Democrats Deliver!
Given their love of alliteration, I am shocked they didnât settle on MEGA MAGA!
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Liberal consultants are just more sophisticated grifters.
As Iâve said before, this makes perfect sense once you understand that this is what the Democratic Party is intended to do. The point of it as an organization is to raise money to pay someoneâs little brotherâs consulting company called like âStanning Progressâ to come up with bullshit like this. OF COURSE itâs designed to appeal to the kind of morons who retweet Occupy Democrats tweets, those are the people who donate to the Democratic Party. Thinking that âultra MAGAâ is a failure in messaging is based on the erroneous belief that the point of the Democratic Party is winning elections.
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This is it. The thing you and I agree on most strongly, I believe
Even Bernie is not innocent on this. Regardless of his intention, he is in practice the party fundraiser whoâs tasked with targeting a different group of donors most of the party could never reach. He gets his cut to decide where to spend that cash, and then the remainder is forwarded to the party at large. No small fraction. Possibly the majority of what his brand raises.
The political scientist Dick Fenno (who I once met) held that members of Congress have three priorities: gaining re-election, amassing power in Congress, and passing what they think is good public policy.
The main point of the Democratic Party is to help Democratic incumbents win re-election. They donât want to set a precedent for primary challenges to sitting Democrats because the day may come when they might be challenged. They donât want to see party resources go to other candidates while they own re-election is less than 100% assured. They donât want to see Democrats gain members who will join opposing factions within the party, diminishing the strength of their own factions. Those who fall in line and patiently wait while amassing seniority donât want to see anti-establishment figures rise within the party and cut in line. And while Democrats are not Republicans, there are many flavors of not-Republican, so while they may agree on not being Republicans, they often disagree on what good, not-Republican public policy looks like.
The consultant class are parasites who have latched onto political parties and convinced them that consultants are indispensable.
But Silverâs idea of paying Democratic operatives so you can do the opposite of what they recommend is a silly, overly binary view of the world. If they say to go east, does that mean one should go west? What about going north or south? Itâs easy to agree to be against something, but harder to agree on a single alternative.
Trying to come up with a single label like âUltra MAGAâ is dumb. Itâs a technocratic solution based on the flawed assumption that you can use reason and data to come up with the best possible answer. Thatâs not how politics, thatâs not how the minds of the masses work. If youâre looking for slogans and catchphrases, these things are best when they grow organically. See how âLetâs Go Brandonâ spread? In looking for effective messaging, Democrats need to be out there talking to people and throwing out all sorts of lines until something goes viral in out meme-hungry society. They should be spamming all sorts of word salads until something sticks in peopleâs minds.
People here who think they can just design a better strategy than Democrats are missing the point. Public opinion is not a deterministic system. You canât do A to guarantee a specific response B from the voting public. And while a lot of people here will probably have a better chance of coming up with a good idea that moves people, thereâs no surefire, killer strategy.
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I think the mistake here is to analyze âthe Democratic Partyâ in terms of thinking of them as a collection of members of Congress. Like if I want to answer the question âwill Facebook (or Meta or whatever the fuck) do anything to make their feed algorithm less destructive to societyâ, my thought process is âno they wonât because they want to make money and their algorithm is what drives the engagement that makes them moneyâ. My thought process does not involve breaking down the personal motivations and moralities of the members of Facebookâs board and executive team. The Democratic Party runs on money, and therefore the institution will gravitate towards whatever makes money regardless of the particular desires of its various members.
I can come at this empirically as well. Who got the loudest condemnation from party leadership, Joe Manchin for derailing the legislative agenda and humiliating the President, or Ilhan Omar and the other Squad members for various mild anti-Israel comments and actions. Which of these sins do you think represented the biggest potential blow to the partyâs continued electoral success? Which of them represented the biggest potential blow to party fundraising? What does this say about the priorities of the Democratic Party?
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So would it have been better if Trump had won reelection and got this recession and economy?
Would anything currently be different if Trump was in the white House? Roe still overturned, inflation, immigration still fucked, student loans not forgiven, people still dying from COVID, lack of future COVID funding, etc. What would be different?
If Trump had been reelected at least Dems and progressives may have a shot in the mid terms and 2024.
Roe getting fucked is a consequence of Trump winning in â16. I donât see great things happening if he gets another four years to pick SCOTUS justices.
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Cmon at the very least NATO is completely fucked, Ukraine gets zero support and weapons from us and possibly gets wiped out, and we probably lose Breyers seat meaning we probably lose every right since 1950 including brown vs board. Not to say we wonât now!
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Biggest things that come to mind are:
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Ukraine would be getting less assistance
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Scotus is different either b/c Breyer decides to stay on or b/c Trump names his replacement. Given the current court makeup, this might not change the outcomes in many decisions, but it would likely lock in the balance of the court for a longer period of time. And there are all of the lower court appointments too.
[ETA: just thinking about the Roe opinion alone, imagine how a Trump admin would handle a leak investigation + protests at the justices homes. I know Garland beefed up security for the justices, but am I wrong to think that Trump might have brought out the teargas and riot cops again?] -
I donât know exactly how, but Federal agencies like the DOE and HHS would be going HAM on culture war stuff like CRT in schools, trans issues, etc. Iâm not saying Biden has been good on these issues, but thereâs still some distance between ânot goodâ and âactively making the situation worseâ.
I felt much the same way when W won, like oh maybe the Dems will get their act together for the next round. Instead they just compromised and shifted further right. I can see now it was a coping mechanism for me.
Dunno, but weâre probably going to find out in 2025.
In hindsight, the 2004 election should have been the moment we realized it is completely hopeless.
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2000 tho
2004 was an even bigger gut punch. It was open knowledge that the whole WMD thing was a lie and yet the country gave W a ringing endorsement.
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I definitely felt way more hopeless after 2020 than I did after 2016. Guy completely fucks the economy and gets more votes than he did the first time? What the fuck.
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The consensus among politics regs is way too up and down. There was going to be a permanent democratic majority 5-6 years ago.
The problem for old Democrats is that they want to go back to the New Deal coalition, which had a lot of racist white, working class voters. Two things kept those voters in the coalition: tolerance of Southern racism and unions.
The New Deal coalition is dead. Dems need to adjust their positions so that uneducated white people are not a group they are targeting. They need to come up with a workable coalition that doesnât embrace that demographic. Sure, some of them will still vote blue, but itâs really time to just say fuck 'em.
I mean, he may have lied but he also killed a lot of brown people. Youâve got take the bad with the good.