That’s on her if she let her brother-in-law shut her down.
Policy explanation isn’t messaging. Messaging is a dumbed down catchy phrase that is memorable and which resonates. It’s basically branding & marketing.
And for all of Trump’s many faults, this is one thing that he’s an absolute genius at.
The problem with this is the Dems as bad as they are have a little nuance to their message. It’s not as simple as your life is a bit shitty because of those c&^%s. Not sure how that wins when most of the country deep down thinks there life would be better if it wasn’t for those c&^%s.
At least for cultural issues, it seems clear to me that Democrats have overstepped. People don’t like trans women in sports. They don’t like defund the police. They don’t like the vocabulary hectoring. Other than abortion rights, there’s not much Democrats are on the popular side of right now.
I know a lot of people hate to hear this, but imo there’s quite a lot of evidence that Democrats went too far left on cultural issues and need to move back toward the center. Downballot races seem to be confirming this.
Economic issues, I think, are a separate question. Hating billionaires and big corporations is still wildly popular. Workers’ rights are still popular. Paid family leave. Etc.
I’m not as familiar with UK politics, but your analogy to the Tories and National Front is really interesting and agreed that seems to be the path we’re on. But I’m not so sure it’s inevitable. It might be. But if Democrats had actually nominated Bernie, for example, would we still be on this path? I dunno. I could see a world where Democrats are the economic populists and Republicans are the social populists. I don’t know enough about history to know if there are examples of this setup or if it naturally trends away from that. Maybe it’s too late, but I still think that’s the way to go. Move left on economic issues, toward the center on social issues.
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Do you think Bernie isnt leftbound in the social policies?
Also, you cant be socialy populist when a contingent of your group wants to honest to god remove the amendment that allows women to vote
Well I don’t disagree with you on the nuance. But more than a decade later I can still remember Obama’s “Yes We Can.” I can still remember Bernie Sanders’ simple lists of policies.
Even where there is nuance to the message, it needs to be boiled down to something that distracted people overloaded with information can easily grasp onto and remember without effort.
That’s something the R’s have been doing far better than the D’s for quite a while now.
“MAGA”. It’s literally become a cult.
Good post. Bernie understood that you lead with the economic populism which leads to the cultural stuff, it does not work the other way around
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He is for sure. I’m not advocating for that and I’m not the biggest Bernie fan.
But when people think of him, what comes to mind is the economic populism. The ranting against billionaires and big corporations. And the pro worker message. That’s the popular stuff.
Take all that but stop pushing left on cultural issues imo.
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Can you go a bit further on this. Ok no trans people in sports, got it.
But there was no serious “defund the police” movement in this country. In every jurisdiction over the last 4 years police budgets have gone up.
So what else should the left not be pushing if I grant the first one? Are you honestly saying we lost a nationwide election over an issue that affects maybe 5000 people nationwide?
100% this
The other thing we have to end on the left is purity testing. It’s driving people away in droves.
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I would guess it means, in part, going after “defund the police” activists much harder. Their mere existence was a problem for some.
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The neocon ghoul endorsements just struck me as so funny all of a sudden
You mean they might have actually cost votes?? But the professionals decided it was good strat! Who cares that even GOP voters don’t give a fuck what Dick Cheney thinks. Well that’s not even true; tons of them had already thoughr for years that he was just a deep state con man
Listen, when a football coach makes a 4th down or end game decision, you just have to accept he knows what he’s doing and sees reality in a way that you can’t, because you’re a pony craving baby
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Now this makes sense. Not everyone has to agree with every component of the platform to caucus. I have no interest in pushing away the people who are anti-trans athletes, though I will be hopeful they will change their mind as the years go on.
These All In assholes continue to be the worst of the worst. I wish there was an easy way for me to transfer my follows from Twitter to Threads or Bluesky so I could ditch this app.
Bruce beat me to it, but I think the important bit is for the leadership (particularly the presidential candidate) to forcefully push back against it.
This isn’t as easy for Democrats, granted. But imagine you’re a low info voter. You see a million Republican ads about trans women in sports or defund the police or open borders or whatever. And you go online and yep, you see what seems like a sizable number of liberals advocating for it. Huh. But ok, is this really what the Democrats stand for, or is this a fringe position? So you go see what the leaders are saying. And what do they say? It’s some incomprehensible, mealy mouthed bullshit because they’re too afraid to make anyone mad. So you’re left with this confused feeling that well, maybe the Democrats really do support this, I’m not sure but I certainly know where the Republicans stand.
“Under my administration there will be no federal law allowing trans women in sports/defunding the police/etc.”
The problem isn’t purity testing, it’s purity testing too much. It’s obvious that Dems should purity test on something like January 6.
One of my arguments about the left is that they are bad at setting priorities. Everything becomes a priority to them when they aren’t even strong enough to wrest control of the nomination away from the party establishment. They should pick one issue and make that their one hill that they are willing to die on. I think it should have been billionaires/class warfare. I don’t think it should have been social issues and definitely not Gaza. It also shouldn’t be climate change because that’s something that you don’t run on but implement anyways.
That doesn’t mean those issues aren’t important or that you can’t have a strong opinion on them, just that they are not the stuff of purity tests. You find some way to co-exist with people who disagree, so long as they agree with you on your one big issue.
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one of gen z’s top issues is climate change