This should be mandatory reading for all democrats and the nine principles should be posted in all of their offices and read before every post on X or cable news hit.
I cannot emphasize numbers four and seven enough. The obsessive lecturing on the left over language that people who don’t work in super progressive organizations or spend 200 hours a week on social media has to stop. Use real words that normal people understand.
And to tie it into point 6, most private sector firms have a lot more important shit to get done just to stay afloat, and need to spend their time on that instead of arcane language and disparate impact lectures.
Ironically, what Democrats need to embrace is all lives matter. I’m not saying that Democrats haven’t believed that in the past, but their identity group focusing hasn’t given that impression.
Stop saying things like Hurricanes especially affected queer people and minorities harder.
As many of you know, I work in a very Trump heavy industry, but the majority of the people I work with are union millwrights. So there is some historical sympathy for the Democratic Party. However, this is over shadowed by the fact that many of them are working class, blue collar conservative, valued type men. Trust me when I say that the message white men are bad comes through louder than the unions are good message.
But all in all these nine principles are a good start. However, it’s the specifics, the language from the leadership, that I want to see change.
On a sidenote, the Democrats need to hire more veterans like Jeff Jackson from North Carolina .
P.S. I just realized there is one principle missing. #10 should have an explicit statement of patriotism and American first.
The CDC’s website on suicide talks about risk disparities and omits the largest risk disparity with suicide, men. Educated elites telling everyone that men and boys are the problem is not helpful.
And I say this as a man who says that yes, many of us are stupid, useless, and gassy. But still.
I challenge anyone to guess what the #1 priority in FEMA's 2025-2026 Strategic Plan was...
...
Equity. #2 was climate change. Only when you get to #3 do you find FEMA's actual mission (Promote and sustain a ready FEMA and prepared nation). I don't think that voters are rejecting Democrats because they're reading up on each agency's detailed policy proposals or stratagic plans or anything. But I think the public absolutely senses that Democrats primary goal is to address and promote identity focused issues and prioritize the interests of those identities. And it's hard to rebut that sense as being a caricature when you can actually go and read those detailed, often ignored and rarely seen statements of what they actually prioritize and see that Equity is FEMAs #1 goal for the upcoming year. The public's sense is, unfortunately, pretty accurate.
When you combine that with the fact that Dems never mention assisting white people or males (outside of minority men) then I don't understand why everyone is so surprised and outraged to find out that those groups are rejecting Democrats. When some Dems/liberals/progressives go even further and accuse white males as being oppressors (and white women as being complicit) then those outcomes are even less surprising.
This framing could at least be argued to be rational when minority groups were voting in lock step with the Democratic party- you're prioritizing those constituents to form a majority coalition. But if Latinos are swinging hard for conservatives and black men are also dropping off as dependable voters then you need to recalculate.
I work in government and nowhere is our congressionally mandated work mentioned anywhere in the mission statements of the department. Lots of stuff on racial justice, equity, environmental justice, and climate change.
I write a lot of federal grant proposals and am gobsmacked by how pervasive this underpants gnomes approach to DEI is. Just make solving unsolvable problems of the human condition the priority everywhere, always and then .... something, something ... we've solved racism!
It is demoralizing to write a dozen pages of detailed, highly technical, heavily cited arguments about esoteric scientific questions built on years of careful experiments only to have your proposal spiked because it doesn't do enough to help marginalized communities. Because apparently that is a problem that physical science can solve.
It isn't limited to the US either. The EU was the same way.
I worked for many years in a university in the corner of an ethnically homogeneous, overwhelming white country where funding decisions were increasingly tied to the diversity of the faculty and European grants were increasingly restricted to people belonging to specific identify groups. The fact that the applicants for tenure-track positions weren't way more diverse than the population was somehow our fault. Color me completely unsurprised—and saddened—that Europe has been electing right-wing populists.
I write grant applications for a performing arts organization in Seattle. As part of the application for a city grant (formerly known as "Civic Partners", now C.A.R.E — "Centering Art & Racial Equity"), you have to grade your own organization according to this rubric:
I had a professor in college who had a doctorate in music composition from a Soviet university. He told me that to earn such a credential in the USSR, you basically had to have the equivalent of a doctorate in Marxist ideology. I hate to say it, but one can't help but see the comparison.
Holy cow, I did not realize how far this can go... I guess we are actually a bit more insulated because of the technical nature of hard science. Though we do have adherents and it is easy to get the impression that saying the wrong thing around them will lead to your metaphorical corpse being dropped from a helicopter in the center of town to make a point.
...but wow, that document is professionalized and operationalized woke scolding. The very first point "Intentionally and publicly excludes or segregates People of the Global Majority - PGM" is unambiguous about what a terrible, terrible person you are for existing. How dare you put on shows by and for the people in your community! Your derelict art is so oppressive that you manage to oppress *the majority of people on Earth*! But you can repent and create a better world, er, performing arts organization, where "Those who have been most
impacted by systemic oppression are centered and decide individually
I think my favorite one is one I saw at a USACE district: "Keeping the floods away, the grain flowing, the fish swimming and the lights on." Or something to that effect.
When I was a teacher I definitely sat through a million trainings and half of them were about the dumbest caricatures of DEI consultant stuff you've ever seen.
Which is a shame, because many teachers are actually pretty dumb and bad at their jobs and would benefit from good trainings that focused on things like, "How do I effectively use phonics to teach students to read?", but the trainings instead have a well-earned reputation for being useless -- even the substantive ones are regularly derailed by grad student meandering instead of practical experience-based discussion of technique.
Sometimes we get shoehorned into fitting our work to meet a message. I tried hoping academic jobs during peak DEI. No one of my background was going to get a TT job unless they were a Harvard star.
LOL I am engaged on a research project on which I'm trying to sort out the tangled web of FEMA programs and similar/duplicative programs in other agencies (the focus is on a particular coastal geography). I saw this too and rolled my eyes so hard they almost got stuck that way. It's a mess, and *this* is their strategy???! Cue the mirthless laughter...
Of course I should have expected it, having seen the recent changes in formerly fully substantive fora such as the TRB.
It isn’t enough to address problems, one has to do it in the ideologically correct manner and we will appoint political commissars to ensure correct thinking!
Yeah, I have learned to my dismay that even engineering is now supposed to be ideologically correct. Bring on the change, please! I loved Jen Pahlka's take on that (https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/curiosity-and-conflict)
I liked chunks of the beginning of this essay, but the recurring theme that an open convention was smart, sensible, or even logistically plausible left me closing the tab at the third-of-the-way point.
It’s so frustrating that as soon as I started reading the DEI/Woke stuff (one of my Covid projects) it was easy to see that the blind ideology was overcoming effective, diplomatic strategy. Actually it’s a good question of why some public organizations caved so completely to the demands. Where was the power? Was there really so much “white guilt”? Fear of youngsters attacking your language and actions?
HR departments of course try to avoid lawsuits, but on what basis could someone sue for making priority #2 equity instead of priority #1?
(Of course the rank and file knows how to avoid strategic plan documents and get on with their work. Hopefully even more so in 2025.)
Absolutely, Michelle Obama's big speech about why men should vote Harris was all about supporting the women in their lives.
I don't disagree with that, but c'mon. Men have legitimate self interest. There's plenty of Richard Reeves info just lying around that should be easily lib coded. But, they can't bring themselves to address it because it violates the narrative. Simple disparity "analysis" would point that young men need more help, but suddenly disparity doesn't imply the same thing.
I like what I've heard from Richard Reeves but it also seems obviously lib-coded to me. Doesn't seem to me that Joe Rogan acolytes are going to buy the idea that lack of sufficient male elementary school teachers is a big problem.
I wouldn't be so sure. A lot of these struggling young men checked out of their educations as far back as elementary school because it's a female-dominated environment that treats male rambunctiousness as a disorder instead of healthy energy to be properly directed.
These formative experiences can have pretty deep downstream impacts on how they perceive the world as adults.
"These formative experiences can have pretty deep downstream impacts on how they perceive the world as adults."
Absolutely. I think I lucked out a bit, because in elementary school I had a lot of males in my schools. I had like one black male principal, and two male classroom teachers, and then a few scattered around the arts and gym. One of my favorite teachers was my fifth grade reading teacher, who was an older, black, southern guy with a deep, deep Alabama accent who held us to absolutely fanatical grammar standards. Great guy.
Reeves talks about the fact that there's a tipping point effect where once you get below 30% it will naturally collapse further because it gets uncomfortable to be male in the profession, the same has happened in psychology as well. This is kind of a definitional chicken/egg problem though so I don't really know how you solve it.
My loose take is that while male flight is generally unidirectional away from femininity — it never reverses — male colonization is characterized by the industrialization and exploitation of lucrative opportunities in women-dominated fields.
So, I would look towards AI tools and edtech like Khan Academy as new attractors for getting men back into early childhood education.
I agree that more male teachers is a net positive, but people are very concerned about sexual misconduct toward children (rightly), and men do statistically commit those actions at higher rates than women. I still think it’s a net positive to have more male teachers, and men should not be stigmatized in general because of the higher rates, but it is statistically true and people know that.
Men commit more of pretty much every crime. We shouldn't have men in schools because they might commit sexual misconduct is a strange and somewhat hateful take, and I don't really think it's relevant here at all. Men self-select out of these jobs, not the other way around.
This is why I think we need to make a distinction between second-order consequences and first- or second-order solutions.
The first-order problem is that in the modern world, young boys suffer without male role models (even setting aside fatherlessness). The first-order solution is to hire more men.
The second-order consequence of hiring more men is that you get more sexual misconduct. Solving this by reversing the first-order solution doesn't truly solve anything, it just gives you the original problem that solution was intended to solve.
The proper way to address the problem would be on the second order: better screening and monitoring of male teachers. I'd be PERFECTLY fine with gender-neutral policies that were disparately-targeted towards policing male teachers: for instance, "no adults alone with students". That in turn might create its own third-order problem -- the budget/scheduling necessary to make sure you keep up the policy -- but that's miles better than creating a society-wide distortion by simply never hiring men in the first place.
Of course, as is usually the problem, none of this is intelligible to the average normie swing voter. But as a matter of policy analysis and problem-solving, our society needs to get a LOT better at this kind of "thinking by orders".
I just want to register how baffled I am about the apparently persistent voter block for whom conspiratorial concerns about rampant child sex abuse is a first order political concern. It just really doesn't seem like a thing that's all that susceptible to policy levers.
Rogan is actually into this stuff! He's done several interviews, notably with Carole Hooven (Author of a book called T about testosterone) talking about what boys and men need, and how our current cultural climate affects them.
I love that the DNC site has a section for literally every single identity group you can think of except men or white people. Like if we're just going to list all identity groups would it be so hard to add those?
The fact that it’s the largest group being left off is not the smartest political decision. Also, why fuel replacement theory claims with this stuff because it really does look bad to many people to see this.
One of the "who we serve" groups is called Ethnic Americans ( https://democrats.org/who-we-are/who-we-serve/ethnic-americans/ ). I literally don't know who they mean. By the party's reputation, it's probably not the people who put "American" as their Census ethnicity.
Ironically, they may serve them insofar as they (often Appalachian whites, I think) tend to be poor and eligible for public aid, but white Appalachian folks sure don't feel served by the Democratic Party.
I even find the use of the word “dude” gives me the total ick. Like democrats can’t even bring themselves to be for “men”, they gotta diminish it in some way.
So, isn't Ethnic Americans kinda that? It's not very clear, but seems to describe anyone who has an ethnicity... which is stupid, but technically describes white Americans
Kinda, but not really. The "Ethnic American" thing was started by Clinton to give white people with strong non-WASP ethnic-immigrant identity a way to organize. He was thinking about Greek-Americans, Arab-Americans, Armenian-Americans, etc... He wasn't thinking about the typical white guy in Arkansas.
Dems are never going to say "you can't join in if you're not the right kind of 'ethnic'" but they aren't going to recruit a generic half-german, have British ancestry white guy from Kansas or whatever.
Source: I actually listened to a full 2024 meeting of that group.
I don’t disagree with this, but one thing that bothers me about the Scott Galloways of the world is that it is a completely open secret that universities have been informally practicing affirmative action for men for *years* Maybe they have mentioned it, but I’ve never heard it.
I went to a competitive public school in Virginia and it was wayyy harder for someone from NoVa to get in than someone from Roanoke. (As someone from Richmond, it was probably also easier for me)
The left's flippancy on religious faith is a problem. And a vote loser. I know one counter I often hear is "But they're trying to shove their religion down our throats!" And indeed some of them are. It would still be better in terms of politics for lefties to engage in less mockery, though.
Do you have any examples of Democratic party politicians doing this? I hear conservatives make the claim a lot, and there are absolutely lefties who mock and deride religion (heck, 20 years ago I was one of them!), but overwhelmingly all I see on the Democratic side are religious politicians evoking their faith publicly. So I'm always uncertain where conservatives and religious conservatives are getting the notion that the Democratic party and it's very vocally religious members mocking religion from. Is it just connecting the dots between 1) culturally, people often criticize religion, sometimes in mocking ways, 2) the people who do this are much more likely to be left leaning, 3) those left leaning individuals clearly support the Democratic party, 4) therefore, the Democratic party mocks religion?
I think you're right that not a single Democratic politician at the national level has really ever said anything that mocks religion, as far as I'm aware. Though I do think that it's not quite just 'people mock religion, and those people are coincidentally left leaning'. The more aggressively political a left-leaning influencer or public figure is, especially on the prog side, the more likely they are to say something that mocks religion. It would be intentional blindness to act like the movement as a whole doesn't have this problem.
Indeed, probably at least half of the Democrats' messaging problem is that the presence of the movement on social media is very extreme, and the politicians themselves do not parrot that but they also make approximately 0 effort to discourage it or distance themselves.
"Indeed, probably at least half of the Democrats' messaging problem is that the presence of the movement on social media is very extreme, and the politicians themselves do not parrot that but they also make approximately 0 effort to discourage it or distance themselves."
I think that's generally true for most issues, with the one exception being religion. National Dems are explicitly religious in a tremendous number of situations. Heck, I just searched through Kamala's convention speech and she said the word faith 23 times. So I think they absolutely distance themselves from the atheist movement and the mocking of religion by actively promoting their own religiosity with relative frequency.
>Do you have any examples of Democratic party politicians doing this?<
Nope. And I didn't write "politicians." I'm thinking "cultural" left — which yes, means it's awfully difficult to curb or disrupt.
But I get the same vibe you describe when we hear people complaining about how urban liberals "look down" on rural folk. And I'm like, "Most city dwellers are far too busy with soccer practice shuttling or working long hours or fighting traffic to spend time mocking rural America." It's just not a phenomenon I personally have witnessed.
But I do think one area we do see this is in the negative portrayal of religious faith in films, TV, standup, advertising, internet discourse, and so forth. And no, there's no way to effectively get liberal cultural arbiters to chill out on this kinda thing. Fortunately, the political salience of this dynamic is likely to fade with time, as religious observance itself grows less common (yes, even in rural areas).
I agree. As a person who is both very progressive and very religious, it is frustrating to see how had that seems to be for some of my fellow progressives to see as not contradictory. Which is baffling to me since I would say that my faith is a driving factor in my supporting many social policies to help the poor or protect the environment that are objectively against my material interests. I am not someone who thinks that the religious have any monopoly on moral values or selflessness but there is a decent venn diagram overlap between people who would answer "I think it is more important to help the poor than to hoard resources" and folks who would say "My faith demands that I prioritize the needs of the poor and marginalized" You can't make majority coalition of non-religious folks who prioritize their moral values and people of faith play a huge role in the Democratic Party and progressive causes but I often feel we are more tolerated than invited to the Party on social media and other spaces.
While I know a lot of people on Left think that political leaders like Cory Booker or Kamala Harris only talk about their religion to pander to voters. I don't think that is true and I think many of our politicians are heavily motivated to engage in public service by their faith. I don't hear anything from leaders of the Party that feels anti-faith to me.
But man, social media can be a trip. Some poor woman in our neighborhood Facebook group shared that she was feeling a great deal of anxiety about the election and fear that Trump would win and wanted to know if there were any local churches that were having services to support folks who would wanting to pray about these concerns. As it happens, literally every single church in my neighborhood is progressive and lots of them had services planned to pray for "peaceful" outcomes of the election and that voters would vote in ways consistent with loving all of our neighbors. Several others, mine included, had contingency plans to support folks spiritual concerns and fears if Trump won. But before anyone who belonged to any church could respond, she was buried in an mountain of comments saying how Christianity was responsible to Trump or saying that any prayer service about the election would be a per se violation of church and state and they would report any church praying for Harris to the IRS to have their tax exempt status removed. These were the MOST leftist voices in the group. It was crazy.
I mean the person who mocks religion most at least among major political figures is Trump himself. Like there's possibly nothing more insulting (at least should be insulting) to someone of devout Christian faith than Trump's hawking of Trump bibles for financial gain. He might as well be the Pardoner selling indulgences.
His entire personal life is a complete middle finger to the idea of the good Christian life.
I bring all this up not to say Democrats should pivot and actually lean into the worst Fox stereotypes of liberals and faith. There's swing voters everywhere; even like 1% of religious voters not voting for GOP next time around can swing at least House districts.
But I will say I'm really not sure how much juice there is an actually leaning into more religious language and being more outwardly religious. We probably won't know for months until Pew surveys come out but I'll make a wager that the people who shifted right from 2020 to 2024 are not particularly religious. Especially given initial findings that the shift right was likely most pronounced among young Latino voters and its young people who are going to religious service the least. Think a "do no harm" strategy is not a bid idea but "evoking their faith publicly"? Not sure how much good that will do.
There’s actually an opening for Dems to capture the Mormon vote, funny enough. If you look at Trump’s vote margin in every US state in 2024 relative to 2020, his worst performance was in Utah.
Many people in the comments here will remember Evan McMullan challenging Trump in 2016, as well, and Trump failing to earn 50% of the vote in Utah. There’s definitely an opening among at least one religious group.
"Think a "do no harm" strategy is not a bid idea but "evoking their faith publicly"? Not sure how much good that will do."
I'm a little bit uncertain as to what you're saying here. What I said above is that Dems literally already do this all the time. So are you saying that they should STOP doing that? I don't see any evidence that mentioning their faith has hurt them electorally (and I say that as an atheist), so I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Can you clarify?
Correct, Dems don’t actually say any of the things that everyone here is saying they need to stop saying. What people mean is that “lefty people online need to stop saying these things” which… good luck. The things the non-elected right says online are far worse; but we aren’t talking about that because they swung 3-5% of the vote their way this time. I’m not saying there isn’t a problem here, but I would start with the information environment that isolates what weird random lefties say and packages it for podcast/social media as “things Dems want to do.”
Ehh, I think the distinction between religion and some of the other things the public holds against Dems (defund the police, decriminalize border crossings, etc.) is that the party did, at one point not too long ago, vocally support those policies. They no longer do, but they haven't vocally disavowed those positions in a way that would persuade a skeptical voter to trust them on the issues.
I think you're absolutely right that it's not Dem politicians, it's just random online people. But as voters and society seem determined to hold Den politicians responsible for those statements, the answer seems to be Dem politicians must constantly condemn the statements of random lefties, which they have not been doing.
I’m not sure that’s going to work. It’s the whole “no I did not beat my wife” thing. It honestly just associates you with the comments/ideology and makes it look like you have something to apologize for.
The answer is going on the offensive through non-political media to elevate the salience of wacko right wing stuff in the minds of voters. The project 2025 stuff actually did break through this way, but we didn’t have the media ecosystem/infrastructure the cultural right does to really drive it. My takeaway is we need to replicate that, which more of a liberalism thing than a Dem Party thing.
I agree that there should be a distinction between things that Democratic *politicians* say, as opposed to other actors within the broader Democratic coalition (online Democratic voters, academics, NGOs, activists, etc). And most recently, we have not heard these politicians say, "I love [toxically unpopular progressive fad]!"
But, at the same time, you very rarely hear Democratic politicians say, "I'm against [toxically unpopular progressive fad]"; "[toxically unpopular progressive fad] is just dumb;" or "No one really likes [toxically unpopular progressive fad]". Instead, these matters are just ignored, or, in response to very specific conservative/anti-woke critiques, we hear ambiguous platitudes about "freedom," "choice," etc. Worse, sometimes pols attempt to conflate critiques of toxically unpopular positions with those of much more popular positions, e.g., voter ID requirements are "Jim Crow 2.0"; opponents of youth transgender medicines need to "stay out of the bedroom," etc.
As such, a rational observer may conclude that the politician is secretly in favor of a toxically unpopular progressive fad, and is engaged in strategic ambiguity at best, or a "Trojan horse" operation at worse.
As to why Sista Soulja moments are rare, I think the best structural explanation I have heard may be derived from the recent Ezra Klein podcast with Michael Lind. I found especially insightful Lind's point about how the pet issues and preferences of wealthy donors are manifest in NGO pressures; and Klein's point that pols lack experience with novel, hot-button issues so they defer to activists and activist-friendly staff to come up with answers to questions and critiques.
I am not personally offended, but I know at least a few older Catholics who were going to vote for Harris before this and the whole Al Smith dinner skip.
Not if there’s some real understanding of the Abrahamic religions. There’s this funny idea that “religion” is about nothing more than “believing” some propositional statement. Then there’s the singling out of religion as the only human institution that has ever caused harm in history.
Considering that Trump is probably the least religious president in decades and religiosity among Republicans has been going down, I'm not sure this was as big an element as other cultural issues.
I woke up 2 weeks ago with a crick in my neck from sleeping on it wrong that was a little annoying. But it was a full blown middle aged catastrophe when it was still hurting me yesterday.
It's always odd when I read some report, and even if it's completely unrelated, there's regularly a sentence or paragraph that says "these impacts hurt [a long list of common disadvantaged groups] harder". Some random acknowledgement of global warming being a threat is also common.
That one was particularly obnoxious because of the insistence on using the whole "LGBTQ" list. Like, no, I'm very sure gay men are less affected by abortion restrictions than just about any other demographic group you could think of.
I want the DNC to establish a new rule: any candidate who in the future agrees to answer a questionnaire from the ACLU or the Sunrise Movement (others TBD) is immediately disqualified.
I vaguely recall a tweet from one of The Groups that used the phrase “most impacted” almost exactly. But this press release was definitely par for the course: https://glaad.org/lgbtqabortionfacts/
Or things like when HRC said that the primary victims of war have always been women. Dems seem hellbent on finding evidence that their chosen groups suffer SOME harm from any particular occurrence and then using that to argue that those groups are the primary or hardest hit victims of it, regardless of any kind of rational analysis of the real harms.
I became 100% for Kamala the first time she said "pregnant women" instead of "pregnant people." It's amazing how that one simple phrase triggered this decidedly liberal and true blue Democrat.
Reminds me of when the left thought they were "owning" Josh Hawley for telling that law school professor that people who have babies are women and she responded by saying that he was killing transgender women. 90% of America was like "...wut?", but lefties on instagram/tik-tok/etc., were all crowing about how SHE had demolished HIM just because she was speaking with passion and intensity about an identity coded issue.
These folks are clearly completely blind to the ways in which their messaging is received by the general public.
That video of him running through the Capitol to get away from the mob is still one of the funniest things I've seen. He can win all the elections he wants and pump his fist from a distance, but he'll always be a little wimp.
Yea, part of the problem is social media amplifies the most provocative/dumbest takes. Its not like there's even that many people that hold these views, its just that they get thrust into our views by the algorithm.
It is a generic fact of life that anything that's bad for everybody is especially bad for the already disadvantaged. So when we propose some improvement, like better policing, we can say, "and by the way, this is especially good for X, Y, and Z people."
I will never forget being in Portland, OR on March 1, 2020 and listening to commentators on a local politics show discuss the impending doom of the Covid-19 pandemic by saying that it would be hardest on trans women of color who do sex work. I swear I'm not making this up.
Example in action: Kamala Harris says of climate resilience efforts / disaster relief, "We have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity."[1] Republicans says she wants to give out disaster relief funds based on racial lines, because, like, that's the most straightforward read of what she said. We've endured enough equality vs equity memes (that Kamala Harris herself has shared! [2]) to know what she meant.
Not only does the White House and Harris campaign deny that's what she meant, there's also an official fact check from Fact Check Dot Org [3] that backs up Harris, saying that she was talking about the need for equity in terms of "long-term investment" when 1) that's substantively the same policy, and 2) in context, it is not clear at all that's what she meant. When the NYT mentions this controversy in a write up, they just straightforwardly say "It was a distortion of her remarks." [4]
So you get this like one/two punch where Democrats will express support for these politically toxic ideas then deny that's what they did, with the media backing them up. And, because they did the denial, they think they're in the clear. But my recommendation would be to just avoid saying the politically toxic thing in the first place.
(Also, in these remarks, Priyanka Chopra Jonas says that hurricanes affect women harder than men and Kamala Harris agrees.)
Hm, that Harris video about "equity" just sounds to me like "means-tested benefits". Right up until that last sentence, anyway. (Then suddenly it sounds like "communism that actually works―somehow!")
Good call on the P.S. Dems need to embrace patriotism and a love for their common citizen, because there is an opening there with the GOP hyperfocused on individualism and "me, me, me."
I like #10. I think the Harris campaign, especially at the DNC, did a good job of that. But I could see the party base rejecting that now, especially with the election outcome. When you think a majority of the voters have lost it, it makes being patriotic that much harder.
Jeff Jackson is great. My partner hates reading political things, but somehow accidentally got on Jeff Jackson’s email list, and actually reads them all, because he’s such a good communicator (at least, to gay scientists living in California - I assume he can talk to others as well). I think he was actually my brother’s congressperson before gerrymandering led him to run for AG. Glad he won!
Love all of this including the patriotism addendum but "America First" still gives me pause owing to its history. When they started using it after the 2016 election I could hardly believe it.
Do any of the people you work with actually hear democrats actually say anything like "hurricanes especially affected queer people and minorities harder?"
I'm delightfully offline, which I suspect is where most persuadable voters are (if not offline literally, then in terms of politics—a lot of people hate political talk!). I never hear this kind of thing. I don't hear it from my leftist friends, I don't hear it at work (and I work in a field that votes something like 90+% D). I just don't hear it. Which makes me think that just like the dreaded leftist Democrat listens too much to the very online, so do the enlightened center leftists. According to a republican pollster Ezra Klein interviewed, the stickiest image of the election cycle was Trump at McDonalds. Persuadable voters aren't persuaded by weird niche takes (which the right has more of). They're persuaded by political theater executed well for the intended audience.
Yes. Usually through Fox News or Facebook posts. But if you read the comments above, even the leftist, leaning people on this board, agree that it happens and have multiple antidotes about it in government life.
He’s the problem though — Dems don’t actually say stuff like this. Aspiring adjunct professors say things like this and it gets tagged as a Dem belief.
I think Matt understands this, but in all of this discussion of "what type of campaign should Kamala have run" and "what positions should Dems take," I think commentators lose sight of credibility issues.
The Democrats have become inextricably intertwined with the main cultural and epistemic institutions: the "mainstream" (i.e., mostly reliable) media, academia, entertainment, and even corporations to some extent. The ideological trends among this group affect the Democrats' politics and vice-versa. It's not really possible for the Democrats to separate themselves from this, since they rely (mostly for good reason) on the support of technocrat-friendly institutions. All of these institutions are informally part of the coordinating mechanism via which the Democratic party makes decisions, as described in Matt's post about the "hollow parties."
So when people say Democrats need to run on "economic populism," that's just not going to work. How can Democrats be populist? They're part of the establishment! They're the elites who are separate from most of society! Who are they going to rail against? Themselves? (I also find it hilarious that Democrats' best idea to earn popularity right now is "be more like Argentina.")
But the same applies to "moderation." The reason that Kamala running to the center didn't work is that there's no way that this blob of institutions can credibly be seen as moderate. No one believes it. It's obvious that a large part of the staff in any Democratic administration, even a "moderate" one, will be people who think way more about the welfare of immigrants who exploit asylum loopholes rather than American citizens (to give an example).
Democrats are in the unfortunate position of being the elite technocrats. They need to actually succeed at that to earn people's trust and convince them that they can govern effectively. Their policies need to help people in straightforward and obvious ways. I don't think anything else will work.
Changing a party's brand is hard. The Republicans did it, but only because Trump came out of nowhere and publicly humiliated all of them. He insulted all of the mainstream Republicans and then forced them to bend the knee. Absent such a revolution in the Democratic party, a re-brand is going to be extremely difficult.
<<Democrats are in the unfortunate position of being the elite technocrats>>
Totally agree with this, but also important to note that at least on the national level, I think part of this comes from being the incumbent party. Republicans have a very slim mandate from the voters, but they're going to almost definitely exceed that mandate and piss people off. Democrats need to wait and see and then leverage being the opposition to help build more inroads with less "elite" sects of American society.
I think it's also because the Republican elite has been so thoroughly discredited that when they turned anti-Trump, they had no way to actually pull wavering Republican voters along with them. Then you end up with Democrats being blamed for job losses to China that happened under Bush.
Credibility is so important. One defense I keep reading of her campaign is: “But she DID run to the center. She DIDN’T run on identity politics” both of which were true, but the party, as well as she personally had history that didn’t make those turns credible. This is why you Sister Souljah. Not to be mean- but your shift won’t look real unless you have paid a price for it. The campaign was willing to run to the center but they weren’t actually willing to pay any kind of price within their coalition. And sure, that would have been a gamble. But not doing everything you could to get that credibility was ALSO a gamble, which they lost.
I think she should have issued an apology over the boarder. The EOs this summer made it clear they could have stopped the boarder crossings much early and they just didn't want to.
In some ways this proof problem hurt them the most. Their own success demonstrated it was all along fixable if they weren't held captive by The Groups.
And that 60 Minutes interview would have been the perfect time and place to address it head on. She could have so easily said "We - or better lay the blame on Biden directly - made a mistake and it took to long to fix and we're sorry for how constrained many blue state budgets became in the process and my policies will carry forward this new approach".
I would hope so, but I think it's rare for politicians to do that, and probably for a reason. They can be accused of "flip-flopping," opponents can still bring up the old things in attack ads, and voters seem not to like "I changed my mind," even when changing your mind is wiser.
Bingo. It's risky, but that's not a bad thing. It raises your ceiling to take a risk, but it potentially lowers your floor if it goes badly. So you come out and say you've learned, you're geniune about it, and then when Trump criticizes you for having been wrong you tell him to grow up and stop pretending like anyone is perfect (and then pivot to pointing out how he used to claim abortion was good and he supported the war in Iraq, and ask if he thinks his supporters think his flip-flops on those issues are evidence of him being an idiot).
Harris' campaign's biggest problem was that they were so worried about the floor dropping that she never did anything risky that would have meaningfully raised her ceiling.
If people feel they know you overall, they’ll overlook a lot of this and sometimes even welcome it. Yet another reason to go on every podcast, talk to any American. If people don’t like you, you’ll find something else to do. It’s a natural process of refinery for the rest of us.
Its rare, but they had to have some sort of internal polling that should of told them the way they were addressing the issue was non-convincing.
The whole issue with Kamala was that she was "safe"... it would of been refreshing to have seen her be less safe. i.e. Joe Rogan interview would of been perfect place to do it.
My explanation for not doing that is the theory that getting out the the “base” wins elections. Far lefty voters who are more in line with 2020 Harris, so the theory goes, are much more valuable than the median voter, so pissing off the lefty base doesn’t work. I think this election proves that theory to be an error.
The thing is that 2024 Harris' campaign messages and endorsements are much more centrist / conservative than 2020 Harris, and 2024 Harris lost. The left, predictably, are saying that she lost *because* she ran to the center and got endorsements from anti-Trump Republicans and Trump insiders who feared him. Should have decisively ditched Israel, said no person is illegal, promised Medicare For All, etc.
It would also have lost her my vote, and I'm a Trump-fearing liberal, so I think I'm not alone in that.
That scale of flip-flopping is going to come with a political cost. Had Harris stuck to her 2020 positions, which are only popular with a small slice of the D coalition, I think she would have lost by more.
Exactly this. If you have a "non centrist" track record, then this does not go away just because you start talking about other issues, and stay silent about the controversial ones. To gain credibility, you have to do something that your former allies will get upset about. Imagine Greg Abbott running for president and simply staying silent on reproductive rights. No centrist potential voter who is concerned about abortion is going to feel reassured by that.
This is my biggest critique with the Pod Save America crew. They keep yelling -- and I mean yelling - that Harris "tacked to the center" and "she ran as a centrist". And it's so fucking stupid. Centrists don't need to "tack". Her "tack" wasn't at all believable. They keep acting like Harris didn't run in the 2020 primary.
"I was trying to find a lane in the 2020 primary by saying nutty things to cater to certain demographics" is politically believable, unsympathetic to normie voters, and probably (IMHO) ultimately true for Kamala Harris.
Matt Y. frequently credits Trump with "moderating" on welfare state issues like healthcare and social security even though his admin tried very hard to repeal Obamacare and social security. If we assume that voters are dumb enough to think Trump isn't going after the welfare state because he doesn't talk about it during the election, why aren't they dumb enough to think that Kamala wants to close the asylum loophole and curb inflation?
It also cuts against the main point of popularism, that you must tack to the center in order win elections and pass liberal policies. If voters really do have long memories of campaign promises and punish politicians for hoodwinking them, then you're not going to be able to govern like a liberal. Triangulation can lead to short term gains, but it makes you an empty shell that believes in nothing in the long run.
Yes. It’s remarkable that Democrats don’t understand costly signaling. Almost everyone (even Matt) seems to believe in a theory of cheap talk in which Democrats can convince people they hold certain opinions just by pandering.
It’s part of a larger theme with left-leaning types. They mistake average Americans’ lack of sophistication (e.g. inability to understand statistics) with gullibility.
I think we have evidence of actual gullibility, though, when people are still voting for Trump because he's "real" or "cares about the working class" or "only he gives men a voice." Or, more kitchen-table, that bringing back Trump will bring back 2018 prices, despite the improbability of deflation in general, and despite Trump's policies being very inflationary (giant deficits, across-the-board tariffs, deporting low-paid workers, firing competent government employees etc). We've seen from experience that he's economically still a Republican and has policies that don't benefit the working class; that in temperament he hardly seems to care for anyone; and that he has an alarming willingness to break laws and exceed his power, including an actual history of refusing to leave office peacefully after losing an election. (Mature democracies don't normally stop being democracies, but they also don't normally elect leaders who have already attempted a coup, have a history of only accepting elections when they win, and talk openly about using the powers of the state to punish their critics. We are in uncharted waters here.)
And yet somehow, he won the popular vote and made gains among the less educated and various "people of color" demographics.
It feels like style over substance. Being vulgar and unfiltered is "real" even if most of what you say is false. Having what elites call poor taste makes you a man of the people, even if you were born into vast wealth and have stiffed all the people you ever interacted with, and your policy proposals are consistently bad for the working class. You can falsely claim to have won every election you were in, when the record clearly shows otherwise, and millions of people will believe you. Bring a mob to the legislature, and your supporters will say it's not a big deal, and also completely justified.
Then again, Trump's margins were not huge, despite the huge headwinds for incumbents around the world, and he did lose in 2020, so maybe even Trump pays some price.
It also seems like all the most gullible voters are on his side already. I've encountered the claim that this was a long-term Republican strategy, to court the less educated, followers of "charismatic" religions, people with "crank" tendencies, etc., allegedly precisely because these people can easily be fooled, and you don't need to give them any sort of material benefits to keep them on your side. There's also an old realignment on race (around the 1960s), where the Democrats proudly became the party of the Civil Rights Act, while the Republicans attracted its opponents without being explicitly racist -- this may also be a realignment of gullible voters into the R camp: "give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you" ( https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lbj-convince-the-lowest-white-man/ )
It may be that voters are gullible, but in ways that can only be exploited by the wrong people.
It's an inconvenient truth that most American voters are dumb. With that being said, it's up to the Democrats to craft a message and identity that resonates with the electorate that they have, which they clearly have been unable to do.
I agree with what a lot of what the likes of MY and Josh Barro say we need to go strategically, but there does seem to be careful eliding of the fact that Trump is simply held to a lower standard across the board of any major politician since Huey Long. Being honest about this fact and being strategically-minded seem to be at odds. It was a shibboleth among elites well before 2015 that Trump was a con artist, which is why only one major bank would do business with him anymore. A lot of his schtick since the 1990s has been conning middle class people out of their money since he was the billionaire they knew as a celebrity (similar to how NFTs worked).
It may frankly be healthier for strategists to level with the Democratic base that we just need to build thicker skin for dealing with this BS that Trump gets away with. Otherwise, a lot of readers are going to come away with takes like "this guy says Harris was condescending, but look at Trump" since Trump is arguably the most condescending candidate ever. The way he is condescending just doesn't have a lot of salience to enough people compared to liberal elites.
Trump for all his flaws does sound like he is sincerely speaking to and for the middle and lower middle class. When the center-left tries to do this (see: Justin Trudeau's administration) they often sound like a bunch of communications consultants. Sure the words "middle class" get uttered a lot but their tone and content are designed to keep them out of the papers, not in the hearts of voters.
Great comment. During the Norah O'Donnell interview, Norah was trying to get Harris to say she supported restrictions on late term abortions - something that polls well with normies so long as there are health exceptions - but Harris wouldn't bite at all. She couldn't even say she supported ANY restrictions on abortion because...why? It might offend her base?
For some reason Trump gets a pass from his supporters when he moderates, but Dem activists haven't done so. Maybe they would from a more charismatic leader (Obama) or movement leader (Bernie) that they trust to deliver for them?
There were so many of these terrible interview moments where she failed to answer very simple questions. I don't get why so many on the left are falling over themselves to praise her campaign.
the campaign mostly focused on the things she is good at (rallies, speeches, debate) and deemphasized the things she was bad at.
this seems smart.
if you want to complain about a mistake: they apparently considered challenging trump to a second debate during the first one, but in the end decided not to do it! looks bad in retrospect.
Good point. Especially when you compare this with Trump who was willing to explicitly disavow a national abortion ban. Trump can be extreme in effect which can lead some people to miss the ways in which he forcefully manages parts of the Republican coalition by strongly moderating on policy.
she didn't want to get into a hypothetical negotiation on this now, because the actual negotiations would depend on the makeup of congress, on their positions, etc?
Sure, but I keep coming back to Matt’s point that 90% of her loss was tied to overall anti-incumbent sentiment (and I’d add another 5% is probably due to anti-Biden-specifically sentiment). If we’re being honest there probably isn’t anything Harris could have done differently to change the outcome.
In support of your point is Biden's success in 2020--he actually could credibly run as a centrist who rejects identity politics / wokeness, and he won.
(For those who doubt he had credibility on this, remember that Biden's entire political brand since becoming VP has been "well-meaning old white guy who sometimes says politically incorrect things". This came to a point in the 2008 primaries when Biden called Obama "articulate" in a debate and caused a bit of a furor--Obama quite brilliantly used it as an opportunity to demonstrate forbearance to skeptical white voters and selected Biden as his VP to racially balance the ticket and signal that non-politically-correct whites like Uncle Joe were welcome.)
(Ironically, Biden would go on to select Harris as his VP for similar reasons. She pilloried him on his record on forced bussing with her "I was that girl on the bus" attack in a primary debate, and so he selected her as VP to neutralize that line of attack and shore up support on the left. Of course, it turns out he never had to worry about his left since he was running against Trump, so this was a strategic error.)
Bottom line is the rain dances of the elite have to get results. If they don't, and especially if they come off as some kind of kayfabe the participants don't actually believe in we get... well we get this.
I think that the most compelling answer on this is the Get Shit Done / Fix the Damn Roads model. Part of what seems to make Shapiro,/Whitmer/Buttigieg credible is repeating a very simple formula 1. this is the concrete and specific thing we need to do, 2. doing that thing, and 3. telling everyone you did it.
Most of the systems/identity talk feels empty and pointless when compared to that style of presentation. I don't know that either Biden in this cycle or Harris could have pulled it off, but the housing issue and manufacturing incentives felt as close as Democrats came to that formula. I'm tempted to add banning non-compete agreements to the list, but I'm not sure whether the issue (or any regulation / ban) has legs over the long term - it seems like parties are not rewarded after the fact for prohibiting (the bad thing).
I think you’ve nailed it here. We are the elites that much of the working and middle class (WMC) has come to dislike. And I think Matt and so many others are stuck on largely addressing form over substance, the shadows on the wall rather than the underlying structural issues.
What changed most significantly for the WMC was when elites began to restructure economic policy by undermining and then repealing the Glass-Steagall Act and related restrictions on commercial and investment banking. What this did was to undermine essential guardrails in financial profiteering of the sorts that had caused the Great Depression. The WMC had no idea about all of this, of course, or that the Democrats eventually signed-on to it. It certainly contributed mightily to the bipartisan consensus that developed around neoliberal globalization that saw WMC jobs and communities undermined. And it was the underlying cause of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, where as a last straw, many millions of WMC people/families lost their final financial lifelines: the equity in their homes. As the banks got bailed-out but not them, the final nail was driven into the coffin of WMC faith in government by either party.
Trump has crushed the Republican Party and rebuilt it in his image and now has badly beaten the Democratic Party. And yes, a lot of the focus has been on cultural issues and immigration and wokeness and other such phenomena because the WMC doesn’t know what hit it. And the Democratic Party has never ever tried to explain it to them. So, when Trump de-escalated into the 2016 race his “plague on both their houses” (starting with the Republicans) resonated with the WMC. And, since the WMC doesn’t know what has really hit them, he has been able to demagogue his way into power since 2016 (we shouldn’t kid ourselves that he hasn’t been the main political force in American since then) by blaming the libs and the immigrants, and the woke, and the deep state — pretty much a complete snow job covering-up — no actually burying — the real causes completely.
What we Dems need to do to reclaim the initiative and maybe eventually the trust and confidence of the WMC is both tell the real story about the last many decades, fess-up to our negligence on their behalf, and most importantly undertake the project of restructuring America’s financial guardrails and incentives such that they cease to prioritize elite, shareholder enrichment (trickle-down economics) and get back to prioritizing something closer to “the common good,” which is what FDR accomplished after the Great Depression.
“If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.” ― Franklin D. Roosevelt
"[Trump] now has badly beaten the Democratic Party"
No he hasn't. It was a stinging defeat, especially because of who it put in power, but it was a small defeat. Trust me, I was around in 1984 and voted for the first time in 1972. Now *that's* how you badly defeat the Democrats.
My experience has been different. Every factory I closed in the early to mid-2000s and moved to Mexico was downstream from NAFTA. Nothing to do with Glass-Steagall. All these factories were part of large multi-national conglomerates. Noting to do with private equity / financial profiteering at all.
FDR solved the problem of being elite but still retaining the support of the working class. Seems like genuine empathy for others, clear communication of plain-language ideas, and positioning himself as a truth-speaking class traitor worked so well that the constitution was changed to add term limits!
I like the idea that Trump humiliating mainstream Republicans helped to rebrand the party.
However, Mike Johnson, a hard core Christian who wants to tell people what to do, is still Speaker. And Trump still wants to cut taxes for the rich and doesn't care about unions. He's not populist, so why do people believe it?
Yes, inflation and general anti-incumbent sentiment explains the election. But something even simpler does too: the candidate most perceived to be an outsider wins. Since Bush Sr, the only time the insider won was 2020, and it’s plausible that absent the pandemic, Trump would have been reelected.
Outsiders can have a staff of insiders and still be seen as an outsider. Obama pulled it off, but the best example is Bush Jr. He was the consummate insider who filled his team with institutional stalwarts who mostly pursued status quo right policies (education being the one, strategically chosen exception). But because he and his campaign brilliantly convinced everybody that he was a regular guy who cleared wood on his ranch in Texas, the populace accepted him as an outsider — or at least more of one than Gore or Kerry.
I am still having trouble wrapping my head around this "elite" branding. The GOP has far more billionaire, media, and big industry support that Democrats do and their policy is way more focused in serving those narrow elite interests than anything Dems do. Being of some institutions doesn't just blanket sign away your right to criticize any institutions at all and many Dems want big institutional reforms. The elite vs populist distinction is pure branding at this point, or at least it feels like it is way more branding than reality.
I dont think a rebrand will be as hard as you think, and I don't think the ability to govern effectively matters in elections. If it did, Trump would not have won.
One thing you changed from your twitter post was you swapped "We are all equal in the eyes of God but..." for "All people have equal moral worth" and I wonder if it would actually be good for the Democratic party to get back to some explicitly theistic language in the platform and the candidates. I saw a chart that divided up the Latino vote based on a number of different factors and the most significant indicator was whether the individual was religious vs. agnostic/atheistic. This pattern held across other minorities. Particularly for Latinos though, there is a very significant cohort that is Evangelical (especially pentecostal)/Protestant/Catholic but also fairly recent converts to the Republican party. Democrats simply won't lose atheists to the Republicans because they speak in more theistic terms. Atheists will still vote Democrat and literally always will. BUT Democrats could continue to lose Latinos to a Republican party that speaks there language when it comes to religion.
I think you need a tenth principle, explicitly address patriotism and American 1st. I see its included in other principles, but perception of patriotism is very important.
I really do hope that as part of that "Don't surrender to China (and Russia)" are things that people care about. I get the instinct not to be engaged in pointless wars, but literally retreating to our shores seems like a very bad and hopefully unpopular move.
In a way, all wars are pointless. But the problem is that if an enemy wants to engage in a pointless war with you, you have generally two options:
1) let them win, which is also kind of pointless
2) fight back, kick their ass, and teach them not to engage in pointless warfare (i.e. teach the FAFO lesson)
In theory, there is a third option that involves diplomacy, but in practice, diplomacy only really works as long as option 2) is on the table, otherwise the other side just rolls over you.
Some combination of Warnock/Kelly/Shapiro/Whitmer would be an interesting ticket. Warnock may be the single most likable guy right now for the Democrats.
I can get behind the actual manifesto. However, if the manifesto mentioned belief in god, I would not endorse it. I would then worry about having to pay private school tuition to avoid the humiliation of my son being subjected to school prayer.
I have been curious that if SCOTUS opens the door on this, whether we'll see movements for school choice beyond the traditional public school system emerge among different demographics...
Rural areas and small cities hate school choice because it doesn't take many students leaving for private schools to wreck their funding formula and put the whole institution at risk. In WI its been rural Republicans who have most successfully fought off some of the crazier voucher proposals.
Just as an FYI, we need to spend half an hour every election night searching by hand for every ballot that includes a write-in. Every election--EVERY election--some dearly beloved voter fills the write-in bubble and writes "no one" for every office. Thanks. Or Mickey Mouse (there's always a mickey). Probably no one will ever see that ballot again except for that election official (in my ward, more often than not a volunteer) who has not had dinner yet.
Anyway, the effect of your "free Palestine" may be muted and unproductive.
I processed an absentee ballot with a write in back in 2020, and I asked the guy in charge what we should do with it. He just sighed and said to feed it into the machine and they’d fish it out later.
As a Christian all the Christian hating from the left really gets to me. I have become more religious as I get older because sometimes things feel so not random or coincidental.
I am agnostic, but I have been a church goer sporadically throughout my life, and I honestly have to say that Christians are the most generous and good people I have ever met.
If there is a need of relief in some foreign county, its Christians who are there with or without support (Haiti).
If I read about a couple who adopts children in need, I automatically assume they are church goers.
If you are feeling alone, just show up to any Church on Sunday and you will inevitably be made to feel welcomed.
I’m nominally Lutheran but mostly agnostic, my wife attends regularly, me less so. I wouldn’t not say any church - at least based on what I’ve seen among friends and family, there are schisms happening in many congregations with some becoming more politically right wing and abandoning what I think are important tenets of the faith.
But generally I agree, Christians today get a bad rap, especially from lefty critics who overlook the bad aspects of other religions like Islam, or elevate “indigenous knowledge” to be on par with science.
The "Christian nationalism" talking point is incredibly unhelpful to Democrats.
First, it's an compound abstract noun from academia.
Second, it's usually used to describe all religious conservatism (e.g. opposition to abortion) in a way that's both imprecise/wrong and counterproductive. We need to be attracting e.g. religious Catholics, not pushing them out of the tent by lumping them together with the MAGA-brained nondenominational fringe.
Third, it directionally makes Democrats sound anti-Christian. Democrats should counter their bad instincts and sound not just neutral-Christian, but pro-Christian. If they can't, they should avoid the subject (which also makes them sound weird, but is better).
"First, it's an compound abstract noun from academia."
What do you mean by "abstract"? There is a movement that is identifiably Christian nationalist. There is a 2022 book literally called "The Case for Christian Nationalism" by Stephen Wolfe (incidentally, Catholic integralists, who seek an American state explicitly subordinated to the Vatican, also believe that Christian nationalism exists and they have a dim view of it, precisely for the "nationalism" part of the term).
I agree that it's a much smaller movement than conservative Christianity writ large, and that it's not useful as an epithet in political contexts for the reasons you mention, but it is absolutely a thing that exists and the term is potentially meaningful.
As a former Christian, all the "Christians" I see in the media and in the news don't believe in one single thing I learned about Christianity as a child and are actively working to make my life worse.
Of course, but the Republican instinct is at least directionally helpful from an electoral perspective, atheists are down there with Mormons for the least popular religious group in America. Whereas many Democrats need to correct against their natural instinct.
There's some potential here but it still needs to be weighed alongside a society that's steadily declining in religiosity, so that any message here should still be relatable to most.
Isn't "relatable to most" part of the Democrat's problem these past few years though. The sense that everything is focus grouped and these overly broad and sterile categories like BIPOC, and Latinx (which is, of course, an attempt to make the Latino category more inclusive), and even the term humankind. The Democrats 2028 – Relatable to Most.
The fact that during Covid there were people on the left minimizing and dismissing the pattern of assaults on Asian women by black homeless men on the NYC subway shows how nutty things were.
Violent homeless men push multiple Asian women in front of oncoming trains! Many people were slugged. And these people who claim moral authority told us that it wasn’t racist and that we couldn’t feel outrage.
(My wife is Asian and was living in NYC when this was all happening.)
Or the way the attacks were recognized to have occurred but the details were swept under the rug in order to further the narrative of white supremacy and racism by implying the perpetrators were MAGA influenced white men.
Exclude may be too strong, but it was definitely intended to create a hierarchy where Asian and Latino concerns were second-tier. At one point there was a debate over whether BIPOC should be revised to BIMPOC to reflect that Muslim POCs also deserved to be elevated above garden-variety POCs and put at the same level as "Black" and "Indigenous".
Right, and I see the reasons not to use jargon like BIPOC, but it is fundamentally true that B and I faced historical discrimination going back centuries that other POC groups did not. And that when you look at various measures of wellbeing, B and I fare much worse than other POC. I don’t see anything wrong with acknowledging that.
If you just went around saying we need racial justice for black people, I don't think Asians or Latinos would be offended by that. That's basically how it was in say the 1980s or 1990s - when you talked about racial justice, you were talking about black people and that was fine. When you start spelling out the hierarchy of grievances, then it's true that you're just systematizing a preexisting belief system, but it's also a personal expression of disrespect.
I'll keep bringing this up because it was the best data point I've heard yet on the Latino vote swing. Ezra's pod with Patrick Ruffini was awesome but this point jump out. In Ruffini's polling the Democrats have become the "welfare party". That's game over IMO. There's no coming back from that.
Why is it bad to be the party that cares about a safety net? I guess most Americans are fundamentally selfish, so it’s potentially bad electorally - though Democrats were also the welfare party in 2020 and it didn’t seem to cost them.
>Isn't "relatable to most" part of the Democrat's problem these past few years though.<
Democrats seemed plenty relatable in 2018. And in 2020. And in 2022. I'm not suggesting Democrats don't face some very major challenges. Losing all three political branches to the right make that clear. Just trying to add a bit of perspective. I like where Matt's going with this—and in high turnout elections Democrats clearly do need to perform better because they won't always be gifted with extremely favorable fundamentals.
It's true, inflation and immigration were the nails in this coffin. I don't think JC getting a shoutout in 2024 would have turned this election. But modern political parties contest in every election because they adjust and winning back even a portion of religious Latinos could make a difference in 2028.
Did the Republican Party adjust? That’s what I keep coming back to amid all these calls for a Dem reckoning - from where I stand it looks like the GOP did nothing differently from 2020 to 2024, and they won just because people got fed up with the incumbent. Feels like that is the path to a Dem win in 2026 and 2028.
I think you'rr mostly right. We are, after all, in era of negative partisanship. But perhaps that makes it all the more important to adjust... we can't afford to trade power to Trump types ever four years because people hate us.
This might be good politics, but I really would selfishly prefer that change not be made. I feel that "all people have equal moral worth", can be given an explicitly theistic justification by those who are so inclined. The hardcore evangelicals will never vote Democrat (because they *want* what the Democrats cannot provide, which is a theocracy).
"All people have equal moral worth from their creation" has the advantage of echoing Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, sounds theistic to religious people and doesn't offend this atheist.
I don’t actually agree that all people have equal moral worth. First of all, I have no idea what moral worth is. Second, I think that Barack Obama has significantly more moral worth than Donald Trump or Jeffrey Dahmer. Moral worth is an incoherent weasel phrase, much like “equal opportunity.” A person with an IQ of 80 will never have the same opportunities as someone with an IQ of 125. It’s just not possible.
I suppose we can pretend that a child molester who is in prison has the same moral worth as a hard-working, nonabusuve father, but why?
I would rather say all people should be treated with decency and leave it there.
What moral system do you tend to subscribe to? If you’re, eg, a utilitarian, then it would make sense to say that trump and Obama have equal moral worth, but we should still treat Obama better (in certain ways) to incentivize good behavior
I’m basically an emotivist. Ethical judgments are subjective. However, out shared evolutionary history creates fertile ground for inter subjective agreement.
I’m certainly not a utilitarian because I would not sacrifice my own life to save two strangers. However, I’m highly utilitarian when it comes to adjudicating disputes between strangers.
To double down on the vagueness a bit, Jefferson was notoriously able to write that it was "self-evident that all men are created equal" while he and his friends personally owned slaves.
I find it interesting, but not a good campaign message. I'm a partial convert to the idea that America is deeply flawed and was even worse for most of its history, but I don't think that's a winning message to send to voters. Even among activists, or to try to convert students to activism, it's important to frame it in a way that promotes hope and motivates action -- MLK himself said that America had made bold promises of equality, that America of his time had defaulted on those promises, but he thought the country could be prevailed upon to make good on them. It's a much more motivating message than "irredeemably racist," coming from a very successful activist who lived in worse times for his people than the present. And yes, he was pretty far left -- but no, that did not mean that he had to preach doom and gloom.
Democrats -- both the mainstream incrementalists and the further-left types -- could benefit from rediscovering a sort of "aspirational patriotism" -- America can be great, it has long aspired to be great, it aspired to noble principles of liberty and equality and has genuinely made progress on them (albeit slow, unsteady, sometimes with setbacks); progress is not inevitable, but achievable with strategy, effort, and enough people contributing.
I wanted to say something slightly different rather than just quoting. In part because "all people are created equal" is so obviously "all men are created equal" but messes up the rhythm of the sentence and so sounds clunkingly woke. Rewriting enough that it merely echoes rather than quoting means the shift from men to people isn't glaringly obvious.
Right but the way Obama talked about God was not the beginnings of a theocracy. There's a lot of daylight there that Dem's shouldn't cede to the Republicans.
Fair. I'm a Canadian atheist so I'm probably not the right person to ask on the correct way to thread the needle of overt religious expression in US politics :)
Most American Christians are not Evangelicals, and even Evangelicals shouldn't be written off.
It's also just not correct to say that all Evangelicals want a theocracy--Ketanji Brown Jackson is a devout Evangelical, and there's a significant wing of Evangelicalism opposed to or simply orthogonal to the MAGAfication of the church. Saying things like that both tries to make the tent smaller and makes you sound weird (because it's wrong) to the religious. Like if you were a member of a typical community Southern Baptist church in North Carolina, how would you feel about people claiming you're a theocrat?
Leftist critics are insatiable. Every concession given to them results in more deluded demands. Some of the worst ideas that have burdened Democrats have come from highly educated zealots who hate the very concept of empiricism (and basic math.)
It’s weirdly liberating now that Democrats have lost, because I no longer feel the need to entertain the varieties of litmus tests the left has pushed onto my class (liberal educated urbanites.)
I just think of them as modern-day communists. There’s always been a far-left faction, born out of academia, with significant influence, that generically wants to break down power structures without any coherent vision for what replaces them. They’ve just gotten better at creating a facade of an ideology to justify their desires. It also helps that today’s flavor is home-grown versus coming from Russians, incubated in Europe, and actively promoted by our biggest enemy.
If everybody just stepped back and said, “these are the same cranks we’ve had to marginalize and ignore for 100 years,” it would be easier to stop taking them seriously.
And, like communism, there are important and valuable kernels in must of the leftist, identitarian ideology. It’s just that the cure has often been as bad or worse than the disease (at best, it improves nothing while dividing people).
In addition to "creating a facade of an ideology to justify their desires," they have deployed and maximized a tactic for derailing criticism/opposition of said ideology that consists of hundreds of variations on essentially one theme: "if you disagree, you are a racist/sexist/transphobe/fascist". This has been very effective within insular spaces where progressive culture holds sway, but it breeds quiet resentment within those spaces. And amongst the broader public the tactic itself has become a novel political asset to the GOP and a novel liability for Dems.
For every one of these theses, someone's ox is gored. (e.g. #5 is obviously the one where you say that we should back away from the trans agenda). That's not a bad thing -- setting priorities requires putting someone's priorities second, third, and later.
But as an intellectual exercise, this list would be improved by pairing it with a list in which you spell out explicitly whose ox is gored in each case. So I take it that #8 is the one where you say that public works projects -- new subway stops, for instance -- do not need to hire union labor, and that the interests of teachers' unions are going to be given less weight in running public schools.
Now, a list like would not be a manifesto. It's the opposite of what our politicians should say out loud. "Here's a list of who gets the short straw" is not a rousing vote-getter, whereas your list is intended to be a set of inspirational positive goals.
But very few of us here are working Dem politicians. We, like you, are striving for clear-eyed analysis first, for slogans later.
So in the interests of clarity, I hope that your follow-on articles will be clearer about pairing the inspirational positive list with the loser-list. "Here's who wins! The American people, the vast majority of voters, and the Democratic Party!" "Here's who loses: this group, this special interest, this minority, this entrenched power-bloc."
To me this was the biggest hurdle for Democrat's "Defend Democracy" message. If it were true that Trump was an existential mortal threat, (not conceding he isn't, just setting the premise) than no individual policy goal should be spared in order to defeat him. The entire point is to preserve politics to fight another day. I think for a ton of voters, preserving democracy and defeating fascism all too conveniently meant supporting all the expansive plans progressives already believed in with no visual and obvious sacrifice in return. No one *acted* in their behavior like they believed Trump was a genuine threat, and voters responded accordingly.
The campaign actually kind of did run like that (with the possible exception of abortion). The problem is that it wasn’t believable to voters - fairly in my view.
So, you're calling for the Defenestration of Progs.
Good advice in general, but my request to Matt was that he should say which of his 9 Theses involves the defenestration of which particular Progs -- unions in one thesis, trans activists in another, and so on. Make the negative list as detailed as the positive list -- or do it in the follow-on articles.
The goring would need to happen before the defenestration. Because once you have thrown someone out the window it's harder to do the goring. Or perhaps it's their Ox that get gored and they themselves get defenestrated.
I can't believe I'm going to say this but I wish the Democrats had their own Jeremy Corbyn to (figuratively) throw under the bus. It's been many years since I read about Sanders vs. Corbyn so I don't remember whose proposed policies are actually worse (I think Bernie) but Corbyn is certainly far worse of a person and had a huge amount of power. If Warren had explicitly run for president this year instead of subtly taking over the Biden administration it would make for a much neater story.
Corbyn is, at least in his underlying ideals, infinitely more left-wing than Warren, there is no comparison. Warren actually comes from a market liberal tradition originally, and a lot of her ideas are about improving markets so they function like they are meant to in textbookshttps://www.niskanencenter.org/building-a-better-warrenism/: . The others are mostly standard bigger welfare state stuff or woke. (Workers on boards admittedly is a bit more radical and genuinely socialist.) Corbyn is a genuinely anti-capitalist socialist, even if he recognized that he couldn't actually propose anything like abolishing capitalism and win. I don't necessarily think Corbyn as UK PM would have been that different from Warren as US president in practice, given the constraints he would have operated under. But his vision of how things *should* be is very different. That's why it was such a shock to most Labour MPs when he became leader.
I think maybe it is hard to see from outside that the UK, despite it's long history of centre-right moderates actually holding power, and lack of genuinely *revolutionary* sentiment, actually has a pretty strong socialist tradition historically. It was permanently defeated by Thatcherism in my view, but, roughly speaking, it is why we have an entirely socialist healthcare system. UK unions were once very strong: they effectively brought down a Tory government in the 70s and exercised real influence within the Labour party. Even today, a significant minority of the British electorate, maybe 20% are genuine socialists in a way that very few people in the US are. Though it's only in 1945-51 that the genuinely socialist faction of Labour actually ran the country and not just the Labour party. (The best PM we ever had in the minds of many historians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom#Academic_opinion)
Starmer's campaign was run quite savvily (particularly in targeting voters in swing districts rather than pilling them up in solidly red-in-the-UK-sense cities). But he also benefitted hugely from a collapse of the Tories and a massive split on the right (which oddly happened as the Tories also moved RIGHT, and so also bled votes to the centrist Lib Dems). The result of this was that Starmer won a majority of 174 and 411 seats on only 1.6% more of the overall national vote than Corbyn's Labour won at the disastrous 2019 General Election*, where Labour got 202 seats and the Tories won a majority of 80. In 2017, Corbyn-led Labour actually won 6.3% MORE of the overall national vote than Starmer got in 2024.
Starmer was running against an unpopular party going for its 5th election win in 14 years, who had literally had to fire a PM within 50 days of taking office for immediately crashing the economy with bad budgetary policies, AND against a backdrop of punishing inflation, and he only out-performed a genuinely far-left massively unpopular leader who was also hamstrung by a Brexit policy nobody liked by 1.6% . So it's arguable the question about the Starmer campaign is "what went wrong", despite their massive majority.
*In fairness to Starmer, to some degree this was because the Lab vote share was artificially lowered by far-left voters abandoning Labour for the Greens in the knowledge that Labour were 100% guaranteed to win anyway, when they might have stuck with Labour in a close election.
In retrospect, none of those 'big left wing comebacks' survived the person who did them and their right-wing policies generally made their countries worse for it.
I was young and foolish then but man have I not forgiven Blair for that (and his wider embrace of Bush). I found out after that whole episode that there was a side to him that I hadn't been aware of (e.g. the very religious one), but I still have cognitive dissonance around the whole thing.
Tony Blair won three general elections, including two stupendous landslides, for a party that's traditionally the minority in UK. His wins broke up 50 straight years of Tory governance (Thatcher to Sunak). I'll take that kind of "temporary victory" (though he can keep Iraq).
If Gore/Clinton had narrowly won instead of losing we would instead be talking about Democrats putting up Reagan-level 3-term performances every time they do this!
Matt writes: "Being a Democrat should mean caring more than Republicans about the lives of poor people, about equal rights and non-discrimination, about restraining big business in matters related to pollution and fraudulent practices, and about protecting social insurance for the elderly and disabled."
I suspect this mission statement is what is *actually* controversial, even though the listed principles will generate more discussion. It doesn't center the three things that I believe have come to define being a Democrat over the past 15 years: climate change, racial diversity and economic inequality.
All are worthy topics to be weighed against other competing priorities. But, in my view, they don't rise to the level of foundational, party-defining mission that Matt wrote out above.
Sure, but it's just one of several things they care about, right? It's not like parents are single issue voters on this topic. Whereas if politicians could directly buy off children's votes by "increasing their allowances", so to speak, or by reducing their homework, then they might very well do so.
Wait, what? His first three points are economic inequality (“the lives of poor people”), racial diversity (“equal rights and non-discrimination”), and climate change (“restraining big business in matters related to pollution”). His only divergence from this is the addition of “fraudulent practices” and “protecting social insurance for the elderly and disabled”.
I actually think John is right though. Each of these subtly but importantly alters the framing.
Just to pick one example: "Improving the lives of poor people" implies focusing on lifting 1 group up, while "economic inequality" can be reduced by lifting 1 group up or bringing 1 down. There's certainly been a lot of narrative focus on the latter vs. the former, even if the policy story is more mixed.
You can think about inequality between the poor and the middle, or inequality between the middle and the rich. If you fund your welfare state with broad based minimally distorting taxation, that’s perfectly compatible with also having a very rich upper class.
The principles are explicitly pro-growth. To the extent you believe there’s a tradeoff* between growth and reducing top end inequality, the principles actually lead to the conclusion that you should abandon the old Occupy 99% vs. 1% issue.
*Matt's position on this tradeoff is nuanced, you can read more in this old post on optimal tax policy:
Democrats need to start by having authentic politicians. The biggest pitfall of popularism is the candidate is forced to take positions they might not personally believe in because the positions are popular according to polling. The public can read right through this. You could tell Kamala was passionate about abortion, but it was really difficult to figure out what else she truly believed in.
I've wondered if there's potential for politicians to support a policy without personally believing in it. Eg, Catholic Democrats like Biden who believe abortion is a sin, but nonetheless support it either due to other beliefs about the role of government or simply recognizing that this is demanded by their coalition.
Similarly, we could imagine a technocratic Democrat openly promising to support some specific protectionist policies despite thinking these are counterproductive. They would state their intent to convince voters otherwise, but promise to continue supporting protectionist policies until they've explicitly campaigned on, and won, a different platform.
Could this work with some voters, on some issues? It would certainly be authentic.
Hm I like this in principle but I I'm not sure there's a good narrative for abandoning technocrats the way there is for embracing toleration. The line "I personally believe X, but this is America and we don't let our personal beliefs get in the way of others' freedom" is baked into our bones, it's our founding myth. "I think you're stupid but democracy requires toleration of stupidity" doesn't have the same ring to it.
You can frame the freedom version in a way that sounds bad - "I think you're evil but as a liberal I tolerate evil" - but ultimately I don't think that's actually the spirit behind liberalism. We tolerate people because we think moral questions are hard and people can get them wrong in good faith and we might also be wrong. Perhaps there's an equivalent line for non-moral questions, but no technocratically inclined Democrat thinks that Joe schmo is just as likely to be right about tariffs as professional economists. So I don't think you could get around conveying the condescension - ultimately, the problem emerges from really believing the thing that people feel is condescending. (I don't know what you do with that - the fact that people feel something is condescending doesn't mean you shouldn't believe it. *shrug*)
I think it’s easier to take those positions on social issues as long as you aren’t trying to put the genie back in the bottle. The abortion one is a good example and Democrats for the longest time took this approach with gay marriage.
On economic issues, the Democrats have too many economists and not enough business people. Kamala’s economic plan was basically increase income and corporate taxes for the wealthy, a targeted tax deduction for first time homebuyers, and a some vague small business tax incentive. Democrats add all these mandates to businesses (especially in blue states) yet act indifferent to imports coming from countries where there are barely any labor, environmental, or welfare standards.
> Democrats add all these mandates to businesses (especially in blue states) yet act indifferent to imports coming from countries where there are barely any labor, environmental, or welfare standards
I disagree. This is the meat of why leftists oppose neoliberalism! But the Dem elite doesn’t car about this.
I think what you need is to be credibly authentic about holding mainstream positions, especially when those mainstream positions disagree with your party base / activists / Groups. And you need to say, believably, that you oppose the Groups on their most unpopular things.
For instance, Trump, as bad as he is, promised he would veto a national abortion ban. He's a notorious liar, but I think it's plausible, and it probably cost him something with the religious right.
"promised he would veto a national abortion ban. "
It may have cost him something, but I felt like he got a pass on it. I always felt like some PAC should run ads in redder areas about how Trump abandoned the pro-life movement in the hopes of peeling away a few votes.
The problem was that Democrats ran so hard on a pro-choice platform that Trumo had plenty of space to moderate while not risking suppport from pro-lifers.
This is one I especially don't believe though. Trump is unprincipled (not *always* a bad thing for a politician), not to mention has no more elections to win, which means he could easily go along with whatever Congress sends him. I think there are enough squishy republicans that it probably doesn't happen anyway though.
True but I feel that for a Republican, Trump is very believable when he acts like he doesn’t have a strong principled position on this issue. I seem to remember trump demurring when asked whether he had personally paid for an abortion.
Right, so absent some guiding principal, what will his real motivations be to sign or veto it? I imagine if republicans could pass it, they would figure out what to offer Trump to sign it (and it wouldn't take much).
Im increasingly convinced that among the electorate, “authenticity” is basically just “heterodoxy.” Thinking about how Theo Von told Bernie that he wished he ran on a ticket with Trump. The parties both have very unpopular parts that makes “mavericks” identifiable and root-for-able. Clearly this isn’t a perfect relationship (Sinema), but seems like there’s something there
I’ll say that number 4 is one that I’ve probably moved to Matt’s position the most the last four years. I was hardly super pro non profit by any means. I’ve been an advocate of taxing the endowments of elite colleges for awhile. And I’m increasingly under the belief that tax exemption for churches or religious institutions generally is kind of terrible.
But man o man have I been convinced that outsourcing city government functions to non profits is a huge mistake. However well intentioned non profits are they suffer from the same issue as any other outside entity brought in to do government functions; the incentive is to do what’s best for the institutions first above all else. And for lefty non-profits that means placating their staff’s idiosyncratic concerns first and providing services second. Which in practice means tons of platitudes for various groups with no actual real world impact. Josh Barro is right; there is no more stark example than the fact that Kamala was bashed repeatedly for saying she supported gender reassignment surgery for prisoners and in five years since there has been precisely zero surgeries. Platitudes signifying you “get it” while accomplishing nothing.
Call it Noah Smith’s “state capacity” or Ezra Klein’s “everything bagel” progressivism but they both get at the same thing.
So I’ll end with this. Am I completely nuts to think that if Lee Zeldin actually follows through with having EPA standards supersede state ones (like CEQA). And because of the fall of “Chevron” deference will be given to judges (probably right wing given where companies judge shop) this might have the perverse effect of ushering in our green revolution? There seem to be breakthroughs all the time in stuff like battery storage. As Matt repeatedly notes permitting reform has bipartisan support. What I’m thinking is the economics keep trending to technologies like solar and electric cars anyway. This is a half glass full take but it would be wonderfully ironic if limiting EPA power or deregulation in general had the perverse effect of helping the environment
Regarding the environment, I don't think that this is a perverse effect. I think that Texas generates more than California (or any other state) from renewables, and, of course, one of the most prominent Trump supporters gets most of his wealth from electric cars, solar panels, and batteries.
The fact that Texas is the leader in solar generation (as you note) is to me the big data point that defanging EPA could lead to MORE investment in green tech not less. Texas is after all still the center of the America oil industry.
I don't think that it's unexpected either. Apart from what I already mentioned in my previous comment about solar in Texas and Elon Musk, you can see huge EV-related investments in Kentucky, Georgia, and South Carolina. These aren't blue states. Georgia also completed two more reactors to produce carbon-free electricity at Plant Vogtle. Actually building green things is more important than verbally supporting them.
Being anti-green is a litmus test for Republicans. I expect them to do everything they can to slow the transition to renewables, no matter what ERCOT and Tesla might want.
Might have a chance to speak with a blue city mayor today. Dropping a manifesto reference on a pol before their staff gets to them is quite the opportunity.
I’m an Irish subscriber so I mostly don’t have to live with US outcomes.
That said, some similar problems have arisen in Ireland. Government overall has spent too much time listening to NGOs and being influenced/pushed by the Green Party (left wing) minor party in our coalition government. The result has been that the majority of Irish people who are centre right by inclination are rebelling over immigration, inflation/cost of living, a shortage of affordable housing etc.
The modern trend to allow NGOs and left wing voices in both politics and the media is driving the mainstream population further to the right has got to be curtailed.
It’s time for mainstream politicians to listen more to voters rather than to vocal activists.
I’m an Irish expat, and I agree with this. The recent referendums were a good example of what you’re talking about — supported by every non-fringe political party; overwhelmingly rejected by the people. It’s not a good look for the political system.
I'm astonished they decided to go to the expense of a referendum campaign to make two tiny changes to the constitution just to wokify the language used, and to probably no operational purpose. The turnout of well under 50% and the resounding No vote of those that did suggests the Irish elite are living in ivory towers.
No joke I was in Ireland on a tour of the countryside and the guide spoke glowingly about how you can't build homes at all legally in the country and people buy them and knock down everything but a single wall in order to rebuild them completely. Then as we got closer to Dublin she lamented how housing is so expensive and it's killing the city. Zero recognition these things were related!
I've seen the same things in NYC to be honest. Normal people seem really resistant to the idea that a housing market exists and is responsive to supply and demand the same way other markets work.
As Matt has pointed out on Twitter, if foreigners are actual willing to purchase unlimited quantities of luxury condos that they leave vacant 51 weeks a year, it's practically criminal malfeasance by municipal officials to NOT to build them since the property taxes would pay for gold-plated public services for the full-time residents.
Ireland has the additional problem that the mainstream political parties are more or less the same which means that change is really hard to enact through elections. I feel the U.S. election we just had, in which the status quo was clearly rejected, just couldn’t happen in Ireland given the current shape of the parties.
I have been feeling and saying 6 for years. The “record corporate profits” leftists like to complain about suggests that, if nothing else, companies are competent in achieving their goals. Who could really think you’re more likely to find excellence at the MTA than at Meta?
Maybe this doesn't pass an ideological turing test but leftists generally believe profits are indicative of a noncompetitive environment and/or exploitation, so Meta being more profitable than the MTA just means its more evil.
Related to this, to better emphasize that there's no inherent virtue to nonprofits, it's easy to list a bunch of nonprofits that they would see as bad. My favorite to use in this regard is Citizens United--it's a nonprofit corporation! That really gives dissonance to the "Citizens United v. FEC opened the door for big for-profit corporations to rig our elections!!!!" bit.
It's worse than that -- they're hypocrites. They're using absolute "record profits" as a gotcha when if GDP is positive every year will have record corp. profits. This is the same "trust the science" crew that will then torture data to fit their own narrative whenever they want.
Facebook is floundering, and the VR bet seems to have been terrible, but Meta is up 77% on the year. My rough understanding is that its AI arm (Llama), Instagram, and WhatsApp are strong.
The VR bet was terrible right until they showed the Orion demo. IMO Meta is doing incredibly well and has a real chance of being far bigger and more important than they currently are.
It had nice parallelism with MTA because it’s only one letter off. But seriously, maybe biased because I do work there, but the company is not floundering. It is true that the Facebook app has lost some of it’s cool factor among a certain set that you and I may belong to. But globally most things are going well and the stock performance over the past couple years reflects it.
I’ll piggyback off of Matt’s point and note that Democrats won a landslide in 2008 by nominating Barack Hussein Obama; for younger readers the 2004 post election analysis was firmly democrats don’t get “real America” and the country was irreparably anti Muslim and anti Middle East and would never ever vote for someone that was even vaguely associated with either (right wingers tried smearing Obama as ‘Muslim’ and clearly didn’t work). Point being as Matt is alluding to predicting what the issue of the moment will be or which issues are salient generally in 4 years is a mugs game (oh yeah the other hot take in 2004 was this country was going through another religious revival, mega churches were all the rage. This was a a new Christian moment and the country would never accept gay marriage. Yeah check now how that worked out; look religious attendance trends).
I think the Lehman Brothers collapse likely shifted Obama's victory from a modest popular and electoral college margin to a blowout.
Think the more important thing to note. In December, 2004 the actual correct take about the 2008 election would be "The two keys to the 2008 election will be the failure of the Iraq War and the collapse of the real estate bubble. We need to make sure to nominate someone who was against the Iraq War and also has no ability to be tied to the coming real estate bubble and subsequent stock market crash". The former was at least a live issue in 2004 and the insurgency was already souring the public on the war during the 04 campaign. But the latter was definitely not on people's radar. This was still the era of "Greenspan is a genius and will solve everything". Bush both in 2000 and 2004 touted the "ownership society" as one of his visions for America. Like there were signs if you looked closely enough the real estate market was overheated already in 2004. And famously a few traders who looked suspiciously like Steve Carrell and Christian Bale saw the weakness of the real estate market and made millions on short positions. And even they weren't taking their short positions in 2004.
Are you kidding me? Gavin Newsom looks like he has a custom gold roofie bottle attached to his keychain, and can be tarred with… well basically every aspect of his governance of California, which exemplifies the sort of inept technocracy that the electorate just picked Trump over.
As an Alphabet Person, I'm looking forward to the post elaborating on #5. The way it's phrased here encompasses a *huge* range of possible policies, ranging from "basically everything the left wants" to "basically everything the right wants". The question of whether biological sex is socially constructed is academic; the real political controversies are about which parts of society should be segregated by (some notion of) biological sex rather than something more malleable.
There are some statements that seem so obviously true, even tautological, that they must be dog whistles for something else. "Biological sex is not a social construct" seems like one of those, and it seems like a dog whistle for transphobia. I hope that will turn out not to be the case.
As you can see elsewhere in the comments on this post, even people who think they believe in a sex binary will often concede that there are exceptions; they just choose not to think about those exceptions when they're proposing policy.
But again, this issue is purely academic. There's no real political controversy that hinges on whether sex is binary.
There are not exceptions. Sex is truly binary, by definition. There are people who don't cleanly fit into that binary, but that is not the same claim as that sex itself is binary. You can say that sexual *expression* in humans is either ternary (male, female, intersex) or bimodal (male, female, everything in between). It would be just as correct to say that a true intersex person has *no* sex than to say they are "in-between" sexes, because sex is a reproductive category and true intersex people cannot reproduce because they do not have functional reproductive systems.
If there is no political controversy, why can democratic politicians (including the president and at least one Supreme Court justice) not affirm this simple fact?
Upthread: "There are some statements that seem so obviously true, even tautological, that they must be dog whistles for something else. 'Biological sex is not a social construct' seems like one of those, and it seems like a dog whistle for transphobia. I hope that will turn out not to be the case."
This is not true. There is no such thing as an in-between sex. There are people with genetic anomalies that mean they don't cleanly fit in either category, but sex is a binary category. There are only male gametes and female gametes and nothing else.
You could argue that sexual *expression* in humans is bimodal, i.e. a male-to-female continuum with two strong poles, but I don't think that accurately describes sexual expression either, because it implies an overlap where there is none. That is, since hermaphrodism in humans is impossible, sexual expression cannot be a continuum.
I take your point on genetics, although I do think even 1% of people having genetic diversity that don't cleanly fit these categories deserves some recognition.
I do think the physical expression of sex is bimodal along a LOT of criteria: height, weight, bone density, muscle mass, visual perception, etc. These are things where you can generally say that there are patterns between males and females, but there is still a lot of overlap. There are a lot of women taller than a lot of men. There are a lot of men with wider hips than women.
Sex *traits* are bimodally distributed, but sex itself is not, as disinterested has eloquently explained.
Sex is not always the salient criteria to use in defining policy--sometimes gender expression or sexuality trump sex. But there remain in our society a handful of areas where sex itself is the most salient criteria, and it is without a doubt the case that activists are trying to redefine and reduce the salience of the concept of sex.
Don't play dumb. This is absolutely a claim some gender activists make, and they can point at peer-reviewed science articles in real journals to back them up.
It was "biological sex is a social construct", which was what you said was obviously false.
I think Matt's point is that we have to push back against such falsehoods in progressive spaces (and the associated neologisms like AFAB/AMAB that implicitly reject that sex is real), while promoting tolerance and decency towards trans people.
I'd also like to see this rephrased to talk about parents' rights to make decisions for their children, including to support their children in transitioning. As the parent of a trans kid, I strongly believe the parents should be the authority here in both directions, with a nod to the idea that older teens can be capable of making some medical decisions with oversight. We have good ethical, medical, and legal rubrics for managing parents' rights vs adolescent autonomy in other contexts such as cancer treatment, teenage parenthood, and emancipation of minors.
But the flip side of that is that I should be able to consent to my child's transition, just like I can consent for them to have elective plastic surgery. I shouldn't have to fear having my kids taken away, or getting arrested, both of which are real possibilities in many red states.
The counter point would be that sex hormones or transitioning for kids has very little scientific basis and a lot of risks. And it seems like we've been oversold on the benefits and the risks have been greatly downplayed. That's why you see a lot of European governments walking it back now.
I agree that it's a lot easier for people not in that position to have opinions. But kids are always going to be a tough issue. Because protecting kids will always be an important government function.
Given the government has an interest in the safety of kids, should the state be empowered to take children away from their parents on the basis of, say, a child not being vaccinated, where the scientific basis is very strong?
To Texas's Department of Justice, prescribing puberty blockers to a transgender child is abuse. Ken Paxton: “There is no doubt that these procedures are ‘abuse’ under Texas law, and thus must be halted” (source below). So I'm still unclear on whether or not you think EAB ought to have their children taken from them if they consent to elective procedures for a hypothetical transgender child. Personally, I disagree with Ken Paxton (and with Hellkitty): I think the American traditions of family privacy and medical freedom ought to prevail on this issue. For the same reasons, I disagree with the notion that parents should lose their kids due to refusing vaccines, even though we actually have an extremely well established understanding about the downside risks of that for children's health!
To pull back a bit, I get frustrated by unprincipled appeals to (at this time, speculative) levels of risk in one medical realm when in basically all other medical realms we prioritize family privacy and medical freedom. I appreciate that this is an active area of research, but the American Academy of Pediatrics evidently considers the benefits of *allowing* these procedures to take place to outweigh the risks given our current level of understanding. Given that, why wouldn't we respect the relationship between a child, their parents, and their doctor, just as we do for everything else?
Am I wrong about this? Is there any medical procedure that is prohibited for children that is also a) considered acceptable by the American Academy of Pediatrics and b) permitted for any consenting adult? If so, I would be thankful if anyone could tell me one example!
Until a diagnosis of gender dysphoria doesn't have to rely on the word of a minor, it is unethical to allow medical interventions that permanently alter the child's body. The difference between a child and an adult is akin to the difference between a caterpillar and a butterfly. And the child is incapable of contracting, of voting, of unilateral emancipation and of electing these types of surgeries.
(1) The diagnostic guidelines for gender dysphoria as written *don't* rely on the word of a minor; they specify behaviors and symptoms that can be observed by attentive parents, teachers, and therapists. This is similar to the diagnosis of other conditions like ADHD, autism, and depression.
(2) Transition for minors rarely involves *surgery*. That's more of an adult thing. And even for adults who want to have surgery, it can take years of advance planning. Even if they could find a provider to do it, a minor who wanted surgery would likely be an adult by the time it actually happened.
(3) Gender dysphoria is hardly the only health condition whose diagnosis or treatment involves a minor patient's input. Many mental health conditions are diagnosed based in part on a minor's input: ADHD, anxiety, depression, autism, etc. Treatment decisions for conditions like juvenile arthritis, scoliosis, cancer, pregnancy, etc., are also based in whole or in part on the minor patient's input. If you want to enforce your principle that minors shouldn't be involved in health decisions with permanent impacts, you're going to have to overhaul multiple fields of pediatric care, not just gender stuff.
Regarding (1): I cannot believe there has ever been a gender dysphoria diagnosis where the male child says "I'm a boy" and parents, teachers and therapists say "No, based on our analysis and observations you are a girl."
I'm have no doubt the diagnosis will be backed up with observations, but the word of the child is a necessary piece of the diagnosis.
I expect you want to likewise decide that it's unethical, and should be illegal, to allow teenage girls to have breast augmentations, nose jobs, eyelid surgeries, and other cosmetic procedures? These permanently alter the teenager's body and rely only on the teenager's word that this will be beneficial. Likewise, you're presumably a fan of banning minors from receiving GNRH agonists to treat endometriosis, as we have only the minor's word that their period pain is serious enough to require this treatment?
Note that all of these cases are consented by the parents, as transitions are -- please note that I am specifically arguing for the *parents' rights* to make these decisions on behalf of their minor children.
Also, as mentioned above, most states allow pregnant minors to make serious decisions about their medical care in pregnancy and childbirth, including consent to c-sections and other surgeries with serious and permanent consequence. And EVERY state permits teenage parents to make all medical decisions on behalf of their own children. It's a bit incongruous to say that teenagers can't consent to their own medical care but can make permanent decisions for their infants, isn't it?
The majority position seems to be something like everyone should be treated with respect. But women's only spaces such as bathrooms, locker rooms, and women's sports are off limits for biological males.
That would essentially mean banning trans people from many public facilities. Which, y'know, if that's your position then go for it, but it's hard to see how that's compatible with "everyone should be treated with respect".
"just use the facility of the sex they are born to" implies that people will be sharing public restrooms with others who give the appearance of being of the opposite gender. Unless that's banned.
It seems to me a sensible resolution is to provide appropriate provisions for privacy that make no assumptions about sex, gender, or sexual orientation. That might sound like "gender-neutral facilities," and that doesn't sound like a bad thing to me.
This is great. One aspect I wanted to highlight: it is a conceit of liberals that we’re “on the right side of history”, and it is well-known that more educated people tend to be more left-leaning. So it’s not enough to open people’s eyes to the political wisdom of the points Matt raises, they need to be *convinced/persuaded* that the underlying ideas are right on the merits. It is not moral to tolerate crime and disorder. It is not ethical to promote irreversible therapies for children. On climate “we” may be right but if our methods don’t solve the problem then we will be wrong. Same for macro and microeconomic issues: if our supposedly ethical methods don’t solve problems, it is not the case that the means justify the ends.
This should be mandatory reading for all democrats and the nine principles should be posted in all of their offices and read before every post on X or cable news hit.
I cannot emphasize numbers four and seven enough. The obsessive lecturing on the left over language that people who don’t work in super progressive organizations or spend 200 hours a week on social media has to stop. Use real words that normal people understand.
Great piece Matt!
"This should be mandatory reading for all democrats...."
For all Democratic office-holders and party-operatives, I'm sure you meant.
For ordinary people not in the politics game, (10) should say "There will be no more mandatory readings."
Well said. Your comment should be mandatory reading for all commenters.
Principle Number 11!
“Principle Number 11!”
No, no — that one states that no manifesto should have more than ten theses.
I thought it stated the maximum volume that a manifesto can go to.
...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope!
Wrong. Do better!
This gave me a great laugh on a cold, drab morning.
Are you referring to the soon-to-be-former Federal office holders who will lose their Schedule F jobs?
Also helpfully unpaywalled!
Share widely!
And to tie it into point 6, most private sector firms have a lot more important shit to get done just to stay afloat, and need to spend their time on that instead of arcane language and disparate impact lectures.
Ironically, what Democrats need to embrace is all lives matter. I’m not saying that Democrats haven’t believed that in the past, but their identity group focusing hasn’t given that impression.
Stop saying things like Hurricanes especially affected queer people and minorities harder.
As many of you know, I work in a very Trump heavy industry, but the majority of the people I work with are union millwrights. So there is some historical sympathy for the Democratic Party. However, this is over shadowed by the fact that many of them are working class, blue collar conservative, valued type men. Trust me when I say that the message white men are bad comes through louder than the unions are good message.
But all in all these nine principles are a good start. However, it’s the specifics, the language from the leadership, that I want to see change.
On a sidenote, the Democrats need to hire more veterans like Jeff Jackson from North Carolina .
P.S. I just realized there is one principle missing. #10 should have an explicit statement of patriotism and American first.
The CDC’s website on suicide talks about risk disparities and omits the largest risk disparity with suicide, men. Educated elites telling everyone that men and boys are the problem is not helpful.
And I say this as a man who says that yes, many of us are stupid, useless, and gassy. But still.
I challenge anyone to guess what the #1 priority in FEMA's 2025-2026 Strategic Plan was...
...
Equity. #2 was climate change. Only when you get to #3 do you find FEMA's actual mission (Promote and sustain a ready FEMA and prepared nation). I don't think that voters are rejecting Democrats because they're reading up on each agency's detailed policy proposals or stratagic plans or anything. But I think the public absolutely senses that Democrats primary goal is to address and promote identity focused issues and prioritize the interests of those identities. And it's hard to rebut that sense as being a caricature when you can actually go and read those detailed, often ignored and rarely seen statements of what they actually prioritize and see that Equity is FEMAs #1 goal for the upcoming year. The public's sense is, unfortunately, pretty accurate.
When you combine that with the fact that Dems never mention assisting white people or males (outside of minority men) then I don't understand why everyone is so surprised and outraged to find out that those groups are rejecting Democrats. When some Dems/liberals/progressives go even further and accuse white males as being oppressors (and white women as being complicit) then those outcomes are even less surprising.
This framing could at least be argued to be rational when minority groups were voting in lock step with the Democratic party- you're prioritizing those constituents to form a majority coalition. But if Latinos are swinging hard for conservatives and black men are also dropping off as dependable voters then you need to recalculate.
I work in government and nowhere is our congressionally mandated work mentioned anywhere in the mission statements of the department. Lots of stuff on racial justice, equity, environmental justice, and climate change.
So much activist brainworms.
I write a lot of federal grant proposals and am gobsmacked by how pervasive this underpants gnomes approach to DEI is. Just make solving unsolvable problems of the human condition the priority everywhere, always and then .... something, something ... we've solved racism!
It is demoralizing to write a dozen pages of detailed, highly technical, heavily cited arguments about esoteric scientific questions built on years of careful experiments only to have your proposal spiked because it doesn't do enough to help marginalized communities. Because apparently that is a problem that physical science can solve.
It isn't limited to the US either. The EU was the same way.
I worked for many years in a university in the corner of an ethnically homogeneous, overwhelming white country where funding decisions were increasingly tied to the diversity of the faculty and European grants were increasingly restricted to people belonging to specific identify groups. The fact that the applicants for tenure-track positions weren't way more diverse than the population was somehow our fault. Color me completely unsurprised—and saddened—that Europe has been electing right-wing populists.
I write grant applications for a performing arts organization in Seattle. As part of the application for a city grant (formerly known as "Civic Partners", now C.A.R.E — "Centering Art & Racial Equity"), you have to grade your own organization according to this rubric:
https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/Arts/Downloads/Grants/CAREGrant/ContinuumonBecominganAnti-RacistArtsandCulturalOrg_2022Update.pdf
I had a professor in college who had a doctorate in music composition from a Soviet university. He told me that to earn such a credential in the USSR, you basically had to have the equivalent of a doctorate in Marxist ideology. I hate to say it, but one can't help but see the comparison.
Holy cow, I did not realize how far this can go... I guess we are actually a bit more insulated because of the technical nature of hard science. Though we do have adherents and it is easy to get the impression that saying the wrong thing around them will lead to your metaphorical corpse being dropped from a helicopter in the center of town to make a point.
...but wow, that document is professionalized and operationalized woke scolding. The very first point "Intentionally and publicly excludes or segregates People of the Global Majority - PGM" is unambiguous about what a terrible, terrible person you are for existing. How dare you put on shows by and for the people in your community! Your derelict art is so oppressive that you manage to oppress *the majority of people on Earth*! But you can repent and create a better world, er, performing arts organization, where "Those who have been most
impacted by systemic oppression are centered and decide individually
how they want to participate".
Hence why I recently started calling these DEI requirements “political commissars.”
Wow. This is pretty shocking.
The very idea that we can solve racism is extremely problematic and centers white ways of knowing and thinking and… (/s)
It shouldn’t be so easy to come up with this stuff. But how easy a power move it is probably contributes to how widespread it is.
Going through the EU grant process made me realize how broken Europe is.
European intellectuals need to decolonize their minds (from US academic hegemony)
I think my favorite one is one I saw at a USACE district: "Keeping the floods away, the grain flowing, the fish swimming and the lights on." Or something to that effect.
When I was a teacher I definitely sat through a million trainings and half of them were about the dumbest caricatures of DEI consultant stuff you've ever seen.
Which is a shame, because many teachers are actually pretty dumb and bad at their jobs and would benefit from good trainings that focused on things like, "How do I effectively use phonics to teach students to read?", but the trainings instead have a well-earned reputation for being useless -- even the substantive ones are regularly derailed by grad student meandering instead of practical experience-based discussion of technique.
Sometimes we get shoehorned into fitting our work to meet a message. I tried hoping academic jobs during peak DEI. No one of my background was going to get a TT job unless they were a Harvard star.
LOL I am engaged on a research project on which I'm trying to sort out the tangled web of FEMA programs and similar/duplicative programs in other agencies (the focus is on a particular coastal geography). I saw this too and rolled my eyes so hard they almost got stuck that way. It's a mess, and *this* is their strategy???! Cue the mirthless laughter...
Of course I should have expected it, having seen the recent changes in formerly fully substantive fora such as the TRB.
It isn’t enough to address problems, one has to do it in the ideologically correct manner and we will appoint political commissars to ensure correct thinking!
Yeah, I have learned to my dismay that even engineering is now supposed to be ideologically correct. Bring on the change, please! I loved Jen Pahlka's take on that (https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/curiosity-and-conflict)
I liked chunks of the beginning of this essay, but the recurring theme that an open convention was smart, sensible, or even logistically plausible left me closing the tab at the third-of-the-way point.
Some people can't be helped, I guess.
It’s so frustrating that as soon as I started reading the DEI/Woke stuff (one of my Covid projects) it was easy to see that the blind ideology was overcoming effective, diplomatic strategy. Actually it’s a good question of why some public organizations caved so completely to the demands. Where was the power? Was there really so much “white guilt”? Fear of youngsters attacking your language and actions?
HR departments of course try to avoid lawsuits, but on what basis could someone sue for making priority #2 equity instead of priority #1?
(Of course the rank and file knows how to avoid strategic plan documents and get on with their work. Hopefully even more so in 2025.)
This is red meat for anyone left of center and needs to be dropped IMMEDIATELY.
Absolutely, Michelle Obama's big speech about why men should vote Harris was all about supporting the women in their lives.
I don't disagree with that, but c'mon. Men have legitimate self interest. There's plenty of Richard Reeves info just lying around that should be easily lib coded. But, they can't bring themselves to address it because it violates the narrative. Simple disparity "analysis" would point that young men need more help, but suddenly disparity doesn't imply the same thing.
This election certainly validated a lot of the Richard Reeves narrative. I hope more Democratic leaders seek him out.
I like what I've heard from Richard Reeves but it also seems obviously lib-coded to me. Doesn't seem to me that Joe Rogan acolytes are going to buy the idea that lack of sufficient male elementary school teachers is a big problem.
I wouldn't be so sure. A lot of these struggling young men checked out of their educations as far back as elementary school because it's a female-dominated environment that treats male rambunctiousness as a disorder instead of healthy energy to be properly directed.
These formative experiences can have pretty deep downstream impacts on how they perceive the world as adults.
"These formative experiences can have pretty deep downstream impacts on how they perceive the world as adults."
Absolutely. I think I lucked out a bit, because in elementary school I had a lot of males in my schools. I had like one black male principal, and two male classroom teachers, and then a few scattered around the arts and gym. One of my favorite teachers was my fifth grade reading teacher, who was an older, black, southern guy with a deep, deep Alabama accent who held us to absolutely fanatical grammar standards. Great guy.
Reeves talks about the fact that there's a tipping point effect where once you get below 30% it will naturally collapse further because it gets uncomfortable to be male in the profession, the same has happened in psychology as well. This is kind of a definitional chicken/egg problem though so I don't really know how you solve it.
My loose take is that while male flight is generally unidirectional away from femininity — it never reverses — male colonization is characterized by the industrialization and exploitation of lucrative opportunities in women-dominated fields.
So, I would look towards AI tools and edtech like Khan Academy as new attractors for getting men back into early childhood education.
Affirmative action for “penis havers.”
I agree that more male teachers is a net positive, but people are very concerned about sexual misconduct toward children (rightly), and men do statistically commit those actions at higher rates than women. I still think it’s a net positive to have more male teachers, and men should not be stigmatized in general because of the higher rates, but it is statistically true and people know that.
Men commit more of pretty much every crime. We shouldn't have men in schools because they might commit sexual misconduct is a strange and somewhat hateful take, and I don't really think it's relevant here at all. Men self-select out of these jobs, not the other way around.
This is why I think we need to make a distinction between second-order consequences and first- or second-order solutions.
The first-order problem is that in the modern world, young boys suffer without male role models (even setting aside fatherlessness). The first-order solution is to hire more men.
The second-order consequence of hiring more men is that you get more sexual misconduct. Solving this by reversing the first-order solution doesn't truly solve anything, it just gives you the original problem that solution was intended to solve.
The proper way to address the problem would be on the second order: better screening and monitoring of male teachers. I'd be PERFECTLY fine with gender-neutral policies that were disparately-targeted towards policing male teachers: for instance, "no adults alone with students". That in turn might create its own third-order problem -- the budget/scheduling necessary to make sure you keep up the policy -- but that's miles better than creating a society-wide distortion by simply never hiring men in the first place.
Of course, as is usually the problem, none of this is intelligible to the average normie swing voter. But as a matter of policy analysis and problem-solving, our society needs to get a LOT better at this kind of "thinking by orders".
I just want to register how baffled I am about the apparently persistent voter block for whom conspiratorial concerns about rampant child sex abuse is a first order political concern. It just really doesn't seem like a thing that's all that susceptible to policy levers.
Rogan is actually into this stuff! He's done several interviews, notably with Carole Hooven (Author of a book called T about testosterone) talking about what boys and men need, and how our current cultural climate affects them.
Joe Rogan would be ALL ABOUT the lack of male elementary school teachers! This is really right in the strike zone for him.
I love that the DNC site has a section for literally every single identity group you can think of except men or white people. Like if we're just going to list all identity groups would it be so hard to add those?
Better yet... stop listing every single identity group.
Yes agree but if you're going to list them and leave one out it's just telling people you hate them. Just madness.
The fact that it’s the largest group being left off is not the smartest political decision. Also, why fuel replacement theory claims with this stuff because it really does look bad to many people to see this.
That page ("who we are for") also has two different pictures and for some reason, 9 of the 10 people are Black.
Given how carefully Dems tend to craft these messages (I can assume this picture wasn't grabbed at random) it seemed like an odd choice
Do you have the link?
https://democrats.org/who-we-are/who-we-serve/
One of the "who we serve" groups is called Ethnic Americans ( https://democrats.org/who-we-are/who-we-serve/ethnic-americans/ ). I literally don't know who they mean. By the party's reputation, it's probably not the people who put "American" as their Census ethnicity.
Ironically, they may serve them insofar as they (often Appalachian whites, I think) tend to be poor and eligible for public aid, but white Appalachian folks sure don't feel served by the Democratic Party.
And that one white guy looks like a hippie!!!! It was probably a photo taken at an event or something and no one thought about it too hard.
Thanks!
Yes, I was on that site and noticed that they didn't list any groups I was a member of. I actually emailed them about it and have not heard back.
Bengals fans are a thoroughly disadvantaged minority (in football.)
That no call on that 2 point conversion was BULLSHIT
Which one? (Yes, I know your answer will be "Yes.".)
It's almost like they don't want those votes and guess what ...
But the funny thing is, white people actually shifted left relative to most of those groups!
Never forget the joy and validation produced by “white dudes for Harris.”
I even find the use of the word “dude” gives me the total ick. Like democrats can’t even bring themselves to be for “men”, they gotta diminish it in some way.
“White man” has a long enough history now of being an insult that they need a euphemism, which explains a lot
Well if they didn’t insist on neo-segregation, they wouldn’t have that problem ☺️
So, isn't Ethnic Americans kinda that? It's not very clear, but seems to describe anyone who has an ethnicity... which is stupid, but technically describes white Americans
Kinda, but not really. The "Ethnic American" thing was started by Clinton to give white people with strong non-WASP ethnic-immigrant identity a way to organize. He was thinking about Greek-Americans, Arab-Americans, Armenian-Americans, etc... He wasn't thinking about the typical white guy in Arkansas.
Dems are never going to say "you can't join in if you're not the right kind of 'ethnic'" but they aren't going to recruit a generic half-german, have British ancestry white guy from Kansas or whatever.
Source: I actually listened to a full 2024 meeting of that group.
I am a half Germain, half Irish guy from Indiana and did not feel included in that section.
I don’t disagree with this, but one thing that bothers me about the Scott Galloways of the world is that it is a completely open secret that universities have been informally practicing affirmative action for men for *years* Maybe they have mentioned it, but I’ve never heard it.
It’s because Democrats are embarrassed about it so they can’t take credit for their own policy.
colleges also have insane rural state preferences if i remember right.
And rural counties for state schools.
I went to a competitive public school in Virginia and it was wayyy harder for someone from NoVa to get in than someone from Roanoke. (As someone from Richmond, it was probably also easier for me)
expressio unius....
DNC is not akin to GOP. It is a party organ but not the party (minor quibble.)
The left's flippancy on religious faith is a problem. And a vote loser. I know one counter I often hear is "But they're trying to shove their religion down our throats!" And indeed some of them are. It would still be better in terms of politics for lefties to engage in less mockery, though.
Do you have any examples of Democratic party politicians doing this? I hear conservatives make the claim a lot, and there are absolutely lefties who mock and deride religion (heck, 20 years ago I was one of them!), but overwhelmingly all I see on the Democratic side are religious politicians evoking their faith publicly. So I'm always uncertain where conservatives and religious conservatives are getting the notion that the Democratic party and it's very vocally religious members mocking religion from. Is it just connecting the dots between 1) culturally, people often criticize religion, sometimes in mocking ways, 2) the people who do this are much more likely to be left leaning, 3) those left leaning individuals clearly support the Democratic party, 4) therefore, the Democratic party mocks religion?
I think you're right that not a single Democratic politician at the national level has really ever said anything that mocks religion, as far as I'm aware. Though I do think that it's not quite just 'people mock religion, and those people are coincidentally left leaning'. The more aggressively political a left-leaning influencer or public figure is, especially on the prog side, the more likely they are to say something that mocks religion. It would be intentional blindness to act like the movement as a whole doesn't have this problem.
Indeed, probably at least half of the Democrats' messaging problem is that the presence of the movement on social media is very extreme, and the politicians themselves do not parrot that but they also make approximately 0 effort to discourage it or distance themselves.
"Indeed, probably at least half of the Democrats' messaging problem is that the presence of the movement on social media is very extreme, and the politicians themselves do not parrot that but they also make approximately 0 effort to discourage it or distance themselves."
I think that's generally true for most issues, with the one exception being religion. National Dems are explicitly religious in a tremendous number of situations. Heck, I just searched through Kamala's convention speech and she said the word faith 23 times. So I think they absolutely distance themselves from the atheist movement and the mocking of religion by actively promoting their own religiosity with relative frequency.
Crazy to blame Democrats for extremism on social media and not Republicans
>Do you have any examples of Democratic party politicians doing this?<
Nope. And I didn't write "politicians." I'm thinking "cultural" left — which yes, means it's awfully difficult to curb or disrupt.
But I get the same vibe you describe when we hear people complaining about how urban liberals "look down" on rural folk. And I'm like, "Most city dwellers are far too busy with soccer practice shuttling or working long hours or fighting traffic to spend time mocking rural America." It's just not a phenomenon I personally have witnessed.
But I do think one area we do see this is in the negative portrayal of religious faith in films, TV, standup, advertising, internet discourse, and so forth. And no, there's no way to effectively get liberal cultural arbiters to chill out on this kinda thing. Fortunately, the political salience of this dynamic is likely to fade with time, as religious observance itself grows less common (yes, even in rural areas).
I agree. As a person who is both very progressive and very religious, it is frustrating to see how had that seems to be for some of my fellow progressives to see as not contradictory. Which is baffling to me since I would say that my faith is a driving factor in my supporting many social policies to help the poor or protect the environment that are objectively against my material interests. I am not someone who thinks that the religious have any monopoly on moral values or selflessness but there is a decent venn diagram overlap between people who would answer "I think it is more important to help the poor than to hoard resources" and folks who would say "My faith demands that I prioritize the needs of the poor and marginalized" You can't make majority coalition of non-religious folks who prioritize their moral values and people of faith play a huge role in the Democratic Party and progressive causes but I often feel we are more tolerated than invited to the Party on social media and other spaces.
While I know a lot of people on Left think that political leaders like Cory Booker or Kamala Harris only talk about their religion to pander to voters. I don't think that is true and I think many of our politicians are heavily motivated to engage in public service by their faith. I don't hear anything from leaders of the Party that feels anti-faith to me.
But man, social media can be a trip. Some poor woman in our neighborhood Facebook group shared that she was feeling a great deal of anxiety about the election and fear that Trump would win and wanted to know if there were any local churches that were having services to support folks who would wanting to pray about these concerns. As it happens, literally every single church in my neighborhood is progressive and lots of them had services planned to pray for "peaceful" outcomes of the election and that voters would vote in ways consistent with loving all of our neighbors. Several others, mine included, had contingency plans to support folks spiritual concerns and fears if Trump won. But before anyone who belonged to any church could respond, she was buried in an mountain of comments saying how Christianity was responsible to Trump or saying that any prayer service about the election would be a per se violation of church and state and they would report any church praying for Harris to the IRS to have their tax exempt status removed. These were the MOST leftist voices in the group. It was crazy.
I mean the person who mocks religion most at least among major political figures is Trump himself. Like there's possibly nothing more insulting (at least should be insulting) to someone of devout Christian faith than Trump's hawking of Trump bibles for financial gain. He might as well be the Pardoner selling indulgences.
His entire personal life is a complete middle finger to the idea of the good Christian life.
Again this chart explains so much about everything in America today. https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx Including the fact that Evangelicals are the strongest supporters of a man who is a complete mockery of what it means to be a Christian.
I bring all this up not to say Democrats should pivot and actually lean into the worst Fox stereotypes of liberals and faith. There's swing voters everywhere; even like 1% of religious voters not voting for GOP next time around can swing at least House districts.
But I will say I'm really not sure how much juice there is an actually leaning into more religious language and being more outwardly religious. We probably won't know for months until Pew surveys come out but I'll make a wager that the people who shifted right from 2020 to 2024 are not particularly religious. Especially given initial findings that the shift right was likely most pronounced among young Latino voters and its young people who are going to religious service the least. Think a "do no harm" strategy is not a bid idea but "evoking their faith publicly"? Not sure how much good that will do.
There’s actually an opening for Dems to capture the Mormon vote, funny enough. If you look at Trump’s vote margin in every US state in 2024 relative to 2020, his worst performance was in Utah.
Many people in the comments here will remember Evan McMullan challenging Trump in 2016, as well, and Trump failing to earn 50% of the vote in Utah. There’s definitely an opening among at least one religious group.
"Think a "do no harm" strategy is not a bid idea but "evoking their faith publicly"? Not sure how much good that will do."
I'm a little bit uncertain as to what you're saying here. What I said above is that Dems literally already do this all the time. So are you saying that they should STOP doing that? I don't see any evidence that mentioning their faith has hurt them electorally (and I say that as an atheist), so I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Can you clarify?
Correct, Dems don’t actually say any of the things that everyone here is saying they need to stop saying. What people mean is that “lefty people online need to stop saying these things” which… good luck. The things the non-elected right says online are far worse; but we aren’t talking about that because they swung 3-5% of the vote their way this time. I’m not saying there isn’t a problem here, but I would start with the information environment that isolates what weird random lefties say and packages it for podcast/social media as “things Dems want to do.”
Ehh, I think the distinction between religion and some of the other things the public holds against Dems (defund the police, decriminalize border crossings, etc.) is that the party did, at one point not too long ago, vocally support those policies. They no longer do, but they haven't vocally disavowed those positions in a way that would persuade a skeptical voter to trust them on the issues.
I think you're absolutely right that it's not Dem politicians, it's just random online people. But as voters and society seem determined to hold Den politicians responsible for those statements, the answer seems to be Dem politicians must constantly condemn the statements of random lefties, which they have not been doing.
I’m not sure that’s going to work. It’s the whole “no I did not beat my wife” thing. It honestly just associates you with the comments/ideology and makes it look like you have something to apologize for.
The answer is going on the offensive through non-political media to elevate the salience of wacko right wing stuff in the minds of voters. The project 2025 stuff actually did break through this way, but we didn’t have the media ecosystem/infrastructure the cultural right does to really drive it. My takeaway is we need to replicate that, which more of a liberalism thing than a Dem Party thing.
I agree that there should be a distinction between things that Democratic *politicians* say, as opposed to other actors within the broader Democratic coalition (online Democratic voters, academics, NGOs, activists, etc). And most recently, we have not heard these politicians say, "I love [toxically unpopular progressive fad]!"
But, at the same time, you very rarely hear Democratic politicians say, "I'm against [toxically unpopular progressive fad]"; "[toxically unpopular progressive fad] is just dumb;" or "No one really likes [toxically unpopular progressive fad]". Instead, these matters are just ignored, or, in response to very specific conservative/anti-woke critiques, we hear ambiguous platitudes about "freedom," "choice," etc. Worse, sometimes pols attempt to conflate critiques of toxically unpopular positions with those of much more popular positions, e.g., voter ID requirements are "Jim Crow 2.0"; opponents of youth transgender medicines need to "stay out of the bedroom," etc.
As such, a rational observer may conclude that the politician is secretly in favor of a toxically unpopular progressive fad, and is engaged in strategic ambiguity at best, or a "Trojan horse" operation at worse.
As to why Sista Soulja moments are rare, I think the best structural explanation I have heard may be derived from the recent Ezra Klein podcast with Michael Lind. I found especially insightful Lind's point about how the pet issues and preferences of wealthy donors are manifest in NGO pressures; and Klein's point that pols lack experience with novel, hot-button issues so they defer to activists and activist-friendly staff to come up with answers to questions and critiques.
https://religionunplugged.com/news/2024/10/23/on-religion-the-kamala-harris-dorito-thing-a-simple-meme-or-sacrilege
I am not personally offended, but I know at least a few older Catholics who were going to vote for Harris before this and the whole Al Smith dinner skip.
I'll be honest- that "this is an anti-religion insult" take seems pretty far fetched to me.
Their general answer to that would be something akin to "They wouldnt joke about Muslims like this"
“Atheism IS a religion.”
The Simulation Hypothesis certainly is.
It’s still more realistic and less harmful than any of the Abrahamic religions, if not particularly compelling.
Not if there’s some real understanding of the Abrahamic religions. There’s this funny idea that “religion” is about nothing more than “believing” some propositional statement. Then there’s the singling out of religion as the only human institution that has ever caused harm in history.
Considering that Trump is probably the least religious president in decades and religiosity among Republicans has been going down, I'm not sure this was as big an element as other cultural issues.
The lessons of 2004 included some hard steering back into religion for Dems and to great effect in 2006 and 2008.
username-comment synergy
Gassy hits home this morning to be honest. Enough said.
Ahh middle age.
I woke up 2 weeks ago with a crick in my neck from sleeping on it wrong that was a little annoying. But it was a full blown middle aged catastrophe when it was still hurting me yesterday.
It's always odd when I read some report, and even if it's completely unrelated, there's regularly a sentence or paragraph that says "these impacts hurt [a long list of common disadvantaged groups] harder". Some random acknowledgement of global warming being a threat is also common.
The killer was the claim that abortion restrictions hit LGBTQ people hardest… 🤔
That one was particularly obnoxious because of the insistence on using the whole "LGBTQ" list. Like, no, I'm very sure gay men are less affected by abortion restrictions than just about any other demographic group you could think of.
It is basically Donald Trump taking out his Sharpie to alter the hurricane cone to include the full Group.
Bowdlerizing "women" out of RBG's quote with regard to one of her SCOTUS opinions on abortion was also galling.
That was the ACLU, not the Dems, right?
I want the DNC to establish a new rule: any candidate who in the future agrees to answer a questionnaire from the ACLU or the Sunrise Movement (others TBD) is immediately disqualified.
It is really, really sad what the ACLU has become. Sunrise Movement on the other hand has never had redeeming features.
Correct, which is where I thought Marie's paraphrased quote also came from.
I think Matt has made the point that three months of centrist paid media doesn’t undo four years of nonsense from Democrat aligned institutions.
I vaguely recall a tweet from one of The Groups that used the phrase “most impacted” almost exactly. But this press release was definitely par for the course: https://glaad.org/lgbtqabortionfacts/
Or things like when HRC said that the primary victims of war have always been women. Dems seem hellbent on finding evidence that their chosen groups suffer SOME harm from any particular occurrence and then using that to argue that those groups are the primary or hardest hit victims of it, regardless of any kind of rational analysis of the real harms.
SIX KILLED IN I-90 CRASH: WOMEN, MINIORITIES HARDEST HIT
The ACLU included everyone but women on that list…
Ouch.
I became 100% for Kamala the first time she said "pregnant women" instead of "pregnant people." It's amazing how that one simple phrase triggered this decidedly liberal and true blue Democrat.
I recall the old joke (back to the 1980s at least):
NY Times headline: "Giant asteroid to destroy earth; women, minorities hardest hit"
It’s always because some Tumblr-brained moron is liable to come along and yell at them for not including that long list.
I'm feeling more and more that the proper response to that is "Sir/ma'am, this is an Arby's/Wendy's.".
And then you need to stay resolute when they yell, "Did you just assume my gender?!?"
"Tell me if you're nonbinary or whatever else, and what fast food restaurant is most appropriate to tell you that you're at."
(Any thoughts on which fast food restaurant would be appropriate here?)
LGBTQAI+ at TCBY.
Gotta be taco bell. Where the meat product can identify as whatever protein based "food" source it wants to.
“Did you just assume malice?”
The whole victim Olympics contest for social credit among the left is so tiresome.
If I hear someone complain about oppression or marginalization again I am just going to say “it’s getting old.”
you ageist asshole
This is where the, "It's all so tiresome" GIF comes in handy.
"I'm so tired, y'all."
Check your privilege or get out of my mentions
Is this really still happening? My sense is it basically stopped circa 2022.
In activist world yes. Post 2022 people have just been freer to say “shut up” and not get blowback.
Reminds me of when the left thought they were "owning" Josh Hawley for telling that law school professor that people who have babies are women and she responded by saying that he was killing transgender women. 90% of America was like "...wut?", but lefties on instagram/tik-tok/etc., were all crowing about how SHE had demolished HIM just because she was speaking with passion and intensity about an identity coded issue.
These folks are clearly completely blind to the ways in which their messaging is received by the general public.
Meanwhile, Hawley's effete chickenhawk bullshit was RIGHT THERE for the making-fun-of.
That video of him running through the Capitol to get away from the mob is still one of the funniest things I've seen. He can win all the elections he wants and pump his fist from a distance, but he'll always be a little wimp.
Yea, part of the problem is social media amplifies the most provocative/dumbest takes. Its not like there's even that many people that hold these views, its just that they get thrust into our views by the algorithm.
We need to reject those takes and instead talk about how we want abortions for some and miniature American flags for all.
It is a generic fact of life that anything that's bad for everybody is especially bad for the already disadvantaged. So when we propose some improvement, like better policing, we can say, "and by the way, this is especially good for X, Y, and Z people."
You CAN say it, but maybe you shouldn't?
This is also the template for every NPR story
I will never forget being in Portland, OR on March 1, 2020 and listening to commentators on a local politics show discuss the impending doom of the Covid-19 pandemic by saying that it would be hardest on trans women of color who do sex work. I swear I'm not making this up.
Did they then go out and interview her?
"World ends, women and minorities hardest hit"
Example in action: Kamala Harris says of climate resilience efforts / disaster relief, "We have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity."[1] Republicans says she wants to give out disaster relief funds based on racial lines, because, like, that's the most straightforward read of what she said. We've endured enough equality vs equity memes (that Kamala Harris herself has shared! [2]) to know what she meant.
Not only does the White House and Harris campaign deny that's what she meant, there's also an official fact check from Fact Check Dot Org [3] that backs up Harris, saying that she was talking about the need for equity in terms of "long-term investment" when 1) that's substantively the same policy, and 2) in context, it is not clear at all that's what she meant. When the NYT mentions this controversy in a write up, they just straightforwardly say "It was a distortion of her remarks." [4]
So you get this like one/two punch where Democrats will express support for these politically toxic ideas then deny that's what they did, with the media backing them up. And, because they did the denial, they think they're in the clear. But my recommendation would be to just avoid saying the politically toxic thing in the first place.
(Also, in these remarks, Priyanka Chopra Jonas says that hurricanes affect women harder than men and Kamala Harris agrees.)
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/09/30/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-during-fireside-chat-with-priyanka-chopra-jonas/
[2] https://x.com/KamalaHarris/status/1322963321994289154?lang=en
[3] https://www.factcheck.org/2022/10/what-vice-president-harris-said-and-didnt-say-about-hurricane-relief/
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/us/politics/harris-racism-sexism-policies.html
As far as I’m concerned, the word “equity” should follow the fate of “defund the police”. Let’s go back to talking about equality and fairness.
Hm, that Harris video about "equity" just sounds to me like "means-tested benefits". Right up until that last sentence, anyway. (Then suddenly it sounds like "communism that actually works―somehow!")
Good call on the P.S. Dems need to embrace patriotism and a love for their common citizen, because there is an opening there with the GOP hyperfocused on individualism and "me, me, me."
I don’t think there’s much of an opening while Elon owns Twitter and we still let foreigners on Facebook/tiktok.
I like #10. I think the Harris campaign, especially at the DNC, did a good job of that. But I could see the party base rejecting that now, especially with the election outcome. When you think a majority of the voters have lost it, it makes being patriotic that much harder.
Jeff Jackson is great. My partner hates reading political things, but somehow accidentally got on Jeff Jackson’s email list, and actually reads them all, because he’s such a good communicator (at least, to gay scientists living in California - I assume he can talk to others as well). I think he was actually my brother’s congressperson before gerrymandering led him to run for AG. Glad he won!
You should see his Instragram and TikTok. Love that guy.
Love all of this including the patriotism addendum but "America First" still gives me pause owing to its history. When they started using it after the 2016 election I could hardly believe it.
Do any of the people you work with actually hear democrats actually say anything like "hurricanes especially affected queer people and minorities harder?"
I'm delightfully offline, which I suspect is where most persuadable voters are (if not offline literally, then in terms of politics—a lot of people hate political talk!). I never hear this kind of thing. I don't hear it from my leftist friends, I don't hear it at work (and I work in a field that votes something like 90+% D). I just don't hear it. Which makes me think that just like the dreaded leftist Democrat listens too much to the very online, so do the enlightened center leftists. According to a republican pollster Ezra Klein interviewed, the stickiest image of the election cycle was Trump at McDonalds. Persuadable voters aren't persuaded by weird niche takes (which the right has more of). They're persuaded by political theater executed well for the intended audience.
Yes. Usually through Fox News or Facebook posts. But if you read the comments above, even the leftist, leaning people on this board, agree that it happens and have multiple antidotes about it in government life.
He’s the problem though — Dems don’t actually say stuff like this. Aspiring adjunct professors say things like this and it gets tagged as a Dem belief.
I think Matt understands this, but in all of this discussion of "what type of campaign should Kamala have run" and "what positions should Dems take," I think commentators lose sight of credibility issues.
The Democrats have become inextricably intertwined with the main cultural and epistemic institutions: the "mainstream" (i.e., mostly reliable) media, academia, entertainment, and even corporations to some extent. The ideological trends among this group affect the Democrats' politics and vice-versa. It's not really possible for the Democrats to separate themselves from this, since they rely (mostly for good reason) on the support of technocrat-friendly institutions. All of these institutions are informally part of the coordinating mechanism via which the Democratic party makes decisions, as described in Matt's post about the "hollow parties."
So when people say Democrats need to run on "economic populism," that's just not going to work. How can Democrats be populist? They're part of the establishment! They're the elites who are separate from most of society! Who are they going to rail against? Themselves? (I also find it hilarious that Democrats' best idea to earn popularity right now is "be more like Argentina.")
But the same applies to "moderation." The reason that Kamala running to the center didn't work is that there's no way that this blob of institutions can credibly be seen as moderate. No one believes it. It's obvious that a large part of the staff in any Democratic administration, even a "moderate" one, will be people who think way more about the welfare of immigrants who exploit asylum loopholes rather than American citizens (to give an example).
Democrats are in the unfortunate position of being the elite technocrats. They need to actually succeed at that to earn people's trust and convince them that they can govern effectively. Their policies need to help people in straightforward and obvious ways. I don't think anything else will work.
Changing a party's brand is hard. The Republicans did it, but only because Trump came out of nowhere and publicly humiliated all of them. He insulted all of the mainstream Republicans and then forced them to bend the knee. Absent such a revolution in the Democratic party, a re-brand is going to be extremely difficult.
<<Democrats are in the unfortunate position of being the elite technocrats>>
Totally agree with this, but also important to note that at least on the national level, I think part of this comes from being the incumbent party. Republicans have a very slim mandate from the voters, but they're going to almost definitely exceed that mandate and piss people off. Democrats need to wait and see and then leverage being the opposition to help build more inroads with less "elite" sects of American society.
I think it's also because the Republican elite has been so thoroughly discredited that when they turned anti-Trump, they had no way to actually pull wavering Republican voters along with them. Then you end up with Democrats being blamed for job losses to China that happened under Bush.
Credibility is so important. One defense I keep reading of her campaign is: “But she DID run to the center. She DIDN’T run on identity politics” both of which were true, but the party, as well as she personally had history that didn’t make those turns credible. This is why you Sister Souljah. Not to be mean- but your shift won’t look real unless you have paid a price for it. The campaign was willing to run to the center but they weren’t actually willing to pay any kind of price within their coalition. And sure, that would have been a gamble. But not doing everything you could to get that credibility was ALSO a gamble, which they lost.
In a lot of ways Harris played a bad hand reasonably well, but she needed to come up with something better than pretend that 2020 never happened.
If she had just said... "I quite frankly I was naïve. While serving in the administration, my views changed as I learned more"
I think she should have issued an apology over the boarder. The EOs this summer made it clear they could have stopped the boarder crossings much early and they just didn't want to.
In some ways this proof problem hurt them the most. Their own success demonstrated it was all along fixable if they weren't held captive by The Groups.
And that 60 Minutes interview would have been the perfect time and place to address it head on. She could have so easily said "We - or better lay the blame on Biden directly - made a mistake and it took to long to fix and we're sorry for how constrained many blue state budgets became in the process and my policies will carry forward this new approach".
I would hope so, but I think it's rare for politicians to do that, and probably for a reason. They can be accused of "flip-flopping," opponents can still bring up the old things in attack ads, and voters seem not to like "I changed my mind," even when changing your mind is wiser.
Plenty of pols get away with it. The key is to be genuine and forceful about it. Convince people you actually believe in the new thing.
Which is why it helps to actually believe in the new thing. This whole analysis does not, in fact, have easy answers.
Bingo. It's risky, but that's not a bad thing. It raises your ceiling to take a risk, but it potentially lowers your floor if it goes badly. So you come out and say you've learned, you're geniune about it, and then when Trump criticizes you for having been wrong you tell him to grow up and stop pretending like anyone is perfect (and then pivot to pointing out how he used to claim abortion was good and he supported the war in Iraq, and ask if he thinks his supporters think his flip-flops on those issues are evidence of him being an idiot).
Harris' campaign's biggest problem was that they were so worried about the floor dropping that she never did anything risky that would have meaningfully raised her ceiling.
If people feel they know you overall, they’ll overlook a lot of this and sometimes even welcome it. Yet another reason to go on every podcast, talk to any American. If people don’t like you, you’ll find something else to do. It’s a natural process of refinery for the rest of us.
I think her turn to the left in 2020 was less sincere than her turn to the center.
“My values haven’t changed” was not the way to sell it.
Its rare, but they had to have some sort of internal polling that should of told them the way they were addressing the issue was non-convincing.
The whole issue with Kamala was that she was "safe"... it would of been refreshing to have seen her be less safe. i.e. Joe Rogan interview would of been perfect place to do it.
I think their theory was that Trump represented "Chaos" and Harris represented "Safety" and a rational electorate would of course prefer the latter.
With a different electorate, that would have been a smart strategy.
I'd have been happy with "I was a knuckle-head."
My explanation for not doing that is the theory that getting out the the “base” wins elections. Far lefty voters who are more in line with 2020 Harris, so the theory goes, are much more valuable than the median voter, so pissing off the lefty base doesn’t work. I think this election proves that theory to be an error.
The thing is that 2024 Harris' campaign messages and endorsements are much more centrist / conservative than 2020 Harris, and 2024 Harris lost. The left, predictably, are saying that she lost *because* she ran to the center and got endorsements from anti-Trump Republicans and Trump insiders who feared him. Should have decisively ditched Israel, said no person is illegal, promised Medicare For All, etc.
It would also have lost her my vote, and I'm a Trump-fearing liberal, so I think I'm not alone in that.
That scale of flip-flopping is going to come with a political cost. Had Harris stuck to her 2020 positions, which are only popular with a small slice of the D coalition, I think she would have lost by more.
My normal response in these situations is "It was drunk. We were dark. I have no regrets." Probably want to pretty something like that up a touch.
Exactly this. If you have a "non centrist" track record, then this does not go away just because you start talking about other issues, and stay silent about the controversial ones. To gain credibility, you have to do something that your former allies will get upset about. Imagine Greg Abbott running for president and simply staying silent on reproductive rights. No centrist potential voter who is concerned about abortion is going to feel reassured by that.
This is my biggest critique with the Pod Save America crew. They keep yelling -- and I mean yelling - that Harris "tacked to the center" and "she ran as a centrist". And it's so fucking stupid. Centrists don't need to "tack". Her "tack" wasn't at all believable. They keep acting like Harris didn't run in the 2020 primary.
“She didn’t say crazy stuff for a whole 3 months! Why didn’t they buy it??”
"I was trying to find a lane in the 2020 primary by saying nutty things to cater to certain demographics" is politically believable, unsympathetic to normie voters, and probably (IMHO) ultimately true for Kamala Harris.
Alas.
Unfortunately for her, this video from 2017 really anchors her views to pre-primary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnppSFggY80
I thought the unbelievable thing was her tack to the left in 2020 and that running as a centrist was a return to form
Matt Y. frequently credits Trump with "moderating" on welfare state issues like healthcare and social security even though his admin tried very hard to repeal Obamacare and social security. If we assume that voters are dumb enough to think Trump isn't going after the welfare state because he doesn't talk about it during the election, why aren't they dumb enough to think that Kamala wants to close the asylum loophole and curb inflation?
It also cuts against the main point of popularism, that you must tack to the center in order win elections and pass liberal policies. If voters really do have long memories of campaign promises and punish politicians for hoodwinking them, then you're not going to be able to govern like a liberal. Triangulation can lead to short term gains, but it makes you an empty shell that believes in nothing in the long run.
Yes. It’s remarkable that Democrats don’t understand costly signaling. Almost everyone (even Matt) seems to believe in a theory of cheap talk in which Democrats can convince people they hold certain opinions just by pandering.
It’s part of a larger theme with left-leaning types. They mistake average Americans’ lack of sophistication (e.g. inability to understand statistics) with gullibility.
I think we have evidence of actual gullibility, though, when people are still voting for Trump because he's "real" or "cares about the working class" or "only he gives men a voice." Or, more kitchen-table, that bringing back Trump will bring back 2018 prices, despite the improbability of deflation in general, and despite Trump's policies being very inflationary (giant deficits, across-the-board tariffs, deporting low-paid workers, firing competent government employees etc). We've seen from experience that he's economically still a Republican and has policies that don't benefit the working class; that in temperament he hardly seems to care for anyone; and that he has an alarming willingness to break laws and exceed his power, including an actual history of refusing to leave office peacefully after losing an election. (Mature democracies don't normally stop being democracies, but they also don't normally elect leaders who have already attempted a coup, have a history of only accepting elections when they win, and talk openly about using the powers of the state to punish their critics. We are in uncharted waters here.)
And yet somehow, he won the popular vote and made gains among the less educated and various "people of color" demographics.
It feels like style over substance. Being vulgar and unfiltered is "real" even if most of what you say is false. Having what elites call poor taste makes you a man of the people, even if you were born into vast wealth and have stiffed all the people you ever interacted with, and your policy proposals are consistently bad for the working class. You can falsely claim to have won every election you were in, when the record clearly shows otherwise, and millions of people will believe you. Bring a mob to the legislature, and your supporters will say it's not a big deal, and also completely justified.
Then again, Trump's margins were not huge, despite the huge headwinds for incumbents around the world, and he did lose in 2020, so maybe even Trump pays some price.
It also seems like all the most gullible voters are on his side already. I've encountered the claim that this was a long-term Republican strategy, to court the less educated, followers of "charismatic" religions, people with "crank" tendencies, etc., allegedly precisely because these people can easily be fooled, and you don't need to give them any sort of material benefits to keep them on your side. There's also an old realignment on race (around the 1960s), where the Democrats proudly became the party of the Civil Rights Act, while the Republicans attracted its opponents without being explicitly racist -- this may also be a realignment of gullible voters into the R camp: "give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you" ( https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lbj-convince-the-lowest-white-man/ )
It may be that voters are gullible, but in ways that can only be exploited by the wrong people.
"bringing back Trump will bring back 2018 prices"
But I never hear the voters hoping that Trump will bring back 2018 income.
(either nominal or real)
It's an inconvenient truth that most American voters are dumb. With that being said, it's up to the Democrats to craft a message and identity that resonates with the electorate that they have, which they clearly have been unable to do.
I agree with what a lot of what the likes of MY and Josh Barro say we need to go strategically, but there does seem to be careful eliding of the fact that Trump is simply held to a lower standard across the board of any major politician since Huey Long. Being honest about this fact and being strategically-minded seem to be at odds. It was a shibboleth among elites well before 2015 that Trump was a con artist, which is why only one major bank would do business with him anymore. A lot of his schtick since the 1990s has been conning middle class people out of their money since he was the billionaire they knew as a celebrity (similar to how NFTs worked).
It may frankly be healthier for strategists to level with the Democratic base that we just need to build thicker skin for dealing with this BS that Trump gets away with. Otherwise, a lot of readers are going to come away with takes like "this guy says Harris was condescending, but look at Trump" since Trump is arguably the most condescending candidate ever. The way he is condescending just doesn't have a lot of salience to enough people compared to liberal elites.
Trump for all his flaws does sound like he is sincerely speaking to and for the middle and lower middle class. When the center-left tries to do this (see: Justin Trudeau's administration) they often sound like a bunch of communications consultants. Sure the words "middle class" get uttered a lot but their tone and content are designed to keep them out of the papers, not in the hearts of voters.
Great comment. During the Norah O'Donnell interview, Norah was trying to get Harris to say she supported restrictions on late term abortions - something that polls well with normies so long as there are health exceptions - but Harris wouldn't bite at all. She couldn't even say she supported ANY restrictions on abortion because...why? It might offend her base?
For some reason Trump gets a pass from his supporters when he moderates, but Dem activists haven't done so. Maybe they would from a more charismatic leader (Obama) or movement leader (Bernie) that they trust to deliver for them?
There were so many of these terrible interview moments where she failed to answer very simple questions. I don't get why so many on the left are falling over themselves to praise her campaign.
the campaign mostly focused on the things she is good at (rallies, speeches, debate) and deemphasized the things she was bad at.
this seems smart.
if you want to complain about a mistake: they apparently considered challenging trump to a second debate during the first one, but in the end decided not to do it! looks bad in retrospect.
Conservative activists are frankly more practical and disciplined than progressive ones.
Good point. Especially when you compare this with Trump who was willing to explicitly disavow a national abortion ban. Trump can be extreme in effect which can lead some people to miss the ways in which he forcefully manages parts of the Republican coalition by strongly moderating on policy.
he wasn't willing to do it during the debate, though. bridge too far
she didn't want to get into a hypothetical negotiation on this now, because the actual negotiations would depend on the makeup of congress, on their positions, etc?
campaigning with cheney seems like a pretty explicit costly signal. you can tell by how many on the left are still actively yelling about it.
Sure, but I keep coming back to Matt’s point that 90% of her loss was tied to overall anti-incumbent sentiment (and I’d add another 5% is probably due to anti-Biden-specifically sentiment). If we’re being honest there probably isn’t anything Harris could have done differently to change the outcome.
If that’s true, why did she bother running? It was a hurdle, but let’s Kamala off the hook a bit too much IMO
Part of me thinks the reason it took Biden so long to drop out after the debate is because Kamala didn't actually want to run in 2024.
It is contradicted by virtually all reporting we have on what was going on with biden, his family and his aides, and what they have said since...
but yeah, it did look like no democrats wanted to run this cycle.
I’m not sure it was knowable at the time how much that sentiment would weigh her down.
Pretty shitty to go around asking for small dollar donations if you don't think you're gonna win.
i think "nobody knows anything" was the genuine assessment by pretty much everyone before the election. let's not try to rewrite history here.
In support of your point is Biden's success in 2020--he actually could credibly run as a centrist who rejects identity politics / wokeness, and he won.
(For those who doubt he had credibility on this, remember that Biden's entire political brand since becoming VP has been "well-meaning old white guy who sometimes says politically incorrect things". This came to a point in the 2008 primaries when Biden called Obama "articulate" in a debate and caused a bit of a furor--Obama quite brilliantly used it as an opportunity to demonstrate forbearance to skeptical white voters and selected Biden as his VP to racially balance the ticket and signal that non-politically-correct whites like Uncle Joe were welcome.)
(Ironically, Biden would go on to select Harris as his VP for similar reasons. She pilloried him on his record on forced bussing with her "I was that girl on the bus" attack in a primary debate, and so he selected her as VP to neutralize that line of attack and shore up support on the left. Of course, it turns out he never had to worry about his left since he was running against Trump, so this was a strategic error.)
It's also not credible when you just do that.During the election season and don't actually govern like that
Bottom line is the rain dances of the elite have to get results. If they don't, and especially if they come off as some kind of kayfabe the participants don't actually believe in we get... well we get this.
I think that the most compelling answer on this is the Get Shit Done / Fix the Damn Roads model. Part of what seems to make Shapiro,/Whitmer/Buttigieg credible is repeating a very simple formula 1. this is the concrete and specific thing we need to do, 2. doing that thing, and 3. telling everyone you did it.
Most of the systems/identity talk feels empty and pointless when compared to that style of presentation. I don't know that either Biden in this cycle or Harris could have pulled it off, but the housing issue and manufacturing incentives felt as close as Democrats came to that formula. I'm tempted to add banning non-compete agreements to the list, but I'm not sure whether the issue (or any regulation / ban) has legs over the long term - it seems like parties are not rewarded after the fact for prohibiting (the bad thing).
I think you’ve nailed it here. We are the elites that much of the working and middle class (WMC) has come to dislike. And I think Matt and so many others are stuck on largely addressing form over substance, the shadows on the wall rather than the underlying structural issues.
What changed most significantly for the WMC was when elites began to restructure economic policy by undermining and then repealing the Glass-Steagall Act and related restrictions on commercial and investment banking. What this did was to undermine essential guardrails in financial profiteering of the sorts that had caused the Great Depression. The WMC had no idea about all of this, of course, or that the Democrats eventually signed-on to it. It certainly contributed mightily to the bipartisan consensus that developed around neoliberal globalization that saw WMC jobs and communities undermined. And it was the underlying cause of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, where as a last straw, many millions of WMC people/families lost their final financial lifelines: the equity in their homes. As the banks got bailed-out but not them, the final nail was driven into the coffin of WMC faith in government by either party.
Trump has crushed the Republican Party and rebuilt it in his image and now has badly beaten the Democratic Party. And yes, a lot of the focus has been on cultural issues and immigration and wokeness and other such phenomena because the WMC doesn’t know what hit it. And the Democratic Party has never ever tried to explain it to them. So, when Trump de-escalated into the 2016 race his “plague on both their houses” (starting with the Republicans) resonated with the WMC. And, since the WMC doesn’t know what has really hit them, he has been able to demagogue his way into power since 2016 (we shouldn’t kid ourselves that he hasn’t been the main political force in American since then) by blaming the libs and the immigrants, and the woke, and the deep state — pretty much a complete snow job covering-up — no actually burying — the real causes completely.
What we Dems need to do to reclaim the initiative and maybe eventually the trust and confidence of the WMC is both tell the real story about the last many decades, fess-up to our negligence on their behalf, and most importantly undertake the project of restructuring America’s financial guardrails and incentives such that they cease to prioritize elite, shareholder enrichment (trickle-down economics) and get back to prioritizing something closer to “the common good,” which is what FDR accomplished after the Great Depression.
“If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.” ― Franklin D. Roosevelt
"[Trump] now has badly beaten the Democratic Party"
No he hasn't. It was a stinging defeat, especially because of who it put in power, but it was a small defeat. Trust me, I was around in 1984 and voted for the first time in 1972. Now *that's* how you badly defeat the Democrats.
Not everyone shares your deep envy of people that get rich on Wall Street.
You say envy I say justifiable moral outrage at money earned by destroying functional businesses and hurting America.
My experience has been different. Every factory I closed in the early to mid-2000s and moved to Mexico was downstream from NAFTA. Nothing to do with Glass-Steagall. All these factories were part of large multi-national conglomerates. Noting to do with private equity / financial profiteering at all.
FDR solved the problem of being elite but still retaining the support of the working class. Seems like genuine empathy for others, clear communication of plain-language ideas, and positioning himself as a truth-speaking class traitor worked so well that the constitution was changed to add term limits!
I like the idea that Trump humiliating mainstream Republicans helped to rebrand the party.
However, Mike Johnson, a hard core Christian who wants to tell people what to do, is still Speaker. And Trump still wants to cut taxes for the rich and doesn't care about unions. He's not populist, so why do people believe it?
Yes, inflation and general anti-incumbent sentiment explains the election. But something even simpler does too: the candidate most perceived to be an outsider wins. Since Bush Sr, the only time the insider won was 2020, and it’s plausible that absent the pandemic, Trump would have been reelected.
Outsiders can have a staff of insiders and still be seen as an outsider. Obama pulled it off, but the best example is Bush Jr. He was the consummate insider who filled his team with institutional stalwarts who mostly pursued status quo right policies (education being the one, strategically chosen exception). But because he and his campaign brilliantly convinced everybody that he was a regular guy who cleared wood on his ranch in Texas, the populace accepted him as an outsider — or at least more of one than Gore or Kerry.
I am still having trouble wrapping my head around this "elite" branding. The GOP has far more billionaire, media, and big industry support that Democrats do and their policy is way more focused in serving those narrow elite interests than anything Dems do. Being of some institutions doesn't just blanket sign away your right to criticize any institutions at all and many Dems want big institutional reforms. The elite vs populist distinction is pure branding at this point, or at least it feels like it is way more branding than reality.
I dont think a rebrand will be as hard as you think, and I don't think the ability to govern effectively matters in elections. If it did, Trump would not have won.
What do we want? Moderation! When do we want it? In the near future!
One thing you changed from your twitter post was you swapped "We are all equal in the eyes of God but..." for "All people have equal moral worth" and I wonder if it would actually be good for the Democratic party to get back to some explicitly theistic language in the platform and the candidates. I saw a chart that divided up the Latino vote based on a number of different factors and the most significant indicator was whether the individual was religious vs. agnostic/atheistic. This pattern held across other minorities. Particularly for Latinos though, there is a very significant cohort that is Evangelical (especially pentecostal)/Protestant/Catholic but also fairly recent converts to the Republican party. Democrats simply won't lose atheists to the Republicans because they speak in more theistic terms. Atheists will still vote Democrat and literally always will. BUT Democrats could continue to lose Latinos to a Republican party that speaks there language when it comes to religion.
I agree with that I just thought it was a little phony coming from me
I think you need a tenth principle, explicitly address patriotism and American 1st. I see its included in other principles, but perception of patriotism is very important.
I think combining any two and _reducing_ it to eight is better. You can call it The Eight Fold Path.
Or call it the Octagon and get all the UFC bros
Fusing the religious right with Joe Rogan acolytes is the secret sauce of current Republican electoral success. I endorse the Octagon.
I really do hope that as part of that "Don't surrender to China (and Russia)" are things that people care about. I get the instinct not to be engaged in pointless wars, but literally retreating to our shores seems like a very bad and hopefully unpopular move.
In a way, all wars are pointless. But the problem is that if an enemy wants to engage in a pointless war with you, you have generally two options:
1) let them win, which is also kind of pointless
2) fight back, kick their ass, and teach them not to engage in pointless warfare (i.e. teach the FAFO lesson)
In theory, there is a third option that involves diplomacy, but in practice, diplomacy only really works as long as option 2) is on the table, otherwise the other side just rolls over you.
FWIW, for somebody it doesn't feel phony from, I thought Raphael Warnock had one of the best speeches at the DNC.
Some combination of Warnock/Kelly/Shapiro/Whitmer would be an interesting ticket. Warnock may be the single most likable guy right now for the Democrats.
Funny thing is that the previous knock on Warnock was some anti-Israel stuff he said, and the knock on Shapiro is "too pro-Israel." Tada!
Oh yeah also, Pennsylvania and Georgia are basically tied for the median state now.
I can get behind the actual manifesto. However, if the manifesto mentioned belief in god, I would not endorse it. I would then worry about having to pay private school tuition to avoid the humiliation of my son being subjected to school prayer.
I have been curious that if SCOTUS opens the door on this, whether we'll see movements for school choice beyond the traditional public school system emerge among different demographics...
Rural areas and small cities hate school choice because it doesn't take many students leaving for private schools to wreck their funding formula and put the whole institution at risk. In WI its been rural Republicans who have most successfully fought off some of the crazier voucher proposals.
Yep, same in Idaho.
Give me a voucher, fast!
The Democrats lost to Trump. I don’t think religion was the issue here guys.
But would you vote Republican instead?
No. When the Democrat doesn’t inspire me, I write in myself or “Free Palestine.”. I did not do this with Harris, because Trump is scary.
Just as an FYI, we need to spend half an hour every election night searching by hand for every ballot that includes a write-in. Every election--EVERY election--some dearly beloved voter fills the write-in bubble and writes "no one" for every office. Thanks. Or Mickey Mouse (there's always a mickey). Probably no one will ever see that ballot again except for that election official (in my ward, more often than not a volunteer) who has not had dinner yet.
Anyway, the effect of your "free Palestine" may be muted and unproductive.
I processed an absentee ballot with a write in back in 2020, and I asked the guy in charge what we should do with it. He just sighed and said to feed it into the machine and they’d fish it out later.
better than voting for some schmuck for school board who never called me or even sent me a mailer
School choice solves that problem for both sides
"We are all equal in the eyes of Hashem..."
I prefer the new phrasing. But I'm an atheist in the sense most religious people use the term.
As a Christian all the Christian hating from the left really gets to me. I have become more religious as I get older because sometimes things feel so not random or coincidental.
I am agnostic, but I have been a church goer sporadically throughout my life, and I honestly have to say that Christians are the most generous and good people I have ever met.
If there is a need of relief in some foreign county, its Christians who are there with or without support (Haiti).
If I read about a couple who adopts children in need, I automatically assume they are church goers.
If you are feeling alone, just show up to any Church on Sunday and you will inevitably be made to feel welcomed.
I’m nominally Lutheran but mostly agnostic, my wife attends regularly, me less so. I wouldn’t not say any church - at least based on what I’ve seen among friends and family, there are schisms happening in many congregations with some becoming more politically right wing and abandoning what I think are important tenets of the faith.
But generally I agree, Christians today get a bad rap, especially from lefty critics who overlook the bad aspects of other religions like Islam, or elevate “indigenous knowledge” to be on par with science.
That is lovely and I really value your testimony.
However, I do read Tim Alberta and David French and realize that the full story is rather more complicated.
When/if I attend church, it tends to be moderate Methodist congregations. So maybe not a complete picture.
Ya it has melted a fair number of church-going brains. Has been sad for me too.
The "Christian nationalism" talking point is incredibly unhelpful to Democrats.
First, it's an compound abstract noun from academia.
Second, it's usually used to describe all religious conservatism (e.g. opposition to abortion) in a way that's both imprecise/wrong and counterproductive. We need to be attracting e.g. religious Catholics, not pushing them out of the tent by lumping them together with the MAGA-brained nondenominational fringe.
Third, it directionally makes Democrats sound anti-Christian. Democrats should counter their bad instincts and sound not just neutral-Christian, but pro-Christian. If they can't, they should avoid the subject (which also makes them sound weird, but is better).
I agree with your points 2 and 3. However:
"First, it's an compound abstract noun from academia."
What do you mean by "abstract"? There is a movement that is identifiably Christian nationalist. There is a 2022 book literally called "The Case for Christian Nationalism" by Stephen Wolfe (incidentally, Catholic integralists, who seek an American state explicitly subordinated to the Vatican, also believe that Christian nationalism exists and they have a dim view of it, precisely for the "nationalism" part of the term).
I agree that it's a much smaller movement than conservative Christianity writ large, and that it's not useful as an epithet in political contexts for the reasons you mention, but it is absolutely a thing that exists and the term is potentially meaningful.
amen to all this.
As a former Christian, all the "Christians" I see in the media and in the news don't believe in one single thing I learned about Christianity as a child and are actively working to make my life worse.
OK not all of them. But most of them, and the ones proudly proclaiming they are Christian are usually the worst.
Because they are pagans.
I'm an atheist and all the Christian hating from the left really gets to me.
As I always say, there's a huge difference between an atheist (which I am) and an antitheist (which I very strongly am *not*)
You do understand that it is fully reciprocated. Neither side has clean hands.
Of course, but the Republican instinct is at least directionally helpful from an electoral perspective, atheists are down there with Mormons for the least popular religious group in America. Whereas many Democrats need to correct against their natural instinct.
There's some potential here but it still needs to be weighed alongside a society that's steadily declining in religiosity, so that any message here should still be relatable to most.
Isn't "relatable to most" part of the Democrat's problem these past few years though. The sense that everything is focus grouped and these overly broad and sterile categories like BIPOC, and Latinx (which is, of course, an attempt to make the Latino category more inclusive), and even the term humankind. The Democrats 2028 – Relatable to Most.
BIPOC was invented to exclude Asians from discussions on race and discrimination. I am convinced of that.
At the very least, it always gave the whiff of Oppression Olympics at play.
The fact that during Covid there were people on the left minimizing and dismissing the pattern of assaults on Asian women by black homeless men on the NYC subway shows how nutty things were.
Violent homeless men push multiple Asian women in front of oncoming trains! Many people were slugged. And these people who claim moral authority told us that it wasn’t racist and that we couldn’t feel outrage.
(My wife is Asian and was living in NYC when this was all happening.)
Yeah it was pretty wild to see how quickly the "Stop Asian Hate" campaign got sidelined once people realized who was doing the Asian hate crimes.
Or the way the attacks were recognized to have occurred but the details were swept under the rug in order to further the narrative of white supremacy and racism by implying the perpetrators were MAGA influenced white men.
Exclude may be too strong, but it was definitely intended to create a hierarchy where Asian and Latino concerns were second-tier. At one point there was a debate over whether BIPOC should be revised to BIMPOC to reflect that Muslim POCs also deserved to be elevated above garden-variety POCs and put at the same level as "Black" and "Indigenous".
Right, and I see the reasons not to use jargon like BIPOC, but it is fundamentally true that B and I faced historical discrimination going back centuries that other POC groups did not. And that when you look at various measures of wellbeing, B and I fare much worse than other POC. I don’t see anything wrong with acknowledging that.
If you just went around saying we need racial justice for black people, I don't think Asians or Latinos would be offended by that. That's basically how it was in say the 1980s or 1990s - when you talked about racial justice, you were talking about black people and that was fine. When you start spelling out the hierarchy of grievances, then it's true that you're just systematizing a preexisting belief system, but it's also a personal expression of disrespect.
Yeah but something needed to be added to "BI" otherwise it would be confusing and probably accelerate the racial realignment ;)
I'll keep bringing this up because it was the best data point I've heard yet on the Latino vote swing. Ezra's pod with Patrick Ruffini was awesome but this point jump out. In Ruffini's polling the Democrats have become the "welfare party". That's game over IMO. There's no coming back from that.
We came back from Reagan’s welfare queens.
Only by passing the Welfare to Work bill. It's gonna take something like that this time.
Why is it bad to be the party that cares about a safety net? I guess most Americans are fundamentally selfish, so it’s potentially bad electorally - though Democrats were also the welfare party in 2020 and it didn’t seem to cost them.
I don't think you could trace a policy more clearly back to this election loss than Biden's completely unnecessary and far too large ARP stimulus.
>Isn't "relatable to most" part of the Democrat's problem these past few years though.<
Democrats seemed plenty relatable in 2018. And in 2020. And in 2022. I'm not suggesting Democrats don't face some very major challenges. Losing all three political branches to the right make that clear. Just trying to add a bit of perspective. I like where Matt's going with this—and in high turnout elections Democrats clearly do need to perform better because they won't always be gifted with extremely favorable fundamentals.
Still...
It's true, inflation and immigration were the nails in this coffin. I don't think JC getting a shoutout in 2024 would have turned this election. But modern political parties contest in every election because they adjust and winning back even a portion of religious Latinos could make a difference in 2028.
Did the Republican Party adjust? That’s what I keep coming back to amid all these calls for a Dem reckoning - from where I stand it looks like the GOP did nothing differently from 2020 to 2024, and they won just because people got fed up with the incumbent. Feels like that is the path to a Dem win in 2026 and 2028.
I think you'rr mostly right. We are, after all, in era of negative partisanship. But perhaps that makes it all the more important to adjust... we can't afford to trade power to Trump types ever four years because people hate us.
This might be good politics, but I really would selfishly prefer that change not be made. I feel that "all people have equal moral worth", can be given an explicitly theistic justification by those who are so inclined. The hardcore evangelicals will never vote Democrat (because they *want* what the Democrats cannot provide, which is a theocracy).
"All people have equal moral worth from their creation" has the advantage of echoing Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, sounds theistic to religious people and doesn't offend this atheist.
I don’t actually agree that all people have equal moral worth. First of all, I have no idea what moral worth is. Second, I think that Barack Obama has significantly more moral worth than Donald Trump or Jeffrey Dahmer. Moral worth is an incoherent weasel phrase, much like “equal opportunity.” A person with an IQ of 80 will never have the same opportunities as someone with an IQ of 125. It’s just not possible.
I suppose we can pretend that a child molester who is in prison has the same moral worth as a hard-working, nonabusuve father, but why?
I would rather say all people should be treated with decency and leave it there.
What moral system do you tend to subscribe to? If you’re, eg, a utilitarian, then it would make sense to say that trump and Obama have equal moral worth, but we should still treat Obama better (in certain ways) to incentivize good behavior
I’m basically an emotivist. Ethical judgments are subjective. However, out shared evolutionary history creates fertile ground for inter subjective agreement.
I’m certainly not a utilitarian because I would not sacrifice my own life to save two strangers. However, I’m highly utilitarian when it comes to adjudicating disputes between strangers.
That Jeffersonian turn-of-phrase is excellent use of ambiguity. Both inspiring and you can read into it what you like.
I'd stick to the original "created equal." Even more vague, but it's a phrase people learn in school as a founding principle of our country.
To double down on the vagueness a bit, Jefferson was notoriously able to write that it was "self-evident that all men are created equal" while he and his friends personally owned slaves.
I find it interesting, but not a good campaign message. I'm a partial convert to the idea that America is deeply flawed and was even worse for most of its history, but I don't think that's a winning message to send to voters. Even among activists, or to try to convert students to activism, it's important to frame it in a way that promotes hope and motivates action -- MLK himself said that America had made bold promises of equality, that America of his time had defaulted on those promises, but he thought the country could be prevailed upon to make good on them. It's a much more motivating message than "irredeemably racist," coming from a very successful activist who lived in worse times for his people than the present. And yes, he was pretty far left -- but no, that did not mean that he had to preach doom and gloom.
Democrats -- both the mainstream incrementalists and the further-left types -- could benefit from rediscovering a sort of "aspirational patriotism" -- America can be great, it has long aspired to be great, it aspired to noble principles of liberty and equality and has genuinely made progress on them (albeit slow, unsteady, sometimes with setbacks); progress is not inevitable, but achievable with strategy, effort, and enough people contributing.
I wanted to say something slightly different rather than just quoting. In part because "all people are created equal" is so obviously "all men are created equal" but messes up the rhythm of the sentence and so sounds clunkingly woke. Rewriting enough that it merely echoes rather than quoting means the shift from men to people isn't glaringly obvious.
Right but the way Obama talked about God was not the beginnings of a theocracy. There's a lot of daylight there that Dem's shouldn't cede to the Republicans.
Fair. I'm a Canadian atheist so I'm probably not the right person to ask on the correct way to thread the needle of overt religious expression in US politics :)
Most American Christians are not Evangelicals, and even Evangelicals shouldn't be written off.
It's also just not correct to say that all Evangelicals want a theocracy--Ketanji Brown Jackson is a devout Evangelical, and there's a significant wing of Evangelicalism opposed to or simply orthogonal to the MAGAfication of the church. Saying things like that both tries to make the tent smaller and makes you sound weird (because it's wrong) to the religious. Like if you were a member of a typical community Southern Baptist church in North Carolina, how would you feel about people claiming you're a theocrat?
Southern Baptists are basically theocrats
We are all equal in the eyes of Turtle Island?
Leftist critics are insatiable. Every concession given to them results in more deluded demands. Some of the worst ideas that have burdened Democrats have come from highly educated zealots who hate the very concept of empiricism (and basic math.)
It’s weirdly liberating now that Democrats have lost, because I no longer feel the need to entertain the varieties of litmus tests the left has pushed onto my class (liberal educated urbanites.)
I just think of them as modern-day communists. There’s always been a far-left faction, born out of academia, with significant influence, that generically wants to break down power structures without any coherent vision for what replaces them. They’ve just gotten better at creating a facade of an ideology to justify their desires. It also helps that today’s flavor is home-grown versus coming from Russians, incubated in Europe, and actively promoted by our biggest enemy.
If everybody just stepped back and said, “these are the same cranks we’ve had to marginalize and ignore for 100 years,” it would be easier to stop taking them seriously.
And, like communism, there are important and valuable kernels in must of the leftist, identitarian ideology. It’s just that the cure has often been as bad or worse than the disease (at best, it improves nothing while dividing people).
In addition to "creating a facade of an ideology to justify their desires," they have deployed and maximized a tactic for derailing criticism/opposition of said ideology that consists of hundreds of variations on essentially one theme: "if you disagree, you are a racist/sexist/transphobe/fascist". This has been very effective within insular spaces where progressive culture holds sway, but it breeds quiet resentment within those spaces. And amongst the broader public the tactic itself has become a novel political asset to the GOP and a novel liability for Dems.
For every one of these theses, someone's ox is gored. (e.g. #5 is obviously the one where you say that we should back away from the trans agenda). That's not a bad thing -- setting priorities requires putting someone's priorities second, third, and later.
But as an intellectual exercise, this list would be improved by pairing it with a list in which you spell out explicitly whose ox is gored in each case. So I take it that #8 is the one where you say that public works projects -- new subway stops, for instance -- do not need to hire union labor, and that the interests of teachers' unions are going to be given less weight in running public schools.
Now, a list like would not be a manifesto. It's the opposite of what our politicians should say out loud. "Here's a list of who gets the short straw" is not a rousing vote-getter, whereas your list is intended to be a set of inspirational positive goals.
But very few of us here are working Dem politicians. We, like you, are striving for clear-eyed analysis first, for slogans later.
So in the interests of clarity, I hope that your follow-on articles will be clearer about pairing the inspirational positive list with the loser-list. "Here's who wins! The American people, the vast majority of voters, and the Democratic Party!" "Here's who loses: this group, this special interest, this minority, this entrenched power-bloc."
Actually this manifesto is a win-win-win.
To me this was the biggest hurdle for Democrat's "Defend Democracy" message. If it were true that Trump was an existential mortal threat, (not conceding he isn't, just setting the premise) than no individual policy goal should be spared in order to defeat him. The entire point is to preserve politics to fight another day. I think for a ton of voters, preserving democracy and defeating fascism all too conveniently meant supporting all the expansive plans progressives already believed in with no visual and obvious sacrifice in return. No one *acted* in their behavior like they believed Trump was a genuine threat, and voters responded accordingly.
The campaign actually kind of did run like that (with the possible exception of abortion). The problem is that it wasn’t believable to voters - fairly in my view.
Not to mention democrats repeatedly supported crazy MAGA in republican primaries
They ran against Trump probably because all the issues their activists like polled badly with the median voter they were chasing.
Defenestrate the Marxists and activists!
"Defenestrate the Marxists and activists!"
So, you're calling for the Defenestration of Progs.
Good advice in general, but my request to Matt was that he should say which of his 9 Theses involves the defenestration of which particular Progs -- unions in one thesis, trans activists in another, and so on. Make the negative list as detailed as the positive list -- or do it in the follow-on articles.
I smack myself now for not thinking of this pun…
With a pun like that, not thinking of it does you more credit.
The goring would need to happen before the defenestration. Because once you have thrown someone out the window it's harder to do the goring. Or perhaps it's their Ox that get gored and they themselves get defenestrated.
"the Defenestration of Progs"
dysphemistic treadmill has won the thread.
I can't believe I'm going to say this but I wish the Democrats had their own Jeremy Corbyn to (figuratively) throw under the bus. It's been many years since I read about Sanders vs. Corbyn so I don't remember whose proposed policies are actually worse (I think Bernie) but Corbyn is certainly far worse of a person and had a huge amount of power. If Warren had explicitly run for president this year instead of subtly taking over the Biden administration it would make for a much neater story.
Corbyn is, at least in his underlying ideals, infinitely more left-wing than Warren, there is no comparison. Warren actually comes from a market liberal tradition originally, and a lot of her ideas are about improving markets so they function like they are meant to in textbookshttps://www.niskanencenter.org/building-a-better-warrenism/: . The others are mostly standard bigger welfare state stuff or woke. (Workers on boards admittedly is a bit more radical and genuinely socialist.) Corbyn is a genuinely anti-capitalist socialist, even if he recognized that he couldn't actually propose anything like abolishing capitalism and win. I don't necessarily think Corbyn as UK PM would have been that different from Warren as US president in practice, given the constraints he would have operated under. But his vision of how things *should* be is very different. That's why it was such a shock to most Labour MPs when he became leader.
I think maybe it is hard to see from outside that the UK, despite it's long history of centre-right moderates actually holding power, and lack of genuinely *revolutionary* sentiment, actually has a pretty strong socialist tradition historically. It was permanently defeated by Thatcherism in my view, but, roughly speaking, it is why we have an entirely socialist healthcare system. UK unions were once very strong: they effectively brought down a Tory government in the 70s and exercised real influence within the Labour party. Even today, a significant minority of the British electorate, maybe 20% are genuine socialists in a way that very few people in the US are. Though it's only in 1945-51 that the genuinely socialist faction of Labour actually ran the country and not just the Labour party. (The best PM we ever had in the minds of many historians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom#Academic_opinion)
Starmer's campaign was run quite savvily (particularly in targeting voters in swing districts rather than pilling them up in solidly red-in-the-UK-sense cities). But he also benefitted hugely from a collapse of the Tories and a massive split on the right (which oddly happened as the Tories also moved RIGHT, and so also bled votes to the centrist Lib Dems). The result of this was that Starmer won a majority of 174 and 411 seats on only 1.6% more of the overall national vote than Corbyn's Labour won at the disastrous 2019 General Election*, where Labour got 202 seats and the Tories won a majority of 80. In 2017, Corbyn-led Labour actually won 6.3% MORE of the overall national vote than Starmer got in 2024.
Starmer was running against an unpopular party going for its 5th election win in 14 years, who had literally had to fire a PM within 50 days of taking office for immediately crashing the economy with bad budgetary policies, AND against a backdrop of punishing inflation, and he only out-performed a genuinely far-left massively unpopular leader who was also hamstrung by a Brexit policy nobody liked by 1.6% . So it's arguable the question about the Starmer campaign is "what went wrong", despite their massive majority.
*In fairness to Starmer, to some degree this was because the Lab vote share was artificially lowered by far-left voters abandoning Labour for the Greens in the knowledge that Labour were 100% guaranteed to win anyway, when they might have stuck with Labour in a close election.
In retrospect, none of those 'big left wing comebacks' survived the person who did them and their right-wing policies generally made their countries worse for it.
By that standard, nothing ever survives in a democracy.
Clinton and Blair were more than fine. Iraq was Blair’s Waterloo.
I was young and foolish then but man have I not forgiven Blair for that (and his wider embrace of Bush). I found out after that whole episode that there was a side to him that I hadn't been aware of (e.g. the very religious one), but I still have cognitive dissonance around the whole thing.
Tony Blair won three general elections, including two stupendous landslides, for a party that's traditionally the minority in UK. His wins broke up 50 straight years of Tory governance (Thatcher to Sunak). I'll take that kind of "temporary victory" (though he can keep Iraq).
If Gore/Clinton had narrowly won instead of losing we would instead be talking about Democrats putting up Reagan-level 3-term performances every time they do this!
Regarding the principles: Bravo!
Matt writes: "Being a Democrat should mean caring more than Republicans about the lives of poor people, about equal rights and non-discrimination, about restraining big business in matters related to pollution and fraudulent practices, and about protecting social insurance for the elderly and disabled."
I suspect this mission statement is what is *actually* controversial, even though the listed principles will generate more discussion. It doesn't center the three things that I believe have come to define being a Democrat over the past 15 years: climate change, racial diversity and economic inequality.
All are worthy topics to be weighed against other competing priorities. But, in my view, they don't rise to the level of foundational, party-defining mission that Matt wrote out above.
My only suggestion to his Mission statement would be to end with "...and about providing social insurance for children, the elderly and the disabled."
Replace "protect" with "provide" and add children to the list.
I think the positive ROI investment threshold for children is probably infinity. I don't get why one of the parties doesn't go all in on children.
A significant reason is that children don't vote.
And that's the difference between a politician and a leader.
But parents vote with their children’s interests in mind, don’t they?
Sure, but it's just one of several things they care about, right? It's not like parents are single issue voters on this topic. Whereas if politicians could directly buy off children's votes by "increasing their allowances", so to speak, or by reducing their homework, then they might very well do so.
Wait, what? His first three points are economic inequality (“the lives of poor people”), racial diversity (“equal rights and non-discrimination”), and climate change (“restraining big business in matters related to pollution”). His only divergence from this is the addition of “fraudulent practices” and “protecting social insurance for the elderly and disabled”.
I actually think John is right though. Each of these subtly but importantly alters the framing.
Just to pick one example: "Improving the lives of poor people" implies focusing on lifting 1 group up, while "economic inequality" can be reduced by lifting 1 group up or bringing 1 down. There's certainly been a lot of narrative focus on the latter vs. the former, even if the policy story is more mixed.
I think the same applies to the other two points.
I'd prefer 'improving the lives of working people'
Same.
Thank you!
I think becoming the YIMBY party and proponents of American empire are better paths for Democrats.
Build our Future and wave the flag in all those Commies faces!
How does it not center economic inequality? It specifically talks about helping poor people.
But it does not say that the rich are too rich.
You can think about inequality between the poor and the middle, or inequality between the middle and the rich. If you fund your welfare state with broad based minimally distorting taxation, that’s perfectly compatible with also having a very rich upper class.
The principles are explicitly pro-growth. To the extent you believe there’s a tradeoff* between growth and reducing top end inequality, the principles actually lead to the conclusion that you should abandon the old Occupy 99% vs. 1% issue.
*Matt's position on this tradeoff is nuanced, you can read more in this old post on optimal tax policy:
https://www.slowboring.com/p/a-totally-off-the-news-post-about
Democrats need to start by having authentic politicians. The biggest pitfall of popularism is the candidate is forced to take positions they might not personally believe in because the positions are popular according to polling. The public can read right through this. You could tell Kamala was passionate about abortion, but it was really difficult to figure out what else she truly believed in.
I've wondered if there's potential for politicians to support a policy without personally believing in it. Eg, Catholic Democrats like Biden who believe abortion is a sin, but nonetheless support it either due to other beliefs about the role of government or simply recognizing that this is demanded by their coalition.
Similarly, we could imagine a technocratic Democrat openly promising to support some specific protectionist policies despite thinking these are counterproductive. They would state their intent to convince voters otherwise, but promise to continue supporting protectionist policies until they've explicitly campaigned on, and won, a different platform.
Could this work with some voters, on some issues? It would certainly be authentic.
Hm I like this in principle but I I'm not sure there's a good narrative for abandoning technocrats the way there is for embracing toleration. The line "I personally believe X, but this is America and we don't let our personal beliefs get in the way of others' freedom" is baked into our bones, it's our founding myth. "I think you're stupid but democracy requires toleration of stupidity" doesn't have the same ring to it.
You can frame the freedom version in a way that sounds bad - "I think you're evil but as a liberal I tolerate evil" - but ultimately I don't think that's actually the spirit behind liberalism. We tolerate people because we think moral questions are hard and people can get them wrong in good faith and we might also be wrong. Perhaps there's an equivalent line for non-moral questions, but no technocratically inclined Democrat thinks that Joe schmo is just as likely to be right about tariffs as professional economists. So I don't think you could get around conveying the condescension - ultimately, the problem emerges from really believing the thing that people feel is condescending. (I don't know what you do with that - the fact that people feel something is condescending doesn't mean you shouldn't believe it. *shrug*)
I think it’s easier to take those positions on social issues as long as you aren’t trying to put the genie back in the bottle. The abortion one is a good example and Democrats for the longest time took this approach with gay marriage.
On economic issues, the Democrats have too many economists and not enough business people. Kamala’s economic plan was basically increase income and corporate taxes for the wealthy, a targeted tax deduction for first time homebuyers, and a some vague small business tax incentive. Democrats add all these mandates to businesses (especially in blue states) yet act indifferent to imports coming from countries where there are barely any labor, environmental, or welfare standards.
> Democrats add all these mandates to businesses (especially in blue states) yet act indifferent to imports coming from countries where there are barely any labor, environmental, or welfare standards
I disagree. This is the meat of why leftists oppose neoliberalism! But the Dem elite doesn’t car about this.
I think what you need is to be credibly authentic about holding mainstream positions, especially when those mainstream positions disagree with your party base / activists / Groups. And you need to say, believably, that you oppose the Groups on their most unpopular things.
For instance, Trump, as bad as he is, promised he would veto a national abortion ban. He's a notorious liar, but I think it's plausible, and it probably cost him something with the religious right.
"promised he would veto a national abortion ban. "
It may have cost him something, but I felt like he got a pass on it. I always felt like some PAC should run ads in redder areas about how Trump abandoned the pro-life movement in the hopes of peeling away a few votes.
The problem was that Democrats ran so hard on a pro-choice platform that Trumo had plenty of space to moderate while not risking suppport from pro-lifers.
> promised he would veto a national abortion ban.
This is one I especially don't believe though. Trump is unprincipled (not *always* a bad thing for a politician), not to mention has no more elections to win, which means he could easily go along with whatever Congress sends him. I think there are enough squishy republicans that it probably doesn't happen anyway though.
True but I feel that for a Republican, Trump is very believable when he acts like he doesn’t have a strong principled position on this issue. I seem to remember trump demurring when asked whether he had personally paid for an abortion.
Right, so absent some guiding principal, what will his real motivations be to sign or veto it? I imagine if republicans could pass it, they would figure out what to offer Trump to sign it (and it wouldn't take much).
He could veto it, but his judges make it the law of the land
"I personally support trans rights, but I do not support federal funding of prisoner sex changes."
Im increasingly convinced that among the electorate, “authenticity” is basically just “heterodoxy.” Thinking about how Theo Von told Bernie that he wished he ran on a ticket with Trump. The parties both have very unpopular parts that makes “mavericks” identifiable and root-for-able. Clearly this isn’t a perfect relationship (Sinema), but seems like there’s something there
I’ll say that number 4 is one that I’ve probably moved to Matt’s position the most the last four years. I was hardly super pro non profit by any means. I’ve been an advocate of taxing the endowments of elite colleges for awhile. And I’m increasingly under the belief that tax exemption for churches or religious institutions generally is kind of terrible.
But man o man have I been convinced that outsourcing city government functions to non profits is a huge mistake. However well intentioned non profits are they suffer from the same issue as any other outside entity brought in to do government functions; the incentive is to do what’s best for the institutions first above all else. And for lefty non-profits that means placating their staff’s idiosyncratic concerns first and providing services second. Which in practice means tons of platitudes for various groups with no actual real world impact. Josh Barro is right; there is no more stark example than the fact that Kamala was bashed repeatedly for saying she supported gender reassignment surgery for prisoners and in five years since there has been precisely zero surgeries. Platitudes signifying you “get it” while accomplishing nothing.
Call it Noah Smith’s “state capacity” or Ezra Klein’s “everything bagel” progressivism but they both get at the same thing.
So I’ll end with this. Am I completely nuts to think that if Lee Zeldin actually follows through with having EPA standards supersede state ones (like CEQA). And because of the fall of “Chevron” deference will be given to judges (probably right wing given where companies judge shop) this might have the perverse effect of ushering in our green revolution? There seem to be breakthroughs all the time in stuff like battery storage. As Matt repeatedly notes permitting reform has bipartisan support. What I’m thinking is the economics keep trending to technologies like solar and electric cars anyway. This is a half glass full take but it would be wonderfully ironic if limiting EPA power or deregulation in general had the perverse effect of helping the environment
Regarding the environment, I don't think that this is a perverse effect. I think that Texas generates more than California (or any other state) from renewables, and, of course, one of the most prominent Trump supporters gets most of his wealth from electric cars, solar panels, and batteries.
I say "perverse" in more of the "unexpected" meaning of the term .
It's hard for me to look at this chart and not conclude that removing regulations would result in more solar panel construction. https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/solar-panel-prices-have-fallen-by-around-20-every-time-global-capacity-doubled
The fact that Texas is the leader in solar generation (as you note) is to me the big data point that defanging EPA could lead to MORE investment in green tech not less. Texas is after all still the center of the America oil industry.
I don't think that it's unexpected either. Apart from what I already mentioned in my previous comment about solar in Texas and Elon Musk, you can see huge EV-related investments in Kentucky, Georgia, and South Carolina. These aren't blue states. Georgia also completed two more reactors to produce carbon-free electricity at Plant Vogtle. Actually building green things is more important than verbally supporting them.
Links:
- https://www.wkyufm.org/2023-08-17/as-worlds-largest-ev-battery-manufacturing-site-takes-shape-historic-glendale-hopes-to-retain-small-town-identity
- https://apnews.com/article/hyundai-ev-georgia-production-begins-ioniq-424cf322822f707e7070260a789ffb59
- https://apnews.com/article/scout-motors-groundbreaking-electric-suv-6062790423e1ab6f7e9d1b8f0994fed8
It’s all permitting and defanging NEPA, not the EPA.
Being anti-green is a litmus test for Republicans. I expect them to do everything they can to slow the transition to renewables, no matter what ERCOT and Tesla might want.
Didn't Trump propose actively subsidizing coal-fired power plants at one during the campaign?
Might have a chance to speak with a blue city mayor today. Dropping a manifesto reference on a pol before their staff gets to them is quite the opportunity.
I’m an Irish subscriber so I mostly don’t have to live with US outcomes.
That said, some similar problems have arisen in Ireland. Government overall has spent too much time listening to NGOs and being influenced/pushed by the Green Party (left wing) minor party in our coalition government. The result has been that the majority of Irish people who are centre right by inclination are rebelling over immigration, inflation/cost of living, a shortage of affordable housing etc.
The modern trend to allow NGOs and left wing voices in both politics and the media is driving the mainstream population further to the right has got to be curtailed.
It’s time for mainstream politicians to listen more to voters rather than to vocal activists.
I’m an Irish expat, and I agree with this. The recent referendums were a good example of what you’re talking about — supported by every non-fringe political party; overwhelmingly rejected by the people. It’s not a good look for the political system.
P.s. For anyone who isn’t following Irish politics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Irish_constitutional_referendums
I'm astonished they decided to go to the expense of a referendum campaign to make two tiny changes to the constitution just to wokify the language used, and to probably no operational purpose. The turnout of well under 50% and the resounding No vote of those that did suggests the Irish elite are living in ivory towers.
omg, I shouldn't complain about how bad things are in the US compared to this.
Irish housing problems make San Francisco look like Vicksburg, Mississippi.
No joke I was in Ireland on a tour of the countryside and the guide spoke glowingly about how you can't build homes at all legally in the country and people buy them and knock down everything but a single wall in order to rebuild them completely. Then as we got closer to Dublin she lamented how housing is so expensive and it's killing the city. Zero recognition these things were related!
That's wild!
I've seen the same things in NYC to be honest. Normal people seem really resistant to the idea that a housing market exists and is responsive to supply and demand the same way other markets work.
As Matt has pointed out on Twitter, if foreigners are actual willing to purchase unlimited quantities of luxury condos that they leave vacant 51 weeks a year, it's practically criminal malfeasance by municipal officials to NOT to build them since the property taxes would pay for gold-plated public services for the full-time residents.
Zero sum thinking leads to bad thinking.
Ireland has the additional problem that the mainstream political parties are more or less the same which means that change is really hard to enact through elections. I feel the U.S. election we just had, in which the status quo was clearly rejected, just couldn’t happen in Ireland given the current shape of the parties.
I have been feeling and saying 6 for years. The “record corporate profits” leftists like to complain about suggests that, if nothing else, companies are competent in achieving their goals. Who could really think you’re more likely to find excellence at the MTA than at Meta?
Maybe this doesn't pass an ideological turing test but leftists generally believe profits are indicative of a noncompetitive environment and/or exploitation, so Meta being more profitable than the MTA just means its more evil.
Yeah, I know this is a common retort. It’s just dumb. People were sure Meta was an unassailable monopoly right up until TikTok came along….
They are both extractive ondustries
Well it is!
Related to this, to better emphasize that there's no inherent virtue to nonprofits, it's easy to list a bunch of nonprofits that they would see as bad. My favorite to use in this regard is Citizens United--it's a nonprofit corporation! That really gives dissonance to the "Citizens United v. FEC opened the door for big for-profit corporations to rig our elections!!!!" bit.
It's worse than that -- they're hypocrites. They're using absolute "record profits" as a gotcha when if GDP is positive every year will have record corp. profits. This is the same "trust the science" crew that will then torture data to fit their own narrative whenever they want.
Don’t sell bus drivers short. It’s a pretty taxing job.
They’re just 1 worker in the line, the competence of an org is based off more than the line workers after all
6/10
I’m not trying to rip on any individual low level employee, but the organization as a whole (and by implication its leadership) has serious issues.
Meta is probably a bad example here. They seem to be floundering.
Facebook is floundering, and the VR bet seems to have been terrible, but Meta is up 77% on the year. My rough understanding is that its AI arm (Llama), Instagram, and WhatsApp are strong.
The VR bet was terrible right until they showed the Orion demo. IMO Meta is doing incredibly well and has a real chance of being far bigger and more important than they currently are.
It had nice parallelism with MTA because it’s only one letter off. But seriously, maybe biased because I do work there, but the company is not floundering. It is true that the Facebook app has lost some of it’s cool factor among a certain set that you and I may belong to. But globally most things are going well and the stock performance over the past couple years reflects it.
I’ll piggyback off of Matt’s point and note that Democrats won a landslide in 2008 by nominating Barack Hussein Obama; for younger readers the 2004 post election analysis was firmly democrats don’t get “real America” and the country was irreparably anti Muslim and anti Middle East and would never ever vote for someone that was even vaguely associated with either (right wingers tried smearing Obama as ‘Muslim’ and clearly didn’t work). Point being as Matt is alluding to predicting what the issue of the moment will be or which issues are salient generally in 4 years is a mugs game (oh yeah the other hot take in 2004 was this country was going through another religious revival, mega churches were all the rage. This was a a new Christian moment and the country would never accept gay marriage. Yeah check now how that worked out; look religious attendance trends).
> right wingers tried smearing Obama as ‘Muslim’ and clearly didn’t work
Among them, a notable reality TV star named Donald Trump
And if Trump screws up bad enough and/or the economy tanks even Gavin Newsom might be able to win in 2028. Obama was also a very talented politician.
Obama was also helped by Lehman Brothers collapsing in September.
I think the Lehman Brothers collapse likely shifted Obama's victory from a modest popular and electoral college margin to a blowout.
Think the more important thing to note. In December, 2004 the actual correct take about the 2008 election would be "The two keys to the 2008 election will be the failure of the Iraq War and the collapse of the real estate bubble. We need to make sure to nominate someone who was against the Iraq War and also has no ability to be tied to the coming real estate bubble and subsequent stock market crash". The former was at least a live issue in 2004 and the insurgency was already souring the public on the war during the 04 campaign. But the latter was definitely not on people's radar. This was still the era of "Greenspan is a genius and will solve everything". Bush both in 2000 and 2004 touted the "ownership society" as one of his visions for America. Like there were signs if you looked closely enough the real estate market was overheated already in 2004. And famously a few traders who looked suspiciously like Steve Carrell and Christian Bale saw the weakness of the real estate market and made millions on short positions. And even they weren't taking their short positions in 2004.
Yes, the financial crisis is what got the Senate supermajority.
Same. Especially Democrats' congressional majorities.
Are you kidding me? Gavin Newsom looks like he has a custom gold roofie bottle attached to his keychain, and can be tarred with… well basically every aspect of his governance of California, which exemplifies the sort of inept technocracy that the electorate just picked Trump over.
As an Alphabet Person, I'm looking forward to the post elaborating on #5. The way it's phrased here encompasses a *huge* range of possible policies, ranging from "basically everything the left wants" to "basically everything the right wants". The question of whether biological sex is socially constructed is academic; the real political controversies are about which parts of society should be segregated by (some notion of) biological sex rather than something more malleable.
There are some statements that seem so obviously true, even tautological, that they must be dog whistles for something else. "Biological sex is not a social construct" seems like one of those, and it seems like a dog whistle for transphobia. I hope that will turn out not to be the case.
Sections of the democratic coalition literally do not believe in a sex binary.
As you can see elsewhere in the comments on this post, even people who think they believe in a sex binary will often concede that there are exceptions; they just choose not to think about those exceptions when they're proposing policy.
But again, this issue is purely academic. There's no real political controversy that hinges on whether sex is binary.
There are not exceptions. Sex is truly binary, by definition. There are people who don't cleanly fit into that binary, but that is not the same claim as that sex itself is binary. You can say that sexual *expression* in humans is either ternary (male, female, intersex) or bimodal (male, female, everything in between). It would be just as correct to say that a true intersex person has *no* sex than to say they are "in-between" sexes, because sex is a reproductive category and true intersex people cannot reproduce because they do not have functional reproductive systems.
Your tautology, "sex is binary because sex is a binary category," is not helpful for this discussion, in my opinion.
If there is no political controversy, why can democratic politicians (including the president and at least one Supreme Court justice) not affirm this simple fact?
Upthread: "There are some statements that seem so obviously true, even tautological, that they must be dog whistles for something else. 'Biological sex is not a social construct' seems like one of those, and it seems like a dog whistle for transphobia. I hope that will turn out not to be the case."
It's not binary. It's bi-modal. These are two very different things that seem very similar.
This is not true. There is no such thing as an in-between sex. There are people with genetic anomalies that mean they don't cleanly fit in either category, but sex is a binary category. There are only male gametes and female gametes and nothing else.
You could argue that sexual *expression* in humans is bimodal, i.e. a male-to-female continuum with two strong poles, but I don't think that accurately describes sexual expression either, because it implies an overlap where there is none. That is, since hermaphrodism in humans is impossible, sexual expression cannot be a continuum.
I take your point on genetics, although I do think even 1% of people having genetic diversity that don't cleanly fit these categories deserves some recognition.
I do think the physical expression of sex is bimodal along a LOT of criteria: height, weight, bone density, muscle mass, visual perception, etc. These are things where you can generally say that there are patterns between males and females, but there is still a lot of overlap. There are a lot of women taller than a lot of men. There are a lot of men with wider hips than women.
Sex *traits* are bimodally distributed, but sex itself is not, as disinterested has eloquently explained.
Sex is not always the salient criteria to use in defining policy--sometimes gender expression or sexuality trump sex. But there remain in our society a handful of areas where sex itself is the most salient criteria, and it is without a doubt the case that activists are trying to redefine and reduce the salience of the concept of sex.
Don't play dumb. This is absolutely a claim some gender activists make, and they can point at peer-reviewed science articles in real journals to back them up.
Please attach link to a peer reviewed journal article
What is absolutely a claim? I lost track of your referent.
It was "biological sex is a social construct", which was what you said was obviously false.
I think Matt's point is that we have to push back against such falsehoods in progressive spaces (and the associated neologisms like AFAB/AMAB that implicitly reject that sex is real), while promoting tolerance and decency towards trans people.
I'd also like to see this rephrased to talk about parents' rights to make decisions for their children, including to support their children in transitioning. As the parent of a trans kid, I strongly believe the parents should be the authority here in both directions, with a nod to the idea that older teens can be capable of making some medical decisions with oversight. We have good ethical, medical, and legal rubrics for managing parents' rights vs adolescent autonomy in other contexts such as cancer treatment, teenage parenthood, and emancipation of minors.
But the flip side of that is that I should be able to consent to my child's transition, just like I can consent for them to have elective plastic surgery. I shouldn't have to fear having my kids taken away, or getting arrested, both of which are real possibilities in many red states.
The counter point would be that sex hormones or transitioning for kids has very little scientific basis and a lot of risks. And it seems like we've been oversold on the benefits and the risks have been greatly downplayed. That's why you see a lot of European governments walking it back now.
I agree that it's a lot easier for people not in that position to have opinions. But kids are always going to be a tough issue. Because protecting kids will always be an important government function.
Given the government has an interest in the safety of kids, should the state be empowered to take children away from their parents on the basis of, say, a child not being vaccinated, where the scientific basis is very strong?
I'm not in favor of taking away kids except in pretty obvious cases of abuse.
That doesn't mean I think there shouldn't be limits on what types of risky medical procedures are available to kids.
To Texas's Department of Justice, prescribing puberty blockers to a transgender child is abuse. Ken Paxton: “There is no doubt that these procedures are ‘abuse’ under Texas law, and thus must be halted” (source below). So I'm still unclear on whether or not you think EAB ought to have their children taken from them if they consent to elective procedures for a hypothetical transgender child. Personally, I disagree with Ken Paxton (and with Hellkitty): I think the American traditions of family privacy and medical freedom ought to prevail on this issue. For the same reasons, I disagree with the notion that parents should lose their kids due to refusing vaccines, even though we actually have an extremely well established understanding about the downside risks of that for children's health!
To pull back a bit, I get frustrated by unprincipled appeals to (at this time, speculative) levels of risk in one medical realm when in basically all other medical realms we prioritize family privacy and medical freedom. I appreciate that this is an active area of research, but the American Academy of Pediatrics evidently considers the benefits of *allowing* these procedures to take place to outweigh the risks given our current level of understanding. Given that, why wouldn't we respect the relationship between a child, their parents, and their doctor, just as we do for everything else?
Am I wrong about this? Is there any medical procedure that is prohibited for children that is also a) considered acceptable by the American Academy of Pediatrics and b) permitted for any consenting adult? If so, I would be thankful if anyone could tell me one example!
Links:
- https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/23/us/texas-attorney-general-gender-affirmation-child-abuse/index.html
- https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/25340/AAP-reaffirms-gender-affirming-care-policy
I think they should be taken away from religious conservatives
Until a diagnosis of gender dysphoria doesn't have to rely on the word of a minor, it is unethical to allow medical interventions that permanently alter the child's body. The difference between a child and an adult is akin to the difference between a caterpillar and a butterfly. And the child is incapable of contracting, of voting, of unilateral emancipation and of electing these types of surgeries.
What a take! A few corrections:
(1) The diagnostic guidelines for gender dysphoria as written *don't* rely on the word of a minor; they specify behaviors and symptoms that can be observed by attentive parents, teachers, and therapists. This is similar to the diagnosis of other conditions like ADHD, autism, and depression.
(2) Transition for minors rarely involves *surgery*. That's more of an adult thing. And even for adults who want to have surgery, it can take years of advance planning. Even if they could find a provider to do it, a minor who wanted surgery would likely be an adult by the time it actually happened.
(3) Gender dysphoria is hardly the only health condition whose diagnosis or treatment involves a minor patient's input. Many mental health conditions are diagnosed based in part on a minor's input: ADHD, anxiety, depression, autism, etc. Treatment decisions for conditions like juvenile arthritis, scoliosis, cancer, pregnancy, etc., are also based in whole or in part on the minor patient's input. If you want to enforce your principle that minors shouldn't be involved in health decisions with permanent impacts, you're going to have to overhaul multiple fields of pediatric care, not just gender stuff.
Regarding (1): I cannot believe there has ever been a gender dysphoria diagnosis where the male child says "I'm a boy" and parents, teachers and therapists say "No, based on our analysis and observations you are a girl."
I'm have no doubt the diagnosis will be backed up with observations, but the word of the child is a necessary piece of the diagnosis.
I think a child's identity is a necessary part of the diagnosis, but not the only one. And isn't that a good thing?
I dont know anyone who thinks it would be a good idea for someone who identifies as cis to be "diagnosed" as trans.
It should be identity + other factors.
I expect you want to likewise decide that it's unethical, and should be illegal, to allow teenage girls to have breast augmentations, nose jobs, eyelid surgeries, and other cosmetic procedures? These permanently alter the teenager's body and rely only on the teenager's word that this will be beneficial. Likewise, you're presumably a fan of banning minors from receiving GNRH agonists to treat endometriosis, as we have only the minor's word that their period pain is serious enough to require this treatment?
Note that all of these cases are consented by the parents, as transitions are -- please note that I am specifically arguing for the *parents' rights* to make these decisions on behalf of their minor children.
Also, as mentioned above, most states allow pregnant minors to make serious decisions about their medical care in pregnancy and childbirth, including consent to c-sections and other surgeries with serious and permanent consequence. And EVERY state permits teenage parents to make all medical decisions on behalf of their own children. It's a bit incongruous to say that teenagers can't consent to their own medical care but can make permanent decisions for their infants, isn't it?
The majority position seems to be something like everyone should be treated with respect. But women's only spaces such as bathrooms, locker rooms, and women's sports are off limits for biological males.
That would essentially mean banning trans people from many public facilities. Which, y'know, if that's your position then go for it, but it's hard to see how that's compatible with "everyone should be treated with respect".
"That would essentially mean banning trans people from many public facilities." No it doesn't they just use the facility of the sex they are born to.
Treating people with respect doesn't mean bowing to their every whim.
You want to be gender non conforming that's fine. Live your life. But that doesn't mean society has to affirm your choices.
"just use the facility of the sex they are born to" implies that people will be sharing public restrooms with others who give the appearance of being of the opposite gender. Unless that's banned.
It seems to me a sensible resolution is to provide appropriate provisions for privacy that make no assumptions about sex, gender, or sexual orientation. That might sound like "gender-neutral facilities," and that doesn't sound like a bad thing to me.
This is great. One aspect I wanted to highlight: it is a conceit of liberals that we’re “on the right side of history”, and it is well-known that more educated people tend to be more left-leaning. So it’s not enough to open people’s eyes to the political wisdom of the points Matt raises, they need to be *convinced/persuaded* that the underlying ideas are right on the merits. It is not moral to tolerate crime and disorder. It is not ethical to promote irreversible therapies for children. On climate “we” may be right but if our methods don’t solve the problem then we will be wrong. Same for macro and microeconomic issues: if our supposedly ethical methods don’t solve problems, it is not the case that the means justify the ends.