1) Stop promoting the thing that Freddie doesn't like us to talk about here (which it his perfect right to do, I have no issue with him setting the boundaries on his own page). Trump's ads on the subject were effective.
2) Stop saying Latinx, it's very off-putting to the Latino population. They've signaled that fact repeatedly. Also, to people of every ethnicity, it makes you sound like a child molesting robot that has an ethnic preference.
3) Don't lie about things people can actually see. It's insulting. Biden wasn't ok for months or years. Yes, Trump was incoherent at times, but he never tried to hide.
4) Sound like something approaching a human being when they speak in public. Focus grouped language inspires contempt and suspicion.
5) Realize that scolding is not an effective political strategy. I get that you feel like some people are "disappointing" or "problematic." Keep that shit to yourself unless it's a small subgroup that no one likes (polygamists, pedos, patent trolls or something like that); Politics 101.
6) Actually allow primaries to pick candidates, stop interfering in the process. We haven't had a candidate unambiguously actually picked by the full delegate process since 2008 (which actually got us a damn good candidate). THIS ONE IS AVTUALLY HUGE, IF YOU WANT TO PROTECT DEMOCRACY YOU CAN START BY PRACTICING IT.
7) Go on Rogan, do well, this isn't negotiable. Do it in the primaries so everyone knows if you can't hold a normal conversation about who you are and what you believe for a few hours. If you can't do that and run out of sound bites after 30 minutes, you don't get to be President.
8) Go to the Al Smith Dinner, be funny, also not negotiable.
9) Don't try to have a coalition that has neocons in it, there are no voters who really miss Dick Cheney. The Reagan GOP is dead, it can't be revived as part of the Dem coalition.
10) If your party has someone in office who isn't popular, think of an answer to the question, "what would you do differently."
I think it's going to someone out of left field. The Democrats have a deep bench, but many will be hamstrung by the 2020-era excesses in the same way so many politicians of the 2010s were haunted by Iraq.
Most of the white college grads I know are kinda wimps, but basically delightful star wars nerds after that.
Meanwhile there's a whole OTHER political constituency that rolls around acting like an even more cariacatured version of the mean frat from Revenge of the Nerds, and seems to think I'm a cryptomarxist pedo executing a secret globalist plan to replace testosterone with IV soy drip.
So, where are the assholes correlated? And I'm not saying it's with the Republican party per se -- maybe just that... most people are assholes?
Oh, not in MY life. They're all super chill here. Got plenty of Trump voters in the community I hang with, smoke meat, and compare our hypothetic visions of apolcalpyse. There's even a couple who just try to talk my ear off about how Tom Hanks is a pedo, but I divert that into fun stuff instead.
Just saying, when I look OUT THERE (or, dear God, on Twitter if I'm feeling masochistic), that neither party seems to have a monopoly, nor even an oversampling, of assholes. And beliving one does strikes me as sort of propogandized thinking.
And by all means, carry on with nerd-on-nerd crime.
I thought Jimmy Kimmel was the pedo, not Tom Hanks. And a very weepy pedo at that.
I'm sorry, but when I saw Kimmel tear up I wanted to vomit. The DNC is the party of white collar professionals right now while the working class flocks to the GOP. At least the latter needs to be grounded, to some extent, just due to the constraints of having to balance a budget.
Sorry for being contentious, but I feel like CRT In particular can’t just be blamed on rich, educated white people. There were plenty of academics of all stripes pushing this kind of rhetoric online; in the news; and at universities. We’re obviously a part of the problem, but I don’t know many white people who were just organically like “we need to pay black people reparations,” and “white people constantly commit micro aggressions,” without having been yelled at online or in person by a not white person. Like I said, white people deserve a lot of the blame because we make up the largest population of people with degrees, but we need to blame Black academics and activists, too, for pushing rhetoric that went against the interests of their own communities.
I mean that there is a gulf now, a "diploma divide", between the working class and college educated cohorts in this country. Are there minority academics who peddled nonsense like CRT? Of course, but demographically speaking blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately working class and so the face of CRT is largely a white one.
Again, there are a lot more of us white liberals, and we do share a lot of the blame, but organizations like Black Lives Matter drove a lot of public opinion on certain issues, and they were a Black led movement (even in my 99% white state of NH has a chapter primarily overseen by people who are not white). I also think popular academics like Coates, Kendi deserve a lot of credit for disseminating these ideas, as well. Did white degree holders take it and run with it? Yes, but there are many not white people at the helms of these movements who should not be able to hide behind the moniker: “it was all educated white peoples’ faults. There are plenty of educated degree holders of all races in the United States, and as we’ve seen, singling out groups for blame and shame has not made anything better.
Bernie Sanders nailed it when pointed out that abandoning the middle class led to the middle class abandoning the Dems.
Do the math. There are tens of millions middle class voters, and a couple thousand PhDs in intersectional victimhood. Whose vote do they want?
I'm surprised that Freddie didn't make it clearer, since he is an old-school class based lefty not an identity obsessed one. It's a crucial distinction that the Dems must embrace, especially nationally.
You missed one. You can’t blame losing the popular vote and all seven swing states on the dumb voters who just can’t handle a black woman as president. Psaki just went there on NBC. No plans for any honest self-reflection this cycle either, I suppose. What a disaster. I can’t wait to read more of your scathing analysis in the coming days, Freddie.
They won't do a damn thing. They've had at least since 2016 to pull their heads outta their asses...and instead just keep cramming it up there further and further.
Did not Sam Kriss teach the Revolutionary Working Masses that Team D keep engaging in a battle of wits with a fetal pig with a bad combover, and the self-proclaimed Smart People keep on losing, because they insist on pretending that they are starring in a really bad spy novel?
Since 2012, actually, when Obama won his second term and the Democratic Party had four years to groom a competitive successor. But the fix was in for the Clinton dynasty.
Good lord. I mean I know America is supposed to be the country where anyone can do anything, but the level of entitlement of these Beltway talking heads is off the chart. You're not a damn journalist Jen, you don't get to lateral transfer to legacy media just because you know how to B.S. at a podium. Sheesh.
All of this makes me painfully aware that I don't have any conservative/right-leaning friends, and I'm going to have to hear variations of this from my social circle for weeks. It's exhausting and frightening to speak up when you're the only one who feels a certain way.
WRONG. Woke has nearly everything to do with it. Wokeness was at the heart of the policies that led ultimately to high inflation, among many other bad outcomes. The Dem party can start healing and reinventing by starting with rooting out wokeness. Better yet, start a 3rd party that's truly diverse (i.e. not just skin color) and better representative of the entire country (but that's never gonna happen).
I'm willing to believe hostility to "wokeness" was a major motivating factor, but I'm struggling to link it to macroeconomic outcomes like inflation. Even dumb spending on DEI departments/policies/etc doesn't seem like it adds up enough to contribute to the price of groceries. And arguably much of that spending was fungible monies part of total budgets anyway, meaning it would have been spent regardless and thus not specifically an inflation driver.
I agree. Most people will take cheap groceries at the cost of vulnerable people's lives. And they're probably not wrong to do so. You're gonna ask people to care about dying kids on the other side of the world over your own family? Give me a fuckin break.
No she didn't. She offered to limit the price at which groceries could be sold, which always results in the groceries not being available to buy at all (i.e. no cheap groceries). Actual cheap groceries can only be produced by either increasing the supply or reducing the demand.
Or we could break up monopolies, change ag policies which favor processed foods, and adjust the tax codes to take the profit out of price gouging.
There is, in fact, and oversupply in the Western world, and food waste accounts for 30-40% of all production? Food is dumped on an industrial level, rather than lowering prices.
The sources of inflation are not in any way, shape, or form a mystery. We know exactly what happened and why. Specifically:
When COVID happened, the US made the decision to spend very generously to support the economy during the lockdowns. It was known going into it that this would cause inflation, but it was believed that it would also lead to a strong, rapid recovery, with minimal impact on employment.
And this was 100% correct. The US made the very conscious (and in my view, objectively correct) decision to cause a limited amount of inflation to limit the other damage COVID would do, and the US ended up with a brief spike in inflation and a strong recovery, both in absolute terms and when compared to other large western countries. The US economy is, objectively, strong right now.
In some ways one of the real damaging results of this election is that the next time we find ourselves in a similar state, elected leaders are going to be very reluctant to enact optimal polices, given how harshly voters reacted, because apparently voters would prefer high unemployment to a brief spike in inflation.
Your hyperbole is showing. And you’re missing the fact that we didn’t need a second round of stimulus - the economy was already overcooked before passing the “inflation reduction act” (still one of the best names ever for a bill, btw).
Other than that I mostly agree with you. But the IRA is filled with wokeness, and was not necessary at the time since the economy was already recovering.
I'm a solar industry vet, so the parts I'm specifically familiar with revolve around needing to use union labor and/or working with low-income housing developers in order to access certain funds. Some might say that govt subsidies for renewable energy is woke in and of itself, but I’m not suggesting that.
If you’re privy to ChatGPT or using other AI LLMs, here’s a prompt you can use to learn more: please analyze the Inflation Reduction Act and call out any policies, directives, or requirements that might be considered "woke" or promoting "wokeness"
Even if we grant your assertion that the IRA is "filled with wokeness"...do you have even the slightest sliver of an argument or evidence why $1 spent on a "woke cause" will cause more inflation spent on an "unwoke cause"?
(Also, the IRA was not filled with wokeness, and requirements that funds need to be spent on union labour are just not woke by any reasonable definition. I don't support such riders, but they're just not woke. Not everything you dislike or which is objectively bad is "woke". Words have meanings!)
Cody - this is nonsense. COVID was just another opportunity to syphon hordes of cash into the pockets of multinational conglomerates. Price gouging by these same greedy fucks fueled inflation.
The 'strong' recovery was strong for the 1%. For normal people, they were frozen from the housing market, the rental market, and were having problems feeding their families. The Fed raised interest rates because COVID gave too many normal folks security - and they were talking shit like quitting their jobs, exiting the rat race, living frugally, saving money. A common complaint from policy makers in 2020 was that people had acquired too much in savings!
This is why the Dems keep losing. I am in a weird position where I work with really wealthy people, and really poor people at the same time. Anecdotally, on the lower income end, it was (surprisingly) not inflation because they think that would have happened either way. It was (1) woke, (2) involvement in foreign wars, and (3) immigration (even among Hispanics).
When you can't feed your kids, nothing else matters.
Everyone in this thread complains about inflation. Inflation is when the government passes the ineptly named "Inflation Reduction Act" which was a big give-away to corporate donors. The government just printed off that money. The printing and distribution of money is inflation of the currency.
Imagine: If The President gave you a million dollars. You could buy a nice house with that money. If The President gave every US citizen a million dollars, you couldn't buy a hamburger with that money.
I can't tell if you're intentionally misunderstanding or not, but: people wanted prices to deflate, not continue to inflate. They don't care what the rate of inflation is, they care what the prices are.
It's a high price to pay...except, no, it's really not. I just hope that's the actual resolution this time, rather than another 2016-2020 redux of doubling down even harder on Ivy Tower bullshit and working the nonexistent refs on Twitter. They'll surely call the game in favour of the Resistance any day now!
Not getting my hopes up though. Already had a bunch of absences from work today due to #trauma. That sort of failure to face reality is gonna go on for awhile. (I mean, as much as SF is reality-based to begin with.) I bet none of them will even move to Canada like they're threatening to.
Maybe as a bonus we'll finally get national voter ID requirements or something. I don't want to be excessively cynical, but if those minorities aren't "keeping up their end of the bargain" by voting D, well...
We should just get free, mandatory government ID out to all voting-eligible Americans. It'd circumvent the voter ID laws on the books in red states, and people might get to use the IDs for other practical everyday matters, as a bonus.
The Democrats certainly can blame losing the popular votes and all 7 swing states on Biden for getting out of the race too late.
If Biden had dropped out before the primaries, the Democrats would have had the distinct possibility of a stronger nominee which would not have lost the popular votes or all 7 swing states.
And with that excuse, the Democrats will not look at why they actually lost.
I agree they could have, but would they have? I think probably not. More than likely, the machine would have put its thumb on the scales (again) and ensured their "chosen one" got the nod, just like they did with Clinton and again with Biden (who barely eeked out a victory).
If the Dems actually let the people choose who they want to represent them, it likely means someone who's a bit of an outsider, which means that many in the existing establishment would be out.
Carter was too focused on being 'A Man of Peace.' This became a source of leverage against him. When you know he won't attack, you are free to do all manner of bad stuff. Iran is still doing bad stuff almost 50 years after taking the US embassy and US hostages. After 444 days of captivity, all the hostages were returned the day before RR took office.
Trump is also without 'Institutional Support.' This is why the institutions tried to take him down last time, and when he announced his candidacy for 2024. But unlike the past, the institutional press has spent their capital, which was trust. Now that the people no longer trust them, we turn to alternative media which undermines the institutions.
I think they almost certainly would have. The Democrats have a fairly deep bench of potential winners, including some excellent communicators and those with appeal in purple or red states.
Mostly governors, with maybe Klobuchar nipping into #5.
But atop that list would be Buttigieg. He's a Reagan-level extraordinarily gifted communicator, and would make a formidable nominee. Given his primary performance in 2020, and how that campaign was ended, I think he would have won the 2024 primary.
But more importantly, we will never know, we can never be sure.
Two people who I really liked in 2020 who were forced to step aside by the Dem machine, and now appear to be part of it. If they could have somehow distanced themselves (I don’t think they could have), they may have had a chance. But an uphill battle for sure. Not sure there are many others on that bench…and those who are better act Iike they’re part of a new team if they want any chance in the future.
Buttigieg turned out to be a real dud. Named as Secretary for Transportation in the Biden Admin, Pete took 6 months off for baby-leave when the country's transportation system was going to hell. Problems in the west coast when the Cali legislature banned trucks more than 10 years old caused backups at the ports. There were too few trucks legal to operate in California and move out the containers. Pete did nothing. When the train derailed in East Palestine Ohio, Pete was nowhere. He could have shown up made a bunch of false promises, reinvigorated hope, and shined.
I find it a fascinating question, but I don't think we can answer it.
1) The DNC has been highly variable. It was ineffective in 2008, a non-entity in 2012, a killer in 2016, disunited and bypassed in 2020. Which version would show up in 2024 I genuinely have no idea.
2) Harris' checkboxes got her nowhere in the 2020 primary. They nominated an elderly white man. Since then, the fanaticism for checkboxing has ebbed somewhat, but for those so disposed, candidates other than Harris have checkboxes too.
3) The Veep phenomenon is fickle. It's more true that the Republicans routinely picked the previous #2 contender for decades until Trump over Santorum. Coming in 2nd correlates with being Veep. The Democrats consistently nominate their VPs since Humphrey, but they don't win (Biden being the exception, but also not the nominee at first opportunity)
Yep and they had a chance with RFK but he’s out and even better joined the other team. I voted for RFK because he was on the ballot in my state. At least it felt like something.
This always comes back to "Who, though?" IMHO the version of Harris who took over after Biden stepped aside was at least a more compelling figure than her dismal 2020 primary version, and I'd wager fear of Trump + uncertainty + incumbent VP status would have likely led to her winning the primary because of the paucity of compelling alternatives.
IMHO the weakness here is kind of embedded in history. The Democrat Brain Trust should have considered the next 4-5 election cycles and its future candidates back in 2008, convinced Obama that he was more valuable to the party in 2012/2016, gotten Hillary out of their system in 2008 and then had pipeline of fresh talent going forward. Holding the spot for Hillary was the fatal mistake that's stymied the competing candidates, compounded by the apparent necessity of Biden in 2020 and fait accompli Harris on 2024.
I guess the good news is that it's a wide open field in 2028 for Democrats and maybe some interesting people will bubble up by then.
Of course that would have entailed effectively admitting they'd fucked up by nominating a literal mummy of the party structure, and after all, they had to nominate him to block Bernie because Bernie might have threatened the sinecures of the party's apparatchiks, the thing which actually must be protected at all costs (including Trump inevitably retaking power).
Self-reflection from Democrat apparatchiks? Never going to happen.
The worst part of this is that we get Trump/Vance in the White House AND more fuel for the obnoxious scolds who make everything and everyone outside of politics miserable because they can't win the game as it lays even with the solution staring them plain in the face.
"... people like me are so critical of the Democrats in large part because they have proven themselves incapable of producing a durable winning coalition."
What's wrong with the Democrats is listening to the demands of progressives and leftists on immigration, gender, crime, etc., instead of actually catering to the median voter. (Kamala convinced nobody she had actually moved to the center, because she is not a gifted politician.)
(I can’t say anything about economics because Trump is a big government and social programs guy with disastrous economic ideals. Hard times for we neoliberals.)
"Progs and leftists" (lord, these terms) were not disappointed in Obama before he took office at all. Obama presented the surface impression of bringing a sea change to the Presidencyduring his campaign--and then went on to govern the way that Harris probably would have, as a protege of the Democratic Party political establishment.
Clinton might have lost in 1992 if it hadn't been for Ross Perot. And we're talking about two political generations ago--a completely different scene. Drawing on the past for lessons makes sense in politics, but they have to be the right lessons. Precedent is not anything to be enslaved to. But Democrat Presidential candidates persist in running like Michael Dukakis, getting driven around in a tank with his head poking out of the top hatch and a helmet on his head.
One of Donald Trump's main strengths is that he's obviously his own man. Which is what a sizeable number of Obama voters wanted Obama to be, only to find that they might just as well have elected Hillary Clinton. But what was any disappointed Obama voter to do in 2012--vote for Mitt Romney? Because that's the only choice.
Without ranked-choice voting, the election campaign system in this country is fatally flawed.
At present, the only way to really shake up either party is to do it like Trump, as a self-funded candidate with a long record of mass media exposure and name recognition who's willing to alienate and upend every rival in the primaries and remake the party in his own image, while also adhering to the priorities of the wealthy interest groups who comprise the institutional structure of the party. (Trump would not have even obtained the GOP nomination if he had antagonized the fossil fuel industry, for example. Or AIPAC. Or if he hadn't reversed his earlier pro-choice leanings on abortion to suit the right-wing evangelical Christians, who comprise a wealthy and powerful interest group as well as a populist base for the GOP.) Trump is an "insurgent" candidate who just happens to coincidentally support the long-standing wish list of many wealthy Republican backers. I'm most concerned about the moves the ignoramus is going to make with undoing regulations like the Clean Water Act. But I'm concerned across the board, really. A President in power gets to discard every promise they've made while running for office, from their rhetorical feints about opposing aggressive overseas military intervention, to imposing tariffs, to health care...
The heart of Perot's appeal was as a populist--he ran on opposing NAFTA, reforming tax policy, cleaning up the lobbying revolving door, criticism of the Persian Gulf war and the military industrial complex. (I was just reading the three 1992 Presidential debates a few weeks ago.) It got Perot a lot of votes. Clinton would never have been allowed to say any of that by his handlers.
"Right" and "left" are terribly misleading labels, especially in American politics. And when Americans who buy into their own uniquely American cockamamie interpretation frames try to apply the labels to other countries, it gets even screwier.
There is no "median voter Theory." Politics is not about any theory. It isn't science, it's a craft. Especially in an electoral democracy. "Triangulation" in a political campaign is merely a tactic. Sometimes it's well-advised, sometimes it isn't. I'd argue that it's never well-advised when followed by the book, like Harris seeking the endorsement of Republicans that Trump said good riddance to, who also happen to be some of the most loathed people in American politics. That's just plain clumsy. It's impossible to tell whether it's sincere or insincere, and even harder to know which is worse. It's definitely an example of some Bob Shrum type wonk doing "median voter Theory", though.
I agree. My preferences are to the left of the "mainstream" Democratic party, but the median voter is way right. I want a Democratic party that can explain itself to rightward voters in a way that moves them left. What we've got are leadership Democrats who drive centrish voters further right.
Fetterman (someone mentioned him up-thread) is a maybe on that score. Buttigieg is a 100/100. Who else do you think rates on that criterion?
Whitmer and Shapiro are reasonably successful/popular governors.
Fetterman probably doesn’t have the health for it. Buttigieg probably ought to hold a more senior position before being the candidate. (Imagine if Biden had made him VP.)
In general, finding Dems with a history of winning in competitive states is a good bet.
Moral of the story is embrace Matt Yglesias Thought and popularism to win more consistently. (Yglesias is of course a left-neoliberal who likes markets and a strong welfare state.)
Agree with all of that. I've yet to be convinced about Whitmer or Shapiro - not writing them off, just yet to be convinced.
(God, I wish Buttigieg had been the VP choice.)
Are you and I the only folks here who are both Yglesias and FdB subscribers? I wish they didn't see each other (Freddie more than Yglesias, too be fair) as the enemy. Freddie's politics - or maybe moral vision would be more accurate - is where my heart lies, but Yglesias Thought is how to get there.
I'm also one of those few, but I increasingly feel uncomfortable mentioning that fact on either blog, which is a shame because I genuinely think there's a valuable synthesis rather than this yawning divide of (mostly-one-sided) beef. I know whose column today brought me more clarity and solace, at any rate...an expected outcome, if still a bit disappointing. Was expecting a closer race in either direction rather than a blowout. Guess I'll have to raise my respect for Nate Silver a little more.
did you vote for Simmons
Freddy who should be the next D candidate? Please, just 1-2 names. Really curious where you fall on this?
Bet you Fetterman runs.
Should've run this time.
I just can't see it happening if he's still having language processing issues, though he certainly seems to be setting himself up for it.
Check out his recent interviews. Seems much improved.
The candidates don't matter as much as The Dems:
1) Stop promoting the thing that Freddie doesn't like us to talk about here (which it his perfect right to do, I have no issue with him setting the boundaries on his own page). Trump's ads on the subject were effective.
2) Stop saying Latinx, it's very off-putting to the Latino population. They've signaled that fact repeatedly. Also, to people of every ethnicity, it makes you sound like a child molesting robot that has an ethnic preference.
3) Don't lie about things people can actually see. It's insulting. Biden wasn't ok for months or years. Yes, Trump was incoherent at times, but he never tried to hide.
4) Sound like something approaching a human being when they speak in public. Focus grouped language inspires contempt and suspicion.
5) Realize that scolding is not an effective political strategy. I get that you feel like some people are "disappointing" or "problematic." Keep that shit to yourself unless it's a small subgroup that no one likes (polygamists, pedos, patent trolls or something like that); Politics 101.
6) Actually allow primaries to pick candidates, stop interfering in the process. We haven't had a candidate unambiguously actually picked by the full delegate process since 2008 (which actually got us a damn good candidate). THIS ONE IS AVTUALLY HUGE, IF YOU WANT TO PROTECT DEMOCRACY YOU CAN START BY PRACTICING IT.
7) Go on Rogan, do well, this isn't negotiable. Do it in the primaries so everyone knows if you can't hold a normal conversation about who you are and what you believe for a few hours. If you can't do that and run out of sound bites after 30 minutes, you don't get to be President.
8) Go to the Al Smith Dinner, be funny, also not negotiable.
9) Don't try to have a coalition that has neocons in it, there are no voters who really miss Dick Cheney. The Reagan GOP is dead, it can't be revived as part of the Dem coalition.
10) If your party has someone in office who isn't popular, think of an answer to the question, "what would you do differently."
11) Don't tell people that you think they have, "too much freedom" and that you want to ration meat and gasoline. https://www.nysun.com/article/survey-ivy-league-elites-believe-americans-are-too-free-support-rationing-gas-meat-to-fight-climate-change
12) Stop demanding people express happiness about the economy when they feel squeezed.
13) You can take policy advice from the upper class, but don't take campaign advice from them.
14) Don't pay advisers and consultants based on how much money they spend on ads.
Paid consultants to the party make so much money and apparently they had 0 of the ideas above!
I think it's going to someone out of left field. The Democrats have a deep bench, but many will be hamstrung by the 2020-era excesses in the same way so many politicians of the 2010s were haunted by Iraq.
At the end of the day college educated white assholes are a minority of the country. Imagine that.
Why are they assholes? I mean what is even the point of adding that.
Not all white college grads are assholes. The ones that join the Democratic party though? Highly correlated.
Most of the white college grads I know are kinda wimps, but basically delightful star wars nerds after that.
Meanwhile there's a whole OTHER political constituency that rolls around acting like an even more cariacatured version of the mean frat from Revenge of the Nerds, and seems to think I'm a cryptomarxist pedo executing a secret globalist plan to replace testosterone with IV soy drip.
So, where are the assholes correlated? And I'm not saying it's with the Republican party per se -- maybe just that... most people are assholes?
If most of the people in your life sre assholes...well, that speaks for itself, doesn't it?
Also, I'm a geek and j have to restrain myself from punching then in the face when I see star wars nerds.
Oh, not in MY life. They're all super chill here. Got plenty of Trump voters in the community I hang with, smoke meat, and compare our hypothetic visions of apolcalpyse. There's even a couple who just try to talk my ear off about how Tom Hanks is a pedo, but I divert that into fun stuff instead.
Just saying, when I look OUT THERE (or, dear God, on Twitter if I'm feeling masochistic), that neither party seems to have a monopoly, nor even an oversampling, of assholes. And beliving one does strikes me as sort of propogandized thinking.
And by all means, carry on with nerd-on-nerd crime.
I thought Jimmy Kimmel was the pedo, not Tom Hanks. And a very weepy pedo at that.
I'm sorry, but when I saw Kimmel tear up I wanted to vomit. The DNC is the party of white collar professionals right now while the working class flocks to the GOP. At least the latter needs to be grounded, to some extent, just due to the constraints of having to balance a budget.
Sorry for being contentious, but I feel like CRT In particular can’t just be blamed on rich, educated white people. There were plenty of academics of all stripes pushing this kind of rhetoric online; in the news; and at universities. We’re obviously a part of the problem, but I don’t know many white people who were just organically like “we need to pay black people reparations,” and “white people constantly commit micro aggressions,” without having been yelled at online or in person by a not white person. Like I said, white people deserve a lot of the blame because we make up the largest population of people with degrees, but we need to blame Black academics and activists, too, for pushing rhetoric that went against the interests of their own communities.
I mean that there is a gulf now, a "diploma divide", between the working class and college educated cohorts in this country. Are there minority academics who peddled nonsense like CRT? Of course, but demographically speaking blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately working class and so the face of CRT is largely a white one.
Again, there are a lot more of us white liberals, and we do share a lot of the blame, but organizations like Black Lives Matter drove a lot of public opinion on certain issues, and they were a Black led movement (even in my 99% white state of NH has a chapter primarily overseen by people who are not white). I also think popular academics like Coates, Kendi deserve a lot of credit for disseminating these ideas, as well. Did white degree holders take it and run with it? Yes, but there are many not white people at the helms of these movements who should not be able to hide behind the moniker: “it was all educated white peoples’ faults. There are plenty of educated degree holders of all races in the United States, and as we’ve seen, singling out groups for blame and shame has not made anything better.
Bernie Sanders nailed it when pointed out that abandoning the middle class led to the middle class abandoning the Dems.
Do the math. There are tens of millions middle class voters, and a couple thousand PhDs in intersectional victimhood. Whose vote do they want?
I'm surprised that Freddie didn't make it clearer, since he is an old-school class based lefty not an identity obsessed one. It's a crucial distinction that the Dems must embrace, especially nationally.
You missed one. You can’t blame losing the popular vote and all seven swing states on the dumb voters who just can’t handle a black woman as president. Psaki just went there on NBC. No plans for any honest self-reflection this cycle either, I suppose. What a disaster. I can’t wait to read more of your scathing analysis in the coming days, Freddie.
They won't do a damn thing. They've had at least since 2016 to pull their heads outta their asses...and instead just keep cramming it up there further and further.
Did not Sam Kriss teach the Revolutionary Working Masses that Team D keep engaging in a battle of wits with a fetal pig with a bad combover, and the self-proclaimed Smart People keep on losing, because they insist on pretending that they are starring in a really bad spy novel?
Since 2012, actually, when Obama won his second term and the Democratic Party had four years to groom a competitive successor. But the fix was in for the Clinton dynasty.
How is Psaki a thing?
Good lord. I mean I know America is supposed to be the country where anyone can do anything, but the level of entitlement of these Beltway talking heads is off the chart. You're not a damn journalist Jen, you don't get to lateral transfer to legacy media just because you know how to B.S. at a podium. Sheesh.
`You can’t blame losing...'
Clearly you don't have enough faith in liberal cope. Have you see the Slate articles and comments?
The general theme seems to be Harris ran a `genuinely perfect' campaign and it's all the fault of the sexist, racist, ignorant voters!
Then we will own it! And move forward, along with Black, Latino, Muslim, and female Americans
All of this makes me painfully aware that I don't have any conservative/right-leaning friends, and I'm going to have to hear variations of this from my social circle for weeks. It's exhausting and frightening to speak up when you're the only one who feels a certain way.
Just make consoling, mumbling sounds. (I consider my friends all conservative/right-leaning - BECAUSE they voted for Harris :) )
Freddie called how this would go better than my election Twitter follows
This election was a referendum on the Democratic Party. Full stop. And the People don’t like that party.
Referendum on egg prices. People don’t like them high.
Exactly. If the Republicans were the incumbents they would be getting voted out just the same. It’s happening all over the world.
So was 2016. They only amplified their losing message. They will do the same this time too.
Woke is done. The Dems bled away too much of the Hispanic voters. The centrists in that party will seize power and purge the far left wing.
Probably true but woke has nothing to do with it. It’s all inflation. The American consumer cares about nothing else.
WRONG. Woke has nearly everything to do with it. Wokeness was at the heart of the policies that led ultimately to high inflation, among many other bad outcomes. The Dem party can start healing and reinventing by starting with rooting out wokeness. Better yet, start a 3rd party that's truly diverse (i.e. not just skin color) and better representative of the entire country (but that's never gonna happen).
I'm willing to believe hostility to "wokeness" was a major motivating factor, but I'm struggling to link it to macroeconomic outcomes like inflation. Even dumb spending on DEI departments/policies/etc doesn't seem like it adds up enough to contribute to the price of groceries. And arguably much of that spending was fungible monies part of total budgets anyway, meaning it would have been spent regardless and thus not specifically an inflation driver.
Wokeness leads to inflation. Do you hear yourself?
Did you read the “Inflation Reduction Act”?
I agree. Most people will take cheap groceries at the cost of vulnerable people's lives. And they're probably not wrong to do so. You're gonna ask people to care about dying kids on the other side of the world over your own family? Give me a fuckin break.
No, they didn't. Harris actually offered cheap groceries as a consolation prize to dead babies in Gaza... people didn't buy it.
No she didn't. She offered to limit the price at which groceries could be sold, which always results in the groceries not being available to buy at all (i.e. no cheap groceries). Actual cheap groceries can only be produced by either increasing the supply or reducing the demand.
Or we could break up monopolies, change ag policies which favor processed foods, and adjust the tax codes to take the profit out of price gouging.
There is, in fact, and oversupply in the Western world, and food waste accounts for 30-40% of all production? Food is dumped on an industrial level, rather than lowering prices.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-11/milk-oversupply-has-us-farmers-in-the-midwest-dumping-it-in-the-sewer
https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2020/march/food-loss-why-food-stays-on-the-farm-or-off-the-market/
https://reason.com/podcast/2017/07/25/stossel-departments/
(You do know that the way American's do things is not the way everyone does them, yeah?)
The sources of inflation are not in any way, shape, or form a mystery. We know exactly what happened and why. Specifically:
When COVID happened, the US made the decision to spend very generously to support the economy during the lockdowns. It was known going into it that this would cause inflation, but it was believed that it would also lead to a strong, rapid recovery, with minimal impact on employment.
And this was 100% correct. The US made the very conscious (and in my view, objectively correct) decision to cause a limited amount of inflation to limit the other damage COVID would do, and the US ended up with a brief spike in inflation and a strong recovery, both in absolute terms and when compared to other large western countries. The US economy is, objectively, strong right now.
In some ways one of the real damaging results of this election is that the next time we find ourselves in a similar state, elected leaders are going to be very reluctant to enact optimal polices, given how harshly voters reacted, because apparently voters would prefer high unemployment to a brief spike in inflation.
Your hyperbole is showing. And you’re missing the fact that we didn’t need a second round of stimulus - the economy was already overcooked before passing the “inflation reduction act” (still one of the best names ever for a bill, btw).
Other than that I mostly agree with you. But the IRA is filled with wokeness, and was not necessary at the time since the economy was already recovering.
How was the IRA filled with wokeness? I'm honestly asking.
I'm a solar industry vet, so the parts I'm specifically familiar with revolve around needing to use union labor and/or working with low-income housing developers in order to access certain funds. Some might say that govt subsidies for renewable energy is woke in and of itself, but I’m not suggesting that.
If you’re privy to ChatGPT or using other AI LLMs, here’s a prompt you can use to learn more: please analyze the Inflation Reduction Act and call out any policies, directives, or requirements that might be considered "woke" or promoting "wokeness"
Even if we grant your assertion that the IRA is "filled with wokeness"...do you have even the slightest sliver of an argument or evidence why $1 spent on a "woke cause" will cause more inflation spent on an "unwoke cause"?
(Also, the IRA was not filled with wokeness, and requirements that funds need to be spent on union labour are just not woke by any reasonable definition. I don't support such riders, but they're just not woke. Not everything you dislike or which is objectively bad is "woke". Words have meanings!)
Cody - this is nonsense. COVID was just another opportunity to syphon hordes of cash into the pockets of multinational conglomerates. Price gouging by these same greedy fucks fueled inflation.
The 'strong' recovery was strong for the 1%. For normal people, they were frozen from the housing market, the rental market, and were having problems feeding their families. The Fed raised interest rates because COVID gave too many normal folks security - and they were talking shit like quitting their jobs, exiting the rat race, living frugally, saving money. A common complaint from policy makers in 2020 was that people had acquired too much in savings!
Swing voters cared about inflation. But voters are people and people are complex animals. They can hold more than one motivation at a time.
Let's not forget that after inflation there was illegal immigration and crime, and there wokeness has real impacts.
Humans are complex? I find them maddeningly simple.
This is why the Dems keep losing. I am in a weird position where I work with really wealthy people, and really poor people at the same time. Anecdotally, on the lower income end, it was (surprisingly) not inflation because they think that would have happened either way. It was (1) woke, (2) involvement in foreign wars, and (3) immigration (even among Hispanics).
Fascinating.
I wonder how much of (2) and (3) was owed to Harris's flagrant flip-flopping and gaslighting with regards to those policy areas.
When you can't feed your kids, nothing else matters.
Everyone in this thread complains about inflation. Inflation is when the government passes the ineptly named "Inflation Reduction Act" which was a big give-away to corporate donors. The government just printed off that money. The printing and distribution of money is inflation of the currency.
Imagine: If The President gave you a million dollars. You could buy a nice house with that money. If The President gave every US citizen a million dollars, you couldn't buy a hamburger with that money.
Inflation went down quite a bit after the passage of the IRA. You should look at actual stats
No, the rate of inflation went down. What people actually wanted was for prices to go back down to what they were before the pandemic.
That's what inflation is, the rate of change of prices. It objectively has gone down quite a bit in the past couple years.
I can't tell if you're intentionally misunderstanding or not, but: people wanted prices to deflate, not continue to inflate. They don't care what the rate of inflation is, they care what the prices are.
It's a high price to pay...except, no, it's really not. I just hope that's the actual resolution this time, rather than another 2016-2020 redux of doubling down even harder on Ivy Tower bullshit and working the nonexistent refs on Twitter. They'll surely call the game in favour of the Resistance any day now!
Not getting my hopes up though. Already had a bunch of absences from work today due to #trauma. That sort of failure to face reality is gonna go on for awhile. (I mean, as much as SF is reality-based to begin with.) I bet none of them will even move to Canada like they're threatening to.
Maybe as a bonus we'll finally get national voter ID requirements or something. I don't want to be excessively cynical, but if those minorities aren't "keeping up their end of the bargain" by voting D, well...
"national voter ID requirements"
That and paper ballots is what I'm hoping for.
We should just get free, mandatory government ID out to all voting-eligible Americans. It'd circumvent the voter ID laws on the books in red states, and people might get to use the IDs for other practical everyday matters, as a bonus.
The Democrats certainly can blame losing the popular votes and all 7 swing states on Biden for getting out of the race too late.
If Biden had dropped out before the primaries, the Democrats would have had the distinct possibility of a stronger nominee which would not have lost the popular votes or all 7 swing states.
And with that excuse, the Democrats will not look at why they actually lost.
I agree they could have, but would they have? I think probably not. More than likely, the machine would have put its thumb on the scales (again) and ensured their "chosen one" got the nod, just like they did with Clinton and again with Biden (who barely eeked out a victory).
If the Dems actually let the people choose who they want to represent them, it likely means someone who's a bit of an outsider, which means that many in the existing establishment would be out.
The election of Carter is most instructive.
In several possible ways. In what aspect are you thinking of?
The man entered office without institutional support in the post-watergate chaos, and was quickly neutered, then gotten rid of.
I can understand that you would be particularly sensitive around the topic of neutering.
Damn straight. Nobody talks about catching stray humans and chopping their balls off for no reason.
Carter was too focused on being 'A Man of Peace.' This became a source of leverage against him. When you know he won't attack, you are free to do all manner of bad stuff. Iran is still doing bad stuff almost 50 years after taking the US embassy and US hostages. After 444 days of captivity, all the hostages were returned the day before RR took office.
Trump is also without 'Institutional Support.' This is why the institutions tried to take him down last time, and when he announced his candidacy for 2024. But unlike the past, the institutional press has spent their capital, which was trust. Now that the people no longer trust them, we turn to alternative media which undermines the institutions.
As if Iran was just being evil, Just Because.
Trump also was unable to accomplish much from 2016-2020, in large part because of his lack of institutional support.
I think they almost certainly would have. The Democrats have a fairly deep bench of potential winners, including some excellent communicators and those with appeal in purple or red states.
But we will never know, we will never be sure.
Can you share who you think might be in the top 5 of the “deep bench”?
Mostly governors, with maybe Klobuchar nipping into #5.
But atop that list would be Buttigieg. He's a Reagan-level extraordinarily gifted communicator, and would make a formidable nominee. Given his primary performance in 2020, and how that campaign was ended, I think he would have won the 2024 primary.
But more importantly, we will never know, we can never be sure.
Two people who I really liked in 2020 who were forced to step aside by the Dem machine, and now appear to be part of it. If they could have somehow distanced themselves (I don’t think they could have), they may have had a chance. But an uphill battle for sure. Not sure there are many others on that bench…and those who are better act Iike they’re part of a new team if they want any chance in the future.
Buttigieg turned out to be a real dud. Named as Secretary for Transportation in the Biden Admin, Pete took 6 months off for baby-leave when the country's transportation system was going to hell. Problems in the west coast when the Cali legislature banned trucks more than 10 years old caused backups at the ports. There were too few trucks legal to operate in California and move out the containers. Pete did nothing. When the train derailed in East Palestine Ohio, Pete was nowhere. He could have shown up made a bunch of false promises, reinvigorated hope, and shined.
The guy was invisible when he was needed.
I think they almost certainly would NOT have.
1) All evidence points to the DNC choosing who they want to choose, and not who D voters want. See 2016 and 2020 for details.
2) Modern Dems are fanatical checkbox creatures, and Harris checks all those boxes.
3) There's a long (and utterly stupid) tradition of Veeps just outright being handed the Prez nomination, although this is true for both parties.
I find it a fascinating question, but I don't think we can answer it.
1) The DNC has been highly variable. It was ineffective in 2008, a non-entity in 2012, a killer in 2016, disunited and bypassed in 2020. Which version would show up in 2024 I genuinely have no idea.
2) Harris' checkboxes got her nowhere in the 2020 primary. They nominated an elderly white man. Since then, the fanaticism for checkboxing has ebbed somewhat, but for those so disposed, candidates other than Harris have checkboxes too.
3) The Veep phenomenon is fickle. It's more true that the Republicans routinely picked the previous #2 contender for decades until Trump over Santorum. Coming in 2nd correlates with being Veep. The Democrats consistently nominate their VPs since Humphrey, but they don't win (Biden being the exception, but also not the nominee at first opportunity)
Yep and they had a chance with RFK but he’s out and even better joined the other team. I voted for RFK because he was on the ballot in my state. At least it felt like something.
This always comes back to "Who, though?" IMHO the version of Harris who took over after Biden stepped aside was at least a more compelling figure than her dismal 2020 primary version, and I'd wager fear of Trump + uncertainty + incumbent VP status would have likely led to her winning the primary because of the paucity of compelling alternatives.
IMHO the weakness here is kind of embedded in history. The Democrat Brain Trust should have considered the next 4-5 election cycles and its future candidates back in 2008, convinced Obama that he was more valuable to the party in 2012/2016, gotten Hillary out of their system in 2008 and then had pipeline of fresh talent going forward. Holding the spot for Hillary was the fatal mistake that's stymied the competing candidates, compounded by the apparent necessity of Biden in 2020 and fait accompli Harris on 2024.
I guess the good news is that it's a wide open field in 2028 for Democrats and maybe some interesting people will bubble up by then.
Of course that would have entailed effectively admitting they'd fucked up by nominating a literal mummy of the party structure, and after all, they had to nominate him to block Bernie because Bernie might have threatened the sinecures of the party's apparatchiks, the thing which actually must be protected at all costs (including Trump inevitably retaking power).
Self-reflection from Democrat apparatchiks? Never going to happen.
The worst part of this is that we get Trump/Vance in the White House AND more fuel for the obnoxious scolds who make everything and everyone outside of politics miserable because they can't win the game as it lays even with the solution staring them plain in the face.
"... people like me are so critical of the Democrats in large part because they have proven themselves incapable of producing a durable winning coalition."
What's wrong with the Democrats is listening to the demands of progressives and leftists on immigration, gender, crime, etc., instead of actually catering to the median voter. (Kamala convinced nobody she had actually moved to the center, because she is not a gifted politician.)
(I can’t say anything about economics because Trump is a big government and social programs guy with disastrous economic ideals. Hard times for we neoliberals.)
Remember Freddie’s post hating on Bill? That guy won twice.
Remember how disappointed progs and leftists were with Obama? That guy won twice.
Remember how Biden ran to the right of the rest of his primary? He won too.
It’s not hard.
The Cheneys hate Trump. Has nothing to do with a Dem shift.
Incumbency had its advantages.
"Progs and leftists" (lord, these terms) were not disappointed in Obama before he took office at all. Obama presented the surface impression of bringing a sea change to the Presidencyduring his campaign--and then went on to govern the way that Harris probably would have, as a protege of the Democratic Party political establishment.
Clinton might have lost in 1992 if it hadn't been for Ross Perot. And we're talking about two political generations ago--a completely different scene. Drawing on the past for lessons makes sense in politics, but they have to be the right lessons. Precedent is not anything to be enslaved to. But Democrat Presidential candidates persist in running like Michael Dukakis, getting driven around in a tank with his head poking out of the top hatch and a helmet on his head.
One of Donald Trump's main strengths is that he's obviously his own man. Which is what a sizeable number of Obama voters wanted Obama to be, only to find that they might just as well have elected Hillary Clinton. But what was any disappointed Obama voter to do in 2012--vote for Mitt Romney? Because that's the only choice.
Without ranked-choice voting, the election campaign system in this country is fatally flawed.
At present, the only way to really shake up either party is to do it like Trump, as a self-funded candidate with a long record of mass media exposure and name recognition who's willing to alienate and upend every rival in the primaries and remake the party in his own image, while also adhering to the priorities of the wealthy interest groups who comprise the institutional structure of the party. (Trump would not have even obtained the GOP nomination if he had antagonized the fossil fuel industry, for example. Or AIPAC. Or if he hadn't reversed his earlier pro-choice leanings on abortion to suit the right-wing evangelical Christians, who comprise a wealthy and powerful interest group as well as a populist base for the GOP.) Trump is an "insurgent" candidate who just happens to coincidentally support the long-standing wish list of many wealthy Republican backers. I'm most concerned about the moves the ignoramus is going to make with undoing regulations like the Clean Water Act. But I'm concerned across the board, really. A President in power gets to discard every promise they've made while running for office, from their rhetorical feints about opposing aggressive overseas military intervention, to imposing tariffs, to health care...
Didn’t Ross Perot run to Clinton’s right?
There’s a lesson in there for progs and leftists. Maybe one day median voter theory will be understood by the party of college grads.
The heart of Perot's appeal was as a populist--he ran on opposing NAFTA, reforming tax policy, cleaning up the lobbying revolving door, criticism of the Persian Gulf war and the military industrial complex. (I was just reading the three 1992 Presidential debates a few weeks ago.) It got Perot a lot of votes. Clinton would never have been allowed to say any of that by his handlers.
"Right" and "left" are terribly misleading labels, especially in American politics. And when Americans who buy into their own uniquely American cockamamie interpretation frames try to apply the labels to other countries, it gets even screwier.
There is no "median voter Theory." Politics is not about any theory. It isn't science, it's a craft. Especially in an electoral democracy. "Triangulation" in a political campaign is merely a tactic. Sometimes it's well-advised, sometimes it isn't. I'd argue that it's never well-advised when followed by the book, like Harris seeking the endorsement of Republicans that Trump said good riddance to, who also happen to be some of the most loathed people in American politics. That's just plain clumsy. It's impossible to tell whether it's sincere or insincere, and even harder to know which is worse. It's definitely an example of some Bob Shrum type wonk doing "median voter Theory", though.
Your inability to understand the relevance of the median voter theory does not bode well for your preferred candidates to win.
“Allowed to say that by any of his handlers.”
I see you adhere to the conspiratorial view of American politics.
I agree. My preferences are to the left of the "mainstream" Democratic party, but the median voter is way right. I want a Democratic party that can explain itself to rightward voters in a way that moves them left. What we've got are leadership Democrats who drive centrish voters further right.
Fetterman (someone mentioned him up-thread) is a maybe on that score. Buttigieg is a 100/100. Who else do you think rates on that criterion?
Whitmer and Shapiro are reasonably successful/popular governors.
Fetterman probably doesn’t have the health for it. Buttigieg probably ought to hold a more senior position before being the candidate. (Imagine if Biden had made him VP.)
In general, finding Dems with a history of winning in competitive states is a good bet.
Moral of the story is embrace Matt Yglesias Thought and popularism to win more consistently. (Yglesias is of course a left-neoliberal who likes markets and a strong welfare state.)
Agree with all of that. I've yet to be convinced about Whitmer or Shapiro - not writing them off, just yet to be convinced.
(God, I wish Buttigieg had been the VP choice.)
Are you and I the only folks here who are both Yglesias and FdB subscribers? I wish they didn't see each other (Freddie more than Yglesias, too be fair) as the enemy. Freddie's politics - or maybe moral vision would be more accurate - is where my heart lies, but Yglesias Thought is how to get there.
I'm also one of those few, but I increasingly feel uncomfortable mentioning that fact on either blog, which is a shame because I genuinely think there's a valuable synthesis rather than this yawning divide of (mostly-one-sided) beef. I know whose column today brought me more clarity and solace, at any rate...an expected outcome, if still a bit disappointing. Was expecting a closer race in either direction rather than a blowout. Guess I'll have to raise my respect for Nate Silver a little more.