A major area where the GOP has been hitting us hard is messaging - sound bites, slogans, chants, and catchphrases that stick. We definitely need something that makes the goal clear and inclusive, to counter the GOP narrative and policies of punching down.
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Perhaps a ‘Unite the Left’ rally? Ok, I’m not gonna go there.
But at the risk of turning this into another copy of the other thread, I agree that the Democrats have serious messaging and audience problems. But also option problems.
Who do we rely on?
- disillusioned core Democrats, who didn’t get a say in the primaries last time and feel that the party pushed another “it’s her turn” candidate - 2 in the past 3 elections?
- disillusioned leftists, who didn’t like the last pick because she was known as a prosecutor who charged people in the War on Drugs?
- union workers, who, (although I thought Kamala and Walz did a great job of speaking to the union crowd), make up less than 10% of the workforce nowadays (let alone the population), many of whom are right-leaning? That strategy is unfortunately 50-60 years out of date. (similar to Clinton advertising on AOL to appeal to the youth voters)
- immigrants, who often come from more conservative societies who simply wouldn’t vote for a black woman to lead them, and also often favor a strong anti-immigration stance because they don’t want the people they moved here to get away from to end up moving in next door?
- sellout centrists, who don’t really want to go hard-right, but would rather fall in line rather than going left?
- with external conflicts like Israel/Palestine and Ukraine/Russia, many people feel strongly one way or the other, and don’t want to be associated with those who feel the opposite, so which do we choose?
It may be a ‘big tent party’, but if nobody wants to be in that tent, especially not all in there together with each other, then that’s not much of a party, it’s just a big empty tent.
And to come back to your point, yes, frankly our messaging mostly sucks.
Much like the Occupy Wall Street protests. Ask 10 people what they were protesting for, and you’d get 15 different answers.
But contrast that to the Market Basket protests - ask anyone there and they’d say “Bring back Artie T.!” One single clear coherent demand.
Do we need a populist who people can rally behind? Maybe. Likely. The world seems to be turning towards that. It’s always dangerous, of course. (Though Roosevelt sure did ok.)
But lacking one of those, we really do need one single clear cohesive message that people can rally behind. Diverse people from many different backgrounds. Disillusioned people. People who’ve given up. People who disagree on some other things. Make it a chant or slogan or whatever. Just some one thing they can all get behind.
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All lives matter?
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In short order, that simple message is once again going to be “it’s the economy, stupid”, because everything old is new again. 
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FDT, and his little doge too!
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I’ve not been part of this thread before the split , so sorry if someone has already covered it, but France is not a good example of how to beat back the far right at all. LePen (and before that, LePen), has steadily been growing in popularity since the 1990s, and now controls a big block of Deputies in the Assembly. And they reach the presidential round regularly now.
“Rally behind the centrists” , doesn’t work when the outcome is that they spend their term in office doing barely enough to maintain the status quo, and then inevitably put more emphasis on shutting out the Left than compromising with them in parliament. We actually need politicians who are prepared to fix the underlying issues that are causing the atmosphere in which the far right thrives, but centrists and Liberals will never consider this because the underlying reason is capitalism itself.
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This does not get nearly enough attention in regard to the Dem leadership. The effort after AOC was elected to shut out primary challengers to incumbents was incredibly misguided and (IMHO) backfired dramatically. That said, I still subscribe heavily to Beau’s bus ride analogy. If I am travelling from Pittsburgh to Seattle, and someone else is travelling to Cleveland, at least for the time we are going in the same direction, and I am willing to help get them where they need to be. If they are headed for Philly, that is a different story altogether. IMHO, this is where we need to draw a line. There are folks who take an all-or-nothing approach and that will get us all killed. It is also not how a democracy works. In the USA of 2025, we have only 2 options, one of which is less-than-perfect, and at times utterly frustrating. The other are literal fascist pigs. I know which choice I am making. While I am sufficiently privileged to likely be fine under either party, I have family and loved ones who literally are being told they have no right to exist under the fascists. If you know anything about WVians, it is that you do not fuck with our families. It’s not clear to me how this will play out at this time, but the idea of allowing fascists to maintain power is just not acceptable. In my view, we can both keep the long view that capitalism is a death cult and needs to be replaced, while seeing that fascism is a very immediate threat to our very existence. If we lose this go-around, that long term view will not matter. We will need to partner with folks who may only be headed for Squirrel Hill, but for the now, that is sufficient.
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What do you think the Hands Off protest was? What do you think the No Kings Day protest coming up Saturday is?
I know for sure (because they are in my Indivisible group) that there is a union tradesperson who voted for T**** three times who is now anti-T**** who is going to the No Kings Day protest. Meanwhile, there is a former member of my Indivisible group who won’t protest unless the only point is climate activism and they keep advocating for violence especially for protests they don’t go to. They ridicule people who protest peacefully as being ineffective, voted for Jill Stein twice but never actually go to a protest.
These two examples are the basis of what I’m talking about. I know who is actually pulling their weight in fighting fascism and who is helping fascism even if it isn’t their intention - and ultimately hurting the effort fighting climate change as a result. And one reason I keep citing Parkrose Permaculture about this topic is because she deals with the same issues on a larger scale.
Ultimately, I only try to make this point in order to help other people fight fascism in the US in what I think is an effective way. YMMV. You might not be dealing with the same issues. But shitting on my advice is not cool. It’s not helpful. And, in the end, I’m going to follow my own advice and continue to spread it despite your hostility and disdain (if that’s what you’ve contributed to this thread).
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Eew trying to manipulate others into harming themselves? Are you sure that’s not just a sociopath?
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I have no idea how you read that from my post.
I was responding to the fact that the left is not united, and that’s a problem. There’s not unity or a clear message. It’s all over the place, and everyone has their own agendas.
In short, I was agreeing with you.
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Sorry, no, that whole wall of text wasn’t directed at you. Just the first paragraph, in regards to the “Unite the Left” comment. And in retrospect, given the rest of my screed, it only defines “the Left” as “anyone left of the fascists” which isn’t really all that left, really. 
Well that, and a kind of political Munchausens-by-proxy that is apparently a thing around here.
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Ah, yeah, my “Unite the Left rally? - OK, I’m not gonna go there.” comment was referring to how horrific the “Unite the Right” rally was. As in, I really don’t think we want to do something that’s anything like that.
We are not united, don’t share a clear consistent message, and we do need to unite, but not like they did. So it has to be different. That’s all I meant by it.
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““Philly could look like L.A. in two weeks,” one prominent activist told me under the condition that I reveal no personal details about them. (I’m simply allowed to say that they live within city limits and are a self-described “Socialist with a license to carry.”)
The activist went on to say that local organizers have been monitoring ICE raids here and elsewhere, determining the best course of action to combat ICE. They say that protesters here are, in fact, ready and willing to combat ICE in the literal sense, as we’re seeing happen in Los Angeles.”
Note: That’s not what we’re seeing in Los Angeles. But yes; there are idiots out there hoping for violence.
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This is a long watch, but really worth it; Jon Favreau interviews political scientist Erica Chenoweth on the 3.5% threshold of political action that we’ve been hearing about lately (it was her team that came up with the figure, with caveats), and how to move things forward.
This was filmed before the events of this weekend.
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I think she is describing Beau’s bus ride analogy, and criticizing the “never Kamala” left, although (IMHO) that was a very small number of folks. Usually i really like her views. Having a harder time parsing this one. I have run into a few “my way or the highway” leftists, but most are very realistic about where they are.
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Bullshit. Leftists are perfectly willing to coalition build. We’ve been doing it for decades. We’ve been working with centrists for decades because what choice did we have? The problem is that centrists today aren’t what they were 40 years ago. The Overton Window has moved so far to the right that today’s centrists are really conservatives. Or, they’re at least espousing conservative talking points. If you actually present them progressive ideas, though, without putting a label on them, they almost always say they’re in favor of it. A lot of people are getting tired of this.
The ones who have been largely unwilling to compromise have been the centrists. Why is it always the leftists who have to give up what we want? Why can’t centrists adopt some progressive ideas in order to get us on board? I would actually say that Biden was doing this, and it was working. And then that disastrous debate happened, everyone lost confidence in him, and Harris came in and seemed a little tepid on the more progressive aspects of the Biden administration. Maybe she wouldn’t have walked back on that progress had she been elected, but the reluctance to fully embrace what Biden had done, along with the obvious overtures to centrists and even traditional conservative Republicans made leftists nervous. Even then, though, the everwhelming majority of us still voted for her. I don’t buy this argument that inflexible leftists are imposing some kind of ideological purity test and that’s what the problem is. I don’t think it’s accurate. I really don’t.
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Don’t say bullshit to her just because you don’t like the message. She is expressing my lived reality where many of the self-described “leftists” exhibit this exact behavior. Some do work toward coalition-building, but there is no small percentage who exhibit purity politics.
And there isn’t’ t really much trade-off. Progressive policies are extremely popular; that doesn’t mean progressive politicians are, other than the few household names like Bernie and AOC. The key is making sure the people we elect pursue those policies, even if they aren’t our #1 choice. And ultimately, if a more moderate politician pursues progressive policies, who gives a shit who is sitting in the chair?
And I realize this could be a geographical thing. PP lives within 10 miles of me, so we are exposed to a lot of the same folks in leftist/progressive groups, good and bad. We deal with the usual politicians plus maybe more of a spectrum of surprisingly effective moderates and shockingly incompetent progressives who do more harm than good.
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Most do. She, and you, are extrapolating the behavior of a very small number of leftists and applying it to the entire group.
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I don’t. Again, most of us voted for Harris, even with our misgivings. What we’re upset about now is being blamed for her loss, and being told we need to work with centrists, when we already are. Why is no one telling centrists to work with us? This goes both ways.
And I’m saying bullshit, because I think the message in the video is bullshit, not because I don’t like the message. I’m allowed to express my opinion too, Duke.
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