DLC 2.0?
Is it time for the Democrats to move to the center?
After winning a landslide victory in 1964, the Democratic Party lost five of the next six elections. It would likely have been six of six were it not for the Watergate scandal, and even then, Jimmy Carter barely beat accidental President Gerald Ford in 1976. A group of party leaders formed the Democratic Leadership Council in an effort to steer the party back to the center and, famously, helped Bill Clinton win in 1992. Since then, the party has won the popular vote in seven of the last nine elections (inclusive of 1992).
Alas, two of those popular vote wins, in 2000 and 2016, resulted in Electoral College losses. Which is to say, losses. And, of course, Donald Trump won outright in 2024. Once again, some party leaders are blaming it on the party having been captured by the left and urge a move back to the center.
WSJ (“Rahm Emanuel, Teasing a White House Bid, Says Democratic Brand Is Weak“):
Rahm Emanuel, never humble about his political skills, is trying to accomplish something that seems far-fetched even for him: push his Democratic Party—rooted in the identity politics of the left—to the center.
The former congressman, White House chief of staff, Chicago mayor and diplomat is direct about what he thinks Democrats need to do to win national elections again. He calls the party’s brand “toxic” and “weak and woke,” a nod to culture-war issues he thinks Democrats have become too often fixated on that President Trump has successfully used against them.
While Emanuel is coy about what he wants next for his political career, he appears to be laying the groundwork for a presidential bid. He will be the headliner at a September fish fry for Democrats in Iowa, where the party’s nomination process traditionally started until 2024.
The Democratic presidential field is likely to be crowded. “Voters will be lucky,” Emanuel said. “They’ll have a real debate, one we didn’t have in 2024.”
[…]
In his usual frenetic way, Emanuel is positioning himself as a savior for the party even as he has flashbacks of the movie “Thelma & Louise” and its suicidal conclusion.
“I’m tired of sitting in the back seat when somebody’s gunning it at 90 miles an hour for a cliff,” the 65-year-old said over lunch at a restaurant overlooking the Chicago River.
At times, Emanuel sounds like he had already made up his mind to pursue the presidency, sometimes slipping into the past tense of a declared candidate and seemingly testing future stump speech material.
“If you want the country to give you the keys to the car, somebody’s got to be articulating an agenda that’s fighting for America, not just fighting Trump,” he said. “The American dream has become unaffordable. It’s inaccessible. And that has to be unacceptable to us.”
For a dose of populism popular in the party, he added: “The public’s not wrong. They figured it out. The system’s rigged. It’s corrupt.”
[…]
There are a few other potential 2028 Democratic candidates also suggesting party moderation. They include Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, as well as former transportation secretary and 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.
WaPo (“Democratic troubles revive debate over left-wing buzzwords)”:
Maybe it’s using the word “oligarchs” instead of rich people. Or referring to “people experiencing food insecurity” rather than Americans going hungry. Or “equity” in place of “equality,” or “justice-involved populations” instead of prisoners.
As Democrats wrestle with who to be in the era of President Donald Trump, a growing group of party members — especially centrists — is reviving the argument that Democrats need to rethink the words they use to talk with the voters whose trust they need to regain.
They contend that liberal candidates too often use language from elite, highly educated circles that suggests the speakers consider themselves smart and virtuous, while casting implied judgment on those who speak more plainly — hardly a formula for winning people over, they say.
The latest debate is, in part, also a proxy for the bigger battle over what the Democrats’ identity should be in the aftermath of November’s devastating losses — especially as the party searches for ways to reverse its overwhelming rejection by rural and White working-class voters.
“Some words are just too Ivy League-tested terms,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona). “I’m going to piss some people off by saying this, but ‘social equity’ — why do we say that? Why don’t we say, ‘We want you to have an even chance’?”
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear — who like Gallego is considered a potential 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful — made a similar point.
“I believe that over time, and probably for well-meaning reasons, Democrats have begun to speak like professors and started using advocacy-speak that was meant to reduce stigma, but also removed the meaning and emotion behind words,” Beshear said, citing such examples as using “substance abuse disorder” to refer to addiction.
“It makes Democrats or candidates using this speech sounding like they’re not normal,” Beshear said. “It sounds simple, but what the Democratic Party needs to do is be normal and sound normal.”
Other Democrats and progressives strongly disagree, saying the party’s problems can hardly be traced to a few terms that, they say, are used by activists far more than by actual Democratic politicians. There are good reasons for using nonprejudiced language and seeking new ways to be sensitive to those who have suffered discrimination, they say — and only bad reasons for jettisoning them in the face of Republican attacks.
“We are simply asking people to consider the language they are using as we move toward shared goals,” said Daria Hall, executive vice president of Fenton Communications, a progressive communications firm. “It is important to acknowledge the human element within populations and to recognize how they identify themselves. Language evolves; it always has.”
The divides are not clear-cut. But some Democrats are emphasizing a need to embrace centrist, common-sense ideas in a plainspoken way, while others say the key is to trumpet progressive, inclusive policies that fit the angry populist mood.
Recent years have seen a pattern of progressives embracing new terms that conservatives turn against them. From “woke” to “critical race theory” to “gender-fluid,” Republicans have long excelled at using such “politically correct” terms to depict Democrats as out of touch.
“Honestly, Democrats trip over themselves in an attempt to say exactly the right thing,” said Allison Prasch, who teaches rhetoric, politics and culture at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “Republicans maybe aren’t so concerned about saying exactly the right thing, so it may appear more authentic to some voters.”
She added, “Republicans have a willingness to paint with very broad brushstrokes, where Democrats are more concerned with articulating multiple perspectives. And because of that, they can be hampered by the words and phrases they utilize.”
Against that backdrop, a crop of youthful, up-and-coming Democrats is arguing that liberals need to abandon what they portray as a series of constantly evolving linguistic purity tests.
Gallego derided the term “Latinx” — which avoids the gender binary suggested by “Latinos” and “Latinas” — as “stupid,” saying few Hispanics use the term. He also recalled once being told not to describe his own background as “poor,” but rather as “economically disadvantaged.”
“Not every person we meet is going to have the latest update on what the proper terms are,” Gallego said. “It doesn’t make them sexist or homophobic or racist. Maybe they are a little outdated, but they have a good heart.”
Monocausal explanations for something as complicated as a national election are almost always wrong. While it’s true that Trump won all seven of the swing states, it’s also true that his overall vote margin was among the smallest ever. He won by only 1.6 percentage points and didn’t quite capture a majority of all votes cast. And was part of a global anti-incumbent wave.
And, again, Democrats won the popular vote in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020, so they’re not in anywhere near as dire shape as they were after getting blown out in back-to-back elections in 1984 (Reagan carried every state except Mondale’s Minnesota) and 1988 (Bush won 40 states and 426 Electors).
Still, while I’m skeptical Rahm Freaking Emanuel is the savior, he, Beshear, and others are on to something.
As someone whose PhD is about to turn 30, I’m certainly not opposed to the language of the academy. It’s quite helpful in its place and often points to real issues in society. Terms like intersectionality and white privilege convey important concepts in a crisp shorthand easily understood by those steeped in the professional jargon.
At the same time, they’re not only confusing but potentially insulting outside their academic context. You’re simply not going to convince a tradesman who’s climbed from poverty to the upper middle class through years of hard work that he’s privileged.
Similarly, while I laud the intent of trying to replace slave with enslaved person, it comes across as artificial and pointy-headed. Slave is a word that’s been around for centuries and is imbued with deep meaning that instantly conveys with a single syllable. Enslaved person, by contrast, is stilted and clunky. It tries to retroactively restore humanity to those held as human chattel, but comes across much like Ford’s attempt to claim Poland was never under Soviet domination.
What’s not quite clear from these conversations is whether Emanuel and company think this is simply a messaging problem or part of a broader need to rethink policy positioning. Is the problem the use of Latinx? Or is it their stance on issues like transwomen in women’s sports? Is the problem calling those here in violation of our immigration laws undocumented rather than illegal? Or is it about actual policies?
Two other quick thoughts occur to me in this context.
First, it’s noteworthy that the Democrats are having this conversation. They fully acknowledge that they lost the 2024 election and are trying to figure out how to win the next one. That’s in stark contrast to the Republican response to their 2020 loss.
Second, continuing the long-running OTB theme of weak parties, it’s not obvious what the institutional Democratic Party can do about any of this. If Emanuel, Beshear, or another more centrist candidate wins the 2028 nomination, they’ll naturally take the party along with them. Conversely, if an AOC wins the nomination, the party will naturally shift in that direction.
Recall that the GOP famously conducted an “autopsy” of their 2012 loss, concluding that it needed to be more inclusive: “We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too. We must recruit more candidates who come from minority communities. But it is not just tone that counts. Policy always matters.”
They nominated Donald Trump in 2016.
People who benefit from the status quo have been saying the Democrats need to move to the center since 2012, and it never works. No one on the right is going to vote for half a democratic loaf when they can get a full republican loaf. Meanwhile actual democratic voters get demoralized and just stay home.
All you have to see is how Republicans have been wildly successful while getting ever more batshit, because what voters actually want is to be inspired by a party that actually stands for something beyond “the beatings will continue until morale improves”
Academic words leak out of the academy because people find them useful. Why was equity useful? Because equality sounded like bullshit coming from people who built their careers on being unfair and deceptive. Not hard.
Move to the center, great. But don’t be under the illusion you can out-conform or out-dumb the Republicans by being angry about the use of latinx on some pointless DEI statement and then banning all mention of genocide in Gaza. You have to some fight in you.
From Emmanuel and Gallego on down, the Democrats doing this bit are being paid to lose.
Yes. Because it’s always time for the Democrats to move to the center.
(Especially if I get to define what the center actually is.)
My God, who still falls for this nonsense?
A lot of this conversation, which I have been noting in various pieces and on social media, feels a bit like the typical pundit who thinks that the world is explained by a simple version of the median voter theorem but then fails to ignore the complex reality of our elections, to include the fact that most of them are not competitive.
And while I am sure that there are all kinds of words that people find off-putting, and maybe some of the terms are truly a political liability (I understand why some people find the term “white privilege” offensive and why it might be a problem coming out of a candidate’s mouth, but by the same token I accept the concept as true, so sometimes truth is ugly).
I will say that language changes over time, and when there are attempts to change language, there is often pushback. But there are plenty of examples, ultimately positive ones, wherein we have, over time, adopted more inclusive, less racist/sexist ways of communicating, and that’s a good thing.
Grandpa is always going to balk at being told he can’t say what he wants to say, but that doesn’t make Grandpa right. (I am not Grandpa yet, but no doubt will be one day, and at some point, I suspect that I will confront the same issue. I hope I am not reflexive about it when it happens, but who knows?)
Let me add: I agree with James, all of this talk is probably a net good, but the real direction of the Democratic Party will be determined by the next nominee.
Also, let me reinforce that the notion that the Democrats are in the wilderness is rather belied by the fact that the only popular vote win the Republicans have prior to 2024 was 2004, and prior to that was 1988.
I fully understand that Trump’s win in 2024 is massively significant and may have altered the trajectory of American and global politics, but pretending like there was a massive repudiation of the Democrats at the ballot box in 2024 is just not empirically accurate.
If you are late to an event because of a flat tire, it may not be smart to spend a lot of time and money on rebuilding the transmission.
@drj:
This is part of the problem. Being in “the center” or being a “moderate” or an “independent” sounds high-minded, but all of those terms are Rorschach tests.
@Steven L. Taylor: Honestly, I think it’s as much about tone as about verbiage. This strikes me as about right:
It’s also, of course, true that a lot of the people who object to the new terms are sexist, homophobic, and racist.
There’s also something indecent about someone like Emanuel talking like he’s in touch with the common man. He spent his life sucking up to men like Harvey Weinstein for money. Everyone knew what Weinstein did. There was no mystery there.
Sucking up for money is actually unpopular, even if necessary. The Democrats want to believe their unpopularity comes from the menacing influence of Ivy-educated adjuncts, and in no way has anything to do with who they have cultivate for money.
I could have written that WaPo piece verbatim. In fact I could have written it a decade ago. Indeed I did write the essence of it ten years ago and was cancelled by the kidlit community for my pains. But better too damn late than never, I suppose.
If Dems want to navel gaze and wax philosophical about this, it’s fine with me.
What I want allllll of them to realize is that they get their say in the primary, and then they get a week or so to lick their wounds if their preferred candidate doesn’t win.
Then buck up and support the nominee. Even if that person doesn’t make their heart beat faster. Even if that person is a white male. Even if that person is a moderate, or someone who makes Bernie look middle of the road.
Republicans get this. You can’t clean up this massive mess if. You. Don’t. WIN.
@Steven L. Taylor:
This is part of the problem. Being in “the center” or being a “moderate” or an “independent” sounds high-minded, but all of those terms are Rorschach tests.
In many cases, centrism is about striving to understand prejudices and bigotry, while striving to not understand the movements against them. There’s a good reason for not wanting to talk about the ‘privilege’ of being able to be against racism and for social equity. But the reasoning occurs along the lines of making someone like John Kerry an effete liberal for windsurfing and not a real man, aka an overweight guy who drives a huge SUV and shoots things. Addressing it is dicey.
Meh. I dont think it’s the choice of words that is the real problem. Yes, it probably hurts when someone in the progressive branch fixates on some term that they want us all to use, but that’s a minor issue I think and the right will always find a way to make left leaning terms seem bad. Maybe on this issue we just need more people to speak out and say we arent interested in using those words so we wont.
Anyway, there is no need for really massive changes, but there is a need to focus on core economic issues. It is hard to build in Dem controlled cities. Some of them do have homelessness issues. Some Dem states and cities manage their finances poorly and at the national level while the Dems have been more fiscally responsible then the Repubs its really damning with faint praise.
Steve
Per Emanuel:
The corrupted system is the problem, so Democrats should stop using words like “intersectionality” and “social equity.” What the hell?
The recurring messages of the Harris/Walz campaign were:
“A new way forward”
“We’re not going back”
“When we fight, we win!”
“Hope is Making a Comeback”
Harris’ walk-in anthem was Beyoncé’s Freedom!
The messaging isn’t the problem. Win in 2026 & 2028 on inevitable Trumpism regret, then focus on fixing the structures that perpetuate anti-majoritarianism.
I hate the comparisons with the Dems’ electoral troubles in the later parts of the 20th century. It ignores the crucial context that what happened was part of a realignment that would see the South leave the Democratic Party, and while it’s true that Carter and Clinton were able to win in part on their strength as Southerners, what ultimately enabled Dems to regain power was not by recapturing the South, but by gaining strength in formerly Republican-dominated regions, particularly the Northeast and West Coast. And the main reason for that was the rightward drift of the GOP. What made the 1968-88 period so challenging for Dems at the presidential level was that the tradeoff hadn’t materialized yet–they lost the South without making up for it elsewhere, but they would eventually achieve the latter while most of the South left the party for good.
In other words, what happened was as much about region as ideology. Clinton’s main Democratic rival in 1992 was Paul Tsongas, a moderate from Massachusetts. While we don’t know whether he’d have beaten Bush if he’d become the Dem nominee, it’s doubtful he’d have picked up the Southern states Clinton carried.
The main reason for the departure of the South from the Dems was civil rights, initially, and then the rise of the Christian Right, particularly in how it weaponized issues like abortion, gay rights, and prayer in public schools–stuff Carter and Clinton generally held “liberal” positions on. Where Clinton moderated most was on issues implicitly connected to race, notably crime and welfare. But a lot of their success had as much to do with their simply being from the South as it did with any particular position they took. And the 1980 and 2000 elections showed that even that had its limits.
The connection between region and ideology within the Democratic Party has basically disappeared in the 21st century. For example, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock may not be lefties in the Bernie/AOC mold, but they’re way to the left of the previous Democrats to hold their seats, Zell Miller and Max Cleland. To be sure, elected Dems are going to be relatively more liberal or moderate depending on where they’re elected, but we don’t have distinct specimens like The Southern Dem or The Northern Dem anymore.
What I do think is similar between now and the Clinton Era is the GOP’s use of fringe issues to distract voters, and Dems’ losing their nerve over them. In the ’80s and ’90s it was flag burning–which Clinton to his credit didn’t take the bait on, though his wife later would as Senator (she co-sponsored an anti-flag-desecration bill). And just like with trans people in sports, politicians misinterpreted polling data suggesting the liberal position was unpopular–the fallacy in both cases is that it’s possible for the public to disapprove of something in theory without caring much about it one way or the other. We’ve been through more than a half-century of culture-war and anti-PC (the old way of saying wokeness) bullshit by Republicans. In that time, Dems have won some elections and lost some. When they lose, some Dems are quick to point their fingers at these niche issues as the culprit, while ignoring broader explanations such as economic dissatisfaction.
@Kylopod:
In the 2020 election, Pete Buttigieg said this during the debates:
This was true then and it’s true now.
@Scott F.:
It sounds like meaningless tripe to me, even if it is meaningless tripe in the common vernacular. I had forgotten all of those until your comment reminded me they happened, and three of the five I’m just taking you at your word for — they sound familiar I guess, definitely plausible.
I appreciated Walz calling the Republicans weird. That stuck. That explained a lot.
As you acknowledge in the comments, all this political posturing is mere theater. Democrats of all stripes mostly agree on 90% of the issues though implementation strategies create some friction. To fine tune the message, the party needs to rally around a leader (Obama?) and pound the air waves and social media. Democrats need to discuss Trump’s fitness and his rapacious greed. Democrats in disarray is a tired old cliché. I also think that when voters vote for stupidity, they need to be called on this. They violated their civic duty and need to be told thusly. (“You voted for a manifestly incompetent moron who talked about immigrants eating pets which tells us you don’t take your franchise seriously, it is time to do so”.)
To my mind, “move to the center” and “use different language” are not at all the same idea. Not even close.
I endorse “use different language” and I am an academic. I have worked to take complex ideas, break them down, and make them easier to understand, using the language I grew up with.
I’m not the only one. Academic-speak has its uses, as James points out. Not in politics. Not in talking to the people I went to high-school with. I want to communicate with them, so I work on it. THIS is the job of a politician. It’s important.
The concept of “privilege” is solid. I am happy to use the concept, but not the word. For instance, “born on third base and thinks he hit a triple”. Or, “that [black] guy has had to deal with shit I’ve never had to deal with”.
When one uses academic language to a non-academic audience, one is asserting one’s authority, and it risks them rejecting that authority. (Yes, this is Topsy-Turvy Land).
“White privilege” sounds like it was carefully focused grouped to find the exact phrasing that would offend the most people. It’s breathtakingly bad. It stops people from listening.
“Intersectionality” is just confusing. Is it about intersex people or sectional sofas?
And a lot of the “people first” language just comes off as inauthentic.
One of Donald Trump’s great strengths is that he comes across as authentic — that man really hates brown people, and he really feels aggrieved, and whatever stupid shit is coming out of his mouth he believes, at least for a moment. It’s often terrible, but it’s real.
I don’t think Democrats should follow Trump’s example on much, but they need someone who can either be authentic or simulate authenticity. Someone unpolished and sometimes crude. Someone who isn’t visibly adjusting their views for the crowd. Whether that’s someone who is authentic, or just a really good actor kind of doesn’t matter (I’ve been saying we should get George Clooney to run for years, only half joking).
Anyone who is in public saying that the Democrats need to moderate should be rejected. It’s a center-left party (more center than left, I would say, but whatever) and it could go a little bit center or a little bit left and it wouldn’t change much, but just do it rather than talking about doing it. Don’t reward shifty little weasels.
AOC isn’t out there spending all of her time talking about how Democrats need to move to the left — she’s out there talking about issues and values from a more left perspective. She’s genuine. She’s authentic. There’s no reason that a moderate couldn’t be doing the same other than that moderates suck.
But let them go out and explain how they want the government to do slightly fewer inspections of children’s genitals than Republicans do, and then roll the savings from that into business empowerment zones (or whatever moderates stand for) rather than complaining about the left.
In short, we should be looking for candidates that can casually drop an f-bomb in public. Whether they actually do or don’t doesn’t matter, just have that ability. It’s not a coincidence that Biden’s popularity waned the more time passed from his famous f-bomb.
@Jay L Gischer: I think one of the continual, generations-long problems in Dem messaging is simply the fact that Dem positions are generally more complicated than Republican ones. We tend to think of Clinton and Obama as having been the party’s most effective communicators in the past half-century, but both suffered their biggest political setbacks while trying to sell a giant, piecemeal, rube-goldberg-esque health-care plan. I think it says something that Obama’s signature legislative achievement while in office is best remembered for a name Republicans invented as an insult. Clinton and Obama were talented campaigners, but neither was a whole lot better than Joe Biden when it came to selling their policies.
Of course “Medicare-for-all”–a term that is a lot broader in what set of policies it applies to than is usually acknowledged–is a strong phrase. But there’s a reason Clinton and Obama opted for proposals that maintained much of the private, for-profit, employer-based health-care system, and that’s the long history of presidents failing when attempting to create a single-payer system. FDR twice declined opportunities to pursue one, fearing backlash from the AMA. Truman made multiple pushes for such a system, and failed. Ted Kennedy was an advocate of single-payer in the 1970s, until he concluded it was not politically feasible, and that’s what pushed him toward the set of policies that formed the basis of the ACA. He claimed his single biggest mistake as Senator (well, aside from Chappaquiddick) was refusing to work with Nixon on a non-single-payer health care plan.
tl;dr I don’t think there’s a quick solution to the Dems’ messaging problem as long as we insist on being a party devoted to transformative but incremental policies. We can’t dumb down our message without dumbing down the messengers.
Anyone who thinks that we should listen to Rahm Emanuel needs to be reminded that he LOST AN ELECTION TO LORI LIGHFOOT. There are precious few things Chicagoans agree on. Our burning hatred of Rahm Emanuel is one of them. I’m willing to guarantee that if he ran he would not win Chicago/Cook County. Absolutely no one likes him.
Also, we’ve been pivoting to “Moderates” for 40 years. Exactly where has gotten listening to Emanuel or James Carville gotten us? Those are people that want to be Republicans, but that brand is too toxic.
The DNC was formed to keep and attract large donors. As are Rahm Emmanuel, Gavin Newsom, the “Abundance Agenda”, and whatever other centrist Pundit’s fallacy advice is out there. It’s good the dems are doing a post-mortem, and James is correct that the GOPs didn’t follow the advice of their post-mortem. And look where that’s gotten them: a federal trifecta plus the Supremes.
A couple days ago Paul Krugman interviewed Barry Ritholtz. The topic was really investment advice, and that most of it is bad. But Ritholtz offered an opinion on polling which is also the best short description of our electoral politics I’ve seen.
Karl Rove said modern national elections are all turnout elections. Rove was, and is, a raging asshole, but he understood politics. The D leaning “independents” aren’t going to be motivated to get off their asses and vote for Republican Lite.
@Gustopher: What’s the George Burns’ line?
([CRT TRIGGER WARNING!!!] And I thought that the main difference between Biden and Harris is that the whole “authenticity” thing only works for certain people. The only person of her complexion for whom authenticity worked so far had a last name that started with “O” and may well have been a genuine unicorn. Maybe we just didn’t see it at the moment.)
ETA: And while I’m here, “One of Donald Trump’s great strengths is that he comes across as authentic — that man really hates brown people, and he really feels aggrieved, and whatever stupid shit is coming out of his mouth he believes…”
The key may be to match authenticity and content.
@just nutha:
I think that has more to do with gender than race. Female politicians are a lot likelier to be called inauthentic. Part of that is our culture’s ingrained misogyny, and part of it is the complicated, contradictory demands of femininity, especially in a role that women were historically excluded from. Politics is supposed to reward those who project strength, but if a woman does it, she risks being seen as overly masculine.
In any case, politics is always in part a performance. Women just have more demands than men when it comes to how they’re expected to perform. It’s like the paradox of plastic surgery, where the best jobs make it look like you didn’t have plastic surgery, but simply aged well.
For that matter, when’s the last time a female politician has been widely described as possessing “charisma”? That’s much less of a problem you see with race. The charismatic black (male) preacher is a familiar trope in our society. I don’t recall Jesse Jackson suffered from a perception of inauthenticity. Obama may have been a unicorn in some ways, but not because of authenticity–indeed, one of his weaknesses was that he was often described as “aloof” and “professorly”–and that itself had to with the contradictions surrounding race in our culture, where he had to avoid coming off as an Angry Black Man, and got accused of being one by the right anyway.
Granted that the issues are too complex to say it was due to one thing. But the low information voter mostly didn’t like a lot of illegal/undocumented immigration, and Biden’s rhetoric on that made it seem like a free-for-all (whether that’s true or not is almost irrelevant).
But the part about the system being rigged – I don’t know anybody who disagrees with that. And if you can manage to point out how much Trump and Musk et al are profiting, which has to be two orders of magnitude more than anything Nancy Pelosi or Hunter Biden ever did, then maybe you have a chance to get through to people.
(Or maybe people don’t care about open corruption and fascist dictatorships anymore. What do I know?)
All current handwringing aside, I’ve been saying for a long time that the Democratic Party has been ossified for years. We saw Joe Biden ossify in real time. And, the Clintons? Please, they have been a part of Party leadership ruminations for going on way too many years now. This is the time to throw them off the bus for good. And, the Senate? Please … Chuck Schumer … it’s well past time to check him into the Hotel California, never to return to Washington again.
I see this as a great opportunity for new Democratic Leadership to emerge. I don’t know who it could be or will be, but it’s long past time to get serious about changing the guard. Bring it!
@Franklin: I’m not sure that people for whom the government “works,” irrespective of how they define the term, ever care about open corruption or fascist dictatorship. The “good Germans” who were deluded into going along because reasons may well be another rationalization. But I’m too cynical and understand that about me.
Oh please. Left wing buzzwords? Lol The D.C. media is as out of touch as D.C. politicians.
The United States is a global laughingstock. China and Russia are making fools of us (they didn’t need much help tbh). We are the only Western, wealthy, modern high-tech developed country without paid family leave or high-speed rail — it actually strains credulity to call the US “modern” anymore. We are increasingly backwoods: we struggle to keep our population housed.
Left wing buzzwords are not warmongering, mass shooting, price gouging, paying slave wages, blocking clean energy, blocking debt cancellation, denying climate change, throwing 14 million Americans off healthcare, abolishing 5th Amendment due process, releasing 1500 Jan 6 terrorists, gutting air safety with DOGE mass layoffs, letting the mentally ill have guns, creating $4 trillion deficits with tax cuts for billionaires, using church positions as a cover to rape kids, and shoveling trillions in tax cuts corporate socialism to welfare queen oligarchs like Elon Musk.
Here in the world’s richest nation people frequently die from lack of affordable healthcare. But effete media elites and the Vichy Dems who worship them want us to waste time on left-wing buzzwords?
American democracy is already suffering from having one party focused on distraction voters with childish nonsense. We don’t need two. Democrats — not just politicians, but also rank-and-file voters –have a civic duty to focus attention more on the country’s serious shortcomings, and less on “A liberal buzzword mean tweet bothered me.” Leaders are supposed to lead. Too many liberals are easily-spooked and panicky to push back on propaganda distraction tactics.
Dems need to tell the corporate media to fk off and get a lot tougher. The Dems who grew up in or were elected in red states — Walz, Beshear, Cooper, Buttigieg, Warnock — get this, though expressed differently. When you grow up exurban Georgia, you learn to recognize and shut down rightwing bs.
I doubt primary voters, craving strength, will allow the 2028 Democratic nominee to be some weak wobbler who has been brainwashed to hate the Clintons and Bidens as much as MAGA, or who sounds like a Fox News host on election denial, DEI, and “left wing buzzwords.” They need to tell the corporate media to fk off and tell the people what they’re gonna do about housing, healthcare, Putin, and the Nazis trying to take over our country.
@Gustopher:
I wouldn’t bet that an assumption and an appeal to the bottom line “goodness” of the US public is a winning formula…except for maybe this guy.
It’s a majority white quasi-racist country. Always has been. LBJ, IIRC, said that the Civil Rights Act was the right thing to do but would cost the Democratic party it’s majority for several generations. He was right. Took a couple decades but it lost the South totally. This is a reality that means it doesn’t matter how one phrases “white privilege” when one should be talking about that tangentially and very carefully, if at all.
People are largely selfish critters who portray themselves as anything but in focus groups. Ideology has to take a back seat to pragmaticism. As Michael Jordan likes to say: “Winning has a price.”
@Steven L. Taylor:
No. It isn’t a net good. It helps no actual politicians or party members or the party as a whole.
The only people it helps are pundits, wanna-be pundits, and anti-democrats.
Corporations, organizations and politicians who are successful don’t tell us their marketing strategy. They just tell us who they are through words and actions. If they are seen as authentic, they get to test their program and messaging and, if the economic context is permitting , have a chance to win.
The reality is that our national elections almost always are a referendum on the economic performance of the incumbents. Our voting population are ignorant and ill-informed about who the candidates are and what they would do if elected.
All this focus on messaging is mostly make-work for folks who aren’t actually in the game.
@dazedandconfused:
It’s a majority white, quasi-racist country where the white quasi-racists don’t want to see themselves as racist. Less white supremacist than “what is wrong with black folks?”
We like to think of ourselves as better than we are, and a lot of people don’t like seeing white supremacists since it tears away the excuses for their own behavior and beliefs. A fig leaf of respectability is required.
Any discussion of white prilege has to be in a “softer boot on the neck” way (conveniently, this softer-boot is pretty much reality), and it helps a lot if racist policies are mentioned at least partly in how they hurt white people — work requirements for Medicaid or SNAP means that your elderly mother has to fill out confusing paperwork perfectly or get kicked off the benefits she earned.
Proud Boys, 3%ers and other Nazis are wearing masks these days. It’s certainly not because they are losing power — it’s because they are much more visible now and about 65% of Americans don’t want to be associated with them. (Sadly, a lot of Americans don’t yet realize that lots of other, “respectable” groups (cops) aren’t much better)
@Gustopher:
This tendency long predates the country’s “quasi-racist” stage. Here’s Strom Thurmond during his 1948 presidential campaign: “We do not invite, and we do not need…rabble-rousers who use race prejudice and class hatred to inflame the emotions of our people.”
That was from the same campaign of a man who gave fiery speeches warning about N-clang invading white people’s homes, churches, and swimming pools.
Long before they complained about PC or wokeness, the loudest racists were those most indignant at being accused of racism. It’s part of the whole rationalization game where people out to oppress others act like they’re the real victims.
Before any Republican can admit the objective reality of Donald Trump to themselves both in private and in public, they have to die an internal death to their personality. Republicans have wrapped themselves up with Trump and are blind to his myriad of faults. And because they refuse to accept reality on reality’s terms, that’s how it can happen again because it is happening here.
The problem with Going To The Center is that Going To The Center is coddling Republican feelings… and Elon Musk told us that empathy is a weakness.
Instead of “going to the center” [which in 110% of cases means adopting Republican policies],
Democrats should run AOC – twice – and Republicans who have feelings should self-deport.
@Gavin:
I’d argue that compared to most, if not all, high income countries, the Democratic party is somewhat right of center.
They’d be moving to the right and leaving the center behind.
Democrats just have to find someone who can move the Democrats toward Clinton’s winning issues such as immigration control, abortion safe but rare, etc. Oh and somehow embrace the revolt of the accountable class personified by DOGE while keeping the unaccountable class on campus, in the bureaucracies, etc.
Richard Miniter, in the longer video the link above comes from, pointed out the Democrats are a coalition of special interests which needs someone who can hold the disparate groups together. Any move toward recovering some of the voters who joined the consensus Trump created on the Republican side to win in 2024 risks internecine war in the Democratic party.
@JKB: As far as I can tell, the only thing all Republicans agree on is that they don’t like Democrats. They don’t, as far as I have seen, even agree on why they don’t like Democrats.
So, yeah, Democrats are not homogeneous. Their arguments can be pretty intense, too. Honestly, put any three people, let alone 100 million, and you’ll get disagreement. Democrats are far more aligned on what kinds of policies they want to see enacted than Republicans, though.
This is the description of pretty much any political party anywhere. Including Republicans.
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