Democratic (Party) Direction

Wow, what an incredible insight. Very novel!

"Environics found social values moving away from the authority end of the scale, with its emphasis on responsibility, duty, and tradition, to a more atomized, rage-filled outlook that values consumption, sexual permissiveness, and xenophobia. The trend was toward values in the individuality quadrant."

I've long thought that if the Democratic party would focus their message on individualism (and the resulting freedom it implies) that they might get somewhere.

Today’s average American “worker” is, in short, very much on his or her own -- too prosperous to be eligible for most government assistance programs and, because of job laws that date back three quarters of a century, unable to unionize. Such isolation and atomization have not led to a new wave of social solidarity and economic populism, however. Instead, these changes have bred resentment toward those who do have outside aid, whether from government or from unions, and an escalating ethos of every man for himself. Against that ethos, voters have increasingly flocked to politicians who recognize that the combination of relative affluence and relative isolation has created an opening for cultural appeals.

"Every man for himself" has been an American credo for hundreds of years. It's the essence of competition, of capitalism, of industry. There's a bridge somewhere between individualism and community--is the Democratic party forcing people over a bridge or seeking one?

American voters have taken shelter under the various wings of conservative traditionalism because there has been no one on the Democratic side in recent years to defend traditional, sensible middle-class values against the onslaught of the new nihilistic, macho, libertarian lawlessness unleashed by an economy that pits every man against his fellows.

Maybe they're taking shelter because they don't think it's an economy that's pitting man against man, it's shelter from the resulting culture war. What are "traditional, sensible middle-class values" anyway? The only hint we get from this article is that candidates should talk about religion and that will mitigate their stance on the death penalty (in Virginia.)

I am happy to see the wasteland that is the Democratic Party looking inward. The Republicans wouldn't dare stare into their own dark abyss.

As for the "average American household" that makes $60K a year, it would have been more informative to see the median income, because the average is skewed upwards by those at the top of the scale - ie., less than 50% of Americans make the "average" income.

Lakoff's extensively written about the need for Democratic candidates and progressives in general to start explicitly talking about values. Also, for campaigns to work at creating more of an overall narrative for a candidate than just a laundry list of policies. It's only his work on the framing aspect that's received attention lately, not so much his work on defining the values systems that right/left folks tend to hold(e.g. "maintaining authority" vs "care & responsibility").

He's offered up Schwarzneggar's campaign as an example of a guy who ran entirely on narrative & perceived identity, and expressively refused to offer up any policy suggestions. Most folks don't have the time/energy/inclination to get into policy specifics, but if they trust your guy, they're trust him to take care of the details.

As he says,

"The pollsters didn’t understand it because they thought that people voted on the issues and on self-interest. Well, sometimes they do. But mostly they vote on their identity -- on persons that they trust to be like them, or to be like people they admire"

which connects to that aspirational bit that the article mentions.

Jim Wallis has talked about several of these same issues over the last year as well, especially with on the whole "onslaught of the new nihilistic, macho, libertarian lawlessness unleashed by an economy that pits every man against his fellows" bit.

Wallis has written about conversations his group has had with Frank Luntz and some other Repub pollsters who were quite open about their m.o. being to get voters so caught in such intense issues that they vote against their economic interest.

As other folks have pointed out, the Republicans have been better that bring the polls to them(gay marriage is the biggest thing you care about) vs the Democrats moving to where the polls now seem to be(well i guess we need to move rightward on gay marriage).

That's the thing, innit? If you build up an entire apparatus to both promote & reinforce certain narratives, people will believe them even if they have no basis in fact. George W. Bush is steadfast & strong, Kerry's a weak-willed flip-flopper, Republicans are all about a smaller government, supply-side economics works, etc

oh fuck yeah this is a major bit of it, too. But since when did we start promoting self-reflection and critical thought?

For real despair, look at how Sen. Rodham Clinton is pandering to libs and righties on alternate days. "Congress run like a plantation," "I'd bomb Iran," etc.

xpost

Please God, take Hilary quietly so she won't fuck up the party with a presidential campaign. WORST POSSIBLE CANDIDATE EVER.

Huh? He's only been going this stuff in the press for about two years. Second, there are plenty of other folks who have made the connection, but have gotten shit for coverage(not fitting in with "religious = rightwing conservative" media narrative?), even when they got arrested for it on the Capitol steps.

For real despair, look at how Sen. Rodham Clinton is pandering to libs and righties on alternate days. "Congress run like a plantation," "I'd bomb Iran," etc.

DLC-candidate-in-centrist-message shocker

very much otm. The change will come from the outside.

Re the direction of the party, past actions indicate the party will be quicker to line up behind someone with Clinton's politics as opposed to Tasini's. I'm not too hopeful when it comes to the future of the Dems.

do you think it's necessary for dems to use the religious right's language ("morals" and "values")? would a less-loaded word like "ethics" skew too liberal?

my question is, when do they not? unless a voter has completely descended into some cynical nihilism, of course.

i mean, yeah, "values" has come to signify a very specific set of values, which just goes to further show that democratic types do need to start talking about theirs.

I don't think it's necessarily too liberal, but it definitely lacks the primal grip of "values"

I mean, we all value things, right? We value ethics, for example, since honesty, fairness, & justice are core principles.

not necessarily, but quite possibly, and yes, respectively.

name one

I don't think they need to use the words "morals" or "values" at all, but on the other hand I don't think "ethics" is necesarily what we're talking about either. "Ethics" to me connotes a branch of philosophy - ie., sterile debates which have little to do with people's daily lives. What they need to communicate is that they are decent people who voters would admire/like/agree with. If the voters think you're a good person, then they will gloss over lots of little policy details. If they don't think you're a good person, you can promise them the moon, but they won't believe you. Unfortunately, things like abortion and gay rights have become a short-hand for some voters on figuring out whether a candidate has values. That is probably a moral fundamentalist fringe whose votes the Dems will not be able to win and probably shouldn't even want to win. But they do need to capture the votes of more moderate voters who worry about rampant sex on TV and loose values among their childrens' friends.

also, we should probably clarify who we're talking about here. "Dems" includes everybody from DLC types like Clinton & Biden to guys like Feingold...

Also, it seems like we're only limiting this to talking about a very specific range of national politics(akin to referring to states as "red" or "blue"), but this doesn't address the other aspects, like state elections(e.g. Montana electing a Democratic governor and Democratic State House & Senate)

There was some major (spring?) 2005 poll all the progressive press was reporting on that found Americans favor Canada-style healthcare, taxing the rich, full domestic rights for gays, etc. Was it Quinnipiac? Can't find it...

It's pretty simple - the population is much more interested in pulling troops out asap. The Dem leadership is not - in fact, many still appear to be trying to out tough Republicans. You know things are odd when it's people like Murtha who are the furthest left on an issue like the war.

yeah, exactly. I think these things just get talked about in some simplified media narrative(again, "your state is RED," etc), and this narrowing just plays into the hands of guys like Rove who are pretty good at taking advantage of such limitations.

OTMFM

Yes, OTM.
I read an article to the effect that Dean is putting most of his effort & resources into rebuilding the party at the local level, precinct level basically, which seems urgent and key. Karl Rove has prob always been a right wing ideologue but he started out doing direct mail, not working on message or on policy. I am not a huge fan of Dean whenever he opens his mouth but if he's getting stuff done at the ground level, it's about time.

I'm not sure which one this was either, but there have been numerous similar studies going back years that support this. In fact the point made upthread about the Dems latching on to movements like civil rights, women's rights, etc supports this as well.

to be really reductive, perhaps unfairly, Lakoff is essentially arguing that Democrats should reframe their most liberal policy positions in a secular language of values and presto change-o, they win. the people in Ruta's article are arguing that Democrats shouldn't just give passionless names to their values, they should talk about where those values come from - family, community, place, country, religion, work, as relevant.

tombot's observation is most otm. while i don't think the work discussed in the piece is free from problems or contradictions, the key takeaway is that there are lots of potential Dem voters who aren't voting Dem because they really believe in the myth that Dems are hedonists, or at least permissiveness freaks, found most often in your big bad cities or somewhere else where people act in ways that folks like you don't (or can't). the Tim Kaine example suggests that if you show them upfront that their stereotype doesn't apply, they will revert to their better nature and vote for you, which they kinda sorta want to do.

xxpost

yeah, i think that what needs to be mentioned that since the rightwingers are really good at controlling media discussion and promoting complete bullshit, Democrats seem to be responding to that, as opposed to what their voters actally think.

Example: Dick Durbin's thing last year, where the rightwing noize machine drummed up so much shit that he felt the need to apologize for a statement he never actually made(calling u.s. troops nazis, as opposed to a comment on Gitmo treatment)

This is probably the party's only hope. Nothing gave me greater pleasure than renouncing my Democratic affiliation on my voter registration card a few years ago. It's ridiculous to me that positions and the discussion of positions trumps philosophy, i.e. "I'm a Democrat cuz I'm pro-choice, support gay rights, against the death penalty..." Millions of Americans like this kind of reductive thinking and good for them; it makes me queasy because, at the end of the day, positions are stupid when expert politicans like FDR, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton get elected and make a hash out of your precious positions.

Maybe this goes to the "values" issue = Feingold perceived (accurately?) as someone with an independent streak who votes what he thinks is right and doesn't stick to the party line.

this defeatist, victimized myopia that the Republicans are somehow playing by a different set of rules (or tactics) has got to end.

well come on over! the arch turns out to be the 50th or 60th best thing about the city. you sure can see it though

i stayed in st louis for a couple days once i liked it cool old brick row houses and whatnot

it looks like the WI Dem establishment is trying to ratfuck Francesca Hong in the gubernatiorial race. I don't know if it'll work because nobody here seems to care what any of them have to say right now. I have been seeing a bunch of ads from Dems though saying this or that candidate polls better against Tom Tiffany than Hong does, real emblematic of what's wrong with them, instead of figuring out why Hong is doing so well or adopting any of her extremely popular policy positions they instead lean fully into "if you don't compromise now it'll be your fault if we lose"

when will these fools recognize it's not just the more socialist policy positions that attract people, but it's also the MOR Dems' lack of principles and strong stands that repel people?

i think it would take a $2.6M assessment of the democratic party carried out by the most talented team of consultants that are ready to get to the bottom of what's wrong. this assessment will take 14 years to carry out and will be buried, but its influence could be noted

that's right - 14 years, 2.6M - that's $538K per year, enough to pay the project manager, documentation of meetings, a yearly annual check-in, travel and incidental expenses, an exclusive "deep dive" into three of the issues that matter the most, and "other"

yea I mean people ain't exactly forgetting that Dems had the trifecta in 2020, there was a goddamn attempted insurrection, and all they did was run out the clock and allow all this shit to happen. similar energy as when an NFL team gets knocked out of the playoff picture by the 3-14 Jets or whatever, the fans just want everyone fired

oh wait, claude has told me that's $186K a year, not $538K. only one exclusive deep dive can be provided now, and the executive summary has now been pre-populated with "you're already doing a great job"

I admit Kamala going "now that the shackles are off I can be the candidate I always wanted to be" is pretty funny

yea I mean people ain't exactly forgetting that Dems had the trifecta in 2020, there was a goddamn attempted insurrection, and all they did was run out the clock and allow all this shit to happen

i'll dial down my posts per minute but i honestly think that yes, people have forgotten that, in fact that the overwhelming majority of people have never knew it in the first place. this is why january 6 happens, an entire party gaslights people into thinking that the ones doing the coup were actually the ones saving the republic, andf then 4 years later it's another tight election.

not even exaggerating, and i know that's dismal and cynical, sorry. but compared to such classic questions as "who is the current vice-president?", "how old is the earth", and "is foreign aid spending more or less than 20% of the federal budget?", i think even fewer americans can describe what happened in 2020/21 with any kind of cohesive narrative whatsoever

I'm guessing that a fair amount of people who actually show up and vote on a regular basis are aware of this and are in fact not happy with how it was managed. That isn't to deny that there are a huge amount of ignorant people out there, but a lot of them just aren't going anywhere near a voting booth.

it looks like the WI Dem establishment is trying to ratfuck Francesca Hong in the gubernatiorial race. I don't know if it'll work because nobody here seems to care what any of them have to say right now. I have been seeing a bunch of ads from Dems though saying this or that candidate polls better against Tom Tiffany than Hong does, real emblematic of what's wrong with them, instead of figuring out why Hong is doing so well or adopting any of her extremely popular policy positions they instead lean fully into "if you don't compromise now it'll be your fault if we lose"

― frogbs, Thursday, July 23, 2026 1:22 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's so transparent and pathetic. The biggest ratfuck is Gov. Evers specifically stating he would not get involved in the primary, then going and endorsing Crowley, who had dropped out of the race two days prior before getting back in, all because Lt. Gov. Rodriguez's campaign manager blew all her money and she also dropped out. Endorsing candidates who can't even crack like 5% in the polls is textbook loser shit. Hong and Roys are superior candidates in just about every way, imo, and somehow Barnes seems to be hanging in there, but again imo he has no juice.

Headline and deck from one of the WaPo's concern trolls, Carine Hajjar:

Do Democrats want real ICE reform? It’ll take more than slogans.
The party has chosen to call for abolition instead of accepting modest improvements.

"Modest improvements," the great centrist rallying cry.

What do we want?

*whisper* modest improvements

When do we want them?

*whisper* after we appoint a commission and hire a consultant

it's interesting to see how freaked out the GOP is by this very modest number of democratic socialist who have won primaries, not even general elections. They would normally ignore the 'fringe freaks' but their big fear (I guess) is a lefty Tea Party movement

its so fucking dumb, ICE started in 2003 and have not made anyone's life better in any meaningful way, they have now ballooned into an unaccountable and barely trained mercenary force committing murder in broad daylight and rounding people up into concentration camps, the arguments for keeping them around are so tenuous that you have to make up shit about eating people's pets to justify it. after Renee Good I don't think I've seen a single non-Trumper argue for "reform", they want it abolished entirely at the very least

Outgoing Minnesota Senator Tina Smith has endorsed Abdul El-Sayed in Wisconsin.

or Michigan? or maybe she made the endorsement in WI

I just sent in my primary ballot for MN5 and obviously voted for Ilhan and Peggy Flanagan, who went to my high school and grew up with a bunch of people I babysat when they were really little.

Ah so *that's* how you win Suzy's vote

or Michigan? or maybe she made the endorsement in WI

Sorry, yeah; El-Sayed is running in Michigan, and Smith has endorsed him.

There was a NYT article about the WI governor's race the other day that annoyed me. It started with the news about Sara Rodriguez dropping out and David Crowley getting back in.

But then the 4th and 5th paragraphs (very close to the top) said:

Some more moderate Democrats in Wisconsin have watched the primary with growing trepidation, worried that the winner in August could be State Representative Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist who has excited voters on the party’s left flank.

If Ms. Hong, a chef from the liberal capital city of Madison, wins the Democratic nomination, some in the party fear it could send the votes of moderates to Republicans in November. Representative Tom Tiffany, who is running with President Trump’s endorsement, is the likely Republican nominee.

Later (all the way down in the 15th paragraph), the article notes that Rodriguez's departure could be "an opportunity for Ms. Hong to expand her left-wing base, as she has highlighted her background in restaurants and promised to address affordability and the cost of health care in Wisconsin."

But at no point does the article give voice to the perspective of Hong's supporters, in the way that it gives attention to the feelings of "some more moderate Democrats."

Hahaha I’m just thrilled for her, honestly: she grew up in section 8 housing, eating free school lunch. More people like her should be in office.

absolutely