interviewer or political podcaster. You can tell has taken a minute to think things through.
Cliffs: The Obama era of politics are over. It’s now the Trump era of politics. What he means by that is the transformation that Trump did to the Republican Party is going to have to be reacted to by Democrats, instead of Republicans reacting to Obama.
He felt there wasn’t enough time, even if it were possible, to create a political persona for Harris that wasn’t attached to Biden.
He also mentions alienating groups, like Rogan. Dems should have politicians going on Rogan, insert Bro podcast, Fox News, etc regularly to pitch their mainly economic ideas. His example was Bernie going on the Rogan podcast and then getting castigated for being sexist and racist for going on it. That tells Rogan he’s not welcome in the party, even though he said he likely to vote Bernie, implying he was at least gettable. His idea is that it allows large swaths of people to at least hear and see a Democrat in a relatable setting at least keep them curious.
He also mentions that a lot of core contingencies that Democrats thought were rock solid all shifted to the right, major metropolitan areas, black men, latinos, etc. means that something’s gone wrong with the core governance paradigm that Democrats have been doing, and then need to do a deep dive on how the run the governments where they have control to gain those contingencies back.
He does point out that while Democrats thought that Trump was an aberration last time, this time the shifts were so pronounced they can’t treat it as a one off, but also Trump’s win was relatively small. It wasn’t a Reagan blow out, it wasn’t a Bush '04 blow out, it’s probably going to be less of a win than Biden got in 2020. So there’s room to work with, Democrats just have to do it.
Anyways, I’d suggest listening to his show about it.
back.
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