There should be a massive effort to place a billboard on every major highway on the outskirts of every major town in every Red District in the Country identifying by name the U.S. Representative who voted for the Big Ugly Bill listing the eventual damages it will do to its citizens. The same should be done in every State with a Republican Senator up for reelection. Much of the bad stuff will not be apparent to voters until after the midterms; consequently, Democratic Party messaging between now and then is critical!
As a medical scientist, I would take issue with racism being considered, out of hand, a social construct. In the U.S., people of African heritage contain, on average, about 23% of European DNA. With intermarriage, as is true with my family, that percentage will increase. But mulatto's are not that common in the central 1/3 of Africa. And there are facts, like the incidence of sickle cell genes, that need to be revealed for competent medical treatment. I would support adding "mulatto" to any application for a situation wherein medical treatment may be necessary. Race mixing will probably continue, until some day the term will be meaningless.
These seem pretty bland to me. As I read them, I think "of course" and continue waiting for something that actually distinguishes Democrats from Republicans. I can't imagine that anyone in either party would disagree with any of them.
Perhaps it's true that some Republicans want to abolish Social Security, though I've never heard anyone advocate this beyond a handful of libertarians. I mean, George Bush wanted to give individuals the choice of investing their Social Security outlays in the stock market, and you may disagree, but that's a far cry from abolishing it.
In fact, some of these points feel pretty Republican. The one about schools being for kids rather than teachers unions - I mean, that's not how you stated it, but that's the implication. The mayor of Chicago is a puppet of the teachers unions and he has been a disaster. Of course we should get rid of this guy and his ilk. But that's not a position that's going to come from the local Democratic Party.
Anyway, I think these are commonsensical and absolutely great. They are not particularly owned by the Democrats, which perhaps was your point. The extremes on both sides are going to oppose them, but the vast majority of Americans will support them. If they became the touchstone of both parties, and we eliminated the noise from the far left and far right, we'd all be better off.
I agree with all the lefties: this is excellent stuff. My MAGA friend read it and responded. “ well-thought out and well-expressed. The Democrats will ignore it”. My only equivalent is with your comment about “the most brilliant political talent of our time“. That he may have been and the amount of enthusiasm and action he demonstrated the ability to create among voters in 2008 was unprecedented in my extended lifetime. However, he had an extraordinary ability to turn opponents into enemies and (one could argue, during this year) his friends towards his opponents.
I can't say I'm a fan of the title. The term "common sense" has so often been used in "common sense gun control" that it immediately repels me (because of its association with things that are only "common sense" to idealogues). Of course, I'm not a Democrat (libertarian, actually), so if you are trying to call out only to the already convinced then it will probably work.
I really like all nine of these principles. This worries me, because I am a college professor, this is Slow Boring, and Matt is the Neoliberal Shill-in-Chief.
For people who don't know, we have a flag. It's yellow. We have a parliamentary alliance in Europe, the Alliance of Liberal and Democrats for Europe. (Now rebranded as Renew or something equally banal.) And, importantly, _we do not win elections_.
Labor and Socialist parties that explicitly do not give in to mere economic realities (and are often pretty explicitly controlled by labor) win elections. Liberal parties can hope to govern in coalitions with the Socialists, optionally with the Greens. (They can also ally with a reasonable right.)
(I know, I'm being way too Eurocentric here. But I think it reflects American attitudes as well, and would be reflected in polling, despite the current weakness of our organized labor.)
I think the points about throwing the aggressively woke to the curb are all good ones. If you manage to take a crushing, across-the-board victory on gay rights in the early 2010s and within four years turn social issues into a giant liability for your party, we have a right to take away your Newspeak book. But this has almost always been the conventional wisdom among Democrats. Besides for Kamala's brief "I am Kamala Harris, [sex is a social construct], my pronouns are she/her/hers, and I'm wearing a blue suit moment" moment a few years back, Democrats avoid that like the plague. Who is our most woke senator – Kirsten Gillibrand? Has she ever campaigned on it or meaningfully pushed woke legislation?
Principle 8 is the most explicitly targeted at unions. Unsurprisingly, it's the one that is pushed by San Francisco-Baynians. I would suggest a tenth principle:
10. Do you not base your principles on the wishes of San Francisco Democrats.
That's a quick way to lose elections.
(And look, I live in Chicago. Brandon Johnson is threatening to burn this city to the ground if we don't give the teacher's union everything they want in perpetuity. That's our problem, we'll try not to make him a national problem.)
(FWIW, Jean Chrétien was a Liberal and a liberal, and he ruled for like a thousand years before being toppled by his own finance minister. [Take that, Blair/Brown.] I suspect that was a combination of political skill and circumstance, but maybe there's something to be learned from old King Jean.)
On second thought, my point about Democrats throwing wokeness to the curb is overstated, or maybe plain wrong. I think Democratic politicians try not to lean into this (and often don't buy into this) as politicians, but their messaging is way too identity-focused, in a way that probably hurts them.
I expect other commenters will push back against this more aggressively, if these comments get read.
I like your #9. When I first started visiting the States in the 80's, 'I am an American citizen' was the least you could say about yourself but also the most you would ever want to say. And people seemed to treat each other accordingly.
But I think you are missing a big thing here in you agenda. Where should the Democratic Party stand on working people and capitalism? I don't see meaningful engagement with the public until it is clear what you all believe in about this.
Trump (amazingly) seems to have working people believing he has their backs. Democrats need an agenda to offer the same reassurance.
I (and others I know) find this extremely appealing. But I can’t help thinking it’s falling into the same trap of appealing to educated liberals by conflating good policy with good politics.
There seems to be a great deal of truth in the idea that politics is downstream of culture. And it appears to have been precisely the cause of Republican’s difficulty during the Obama years and Trump’s rise.
Eric Cantor (as reported in American Carnage) said of the tea party years): "I was banging my head against the wall... I think it was because people were in search of something on this menu of fiscally conservative policy positions that didn't quite match with their cultural conservative motivations. That's what what's so odd. It was all about economics on one level but it didn't quite match with this cultural thing that was lighting the house of fire."
Mitch Daniels was barely a blip with practical centrism: “Every day, we work to lower the costs and barriers to free men and women creating wealth for each other. We build roads, and bridges, and new sources of homegrown energy at record rates, in order to have the strongest possible backbone to which people of enterprise can attach their investments and build their dreams.” (CPAC 2011)
Trump, free from political priors, and with enough star-power/chaos/provocative language to keep people’s attention was able to calibrate to the lowest common denominator of the culture.
For better or worse, running for President is about cult of personality: are you JFK/Obama sophistication/cool, George W. Bush everyman-heir to political royalty, Regan common-sense advocate for middle-America, Trump pugilistic grievance-retribution champion? We need another Obama. Or even better, a Regan.
I worry that Matt’s approach alone will fail to capture the "cultural progressivism" that would “light an electorate on fire”. We need someone that can capture the zeitgeist and explain why these common-sense ideas are the best course forward.
It seems to me that a lot of Trump's support is due to the perception that he is anti-establishment. I think Democrats, whether in policy or not, should position themselves as anti-establishment. On another note, I see it as unhelpful to tell radical leftists to tone down their rhetoric. Democrat politicians are already not, for the most part, adopting their rhetoric. And it is unlikely that this small contingency of the left will change as a consequence of being criticized for being politically ineffective.
Here is the fairly simple take that I have come to: You cannot say that democracy matters and that you are going to use political to impose policies that are out of step with the median voter and highly unpopular. In business, they say, 'the customer is always right'. In politics, we need to say, 'the voters are right'. If you sincerely believe the voters are wrong, then you need to persuade them and change their minds first, and them change the policies after.
I more or less agree with all 9 principles but my version of 1 would be much more focused on reducing the width of the wealth and income distribution. I genuinely don’t believe countries with too wide a range are healthy.
There should be a massive effort to place a billboard on every major highway on the outskirts of every major town in every Red District in the Country identifying by name the U.S. Representative who voted for the Big Ugly Bill listing the eventual damages it will do to its citizens. The same should be done in every State with a Republican Senator up for reelection. Much of the bad stuff will not be apparent to voters until after the midterms; consequently, Democratic Party messaging between now and then is critical!
As a medical scientist, I would take issue with racism being considered, out of hand, a social construct. In the U.S., people of African heritage contain, on average, about 23% of European DNA. With intermarriage, as is true with my family, that percentage will increase. But mulatto's are not that common in the central 1/3 of Africa. And there are facts, like the incidence of sickle cell genes, that need to be revealed for competent medical treatment. I would support adding "mulatto" to any application for a situation wherein medical treatment may be necessary. Race mixing will probably continue, until some day the term will be meaningless.
@matt could you link all the related pieces back to this original article?
These seem pretty bland to me. As I read them, I think "of course" and continue waiting for something that actually distinguishes Democrats from Republicans. I can't imagine that anyone in either party would disagree with any of them.
Perhaps it's true that some Republicans want to abolish Social Security, though I've never heard anyone advocate this beyond a handful of libertarians. I mean, George Bush wanted to give individuals the choice of investing their Social Security outlays in the stock market, and you may disagree, but that's a far cry from abolishing it.
In fact, some of these points feel pretty Republican. The one about schools being for kids rather than teachers unions - I mean, that's not how you stated it, but that's the implication. The mayor of Chicago is a puppet of the teachers unions and he has been a disaster. Of course we should get rid of this guy and his ilk. But that's not a position that's going to come from the local Democratic Party.
Anyway, I think these are commonsensical and absolutely great. They are not particularly owned by the Democrats, which perhaps was your point. The extremes on both sides are going to oppose them, but the vast majority of Americans will support them. If they became the touchstone of both parties, and we eliminated the noise from the far left and far right, we'd all be better off.
I agree with all the lefties: this is excellent stuff. My MAGA friend read it and responded. “ well-thought out and well-expressed. The Democrats will ignore it”. My only equivalent is with your comment about “the most brilliant political talent of our time“. That he may have been and the amount of enthusiasm and action he demonstrated the ability to create among voters in 2008 was unprecedented in my extended lifetime. However, he had an extraordinary ability to turn opponents into enemies and (one could argue, during this year) his friends towards his opponents.
If you’re in NYC and want to work on this locally, I took some inspiration from Matt’s title:
https://www.maximumnewyork.com/p/the-sensible-seventy
I can't say I'm a fan of the title. The term "common sense" has so often been used in "common sense gun control" that it immediately repels me (because of its association with things that are only "common sense" to idealogues). Of course, I'm not a Democrat (libertarian, actually), so if you are trying to call out only to the already convinced then it will probably work.
I really like all nine of these principles. This worries me, because I am a college professor, this is Slow Boring, and Matt is the Neoliberal Shill-in-Chief.
For people who don't know, we have a flag. It's yellow. We have a parliamentary alliance in Europe, the Alliance of Liberal and Democrats for Europe. (Now rebranded as Renew or something equally banal.) And, importantly, _we do not win elections_.
Labor and Socialist parties that explicitly do not give in to mere economic realities (and are often pretty explicitly controlled by labor) win elections. Liberal parties can hope to govern in coalitions with the Socialists, optionally with the Greens. (They can also ally with a reasonable right.)
(I know, I'm being way too Eurocentric here. But I think it reflects American attitudes as well, and would be reflected in polling, despite the current weakness of our organized labor.)
I think the points about throwing the aggressively woke to the curb are all good ones. If you manage to take a crushing, across-the-board victory on gay rights in the early 2010s and within four years turn social issues into a giant liability for your party, we have a right to take away your Newspeak book. But this has almost always been the conventional wisdom among Democrats. Besides for Kamala's brief "I am Kamala Harris, [sex is a social construct], my pronouns are she/her/hers, and I'm wearing a blue suit moment" moment a few years back, Democrats avoid that like the plague. Who is our most woke senator – Kirsten Gillibrand? Has she ever campaigned on it or meaningfully pushed woke legislation?
Principle 8 is the most explicitly targeted at unions. Unsurprisingly, it's the one that is pushed by San Francisco-Baynians. I would suggest a tenth principle:
10. Do you not base your principles on the wishes of San Francisco Democrats.
That's a quick way to lose elections.
(And look, I live in Chicago. Brandon Johnson is threatening to burn this city to the ground if we don't give the teacher's union everything they want in perpetuity. That's our problem, we'll try not to make him a national problem.)
(FWIW, Jean Chrétien was a Liberal and a liberal, and he ruled for like a thousand years before being toppled by his own finance minister. [Take that, Blair/Brown.] I suspect that was a combination of political skill and circumstance, but maybe there's something to be learned from old King Jean.)
On second thought, my point about Democrats throwing wokeness to the curb is overstated, or maybe plain wrong. I think Democratic politicians try not to lean into this (and often don't buy into this) as politicians, but their messaging is way too identity-focused, in a way that probably hurts them.
I expect other commenters will push back against this more aggressively, if these comments get read.
Shouldn't Point 8 refer to "students" rather than "users"?
I like your #9. When I first started visiting the States in the 80's, 'I am an American citizen' was the least you could say about yourself but also the most you would ever want to say. And people seemed to treat each other accordingly.
But I think you are missing a big thing here in you agenda. Where should the Democratic Party stand on working people and capitalism? I don't see meaningful engagement with the public until it is clear what you all believe in about this.
Trump (amazingly) seems to have working people believing he has their backs. Democrats need an agenda to offer the same reassurance.
'
I like these a lot. I think the gender / sexuality wedge is very real, and feels pivotal.
I also think the racial one is kind of just pandering. I think something, more on immigration would be more relevant.
Surprised communication, information and the public didn’t make it here.
You were on a good roll there; then you descended in paranoia.
I (and others I know) find this extremely appealing. But I can’t help thinking it’s falling into the same trap of appealing to educated liberals by conflating good policy with good politics.
There seems to be a great deal of truth in the idea that politics is downstream of culture. And it appears to have been precisely the cause of Republican’s difficulty during the Obama years and Trump’s rise.
Eric Cantor (as reported in American Carnage) said of the tea party years): "I was banging my head against the wall... I think it was because people were in search of something on this menu of fiscally conservative policy positions that didn't quite match with their cultural conservative motivations. That's what what's so odd. It was all about economics on one level but it didn't quite match with this cultural thing that was lighting the house of fire."
Mitch Daniels was barely a blip with practical centrism: “Every day, we work to lower the costs and barriers to free men and women creating wealth for each other. We build roads, and bridges, and new sources of homegrown energy at record rates, in order to have the strongest possible backbone to which people of enterprise can attach their investments and build their dreams.” (CPAC 2011)
Trump, free from political priors, and with enough star-power/chaos/provocative language to keep people’s attention was able to calibrate to the lowest common denominator of the culture.
For better or worse, running for President is about cult of personality: are you JFK/Obama sophistication/cool, George W. Bush everyman-heir to political royalty, Regan common-sense advocate for middle-America, Trump pugilistic grievance-retribution champion? We need another Obama. Or even better, a Regan.
I worry that Matt’s approach alone will fail to capture the "cultural progressivism" that would “light an electorate on fire”. We need someone that can capture the zeitgeist and explain why these common-sense ideas are the best course forward.
It seems to me that a lot of Trump's support is due to the perception that he is anti-establishment. I think Democrats, whether in policy or not, should position themselves as anti-establishment. On another note, I see it as unhelpful to tell radical leftists to tone down their rhetoric. Democrat politicians are already not, for the most part, adopting their rhetoric. And it is unlikely that this small contingency of the left will change as a consequence of being criticized for being politically ineffective.
Here is the fairly simple take that I have come to: You cannot say that democracy matters and that you are going to use political to impose policies that are out of step with the median voter and highly unpopular. In business, they say, 'the customer is always right'. In politics, we need to say, 'the voters are right'. If you sincerely believe the voters are wrong, then you need to persuade them and change their minds first, and them change the policies after.
I more or less agree with all 9 principles but my version of 1 would be much more focused on reducing the width of the wealth and income distribution. I genuinely don’t believe countries with too wide a range are healthy.
.