Brian Beutler responded to this by posting a piece he wrote earlier this year. What he wrote then still rings true to me: [gift link]
Charitably, we could say Ron DeSantis’s primary campaign flopped because he and other Republicans chose not to write Donald Trump out of the party after January 6, 2021, and so there was no niche for him to fill. If Trump’s response to losing the 2020 election isn’t disqualifying, maybe it means he was right to be mad; maybe it means he didn’t really lose. If that’s the case, then he’s a strong option for 2024, and there’s no need for a pretender. With Trump out of the way, the primary would’ve been a real dogfight between many more candidates; with him in the picture, nobody cut from the same cloth stood a chance.
More accurately, DeSantis lost because he has no charisma, and lacked the courage and integrity to level with ride-or-die Trumpers that Trump actually lost the 2020 election. He also has an annoying voice, and is short. His height is actually pretty average, but he’s shorter than most successful male politicians in the U.S., and (most importantly) he’s highly self-conscious about it. He carries himself in a way that makes people view him as short, more than he actually has difficulty reaching things on high shelves.
And so Trump and his supporters exploited it. They mocked him over these superficial weaknesses knowing that his character weakness (his lack of dignity and integrity) would inhibit him from responding in kind. You might say the meatball was in his court and he curled into the fetal position.
This is all quite stupid; it’s actually pretty demoralizing for people who got into politics for high-minded reasons. But it’s an irreducible fact about any calling that rewards popularity. And so people who take the elevated aspects of politics seriously, who want to protect their accomplishments and make progress on others—they have to make some degree of peace with the fact that low-brow means can advance high-brow ends. And if the high-road leads to hell, they shouldn’t take it.
When the insider account of the Harris/Walz campaign comes out, and we find out which highly paid consultant stopped Walz from saying “weird”, I hope we make sure that person is never employed by any Democratic campaign in the future. Walz was onto something. They’re abusers, and they’re also weird. DeSantis is deeply, irrevocably, weird. Walz also had way more insight into how to talk to Fox-addled voters than any DC consultant, because he had to do it to win in his red House district.
One thing that really bothers me about the whole Walz/weird thing is that they may have stopped saying it because the political reporters and insiders got tired of hearing it. But you can’t listen to reporters / pundits /consultants when they’re “tired” of something, because repeat, repeat, repeat your message is Politics 101.
They’re weird, they abuse women, they rape teenagers and they believe a bunch of nonsensical shit. I see no downside in repeating that.
hrprogressive
First Step – Convincing the Democratic Party to say things that are true about the Fascist GOP instead of finding the nearest press conference with which to proclaim they are ready to work with them.
It ain’t gonna happen.
Today’s Democratic Party fundamentally does not believe in doing this, to their own detriment.
How would a Party that isn’t dutifully playing a “Controlled Opposition” role look, or do, anything differently than they have been doing over the last more or less decade?
They have zero interest in actually stopping these people.
This type of change is going to have to come from the citizenry.
I, for one, am happy to do it.
Almost Retired
Agreed. And I will never, ever, be able to think of Musk again without the phrase “skipping like a dipshit” popping into my mind. And his subsequent awkward pantomime to a 1970’s gay liberation anthem. Someone should set the video of Trump mock-fellating a microphone to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax.” Weird. They’re just all weird. It was a great theme.
dm
Trump’s first term had that ICE guy who kept women detainees’ menstrual cycles in an Excel spreadsheet (https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a26985261/trump-administration-abortion-period-tracking-migrant-women/)
Then there was George Nader, Trump fund-raiser and advisor who was a repeat child-porn offender.
Plus Trump’s own proclivities concerning young blondes, and teen beauty-pageant bodies.
Plus, don’t forget their eagerness to inspect children’s genitals before they can be allowed to access school restrooms — layered on top of their general weird obession with what’s in other people’s pants.
planetjanet
Stop looking for that “one weird trick” to right what Democrats did wrong. How about just trying to get our fellow Americans to stop being so racist?
@mistermix.bsky.social
I found my post from a year ago predicting DeSantis’ loss on the grounds of him being short and looking/acting like a short man. I still think I’m right on that score: Little Ron DeSantis
dm
@planetjanet: It’s not “one weird trick” as much as a whole toolkit full of tricks, akin to throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.
planetjanet
@hrprogressive: Do you really think we should just stop trying to govern. You know, be responsible. You are leaving out context from what leadership says. They are willing to work together … WHERE WE HAVE COMMON GROUND. It is not a capitulation.
John S.
It was likely Jen O’Malley Dillon. The same person who wouldn’t let Harris put even the slightest bit of daylight between her and Biden in a fiercely anti-incumbent environment.
John S.
@planetjanet:
I think you underestimate the whiplash caused by going from “these people are fascists” to “we have to work together”.
Good luck threading that needle with the Democratic base.
Bugboy
A couple observations:
Barney
@planetjanet: Pointing out that Trump is an adjudicated rapist, and has been credibly accused of sexual assault by many women, is not incompatible with governing responsibly. Indeed, pointing out the moral depravity of the opposition is probably a vital part of being responsible, whether governing or not.
We don’t have common ground with a rapist. Nor, really, with the supporters of a rapist.
tobie
A politician ready for prime time would have been able to go through hours of debate prep and still come off as spontaneous and authentic in the debate. Walz was not ready for prime time. Period. He let Vance repeat again and again that jobs were being shipped to China when thanks to the CHIPS & Science Act the opposite was the case. Sarah Longwell the internal poll figures. Walz hurt the ticket.
Steve LaBonne
We all want to think that campaigns, and of course our own ideas about how they “should” be run, matter a lot
But is that really true?
@mistermix.bsky.social
@John S.:
I’m sure not happy with some of what I’m hearing from the higher ups in the Harris campaign. Harris really had no choice but to make nice with them because of the time crunch, but if your internal polling shows you consistently 4 points behind, and you have a little bit of lighting in the bottle with both Harris and Walz exciting people, why the fuck do you, for example, put Walz on a leash in the debate?
And before people talk about re-litigating the campaign, that we need to move on, yeah we need to move on *and* we need to make sure that the people who made mistakes are identified and not hired again. There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying, for example, Jen O’Malley Dillon had her shot and now it’s time for her to find a new career. These are people hired for a job that and they failed.
Unfortunately, as in a number of other walks of life, consultants are like lice or roaches and it’s almost impossible to get rid of them once you have them.
AM in NC
100% agree on this.
I want yard signs to place along streets everywhere:
Good people don’t support Republican Rapists
Republican Officials: Greedy Old Predators
Republican Officials: Gross Old Perverts
Republican Government: by, of, and for sexual predators
Over and over and over again tie the entire party to their sex predator officials and hangers-on
different-church-lady
I think the problem here is that The Cult of Personality has grown so large that pedophilia is no longer viewed as a disqualification.
Yeah, I wish I was just being cynically sarcastic…
different-church-lady
@planetjanet: Asymmetrical warfare is a harsh mistress.
different-church-lady
@planetjanet: Agreed.
But also hella easier said than done.
Kay
@planetjanet:
Obama had the largest mandate from voters in 30 years in 2008. Within days of his election, Republicans met and agreed to oppose every single thing he did. Two years later Republicans won 6 Senate seats, 60+ House seats and half the governors and state legislatures. We can hope for a better electorate that is rational and rewards good government or we can win – pick one.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Zelensky is short. Nobody sees him as weak because he has character
ETA: Also, he doesn’t care. If you want to be petty, that’s your problem, weirdo
@mistermix.bsky.social
@tobie:
Did Walz decide to go out there and make nice with Vance just because he, Hope, Gwen and Gus were sitting around bullshitting about what he should say in the debate?
No, like most Democrats, he had a room full of consultants prepping the shit out of him with a bunch of canned, shitty answers that have the same relationship to authenticity that Gerber Baby Food squash has to a nice, roasted butternut.
I’ll grant that he probably isn’t the most natural, supple debater (read fucking slippery liar) that JD Vance is, but he was there executing the strategy that he was sent out to execute. The guy is the epitome of a good soldier, he sure wouldn’t push back even if he disagreed with the strategy.
owlbrick
THANK YOU! This needs to be heralded from every mountaintop… The GOP have a mile-wide vulnerability, and taking the high road isn’t going to fix things. Point out their flaws, and keep hammering on them until they sink in with the average American.
A Ghost to Most
We know they will say and do anything to institute christian fascism. The question is, what are you willing to do to stop them?
KatKapCC
I don’t know what people think “call them pedos a million times” is going to accomplish. The hardcore maga base either know about all this shit and don’t care, or would refuse to believe it even if they walked into a room and saw Gaetz assaulting a pre-teen in front of an oil portrait of Epstein. And the non-maga Republican voters and independents would mostly pearl-clutch and think this is just Democrats being over the top again and lacking civility.
There is also the issue of defamation. In a case where there has been no confession or conviction, journalists and politicians cannot simply start calling some a pedophile. That is lightyears away from “weird”. Weird is an opinion. Pedophile is not. There’s a reason why newspapers and news anchors will not call someone a rapist if that person has not been convicted of rape. Their legal departments won’t allow it.
I think it’s fine and wise to make sure people are aware of accusations and such, but you can’t skip from that to PEDO PEDO PEDO on the news 24/7. That’s not how this world works.
different-church-lady
@owlbrick: Nothing personal, and I hate to keep hammering on this but…
..the whole fuckin’ problem is WE DID THAT and there was no sinking in. Their flaws are quite evident, but they’re no longer seen as disqualifying.
p.a.
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Abs right. Whatever we do, don’t look back and analyze the loss? Learning from mistakes need not equal fighting the last war next time. We hope.
And is there part of this “we like Harris and Walz, don’t knock them” going on? If they got bad advice, who do we hold responsible? Just the people giving it, or the people who took it as well.
Was the momentum we felt early in her campaign just us in our own “non-Fox bubble”? Or was it real? And was it frittered away? (Passive voice there, because accountability is…?)
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Steve LaBonne: That study you linked is Exhibit A in why the Democrats need to be taking some of the billions they spend on shitty TV ads and messaging 24/7/365, as I advocated in posts the last couple of days.
Also, the fact that they don’t change minds doesn’t mean they don’t motivate our voters to turn out — those are two different questions.
different-church-lady
@KatKapCC: It’s Cleek’s Law, taken to the most horrific extremes: “If liberals think pedophilia is bad, then fuck them, we’ll elect pedophiles!”
planetjanet
@John S.: No, I do not. The leadership is preparing for a fight, laid down the values they would continue to fight for and pledged to work together WHERE WE HAVE COMMON GROUND. That might be nothing. It might not. You don’t spit in someone’s face everyday and get them to vote with you on Friday. It takes some character.
KatKapCC
@different-church-lady: I mean, we also have to contend with the fact that the right thinks every single elected Dem is a pedophile. They think when we point out the issues around someone like Gaetz, that it’s just projection from our side (when it’s really projection from THEM). Biden, Newsom, Walz, Schumer, Clinton, etc etc, all get called pedos by the maga morons constantly
Also, and I know people hate this kind of hair-splitting, but if the girls Gaetz has been going after are like 16 and 17, that’s not pedophilia. It’s gross and wrong and disturbing, but it is not pedophilia.
planetjanet
@Kay: I am not changing my values or trying to be a fascist because of 1.5% loss.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@p.a.:
In this particular case, I’m not going to knock Harris and Walz as hard because they had a very short window in which to do things and they inherited a campaign and strategy so massive that pointing it in a different direction would be like turning an aircraft carrier. But, yes, they deserve some part of the blame.
different-church-lady
@KatKapCC: The word doesn’t mean anything to them other than “an insult I can throw.” Just like kids on a playground calling each other fags: they don’t literally mean “you’re a homosexual”, they just know it’s a hurtful word that conveys malice.
Peke Daddy
@planetjanet: No, just don’t rescue the opposition when they crash and burn without first making it clear they did it, and extract multiple pounds of flesh in return for help.
different-church-lady
@planetjanet: I’m with you, but at the same time we gotta stop bringing plastic sporks to a knife fight.
Peke Daddy
@KatKapCC: Technically, it’s Ephebophilia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephebophilia
KatKapCC
@different-church-lady: Truth. My male cousin and I are both gay, and one time when we were in middle school (at the same school), a kid called both of us dykes, and I was like…can’t you at least get your insults correct?
KatKapCC
@Peke Daddy: Right, which is also creepster behavior for sure.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@KatKapCC:
We aren’t messaging to the hardcore MAGA base. Their minds cannot be changed. So let’s forget about them.
I think you’re using the beltway media as a stand-in for non-mega Republican voters and independents. I honestly don’t know what the swing voters would think, but I’m sure that if we began consistent messaging about the awful, shitty stuff that Trump’s picks did, the mainstream media is going to clutch pearls. But, if this election showed Democrats anything, it should have showed us that the mainstream media is at best a frenemy and at worst an enemy. And, they’re pretty irrelevant to the people we’re trying to reach (they don’t read the papers). So who cares what they say?
Finally, an important group to consider is our voters who didn’t vote. Why not show that we have some fight so they might want to come out to the polls next time?
linnen
@planetjanet:
We are told that they don’t like racism, but they voted for a platform that includes racism. We are told that they don’t like bigotry, but they were just fine with voting for a platform that includes bigotry. We were told that they don’t like misogyny, antisemitism, and other prejudices, but they ignore that the platform includes all that. They said that they had an issue, a single very important over-riding issue, that was worth-while voting for while voting for a platform that did not even support that issue! Whatever that vocally supported supposed issue was!
The rest of us are realizing that close to half of our fellows are the same sort of person that sold out Anne Frank to the occupying Nazis.
What part of the Democratic platform needs to be abandoned, for the so-called ‘single issue’ voter and the Republicans will settle for no less than all, in order to reach this Common Ground?
tobie
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Every politician spends hours upon hours prepping for major debates. Some handle it well. Walz didn’t. The desire to claim its all the fault of his establishment handlers, and the idea that populist progressives cannot fail, they can only be failed sounds like MAGA-level conspiracy to me. We lost. That’s devastating. We will need to rebuild from the rubble. I believe in the value of govt so I’ll volunteer for the candidate that aligns with that view. I’m a citizen, not a campaign strategist, so my idea of how campaigns should be run doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.
planetjanet
@different-church-lady: I understand feelings are raw and you want people fighting back. They are, just not the leadership who have to do the negotiating. We have a strong bench with the likes of Jasmine Crockett and Dan Goldman and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to man the barricades. You are not going to hear that from Schumer or Jeffries who are at the table when it counts.
geg6
I could not agree more. This is exactly our problem. We aren’t speaking to people the way people actually talk. This isn’t 1860 or 1921 when florid rhetoric and soaring and poetic phrases were in style for public speakers. We need to speak plainly, not just about the opposition, but about what are policies will actually do for people in terms they understand or that we can explain plainly. We just don’t do that.
KatKapCC
@@mistermix.bsky.social: I was not using the beltway media to stand in for anything. I was basing this on comments and such I have seen online from people who didn’t like things the Dems said about Trump even though they weren’t Trump supporters. There are a lot of squishy middle voters who think Dems make things up and exaggerate. I think making sure those folks know the details around accusations against Gaetz is smart. I think screaming THEY ARE ALL PEDOS through a bullhorn into their ears is not going to achieve anything other than turning them off from the left even more.
matt
Was it David Plouffe? He seems to be that big of an idiot.
MobiusKlein
Attributing the loss to Waltz doing (supposedly) badly in the VP debate is such inside baseball.
Harris did great in the presidential debate, and it didn’t seem to matter.
Maybe you could count the VP debate as a symptom of a deeper rot, just one more visible at the front. Myself, the debates were examples of the rot in the overall media environment. Outright lying in front of the entire country (eating the pet) had no impact.
planetjanet
@linnen: You misunderstand me. I am not jettisoning any of my values and standing strong. There are some on the other side who do not want to crash the economy or outright ban abortion. There are areas of common ground. We need to do the hard work of talking to our friends and colleagues who say racist things. We need to address the behavior without namecalling. Like just saying, that is an unkind thing to say about someone. It is a long hard road to get there. Harder than just calling someone weird.
N
Dems need to stop all public criticism (keep it inside) and engage in relentless attacks. The GOP is elitist. The GOP condescends to voters. We need to combat their claim that Dems are into identity politics, but probably not by saying they are. We need instead to say they are the party of by and for the rich and we are for everyone else. I am so frustrated that Dem leaders can’t figure this out.
Baud
Some folks on Blue sky are talking about this Bernie Sanders tweet. Right approach or wrong? I can’t tell anymore.
planetjanet
@Baud: Interesting idea. The concept is fine, but its like asking Elon to raid his own piggy bank.
KatKapCC
@Baud: He needs to retire. That tweet is epic bullshit. Musk isn’t right about anything, and showing even the slightest agreement with their disastrous garbage is some addle-brained level nonsense.
Shakti
I will repeat it over and over again because it’s right. Because it is true.
The sheer number of pedophile and sex abuse and sex related scandals coming out of the Republicans from nigh on… 20 years? 25 years?
They are literally The Missing Stair Party. Abusers wrap themselves in the cloak of respectability and power so they have allies to go to bat for them. They are the people that keep yelling “Freak!” in a church or a playing field or a bathroom so you don’t notice what they’re doing in the basement. They are the people who keep yelling “fire” in a crowded theater so you don’t notice the ones that keep getting set around town. Or the wildfires.
Because the people who would care and need to know should know. So it doesn’t get buried. There are new people who do not know, people who are too young, idk. And there’s so much that gets buried by time and just… the norms shifting.
[E.g. I had to sit there and remind myself about what happened with Charles Kushner. That it was a norm (aspired to) to punish election fraud and white collar crime through accounting fraud and fake checks and extortion. That shaking down people through revenge porn is illegal. Help. ]
It’s not a political strategy. I can’t even parse what would be a political strategy. Is making denialists work to exercise their denial useful in that way?
The MAGAs I see are in straight denialism and projection. I don’t expect to convince them.
different-church-lady
@Baud: @KatKapCC: “You’re not wrong
WalterElon! You’re just an asshole!”@mistermix.bsky.social
@KatKapCC:
I don’t know if your friends are representative.
That said, characterizing what I wrote as screaming “they’re all pedos” assumes that the message would be tone-deaf and stupid. There are ways to do it that aren’t tone-deaf and stupid.
different-church-lady
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
Ah. Then we won’t be seeing any of those.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@tobie:
The debate strategy was terrible. Whether or not Walz could have done better with a different message is a question we’ll never know the answer to. I’m happy to blame consultants for the strategy because that isn’t how Walz came to public attention — he was noted for calling them “weird” and having some good attack talking points. And, final point, the VP debate is supposed to be the one where the attack dog attacks, and instead we had a bunch of “wow, JD, that’s a good point.
Edited to add: Agree with the other commenters who think debates matter less and less every cycle.
Citizen Alan
@tobie: i find the idea that we lost because of the vice presidential debate performance to be utterly preposterous. Maybe it would have helped if waltz had done a better job of exposing j d vance as an absolute freak. I don’t know, but I doubt it.
Ironically, I think the only vice presidential candidate of my lifetime to have ever delivered debate performances that helped move the needle in our direction was joe biden, both in 2008 and 2012. Lloyd Benson absolutely crushed dan quayle in 1988, but it certainly didn’t make a difference.
No matter what micro issue we want to focus on, in the end, we have to deal with the reality that we lost the election because 75 million Americans are evil, nazis and 10 million nominally Democratic voters didn’t care enough about the prospect of nazi rule to come out and vote.
George
@hrprogressive:
Democrats should lay the foundation for the upcoming two years by saying they are willing to work with the GOP on sensible legislation that benefits the American public. Then, when the GOP fails to introduce such legislation, the Democrats can say, “Look, we were open to working with the GOP, but it failed to deliver. Therefore, we propose XYZ instead.”
That strategy will help capture more potential voters for the Democratic party than the foolish idea that the Democrats should oppose everything from the GOP at the get-go. That is a pathway to political irrelevance.
That strategy should also be adopted by commenters on blogs, etc., rather than the continual sniping by some folks against Democratic politicians both when the party is in power and when the party is out of power.
Citizen Alan
@KatKapCC: crap like this is why I despise bernie sanders more than any living person who is not a republican.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I wish that old coot would STFU. That said, I think there’s a way to convey a message on Pentagon waste and fraud — a legit concern — without seeming to lionize a fascist oligarch OR alienate people who pay no attention to politics and think Musk is a business genius who’s qualified to cut government waste.
Maybe something like, “Democrats agree there’s waste and fraud at the Pentagon. It’s an urgent issue because the billions in potential savings could be used to make sure working people have a fairer shot.
But Musk’s companies have received $XXXB in taxpayer funds to date. Will he look for savings that benefit you and your family or for opportunities to direct more government cash to himself?
Can a guy who could spend a dollar a second for 12,000 years without going broke understand working people’s lives and priorities?”
different-church-lady
Side note to Mistermix: it’s good to see you front-posting more often and bringing the heat.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: Subtly is not a Bernie quality.
oldgold
@Kay: The 2010 election was a disaster for the Democratic Party. A disaster that as a consequence of the ensuing gerrymandering and resulting emasculation of State Democratic Party organizations continues to haunt us.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: I’m sure you could do a better job. But this post is about messaging, and I’m continue to be unclear about what the messaging rules are supposed to be when it comes to dealing with Trump people.
Repatriated
It’s worked before.
Remember Mark Foley (R-FL) in 2006? And the Rs losing the House that year over it?
And this after the Congressional Page Scandal a few years before had primed the electorate to expect GOP perviness…
It takes persistent messaging.
Times might be different now, but maybe not. The whole Qanon business created a permission structure: both sides do it, and the Dems are worse (now including literal blood libel!) In other words, any true allegation against TFG meant the Dems must have done something else far worse that they hadn’t been caught at yet.
The trick, then, is to figure out how to flip the Q conspiracy framework back on them with consistent and persistent messaging about the GOP “coverup”. (In fairness, it’s not a stretch from what’s actually happening.)
eclare
@Baud:
I have worked on an audit of a govt contractor. How does an entity “fail” an audit? What does that mean? And if Bernie knows about billions unaccounted for, he needs to be specific and not just drone on about the MIC.
And he should never say Elon is right. Ever.
YMMV
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Betty Cracker: Agreed – Bernie is off the rails on this one. You never have to hand it to Elon Musk, ever.
eclare
@KatKapCC:
1000%
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Required reading:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/a-kamala-harris-canvassers-education
Canvasser in PA. Wasn’t pretty.
Geminid
I just wish people would speak for themselves and not cite “the Democratic base” in order to back up their individual opinions
different-church-lady
@Baud:
So is everyone else.
Kay
@Baud:
I think its a mistake. We can’t keep.saying they’re right while telling people to vote for us.
This has never, ever worked for us.
Kay
@oldgold:
Yup. 2010 was a disaster.Two short years after Obama had a huge win the fickle, ridiculous, low info voters who actually decide elections decided to all vote for Republicans, even though Republicans did not one thing in the previous two years other than scream that Obama was a socialist born in Kenya and block everything. Democrats should block everything. Trump’s an incompetent who hires low quality people. His Presidency will be a disaster. All Democrats have to do is sit back, fold their arms and oppose. Everything.
Baud
@Geminid:
I contain multitudes.
Baud
Thanks for all the responses to my question.
Kay
I don’t fault Democrats for tacking Right with Kamala. They knew Biden was polling poorly even among the D base. Getting enough Right voters was a Hail Mary. They were going to lose. Trying something is better than just accepting losing in June.
But now they lost so they should sit back and just oppose, oppose, oppose.
UncleEbeneezer
@different-church-lady:
At some point we need to have a longer more difficult conversation about the golden rule of Listen-To-Activists when it comes to allyship, helping educate people less-knowledgable (but whose hearts are in the right place) and persuasion/dissuasion.
Over the last ten years many of us strived to spread the gospel of Anti-Racism, Feminism, Trans-inclusion etc. And we were encouraged to listen to/follow-the-lead-of Activists.
Problem is, many of the most prominent online activists sent marching orders that we were supposed to flip the Thanksgiving table, yell “Colonizer” etc., and do other obnoxious, performative shit that would actively turn away anyone who was sincerely interested in learning or being better, but who needed some time, room and grace to do that. Very-Online Activists and Academics (along with their adoring Stans) created a toxic culture where there was significant social pressure to be as abrasive and dismissive as possible towards potential allies.
Additionally, if you (the aspiring ally) ever hesitated or dared to question this approach, perhaps as someone who navigated your own white/male/cis whatever fragility yourself, you would immediately be accused of White/Man/Cis-splaining and the pile on was now on you.
We all know that most of the pearl-clutching from moderates and centrists about Woke-ism, Intersectionality, Gender Ideology is just so much bullshit. But we also need to be honest about the fact that there is a real and toxic element in activist/ally spaces that probably turns off far more potential recruits than it will ever attract. In an environment where every election comes down to 1-2% margins and where we face an uphill battle of helping people better understand oppressions, this seems like a pretty important conversation and reevaluation of our tactics.
Baud
In fairness to Bernie, apparently Warren is also doing the same thing, according to politico.
Fake Irishman
@Kay:
kind of like our refusal to talk about the amazing economy because “people were hurting”
(There are always people who are hurting, no matter how good the economy, no matter how strong social programs are and no matter how much median wages are rising)
UncleEbeneezer
@geg6: One thing that I think needs to happen is that we need to find ways to have useful discussions about Social Justice issues (Racism, Misogyny, Transphobia etc.) that don’t use the academic language that turns off so many listeners. Full caveat: I have no idea how to do this as I think the Social Justice language is actually the most fitting for the topic, personally, but I recognize that a large swath of potential allies are immediately dismissive of anything that sounds like it came from the Social Justice/Academia worlds.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
Someone in that comment thread pointed out that Warren is simply using Hair Furor’s campaign rhetoric against him and that the headline of the piece is very misleading.
From the article:
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Thanks. That was the same issue Sanders identified early on. I actually question whether that would be popular if implemented, but I don’t think Trump will do it anyway.
Stevo
“pedo”, “rapey”, “freaking weird”, “insane”, “a-holes”, “racist Nazis” then followed by all of the ways they will screw up your life, followed by all the ways Biden kicked ass. They had to do that every day and respond to the inane shit flooding the zone from the other side in real time.
The democrats needed to act like them, and it should have been easier. No need to make crap up. I found the whole campaign so infuriating. The dems needed ads just like the other side, but you don’t have to make the scary crap up. Polio kids, tariffs killing the economy, dead women, Putin, all the nuthouse trump stuff acting like a demented freak. It should have been easy. They did it to us and we assumed everyone would think they were nuts.
different-church-lady
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
See, is that so hard?
eclare
@Baud:
You don’t think a cap on interest of 10% would be popular? Why not? I’m missing something.
different-church-lady
@Fake Irishman: I’m going to have more to say about this when I finish baking the thought. But (a) we did talk about how good the economy really was. The problem was (b) some people really were hurting and (c) we talked about it like “If you think the economy is bad it’s because you’re wrong.”
The half-baked part is where Biden’s mistake was to run a conventional incumbent campaign — “Eveything’s great, let’s stay the course” — in a time when everyone (even the people on our own side) were grumpy and irrational.
Martin
I don’t think messaging is the fundamental problem. Yes it can be improved, but we didn’t lose because of messaging.
I think voters wanted real problems solved, Democrats chose to campaign on Trump being a bad man, Trump campaigned on giving a voice to voters problems. In short, Trump listened to voters and Democrats didn’t. That’s not a messaging problem. And saying ‘they’re pedos’ isn’t a solution when those problems continue to exist. If my house is on fire, and a pedo shows up in a fire truck and nobody else does, I’m going to be okay with a pedo putting out the fire and then, after, I’ll deal with the fact he’s a pedo.
One of my big problems with Democrat’s messaging is that they go out there and talk about Trump as an existential threat, and then do fuck-all about it, apart from messaging, and when Trump wins, they tell us ‘everything is going to be okay’. What?! You just told us Democracy was going to end. How the FUCK is that ‘going to be okay’? It’s not a messaging problem, it’s an action problem. And I don’t see how yelling ‘they’re pedos’ is going to matter if the voters just went out of their way to vote for one. The lesson is that voters don’t care when there are bigger problems to address. Think of it like a societies hierarchy of needs – yes, character matters, but it’s not the foundation of the pyramid, it’s closer to the top, with more important things below it. So either Democrats aren’t listening to voters saying that the foundational needs aren’t being met, or they don’t care (elite, out of touch, etc.)
Even a month in, Democrats still aren’t listening and are focused on Trump having bad solutions to those problems (true) but generally won’t acknowledge the problems themselves. What’s the Democrats plan to making the economy work better? Understand that ‘the economy’ isn’t the price of eggs. It’s where we work, how we get jobs, what we’re required to buy to participate, who is rewarded, what goods and services we have access to. If we aspire to a free market (arguable), do we have choice in that market? Having your ISP jack your prices and you can’t do shit about it because there’s only one. Landlords raising prices because they want to, even when their costs don’t go up, etc. All of that. It can’t be ‘we’re going to do a strategic jobs program for semiconductor engineers in Arizona’, it needs to be much broader than that.
Democrats didn’t fail to communicate a solution for what voters were saying they needed, they failed to have a solution.
Gretchen
@hrprogressive: so you know absolutely nothing about Ben Wikler and have no interest in learning, since it interferes with your preferred narrative of Dems suck.
tobie
@@mistermix.bsky.social: No, Walz didn’t execute the strategy. He failed miserably on the debate stage because he got flustered, tongue-tied, and was unable to remember anything. Heck, he couldn’t even explain his statements about his time in China. Democrats campaign on their competence in governing. Walz didn’t help that message one bit.
Regarding the campaign strategy: I think they distanced themselves far too much from Biden’s accomplishments. They could have talked about the epic job losses to China under Trump and the revival of American manufacturing under Biden. (No thanks to progressives who voted against the CHIPS Act.) Voters had no clue about that.
ETA: all this still doesn’t explain the loss IMO. Any reflection on the election that doesn’t consider who owns social media and how various actors, foreign and domestic, were shaping public opinion is missing the boat. I wish Biden had hammered home the propaganda war being waged early in his admin. My totally amateur opinion is that is what cost Dems the election.
Baud
@eclare: Almost impossible to make it retroactive, and would likely lead to a major credit crunch. The latter might be a good thing policy wise, but I suspect it would be unpopular.
And if it only applies to credit cards, the rate cap will be a boon for the much worse payday loan industry.
Kathleen
@different-church-lady: I thought it was the only right message is the one Democrats are not sending. Then when Dems use that “right” message they’re back to using the “wrong” message. I hope this is perfectly clear LOL.
UncleEbeneezer
What makes you think that? I’ve never seen a President put more effort into solving real problems than Biden. Harris ran on continuing that goal of trying to solve real problems. Trump paid zero attention to these problems focussing only on imagined ones. And he won.
different-church-lady
@Martin:
Holy shit… Trump doesn’t listen to voters: Trump tells them what to think.
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
@different-church-lady:
So maybe Dems should work with Trump.
Martin
@eclare: You cap it at 10% and half of the country will lose access to credit cards, and it’s mostly going to be the half that benefited from the rate cap.
As part of a comprehensive reform of credit and debit cards, access to banking services, elimination of things like checks, etc. I think it could be good.
But my continual warning is that I don’t think that government regulators can pull it off because I think as soon as they put out a reform package, the banks will have figured out new instruments that the regulation doesn’t cover and roll them out by the time the reforms take effect. They’ll replace it with crypto or some bullshit. It’s what they are designed to do.
I think if you want to do a reform like this, you need to have government provide a counterweight. California gave up trying to regulate drug companies and instead became one. If you want to give people relief on credit card interest rates, I don’t seen an alternative but for the government to provide banking services to provide a floor on the market.
Geminid
@tobie: I believe the CHIPS Act drew unanimous support from Senate and House Democrats.
The Infrastructure bill did not. I thought the intra-party debate before and after its passage undercut its positive political impact even though only 6 Democratic House members voted against it. Many Democrats were left thinking it was a bad bill when it was in fact a very good one, at least in my opinion.
And the Infrastucture bill could have been passed in April of 2021, instead of seven months later in November. Ed. But I think that was a tactical decision on the part of Biden’s people and Congressional leadership.
Elizabelle
@tobie:
I think so, too. It’s fucking ridiculous to give up the Supreme Court for a generation over the cost of eggs. (Cost of gas, which declined: crickets.)
Ashamed of US voters. Biggest self-own since Brexit. It just hurts that we can’t have President Kamala. Fuck the voters (and even more so, the nonvoters).
geg6
@different-church-lady:
Yep.
Bill Arnold
@Fake Irishman:
The GOP won the POTUS position with 525 electoral votes in 1984 with a much worse economy (inflation, unemployment, interest rates) than the October 2024 miracle economy, marketing the economy in 1984 as “Morning in America”, and the economy in 2024 as a disaster, etc.
The GOP won the POTUS position with 426 electoral votes in 1988 with a significantly worse than the 2024 miracle economy.
Propaganda works, and Democrats and “allies” aid and/or abet GOP propaganda.
Kay
@Baud:
Fetterman too. Its a mistake. What do they plan on doing when Trump doesn’t cut interest rates on credit cards or halve the defense budget? Accuse him of lying? He’s been lying to voters for a decade – they just re elected him.
Aren’t voters just as likely to say the Democrats who worked with Trump failed to pass these things? They’re literally signing on to Trump’s failure. Its moronic and just the kind of over thought idiocy we end up doing. Say Trump.sucks and oppose everything he does. When he fails in the next two years you can then say you opposed him.
Anyway
Amen, sistah … Hurts so much.
Martin
@UncleEbeneezer: How did they solve inflation? Sure, the rate went down, but the effects continued. The 10% increase in prices in 2023 are still there. I can see 3 solutions:
All of these have various problems, but none of them happened and there was no effort to advance anything like this. There was no pushback against corporate profits (which grew faster than inflation – so there’s your source right there), and there was no push for wage growth. Yeah, Biden sided with select unions for higher wages, but there was no push for minimum wage, no incentives for broad wage growth to employers, etc.
Yes, Democrats focused on making sure that inflation wouldn’t be a compounding problem, but did fuck-all about actually addressing the already felt effects of it. Trump gave voice to that. He said that this is a problem – and it IS a problem. His solutions are complete garbage and will make it worse, but he at least listened and gave voice to the problem – something Democrats failed to do.
Biden provided a framework for how the problem should be solved, without actually solving them. His turn from neoliberalism is very well taken and shouldn’t be understated, but he only applied it to a limited number of places, and not broadly. And so, the problems continued pretty much everywhere. Do we have new factories being built from direct government intervention? Yes. But that doesn’t fix the fact that my rent went up 10% and my pay didn’t. And that’s the problem. Maybe, if I’m in the right industry, I’ll benefit from that factory in 3-5 years, but not today.
OGLiberal
“One thing that really bothers me about the whole Walz/weird thing is that they may have stopped saying it because the political reporters and insiders got tired of hearing it. But you can’t listen to reporters / pundits /consultants when they’re “tired” of something, because repeat, repeat, repeat your message is Politics 101.
They’re weird, they abuse women, they rape teenagers and they believe a bunch of nonsensical shit. I see no downside in repeating that.”
We also have to admit that a lot of folks who don’t follow the Trump caravan across the country actually like this – raping women (the men), shaming women who were raped (the women) and too many people who don’t like this stayed home because reasons.
The reality is that what we stand for is in the minority these days because gas seems like it’s too high and I feel bad about making those gay jokes that used to get so many laughs.
We are a damaged nation and it’s going to take a while to change that or come to some sort of terms with that. We’re fucked. Call me a nihilist but this fucking country just elected Donald Trump to a second term after all of….that! How can I not be a nihilist? This is a generations long problem we are facing here and we’re barely out of the first act.
UncleEbeneezer
@different-church-lady: This is the part I don’t get either. Voters chose the candidate that doesn’t even offer solutions to real problems and rejected the candidate that did. How anyone uses that to reach the conclusion that voters are interested in solutions to real problems just makes no sense. Voters, imo, just showed pretty clearly that they couldn’t care less about real solutions to real problems.
Kay
@Bill Arnold:
I said it over and over. People were literally propagandized into believing a good economy was bad.
Oh well. We’re due for an actual bad economy here shortly so maybe then people will recognize “good” and “bad” again. Job losses tend to focus the mind of the public.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Truth.
Not even funny, but you could see the FTF NY Times and WaPost do stories, very late in the campaign, that “hey, it’s actually a good economy — why don’t people see that?”
Fuck ’em. They did it.
Kay
@Bill Arnold:
Black Friday online shoppers spent 10 Billion – you know on their phones while waiting at the food bank in this terrible economy. Apparently they’ve been spending imaginary money the last four years, as they rack up records in retail and travel spending.
Elizabelle
@Martin: I think your premise is nuts. And insulting, actually. It does not seem that you and I watched the same events and campaign this fall. Strange.
Not going to say more than that, because I am off politics. But. Wow.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
The ” bad economy” with record consumer spending. No one ever solved the mystery of how people spent like drunken sailors if they didn’t have any money.
OGLiberal
@UncleEbeneezer: “Give minorities, gays, trans folks, women, immigrants, etc, the same respect you expect them to give to you. And remember, you’re all just silly humans.” Simple enough but the you’ll have to spend hours debating their religious and psuedoscience reasons they feel the way they do. Ain’t no winning over bigots. Hollywood films make it seem like it’s possible. It is not. And there are thousands of new ones born everyday.
UncleEbeneezer
@OGLiberal: I’m not talking about bigots. I’m talking about people who don’t really understand systemic oppression and how their vote could perpetuate or combat them. People who with a little listening could start to understand the importance of their votes on these fronts and see through the right-wing distortions of them. There are a lot of people like that who we could conceivably bring into our tent.
different-church-lady
@Kay: Now… you don’t suppose… that maybe these, uh, fine upstanding Americans feel stressed because… they’re spending it on non-necessities faster than they’re earning it? I mean…
Elizabelle
@Kay: And now they’re not spending on media or giving clicks to all the false narrative purveyors. Strange!
OGLiberal
@UncleEbeneezer: I hope you’re right. I just think the last 20 or so years have shown me that most people are just bad and will vote for bad people when given the choice. It’s only when the shit really hits the fan they turn to Dems to fix shit and, 2-4 years after that, they turn right back against the Dems because, “not fast enough” or, “you’re helping the wrong people…you know, like, the poors”.
I have lost all faith and hope. I just need to make sure my wife and kids are safe and healthy. Don’t give a fuck about anybody else any longer. Not after this shit. My country turned its back on all it’s supposed to stand for. And I don’t care if it wasn’t every body or “cause gerrymandering”. A sane electorate anywhere not forced to the ballot box (or away from it) by threats of violence/retribution should never have let this happen. We did…and it wasn’t a coup…the right side lost because too many Americans don’t care about being on the right side of history. We watched a devastating Trump first term, we watched him seemingly implode for 4-years after we barely kicked him to the curve. And then, 4-years later, we put him back in charge with more votes and more power than ever. Wtf is wrong with us? City in a fucking trench, not on a hill.
Elizabelle
@OGLiberal: Yeah. I think I have had it too
ETA: Although. Here one has to remember the struggle for civil rights. Took strength and too much patience, and we have seen a lot of backsliding. Much respect to those who fought for civil rights, and all the hard causes.
I had truly thought American voters were better people than they are. That is what I am coming to terms with. For one thing, how can you depend on these morons in the future? You can’t.
Harrison Wesley
@Bugboy: Actually he does pretty well under bright lights, since they caused the original Nosferatu to completely disintegrate.
Chris T.
@linnen:
Simple: we just have to say “we’ll enslave all the illegals and make them work for you, for free!”
We don’t even have to lie because we can take all those “illegals” and make them “legal”. Of course we won’t get there at all, because we’ll lose all the previous Dems and only gain maybe 1/4 of the Repukes in the process, so it will all be moot, but we’ll Reach Common Ground! That’s the objective, right?
Lobo
@Baud:
I thought the weird label really worked. It encapsulated everything we saw with the Trump campaign: racism, misogyny, abuse, cronyism, etc. It was a way of saying everything in an abbreviated way to avoid mindlock because there was so much revolting stuff. I still think it works.
Martin
@Elizabelle: Why do you find it insulting? Are you Joe Biden?
Arky Vaughan
Geoff Garin was the fellow who told Harris and Walz to stop saying “weird” and “we’re not going back”
according to this article:
Cele|bitchy | Democratic strategists told Kamala Harris to stop saying ‘we’re not going back’
Ksmiami
@planetjanet: the Republicans are the enemy of America. There can be no compromise, no negotiation, no tolerance of their intolerance. Fuck em. Defeat and ignominy is the only Path. They are Revanchists terrorists, not a political party.
Ksmiami
@OGLiberal: I just want red state morons to get their faces eaten, or die by a horrible, preventable disease.
Ksmiami
@Kay: I’m Rt there either you. Not one vote, not one compliment. Nothing but outrage and opposition from Democrats in Congress etc and yes, insults. Every fucking day.
Ksmiami
@George: no. Label everything the GOP intends to do as destructive to our Country and way of life. Added benefit is that it will be a true statement.
EveryDayIHaveTheBlues
@George: This is a good strategy, and I agree with it. The problem as I see it is that only media who care about this is the mainstream ones who are reflexively in the tank for both-siderism anyway.
So, who cares? Is this a good approach to take with an eye on the potential attack ads come election time? I’m genuinely curious if this helps the Ds in the long run. Your thoughts, George?
Planetjanet
@Baud: It is not a bad idea to direct their destructive gaze onto a target that would actually be helpful.
Planetjanet
@Elizabelle: I agree with you. So many seem to only hear a narrow part of what was being said. Like they only listen to soundbites, never a whole speech. They hear one thing and tune everything else out. I don’t understand it. Guess they just want to get mad and stay mad.
EveryDayIHaveTheBlues
@Ksmiami: The thing is, will this help us win? We can talk out of both sides of our mouths and see how that works: pretend to extend the hand of bipartisanship when it’s politically expedient, but in reality deny an iota of support for everything and accuse the Rs of seeking to destroy the country.
I’m curious if Rs standing for election in close fights (like the scum Ted Cruz, or Lindsey Graham in the last cycle) touted their bipartisan creds.
George
@EveryDayIHaveTheBlues: It is safe to say that the GOP will not meet the Democrats halfway in anything. The Democrats talking about bipartisanship on behalf of making the lives of Americans better is good politics. If Democrats can draw the GOP to the center, that is good.
Of course, the GOP refusing the offer of bipartisanship is likely, which means that Democrats then can say, “Look, we tried. Now we are going to pursue our own agenda,” or something to that effect.
Opposing everything associated with the GOP out of the gate simply sets up the Democrats as being obstinate, and whereas there might be certain elements on the left side of the spectrum who would whoop and holler at that, being obstinate from the start is not a recipe for winning elections.
EveryDayIHaveTheBlues
@George: All of this is true.
But
WHO is going to be parsing out the message of dems being (bi)partisan? If its the usual suspects (NYT, WP, CNN, MSNBC), then I’m not sure that it really matters (I’m conflicted on this point, because the mainstream media (MM) did seem to have an impact on Biden’s perception as old. However, much of the election analysis (perhaps incorrectly) seems to say that all the youts get their news from podcasts or whatever and the MM didn’t matter. So which is it? Were podcasts and tiktok ALSO saying that Biden was too old?)
For all of the times that Ds have tried, including during Obama’s tenure, I can’t think of any political capital they’ve accrued from it. If you can think of any, I’d be truly glad to hear and learn from it. The way I see it, it’s fine to talk a big game like this and then shiv the Rs in the back IF IT HELPS THE Ds. If not, just be done with the pretense and shiv ’em in the chest. Regardless of whichever way one chooses, one must be sure to plunge the knife in good and deep.
Kayla Rudbek
@UncleEbeneezer: I’d say that it’s like trying to drive a car with a bad alignment, so that you constantly have to keep on correcting so that you can keep moving forward instead of going off the road.
Kayla Rudbek
@eclare: the thing is that many people would lose access to credit if the rate was capped at 10%.
Martin
@George: Voters don’t want bipartisanship. They want results. They think that bipartisanship is the better way to get there, but they will take it however you get there.
Democrats have a tendency to believe that the means of getting there is what determines if a policy is moral more than what policy itself does. So they are very process, rather than results driven.
Hunter’s pardon is being results, rather than process driven. The moral thing last week was to let the justice system take its course and produce the moral outcome, today the moral thing is to pardon him because the system can’t be trusted to produce moral outcomes. That is a sea change to how Biden views things.
It doesn’t matter if Democrats oppose everything associated with the GOP. They already blame us for doing that. Mitch called Democrats the most obstructionist in history when Trump was elected. You can’t appease them or shame them. You have to fight them with the tools you have.