Totally agree.. hmmm.. I think the first time I read "Epstein class" it was in a Heather Cox RIchardson Letter from an American. Just want her to get her due if that is true. :)
Great stuff from Dan, as we have come to expect. Absolutely agree on the necessity of using Ossoff’s (and AOC’s) approach.
But I do have to take issue with Dan’s statement about Trump.. “I never really bought that argument; it presumes a level of rationality and strategic thinking that Trump has never once demonstrated in his eight decades on this planet.”
I think it’s clear that we have underestimated Trump’s intellect at our own peril. Underestimating him has allowed him to take all the power he has, which is, you know, quite fucking considerable.
Yes, he has never been an intellectually curious man and has displayed genuine stupidity more times than anyone can count, and fortunately not every evil scheme he has attempted has been successful, but we should not ignore his unparalleled success as a conman. He is still very much a force to be reckoned with, not one to be dismissed for cathartic reasons.
Whatever he has planned for the midterms could easily make January 6th look like a Christmas pageant.
Even putting Trump aside, there's value in associating billionaires with pedophiles. Maybe Americans will finally fall out of love with them and we can create a more equitable tax system to make government work again.
To me, this is the fatal flaw in populism. While it certainly has positive attributes, its practitioners always end up making arguments that pit one class against another. Is this much different from Romney condemning 47% of the population as users and takers?
I agree partially. I wish there was no need to pit people against each other, but there are two reasons why it's necessary. First, people are unhappy with the decline in the standard of living in the country. If you want to gain people's support for your leadership, they need to buy into your worldview as to why they're in this situation. An anti-billionare narrative is clean, clear, and there is lots of evidence that the wealth hoarding at the top is a big part of what's going on. Second, the class warfare rhetoric is already flowing from the opposite direction. Every time the right fights to destory the social safety net, they are pitting classes against each other. Not fighting back leaves you defenseless.
Politicians have been talking about unfairness and trying to fix it for a long time without pitting groups of people against one another. Think the Civil Rights struggle.
The right has been attacking and damaging people for a century. It’s one of the reasons to avoid it.
Bernie—a great activist but a poor politician—uses this type of populist appeal almost exclusively. To me it is just lazy and shallow, and the reason he can get masses of people stirred up, but never formulate or pass real legislation. There are only “concepts of a plan” behind his resentments.
Affordability, ICE, and the Epstein files fits into the slogan you came up with months ago - Chaos, Cost, and Corruption.
A talented politician like Jon Ossoff can weave these themes together into a compelling message. And he did it while being plainspoken —calling Trump out as a Klansman—without a lame-sounding injection of cuss words as so many Democrats do now.
Dan, this framing seems inevitable, but there's something that needs to be said before Democrats try to own this issue: the Epstein files were sitting there during the Biden years and nobody touched them. Voters are going to notice that. The cover-up story doesn't begin with Trump — most people are going to trace it back to the night Epstein died and ask why, through democrat and republican administrations, nobody ever actually opened the door. That's not a right-wing talking point, it's just the timeline.
And that's before you get to the Biden health situation. Voters already believe that Democrats covered up Biden's capacity to govern. Voters aren't going to draw a clean line between the Epstein Class and the people who covered for Biden. In their minds those circles are going to overlap pretty significantly.
I think this is going to be the political message of our time but it's only going to work for Democrats if it comes from those who genuinely weren't in the room for any of this. Its going accelerate a changing of the guard to younger and reform focused set of leaders or its going pass the Democratic Party by.
Epstein was prosecuted in 2019. Maxwell was convicted in 2021. Courts seal grand jury and victim materials by law.
If someone claims there was a cover-up, they should point to specific evidence of obstruction—not just the absence of new public documents.
The current Epstein File storm is about the release of the files (an incredibly rare occurrence for any crime). This is a self-inflicted wound as MAGA and their enabler’s vociferously demanded the release of the files. Then when they were in a position to do so, started acting like they were cagily covering things up.
100% agree. Tying lack of affordability to the special treatment the Epstein class has long been afforded is a winning message because at its core it’s about fairness, which is a concept everyone intrinsically gets. But the Dems need an effective messenger to communicate this. The person who is currently in the best position to be that messenger is Chuck Schumer because of the power of the filibuster. But “let’s make a deal, any deal, because deals are intrinsically great even if they are one sided against my team” Chuck is incapable of carrying that message. Even now we hear him spouting nonsense about how the Republicans can be persuaded to make a reasonable deal regarding ICE. There is no reasonable deal on the table other than ICE must be made to conform with standard police force behavior, period. But Chuck will cede the moral high ground the Dems occupy on this issue as sure as the sun will rise in the morning. Without an effective messenger, no message, no matter how correct, will break through
Every issue affects the economy. It’s not a stretch to link anything to the economy. The “Epstein Class” is pithy, relatable and true. Hope they don’t over focus group it!!!!
Totally agree.. hmmm.. I think the first time I read "Epstein class" it was in a Heather Cox RIchardson Letter from an American. Just want her to get her due if that is true. :)
Great stuff from Dan, as we have come to expect. Absolutely agree on the necessity of using Ossoff’s (and AOC’s) approach.
But I do have to take issue with Dan’s statement about Trump.. “I never really bought that argument; it presumes a level of rationality and strategic thinking that Trump has never once demonstrated in his eight decades on this planet.”
I think it’s clear that we have underestimated Trump’s intellect at our own peril. Underestimating him has allowed him to take all the power he has, which is, you know, quite fucking considerable.
Yes, he has never been an intellectually curious man and has displayed genuine stupidity more times than anyone can count, and fortunately not every evil scheme he has attempted has been successful, but we should not ignore his unparalleled success as a conman. He is still very much a force to be reckoned with, not one to be dismissed for cathartic reasons.
Whatever he has planned for the midterms could easily make January 6th look like a Christmas pageant.
David Axelrod calls him a “feral genius”, which seems to fit. He’s not the idiot people claim he is. To me he is sly but almost deliberately ignorant.
Even putting Trump aside, there's value in associating billionaires with pedophiles. Maybe Americans will finally fall out of love with them and we can create a more equitable tax system to make government work again.
To me, this is the fatal flaw in populism. While it certainly has positive attributes, its practitioners always end up making arguments that pit one class against another. Is this much different from Romney condemning 47% of the population as users and takers?
I agree partially. I wish there was no need to pit people against each other, but there are two reasons why it's necessary. First, people are unhappy with the decline in the standard of living in the country. If you want to gain people's support for your leadership, they need to buy into your worldview as to why they're in this situation. An anti-billionare narrative is clean, clear, and there is lots of evidence that the wealth hoarding at the top is a big part of what's going on. Second, the class warfare rhetoric is already flowing from the opposite direction. Every time the right fights to destory the social safety net, they are pitting classes against each other. Not fighting back leaves you defenseless.
Politicians have been talking about unfairness and trying to fix it for a long time without pitting groups of people against one another. Think the Civil Rights struggle.
The right has been attacking and damaging people for a century. It’s one of the reasons to avoid it.
Bernie—a great activist but a poor politician—uses this type of populist appeal almost exclusively. To me it is just lazy and shallow, and the reason he can get masses of people stirred up, but never formulate or pass real legislation. There are only “concepts of a plan” behind his resentments.
Affordability, ICE, and the Epstein files fits into the slogan you came up with months ago - Chaos, Cost, and Corruption.
A talented politician like Jon Ossoff can weave these themes together into a compelling message. And he did it while being plainspoken —calling Trump out as a Klansman—without a lame-sounding injection of cuss words as so many Democrats do now.
Dan, this framing seems inevitable, but there's something that needs to be said before Democrats try to own this issue: the Epstein files were sitting there during the Biden years and nobody touched them. Voters are going to notice that. The cover-up story doesn't begin with Trump — most people are going to trace it back to the night Epstein died and ask why, through democrat and republican administrations, nobody ever actually opened the door. That's not a right-wing talking point, it's just the timeline.
And that's before you get to the Biden health situation. Voters already believe that Democrats covered up Biden's capacity to govern. Voters aren't going to draw a clean line between the Epstein Class and the people who covered for Biden. In their minds those circles are going to overlap pretty significantly.
I think this is going to be the political message of our time but it's only going to work for Democrats if it comes from those who genuinely weren't in the room for any of this. Its going accelerate a changing of the guard to younger and reform focused set of leaders or its going pass the Democratic Party by.
Epstein was prosecuted in 2019. Maxwell was convicted in 2021. Courts seal grand jury and victim materials by law.
If someone claims there was a cover-up, they should point to specific evidence of obstruction—not just the absence of new public documents.
The current Epstein File storm is about the release of the files (an incredibly rare occurrence for any crime). This is a self-inflicted wound as MAGA and their enabler’s vociferously demanded the release of the files. Then when they were in a position to do so, started acting like they were cagily covering things up.
That's a fine legal sounding argument but I think it misses the perception point.
100% agree. Tying lack of affordability to the special treatment the Epstein class has long been afforded is a winning message because at its core it’s about fairness, which is a concept everyone intrinsically gets. But the Dems need an effective messenger to communicate this. The person who is currently in the best position to be that messenger is Chuck Schumer because of the power of the filibuster. But “let’s make a deal, any deal, because deals are intrinsically great even if they are one sided against my team” Chuck is incapable of carrying that message. Even now we hear him spouting nonsense about how the Republicans can be persuaded to make a reasonable deal regarding ICE. There is no reasonable deal on the table other than ICE must be made to conform with standard police force behavior, period. But Chuck will cede the moral high ground the Dems occupy on this issue as sure as the sun will rise in the morning. Without an effective messenger, no message, no matter how correct, will break through
100% agree.
Every issue affects the economy. It’s not a stretch to link anything to the economy. The “Epstein Class” is pithy, relatable and true. Hope they don’t over focus group it!!!!