Democratic (Party) Direction

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.

did you read the article i linked? it says that the drift is not on policy, but on attitudes. people are voting attitudes first, and the Dems are still running on policy.

Regarding that poll, I ask whether it polled "adults" (I'm betting) or "Registered Voters". I'm sure most Americans do support taxing the rich. Guess what? We already do that, and changing the progressivity of the tax code more than marginally has always been a non-starter. I think it's quite conceivable that most Americans do support nationalized healthcare (though it would be interesting to see how the question was phrased and how much support drops off if you say some call it 'socialized medicine'), and accordingly there have always been Dems who push for that. Clinton sought to take baby steps toward it, in Clintonian style, and Dems got gunshy for years after given the political fallout. But its time is coming back. As for full domestic rights for gays, that doesn't surprise me either, because it doesn't say "gay marriage," which many Americans support, but not most. But most Americans, afaik, would go for civil unions.

In your summary, it still sounds like both of these approaches are only dealing with the way Dems talk about the issues - rather than their actual policy ideas. I think Dems do need to change the way they talk about issues, but I also think they need some new policy ideas which will crystallize this identity shift in a way that speaks to voters. Clinton in '92 didn't just talk about issues in a different way - he had some new ideas, like welfare reform, that split open the old left-right dichotomy.

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

More WI analysis for folks who haven't been paying close attention

https://goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/coordination-and-electability-wisconsins

Good post, thanks for sharing

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2028-election/dnc-committee-sets-south-carolina-vote-first-democrats-2028-presidenti-rcna588863

South Carolina is poised to hold the first Democratic presidential nominating contest in 2028 after the Democratic National Committee’s powerful rules committee moved to keep the state at the front of the line.

The move, set to be recommended by the rules committee Friday and presented to the full Democratic National Committee at its summer meeting next month, settles a monthslong battle among a handful of states.

The end result elevates South Carolina over rivals like Nevada and New Hampshire, which will still be allowed to hold early nominating contests, and pushes Iowa out of the early-voting window altogether. DNC members also granted Michigan, New Mexico and Virginia the ability to hold an early contest, leaving six states eligible to hold contests prior to Super Tuesday.

That’s not a bad spread of 6 states — one the Democrats won’t win (S.C.) but has a concentrated Black voting base, five others they should or could win, decent demographic and geographic spread. Bumping Iowa takes away a Midwestern state, so I guess New Hampshire is the small-white-state proxy.

Tho I guess Michigan is also Midwestern. I think of it more as the Rust Belt specifically.

Back in 2019, 538.com did an analysis that ranked each state by how demographically representative its Democratic electorate was of the national Democratic electorate. The idea being that the states at the top would be ideal states to go early in a Democratic primary.

Illinois was 1st, which made me happy as an Illinoisan.

Of the six states selected today, Nevada was 5th, Michigan 11th, Virginia 14th, New Mexico 31st, New Hampshire 34th, and South Carolina 46th.

The argument for the latter three, I guess, is that they rank highly within specific demographic groups: NM has the highest percentage of Hispanic voters, SC has the 3rd-largest percentage of Black voters, NH has the 5th-highest percentage of white voters without a college degree.

(NB: The demographic data is based on the 2016 election, so will likely have changed in the past decade.)

It's not the most representative sample they could select, but it's an OK proxy given the legacy claims of New Hampshire and South Carolina. I do think displacing Iowa from first is good, even if it has sometimes propelled interesting candidates.

I agree. Especially god to get rid of a state that uses a caucus system.

*good