Here’s where I think we are with regard to our message and having it penetrate the vast stupid emptiness of media in our time:
- The Democratic Party establishment / electeds, especially those who have been around for a while, do not like to “do politics” between elections. There are some efforts, but on the whole, the Democratic media ecosystem is a far cry from the right wing media ecosystem because Democrats only want to campaign between roughly May and November of an election year.
- Any effort to do year-round messaging/politics for the left or center/left has been grassroots and underfunded. This blog, a community-financed effort with unpaid writers, is an example. Similarly, today’s for-profit blogs, Substacks, are generally fragmented and have small communities around them: for-pay content is a total dead end for mass messaging.
- Around the mid-2000s, say 2004-2010, blogs actually had a decent following as alternative media, but the rise of social media since then has lessened our reach, for a number of reasons:
- Some people who would otherwise blog instead just pushed out social media posts
- Social media runs on advertising and Democrats’ inclination not to run year-round campaigns left us with smaller pocketbooks compared to the right.
- Social media algorithms are tuned to promote outrage and the right is a rage machine. We aren’t.
- Dems have a few deep pockets donors who might be inclined to build some kind of media ecosystem, but for a number of reasons, these efforts never go anywhere. The reasons include:
- The fecklessness of the rich, who do things for idiosyncratic, ego-driven reasons.
- The lack of any real incentive for donors to donate (i.e., they won’t profit from tax breaks or other incentives Republicans dangle in front of their donors).
- The fact that Democrats don’t have rich corporations on their side, and they play a huge part in pushing the messages of the right.
- Democrats’ messaging is consistently sabotaged by a group of “centrist” “savvy” pundits and political consultants who shy away from controversial messaging and believe that some sort of mealy-mouthed triangulation is the way to win elections. Matt Yglesias typifies this sort of thinking, but there are others, such as Seth Moulton, who has an op-ed in today’s Post about “the word police”.
- The post-election calls to abandon trans rights on the parts of some pundits is a good example of this.
- The false statement that the Harris campaign was too “woke” is another.
I’m sure there are other barriers to our messaging getting out, but that’s about all I can think of in my post-Thanksgiving hungover state.
bjacques
Democratic post-election exhaustion vs Republican outrage, which clearly never sleeps
EDIT: For what it’s worth, Democratic women hit the ground running January 21st 2017 and organised and ran for office, generally outperforming expectations year on year, even in special elections, up through this November, with one glaring exception.
Suzanne
I am skeptical that there is a market for a left-y counterpart to Fox News.
I would love to see if this generation can come up with something in the vein of the Daily Show. I think the comedic tone is critical to keeping people engaged. Stewart, Colbert, Oliver, etc….. those people are all my age. So is Rogan. We don’t need content. Younger people need content in their aesthetic.
p.a
Atrios touched on this today at 2:30
https://www.eschatonblog.com/2024/11/dems-and-media.html?m=1
Mendo
Great summary. The only thing I’d add/emphasize is that one thing the right seems to be able to do really well is inject politics subtly into “non-political” areas, e.g. the manosphere podcasts. Are sports political? Of course they are! But most observers would say no, since they don’t really see the underlying assumptions about masculinity, competition, celebrating the military, etc as political. The right has mastered everyday, lowkey political activity that doesn’t appear to be political. From megachurch sermons to sports podcasts to evening news on Sinclair network stations.
And yeah, all that stuff costs money. The billionaires can fund that shit 24/7/365. The Dems can reach parity, more or less, for 6 months every 4 years when it comes to electoral campaigns, but the right has been shaping the battlefield for the other 42 months.
featheredsprite
Since women seem to be more amenable to extended politics, perhaps we can try to engage them. An example wou;d be a 50-state push for abortion access. Or maybe some other topic.
I am so od I no longer know what moves younger women.
Geminid
Virginia Democrats will be doing politics next year. We have a Governor and 100 Delegates to elect.
I’m looking forward to it, and to hearing from all the newly minted Virginia politics experts. I’m gonna learn a lot!
Betty Cracker
I think an underrated reason Dem electeds don’t campaign full time is that they’re actually doing their jobs, i.e., working on legislation. Repubs are full-time rage farmers. I don’t know how to correct an imbalance like that without changing the nature of the party.
Gretchen
I just finished reading Wild Faith, about the evangelical homeschool ecosystem. Those folks deliberately keep their kids from any outside sources of information. Just Christian media and the church. This picked up steam in the 80s and 90s. Those kids are adults now and going into politics. Their preachers all told them God commands them to vote for Trump against the baby killing Marxists. I think it’s an important book that helps define part of our problem. I don’t know how you get through to those people though
Baud
You’re comparing apples and oranges. On our side, you’re talking about the party, and on the other, the entire right wing propaganda machine, which is far more extensive than the party itself.
Gretchen
The paywall point is important too. Joe Rogans show is free. Newspapers all have paywalls.
UncleEbeneezer
We have a whole wing of our coalition and numerous media (blogs, podcasts etc.) that do nothing but stoke rage. Rage against our own Party/candidates.
Salon, The Nation, The Intercept, Jacobin, Chapo, Young Turks, Mehdi Hassan do nothing but criticize Dems. They are one of the reasons all of Biden’s accomplishments never got the credit they deserved. People were much more interested in bashing him for being old and Gaza.
John S.
@Betty Cracker:
What a wonderfully colorful metaphor!
It’s true, the rage farmers are busy planting and tending to their rage, which only gets harvested every couple of years at election time. Nobody expects them to do otherwise.
I don’t think Democrats would get away with that. People actually expect them to do things while in office.
Aziz, light!
I’ve long had nothing but contempt for Democrat-hating lefties who believe that burning down our government will promptly lead to a progressive paradise rising from the ashes. Not that I’ve changed my tune about them, but I now think the only way forward will be from some degree of collapse, after Trump voters have paid a real price for their arrogance and stupidity. The collapse will come because the corruption and self-dealing and damage to our economy, national security, environment and societal norms will be off the charts. What follows won’t be the progressive pipe dream but, I hope, some broader middle-ground consensus. If we just swing the power pendulum back, we will never break free of this self-defeating cycle.
Messaging about the goodliness of liberal policies will not break through the social media distortion field. They will have to admit to themselves that their god king is a failure and their movement a fraud.
Steve M.
Soros pere et fils seem willing to fund groups that don’t generate financial profit for them. Why not this, if they want to live in an America that’s more Republican than Democratic and want to resist Trumpism/Putinism/Orbanism?
And while I’m skeptical of the conventional wisdom that the leopards of American authoritarianism will eat the faces of the rich eventually, you might think some rich people would want to avoid authoritarianism because it’s destabilizing and because the authoritarians demand greater and greater tribute from the rich. But so far they all seem unconcerned.
Gloria DryGarden
@Suzanne:
“Dems have a few deep pockets donors who might be inclined to build some kind of media ecosystem, but for a number of reasons, these efforts
never go anywhere “have not gone anywhere yet.id like to support any growth of useful news sources. And support of said donors.
I’ve just heard a TikTok video listing companies that were big donors to djt and proj 2025. I’m going to have to adjust my shopping habits. The one that hurts most is ace hardware, and Perdue chicken. I don’t mind skipping Walmart, or my pillow. The list of companies to avoid is long.
John S.
@UncleEbeneezer:
You make a good point. But it also exposes the asymmetry of the left wing vs. right wing media ecosystem.
I’m pretty sure that Salon, The Nation, The Intercept, Jacobin, Chapo, Young Turks and Mehdi Hassan combined don’t have the reach of Joe Fucking Rogan.
dc
From Scientific American, “How Hope Can Be More Powerful than Mindfulness, In difficult times, a forward-looking mindset may be especially helpful”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hope-can-be-more-powerful-than-mindfulness/
John S.
@Gloria DryGarden:
There’s a fantastic app my niece turned me onto called Goods Unite Us. You can pretty much see exactly who all our brands are donating to politically.
https://www.goodsuniteus.com/
UncleEbeneezer
@John S.: Very true. The right-wing ecosphere thrives because Racism, Misogyny and Xenophobia are very popular and always have been.
Betty Cracker
@John S.: Great point. The most recent TPM podcast made the related observation that among Repubs, the extremists are lawmakers while Dems get pasted for views expressed by lefty extremists who have zero power and little influence in the party. “Both sides!”
Starfish (she/her)
@Suzanne: I agree. Younger people need content in their aesthetic.
I enjoy Amber Ruffin. Here she is talking about Hasbro dropping the Mr. from their Potato Heads and how we all know that potatoes are boys.
Kristine
My own bullshit hypothesis which has likely already been said many times in many ways: any way forward that relies on appeal to better angels (any degree of socialism, social justice, equality, tolerance) is always going to face an uphill battle against lowest common denominator lizard-brain fear/hierarchy/acquisition. It’s bottom line basic and I have no flipping idea how to battle that with the current set of tools.
The best approach I can think of is the appeal to enlightened self-interest, but that requires a lot of explaining and convincing people that it’s okay if other people get support too.
ETA: when you have people saying that Jesus was too woke, 🤷♀️
Marmot
@Betty Cracker:
Ages ago some article in The Nation examined where money on “the left” went, compared to money on “the right.” The answer is that our side spends money on a lot of groups that help people—indigent defense, human rights, etc.—while the other side spends on think tanks and propaganda.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Betty Cracker:
They’re also on the fundraising hamster wheel, calling donors from little rooms near the Capitol in DC.
Betty Cracker
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Truth.
Starfish (she/her)
@Baud: Yes, Chris Rufo holds no office. He is just some dude who has decided that he is going to say things about education (that he has no background in), and people just go around treating him like he is credible. That one hate lady who ran Libs of TikTok was just some rightwing asshole, and wingers decided to elevate her to power.
They weren’t over here bellyaching about how maybe that is not the right tone. They just went “Yes, AND” to all of everyone’s looney beliefs to expand their appeal.
You want to wear a tin foil hat? Yes, there is a place here for you. Look at the vegan dude with the funny horns on his head. Go sit over there.
Suzanne
@Starfish (she/her): As we discussed last night….. we’re all fucken old. Whatever comes will not have our tastes/aesthetics in mind,
I do think that becoming the unfunny side is a really difficult thing.
Lobo
@Kristine: Simply, the Repubs play by Behavioral Economic rules and Dems by Classical Economic ones. Emotion over reason. They tell stories, Dems recite stats. For example, the story of Transgender women as a threat to women/girls. We recite a list of stats. Instead, we should punch back with a story of how women and girls are in way more danger from conservative male preachers and male politicians.
Melancholy Jaques
I am pretty sure that what they mean when they say “too woke” is that the candidate was not a white male centrist. Harris is a woman of color. To them, her very existence is “too woke.”
Gretchen
@Lobo: Also women and girls are endangered by busybodies policing bathrooms. AOC accusing Mace of wanting to do genital inspections seemed to get to Mace
Starfish (she/her)
@Suzanne: Josh Johnson’s career is really starting to take off.
Fleeting Expletive
@John S.: The site is fascinating. Seeing a graph showing, say, McDonalds relative commitment pro or con for things like universal health care, immigration. It’s entirely general, and I’d like to find sources and citations. It might influence choices if people knew or could easily compare social equity profiles for the daily choices we make.
John S.
@Kristine:
That’s what I always found remarkable about Jesus. The code of ethics he proposed was radical in his day, but here we are thousands of years later and we still can’t manage to live up to the simple standard of the golden rule — despite all our so-called evolution.
arrieve
@Suzanne:
I think trying to counter the Fox News ecosystem is fighting the last war. Democrats need to be where the voters we want are, and we need to be there relentlessly.
One of the ESL teachers I work with reported that two students in her class who voted for Trump said it was because FEMA gave all the money that should have gone for hurricane relief to migrants. I know they didn’t hear that from Fox because they don’t speak English well enough.
I don’t know how we counter all of the Russian bots and deliberate misinformation on social media. But having funny, honest, true information in some format that appeals to people is a good start.
Steve LaBonne
My theory which is mine is that this was pretty normal thermostatic voting, with a bit of a tailwind from a worldwide anti-incumbent trend. Too many low info voters are incapable of understanding that the Republicans are no longer a “normal” political party and can’t even see normal from where they are, and shouldn’t be trusted as half of a rotation. Elaborate theories (all of them) of what Democrats should have done or should do differently are pretty much a waste of time.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
We still need to think about how to deal with a polarized electorate and be more competitive in a lot of states.
Baud
JB Pritzker is on Blue sky.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: We do but it won’t stop the thermostatic behavior and each swing to the Republican side will continue to be worse than the last. Honestly I think the biggest boost we’ll get will be Trump leaving the scene rather than anything we do. A significant number of his voters are his and his only.
Geminid
@Baud: I wonder if “Nomadic Warriors for Pritzker” has made it over to BlueSky yet. That’s a funny account.
Baud
@Geminid:
Looks like it
https://bsky.app/profile/nomads.bsky.social
Kristine
@Baud:
My governor!
Wondering how much sand blue state governors can throw in authoritarian machinery.
matt
On point 5, the reason these hustling centrist weasels of the media do this is because they are misapplying their personal incentives to the Democratic Party. What works for them as journalist strivers is NOT what will work for the party, but they get to broadcast their approach and offer poison pill advice for the Democrats as a twofer, it’s like catnip for these people like Jon Chait, Yglesias.
John S.
@Kristine:
As much as they want! Look at all the crazy shit Texas, Florida and other red states did to thumb their nose at the Biden administration.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Democratic governors have that much chutzpah.
UncleEbeneezer
@dc: Thanks for this. Very interesting and makes sense.
Kristine
@Lobo:
That way, we can make a point and get all those bonus complaints about how we’re such meanies.
Starfish (she/her)
@Suzanne: I wanted to talk more about this. The general culture of Balloon Juice is five to ten years older than I am, and it has always been this way. I have been here for probably twenty years, possibly a little more.
You and Kay are raising children who are young adults and have more insight into some of these generational boundaries than some other folks here do.
People are boundary-policing what it means to be a good or proper Democrat and have been doing that harder since Hillary Clinton ran for President. That attempt to police the community and marginalize certain ideas that do have significant support and not be welcoming to newcomers is not good for the blog and not good for the party.
I have seen people go so hard against some of the younger folks here, and when I realized “Oh, that person is young!” then a lot of what they were doing became understandable in a way that it was not before.
Kristine
@John S.:
Hoping that’s not the case. We do have a pretty big economic engine on our side.
RevRick
@dc: Where does hope come from ? It’s one thing to say that we hope for a better future, but that begs the question of what anchors that hope. Saying we should have hope doesn’t cut the mustard. Indeed, the imperative is itself an obstacle and is emotionally exhausting.
I agree wholeheartedly with the findings of the Scientific American article, but I suspect it just can’t complete the thought, because it enters a realm where science is dumb.
The author of the book of Hebrews, pushes the matter one step further by saying “Faith is the assurance/substance of things hoped for…” (11:1). Faith, which is relational, is the ground upon which hope stands. And that, of course, raises the question faith in whom?
If we say, faith in our fellow humans, well, that leads to colossal disappointment. And if I say, “faith in God,” I suspect that this is a bridge too far for a lot of people who will bring out the pitchforks and mutter I’m pushing utter nonsense. The FSM and all that.
I can only speak from my experience to say that such faith nurtures my hope. It is grounded in the church to which I belong, and what does it for me varies from sermons to hymns to a casual conversation at coffee hour. I see others struggling to live out their faith and I gain strength from our mutual weakness and humanity. I meet people who are likeminded with whom I build an ongoing relationship and we support each other and get stuff done.
Geminid
@Baud: I ran into Nomadic Warriors for Pritzker on a Twitter thread showing a celebrity archer named Joe Rohan shooting arrows at a Cybertruck window. They all bounced off.
Someone said, “Well, at least I know I’ll safe driving across the steppes!”
“No. You will not be safe,” someone replied
It was Nomadic Warriors for Pritzker. Their header shows a smiling Jay Pritzker sitting on a horse and decked out in Mongol armor, pointy brass hat and all. There’s a big hawk on his forearm, glaring at viewers.
brendancalling
Speaking of messaging, I just sent a message to the Post: fuck you, I canceled my subscription.
Kristine
@John S.: I just shake my head.
Baud
@brendancalling:
::insert banned symbol of approval here::
gene108
I really do not know how a Democratic friendly media “empire” would operate. What are the emotionally trigger points that would get people to be engaged with Democrats?
I understand I am not “normal” regarding what engages me regarding politic versus other people, so I really do not know what would work.
There doesn’t seem to be a preset demographic, like white men for right-wing media – Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc. – that are there to capture. I feel like the landscape of who the a liberal media “empire” would target is a lot more fragmented.
brendancalling
@Aziz, light!: this has been the Democratic strategy for years, though. “Wait til the GOP collapses and clean up the mess, only to get booted out again for another mess.” Lather rinse repeat. Because of this lazy strategy, all our gains may be completely wiped out for a generation, including the ACA, the CFPB, and even social security.
It’s a lazy strategy that seems to be paying fewer returns over time. IMO, of course.
tobie
I’m an anti-populist so would likely be turned off by hyper-progressive messaging. I find post-mortems of the election unhelpful. We don’t have enough evidence yet. Still, when the major social media apps are owned by rightwingers or foreign adversaries (Twitter, Meta, TikTok, Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, etc.) and foreign adversaries are flooding the zone with messaging calculated to turn off voters to Dems, Dems face an uphill battle and will need to find a way to break through this wall of disinfo. TPP would have contained China but a certain faction of the party turned a good trade deal with strong geopolitical implications into a neoliberal pinata that had to be smashed.
Michael Bersin
“…Any effort to do year-round messaging/politics for the left or center/left has been grassroots and underfunded. This blog, a community-financed effort with unpaid writers, is an example…”
Like the weather – everyone is talking about it. What are we gonna do about it? Uh, create content for starters.
Meta: the information landscape
Ruckus
@Gretchen:
Not to sound too critical but it’s like the Nazi in WWII. Now some of them were hard core, complete and utter assholes who wanted to kill everyone that wasn’t with them 1000%.
A lot of them went along because they might gain something and had everything to lose if they didn’t.
Some people have been voting for republicans for decades, don’t see anyone else as acceptable and have heard their entire lives that democrats want to give away all their land and rights to people that don’t look or think like them and/or kill them to purify the race. It’s all bullshit but they have nothing else. In my entire life I seen nothing that republicans want that helps anyone but themselves. They don’t want a country for all, they want a country for them and them alone. They want to travel back in time 150 years or more because.
Notice that I gave no actual answer or logic, because there isn’t any.
RevRick
@John S.: Jesus didn’t so much promote a code of ethics so much as he proclaimed a world turned upside down. He wanted us to see that this world was oriented in a completely dysfunctional direction and he offered both a vision of a radically different world and a way to get there.
The apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians, about twenty years later, alludes to a baptismal hymn/creed that was so familiar that his audience understood this vision: “There is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male and female…” (3:28). Jesus’ message that all distinctions of race, class and gender are bullshit, became part of the life of the early church. Alas…
p.a
Better angels of our nature and all but talking about marginal tax rates and the proper subsidy for PEV purchasers while being called communists and baby killers apparently doesn’t resonate with enough voters.
What exactly happened approaching November with “they are weird”? Where did it go? It was working. Besides some low-recognition House members pushing it where was the “panty-sniffing freaks” meme. And I mean use those exact words.
Martin
I don’t disagree with these, but there are some important things missing.
Around 3) – in education you will be more successful teaching students if they experience the process of learning the lesson than having the lesson packaged up neatly for them. One reason why I think young people are receptive to people like Rogan is that Rogan is not an ideologue. He doesn’t come in with the lesson packaged, you watch him go through the process and join along. He’s a dumbass, don’t get me wrong – and if you want misinformation spread, put it in front of him as he’s too dumb to question it – but not all of these people are that dumb. I think young men favor being exposed to the process of learning politics, economics, etc. and democrats really don’t engage with that. That’s what Pete does – he goes on Fox News and he explains why all their hot takes or misinformation is wrong. That exercise is how people learn and knowing that it can be challenged and defended is what makes it credible. In a world of AI – witnessing the photo being taken or the art being made might be the necessary defense against being constantly scammed. Democrats need to be seen making sausage and they generally don’t do it. We don’t need a Joe Rogan of the left, because Joe Rogan isn’t the important component of it. We need Democrats to get off MSNBC and into the media that people regularly consume. And if that’s some sports podcast that dips into politics here and there, then get in there if you’re a Democrat who likes sports. Remember, Rogan endorsed Sanders in 2020. And Sanders has been on his show. And we gave Bernie shit for landing Rogan as an endorsement, and today we’re begging for that.
4) I don’t think there’s any point of dancing around the reality that Democrats would benefit a lot from doing anti-corporate populist class war. This is particularly as Gen Z is the first generation to have a negative opinion of capitalism. It’s not that simple to say ‘they want communism’ – they don’t, but an aggressive clawing back of the $12K per US citizen that US corporations report in profits each year, which ultimately get handed to the investor class, would go a LONG way. There is nothing on the table by the GOP that is as appealing as a promise to fight to return some of that money to consumers. Yes, you’re going to burn your billionaires. Go read MLKs Letter from a Birmingham Jail and where you get to the ‘white moderates’ part, mentally swap economic order/justice for racial order/justice. Note, this doesn’t require not still fighting for racial justice. Not only are these not exclusive activities, you cannot achieve racial justice without delivering on the economics as well.
5) I again return to the decision to roll out Liz Cheney to appeal to Republicans rather than ANY effort to appeal to the left. Trump keeps winning by turning nonvoters into voters. Democrats are the most goddamn stubborn motherfuckers who absolutely refuse to do this. It’s like they worry more about the disappointment of the right than they do the support of the left, and I suspect it’s because the consultant class doesn’t talk to leftists, they talk to billionaires, which is why they are on the ‘stop talking about supporting trans rights’ thing.
My annoyance around this election is the temptation to blame rather than fix. I keep getting people saying that Biden and Harris have done all of these things, and yet neither of them, nor most Democrats are interested in going after core problems and instead fiddling around the edges, and I think we’re past the point of oblique technocratic solutions. My city keeps building housing promising that prices will come down and they just keep going up. The problem is that the demand in the county is hundreds of thousands of units more than supply, and the city can’t build the hundreds of thousands of units + 10% or whatever would be needed to actually flip the market in favor of buyers. I keep telling them that the only way to lower prices is to build non-market rate (public housing), because they don’t the ability to lift this market into that state on their own and so they constantly fail their promises. And because they can’t get ahead of the problem, it doesn’t materially impact homelessness either, which is their other promise because prices never reduce, not even rents. We’re at a point that rents are going up faster than the state law permits for rent hikes (10% annually), so new units are coming up at even higher rents than existing renters are paying which further tightens the market because nobody is going to move unless they absolutely have to.
Democrats are caught in this same cycle where their remedies are too small to achieve their promises. They’re afraid of the big solutions because it disrupts the order (as institutionalizes, this is a natural response by them) and small solutions are obviously too small to voters. Anti price gouging laws are a good idea, but that’s not the central problem, and it doesn’t help solve the central problem. At some point you need to stop fucking around with the solutions that you feel comfortable doing and start talking about the solutions that will actually work.
The GOP doesn’t do this either, but Trumps ideas are at least big. They’re big and damaging rather than big and reforming, but they’re big – they’re the shape of what is needed and the public respond to that.
zhena gogolia
@p.a: Yeah, I had some of the same questions.
The Truffle
@brendancalling:
Hate to say it but we may have to just resist the urge to fix it everything and everyone.
Ending the ACA or Social Security would piss off a lot of their base. Maybe just let them feel the rage of their base for once.
Trump may have “big ideas,” but his base doesn’t believe he would ever implement them. That is the difference. Some people have to learn the hard way.
By the way, I think Musk is the new Steve Bannon—a burn it down type who will pushed out within months.
Ruckus
@Steve M.:
And while I’m skeptical of the conventional wisdom that the leopards of American authoritarianism will eat the faces of the rich eventually, you might think some rich people would want to avoid authoritarianism because it’s destabilizing and because the authoritarians demand greater and greater tribute from the rich. But so far they all seem unconcerned.
As long as the rich keep getting richer they like whatever it is that makes them rich. Money is, in enough quantity the best drug ever. You are free to buy whatever/whomever you want, if you are stinking rich. You can have your own “police department.” And likely will. You can live wherever you want, and likely continue to get richer, as long as you have more sense than a termite. Buy a huge yacht, an airplane, 10-12 homes where ever you want to travel to. Eat the finest food, expensive liquor, drive expensive cars – have a driver! And if you are making enough MORE money then you can go hog wild and live like a king. The sky is barely the limit.
The rich can afford to buy those authoritarians – and do. And if said authoritarians get out of line, they can afford to have them permanently “removed.”
Money don’t buy love, but it can buy a lot of selfish stuff and actions.
ChristianPinko
The greatest failure of the Democratic party has been its total unwillingness to promote its own brand. Because this is a two-party system and the Republicans have absolutely established themselves as the conservative party, the Democrats by default are the liberal party. There’s no way around that. Unfortunately, about twice as many Americans identify as conservative than as liberal. Plus, “liberal” has become a generalized term of abuse for not just right-wingers, but edgelord left-wingers who equate being liberal with having no principles, being equivocators, etc.
There’s two things the Democrats could do about that. What they’ve done is try to downplay the liberal label and try to reach out to moderates. This has been a self-defeating strategy, because it means basically accepting that the Republicans’ base will be about twice as big as the Democrats’ base. So Democrats have to work much harder to get the moderate / apolitical vote, in order to get to 51% of the vote. Consequently, Democrats tend to win only when Republicans have fucked up so badly that the electorate decides to bring in Democrats to clean up the mess. As soon as voters forget about how bad things were when they voted for the Democrat, they go back to voting Republican. The Republican dominance of media has only made this situation worse.
The other thing that the Democrats could do is make their base bigger. Convince people that liberalism is better than conservatism. That’s a tall order, but in the long term it’s the only way. Trying to consistently eke out hairbreadth victories in an electorate that favors conservatives / Republicans 2-to-1 is a doomed effort.
HOW you convince people that liberalism is better is another question. One part of the answer is defining and reclaiming what “liberal” means. A second part involves building up grassroots groups that embody and enact liberal values, so that people can see what liberalism means on a day-to-day basis and can make being liberal part of their identity. Such groups would do for liberalism what white Christian churches have done for conservatism.
Martin
That’s one way of looking at it. Another way is that these are all products of a capitalistic system that government is not equipped to rein in. Musk can’t buy Twitter if we don’t allow Musk to have $300B. It doesn’t matter if he’s rightwing or a foreign asset if we simply deny him the ability to do that.
Michael Bersin
Money.
If 1% of the total contributed to the Harris for President campaign was instead given to progressive/non-Fascist/non-traditional media – to hire full-time reporters/researchers spread over a large number of sites you’d be talking an order of magnitude increase in serious content. There’s already a lot there. Once you create more of that content the environment spreads it. Make it relentless.
I spend a lot of time looking at and posting on the obscenities involved in campaign finance, but it ain’t my full-time job and currently it’s like trying to take a sip from a firehose. I could use that kind of help connecting the strings on the wall.
In two days the right wingnuts in the Missouri General Assembly will prefile hundreds of whack bills for the upcoming session. It’s a full-time job keeping track of those obscenities. Again, an analysis of the content that breaks through to their constituents would result in a “You did what?” from them Currently there is none of that accountability – the local newspapers got bought out and their reporting staff in the state capitol press (true across the country) no longer exists.
It’s a start.
Dan B
@Lobo: Your point fits precisely with what the communication professor and branding professional I know site repeatedly. Facts without emotional hooks and narrative do not get through.
I believe we can get through by utilizing street theater to point out the awful things the right does, like having die-ins of young women at the Supreme Court and at GOP headquarters. Producing eye catching visuals is irresistible for all types of media.
Michael Bersin
@Dan B:
If I could get there, I’d photograph it.
Another Scott
@Steve M.: Good to see you here, No More Mister.
I assume that the wealthy aren’t concerned because, 1) they’re Republicans and believe the GOP orthodoxy still holds and most of DJT’s mouth noises are just mouth noises and not what he’s actually going to try to do, and 2) they figure if things get bad enough they can just move to Monaco or Monte Carlo or wherever and have a quiet peaceful life there, counting their doubloons, while the proles whatever it is they do.
Grr…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Bruce.desertrat
There’s a Democratic media ecosystem? The “right wing media ecosystem” is…the media.
Dan B
@John S.: I believe that Washington’s incoming governor has the chutzpah. He has never backed down from a fight against the far right.
Ruckus
@The Truffle:
You end social security you are going to piss off a lot of normal people that survive on what they put into it over a lifetime. Some of them will very likely be on that shitty side of the fence. Not that the wealthy assholes of the world would care – as long as it hurts one liberal, they are likely good with it. But many humans live off of SS or it is at least a large portion of their retirement. This world is not made up of only the rich and the poor, one thing that makes this country actually work is the huge middle of the population between the wealthy and the bums – no matter their politics. They provide the labor, the goods, the food, the background work of entertainment, a large part of the medical segment, and on and on. And they want a retirement, a time of relaxation and maybe travel, family and friends. They want to be able to look back and not think it was all in vain and bullshit
Social security may be able to be better, likely it can. But kill it and you will have a very large quantity of old farts who are pissed beyond belief. Think about how I might know.
Gloria DryGarden
@Michael Bersin: I’d like to support what you are trying to build. I like your thinking. How can I help?
what are the next steps?
do you want to have a zoom with some of the nations better reporters, and some donors and networkers? A brainstorm?
we need eolirin for branding help, he might lurk on the Ukraine page.
Gloria DryGarden
@Ruckus: cut ssi, hurts the economy?
RevRick
In the waning days of the Biden administration:
1). The Russian ruble is in free fall;
2). The Syrian rebels have liberated Aleppo and Assad has fled to Moscow.
And it isn’t even Christmas yet.
Baud
@RevRick:
Biden, like wine, only gets better with age.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
He always makes it seem like he is part of some sort of correct, reasonable majority on any given issue, when in fact he is a useless turd whose input has never been salient in any context whatsoever. The basis of his career in “opinion journalism” is to steadfastly refuse to learn anything that takes him beyond his privileged upbringing and to thereby channel the views & prejudices of exactly the people with that same upbringing back to them & be praised & promoted for it.
And part of the overall messaging problem is that we have a lot of self-professed progressives who’ve been buying his bullshit for most of their adult lives. I tell myself that at least those people generally vote (D) but that messaging bleeds over into the overall content that low-info voters (or the ones what sat on their asses this time) get from any variety of sources. And it waters down our message in between election cycles.
The Truffle
@Martin: How are Le Felon’s ideas “the shape of what is needed”? Didn’t Bannon blather about burning it all down in 2016? How did that work out?
Gloria DryGarden
@Dan B: teach us about branding. Please.
what the communication professor and branding professional I know cite repeatedly. Facts without emotional hooks and narrative do not get through.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@RevRick:
Butbutbut, Eggs! Afghanistan! Senile!, etc., etc., etc.
I remain convinced that history will be good to Biden, assuming we’re around long enough to write it.
RevRick
@Baud: My goblet is pretty full.
Geminid
Turkiye-based news aggregator Clash Report is showing a picture of Syrian rebels on the steps of Aleppo’s historic Citadel. Other sites report that they’ve raised the Free Syrian flag over the Citadel.
In 2016, it took Bashir Assad’s army along with Russian forces, Iranian militias and Hezbollah four months to conquer Aleppo; 33,000 Syrians died as the city was pounded into submission. Syrian rebels just took Aleppo back in 72 hours.
Clash Report had another picture of rebel fighters clustered in front of a brightly lit shawarma shop. This touched off the inevitable debate over whether Syrians have appropriated Turkish doner kebab or Greek gyros. That’s the kind of conflict I hope to see more of in coming years.
Ruviana
@RevRick: Assad ran to Moscow? Awesome! LGM was talking about Aleppo falling earlier today.
lee
@Aziz, light!: I’m right there with you.
I live in Texas and when shit starts going pear shaped I will 100% point out that it is because of Trump. From prices going up to immigrants being rounded up.
Gin & Tonic
@RevRick:
Strongly suggest not counting chickens before they’re hatched.
RevRick
@Ruviana: Yes, he allegedly went to beg for Russian aid, but whether he ever returns… here’s hoping he spends his life freezing his ass in Moscow.
RevRick
@Gin & Tonic: Understand. Not making omelets just yet. But I do have salsa on hand for topping.
Lobo
@Kristine:
It is all about being the right kind of meanie. ;)
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: i wonder if you might summarize the good news aspect of these facts, as I were a 6 year old?
It’s just not something I’ve been following, kind of lost in the weeds of my own life challenges.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
THERE ARE FOUR
LIGHTSCHICKENS!Geminid
@Ruviana: Middle East Eye correspondent Ragip Soylu is doing some good reporting on the developments in Syria. Soylu is MEE’s Istanbul bureau chief, and this is a huge story in Turkiye.
WaterGirl
edited because this belongs on a different thread.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: This is a big part of the issue.
hrprogressive
Democrats by and large have no desire to actually fix these things.
They really inhabit a fantasy world of bipartisanship and comity and kumbaya that just does not fucking exist.
Once that is understood, all the other – very valid points and reasons raised here – make so much more sense.
The Fascist GOP is driven by absolute power, subjugation, ruling, oppressing, etc. They crave it like the human body craves oxygen.
The Listless Democratic Party craves bipartisanship and “normalcy” in a world that has been “abnormal” for 25 fucking years if not longer.
All the other things won’t ever even begin to be addressed if the politicians that are supposed to represent what we want don’t actually believe it themselves.
And ask yourselves,
If they did “believe in it themselves” – why are they so feckless and timid in the face of a literal incoming Fascist/Authoritarian Regime?
It’ll all make sense once everyone realizes they have no desire for anything other than their own powers and to be blessedly beltway-approved bipartisan.
Ruckus
@Gloria DryGarden:
In the long run very likely.
In the short run absolutely.
Some old farts live off of SS, sure we may have a not all that tiny bank balance but social security does pay a lot of old farts a not unreasonable amount monthly. Even ones that put a bit, or even several bits in the bank. We are living longer. We live in a world where a profit is required to stay in business, no matter if that business is providing food – prepared or not, or housing or medical care or _ _ _ _ _ _. And the vast middle of the population often has a difficult time saving enough to live for 25-40 years without social security. That was one of the reasons that it exists, it makes a better world for all, people don’t have to work till they drop, just to make the rich – richer than they can spend in 10 lifetimes. And business and those workers put money into social security to give them that monthly stipend that allows them to live at least semi reasonably. And not on a street corner or your back yard stealing whatever it takes to exist.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: I would refer you to London-based Middle East Eye, and reporting from their Istanbul bureau chief Ragip Soylu.
Soylu began his career in journalism one year before the Syrian civil war began in 2011. He and most other Turks have followed this terrrible conflict ever since. Middle EastEye has published at least two of Soylu’s articles since this offensive began earlier this week.
Gloria DryGarden
@Kristine: this is interesting. I need more info on this, I guess I’m still at a basic level. If you care to fill this out a but more for an unsophisticated newer person here, I’d be grateful.
Baud
@hrprogressive:
Exactly why I’m no longer going to worry about Republicans in control of government.
Gin & Tonic
@Martin:
Yeah, Rogan is so open and non-ideological that after saying “fuck Ukraine” on his show he’s now reportedly rejected an offer by Zelensky to come on the show.
Free speech my entire fucking ass.
Dan B
@Michael Bersin: There are some good “street theater” outfits and a personal story or two – the young woman with “I have cancer and I ❤️ the ACA” is great. It would be great to have 100 people with their health issues. How about a march for people on SSI or SS Disability?
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: thank you.
I’ll beg Pollyanna to read thru it and give me a synopsis. Im not retired, it sounds like a lot to wade through at my current state. I’ll catch up eventually.
you’ve often been generous and kind to me, and elucidative, and I thank you for it.
Gloria DryGarden
@Gin & Tonic: OMFG
Birdie
@Martin: I’m not begging for Joe Rogan’s endorsement, you don’t speak for me.
I don’t think you have experienced the modern job and housing market personally and my sense is you aren’t a natural target for minority scapegoating. I think I get turned off by people who spout confidently about solutions without direct experience of what they think they are appealing to. It feels condescending, to be honest.
Re: public housing, sure maybe, but I don’t see how this is any different from student loan forgiveness. Unless we nationalise the residential property market, increased public housing investment will create distinct classes of haves and have-nots based on who qualifies, and the resentment of those who miss out will be easily exploited, especially because public housing is anti-aspirational and unfortunately most people are aspirational in their thinking.
I might think it’s a good idea as policy but I don’t think it’s good politics, at all, because most of the “do something” people asking for it now will not qualify if it ever actually gets built, and in any case aren’t reliable voters even if their wishes are catered to.
Gloria DryGarden
@Gretchen: maybe frank schaeffer has some insights? He converted OUT of being an evangelist right wing guy.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
Apparently, he dicked around when it came to scheduling Kamala which is why she never appeared on his show.
karen gail
I have been reading opinion pieces; it is an interesting look at the mind and mindset of those who write them. Surprisingly, a large number of them are to the big name media outlets; but what got to me is how many of them seem to run along the same line. They are looking forward to have a successful businessman back in the White House, they are also looking forward to House no longer having witch hunts; in their minds the President Biden is an incompetent old person who couldn’t even do proper withdrawal from Afghanistan and has spent the time since then failing to do anything to help country be a powerful presence in the world.
If you tell these people that Trump couldn’t make money running a casino they wouldn’t believe you; they also see Musk as great inventor who has outdone anything that NASA could ever do. Were you to tell them they were buying colored water rather than healing tonic from any GOP they wouldn’t believe you.
When you are dealing with people driven by emotions, all the facts in the world aren’t going to reach them; they also believe that they will be “safe” because they worship at the feet of god/emperor Trump.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Yep. He waited until something like 4-5 days before the election, then wanted her to be available for something like 4-5 hours for the show.
Plus travel time etc.
That would have removed nearly an entire day of campaigning out of the last 3-4 days.
Rogan wanted to leave the impression that he wanted her there but she refused. Asshole.
Baud
@karen gail:
The media complex was so much happier with Trump 1.0 than they were with Biden. It’s showed.
KatKapCC
@Ruckus: Any discussion of Social Security also needs to include disabled people. It is not just retired senior citizens who need it. And if they go after SS as a whole, they will probably start with disability benefits.
azlib
@Steve LaBonne:
I tend to agree with this analysis.
Jager
@Suzanne:
George Soros is the largest shareholder in Audacy Broadcasting since he is constantly blamed for anything “left.” I certainly think Audacy would have been better off switching a few of its low-rated stations to something other than the third, fourth, or even fifth sports talk station in various markets.
Gloria DryGarden
@hrprogressive:
The Fascist GOP is driven by absolute power, subjugation, ruling, oppressing, etc. They crave it like the human body craves oxygen.
like an addiction. A horrible, dark, deeply harmful addiction.
i wish I had some ideas here. Your statement engenders some dark despair. And I don’t drink, so, not sure what there is.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: I think you would find Ragip Soylu’s articles very accessible. He writes for a general audience
When it comes to events in the Middle East, I have found reporting from regional sources much more valuable than what American media comes up with. Most Americans are only occasionally interested in these issues, but journalists in the region live with them every day.
Dan B
@Gloria DryGarden: I’m a bit rusty on Branding but in essence it’s using stories from the most clear and emotionally resonate people and tying that to images, totemic icons, and cultural items that resonate with your target audience. So first you need to identify the audience, then the story, and the who and where to tell it, then link to more things that reinforce your story’s moral core. It takes practice to figure out how to do all these. People with academic training often think the facts are the story. Instead it’s most always: something happened to person, or people, that resulted in this outcome. Ireland outlawed abortion until a young woman died because she was refused an abortion. Her story and the people who agitated for her were in the news for weeks. There were people who cared for her. That was the brand.
Another Scott
@Geminid: Tendar’s thing on BlueSky has lots of maps.
https://bsky.app/profile/tendar.bsky.social
It looks to be a very promising day for the anti-Assad forces.
Has anyone checked in on Tulsi??
Best wishes,
Scott.
Gloria DryGarden
@Steve LaBonne: I had a long chat with a non voter a few days ago. He explained to me why. Said he voted for Biden last time, but not pleased w current admin.
he really didn’t believe it mattered. And in Colorado, w blue electoral votes, it’s true, it didn’t affect this election’s EV count.
he thinks both sides are saying the same negative stuff about the other. And seemed shocked that anyone thinks the parallels w hitler could be realistic.
i tried.
he said give me a whole plate of delicious food, or I’m not voting for it.
sigh
Michael Bersin
@Gloria DryGarden:
Crowdsourcing.
In Missouri:
1. Someone to monitor/follow up on campaign finance. Show Me Progress archives are easily accessible. Learning one’s way around the Missouri Ethics Commission and FEC sites. Connect the dots. look at the past.
2. No one is safe as long as the right wingnut controlled super majority in Missouri General Assembly is in session. Someone to follow bill filings and wade through bill progress and iterations, monitoring live debate and committee hearings. Follow amendments. Follow the history of bills in previous sessions.
3. Monitor Hawley (r), Schmitt (r) in the U.S. Senate and Alford (r), Eric Burlison (r), Sam Graves (r), Blaine Luetkemeyer (r), Jason Smith (r), and Ann Wagner (r) in the House. Social media posts, bills, statements, and anything else. They’re all right wingnuts.
4. Monitor the statewide officeholders in Missouri – They are all whack. They have histories. Same as the state’s congressional delegation.
That’s for starters. Rinse. Repeat.
Do the same for every state.
Publish what’s publishable. Push it out. In Missouri, Jess Piper has a huge following and a loud bullhorn. If it’s legit and she pushes it out a whole lot of people see it. Cultivate other sources.
It’ll take personnel, persistence, and coordination like this here clean, well lit, place.
I’ve been doing this since 2007. We started with a stable of people. We have had people come and go. I’m what’s left. I continue doing this because I’m a stubborn, cranky, foul-mouthed, vituperative, vengeful son of a bitch with a long memory.
If some billionaire wants to lay some money on the enterprise and a few young, hungry, just out of J-school graduates want to permanently ruin their future in corporate media, I’m all ears.
Baud
@Michael Bersin:
Thank you for your effort.
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
There’s a lot of propaganda out there to disillusion people.
Steve LaBonne
@Gloria DryGarden: Certain commenters here represent the same destructive mentality.
Gloria DryGarden
@Dan B: thank you. I’ve been one of the facts based folks.
but everyone has a job in sales: convince your boss, sell that you did a good job, persuade the kids, recommend a product or a way of behaving, a strategy. It’s all sales.
I suck. shall try to learn. If you think the Democratic Party needs better branding, can you position yourself as part of their team of advisors? Write a stream of opinion/ educational pieces in the more liberal based media we’re trying to create?
Geminid
@Another Scott: Yeah, these events come at an awkward time for Gabbard. She is one of Bashir Assad’s foremost apologists.
I consider Assad to be the biggest war criminal of this century. People rightfully complain about Benjamin Netanyahu, but when it comes to human rights violations Syria’s President makes Israel’s Prime Minister look like a piker.
karen marie
The other day when I read that Kari Lake was in negotiation with Newsmax for a show it occurred to me that one significant way Republicans have an advantage in name recognition is that so many of their failed candidates are hired by rightwing media outlets where they can attract eyeballs and appear to be relevant and “doing something.” That is not something that happens with failed Democratic candidates who simply disappear for two or four years.
Given the lopsided media/absence of “leftwing media,” failed Democratic candidates are not seen to be “doing something” between elections. For at least the last 20 years, failed Democratic candidates are rarely, if ever, invited as guests on political chat shows. When a Dem is in the WH, the excuse is “we have to hear from Republicans.” When a Republican is in the WH, the excuse is “we have to hear from Republicans.”
As ever, it’s heads we win, tails you lose.
Those failed Dem candidates need to get their shit together and press to get themselves invited to the political chat shows but to also go on “alternative media” to make a noise.
Have I mentioned recently how much I dislike Republicans and everything they stand for?
Michael Bersin
@Dan B:
“… the young woman with ‘I have cancer and I ❤️ the ACA’…”
Her full story is an amazing one of resilience amid constant challenges.
I didn’t know her when I photographed her. I published the photo and pushed it out on social media almost eight years ago (from the Women’s march in Kansas City). She saw it somewhere and contacted me shortly after that.
Gloria DryGarden
@karen marie: what can you do to help make this happen? It’s a good idea.
if someone else thinks so too, you might want to give this idea a bump, or bring it up to her.
I’m pretty sure she has the pie on me since sept 20.
Michael Bersin
@Baud:
I’m preparing for the worst come January. I definitely don’t have a martyr complex, but I’ve been preparing to document the atrocities and also preparing to walk away.
Gloria DryGarden
@Another Scott: I love a map, it’s one way to get me attending to something, esp on difficult subjects. But maps and charts make it bite sized, and FUN.
therefore, thank you
Gloria DryGarden
@Michael Bersin: you have some place to walk away to?
Gloria DryGarden
@Michael Bersin: beautiful. The net of connection
Viva BrisVegas
There is a reason the two most successful Republicans of all time (not counting Lincoln) are Reagan and Trump.
They are both entertainers. For most voters, news has become entertainment and politics has become entertainment.
They are not voting for steak, they are voting for the sizzle, and Trump sizzles.
The answer to the problems Democrats face is to find someone who sizzles. Boring technocrats are not going to cut it any more.
hrprogressive
@Baud:
Must be nice to be at the place you are in life to absolve yourself of all worry about what might be down the pipeline.
Everyone else isn’t in such a place.
Baud
@hrprogressive:
It’s awesome. I wish everyone else the best though. And I have full faith you all will figure it out and succeed where older progressives who constantly talked about how much other Democrats sucked failed.
hrprogressive
@Gloria DryGarden:
My problem is that, I think if some of mistermix’s issues *were* addressed, you’d find there are a lot of normies receptive to left of center ideas and policies.
In theory, for example, using a wide-ranging medium like “social media” should be enough to pull together enough like-minded people to make a positive impact.
But because these mediums are wholly owned subsidiaries of corprofascist shareholders, there’s less and less of a chance of that being feasible.
Twitter was great for this before. But then Elon bought it and destroyed it. I think this was not an accident, and was instead, by design.
So what do all the plebes who can only yell into the void do?
It’s tough to see how that effort is funded, organized, mounted, etc.
hrprogressive
@Baud:
“Clap louder, and vote harder” didn’t work either, to be crystal clear.
Baud
@hrprogressive:
Nothing has worked. But people still cling to their ideas.
The Truffle
@hrprogressive: Older Democrats think the way you describe.
Younger ones like AOC and Jasmine Crockett are another story.
Of course, then you have popular Dem governors like Whitmer or Beshear who have to play the bipartisanship game to get anything done.
Geminid
@hrprogressive: As long as there is a closely divided electorate people will be taking cheap shots when we lose a close election; like you just did.
Geminid
@The Truffle: Reps. Ocasio-Cortez and Crocket win easy elections in safe districts. I would look to Democrats like Sharice Davids, Lauren Underwood and Emilia Sykes for guidance when it comes to winning a majority.
Kathleen
@hrprogressive: Right! After being terrorized and threatened on January 6th, they stayed into the early hours of the next morning to certify the vote while surrounded by fellow members who wanted them dead. I think that takes courage and I’m sick and tired of them being characterized as “spineless” and “feckless” in the face of death.
Martin
@The Truffle: I think voters feel that the economy, while maybe good from the viewpoint of GDP and the Fed, is fundamentally unfair.
Trump speaks to the feeling of unfairness, and he talks of economic populism. He’s lying, of course, but the shadow of it looks like the shadow of what might work. But Democrats are unwilling to present something like that. Given the choice between action and inaction, you take action.
Yeah, it didn’t work out in 2016. And yeah, voters voted him out. And when Biden was given a shot, he didn’t deliver, so they voted him out. Y’all seem to have all internalized the MSMs message that there is a broad rightward shift here. I don’t think there is. I think we’re going to keep voting incumbents out until someone gets the message. Note – incumbents lost EVERYWHERE globally, and I think part of the reason for that is that Covid was fairly easy to weather by large corporations and it was individuals and small businesses that got wiped out. And in the same way that 2008 consolidated power in large corporations (the too big to fail banks actually got bigger) Covid had the same effect.
Voters wanted people thrown in jail and big banks broken up, and Dems chose to protect the economic order over economic justice. (Obama look forward and not back). And they mostly forgave Obama for that, but they didn’t forgive the message – which you can see how (particularly young men) have given up on doing the traditional career path in favor of get rich quick bullshit, and is turning the economy increasingly into scams.
And when Trump fucked up Covid, we got rid of him, brought in Biden and the same thing happened. Is GDP good? Sure. But it’s good because Amazon is good but my neighborhood restaurant went out of business. And we want the reverse, and GDP doesn’t capture that, inflation rates don’t capture that, unemployment may not capture that, but institutional dems keep falling back on those measures, and not on the whether those are the measures that matter. That’s why Dems keep mocking economic anxiety – because look GDP is great! Elon Musk made a quadrillion quatloos last year and made up for the 150,000 tech workers that were arbitrarily laid, what are you complaining about – look at that 2.6% inflation rate.
People think the economy is incorrectly structured, despite the rosy metrics, and Democrats keep defending that structure because they are institutionalists. Trump at least indulges the anger people have around that. His prescriptions are completely wrong, but he at least does the first necessary step which is to listen and allow the criticisms of the institutions to go forward. Democrats just don’t indulge that because they are terrified of the idea of having to do large scale reform.
And I’ve said it before – if you are afraid to do controlled reform (and this isn’t just Dems but institutional Republicans as well), you will wind up with uncontrolled reform. And Trump represents uncontrolled reform.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: Four years of policies progressive enough to be approved by Bernie and AOC didn’t work either. But that’s no fun to think about because it doesn’t give us an excuse to bash Democrats.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
Bernie has been a national figure for almost a decade. If his ideas were broadly popular, I think we’d see more evidence of it in election outcomes.
Kathleen
@Geminid: Though Brown lost, all 5 of the Democratic Reps won re-election. Landsman, Beatty and Brown appeared to win easily. But to me the most heartening was Kaptur and Sykes because both of their districts had been gerrymandered and conventional wisdom had Sykes losing the seat the first time she ran but she won it and came back the second time though it was pretty close. Kaptur had a fight also but squeaked through. I find that interesting. Are these anomalies or could these victories be studied and “best practices” of the candidates be included in these “where do we got next” discussions?
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: It’s quite possible that his ideas are fairly popular. Alas, voting is 90% tribal rather than policy-based, something the “progressive” Democrat-bashers refuse to comprehend. By constantly smearing the party that actually seeks progressive policies they, to the extent they have any influence at all, only make those policies harder to attain.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
True enough. We often see Dem issues succeed in referendums while Dem candidates lose.
Of course, bashing and smearing Dems could just be another manifestation of tribal identity.
different-church-lady
The problems Democrats (and people who think like Democrats) have is they believe the good things they do are self-evident. And they’ve had this problem for years and years, not just this last cycle.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: Yes, being that kind of self-destructive “progressive” is definitely a tribal identity. It certainly isn’t a rational approach to politics.
Geminid
@Kathleen: Rep. Greg Landsman (OH01) also won a close election this year. Landsman’s, Kaptur’s and Sykes’s dostricts might be an example of gerrymandering overreach. In 2022, Republican redistricters to draw a map they hoped would put all three seats in their column but they did not win one. A more cautios gerrymande could have knocked at least on of those Democrats out, and maybe two.
Another Scott
@hrprogressive: I’m in the Mayhew 218 – 51 – 1 – 5 camp, myself.
It’s not the media. It’s not the Boomers. It’s not Capitalism and Oligarchy. It’s not the billionaires. It’s not VVP. It’s not inflation. It’s not immigration. It’s not the Fairness Doctrine or Citizen’s United. It’s not any one simple thing like that.
It’s getting a majority in the legislature and holding the presidency long enough to enact meaningful progress.
And that means for me, as long as the Republicans continue to demonstrate that they are an impediment to our rights, our economy, justice, and simple fairness, as well as a threat to all life on the planet, then the only sensible position is to vote for Democrats. Post-hoc circular firing squads damage our efforts to get a majority that’s big enough to enable lasting progress.
I’ve also learned the hard way that most people are not liberal. Only something like 20% call themselves liberal (last I looked). Let’s see – “As of 2021, about one quarter of the American public self-identifies as liberal, making it the smallest of the mainstream ideological groups.” – Wikipedia. We absolutely must be willing to take half-a-loaf and celebrate the win and build on it in the future. Progress is always incremental. That doesn’t mean throwing groups under the bus, that means recognizing that politics is slow and hard and messy and irrational and all the rest.
W was a monster, but he knew how to get things that the GQP was opposed to – Medicare Part D – done. Figuring out how to get enough of the elected GQP to join us to move the ball forward is not a bad thing – it’s how progress happens. Wishing and hoping for a 150 member AOC caucus is a great aspiration, but in the mean time work has to be done with the cards we have in our hands.
[ /rant ]
My $0.02.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Gloria DryGarden
@Suzanne: i saw you on the zoom, you’re not fucken old. I missed your discussion last night. You and starfish have got my attention with your discussion.
very curious, and interested .
Boys are potatoes? Aesthetics in the content?
re policing the community, and which opinions are correct ( isn’t that an oxymoron.?) I have experienced that as a newcomer on this blog. I try to be thoughtful, and careful, and walk on eggshells. There are things I understand, and care deeply about, and there are things about which I totally lack the background knowledge , and some interesting lines of snark and references that totally go over my head.
sometimes it’s safe to go out on a limb, or ask a question. Other times, I’ve been quite mistaken.
Anyway. Whatever.
Gretchen
@Geminid: Sharice David’s is my rep. She flipped a seat that was in Republican hands for a decade and was re-elected for her 4th term. AOC couldn’t win here. @hrprogressive thinks he knows better how to appeal to moderate voters. I’m waiting for him to tell us what he’s doing to win next time
frosty
Yes, and they are the reason that the polls undercounted his support in three elections.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
I don’t even need a lefty Fox.
I just need one that isn’t dedicated to that phucking BOTH SIDERISM.
THAT SHYT GOTTA GO 😡😡😡
Gretchen
@hrprogressive: so what’s your plan for getting people to vote for progressive candidates? What are you doing during the next four years since you think current Democrats suck? Please be specific. Keyboard warriors shitting on elected Democrats on social media doesn’t move votes.
different-church-lady
@rikyrah: The kind of both siderism we really need to get rid of is the one where both sides think Democrats suck.
Starfish (she/her)
@Gloria DryGarden:
I think Nukular Biskit started the conversation. He assumed that most of the juicers are younger than he is. I told everyone that over the past twenty years, I have been the youngest juicer at stuff, and I am in my mid-forties.
Anyway, someone else pointed out that when there are discussions of music and culture, the music and culture often land somewhere in the 1970s and early 1980s. That type of thing lets you know how old the community is.
I live in a college town that has gotten unaffordable. When we were doing Democratic GOTV for Hillary Clinton, some people in the community (old) asked if they could go register voters on campus, and the GOTV people were telling us absolutely not because they wanted some folks who were younger and more aesthetically pleasing to the undergrads.
It has been interesting lately because there have been some newcomers to the community, and I think that sometimes they get treated harshly.
The Bernie Sanders v Hillary Clinton primary was a major feud around here, and some folks are trying to do that same mess with the Biden and Harris primary. They are trying to create grudges and hold them. You know how you DON’T build a party? By doing that mess.
All the factions of the Democratic Party are smarter and more attractive than the Republican Party. Whether you are leftists creating mutual aid funds or conservative Democrats who like airplanes, you can all come sit next to me and let me know how we are going to work on making things better before that Clarence Thomas retires, and Donald Trump puts that fool Eileen Cannon in his seat.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
White people will never let that happen.
Gretchen
@different-church-lady: The Professional Left podcast sells a Tshirt that says Both Sides Don’t
@rikyrah:
Gloria DryGarden
@Another Scott: I love so many of your comments. (!!!) especially this one.
your summary is a relief,
after weeks of endless spinning on the blog’s gerbil wheel of discussion
i think it’s All those things, AND what you said about electing democrats into office for long enough to get something done.
it sounds like in a way, we’re about to try topping from below. I’m all for strategies, networking, building, having actions and directions to take.
This thread today comes closer to summing up several big aspects and leading toward action.
media+branding+ money+ photo journalism+ tracking bills in legislature…etc
Im often the only one in @ room who asks, what can we do?
it’s hard not to slip into depression over the heaviness and dread. I’m available for brainstorming, and networking, and any incremental or messy steps toward action that can be encouraged.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Starfish (she/her): I think you have some good insights about the community here.
I’ll have a post tomorrow addressing some of the comments – I was out most of the afternoon and responding on my phone is a pain.
Martin
@Gin & Tonic: I’m not saying Rogan isn’t vulnerable to pressure. He clearly is after his clumsy reversal of his RFK endorsement to switch to Trump. I’m not defending Rogan in any way. He’s a dumbass. He falls for the most transparent propaganda and misinformation constantly.
My point is that you can’t fucking whine about that and expect it to stop happening. Rogan has his audience and nobody fucking cares if you like it or not. That’s the reality and you need to engage with that reality one way or another.
But I think this is perhaps indicative of the problem. Rogan articulated his reasons for not having Zelensky on, and they aren’t unreasonable. His audience isn’t tuning in for foreign policy and I think it’s probably for the best that Rogan doesn’t expose his own idiocy further in that direction. He’s much more of a daily culture kind of guy and that’s his audience.
But you’re not interested in that answer – you see that and map an ideological lens onto it, which is the thing the right cannot resist doing which is why they see every video game with pronouns being some kind of liberal plot rather than a pretty understandable business decision, and I don’t think it benefits the left to engage in that same sort of thing.
Martin
Well, that just speaks volumes.
Steve LaBonne
@frosty: We have to fervently hope the right doesn’t have anybody else who can turn them on the way he does. I don’t see any plausible successor on the horizon, yet as soon as I have that thought I remember that few of us, and certainly not I, saw Trump coming in 2016.
Gloria DryGarden
@Starfish (she/her): thank you. Were you on the zoom, and I missed you? Did you not put your nym?
I’m 66, and I didn’t know know how I can migrate a still photo of myself into zoom. i have white hair, physical indignities, and a sharp wit.
40s seems young, but I guess it looks old to college folks. Well shit, can we we just dress up hip, like the old hippies some of us are, or glam, like Anne Hathaway in her movies where she gets younger lovers? Or slightly colorful and outlandish like the older women models and purple wearing red hat society ladies?
nukular biscuits looks about 55 max, maybe younger.
would like to understand about
mrpotato head/ boys. I’m sure I would agree with and relish the point being made. I’m in classrooms where we actively use this toy.sorry I missed you. We older persons, we don’t all look good, but ageism tries to make us invisible. It turns out we have a thought or two in our heads, and some wisdom. Not sure how to change the culture. I’ve felt more respect from my immigrant Venezuelan neighbors than from born in America staff at schools. I can sense they respect their elders in their culture. And they don’t mind speaking to them.
SomeRandomGuy
@RevRick: Faith and hope are actually so intertwined that I doubt anyone knows what either of them *means*.
Do I have faith in something? Yes – that life could be better.
Wait – isn’t that a *HOPE*? I have no reason for *hope* that life could get better; since reasoning fails, I turn to faith.
Now STOP ASKING me all these PERSONAL QUESTIONS you used up literary device.
Ahem. Seriously: when you get to the point that you’re not sure why you’re hanging on well, you might be burning up your hope candle, so to speak, or, maybe the faith candle’s all you need, but, deep down, the essence of hope is faith, even if it’s not faith in an entity or creed; it might just be faith that there is a better world, and hope to be there to see it.
No disrespect meant to specific religious faiths – but, if a person doesn’t feel moved by a religion, one can still practice faith, in a religion, or an ideal, or anything. Heck, even in yourself, if you’re just trying to keep yourself going.
Gloria DryGarden
@Starfish (she/her):
@Gretchen: need this tshirt. Both sides don’t. Love it.
Steve LaBonne
@SomeRandomGuy: You have perfectly described the way I, a UU atheist, view faith and why it’s necessary.
Ruckus
@KatKapCC:
True.
I was trying to show that Social Security has a big place in this country. And yes it has more than one side to it. The majority I believe though is retirement income. And I know people that ended up with not enough or extremely close to not enough, meaning that with effort and everything else going their way they can live on it.
One reason it has a big place is a lot of our work/employment side of life often does not cover living after working 50-60 yrs. Because of a lot of what we don’t provide. Often a reasonable transportation system that doesn’t require a car. More often than not. Often a way to partake of groceries other than driving to a store when someone should no longer be behind the wheel. Often a reliable, rational transit system that doesn’t require a car to be driven by an 80+ yr old human. And from my standpoint of a person of into senioritis a reasonable way and not all that far from that 80 yr old person, I want to sell my car and not have to drive one. Many of you might actually appreciate that….
I am a retired person. I worked for 60 yrs, 3 1/2 was in the USN. I live OK, I eat OK, I have a roof over my head. I’m reasonably healthy for someone my age and in better shape than many I know my age. But many people are living longer. Better working conditions, better concepts of pay and the COL, safety laws for businesses helped with that, but I was skilled in the jobs I worked in and did OK in the wage department. Many do not, even with minimum wage increases. The world population is growing, the US population is growing. Farming land is not doing all that much growth. The population of the world is growing and food and at least the necessities of life have to as well. We WILL NOT at rational levels of necessities if we do not recognize the basic needs of humanity and the desired needs of the greedy. Study history and see what life was like for most people not all that long ago in time. We have to at least have a discussion and a concept of the needs of the future if we are to survive without a massive war – a bit that often came in the past for one of two reasons. First greed. Second food and shelter. If we don’t recognize these we will not do well as a society and neither will anyone else. Even the RICH will do poorly, because they likely can’t grow their own food or create the things they want. And if people die of starvation the concept of large wars may once again show their ugly heads. Which likely won’t go well at all, for many reasons.
The world is changing, as it always does. It grows, it learns, it screws up, it may learn from that (It hasn’t seemingly learned a lot in this manner before, or at least in any way learned about the cost until later, after spending a lot in money, time and bodies) But we are getting to a point where that cost escalates exponentially every time some brainy ass forgets history and gets greedy.
Gloria DryGarden
@Steve LaBonne: would you be willing to translate what he said? It started to sound like an attack, and my brain shuts off. And it got complex.
i think I could hear it from you. And I like the uu approach. Atheists often make sense to me. faith vs hope..
hope is complicated by what the hospice and death and dying folks say about it. And further complicated because I think some in my second language, where hope overlaps with wait, and expect, all one word, so you hear in the context, or it means all that at once.
Gin & Tonic
@Martin: If he believes his audience isn’t tuning in for foreign policy, why is he opining on it? I see a clown who’s afraid of having someone on who’s stronger and smarter than he is and who will call out his bullshit. It’s not a business decision, it’s weakness.
Gin & Tonic
@Martin: If he believes his audience isn’t tuning in for foreign policy, why is he opining on it? I see a clown who’s afraid of having someone on who’s stronger and smarter than he is and who will call out his bullshit. It’s not a business decision, it’s weakness.
ETA: Don’t tell me what I think.
Steve LaBonne
@Gloria DryGarden: My translation is simply that when it’s really hard to find rational grounds for hope (a place I am frequently in these days), in order to keep going we need a hope that goes a little beyond the rational, which can be called faith. And that’s basically what gets me out of bed and to church most Sundays, and it really does help me. I hope that makes sense. Also religion, including non-theistic religion, is a natural home for values like empathy and altruism that are countercultural in our society, and that are most powerfully lived in community.
SomeRandomGuy
@Gloria DryGarden: you mentioned you don’t drink… well, for an intoxicant free event that might make you feel like you tossed back something strong, you could try vagus nerve stimulation. Putting your face into ice water will activate the vagus nerve – there’s other ways to stimulate it – and I can attest that it makes a body… different. The vagus nerve is seen as a major player in the “rest and digest” (vs. “fight or flight”) nervous system. Please don’t think I’m being stupid when I say “try this while sitting down.” You may not believe it, but vagus nerve stimulation (plus coping with face and bowl) can make you wobbly, and bowls of ice water are *not* intended to illustrate gravitic principles.
Two other warnings: make sure the ice is floating freely – no chunks sticking together, because they could stick to your face (they’re still cold enough to freeze liquid water). And, vagus nerve stimulation can cause pre-fainting symptoms – which is why I said “it can make you wobbly” and urge use of a chair.
When I told some kids I could get them a high and it didn’t involve chemicals, just ice and water, I was arrested for teaching them to make hash. I asked what they meant – I don’t *make* hash, I buy it in the can, like everyone who doesn’t know what a good hash can be like. But you don’t make HASH with ice and water. A pot? No, you use… oh. Just a cold water pusher, am I, none of that demon weed.
(ObTech: “bubble hash” is extracted using ice and water, so I made a weird joke. ObVious: The joke was, in fact, fiction. But I wonder if you could get in trouble for doing that.)
Steve LaBonne
@Gloria DryGarden: P.S. Here you can read our most recent “official” description of our shared values. I find myself pretty much 100% in tune with it.
Suzanne
@Gloria DryGarden: My point about age is that I — a decidedly middle-age person whose eldest child voted this year for the first time — shouldn’t really be speaking about what the future media/visual culture landscape should look like.
Every generation has their own aesthetics, you know? When I was in my 20s, it was definitely the Comedy Central era. Snarky comedy was how my peers and I engaged with politics. And that was an important part of how the Obama coalition was able to attract young people, because there was some cultural alignment already. Organization isn’t just walking around from door to door with clipboards and signing petitions, it’s also getting people to have a common set of references and ideas.
But that was, like, a long time ago now. I was in graduate school when Obama was elected. The kids have their own humor and their own references. A media ecosystem that genuinely communicates to them and for them…. is not a thing I can even talk about.
Gloria DryGarden
@SomeRandomGuy: I’ll try a cold wet wash cloth. Or some snow North of my fence, perhaps, with a chair nearby. I usually get high via movement and sound, but it takes a few hours, not readily available. Thank you.
I’m hiding and avoiding by reading romance novels and watching TV clips in YouTube. The new holiday shopper ads are unbearable already.
Gloria DryGarden
@Suzanne: I’m definitely curious about the media ecosystem that works. Or plural. Media ecosystems.
i plan to live long, and you’ve got decades ahead of you. I’m at the young end of boomers, and we/ I definitely need media that’s accurate and factual and supportive of good things Democrats do.
Like you, I’ve no idea what younger folks need.
Good points about common references and ideas. And about going beyond facts and clipboards.
Gloria DryGarden
@Steve LaBonne: thx
Helped. The dark despair sorts of feelings, so real, so Sharp and cold some days.
If altruism and empathy are countercultural, I really need to leave, I’ve come to the wrong planet.
It’s a stark reminder that a whole lotta folks are really NOT my peeps. And that I’m living behind enemy lines.
And that I like my ace hardware, but the ace company is a big maga donors. And that even in blue blue Denver, there are people who voted red, and I might not guess
Ramona
In this piece https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/not-popularism-not-deliverism-partyism,
Henry Farrell, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins outlines without necessarily recommending building the Democratic party so that ordinary people interact with one another and political leaders. It’s a big lift and requires money and huge organization but it spoke to my frustration at not finding ways to actually JOIN the party.
Suzanne
@Gloria DryGarden: There’s much less of a monoculture for them than there was for me, and certainly far, far less than there was for my mom and her cohort. So I don’t know what will emerge.
Bonnie
What does “woke” mean?????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Steve LaBonne
@Gloria DryGarden: My wife is my peep. UUs are my peeps. My community orchestra and string quartet friends are my peeps. At 69, I’m all out of time for those who are not my peeps. “Life is too short” is not just a cliche now.
Steve LaBonne
@Bonnie: It means “whatever doesn’t uphold white male Christian supremacy”.
RevRick
@Another Scott: Count me in Mathew’s camp too. It irks me to no end when curses at hurled at “Democrats.” Manchin and Sinema prevented the passage of a more comprehensive Build Back Better bill. The rest of the Democratic caucus and friendly Independents were on board. The only time the House caucus fractured was over tactics on how to deal with Manchinema by withholding votes on the Infrastructure Bill. The Democratic Party has never been so cohesive and willing to do big things. I frankly was astounded at how much Biden accomplished with his ridiculously narrow margins.
RevRick
@SomeRandomGuy: Well, I have an idea about faith and hope. Faith is a combination of belief and trust. Hope is an orientation towards the future.
Gloria DryGarden
@Bonnie: including people who have been marginalized or had oppression and struggle and diminished rights that they sometimes still have to fight for…
Kind of a dumb word isn’t it, for people who don’t mind taking the blinders off and including everyone and being willing to include a variety of pov on what history contains.
Maybe it means, anti-denial..
Mike
@featheredsprite: I like this idea. We need to have clearly focused targets (things we are for and things we are against). For me, that is how the other side has been able to motivate people. But, it is not easy to identify what makes the best target, is it? Women’s control over their bodies is one, but more are needed, IMO.
Dan
@Betty Cracker:”I think an underrated reason Dem electeds don’t campaign full time is that they’re actually doing their jobs, i.e., working on legislation”
I work in politics and respectfully, I don’t think that’s true. The typical elected legislator spends a surprisingly small amount of time on actual lawmaking, even in positions with heavy responsibility.
They spend most of their time fundraising and going to events.
Dan
@John S.: Beat me to it. Those outlets don’t have one-tenth the reach.
206inKY
The left coalition is not a rage machine because it draws a lot of people who are repulsed by the emotionally stunted culture of the right. It’s absurd to say there’s no politics between elections, as if things like the ferocity of #MeToo and BLM (long before Floyd) didn’t happen, or that Millennials and Gen Z don’t exist.
I’d give a different set of bullets than OP.
1) Kamala ran a historically brilliant campaign with no messaging problem. Her only problem was time—she had three months, another candidate’s infrastructure, and no time to test some key points (i.e. efficacy of $25k for down payments proposal as a net positive in winning votes). The three-week knife fight wasn’t nearly as damaging as the impossibility of running a primary once Biden decided to go for it in 2022. Once he made the decision, we were trapped until the debate.
2) The fractured information environment radicalized young white men en masse, providing a huge boost for Trump, but the cultural world of Gen Z is way more diverse, vibrant, and complex than Joe Rogan. There was a lot of intergenerational contempt in both directions. Allowing Trump to position himself as the candidate who would “save TikTok” was a bonkers own goal.
3) We were hit with brutal misinformation and information warfare. Top of the list is Netanyahu’s continued use of violence to maximally assist Trump, including opening an entire second war at the height of the campaign before offering a cease fire with Hezbollah as a “gift” to Trump after the election. And of course Musk’s purchase and weaponization of Twitter. There’s also the small but fervent covid-denial bubble—a world unto its own. And the extensive microtargeting from dark money and state actors to fracture Democrats. Russia seems to have tossed its efforts here to undermine Ukraine from a less obvious angle.
The Truffle
@Martin: But Felon 34 doesn’t have any interest in addressing people’s grievances. That is the issue.