Democratic (Party) Direction

Whichever party more effectively captures the public's feeling of what is wrong with the country seems able to ride that to push things left or right as they see fit. (cue silby's 'people don't vote for reasons' argument)

"Make America Great Again" resonated against "America Is Already Great" because who actually believed the latter?
Obama and Clinton won on Hope and Change challenges to the status quo.
Dubya ran against the moral dissolution of the Clinton White House (least effective counter-narrative, not enough people gave a shit if the President had affairs).
Carter's austerity without hope didn't play well against Reagan's boundless optimism.
Carter/Ford... both just kind of meh in the end.
Nixon's silent majority thought we weren't patriotic enough, didn't love the troops enough, backlash against the decline of American exceptionalism/Manifest Destiny/etc..

Captures in branding*

And Biden ran on "back to normal, don't you want to spend your day not thinking about politics again," resonating against "chaos in the White House" and won.

Can't help but think that americans (and elsewhere!) love that 'let's be united' stuff that Biden sold.

the obvious solution is for the Democrats to run someone with a farther left platform that people actually like

I think it’s a good goal, but we’ve got to also get that going across the house, senate, and maybe more importantly state and city level politicians

The closer you start to the ground, the more we’re going to see how progressive policies work in practice and can be pushed to the federal imo

tbh, any Democrat can choose to run for any office - and can adopt whatever platform they think will appeal to the most voters. It's getting your campaign stood up and organized that's the real hurdle, not a lack of blessing from the Democratic Party apparatchiks.

imo mcgovern (like carter) is secretly much closer to being a prefiguration of the present college-kid democratic party than a symbol of what it’s supposedly reacting to and replacing

(not ideologically, but in terms of post-southern political strategy)

Whichever party more effectively captures the public's feeling of what is wrong with the country seems able to ride that to push things left or right as they see fit. (cue silby's 'people don't vote for reasons' argument)

"Make America Great Again" resonated against "America Is Already Great" because who actually believed the latter?
Obama and Clinton won on Hope and Change challenges to the status quo.
Dubya ran against the moral dissolution of the Clinton White House (least effective counter-narrative, not enough people gave a shit if the President had affairs).
Carter's austerity without hope didn't play well against Reagan's boundless optimism.
Carter/Ford... both just kind of meh in the end.
Nixon's silent majority thought we weren't patriotic enough, didn't love the troops enough, backlash against the decline of American exceptionalism/Manifest Destiny/etc..

― onlyfans.com/hunterb (milo z), Wednesday, 11 November 2020 20:04 (forty-six minutes ago) link

Right, and in this regard, some Democrats may have been hurt by a GENERALIZED perception of Democrats = the chaotic rioting I see on TV, culturally left ideas, disorder, uncomfortable change, lack of authority etc. Which is how the GOP attacks paint them. And I think the success of that probably says more about the voters in the district and the success of the attack messaging than the popularity of the platform.

I dunno, sell clean energy without mentioning climate change, just pure pork.

as you note later on, this is the intended branding of the Green New Deal, and the term "renewables" - a big jobs program that will be long-term sustainable, and happens to have a chance of preserving human life as well. it just needs more oxygen on the New Deal part, so that people who think they're anti-green for reasons can ignore the fact that they don't actually have reasons, and move on to caring about the jobs instead.

From the same article as 'do we want to govern or connect with and motivate voters be internet celebrities': The trio of Democratic leaders in the House — Speaker Pelosi (80), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (81) and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (80) — are "on a glidepath" to another term leading the Party.

gerontocracy is a bipartisan value

Republicans are slightly better about it. Paul Ryan had barely entered puberty.

Malpractice for these decrepit ghouls not to retire

hai guys i heard you had an urban rural divide

http://images.wikia.com/fantasysports/images/d/dc/Hammer_and_sickle.png

https://image.spreadshirtmedia.com/image-server/v1/compositions/111592304/views/1,width=300,height=300,appearanceId=2,version=1465297176/hammer-sickle-t-shirts-men-s-premium-t-shirt.jpg

even

The way the Rs embrace *QAnon* Members versus how the Ds deal with the Squad is really a sight to behold. https://t.co/scfueNcu7e

— Rebecca Katz (@RebeccaKKatz) November 12, 2020

Schumer siding with Warren to pressure Biden to sign an EO for student debt cancellation up to 50 000$ seems to me like the general direction the party is going.

PLEEEEEEASE let that happen

that would mean EVERYTHING to me

10 years ago, on this very forum, i used to argue against student debt relief, on the grounds that if many billions of dollars were going to finally be allocated to help people with financial problems, that money should instead go to the homeless, or toward a truly universal safety net, rather than toward a subset of people who were already well off enough to be in a position to get a loan.

however, now i just really want my student loans to go away.

Crazy fact: US total amount of student debt is higher than what the entire govt of Canada spends in year.

Great idea for an economic stimulus workaround as well

New long interview with David Shor:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/david-shor-analysis-2020-election-autopsy-democrats-polls.html

It is a very solid piece (unfortunately I was sad for like an hour after reading it)

Shor's skepticism about the value of voter turnout efforts is kinda hard for me to square with the amount of voter suppression we're dealing with.

I'm skeptical of one sentence about the weakness of canvassing followed by one about GOTV mail as if they're the same thing - and the Vox article they link to is about phone calls being as effective as in-person interactions (in the context of why it's okay to not canvas during COVID).

I throw away most mail without looking at it, I do not answer my phone for any number that isn't saved as a contact. Both those methods are more likely to miss me than in-person canvassing - which is less annoying than either junk mail or junk calls, and harder to ignore. Does anyone answer phone calls from unknown numbers? That's some landline Boomer shit.

Idk but yesterday I looked up a bunch of NYC races that are happening in 2021 and a fair number of the declared candidates didn't have websites or a cultivated social media presence that showed any awareness of "online" as important. In the year of our Lord 2020 if you don't have a website you are not serious. (Except for that one guy in Coney Island who is probably gonna beat Mathylde Frontus, apparently. The article is stupid and contradictory imo but there are some good quotes in the last two paras.

xp: I answer numbers I don't know because sometimes it is an alternate number from my doctor or vet.

this is really good imo. breezy convo with Dorothy Fortenberry (Handmaiden’s Tale writer). nuanced takes RE current/ future of Democratic Party. gets weirdly naive in the Amy Kony 2020 Barrett section but hey I’m not catholic so...


https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-your-enemy/id1462703434?i=1000496529236

someone needs to get on that podcast transcription market

why is there a giant intractable conveyor belt that moves everyone with any power to the right? is that just how power works? it seems to be some kind of law of physics. sheesh!

what's that quote from Scarface again? first you get the money... then you get the power... then you turn into a selfish douchebag who will remorselessly crush the rest of humanity to maintain your dragon's hoard of wealth

before you get to that last step though you have to bothsides rich people because i mean they are just people after all! who are victims of things too!!!!!1

reminder that the first major NY Times headline about Bernie Sanders accused him of being in the pocket of Big Poor pic.twitter.com/6HhHpisJCN

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) November 11, 2020

Don't think "bias" is being used in a pejorative sense there.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/08/us/vermont-socialist-plans-mayoralty-with-bias-toward-poor.html

what? i think it's pretty clear that it's nytimes usual at-a-remove irony, which is pejorative

that article is pretty great. crazy that Vermont was solidly Republican until 1992

It doesn’t come across that way in the article to me

the article paraphrases something Bernie said as "bias towards the poor," in context it's non-perjorative. Still a bad Timesian headline imo

this is pretty in the weeds but I wonder if the word "bias" has increasingly taken on a negative connotation over time, as it's not an inherently negative word

In woodworking and fabric, bias often = strength.

his is pretty in the weeds but I wonder if the word "bias" has increasingly taken on a negative connotation over time, as it's not an inherently negative word

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive),

it sure has

I take it none of you are into Kpop then

“Bernie is my bias” would be an extremely positive thing to say in that context

AOC casually raised $75K+ for low-income families by playing video games for a few hours while educating current & future young voters on the GOP Senate's indifference to pandemic economics. The kind of outreach that Dems typically spend millions in consulting fees to figure out.

— Adam Herman (@AdamZHerman) November 28, 2020

The Democrats could win elections and push their agenda through with relative ease if someone with influence and guts told Pelosi and Schumer to step down and put some younger people in charge who could get young people to give a shit and vote.

— Adam Herman (@AdamZHerman) November 28, 2020

As a former marketer, it is frustrating to see how the DNC squanders their robust mailing lists by just HAMMERING people with donation requests instead of informing and igniting their supporters. Give me content, get me excited and THEN ask for money.

— Angela is MORE THAN THIS (@angelinadarling) November 28, 2020

I don't know much about politics but one thing I do know is that anybody who tells you there's a simple easy way to win elections is bullshitting you.

I mean I think the Democratic Party should make way for younger and fresher leadership on the merits, I just don't have any particular confidence that younger, fresher leaders will actually be better at winning elections / passing legislation.

xxp extremely otm especially w/r/t GOTV which is key IMO