She bings up some good points, both scientific and personal.
If you search for this video, it doesn’t show up. Fortunately I had it in my browser history.
7 Likes
When anyone starts their remark with “I love XXX and have many XXX friends…” I immediately ignore everything they have to say.
21 Likes
The far right, restored to power over the past two weeks, is said to be setting out to reverse the 20th century, undoing its progress for racial equality, women’s rights, queer dignity and freedom, and democratic fairness. But if the Republicans are seeking to reverse the 20th century, the Democrats seem to wish to simply ignore the 21st. Their strategies and impulses, their vision of how American politics works, no longer function in the present. Instead of adapting to the future, they seem to be sticking their heads in the sand, and waiting for the return of the past.
This is why the Democrats have not adjusted to the new age of political communications, in which voters can be animated and convinced by their information environment: Democrats tack to the right, over and over, and use traditional media like newspapers, cable news, and press releases to show off their new positions and distance themselves from their own ones. Voters don’t see it; they are too busy on social media, where Republicans are deftly setting the agenda that the Democrats can only feebly follow, chasing their opponents to the right even further. The result is that the party has not advocated its own actual worldview for years: Democrats have not shown a set of social values, or a theory of governance, or anything like a commitment to principle. They have not stood up for targeted groups, or articulated a real vision of democracy; they have never picked a bold fight, and they have never taken a stand that they don’t back down from when Republicans oppose it. No wonder the American public, when it thinks of Democrats at all, tends to think of them as out of touch, opportunistic, and cowardly. That is because they are.
The result is not so much that the Democrats are a weaker party as that they are not much of a party at all: it is the extremist Republicans, and they alone, who are communicating a vision of America to the public, and the whimpering, servile politicians who pass for an “opposition” never counter with their own vision but only whisper, barely audible, the feeble response: “Not so far.”
What Democrats need, now, is to discover their spine, and to articulate a set of values that they do not flinch from. The point is not to try to feign positions that they think the electorate already shares: the point is to take a stand with principle and integrity, and to let that guide draw the voters to them.
Elections are popularity contests, and the way to be popular is not through policy, but through personal robustness, through a willingness to put up a fight. If Democrats fight what they have long believed were losing battles – trans rights and abortion; healthcare and childcare; education; social security; good, union jobs – they might find that it is the fighting itself that proves persuasive. They have already tried compromise; they have already tried capitulation. It is time to try defiance.
23 Likes
Well yeah, we’re not yelling at Johnson and Thune and other members of the GOP because they’ve already donned the uniform of the SS and pledged allegiance to their führers. We’re yelling for those who haven’t joined the fascists to confront the fascists. Which is the correct and obvious thing to do.
19 Likes
Wow, way to ignore the elephant-owned mass media and social media sucking up all the oxygen in the room:
What Democrats need is not to “discover their spine,” it’s to find/own alternative media channels. Next to none of the existing ones are reliable, and I just saw people exchanging information about upcoming protests on Reddit this morning FFS. Even some of the progressive voices I normally follow are falling victim to this latest round of “Why Democrats are Doomed” or “They’re not doing anything” narratives that have increased in volume since the media’s favorite whipping boy Biden is no longer in office.
15 Likes
11 Likes
23 Likes
The media is shitty, but so are the democrats. They don’t stand for anything. My existence is being criminalized and the democrats response is to call it a distraction. Trump’s opening up concentration camps and Dems are tweeting about how many more immigrants Biden deported and seeking bipartisanship.
ETA: State level democrats do seem to actually be fighting back, but at the national level, it’s bleak.
20 Likes
That’s just not true. The Democratic Party isn’t just Chuck fucking Schumer.
8 Likes
That is at least something. Doing what he can with what he has where he is. Now the rest of you “powerful people,” where is your action?
17 Likes
It’s not just Chuck Schumer calling trans people a distraction.
14 Likes
True, but the “moderates” who seem perfectly willing to throw entire groups under the culture war bus to chase conservative votes are pretty much in control of the party. Harris-Walz could have had a much stronger campaign if they had actually listened to what the rank and file were asking for, and then ran on that… instead they made the choice to chase disaffected republicans as hard as they could. The party leadership keep tacking right, and then they keep failing. Maybe it’s time for them to take a stand like some Democrats seem to be doing.
21 Likes
As far as I can tell, the leading Democrats are extremely dedicated to making Trump look like Hitler by acting exactly like Hitler’s opposition. 
21 Likes
Some of that cynical strategy is classical ‘triangulation’. Essentially the short-sighted: “meh, what are those to the left of us gonna do? vote republican!?” So, they endlessly court the middle, because the one political party thinks it has the significant left nailed down and the other has the significant right locked in. Of course, we know this doesn’t work when the margins are so hideously narrow (plus gawdawful things like the electoral college). The tricky bit (and one that i’ve failed consistently at) is convincing the established political strategists that this is suicidal when the options of not voting or …jill-steining are so upwards in too many voters minds. @#$!!!
18 Likes
Here’s another example of state level democrats doing something:
22 Likes
Finally some national dems making some noise:
22 Likes
It would be dumb regardless. The biggest group in the US is people who don’t normally vote. We know actual hopeful and progressive messages can win votes from them. Democrats like Harris keep throwing that away in favor of going after the Liz Cheney only-hurt-the-right-people contingent, as if anyone actually likes her.
17 Likes
That group is who the Democrats need to reach out to. They need to reach out to people who are so disenchanted with our political system (well before Trump), figure out what they want, and propose policies to get us there. It really isn’t rocket surgery… the Democrats (or the leadership) has just decided that the only game intown ot playing to the mythical middle, and ignoring the rest of us… progressives don’t matter, because as @theophrastus said - what are we gonna do, vote republican? So they are constantly trying to give in on culture wars in order to win back those Reagan Democrats… well, they left because they were mad about integration and women’s rights gains and LGBQT+ rights… But these non-voters WANT stuff, too. And the democrats could talk to them and figure out what they want, but they refuse to do that in favor of asking their already existing voters for yet more donations, rather than asking for actual input! They figure they have professional policy people, so they don’t need to know what we want, because we should always just trust these “experts” because they have advanced degrees and went to yale and came from good families…
Ugh…
15 Likes