Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party: Farmers, truck drivers, railroad workers --- the people I come from believed in the DFL and unions. I was the first in my family to earn a college degree thanks to the Pell Grant and other grants and loans brought to me by liberal policies. Do you know how poor you had to be in the 80s to qualify? I do. I also know that I get lumped in with college-educated suburban white women voters, which doesn't reflect the fact that I spend half of my life on a Native reservation and am definitely not well-to-do. So STOP! Stop talking about voters in categories. Stop winning groups of voters and start winning human beings! I for one would like to see someone who sees all voters as human beings with essential needs. Someone who is planning for the obstacles we all face. A UNIFIER who can speak to the big tent. Because winning voters by focusing on what divides us does not seem to be working.
Categories are not intended to reflect any specific members of the category. We still need categories as just one critical thinking tool to help understand what’s going on.
That said, I have a problem with “working class” just because America never had a class system. Instead we had a race system.
Britain moved away from their class system. America moved away from our race system.
Both countries have somewhat moved on from the days where the newspaper want ads were divided into “Jobs for Women” and “Jobs for Men.”
It just hasn’t been that long yet, so we can still see evidence of it. I don’t think it makes sense to pretend these identities are not important. I think it informs part of why people might be on Team Red or Team Blue. Just my opinion.
I agree, Erik. I think categories are useful for Party strategy. And if pundits want to use them, they will. I am talking about the way that candidates address their voters or speak about their voters. Candidates need to speak to all people, not just their key categories. By focusing on certain groups, they neglected other groups and the Republicans seized on that and twisted it.
Dan, I very much agree with the anti-corruption proposals. Additionally, I'd like to see Dems strongly push a broad mantra to "rebuild our middle class." Every proposal should mention this aim. Start with tax code overhaul. Simplify it and make it transparent, and more fair! Orient the tax code to more favor true work (goods or services) vs. passive investment income and so many loopholes that benefit the already wealthy. Propose further tax benefits for community service workers, eg, public school teachers, police and fire. Not only could this approach be good policy, but also politically potent.
You are spot on. But I fear tax changes like this wouldn’t even pass a Dem controlled Congress because far too many Dems are in thrall to the tax ideas pushed by corporations and the wealthy
I hate to be callous, but we're just talking about POLICY for the election. Whether any of it can be passed is another issue. But having it as a stated goal is vital. (Altho I'm not convinced term limits - beyond a flashy cosmetic fix - is a meaningful reform to improve our politics.)
During the campaign, Harris donor and Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman called for Lina Khan ro be fired, because, he said, she was making war on business. Harris was silent. This was very bad. She had been handed an opportunity for a "Sistah Souljah" moment, in which a Democratic candidate calls out a democratic constituency suspect in the eyes of the wider public, in this case the very corporate elite the wider public now fears and loathes, to the point they celebrate their murders (yes, I'm referring to Saint Luigi).
This is emblematic of the problem you identify. I'd add that the people whose votes we need need an enemy, it's a psychological imperative for them. How to give them that, ie, "Eat the Rich", without panicking the horses in the suburbs will be tricky, but less tricky than Biden found it, I suspect, once Trump and his billionaires crash the economy.
The current head of the DNC, whose name I can't be bothered to remember, remarked there were good and bad billionaires. Very, very, bad. The point is, we have no way to control, to protect ourselves from, the bad ones. And they are, inevitably, mostly bad. Brandeis was right, we can have concentrated private wealth and power, or we can have democracy - which we are now watching dying before our eyes.
Great analysis. I forgot about Hoffman telling Harris to fire Khan. I remember being disgusted in the moment when Harris said nothing. But at that point her corporate lawyer brother in law Tony West had seized control of her messaging and her brief foray into populism died. Sympathizers at the time said Harris did the best she could with the bad hand Biden dealt her but her extreme caution and unwillingness to break with Biden, even a little, cost her the election
Actually, I view her muddying the economic populism message AS "breaking with Biden". The most fiercely populist night of the convention was the first, the night Biden spoke. It was corporate media that trashed and toxicified Biden, that muffled his message, buried his successes, and corporate Democrats seemed fine with it. Remember who stuck with Biden. Bernia and AOC, not Nancy Pelosi!
You're correct Biden governed like a populist But he was such a poor communicator that nobody knew it and he didn't get credit for it. By break with Biden, I mean separate because he was so unpopular. But the only thing that was happening, which I learned from Tapper's book, is that Biden was pressuring her to stay the course, using "no daylight" as his stick to keep Kamala in line. Biden accomplished much But he and his advisors kept the truth of his infirmity from America until it was too late to pursue any course other than passing the baton to Kamala
I actually don't buy the infirmity. I saw multtiple instances when he was very quick and pitch perfect. In fact just saw one at the funeral of the two lawmakers in Minnesota. At any rate, I remember Reagan in 1984. Trust me, his decline was absolutely a thing. He won 49 States.
It's important to see just what Biden was up against communicating. The corporate media was dominated by Republican talking points. He had no media organs like the RW does. And remember, commanding attention is all Trump does, it's his entire toolbox. Unlike Biden, he doesn't govern at all.
Democrats could have mobilized to counter this RW advantage, but mostly just wrung their hands about how Biden wasn't doing it all. It's not for nothing that the institutional weakness of the Democratic party is a commonplace.
Please don’t give Biden a pass. There are many instances of Member of Congress experiencing Biden either forgetting them and forgetting his train of thought. And this was long before the debate trainwreck. A candidate with his dismal approval rating combined with his age had no business running for a second term. And it’s not like the polls on whether he should or should not run didn’t reflect that. The right wing propaganda machine is a perpetual reality. And it didn’t work when Obama ran and he is black. And why? Because he was young, charismatic, and brilliant. Biden accomplished a lot. But he should have stuck to his pledge to be a bridge. If he had his legacy would be in tact rather than in tatters
I'd check out what Joesph Stiglitz has to say about the Obama administration, Novara media on You Tube. Obama got one major piece of legislation passed, w/ 59-60 Senators. With 50, Biden passed at least four.
Obama won probabiy because the Republiicans nominated a for real, actual, predatory capitalist, who spouted Ayn Rand to donors. His campaign exploited that to the hilt.
It really helped to counter "Where's my bailout" backlash.
Ms. Khan stopped the Albertsons/Kroger merger and stopped Spirit/JetBlue merger. In my view stopping these mergers didn’t help anyone. Stores are still closing anyway, people are losing their jobs and Spirit is weeks or days away from total collapse.
I think this was an example of the Executive branch picking winners and losers based on popular outrage on Twitter instead of having any kind of plan.
Notice the Biden Administration allowed Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines merger to sail through at the same time there were fighting these other two.
I’m not saying “don’t stop mergers,” but to make a rule about it instead of doing it randomly sometimes and not other times.
I’ve seen reports that about the first thing Lina Khan did was develop and promulgate revised doctrine, and that similar process took place at the Anti Trust Division at DOJ under Jonathan Kanter. Both came in with a thought out agenda, a “neo-Brandeisian” revival of anti-trust, which they had been writing and speaking about for some time. Biden was well aware of what they, and others, intended.
This was not an accidental or arbitrary process. It was integral part of Biden’s ‘New Deal 2.0’ agenda - for that IS what it was.
I've read Lina Khan's famous paper about how bad Amazon is. She has some points. She concludes Amazon will hurt consumers and hurt investors. That could happen. She concludes price and output are insufficient indicators of harm. She proposed an "essential facilities doctrine" with a four-factor test but that doesn't apply to either of these blocked mergers. Also:
1. Blocking Spirit and JetBlue BENEFITED United by keeping two of it's competitors smaller and weaker.
2. Blocking Albertsons and Kroger BENEFITED Walmart for the same reason.
3. Not blocking Alaska and Hawaiian expanded the number of nonstop routes served by only one airline. Many of these routes are over water so driving, bus or trains are not options. Only a ship. In my opinion it will lead to job losses and cost cutting or Alaska wouldn't have any incentive to have gone through with it.
None of this made any sense outside of following the Twitter mob in my opinion.
This is a great outline for a strong offense. But, I worry that it ignores the need for a strong defense when the Republicans and the right wing media machine will inevitably turn the conversation to all of the "controversial" issues - medicare for all, LGBTQ rights, racial justice, immigration, etc. Dems either try to get very technical in their responses (actually immigration is a civil offense, not a criminal offense) or they are so afraid of saying the wrong thing, they end up saying nothing. Pete's response to the late term abortion question brought it to a very human level that I think really helped blunt that attack. Andy Beshear doesn't shy away from LGBTQ rights. He brings it back to his faith and a very core fundamental belief. But, they are the exception. Elissa Slotkin I think just says ignore all that stuff. Newsom throws trans people under the bus. We absolutely need a strong offense but it has to go hand in hand with a strong defense. But the only thing I hear from anyone in leadership is focus on economics and ignore everything else.
This “everything that doesn’t focus on the economy is a distraction” crap that far too many Dems push ignores the fact that Republicans have consistently won on cultural issue. Time for the Dems to reframe the issues they are too scared to run on. Time for Dems to be less scared overall
Agree. I think R's very successfully use cultural issues to deploy their economic message. Perfect example: "she cares about they/them, he cares about you". Turn cultural issues into economic ones. Don't shy away from either, but make everything two-pronged. R's have done that unfortunately much, much better than Dems.
This point about Newsom: I have heard Newsom say this about trans athletes, that for scholastic low-level games and competitions, that these should be open to all. But when athletic competition is at the level where women are building toward a career or scholarships, trans athletes should not compete as they have too great of an unfair advantage over those born as female.
Now agree or not, that’s a nuanced and thoughtful position. It’s not a position born of bigotry or hatred.
I was referring to his podcast with Charlie Kirk where he used phrases like “i agree it’s deeply unfair” and appeared to agree with Kirk’s position or at least his words could later be used by others to imply that so that later conversations were dominated by that and no one is talking about the issues that Dan says Democrats should be talking about.
with Kirk and took what he said to be merely drawing Kirk out.
I was generally not a fan of Newsom’s early podcasts. I thought I knew what he was doing, but I thought he just ended up providing airtime to right-wingers to spout their horrible opinions unchallenged.
I also got tired of hearing the phrase “I appreciate that”.
He may be the nominee. He has some time to improve.
Please can I ask a question, as one of your UK subscribers, why is it a bad idea for Democrats to elect a leader after the election, not wait until close to the next elections? In the UK we elect immediately and have a Leader of the Opposition who then is the focal point for all opposition and has time to formulate policy. I know you all push back when that is suggested, but why as so much criticism of the Democrats is about lack of leadership. and Trump as the de facto leader of the Republicans even before a Primary meant voters knew who to look to. thanks
If I understand where you are coming from, this has to with America not having a parliamentary system. The president is not a member of either legislative house; he’s elected separately.
Elections for leadership are held for each new Congress, but only within each house of Congress. Typically, the party out of power does not change its leadership, though. If you ask me, Democratic leadership across the board should have fallen on their swords after the 2024 election, but that’s a different story.
In America House of Commons = House of Representatives. The Democratic Leader is Mr. Hakeem Jeffries. Our House of Lords, "the Senate," is led by Mr. Chuck Schumer. Those two are often viewed as major leaders of the opposition.
With America's federal system, each state has quite a bit of power. Ms. Laura Kelly is Governor of Kansas and Chair of the Democratic Governors Association. Mr. Gavin Newsom, Governor of California is a prolific leader in the party right now.
The Democratic State Attorneys General are also quite powerful and coordinate as well.
Now, Before the Midterms: 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! We need to be in Republican Faces Every Day like they are in ours.
For Example, " Your Representative in Congress, (first name, last name) Just Voted to slash Your Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP Benefits to Pay for Tax Cuts for the Rich! VOTE HIM (HER) OUT."
Is that a slight overstatement of facts? Certainly, but that's what Republicans do all the time and we need to counterattack using the same tactics and be UBIQUITOUS about it, e.g., Billboards.
Keep pounding this message home Dan. Maybe some of the feckless Dems in Congress will listen. More importantly, these positions appear to be bubbling up from the grassroots. Dems have just won a state race in Iowa by 11 points in a district Trump won by 10
Dems don’t even have to be particularly pro-union. They just have to be pro-all the things that unions do to make the lives of their members better. They have to remind people of why unions were formed and exist in the first place. To be the collective voice for the traditionally voiceless. In fact, if Dems just embrace this concept themselves, that they too, are the voice for those who have never had one and for those who feel as if they’ve lost their voice (and here voice=power) and if they apply that mission to everything they do, they will (hopefully)start making choices that feel better for their voters and also, maybe find a little courage of their convictions (looking at you, Schumer, Pelosi, and Jeffries. Oh and every Dem operative who helped tank Kamala’s campaign by making it milquetoast)
Imagine messages that turn the Republicans' "makers and takers" slur on it's head.
Visuals of farm workers, mechanics, pub owners, teachers, construction workers, nurses etc with a "We make America" message, contrasted with Trump and his oligarchs and yachts and gold toilets with "They take from America", followed with "Make America fair, for everyone".
Probably far too confrontational for today's Dem leadership, and it would piss off the donors, but hooboy, that would feel good and likely speak to a lot of voters.
I would wish that NYC politics would not become an avatar for National Democratics. NYC has fairly unique problems that don't translate to the rest of the country. Our mass transit system is comprehensive but old. The subway has grown over the decades by patching 3 independent systems together. Our crowded neighborhoods make rents & thus grocery store prices higher than they otherwise would be. Even our park systems are generally kept up by independent foundations rather than direct city funds. School union systems can make it difficult to access independent social work projects.
Mamdani is a local politician who is actively and creatively addressing these and other issues by talking to everyday people all the time. This aspect of who he is & how he is functioning is what Democrats across the country can emulate. (Last weekend Mamdani organized an impromptu citywide scavenger hunt)l. Thousands, apparently, participated. He spoke to so many in this fun setting. It was fabulous! It got us out of our cloistered neighborhoods)
Look no further than the Dems’ Herculean effort to distance themselves from Mamdani in order to assess what’s absolutely upside-down in their party. Instead of embracing this grassroots populist movement with full-throated endorsements (have there been any??) and doing their level best to adopt and emulate Mamdani’s contemporary and essential strategies for communicating and campaigning the Dems insist on pretending everything is politics as usual and sticking Chuck fucking Schumer in front of microphones at every opportunity. Have they done any meaningful post-mortem on the complete ass kicking they just received? Nope. We’d like to think that Biden’s insisting to run again was the main problem with the party (and that was huge) but it runs far deeper than anybody in leadership wants to admit.
We need to be calling out republicans at every opportunity. Trump is one man, albeit the President, he could not do any of this without the compliance the GOP is showing
Probably best to start with talking like middle class people and not coded language. Big ideas are hard to come by, but something like no fed tax on people under 30 years old and make less than 100k. Keep it simple!
But I think it is a very big mistake to confuse Romney voters with Harris voters - there are some demographic similarities, but they are different people. That is, Romney voters did not switch to Harris except for a fairly small number of never-Trumpers who held their nose and pulled for Harris. I suspect part of what happened was just old country club Republicans dying and younger, more socially liberal college educated voters showing up. Most Romney voters held their noses and voted for Trump. Most Obama voters voted for Harris with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The percentages changed for other reasons, but Romney voters did not become Harris voters.
However, the shift in working class voters is real. Whole neigborhoods that Obama carried were carried by Trump by significant margins. I am not sure we understand why, but I think there is something to the "Strangers in Their Own Land" argument. If you are white and struggling and went to fairly crappy schools because your parents struggled after the Reagan revolution it may really frost you to hear about your alleged "White Privilege." It is not that the chunk of Trump voters we need really hate Chappell Roan - those folks are a lost cause. It is just that non-princess (or prince) cis-gender, heterosexual mid-westerners need to believe we also on their side. And if they don't have privilege in general, they cannot have white privilege. Today, too many people feel far from the concerns of the Democratic party, and that is not wholly the creation of Right media.
I am not a big Texiera fan; I think many of his specifics are wrong, or crabbed, or both, but he does make us think about majoritarian politics. We do not lead with "Good Schools for Everyone," or "Health Care Access for Everyone." We lead with "The Marginalized do not ..." But you do not have to be marginalized to be struggling in the U.S.A.
Well said. I have no idea what "non-princess (or prince) cis-gender, heterosexual mid-westerners" means, but it was hilarious reading it.
Agree here. I made the point that no one who works a physically tough job for too many hours for too little money is particularly privileged, on another substack, but was attacked to various degrees for it. I don't mind the attacks at all, but I think it would be good to ditch that mindset.
Our politics shouldn't be a competition to see who is the most victimized subset of people.
Or, just quit talking about privilege. It just leads to a sociology debate meaningless to anyone older than a college sophomore. It adds to the belief that Democrats are just looking for a way to lecture people. You’re correct, a voter who works at a physically tiring job has no patience about hearing they’re privileged. It sounds stupid. And is stupid if your aim is to elect someone with a majority.
Have you looked at the numbers of Biden — Trump voters? You are dead wrong. That number was not small. It was greater than the winning margin in the election.
5% of Biden's 81 million votes is slightly more than 4 million votes. Trump’s winning margin was 2.3 million votes. So… they DID provide the winning margin. As I said.
It is possible to support the civil rights of transgender people and still protect women’s sports, which is a new and fragile institution and does not need the controversy of who is eligible to compete. Please do not give the Republicans the “they them” weapon.
"Donald Trump ran and won on two ideas: he would lower costs and take on a corrupt, broken political system that has failed the working class for far too long." What irony, what a joke. I don't see why Democrats, esp those running for office or in office, are not using this as the key message, you can write it all yourselves in one sentence. I would add that he won on a return to true, dominant patriarchy. I do believe we made some mistakes in some ways there, I was in grad school just prior and men were not called on, and women teachers literally said to us women: this is our time, and truly ignored male students who were on our side, trying to do good work. But still. What is happening is so ugly the messages all seem obvious to me.
Yeah, Dems always say they're a big tent party, but seem to not want young, white men in there :-)
I'm only one of three men in my office-- all the rest are whip-smart, accomplished young women, who hate Trump and all but one are fairly progressive. But the whole men-women power structure thing doesn't dominate their worldview, even though they are very aware of the coded and not-so-coded language of sex politics these days.
Ya gotta take care of everybody, right? You do not diminish people so that others can rise, unless it is about unfair wealth. That is whole different issue.
There are a few reasons we’re losing the working class. First, Dems at the federal level get done maybe half of what they promise. Obama promised high-speed rail, an infrastructure bank, universal broadband, and a major national rebuilding effort. Still waiting. Remember “shovel-ready”?
Biden got Chips and Infrastructure done, but the rollout was pitiful. The amount of broadband rolled out under the infrastructure bill? Zero. Dems promised expanded voting rights and a ban on gerrymandering. Nothing — and Dems delivered the perception that they cared more about student loan forgiveness than anything else. By working on it persistently.
We hear Dems talking to working class folks as though we’re missionaries bent on converting them to be us — better educated, more refined, with cleaner fingernails. They want a more secure life and more opportunity; they don’t aspire to become Niles Crane.
No one votes against Dems because of their position on trans issues. They vote against Dems stupid enough to deliver the message that they believe that type of issue is what an election should be decided on.
Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party: Farmers, truck drivers, railroad workers --- the people I come from believed in the DFL and unions. I was the first in my family to earn a college degree thanks to the Pell Grant and other grants and loans brought to me by liberal policies. Do you know how poor you had to be in the 80s to qualify? I do. I also know that I get lumped in with college-educated suburban white women voters, which doesn't reflect the fact that I spend half of my life on a Native reservation and am definitely not well-to-do. So STOP! Stop talking about voters in categories. Stop winning groups of voters and start winning human beings! I for one would like to see someone who sees all voters as human beings with essential needs. Someone who is planning for the obstacles we all face. A UNIFIER who can speak to the big tent. Because winning voters by focusing on what divides us does not seem to be working.
Well said, fellow Pell grant recipient here.
I cannot claim to have ever lived in poverty, but I think you are right and I think you have framed it beautifully.
Categories are not intended to reflect any specific members of the category. We still need categories as just one critical thinking tool to help understand what’s going on.
That said, I have a problem with “working class” just because America never had a class system. Instead we had a race system.
Britain moved away from their class system. America moved away from our race system.
Both countries have somewhat moved on from the days where the newspaper want ads were divided into “Jobs for Women” and “Jobs for Men.”
It just hasn’t been that long yet, so we can still see evidence of it. I don’t think it makes sense to pretend these identities are not important. I think it informs part of why people might be on Team Red or Team Blue. Just my opinion.
I agree, Erik. I think categories are useful for Party strategy. And if pundits want to use them, they will. I am talking about the way that candidates address their voters or speak about their voters. Candidates need to speak to all people, not just their key categories. By focusing on certain groups, they neglected other groups and the Republicans seized on that and twisted it.
Dan, I very much agree with the anti-corruption proposals. Additionally, I'd like to see Dems strongly push a broad mantra to "rebuild our middle class." Every proposal should mention this aim. Start with tax code overhaul. Simplify it and make it transparent, and more fair! Orient the tax code to more favor true work (goods or services) vs. passive investment income and so many loopholes that benefit the already wealthy. Propose further tax benefits for community service workers, eg, public school teachers, police and fire. Not only could this approach be good policy, but also politically potent.
You are spot on. But I fear tax changes like this wouldn’t even pass a Dem controlled Congress because far too many Dems are in thrall to the tax ideas pushed by corporations and the wealthy
I hate to be callous, but we're just talking about POLICY for the election. Whether any of it can be passed is another issue. But having it as a stated goal is vital. (Altho I'm not convinced term limits - beyond a flashy cosmetic fix - is a meaningful reform to improve our politics.)
Community service workers should be paid more, not taxed less.
During the campaign, Harris donor and Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman called for Lina Khan ro be fired, because, he said, she was making war on business. Harris was silent. This was very bad. She had been handed an opportunity for a "Sistah Souljah" moment, in which a Democratic candidate calls out a democratic constituency suspect in the eyes of the wider public, in this case the very corporate elite the wider public now fears and loathes, to the point they celebrate their murders (yes, I'm referring to Saint Luigi).
This is emblematic of the problem you identify. I'd add that the people whose votes we need need an enemy, it's a psychological imperative for them. How to give them that, ie, "Eat the Rich", without panicking the horses in the suburbs will be tricky, but less tricky than Biden found it, I suspect, once Trump and his billionaires crash the economy.
The current head of the DNC, whose name I can't be bothered to remember, remarked there were good and bad billionaires. Very, very, bad. The point is, we have no way to control, to protect ourselves from, the bad ones. And they are, inevitably, mostly bad. Brandeis was right, we can have concentrated private wealth and power, or we can have democracy - which we are now watching dying before our eyes.
Great analysis. I forgot about Hoffman telling Harris to fire Khan. I remember being disgusted in the moment when Harris said nothing. But at that point her corporate lawyer brother in law Tony West had seized control of her messaging and her brief foray into populism died. Sympathizers at the time said Harris did the best she could with the bad hand Biden dealt her but her extreme caution and unwillingness to break with Biden, even a little, cost her the election
Actually, I view her muddying the economic populism message AS "breaking with Biden". The most fiercely populist night of the convention was the first, the night Biden spoke. It was corporate media that trashed and toxicified Biden, that muffled his message, buried his successes, and corporate Democrats seemed fine with it. Remember who stuck with Biden. Bernia and AOC, not Nancy Pelosi!
You're correct Biden governed like a populist But he was such a poor communicator that nobody knew it and he didn't get credit for it. By break with Biden, I mean separate because he was so unpopular. But the only thing that was happening, which I learned from Tapper's book, is that Biden was pressuring her to stay the course, using "no daylight" as his stick to keep Kamala in line. Biden accomplished much But he and his advisors kept the truth of his infirmity from America until it was too late to pursue any course other than passing the baton to Kamala
I actually don't buy the infirmity. I saw multtiple instances when he was very quick and pitch perfect. In fact just saw one at the funeral of the two lawmakers in Minnesota. At any rate, I remember Reagan in 1984. Trust me, his decline was absolutely a thing. He won 49 States.
It's important to see just what Biden was up against communicating. The corporate media was dominated by Republican talking points. He had no media organs like the RW does. And remember, commanding attention is all Trump does, it's his entire toolbox. Unlike Biden, he doesn't govern at all.
Democrats could have mobilized to counter this RW advantage, but mostly just wrung their hands about how Biden wasn't doing it all. It's not for nothing that the institutional weakness of the Democratic party is a commonplace.
Please don’t give Biden a pass. There are many instances of Member of Congress experiencing Biden either forgetting them and forgetting his train of thought. And this was long before the debate trainwreck. A candidate with his dismal approval rating combined with his age had no business running for a second term. And it’s not like the polls on whether he should or should not run didn’t reflect that. The right wing propaganda machine is a perpetual reality. And it didn’t work when Obama ran and he is black. And why? Because he was young, charismatic, and brilliant. Biden accomplished a lot. But he should have stuck to his pledge to be a bridge. If he had his legacy would be in tact rather than in tatters
I'd check out what Joesph Stiglitz has to say about the Obama administration, Novara media on You Tube. Obama got one major piece of legislation passed, w/ 59-60 Senators. With 50, Biden passed at least four.
Obama won probabiy because the Republiicans nominated a for real, actual, predatory capitalist, who spouted Ayn Rand to donors. His campaign exploited that to the hilt.
It really helped to counter "Where's my bailout" backlash.
"Brief Foray into populism...," that says it all.
Ms. Khan stopped the Albertsons/Kroger merger and stopped Spirit/JetBlue merger. In my view stopping these mergers didn’t help anyone. Stores are still closing anyway, people are losing their jobs and Spirit is weeks or days away from total collapse.
I think this was an example of the Executive branch picking winners and losers based on popular outrage on Twitter instead of having any kind of plan.
So...lets let the consolidation of overweening and unaccountable economic power continue? We're already completely at its mercy.
Notice the Biden Administration allowed Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines merger to sail through at the same time there were fighting these other two.
I’m not saying “don’t stop mergers,” but to make a rule about it instead of doing it randomly sometimes and not other times.
I’ve seen reports that about the first thing Lina Khan did was develop and promulgate revised doctrine, and that similar process took place at the Anti Trust Division at DOJ under Jonathan Kanter. Both came in with a thought out agenda, a “neo-Brandeisian” revival of anti-trust, which they had been writing and speaking about for some time. Biden was well aware of what they, and others, intended.
This was not an accidental or arbitrary process. It was integral part of Biden’s ‘New Deal 2.0’ agenda - for that IS what it was.
I've read Lina Khan's famous paper about how bad Amazon is. She has some points. She concludes Amazon will hurt consumers and hurt investors. That could happen. She concludes price and output are insufficient indicators of harm. She proposed an "essential facilities doctrine" with a four-factor test but that doesn't apply to either of these blocked mergers. Also:
1. Blocking Spirit and JetBlue BENEFITED United by keeping two of it's competitors smaller and weaker.
2. Blocking Albertsons and Kroger BENEFITED Walmart for the same reason.
3. Not blocking Alaska and Hawaiian expanded the number of nonstop routes served by only one airline. Many of these routes are over water so driving, bus or trains are not options. Only a ship. In my opinion it will lead to job losses and cost cutting or Alaska wouldn't have any incentive to have gone through with it.
None of this made any sense outside of following the Twitter mob in my opinion.
This is a great outline for a strong offense. But, I worry that it ignores the need for a strong defense when the Republicans and the right wing media machine will inevitably turn the conversation to all of the "controversial" issues - medicare for all, LGBTQ rights, racial justice, immigration, etc. Dems either try to get very technical in their responses (actually immigration is a civil offense, not a criminal offense) or they are so afraid of saying the wrong thing, they end up saying nothing. Pete's response to the late term abortion question brought it to a very human level that I think really helped blunt that attack. Andy Beshear doesn't shy away from LGBTQ rights. He brings it back to his faith and a very core fundamental belief. But, they are the exception. Elissa Slotkin I think just says ignore all that stuff. Newsom throws trans people under the bus. We absolutely need a strong offense but it has to go hand in hand with a strong defense. But the only thing I hear from anyone in leadership is focus on economics and ignore everything else.
This “everything that doesn’t focus on the economy is a distraction” crap that far too many Dems push ignores the fact that Republicans have consistently won on cultural issue. Time for the Dems to reframe the issues they are too scared to run on. Time for Dems to be less scared overall
Agree. I think R's very successfully use cultural issues to deploy their economic message. Perfect example: "she cares about they/them, he cares about you". Turn cultural issues into economic ones. Don't shy away from either, but make everything two-pronged. R's have done that unfortunately much, much better than Dems.
This point about Newsom: I have heard Newsom say this about trans athletes, that for scholastic low-level games and competitions, that these should be open to all. But when athletic competition is at the level where women are building toward a career or scholarships, trans athletes should not compete as they have too great of an unfair advantage over those born as female.
Now agree or not, that’s a nuanced and thoughtful position. It’s not a position born of bigotry or hatred.
Has he said other things I just haven’t seen?
I was referring to his podcast with Charlie Kirk where he used phrases like “i agree it’s deeply unfair” and appeared to agree with Kirk’s position or at least his words could later be used by others to imply that so that later conversations were dominated by that and no one is talking about the issues that Dan says Democrats should be talking about.
Thanks. I heard his podcast
with Kirk and took what he said to be merely drawing Kirk out.
I was generally not a fan of Newsom’s early podcasts. I thought I knew what he was doing, but I thought he just ended up providing airtime to right-wingers to spout their horrible opinions unchallenged.
I also got tired of hearing the phrase “I appreciate that”.
He may be the nominee. He has some time to improve.
Please can I ask a question, as one of your UK subscribers, why is it a bad idea for Democrats to elect a leader after the election, not wait until close to the next elections? In the UK we elect immediately and have a Leader of the Opposition who then is the focal point for all opposition and has time to formulate policy. I know you all push back when that is suggested, but why as so much criticism of the Democrats is about lack of leadership. and Trump as the de facto leader of the Republicans even before a Primary meant voters knew who to look to. thanks
If I understand where you are coming from, this has to with America not having a parliamentary system. The president is not a member of either legislative house; he’s elected separately.
Elections for leadership are held for each new Congress, but only within each house of Congress. Typically, the party out of power does not change its leadership, though. If you ask me, Democratic leadership across the board should have fallen on their swords after the 2024 election, but that’s a different story.
In America House of Commons = House of Representatives. The Democratic Leader is Mr. Hakeem Jeffries. Our House of Lords, "the Senate," is led by Mr. Chuck Schumer. Those two are often viewed as major leaders of the opposition.
With America's federal system, each state has quite a bit of power. Ms. Laura Kelly is Governor of Kansas and Chair of the Democratic Governors Association. Mr. Gavin Newsom, Governor of California is a prolific leader in the party right now.
The Democratic State Attorneys General are also quite powerful and coordinate as well.
Now, Before the Midterms: 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! We need to be in Republican Faces Every Day like they are in ours.
For Example, " Your Representative in Congress, (first name, last name) Just Voted to slash Your Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP Benefits to Pay for Tax Cuts for the Rich! VOTE HIM (HER) OUT."
Is that a slight overstatement of facts? Certainly, but that's what Republicans do all the time and we need to counterattack using the same tactics and be UBIQUITOUS about it, e.g., Billboards.
Keep pounding this message home Dan. Maybe some of the feckless Dems in Congress will listen. More importantly, these positions appear to be bubbling up from the grassroots. Dems have just won a state race in Iowa by 11 points in a district Trump won by 10
Dems don’t even have to be particularly pro-union. They just have to be pro-all the things that unions do to make the lives of their members better. They have to remind people of why unions were formed and exist in the first place. To be the collective voice for the traditionally voiceless. In fact, if Dems just embrace this concept themselves, that they too, are the voice for those who have never had one and for those who feel as if they’ve lost their voice (and here voice=power) and if they apply that mission to everything they do, they will (hopefully)start making choices that feel better for their voters and also, maybe find a little courage of their convictions (looking at you, Schumer, Pelosi, and Jeffries. Oh and every Dem operative who helped tank Kamala’s campaign by making it milquetoast)
Imagine messages that turn the Republicans' "makers and takers" slur on it's head.
Visuals of farm workers, mechanics, pub owners, teachers, construction workers, nurses etc with a "We make America" message, contrasted with Trump and his oligarchs and yachts and gold toilets with "They take from America", followed with "Make America fair, for everyone".
Probably far too confrontational for today's Dem leadership, and it would piss off the donors, but hooboy, that would feel good and likely speak to a lot of voters.
I would wish that NYC politics would not become an avatar for National Democratics. NYC has fairly unique problems that don't translate to the rest of the country. Our mass transit system is comprehensive but old. The subway has grown over the decades by patching 3 independent systems together. Our crowded neighborhoods make rents & thus grocery store prices higher than they otherwise would be. Even our park systems are generally kept up by independent foundations rather than direct city funds. School union systems can make it difficult to access independent social work projects.
Mamdani is a local politician who is actively and creatively addressing these and other issues by talking to everyday people all the time. This aspect of who he is & how he is functioning is what Democrats across the country can emulate. (Last weekend Mamdani organized an impromptu citywide scavenger hunt)l. Thousands, apparently, participated. He spoke to so many in this fun setting. It was fabulous! It got us out of our cloistered neighborhoods)
Look no further than the Dems’ Herculean effort to distance themselves from Mamdani in order to assess what’s absolutely upside-down in their party. Instead of embracing this grassroots populist movement with full-throated endorsements (have there been any??) and doing their level best to adopt and emulate Mamdani’s contemporary and essential strategies for communicating and campaigning the Dems insist on pretending everything is politics as usual and sticking Chuck fucking Schumer in front of microphones at every opportunity. Have they done any meaningful post-mortem on the complete ass kicking they just received? Nope. We’d like to think that Biden’s insisting to run again was the main problem with the party (and that was huge) but it runs far deeper than anybody in leadership wants to admit.
We need to be calling out republicans at every opportunity. Trump is one man, albeit the President, he could not do any of this without the compliance the GOP is showing
Probably best to start with talking like middle class people and not coded language. Big ideas are hard to come by, but something like no fed tax on people under 30 years old and make less than 100k. Keep it simple!
You and Ruy Texiera should talk to each other!
But I think it is a very big mistake to confuse Romney voters with Harris voters - there are some demographic similarities, but they are different people. That is, Romney voters did not switch to Harris except for a fairly small number of never-Trumpers who held their nose and pulled for Harris. I suspect part of what happened was just old country club Republicans dying and younger, more socially liberal college educated voters showing up. Most Romney voters held their noses and voted for Trump. Most Obama voters voted for Harris with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The percentages changed for other reasons, but Romney voters did not become Harris voters.
However, the shift in working class voters is real. Whole neigborhoods that Obama carried were carried by Trump by significant margins. I am not sure we understand why, but I think there is something to the "Strangers in Their Own Land" argument. If you are white and struggling and went to fairly crappy schools because your parents struggled after the Reagan revolution it may really frost you to hear about your alleged "White Privilege." It is not that the chunk of Trump voters we need really hate Chappell Roan - those folks are a lost cause. It is just that non-princess (or prince) cis-gender, heterosexual mid-westerners need to believe we also on their side. And if they don't have privilege in general, they cannot have white privilege. Today, too many people feel far from the concerns of the Democratic party, and that is not wholly the creation of Right media.
I am not a big Texiera fan; I think many of his specifics are wrong, or crabbed, or both, but he does make us think about majoritarian politics. We do not lead with "Good Schools for Everyone," or "Health Care Access for Everyone." We lead with "The Marginalized do not ..." But you do not have to be marginalized to be struggling in the U.S.A.
Well said. I have no idea what "non-princess (or prince) cis-gender, heterosexual mid-westerners" means, but it was hilarious reading it.
Agree here. I made the point that no one who works a physically tough job for too many hours for too little money is particularly privileged, on another substack, but was attacked to various degrees for it. I don't mind the attacks at all, but I think it would be good to ditch that mindset.
Our politics shouldn't be a competition to see who is the most victimized subset of people.
Or, just quit talking about privilege. It just leads to a sociology debate meaningless to anyone older than a college sophomore. It adds to the belief that Democrats are just looking for a way to lecture people. You’re correct, a voter who works at a physically tiring job has no patience about hearing they’re privileged. It sounds stupid. And is stupid if your aim is to elect someone with a majority.
I think where there may be confusion is that it's much more likely for people to move from voting for their usual party to not voting (and vice versa)
So like to your point, we're not talking about all that many people who go all the way from Team Blue to Team Red.
Some people do, but it's very small.
Have you looked at the numbers of Biden — Trump voters? You are dead wrong. That number was not small. It was greater than the winning margin in the election.
79% of Biden voters voted Harris, 5% voted for Trump and 15% dropped off
5% of Biden's 81 million votes is slightly more than 4 million votes. Trump’s winning margin was 2.3 million votes. So… they DID provide the winning margin. As I said.
It is possible to support the civil rights of transgender people and still protect women’s sports, which is a new and fragile institution and does not need the controversy of who is eligible to compete. Please do not give the Republicans the “they them” weapon.
"Donald Trump ran and won on two ideas: he would lower costs and take on a corrupt, broken political system that has failed the working class for far too long." What irony, what a joke. I don't see why Democrats, esp those running for office or in office, are not using this as the key message, you can write it all yourselves in one sentence. I would add that he won on a return to true, dominant patriarchy. I do believe we made some mistakes in some ways there, I was in grad school just prior and men were not called on, and women teachers literally said to us women: this is our time, and truly ignored male students who were on our side, trying to do good work. But still. What is happening is so ugly the messages all seem obvious to me.
Completely agree. Excellent comment.
Yeah, Dems always say they're a big tent party, but seem to not want young, white men in there :-)
I'm only one of three men in my office-- all the rest are whip-smart, accomplished young women, who hate Trump and all but one are fairly progressive. But the whole men-women power structure thing doesn't dominate their worldview, even though they are very aware of the coded and not-so-coded language of sex politics these days.
Ya gotta take care of everybody, right? You do not diminish people so that others can rise, unless it is about unfair wealth. That is whole different issue.
There are a few reasons we’re losing the working class. First, Dems at the federal level get done maybe half of what they promise. Obama promised high-speed rail, an infrastructure bank, universal broadband, and a major national rebuilding effort. Still waiting. Remember “shovel-ready”?
Biden got Chips and Infrastructure done, but the rollout was pitiful. The amount of broadband rolled out under the infrastructure bill? Zero. Dems promised expanded voting rights and a ban on gerrymandering. Nothing — and Dems delivered the perception that they cared more about student loan forgiveness than anything else. By working on it persistently.
We hear Dems talking to working class folks as though we’re missionaries bent on converting them to be us — better educated, more refined, with cleaner fingernails. They want a more secure life and more opportunity; they don’t aspire to become Niles Crane.
No one votes against Dems because of their position on trans issues. They vote against Dems stupid enough to deliver the message that they believe that type of issue is what an election should be decided on.