Before I even read this shit, Matt's going to concoct some fanciful scenario where Democrats can somehow moderate enough to win over rural conservatives. As someone who grew up in a conservative household in a conservative area with many conservative friends, I think Matt needs to wrap his New York liberal brain around the fact that the dynamic just isn't going to shift until Republicans royally fuck up and alienate their consituents. Like bro, you gotta understand that every goddamn conservative-leaning acquaintance I've had listen to your podcasts absolutely fucking hates the way you talk. They immediately peg you as a hyper liberal no matter what the fuck you're saying because your whole affect just comes off that way. Yes Dems have a culture issue but you're completely fucking blind to just how deep and subtle the cultural signifiers are.
Wait. Matt's assuming a locus of control that doesn't exist. No one can predict the political environment 4 years from now. The best you can do is maintain an open-mind and plenty of contingencies so you can adapt to the future as it reveals itself.
More than that, Matt's dream of taming the activist left is a hubristic fantasy. Vocal minority though they may be, the reason they have outsized influence is because they simply want it more. Moderates could dominate politics if they cared to, but they don't so they don't. That's why they're moderates. Cringe progressives will remain an important faction within the party. Dems will suffer their bad messaging but benefit from their enthusiastic volunteers and underpaid staffers. If your "plan" doesn't work around that, it's not a real plan.
I don't entirely disagree, but I also doubt Matt actually has any illusions about this himself. He can still have influence, even if only at the margins.
Plan's aren't a thing. There is no central authority that can decide who runs where. It's way too early to be writing things off. The Senate looks bad on paper, but things can change. Strong candidates aren't always obvious in advance. If Trump continues to be unpopular, particularly if the bottom falls out, candidates in red states will start to take a hard look at running. I have no idea who those candidates are, but that's true in every cycle.
If Trump falls apart like Bush did it will open doors that look closed now. Candidates will emerge in places that look hostile today. Chuck Schumer and others should try to recruit candidates in red states, but often times candidates will run on their own initiative. Just look at Georgia's two senators. Nobody sought them out in 2019 and on paper they didn't look like senators, but they both turned out to be great candidates.
We're barely in the second inning. We have a long time to go. As to Matt's belief that it's much more likely that things will get better for Republicans in Michigan and Georgia than for Democrats in Iowa and Ohio, I would take the opposing side of that. Trump is a lame duck and his act may start to wear thin. Odds are he will be the latest victim of the six-year itch.
For those interested, I'm on Substack and wrote about my thoughts on the Senate going forward below.
The biggest problem with the Dan Osborn strategy is, to work, the candidate has to be able to distance themselves from the Democratic party enough that they don't simply get the same vote share that a regular Democrat would, and no more. I feel like, if this strategy were used more regularly, the novelty would wear off, and voters would simply get used to assuming that, when there's no Democratic candidate, "I" just means "closet D", which defeats the whole purpose of running an independent candidate in the first place. Of course, the Republicans would also be doing everything possible to portray the independent candidate as a puppet of Nancy Pelosi and AOC, which wouldn't exactly help things in a red-leaning state either.
Another way to put, let's imagine that, as a Democratic voter in a blue-leaning state, Republicans chose to not field a candidate and back an independent. Would you actually consider voting for that independent, or would you view it as a sneaky trick by the Republicans to try and steal what should be a safe blue seat by confusing voters? If your answer is the latter, it's unreasonable to not expect red-state Republicans in an R vs. I race to do likewise.
A potential option is a serious push for open primaries/run-offs which would sidestep this whole issue of putting Osborn-like independents in a position to win in states like NE/AK/TX/FL/OH/IA/KS without having to convince the local Ds to not run anyone.
Find a MAGA republican candidate in Maine to primary Collins from the right and fund the crap out of them. This is sleazy tactics but it has a good chance of working.
Aside from Sage in Iowa and Cooper in NC, who would be some other good candidates to run? Jared Golden seems like a terrific opportunity to challenge Collins - who only won by single digits for the first time since 1996 her last election, is running underwater in approval ratings right now, and will be 73 next year.
I thought Allred was an outstanding candidate in TX, but MY is right, there needs to be something to shake up the race, you can't win a conventional Dem campaign.
Alaska, like Maine, can be a bit quirky in election, not always voting in a partisan manner. Could Mary Peltola have a chance to win? AK House leader Bryce Edgmon (former Dem, now undeclared)? Any other good AK candidates? (Also, why haven't Dems offered Lisa Murkowski whatever she wants to flip parties?)
In a big wave election, KS could be in play - Roger Marshall has had some of the lowest approval ratings of any Senator. Rep. Sharice Davids outperformed Harris by 7 points. I don't know that she would have much appeal outside the KC metro area, but she has taken that district off "toss up" lists. I think the electorate has had enough of perennial millionaire independent candidate Greg Orman. The party could really use a good - and perhaps unconventional candidate here.
This isn't a fully baked thought, but there was a sea change at some point, the Blue Dogs have mostly vanished. Moderate now means New Democrat types. I'm having difficulty imagining a Democratic party that actively encouraged Blue Doggishness. Pelosi did a much better job making the party safe for the capitalists. One can imagine a Democratic party that embraced outright conservativism in reaction to the increasingly revolutionary MAGA movement. I'm struggling to see how the party we have could get there, though.
"and “illegal immigration creates a pool of cheap labor with no rights and is detrimental to every American worker” does more work to explain it."
I think this is really smart because (a) people do care about illegal immigration and want it stopped; and (b) you differentiate yourselves from Republicans on the issue by coming at it from a pro-labor angle instead of a xenophobic/racist angle, which makes it seem more authentic and more attractive to blue collar union workers.
Dems need to be reframing more "difficult" topics like this. They don't need to abandon their values, but they need a way to shift paradigms and get out of the rut of begin reactionary to the right and offering small-bore tax credits and regulations as a solution to everything.
So here's the weird thing: if “law-abiding citizens have, and must always have, the right to bear arms” and “illegal immigration creates a pool of cheap labor with no rights and is detrimental to every American worker” are socially/culturally conservative positions, too moderate for Democrats to run on...
Then why is NOBODY, Democrat or Left outsider, seemingly willing to try the Bernie 2016-Dan Osborn proposition of being "conservative" on culture-war garbage and left-wing on economics? I would consider myself to Osborn's left, but that's because I *do* favor the large-scale welfare-state and infrastructure spending stuff. I would never dream of saying, "just throw away winnable elections for a generation because you don't want to compromise on open borders and gun-grabbing." Hell, I'd much rather negotiate with Osborn about an infrastructure or welfare-state bill than with Joe Manchin.
"If you make the decision to give answers that are popular with the voters of Iowa, then the national audience of donors and nonprofit staffers and social media junkies needs to decide how to respond to that."
Is the above point that the groups mentioned do not need to be creating a narrative that the candidate is an amoral monster? Or there needs to be candidates with very thick skin who stick to their guns on some issue specific moderation and expect some pushback?
My personal plan would be have three main planks. Dems need to actually run first and foremost on preserving and restoring Democracy, which means an attention-grabbing platform of radical but broadly popular governance reforms: term limits on Congress, age limits on judges, a ban on insider trading (i.e., require blind trusts during terms in office), non-partisan primaries, national referendums for hot-button issues, an end to presidential pardon power, an end to presidential immunity. In other words, they need a hard rebranding away from the insider, institutional image that dogs them more than anything else, and that backs up their messaging about saving democracy.
Second, on specific issues and messaging: Dems need to aggressively go after religious voters or back independent candidates that do. I've posted about this before but Trump's "win" on abortion (sending it back to the states) has created an opening with this group for the first time in at least a generation, and it's political malfeasance that we haven't seen any attempt by now. We don't need to win evangelicals or Catholic conservatives, but carving into those margins even a bit would pay massive electoral dividends, especially in the south and midwest.
Third, and long-term: Dems need to TRY, everywhere. The "forget-the-south" strategy Dems put in place after 2000 has almost as much to do with our current situation as anything Republicans have done, and it's frankly unsustainable in the current media environment. Trump was holding rallies in the Bronx not because his campaign thought he could actually win in New York, but because they understood that social media makes every state's election far more correlated than in years past, and carving into margins among voters of color in New York would have knock-on effects in Detroit in Milwaukee. In the same vein, failing to show up at Oklahoma rodeos in 2026 WILL have knock-on effects in Texas and Kansas.
I don't understand how Trump's judicial nominees are more "hand-picked" than a Democratic president's would be. Obviously presidents "pick" nominees and get advice on that from legal experts. Is there a difference between "hand-picking" and just "choosing" that I'm not aware of?
As for the judges being lackeys.... Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch haven't agreed with each other on every single issue. They are Republican and conservative to be sure, but I don't see more unanimity from them than I have recent Democratic nominees.
I have two words for you - "Federalist Society". Two more - "Leonard Leo". And finally four words that go with those, and have for the Rs ever since 1990 - "No more Souters. Ever." Get through that thicket and you're mighty close to "hand-picked". And watch the Trump appointees on the lower federal courts engage in performative MAGA-ism from the bench in order to catch the eye of the Caudillo or whichever one of his minions keeps his eyes peeled for the next dime-store Carl Schmitt (Aileen Cannon, Matt Kacsmaryk, James Ho, Kyle Duncan - just for starters). Their unanimity is around overthrowing pretty much any caselaw since the 1930s that enhanced legislated or administrative federal regulatory power, constrained the executive or expanded 14th-amendment-based rights.
It’s not a plan per se, but I think the Dems need their “Trump”, as in a charismatic leader willing to force the party into embracing what voters want. Even if it’s on a purely rhetorical level, GOP leadership no longer pushes Medicare cuts and Social Security privatization.
Dem party leadership by all appearances is too feckless attempt any major changes on their own, it has to be someone willing to break with them and someone who can command a crowd like Trump and a Bernie.
Whining that the left won’t cooperate and keeps undermining us isn’t a plan, it’s just a loser mentality that will continue to feed into the left maintaining enough power to do said undermining.
As a counterpoint to today's piece, I present this opinion by Jonathan V Last of The Bulwark (JVL to his friends). The unofficial motto of The Bulwark is "JVL Is Always Right"!
Sorry for stating the blatantly obvious, but, given the overall content of this thread, it apparently needs to be said, so here is an excerpt from JVL's piece:
"After Mitt Romney lost in 2012 the Republican party did an autopsy and determined that it had a massive brand problem: Voters thought that Republicans were racists and anti-abortion zealots; Hispanic voters, especially, wanted no part of them. The party leaders declared that in order to repair the brand they had to change the party’s policy proposals and meet voters where they were.
In response... Donald Trump ran on anti-immigrant xenophobia and promising to overturn Roe v. Wade. He played footsie with white nationalists and dined with neo-Nazis. Instead of making the GOP more hospitable to independent voters, Trump leaned all the way into the “worst” aspects of the party’s brand.
He then won the presidency and subsequently increased his vote-share in each of the next two elections.
I’m not saying that Democrats should lean into progressivism and go Based Woke. I’m just saying that these things can work in different ways."
I think he has a point, in that Trump's policies are about to sneak up on us and make everybody's lives shittier on a timetable that I have to admit I did not understand or see coming. Under those circumstances, the theory ignore the left don't fight them, is part of a good strategy. But I think it is incomplete, and Matt's point is that you need to have some plan of how to take advantage of the shittiness that's more than just "things will be so shitty Texans will vote for anybody without an R next to their name." I think partisanship mitigates that hope. Maybe we don't have to beat back the AOCs and Bernies, but we really do have to have some people ready to go, and we have to at least protect them from sabotage from the left.
Regarding the point of how quickly things are going to be weird and bad, again I have to admit I did not understand this, and I consider myself both well informed and economically savvy. These markers, like goods in transit, don't seem to be roiling the markets today like they were a few weeks ago, and I don't understand that. On the political front, we need our democratic leaders to start highlighting these things and pointing out what's going to be bad, and more importantly, IT'S ALL TRUMP AND THE REPUBLICANS' FAULT.
Trump was a former Democrat who bucked long-standing GOP orthodoxy on things like entitlement cuts, not unlike say a Democrat in 2024-2026 who embraces free trade and environmental deregulation.
The 2014-2016 GOP equivalent to the modern progressive faction was the Freedom Caucus and libertarians like Rand Paul who viewed the GOP establishment as "weak" because they didn't cut taxes and deregulate hard enough.
Something something conservatives are 40% of voters blah blah blah this is why we be meaner to people Democratic base voters like.
The 40% part is true - the thing those people don't mention is part of the reason the GOP doesn't have the supermajorities David Shor thought they'd have in 2014-ish (I think) is because much of that 40% has radicalized itself in ways that make San Francisco overreaches look like the kind of local silliness it is.
Look, Jesse, I know we've disagreed a lot and I'm still to the right of you, sounds like, but I really appreciate you being here and providing a counterweight to the depressingly many comments along the lines of "let's beat up on Teh Groupz because that's the only way to court the Median Non-College-Educated White Guy in Suburban Wisconsin." So, thank you.
I'd make the argument a lot of people here, including Matt, are still stuck in 2020's fights the same way frankly, entirely too many people on Bluesky are still stuck on the 2016 primary.
Like, go ahead, run your perfect anti-woke anti-choice candidate in South Carolina. Don't be surprised when that candidate only gets 47% after getting lots of superPAC help and it turns out turnout among pro-choice college educated women in the urban areas of Charleston didn't do as well as the previous normie Democrat who got 44%.
The 'Groups won't less run a moderate' is the same as the 'neoliberals screwed us true progressives in the primary.'
No, most normie Democrat's just don't want either a super centrist who doesn't seem like they really like the Democratic parry or an uberprogressive leftie who doesn't seem like they really like the Democratic party.
It turns out Democratic voters like Democrat's and Democratic policies.
Larry Hogan outran Donald Trump in every? precinct in my state, some more than others but it's not like he struggled in very MAGA rural areas. Manchin outran Hillary dramatically everywhere, more in some areas than others but he ran way ahead of her in college towns and urban areas too. I think the tradeoff here is overstated. A lot of dems in deep red areas want to win, and that can motivate a lot of turnout.
In Louisiana, we went in 2019 from a pro-gun, pro-life, pro-cop white governor to a moderate-lib black guy in 2023 and not only did democrat vote percentage drop (even among black voters!) dem turnout dropped a lot too (especially among black voters!). The chance to back a candidate who they disagreed with on many things but obviously is much closer to them than a republican and can actually win can do wonders for turnout!
Louisiana is an R+12 state, equivalent toNebraska. Ohio, Iowa, or Alaska are R+6-8, which while difficult is still a different beast, just like New Jersey is different than Maryland for a Republican.
Also, LA's slightly different in that socially conservative minorities and a rural white vote that are still overrepresented to a certain extent in the Democratic voting base they way they really aren't in say, Kansas or South Carolina due to cultural factors of Lousiana specifically.
Also, the turnout in 2019 for an incumbent is different than an open seat in 2023 - for example in 2015, turnout overall was 1.114 million vs. 2023's turnout of 1.062 million. 2019's turnout of 1.343 million seems to be the outlier here.
I'm not saying a normie lib could've done as well as JBE, but I'd also point out Bel Edwards also expanded Medicaid and ironically, was more supportive of LGBT policies than you'd guess. In other words, he gave people in 2019 something to turn out for, even if he was more moderate on other policies.
I'm also not against this - John Hood & Robert Presley have run the sort of campaigns you want in Mississippi and the ceiling there continues to be about 46-47%, in part because neither of them have been lucky enough to be running against a laughably uncharismatic corrupt candidate like David Vitter in the pre-Trump era.
I'll be blunt here - John Bel Edwards running the same campaign in 2019 against a Vitter who is running for his 1st term opposed to 2015? JBE probably loses because we've had 3 years of 'lol nothing matters' filtering down to the sort of voters who probably did shift to JBE over Vitter in 2015.
Obviously, I can't say that for sure, but it's a feeling.
Before I even read this shit, Matt's going to concoct some fanciful scenario where Democrats can somehow moderate enough to win over rural conservatives. As someone who grew up in a conservative household in a conservative area with many conservative friends, I think Matt needs to wrap his New York liberal brain around the fact that the dynamic just isn't going to shift until Republicans royally fuck up and alienate their consituents. Like bro, you gotta understand that every goddamn conservative-leaning acquaintance I've had listen to your podcasts absolutely fucking hates the way you talk. They immediately peg you as a hyper liberal no matter what the fuck you're saying because your whole affect just comes off that way. Yes Dems have a culture issue but you're completely fucking blind to just how deep and subtle the cultural signifiers are.
This is weirdly aggressive. But anyway, what's your plan then?
Wait. Matt's assuming a locus of control that doesn't exist. No one can predict the political environment 4 years from now. The best you can do is maintain an open-mind and plenty of contingencies so you can adapt to the future as it reveals itself.
More than that, Matt's dream of taming the activist left is a hubristic fantasy. Vocal minority though they may be, the reason they have outsized influence is because they simply want it more. Moderates could dominate politics if they cared to, but they don't so they don't. That's why they're moderates. Cringe progressives will remain an important faction within the party. Dems will suffer their bad messaging but benefit from their enthusiastic volunteers and underpaid staffers. If your "plan" doesn't work around that, it's not a real plan.
I don't entirely disagree, but I also doubt Matt actually has any illusions about this himself. He can still have influence, even if only at the margins.
Plan's aren't a thing. There is no central authority that can decide who runs where. It's way too early to be writing things off. The Senate looks bad on paper, but things can change. Strong candidates aren't always obvious in advance. If Trump continues to be unpopular, particularly if the bottom falls out, candidates in red states will start to take a hard look at running. I have no idea who those candidates are, but that's true in every cycle.
If Trump falls apart like Bush did it will open doors that look closed now. Candidates will emerge in places that look hostile today. Chuck Schumer and others should try to recruit candidates in red states, but often times candidates will run on their own initiative. Just look at Georgia's two senators. Nobody sought them out in 2019 and on paper they didn't look like senators, but they both turned out to be great candidates.
We're barely in the second inning. We have a long time to go. As to Matt's belief that it's much more likely that things will get better for Republicans in Michigan and Georgia than for Democrats in Iowa and Ohio, I would take the opposing side of that. Trump is a lame duck and his act may start to wear thin. Odds are he will be the latest victim of the six-year itch.
For those interested, I'm on Substack and wrote about my thoughts on the Senate going forward below.
https://coldpoliticaltakes.substack.com/p/the-laws-of-political-physics-still
The biggest problem with the Dan Osborn strategy is, to work, the candidate has to be able to distance themselves from the Democratic party enough that they don't simply get the same vote share that a regular Democrat would, and no more. I feel like, if this strategy were used more regularly, the novelty would wear off, and voters would simply get used to assuming that, when there's no Democratic candidate, "I" just means "closet D", which defeats the whole purpose of running an independent candidate in the first place. Of course, the Republicans would also be doing everything possible to portray the independent candidate as a puppet of Nancy Pelosi and AOC, which wouldn't exactly help things in a red-leaning state either.
Another way to put, let's imagine that, as a Democratic voter in a blue-leaning state, Republicans chose to not field a candidate and back an independent. Would you actually consider voting for that independent, or would you view it as a sneaky trick by the Republicans to try and steal what should be a safe blue seat by confusing voters? If your answer is the latter, it's unreasonable to not expect red-state Republicans in an R vs. I race to do likewise.
A potential option is a serious push for open primaries/run-offs which would sidestep this whole issue of putting Osborn-like independents in a position to win in states like NE/AK/TX/FL/OH/IA/KS without having to convince the local Ds to not run anyone.
Keep up the good work!
Find a MAGA republican candidate in Maine to primary Collins from the right and fund the crap out of them. This is sleazy tactics but it has a good chance of working.
Aside from Sage in Iowa and Cooper in NC, who would be some other good candidates to run? Jared Golden seems like a terrific opportunity to challenge Collins - who only won by single digits for the first time since 1996 her last election, is running underwater in approval ratings right now, and will be 73 next year.
I thought Allred was an outstanding candidate in TX, but MY is right, there needs to be something to shake up the race, you can't win a conventional Dem campaign.
Alaska, like Maine, can be a bit quirky in election, not always voting in a partisan manner. Could Mary Peltola have a chance to win? AK House leader Bryce Edgmon (former Dem, now undeclared)? Any other good AK candidates? (Also, why haven't Dems offered Lisa Murkowski whatever she wants to flip parties?)
In a big wave election, KS could be in play - Roger Marshall has had some of the lowest approval ratings of any Senator. Rep. Sharice Davids outperformed Harris by 7 points. I don't know that she would have much appeal outside the KC metro area, but she has taken that district off "toss up" lists. I think the electorate has had enough of perennial millionaire independent candidate Greg Orman. The party could really use a good - and perhaps unconventional candidate here.
no idea what will happen today, but it seems that trump genuinely prefers carney as his foil
This isn't a fully baked thought, but there was a sea change at some point, the Blue Dogs have mostly vanished. Moderate now means New Democrat types. I'm having difficulty imagining a Democratic party that actively encouraged Blue Doggishness. Pelosi did a much better job making the party safe for the capitalists. One can imagine a Democratic party that embraced outright conservativism in reaction to the increasingly revolutionary MAGA movement. I'm struggling to see how the party we have could get there, though.
"and “illegal immigration creates a pool of cheap labor with no rights and is detrimental to every American worker” does more work to explain it."
I think this is really smart because (a) people do care about illegal immigration and want it stopped; and (b) you differentiate yourselves from Republicans on the issue by coming at it from a pro-labor angle instead of a xenophobic/racist angle, which makes it seem more authentic and more attractive to blue collar union workers.
Dems need to be reframing more "difficult" topics like this. They don't need to abandon their values, but they need a way to shift paradigms and get out of the rut of begin reactionary to the right and offering small-bore tax credits and regulations as a solution to everything.
“"and “illegal immigration creates a pool of cheap labor with no rights and is detrimental to every American worker” does more work to explain it."”
Even if it’s not true.
The problem is, as the Great DoorDash Panic of 2023 showed, people aren't willing to give up cheap labor.
So here's the weird thing: if “law-abiding citizens have, and must always have, the right to bear arms” and “illegal immigration creates a pool of cheap labor with no rights and is detrimental to every American worker” are socially/culturally conservative positions, too moderate for Democrats to run on...
Then why is NOBODY, Democrat or Left outsider, seemingly willing to try the Bernie 2016-Dan Osborn proposition of being "conservative" on culture-war garbage and left-wing on economics? I would consider myself to Osborn's left, but that's because I *do* favor the large-scale welfare-state and infrastructure spending stuff. I would never dream of saying, "just throw away winnable elections for a generation because you don't want to compromise on open borders and gun-grabbing." Hell, I'd much rather negotiate with Osborn about an infrastructure or welfare-state bill than with Joe Manchin.
"If you make the decision to give answers that are popular with the voters of Iowa, then the national audience of donors and nonprofit staffers and social media junkies needs to decide how to respond to that."
Is the above point that the groups mentioned do not need to be creating a narrative that the candidate is an amoral monster? Or there needs to be candidates with very thick skin who stick to their guns on some issue specific moderation and expect some pushback?
My personal plan would be have three main planks. Dems need to actually run first and foremost on preserving and restoring Democracy, which means an attention-grabbing platform of radical but broadly popular governance reforms: term limits on Congress, age limits on judges, a ban on insider trading (i.e., require blind trusts during terms in office), non-partisan primaries, national referendums for hot-button issues, an end to presidential pardon power, an end to presidential immunity. In other words, they need a hard rebranding away from the insider, institutional image that dogs them more than anything else, and that backs up their messaging about saving democracy.
Second, on specific issues and messaging: Dems need to aggressively go after religious voters or back independent candidates that do. I've posted about this before but Trump's "win" on abortion (sending it back to the states) has created an opening with this group for the first time in at least a generation, and it's political malfeasance that we haven't seen any attempt by now. We don't need to win evangelicals or Catholic conservatives, but carving into those margins even a bit would pay massive electoral dividends, especially in the south and midwest.
Third, and long-term: Dems need to TRY, everywhere. The "forget-the-south" strategy Dems put in place after 2000 has almost as much to do with our current situation as anything Republicans have done, and it's frankly unsustainable in the current media environment. Trump was holding rallies in the Bronx not because his campaign thought he could actually win in New York, but because they understood that social media makes every state's election far more correlated than in years past, and carving into margins among voters of color in New York would have knock-on effects in Detroit in Milwaukee. In the same vein, failing to show up at Oklahoma rodeos in 2026 WILL have knock-on effects in Texas and Kansas.
I don't understand how Trump's judicial nominees are more "hand-picked" than a Democratic president's would be. Obviously presidents "pick" nominees and get advice on that from legal experts. Is there a difference between "hand-picking" and just "choosing" that I'm not aware of?
As for the judges being lackeys.... Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch haven't agreed with each other on every single issue. They are Republican and conservative to be sure, but I don't see more unanimity from them than I have recent Democratic nominees.
I have two words for you - "Federalist Society". Two more - "Leonard Leo". And finally four words that go with those, and have for the Rs ever since 1990 - "No more Souters. Ever." Get through that thicket and you're mighty close to "hand-picked". And watch the Trump appointees on the lower federal courts engage in performative MAGA-ism from the bench in order to catch the eye of the Caudillo or whichever one of his minions keeps his eyes peeled for the next dime-store Carl Schmitt (Aileen Cannon, Matt Kacsmaryk, James Ho, Kyle Duncan - just for starters). Their unanimity is around overthrowing pretty much any caselaw since the 1930s that enhanced legislated or administrative federal regulatory power, constrained the executive or expanded 14th-amendment-based rights.
It’s not a plan per se, but I think the Dems need their “Trump”, as in a charismatic leader willing to force the party into embracing what voters want. Even if it’s on a purely rhetorical level, GOP leadership no longer pushes Medicare cuts and Social Security privatization.
Dem party leadership by all appearances is too feckless attempt any major changes on their own, it has to be someone willing to break with them and someone who can command a crowd like Trump and a Bernie.
Whining that the left won’t cooperate and keeps undermining us isn’t a plan, it’s just a loser mentality that will continue to feed into the left maintaining enough power to do said undermining.
As a counterpoint to today's piece, I present this opinion by Jonathan V Last of The Bulwark (JVL to his friends). The unofficial motto of The Bulwark is "JVL Is Always Right"!
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/dear-democrats-stfu-about-woke-ports-empty-los-angeles-seattle
Sorry for stating the blatantly obvious, but, given the overall content of this thread, it apparently needs to be said, so here is an excerpt from JVL's piece:
"After Mitt Romney lost in 2012 the Republican party did an autopsy and determined that it had a massive brand problem: Voters thought that Republicans were racists and anti-abortion zealots; Hispanic voters, especially, wanted no part of them. The party leaders declared that in order to repair the brand they had to change the party’s policy proposals and meet voters where they were.
In response... Donald Trump ran on anti-immigrant xenophobia and promising to overturn Roe v. Wade. He played footsie with white nationalists and dined with neo-Nazis. Instead of making the GOP more hospitable to independent voters, Trump leaned all the way into the “worst” aspects of the party’s brand.
He then won the presidency and subsequently increased his vote-share in each of the next two elections.
I’m not saying that Democrats should lean into progressivism and go Based Woke. I’m just saying that these things can work in different ways."
I think he has a point, in that Trump's policies are about to sneak up on us and make everybody's lives shittier on a timetable that I have to admit I did not understand or see coming. Under those circumstances, the theory ignore the left don't fight them, is part of a good strategy. But I think it is incomplete, and Matt's point is that you need to have some plan of how to take advantage of the shittiness that's more than just "things will be so shitty Texans will vote for anybody without an R next to their name." I think partisanship mitigates that hope. Maybe we don't have to beat back the AOCs and Bernies, but we really do have to have some people ready to go, and we have to at least protect them from sabotage from the left.
Regarding the point of how quickly things are going to be weird and bad, again I have to admit I did not understand this, and I consider myself both well informed and economically savvy. These markers, like goods in transit, don't seem to be roiling the markets today like they were a few weeks ago, and I don't understand that. On the political front, we need our democratic leaders to start highlighting these things and pointing out what's going to be bad, and more importantly, IT'S ALL TRUMP AND THE REPUBLICANS' FAULT.
Trump was a former Democrat who bucked long-standing GOP orthodoxy on things like entitlement cuts, not unlike say a Democrat in 2024-2026 who embraces free trade and environmental deregulation.
The 2014-2016 GOP equivalent to the modern progressive faction was the Freedom Caucus and libertarians like Rand Paul who viewed the GOP establishment as "weak" because they didn't cut taxes and deregulate hard enough.
Something something conservatives are 40% of voters blah blah blah this is why we be meaner to people Democratic base voters like.
The 40% part is true - the thing those people don't mention is part of the reason the GOP doesn't have the supermajorities David Shor thought they'd have in 2014-ish (I think) is because much of that 40% has radicalized itself in ways that make San Francisco overreaches look like the kind of local silliness it is.
Look, Jesse, I know we've disagreed a lot and I'm still to the right of you, sounds like, but I really appreciate you being here and providing a counterweight to the depressingly many comments along the lines of "let's beat up on Teh Groupz because that's the only way to court the Median Non-College-Educated White Guy in Suburban Wisconsin." So, thank you.
I'd make the argument a lot of people here, including Matt, are still stuck in 2020's fights the same way frankly, entirely too many people on Bluesky are still stuck on the 2016 primary.
Like, go ahead, run your perfect anti-woke anti-choice candidate in South Carolina. Don't be surprised when that candidate only gets 47% after getting lots of superPAC help and it turns out turnout among pro-choice college educated women in the urban areas of Charleston didn't do as well as the previous normie Democrat who got 44%.
The 'Groups won't less run a moderate' is the same as the 'neoliberals screwed us true progressives in the primary.'
No, most normie Democrat's just don't want either a super centrist who doesn't seem like they really like the Democratic parry or an uberprogressive leftie who doesn't seem like they really like the Democratic party.
It turns out Democratic voters like Democrat's and Democratic policies.
Larry Hogan outran Donald Trump in every? precinct in my state, some more than others but it's not like he struggled in very MAGA rural areas. Manchin outran Hillary dramatically everywhere, more in some areas than others but he ran way ahead of her in college towns and urban areas too. I think the tradeoff here is overstated. A lot of dems in deep red areas want to win, and that can motivate a lot of turnout.
In Louisiana, we went in 2019 from a pro-gun, pro-life, pro-cop white governor to a moderate-lib black guy in 2023 and not only did democrat vote percentage drop (even among black voters!) dem turnout dropped a lot too (especially among black voters!). The chance to back a candidate who they disagreed with on many things but obviously is much closer to them than a republican and can actually win can do wonders for turnout!
Louisiana is an R+12 state, equivalent toNebraska. Ohio, Iowa, or Alaska are R+6-8, which while difficult is still a different beast, just like New Jersey is different than Maryland for a Republican.
Also, LA's slightly different in that socially conservative minorities and a rural white vote that are still overrepresented to a certain extent in the Democratic voting base they way they really aren't in say, Kansas or South Carolina due to cultural factors of Lousiana specifically.
Also, the turnout in 2019 for an incumbent is different than an open seat in 2023 - for example in 2015, turnout overall was 1.114 million vs. 2023's turnout of 1.062 million. 2019's turnout of 1.343 million seems to be the outlier here.
I'm not saying a normie lib could've done as well as JBE, but I'd also point out Bel Edwards also expanded Medicaid and ironically, was more supportive of LGBT policies than you'd guess. In other words, he gave people in 2019 something to turn out for, even if he was more moderate on other policies.
I'm also not against this - John Hood & Robert Presley have run the sort of campaigns you want in Mississippi and the ceiling there continues to be about 46-47%, in part because neither of them have been lucky enough to be running against a laughably uncharismatic corrupt candidate like David Vitter in the pre-Trump era.
I'll be blunt here - John Bel Edwards running the same campaign in 2019 against a Vitter who is running for his 1st term opposed to 2015? JBE probably loses because we've had 3 years of 'lol nothing matters' filtering down to the sort of voters who probably did shift to JBE over Vitter in 2015.
Obviously, I can't say that for sure, but it's a feeling.