CNN:Democrats confront their powerlessness as Trump flexes authority
Democrats remain essentially leaderless, with prospective future presidential candidates largely sitting back and allowing others to be the first ones through the buzzsaw of Trump and his cheerleaders, none eager to be the face of a party just yet. They are disconnected from the Democratic National Committee, where the Obama-era rallying cry of “Yes We Can!” became the watered down facsimile slogan “Yes We Ken!” for Ken Martin, the largely unknown insider who emerged as the winner of the recent chair race that the party’s most prominent figures avoided.
I’m disappointed that Wikler didn’t win it, and pretty much all the commenters here who expressed a strong preference would have preferred him, from what I can tell. That said, there are some good Democratic quotes in the piece, which I recommend reading, from people like Sean Casten, Greg Casar, Hakeem Jeffries and Brendan Boyle. But the anonymous cowards who won’t put their names on quotes say stuff like this:
But Casten said that activist leaders have told him and colleagues that they fear protests against Trump might eventually be used as a predicate for declaring martial law. Other House Democrats echoed this privately, and several left-leaning activist group leaders told CNN directly that their own safety concerns for participants have risen since the president’s blanket pardons for January 6 rioters.
When I read this and look at the op-ed from doctors providing trans care in Minnesota, my sympathy is lessened. We can’t cower because Trump “might” do something.
Here’s another non-banger from Politico. Dems concede Republicans ‘running circles’ around them online as Trump remakes Washington. Yes, I am not a fan of that publication, but this a fact-based, not gossip-based piece. Our social accounts lag far, far behind the Republicans’.
“Republicans are running circles around Democrats for how to connect to the culture today,” said John Della Volpe, director of Harvard University’s youth poll and an expert on Gen Z. “People are still asking me in these post-election meetings, ‘Who is Theo Von?’ Even if they had the best message, you can’t connect if you’re not part of modern American culture, if you’re not injecting yourself into these spaces where people already are.”
[…]Democrats’ weakness in reaching voters outside traditional channels — TikTok, not MSNBC; YouTube, not national newspapers — isn’t new. One post-election analysis from Navigator Research, a Democratic research project, found that a majority of “swing voters” and new Trump voters last year got their news primarily from social media and alternative sources, like podcasts. Broadcast and cable news were far less popular amongst those two groups, the research found, while half of Kamala Harris’ voters got their news from broadcast TV outlets.
“Republicans’ ability to speak into the ecosystem is sharper, more precise and Democrats are behind in that,” said Dan Sena, a longtime Democratic strategist and former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Sena, like other Democrats, noted that Republicans benefit from a broader media ecosystem that amplifies their message, where a story can travel from a Republican influencer’s video to Musk’s X feed to Joe Rogan’s podcast to Fox News, reaching millions of viewers along the way.
“There is a fight for the attention economy, and today the Republicans are winning. No doubt,” he added.
Sena warned that the fix won’t come from the Democratic National Committee, DCCC or other affiliated party arms, therefore, it’s “not even a fix we can expect right now,” he said. Instead, “that’s going to come through our candidates pushing back, getting their own internal communications sharper as we head into 2026.”
So my reasoned response to Sena is fuck that guy. If he was in charge of the DCCC, why didn’t he change things. This is part of the critique of Democratic consultants: they never take responsibility for losing. Anyway:
“The leadership vacuum IRL is causing a messaging vacuum online,” said Kyle Tharp, a progressive researcher who tracks digital political trends through his substack, Chaotic Era. “Even though there are some bright spots, Democrats are still getting steamrolled online and there’s not a lot they can do about it because there’s not a single coordinating body or person to push an offensive message.”
“I don’t know how fixable that problem is right now,” Tharp added.
Politico name-checks some of the people that I and others have called out as good on social media: AOC, Maxwell Frost, Chris Murphy, Brian Schatz and Robert Garcia. The piece also notes that Hakeem Jeffries appeared on a couple of podcasts recently, and so did Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker.
“They should be creating bait of their own. Be more aggressive, be more outlandish,” said Tim Miller, a former GOP strategist who now hosts a podcast on The Bulwark, a site founded by anti-Trump Republicans. “I think they should be doing 700X of what they’re doing, in terms of output, volume, platforms, speed.”
I agree with this. Often, when I post about a Democrat not saying much, someone posts a video or tweet showing them doing something. That’s great, but it’s a quantity and quality game. If our rapid response isn’t getting traction, and the numbers show it isn’t, then we need to adapt and change, quickly.
These people work for us. If they’re not doing the work that we want to, we can make that clear when we message them, and via our donations. People on this site have sent a shit ton of money to Democrats, so asking some of them to do better seems reasonable, at least to me.
WheatBoy56
He is right: they should be doing about two or three orders of magnitude more than they have been doing. Pathetic leadership.
Leto
We would do well to follow the example of the protestors in Georgia that Adam highlights nightly. I think they’re on day 80 of massive, countrywide protests? They’re out there every damn day. Don’t know if anyone there is doing the, “They’re not doing it right” bullshit. Probably, because humans can’t help themselves.
Harrison Wesley
The anonymous ‘activist leaders’ who are worried about what the Diaper King might do have apparently never heard of the civil rights movement. Its participants didn’t have to theorize; they SAW what the reaction was. And it didn’t stop them.
HinTN
This exactly. They are cowards.
tobie
WaterGirl’s suggestion that Dems appoint a shadow cabinet has grown legs. Even Laurence Tribe has advocated for it. We’re dealing with a many-headed hydra and can only adequately respond in real time to the damage occurring in the federal govt if multiple individuals are tasked to highlight the daily outrages, SNAFUs and assault on Americans. I have no idea how to gain traction on social media, especially when the largest platforms belong to Musk and Zuckerberg.
HinTN
@Harrison Wesley: John Lewis almost died causing “Good Trouble”. We should be so lucky as to have one, or more, of his stature today.
scav
Attention Economy? That shit deserves to go down in flames. Cancer cells unfortunately have dysfunctional apoptosis. Let’s be better than cancer.
HinTN
Hoo boy did I need today’s image by Munira. Thanks WG!
RaflW
Georgetown U. historian Thomas Zimmer said this morning in response to one of the articles in the OP:
“We desperately need a mobilization of civil society. And it’s precisely because mobilizing will be far more dangerous than during the first Trump administration that we need Democratic leaders to signal that it is time to mobilize, embrace the mobilization – we need them to *lead*.”
I agree with the main thrust here, but I also very much believe (through being part of activist cadres on previous issues) the following, which I replied:
“@raflw.bsky.social
It seems ahistorical to expect national elected officials to lead. Their role has always been to jump in front of collective action, once organized and under way by the angry citizenry, and pretend to have ‘lead’ it.”
scav
@RaflW: Isn’t it also true that a fair number of historical mass movements had fictitious leaders? There was no Captain Ludd.
RaflW
A bit of a throw-away given the larger stakes, but coming from both business-land and government-adjacent advocacy, we can shorten the above from mistermix to just say “This is part of the critique of consultants: they never take responsibility.”
Yet in a way, what Musk is right now is the mother of all ‘anti-consultants’. He’s been brought in to wreck everything the GOP hates, and do it in a way that removes responsibility from all the parties (Trump, Thune, Johnson, all the backbenchers).
One wonders if Musk knows that he’ll be handed all the bags of fury and anger and crashing business climates, etc. (I wonder if even he will be held responsible.)
HinTN
@RaflW:
Not unless we’re willing to stop “turning the page” “moving forward” “forgiving and forgetting” like we’ve done since Ford pardoned Tricky Dick.
TBone
Hometown Represent! I wonder if Wanda Sykes will show up. #50501in Media PA tomorrow on the Court House steps:
Broken link ugh
Sister Golden Bear
@RaflW:
To narcissists and bullies other people are merely non-player characters without agency. They’re invariably surprised when that turns out not to be the case.
Whether he’ll be held responsible is entirely different question, but if Trump does try to underbus him, I’m sure it’ll be a shock. I mean how dare a subordinate try to challenge him.
RaflW
@scav: Dunno. I’m just thinking about the (possibly apocryphal) story of FDR meeting with A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters where the latter laid out demands.
“You’ve convinced me. I agree with what you’ve said. Now go out and make me do it,” FDR has been said to have replied.
Even if not literally true, I think it speaks to how leaders often respond to movements, not get out in front of them.
Suzanne
This is the kind of thing that makes me fucken hopeless. Oh my God.
Harrison Wesley
My oldest friend called me today to make sure I wasn’t going to overconsume on the 28th. I told her we’re planning on dinner at a small local restaurant followed by a play put on by the FSU Conservatory students. Nothing to enrich oligarchs or to fuck over everyone else.
Glory b
Black women say “We tried, you didnt want to listen, it’s on you now.”
WTFGhost
Imma gonna agree with that, but: you need *teams* to do that.
You need those people, and you need some separation – that’s one of the way Republicans operate. You can’t exactly blame them for *anything*, right? “It’s the THINK TANKS or the SHOCK JOCKS or the DOOM-MONGERS, but, they *are* asking questions that I think deserve answers!”
So: some wonk goes afield, no big. Some compassionate person suggests Israel shouldn’t be engaging in modern day genocidal activities, support for the hate mail can be shared privately, and political strategies shifted. Some rude person says something rude? “Where *is* your sense of humor?” And, of course, those merely *sharing* things can hardly be blamed for EVERY WORD in the shared thingie.
See, all of these tasks are *necessary*. The idea of specialized teams for them makes sense. Sure, some people will skip around – like Obama could, which is why he was so gifted – but if you understand “different teams for different tasks” you stop expecting an Obama. Harris had joy, compassion, wonkiness, but she didn’t have full throated, sneaky, go-for-the-throat *nastiness* ready to eviscerate the enemy. They even thought “couchfucker” was too much. Well – *HARRIS* should. *WALZ* should. And they should give a warm handshake and embrace to the person who came up with it, *swearing* that it was because (he, I assume) “has gone beyond such pettiness,” or “made his point that few people read the book well enough to *know* he was teasing… and fibbing.”
You need that *community*, see? That’s the reward that makes Republicans keep trying to out-hate each other. Well – we can do them better.
My thoughts, which were recently trying to chase down butterflies that caused typhoons, only to realize perhaps its the raging amounts of insanity that magnify the effects of the butterfly’s wings, and… WHY AREN’T MOTHS INCLUDED, HUH?
RaflW
@Sister Golden Bear said
I think this also relates closely to the potential economic free fall I think we’re headed for. The closed loop libertarian freaks who’ve assumed control may actually believe the bullshit they’ve been marinating in for decades.
They appear to think these 100s of thousands of government workers really are deadweight. That ‘the market’ will freely run in glorious expansion. That we are ‘wasting’ money in Europe, etc. That regulations strangle us rather than create predictable guardrails that benefit both parties in the tradeoff.
Of course, these are all zero-sum thinkers anyway. The whole idea of a win-win is anathema to the predatory mind. But their hubris is in thinking they’re ‘freeing capital’ rather than shattering both demand and, just as importantly, a sense of stability that normal business people need to perceive to be willing to invest in equipment or personnel.
Glory b
@WTFGhost: We spend too much time, bandwidth and effort criticizing other Dems, something Republicans don’t do.
WTFGhost
@Glory b: I’m trying to help too – could you give me some advice?
(I’m sorry – I couldn’t read your advice, if you have any to give right now. It’s just the sort of thing that sounds like *someone* should say in response. “Okay, it’s on us… any advice?”)
jefft452
“But the anonymous cowards who won’t put their names on quotes…”
Why do you assume these people actually exist?
They are likely as real at Friedman’s cab drivers
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
See this is what I don’t understand…the Harris campaign raised more than a billion dollars in a matter of months. I can’t imagine they spent it all. That kind of cash could pay for tons of online messaging. It’s obvious that it’s needed and it’s obvious the Dems could raise the money to make it happen, and maybe even already have that money on hand. But they’d apparently rather wish for a pre-social media world and not bother playing in that space.
On one level I get it. I don’t use social media much because most of it seems dumb, amateurish and when it comes to political messaging transparently manipulative. I get why people with a certain level of education mostly ignore a lot of it – it’s hard to believe anyone finds it convincing. But they do, and it’s a lot of territory to just give up on. So on that level it’s just a bad idea to wish it away.
zhena gogolia
@WTFGhost: My advice is, should Democrats ever get anywhere near the White House again, they should support the President to their last gasp.
Suzanne
@WTFGhost:
Yes this.
These campaigns get money absolutely shoveled to them. They can hire some good media people to help them.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I’m curious if there is any common features among these House Dems that can only “echo privately”, namely, what caucus/coalition do they belong to.
We had this same conversation 2-3 weeks ago over media approach, messaging, etc. Looks like nothing has changed during that time frame.
Suzanne
Here in Pittsburgh, it is sleeting sideways due to high winds, and I found a giant dead rat in my backyard this morning.
Back to bed.
narya
Okay, maybe this is an unpopular take, but I do not particularly want to see some single, coordinated approach right now. A variety or approaches is what we see now, and what, for example, Maddow has been highlighting, and I like it. Some of it can and will and does get attention, but we cannot predict exactly what will, so avoiding doing that One Thing/One Message approach is useful right now. It’s been less than a month, FFS.
And also too: a lot of the bemoaning about how Ds aren’t in enough spaces blah blah blah, elide the absolute fact that the RW OWNS a lot of the media, horizontally and vertically. Chris Murphy taking a great stand–which I think he has been doing–don’t mean shit if the media outlets won’t cover it, and most of them don’t. But I DO see a certain amount of organic organizing, and I DO see some folks picking a particular issue (Warren on CFPB) and focusing on that.
WTFGhost
@RaflW: That’s what I meant when I talked about separation, too. The President can’t support gay people serving openly, until activists build enough ground support for it. “It’s not that I don’t want you to serve openly – it’s that I’m hoping to pass universal health care, too!”
One team would be mocking homophobia as cowardice: “I’ll face a machine gun nest, but not a gay man in the foxhole next to me.”
One would be highlighting the pride and honor. (Yes, there’d be a tiny Pride joke in there – pride flag *below* the American flag, as is proper.)
One would be pointing out that Israel has had mixed-sex military – are you saying *their* military readiness is bad?
THEN, then you’d get a messaging push that a politician can step onto comfortably.
That’s part of what Republicans do – and, again, the community holds together. They know if they’re going to crap on someone, at least, make it a nice crap sandwich, say you admire them, here’s the crap, followed by “please, remember, I’m saying this because we’re friends, and I disagree, but that doesn’t mean our friendship is broken.”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Yup. If Hakeem Jeffries holds the greatest press conference ever and nobody (effectively) reports on it, did it actually happen?
Harrison Wesley
@Suzanne: A symbolic representation of America 2/16/25.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
IIRC she ended the campaign with a $60 million deficit.
The day after the election, her KamalaHQ social media accounts which were run by a great, young staff went dark. A massive waste. Not blaming Kamala for this, btw, it’s a structural problem with the Dem party. Now that account has been resurrected with a new name, FactPostNews (https://bsky.app/profile/factpostnews.bsky.social) and it has a piddly 12K followers on BlueSky and 26K on Instagram. KamalaHQ had 1.2 million followers on Instagram. It’s also not as good as KamalaHQ. KamalaHQ posted more frequently and was more “edgy”.
Suzanne
@Harrison Wesley: Believe me, I said, “OH LOOK A METAPHOR” after I stopped shrieking.
MobiusKlein
Is there a reason that previous democratic Presidents and VPs aren’t out there calling for massive resistance? Being the Govt in exile / loyal opposition?
Get Obama, Bill C, Al Gore, Biden, Kamala, Pelosi, etc all calling for a mass action. That would get some headlines, and some unification.
prostratedragon
From reddit:
Leto
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I feel like we answered this the previous four years. All this great shit that Biden/Dems accomplished, basically zero reporting with people going, “What have they done?”
WTFGhost
If anyone wants to arrange a march, “we’re willing to die, if Trump wants to gun us down” for people with severe disabilities who think Trump might bayonet them in the gut FISCALLY instead of physically, I’m in for the greater Seattle chapter. I might need to rent one of those scooters.
I am not kidding – I often say I live on grenade watch. If I could die *heroically*, well… that’s not suicide. That’s not leaving an emotional atom bomb in the brains of everyone who knows me. That’s good, clean, grief, “he hated the physical world, and now he’s free of it, and I always *knew* he was that kinda guy.”
I would *LOVE* to be the new Crispus Attucks. And most of y’all know I have a bit of a nasty desire to poke the normies for not being as brave as they demand *I* be. “I’m MARCHING – okay, with a WALKER! – WHERE ARE YOU WIMPS?”
bbleh
@RaflW: @WTFGhost: well but … I think FDR’s quote was really more like “give me popular cover to do what I want to do.” And my response to that in the present situation is, WHAT MORE COVER DO YOU NEED? Are there ANY Dems who support the Orange Guy or his policies? Even among mostly-agnostic normies who don’t know much about his policies or actions, once they find out, they don’t support them either. Dem politicians don’t need more cover to do what they should be doing.
And they HAVE the platforms. I don’t care how many local teams we assemble, they’re not gonna be followed around or called by CNN looking for juicy quotes. Dem politicians have the positions, the staff, and the time, and … IT’S THEIR JOB. What else do they DO? (And yeah, their OFFICES do constituent service, but that’s almost entirely staff.)
What *I* would say to someone quoting FDR at me is, how about you provide some focus and some leadership around which we can rally? You want a team, then set some goals, advocate for them, and STICK WITH IT for more than one news cycle (three days after the fact, after careful consultation with colleagues and consultants).
I yell (politely) at my reps routinely. They know what we want and what we’ll support. They need to stick their necks out a little.
tam1MI
I wonder how long it will take for the reality that what was done to Joe Biden by his own party was a disastrous mistake that locked in Trump’s victory to sink in. I will never forgive those elected Dems for what they did, especially now that they are cowering and pissing themselves in the face of Donald Trump.
gene108
For the people griping about Democratic communications, keep in mind Republican politicians did not build their media advantage. This was done by wealthy people with political axes to grind. Republican politicians aligned themselves with right-wind media.
**************
Something that’s still overlooked by people in the U.S. is Trump’s social media advertising from the 2016. Cambridge Analytica and Peter Thiel lined up to do data mining to better focus online ads. They paid millions to Facebook, Google, etc. for user data that they used very effectively to micro target potential voters.
The BBC, as part of their investigation into Cambridge Analytica, also looked at its influence in the 2016 Trump campaign. I can’t find the segment online anymore, but someone responsible for the digital marketing for Trump 2016 said they could fine tune their ads to include a pickup truck if they thought it’d appeal to certain groups of people. Not only that but they could change the color of their pickup truck to better appeal to certain groups of people based on their data.
**************
As has been noted before, the right-wing media ecosystem took decades to build and billionaires willing to set their money on fire for the sake of advancing their views.
This is one big reason so many dumb Republican politicians keep getting elected. There’s a robust media system that props them up.
Republican politicians aren’t dominating social media. Dweebs like Ben Shapiro are. Republican politicians have to do very little to get their message out between right-wing media and the lazy MSM.
I also don’t think there was ever a “golden age” of broadcast media, despite everyone trusting Walter Cronkite. The blinders and fecklessness of the media wasn’t so obvious, because there wasn’t an active right-wing disinformation network actively competing against them at the current scale.
****************
The things I wish Democrats would do is be very public about their 90+ year history of making things better for ordinary Americans, from Social Security to Medicare to the ACA/Obamacare to FDIC insurance on bank deposits to Family Medical Leave.
Contrast it to Republicans who’ve mostly cut taxes for billionaires.
Pull up those charts that show how much better job growth is under Democrats than Republicans.
The lack of repetition is one of the Democrats biggest problems*. They don’t need a rapid response to every Republican lie, rather they need to clearly define themselves to voters.
This really needs to be the focus of the DNC, DCCC, etc. continuously throughout the year.
*The other problem is people bitching that we aren’t some Scandinavian social democratic republic. I get wanting to expand the safety net, but for fucks sake even the unpaid FMLA was huge progress. Bush, Sr. vetoed it every time it passed Congress. Treat it like a victory, rather than a failure because the leave is unpaid.
TBone
@TBone: there is no way I can be in Media, PA tomorrow but I don’t have to! #50501 is truly going nationwide! Right here in the County seat of Union County, PA!
🎶🤘
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Ayrc7RqjA
jowriter
@MobiusKlein: Agreed. Where are they?
Sister Golden Bear
@RaflW:
I’m reminded of the story about a guy who stopped being Libertarian after taking ecstasy and realizing for the first time in his life that other people have feelings too.
And yes, Libertarians are like house cats, convinced of their fierce independence and self-sufficiency while utterly dependent on a system that they utterly unaware of, nor comprehend at all. Except house cats are weird little assholes only some of the time.
RaflW
@bbleh: I agree they should stick their necks out. They’re not, at least not with enough consistency or cohesiveness (things like going to and getting barred from Dept of Ed, USAID and such is a tiny start).
So then the issue is, what do we — big, collective we — do since they so far won’t.
The answer is what SNCC did. What suffragettes did. What ActUp did. And so on…
WTFGhost
@bbleh: right, but I’m saying, we have to make *noise* – not just demand that they make noise. They’re running scared, and they are terrified of sticking their necks out, so, we have to find what team we can play on.
Can we just bitch a bit in blogs and social media? *EVEN THAT HELPS*. Can we share clever memes? Can we try to make them? Cute doggo “they weren’t eating me in OHIO – but he cut food aid to (ed: I know, I know, DO IT) [country where dog is eaten]”
That’s ten seconds from a diseased brain. Okay, the diseased brain *helped* a bit there, I admit. But come on. I…
Fuck. I am a genius, with a master’s in math, even at my worst. EVERYTHING hurts. Each letter I type to you hurts. It is a gift.
So I see “you,” generically as bursting with energy, able to talk, or read, for one or more HOURS at a time. And it’s like, I worked my whole life to sharpen my brain and now I can’t use it.
You might see what I throw around easily as hard. But the only reason I can throw it around at all, is that lifetime of sharpening my brain, so I can use the short bursts of peace to do amazing things. Most people – they don’t realize how powerful their brains, and their words are, if they focus on them as *tools*. Tools that need the right amount of sharpness, hardness, toughness, etc..
Um. Does the fact that I once wanted to teach show here, in the “use your brains! SHARPEN them! TEMPER them!” speech?
So, I’m sorry if my envy of normality is making me sound like I’m asking you to do the impossible, or to be more than you are. I am saying, though, that from my perspective, you have something I may never have, and I hope you find the way to use it best.
RaflW
@Sister Golden Bear: House cats (some) also offer pleasing surfaces for petting, and know to make purring noises which have strange mood enhancing effects on their humans.
Republicans and libertarians? No benefits on offer. At all.
tobie
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: @Suzanne: My only social media account is on Mastodon so I’m not the right person to comment on this, but I remember reading on BJ that the Harris campaign had really funny, snarky, pointed posts on TikTok, X, and Instagram and that her team was good in getting posts up quickly.
We lost and that sucked but we seem to have changed our tune on the Harris campaign’s media campaign to fit that result. Even the whole complaint “she didn’t go on Joe Rogan” ended up being engineered from the right, when we learned, just recently, that it was Rogan who cancelled the meeting she planned with him and for which she used the Houston rally as cover.
That taught me: our responses are also manipulated…precisely because we don’t own the major social media apps. This is a big reason I try to refrain from finger pointing. I don’t know enough and am not savvy enough to understand the machinations behind the scene that generate media sensations.
scav
@RaflW: Oh yes, agree that elected officials vastly tend not to get ahead of anything but a solid crowd. More that, if a crowd is moving, they’ll sometimes invent a leader to follow if necessary. There’s at least one more example from Ireland my brain is half remembering. Another from England. Sort of a nom de resistance that shows up in letters and proclamations everywhere.
cmorenc
@scav: True about some mass movements with fictitious leaders – with QANON being an ironic example, though probably not one of the examples you had in mind.
RaflW
@tobie: Random side note, but in looking to see what the press says Harris is up to right now (don’t go look, it’s not worth the time, search sucks and our press sucks worse), Rogan is still milking this sh*t. And of course Newsweek is fluffing his nonsense.
Again, no one should bother. I absolutely did not click thru to the latest Rogan claptrap. But it does illustrate how the wingnut Wurlitzer is a fucking hyrda and a siren combined (in the Greek senses).
emjayay
@gene108: This place needs a simple thumbs up thingy. And replys to comments that are actually right under the original comment.
Miss Bianca
@RaflW: “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.” (Mahatma Gandhi, I think)
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia:
What, even if they’re old?
Chris
@tam1MI:
I’m still waiting to see when the reality will sink in that most Democrats in 2024, both among voters and politicians, got royally played by a scorched earth media campaign lasting five years and making EmailGate look positively restrained. I pretty much expect the answer to be “never.”
geg6
@tam1MI:
Yep.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@tobie: Harris has a great social media team but it was in the field for only a few months. Right wing messaging is out 24/7 365 perpetually. The only thing keeping Dems in the game is their policy slate is far more appealing and it’s a disaster every time Republicans get unified rule.
The propaganda works until disaster ensues and at that point it’s so obvious things got a lot worse to a critical mass of people that they vote for change. Then things slowly start getting better but the Republican messaging is still out there saying things suck, they’re not getting better, they’re getting better in the wrong way and not fast enough plus look they hate guns and pick up trucks and all the other culture war bullshit you love. And next thing you know people’s opinion of the President that did good things suffers.
So the cycle repeats. Short circuiting that cycle by messaging constantly all the time seems like it would help but it’s not something Democrats do.
cmorenc
@tam1MI: I am fed up with people still whining that we lost because the dems didn’t stick with Biden as their nominee. Biden was dead candidate walking after his disastrous June debate performance, which fairly or unfairly both confirmed normie voter impressions of his alleged diminished capacity and worse, allowed Trump by sheer contrast to appear dynamic and on top of things when a sharper D performance would have vividly exposed the incoherent shoddiness of Trump’s performance.
We would be in a very different place had Biden brought his State of the Union speech level game to the debate that night in June, but he didn’t. He instead left Ds between a rock and a hard place, which put all his positive accomplishments during his Presidency at grave risk.
Most important: pouting about “we did Joe wrong” does NOTHING constructive toward finding our leverage against Trump and Musk. Anger redirected at Trump and the too-flaccid contemporary D leadership response to Trump is vastly more helpful than serving in a D circular firing squad volunteer militia.
zhena gogolia
@cmorenc: We have no leverage against Trump and Musk. None. What we had was an incumbent President and the opportunity to vote. We blew it.
ETA: I just get tired of hearing people who are ready to make signs and go march and put out all this (useless) energy when it was too hard for them to support their own candidate when it counted. Some of us realized what was at stake.
geg6
I am disappointed to see so many complaining that even when our congresscritters say something good, the legacy media doesn’t cover it. People, it’s been that way for forty+ years! We need to quit worrying about those idiots and start thinking about how to create our own echo chamber. Skip the outlets that no one but senior citizens consume and find a way into the podcasting and social media that are dominating public discourse in the current world. There are very liberal podcasters out there, many of them famous from other media but they almost never talk politics. We need our own Ben Shapiros and Joe Rogans and Candice Owenses. There are some out there (the Meidas brothers, for one example). But we need more and better ones, especially in the podcasting world. Too many of ours are serious and wonky. There is a place for that but we need more accessible people (meaning less wonky, more cutthroat and funny) to attract people to listen to them.
cmorenc
@zhena gogolia: We have to start from where we are – and whining about how unfair it all was to Biden isn’t going to gain us any useful traction going forward. What would be more useful, once the destructive effects of Trump & Musk’s early-term maneuvers begin to bite the majority of the electorate in economically tangible, painful ways, is to contrast the economic success and stability that Biden tangibly brought with the insecurity and destruction now happening on Trump’s watch. They won’t be able to hide or explain away why not just eggs, but produce has become much more expensive under Trump, as well as the many other consumer goods impacted by tariffs.
zhena gogolia
@cmorenc: I’m not whining. I was answering someone who asked for advice. If we do the same thing in the future that we did with Biden, we are going to have the same result. Trump also had a disastrous debate performance (both against Biden and against Harris). The response of his supporters was, “What debate?” What we need to learn is to be more like that when THE LOSS OF POWER FOR PROBABLY A GENERATION IS AT STAKE. I don’t give a shit about Biden’s feelings or anything you seem to be imputing to me. I give a shit about the United States of America, which is now sliding into utter (and utterly predictable) disaster because we followed the New York Times like lemmings over a cliff.
BrotherCrab
Raise the heat and the pressure and help the obese orange frog to boil itself. Trump cannot handle any sort of opposition, so make him face it on a daily basis. The more he looks like a wimp, a lunatic or a failure, the madder, dumber and more repulsive he gets. There are two objectives here: short-term slowing/breaking of his program and long-term ensuring no part of it takes root. Institutional Democrats are largely useless, so go around them, ignore their squeaks, do what needs to be done. They played a part in getting us here, so they have an interest in using decorum to keep us here and avoid admitting their career-ending faults. Raise the heat and the pressure!
Professor Bigfoot
@Miss Bianca: Am I the only one who remembers the absolutely lukewarm at best support Obama got from elected Dems?
While the conservatives tore into him like rabid beavers?
IT’S A WHITE DUDE PROBLEM.
Sooner or later some white dude “on our side” is going to advocate that we shouldn’t fight for trans rights; we shouldn’t fight for gay rights, we should just focus on economics and lay all this “civil rights” stuff aside.
Watch and see.
Professor Bigfoot
@zhena gogolia: White dude problem.
Of course, they’re the only people who can’t seem to hear Democratic messaging and are dead nuts certain they can do better… but ultimately for them it always comes down to “quit whining about trans rights and focus on economics!”
Because their rights will NEVER be trampled.
zhena gogolia
@Professor Bigfoot: It’s tiring.
Professor Bigfoot
@zhena gogolia:
What did I say?
dnfree
@zhena gogolia: Boy, I hate going back to this topic again, but I’m not letting it go if you aren’t. I saw the debate. Biden made it quite clear that he not only didn’t have another four years in him, his degree of functionality currently was in question. I’m not basing that on what someone told me to think; I’m basing it on seeing the debate.
The more time has passed, the more I think Biden blew it by not announcing he wasn’t running in time for a genuine primary campaign. By the time his diminishment was evident, it was too late. That’s on him and the people around him.
You disagree with me and that’s fine. I think sticking with him would have been a disaster and I think that’s on him. His ego got the better of him.
schrodingers_cat
Brocialist mantra: Whatever the Dems are doing, they are doing it wrong. The worst development in our politics was the rise of the twin avatars of white grievance, 🍊 🤡 and St. Bernard.
schrodingers_cat
@dnfree: He had one bad debate, he was jetlagged and ill. I saw him speak eloquently at an international conference conference later that week. But you do you. Change your handle to Factfree while you’re at it.
dnfree
@tam1MI: And you too. What was done to Biden wasn’t done by his own party; it was done by Biden himself. All the talk about his supposed dementia by Republicans was unfair until he stepped on that debate stage and made it seem plausible. His staff and family had to know that.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: Trump gave a blow job to a microphone the week before the election. But his supporters didn’t give a flying fuck.
wonkie
I am opposed to mass protests because I am concerned that they will degenerate into the stupid behavior that ruined the Balck Lives protests. Those traffic fuckings and riots actually helped Republicans win. If I was a COngressional Dem, would NOT want a repeat of that.
On the other hand, the events in the next post up are intelligently designed and will likely be productive and effective. They are also small scale, targeted, and timed for daylight with a definitive ending. I’m trying to find some local people to do Indivisible events near where I live.
It’s too easy for large scale events to be hijacked by idiots who just want to vent in public like two-year olds while fucking with traffic or breaking windows.
Professor Bigfoot
@dnfree: If it weren’t for the fact that he’s a white man, of course.
Y’all keep skipping past this fact: he was a white man and therefore more white people felt comfortable voting for him.
He got ditched because other white people in his own party knifed him, I believe because he’s too friendly to Black people.
Black woman SC nominee, Black woman VP, Black people scattered all through his administration and white people decided a 34 count felon was preferable to a smart, capable Black woman.
Josie
I have always agreed with those who thought we should have stuck with Biden, even though I have always been an avid supporter of Harris. I have come to think, however, that it would not have mattered. The cake was already baked before the debate. We would have lost with either candidate because we could not get our message out in any meaningful way. Until we figure out how to solve that problem, we will struggle to win national elections.
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat: Yet another white dude, doing what white dudes usually do.
Thank the gods that there are as few of this kind of white dude here as there are… but he’s a solid reminder that they are not to be trusted.
Professor Bigfoot
@Josie: I believe we might have had a better chance with a white man at the top of the ticket; but Dark Brandon was just a little too friendly with the duskier set; and a little too popular with them.
dnfree
@schrodingers_cat: That “one bad debate” was worse than bad. It was disastrous in context. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
The context was not only all the right- wing comments about him; it was also his general failure to communicate dynamically and often. It was the behind-the-scenes stories of concern from those who interacted with him regularly. And then it was all the comments about how no one had voted for Harris. (I voted for Harris as part of the primary ticket.).
I think part of what did Harris in was people loyal to Biden who thought he had been unfairly treated and stayed home. If Biden had just announced in 2023 that he wasn’t running again—we don’t know what would have happened. We do know his polling cratered after the debate.
tam1MI
Trump’s policies stirs up trouble in South Africa:
dnfree
@schrodingers_cat: Wow. I am explaining my interpretation of the facts in evidence, and you are explaining yours. Neither of us knows with certainty what would have happened if either a) Biden had stayed in after the debate as our candidate, or b) Biden had announced in 2023 that he wasn’t running again.
I’m not “fact-free” and neither are you. We simply see different likely results from the facts at hand.
Professor Bigfoot
@dnfree: Dismissing the racial aspects of how Americans* chose a 34 count felon over a Black woman?
Disingenuous, at best.
Professor Bigfoot
@dnfree: Your explanation ignores the racial aspects of how Americans* chose a 34 count felon white man over the highly qualified Black woman.
There’s very little meat on that bone.
tam1MI
Already happened.
James Carville.
tam1MI
The bad debate is the fig leaf excuse. And the blunt fact is that debates don’t matter – Harris wiped the floor with Trump in her debate, even Fox News conceded that, and it made not one whit of difference to the end result.
They broke it, and now they refuse to buy it.
tam1MI
I agree with you here. It’s kind of what happens when you tell people their vote doesn’t matter and doesn’t count, and force out the President they went out of their way to vote for in primaries held not even a full month earlier.
Professor Bigfoot
@tam1MI: White people.
linnen
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Preach!
linnen
@gene108:
THIS!
This needs to be printed out poster-sized and stapled to the forehead of all the pundits, centralist talking heads and Democratic “strategists who used to work on a campaign” that harp about the failure of Democratic messaging.
narya
Not to put too fine a point on my earlier comment, but there’s a post of a CNN story about “Dems afraid to do anything” that features a picture of Warren at a protest to protect the CFPB. WTAF.
@Professor Bigfoot: ding ding ding! We have a winner!
neldob
“Words,” John Maynard Keynes once wrote, “ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.”
Gretchen
@wonkie: Also there will be right-wingers trying to disrupt protests and make them look bad, like the guy who broke the Target window in Minneapolis, which was the first example of lawless Antifa and actually turned out to be a Proud Boy or something like that.
different-church-lady
Like they’re gonna wait for an excuse?
different-church-lady
@Professor Bigfoot:
We focus on economics and they vote for Trump anyway.
Gloria DryGarden
@WTFGhost: with just a little bit of editing, perhaps a co writer, this could become one of those how to go forward posts that WG has requested from us.
please will you consider it ?
Gloria DryGarden
@narya: re wimpy lame headlines, or dem actions not reported about
yup. Like watching the headlines, even in my phones google news feed, with hyped up positive headlines for weird harmful republicans, and limp headlines about Harris, or vpbuden, “trying” to get something done. Headlines designed to build up one set of candidates, and recast as ineffectual, the effectiveness coming from dems.
And yeah, we were played. And yeah, RW has ownership of so much media, that’s been a big factor.
wish I were writing about solutions.
A composite of all the comments in this thread from WTFGhost up through #44 and beyond, seems full of great ideas. I agree with so many here, and I feel heartened.
Suzanne, I nominated your rat metaphor…
wtfghost, it hurts you to type? Thanks for your many illuminating and well thought out points of view. It has great value.
onward, in whatever ways we find to play for the team!
dnfree
@tam1MI: Sorry you feel that way. My reaction to the debate was obviously different from yours. The debate made the problem obvious. I think Biden became unelectable at that point, despite having other appearances in which he seemed competent. There weren’t any great answers so late in the game.
I’ve had experience with family members sliding into dementia. They have good days and bad days. And there’s also the concept of “sundowning”, being worse in the evening. The debate was in the evening.
dnfree
@Professor Bigfoot: I’m not a white dude. I’m a fairly old white woman who has been “woke” to civil rights issues and racism since the early 1960s. I voted for Biden and Harris as a ticket in the 2024 primaries and I thought under the tight time circumstances Harris was the logical choice to take over. I think she and Walz did the very best they could under the circumstances and I think she would have been a good president. I’m not sure how you’re interpreting what I said.
The Truffle
@cmorenc: this is true. There is a lot of talk about Cheeto “remaking” Washington. As before, he’lll overreach. Just make him own it. And within a year Musk will likely be gone.
Democrats need their own Tea Party and their own Contract with America.
Also, why can’t some rich liberal create new liberal media outlets?
The Truffle
@Glory b: That is my problem. Enough of the circular firing squad.
I wish people would channel that energy into state and local races. Build up the party.
geg6
@dnfree:
Complete and utter bullshit. Please provide evidence of this.
geg6
@dnfree:
Dude, I am currently living with a partner with dementia. Joe Biden does not have dementia.
Professor Bigfoot
@dnfree: You refuse to see why she lost— because she’s a Black woman period full stop.
Y’all come up with all kinds of rationalizations and “not all white peoples,” but you cannot accept that the majority of your demographic preferred a white man with 34 felonies.
dnfree
@Professor Bigfoot: I was referring to one of the contributing factors, of which there seem to have been multiple. Apparently a lot of people who voted for Biden in 2020 stayed home. And we’ve seen a number of people here complain that the party should have stuck with Biden but the party betrayed him. It doesn’t seem far-fetched to me that some Biden supporters sat this one out. I am not denying the effects of racism and misogyny.
Speaking solely for myself, the debate cinched the idea that Biden would be unable to win. That late in the process, and with the primaries already over, I saw no alternative but proceeding with the other candidate elected on the primary ballot. If something had happened to Biden in office, she would have taken over, so everyone who voted for Biden in the primary DID also vote for Harris. I did!
dnfree
@geg6: I have had family members with dementia. Often the family either doesn’t see, or excuses, the symptoms in the early stages, but looking back they can see them. Joe Biden in that debate LOOKED like someone with dementia to me. Sure, at other times he did not. But at that debate he looked like someone who did not have four more years in him, at the very least. It was a forecast of things to come.