Defining the 21st Century Democratic Party

[LawBeefaroni]

If the shoe was on the other foot, it would be a sure sign of fraud and the gravy seals would be gearing up for January.

[Blackhawk]

Can you imagine if Trump had won the popular and lost the Electoral?

[Grifman]

The future looks grim unless the Dems come up with new answers:

[Grifman]

I think this is an excellent analysis of what the problem with America is and why Trump is so attractive to do many:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/opin ... ticleShare

An excerpt:

In the West, neoliberalism — that blend of free trade, deregulation and deference to financial markets — hollowed out communities while enriching a global oligarchy. Meanwhile, a homogenized and often crass popular culture eroded traditional national and religious identities. After 9/11, the war on terror was embraced by autocrats such as Mr. Putin, who used it as a frame to justify power grabs while forever wars fueled mass migration. The financial crisis came through like a hurricane, wrecking the lives of people already struggling to get by while the rich profited on the back end. Then social media’s explosion offered a vehicle to spread grievance and conspiracy theories, allowing populist leaders to radicalize their followers with the precision of an algorithm.

The playbook for transforming a democracy into a soft autocracy was clear: Win power with a populist message against elites. Redraw parliamentary districts. Change voting laws. Harass civil society. Pack courts with judges willing to support power grabs. Enrich cronies through corruption. Buy up newspapers and television stations and turn them into right-wing propaganda. Use social media to energize supporters. Wrap it up in an Us versus Them message: Us, the “real” Russians or Hungarians or Americans, against a rotating cast of Them: the migrants, the Muslims, the liberals, the gays, George Soros and on and on.

[Kraken]

The future looks grim unless the Dems come up with new answers:

Blue people moving to red states don't become red people. Rather, they turn those states a wee bit more purple. If Dems recalibrate to improve their appeal even slightly among red staters, TX and FL won't necessarily stay Republican forever. For the past couple of years, MA has had the second-highest rate of out-migration in the US (mostly due to housing costs), with the most popular destinations being NH and FL. Massholes living in FL don't morph into Florida Man.

Longer term, global warming will halt or reverse that migration trend as the sunbelt becomes less habitable, but that's still a couple of censuses away. And of course those red refugees won't turn blue by virtue of moving north any more than blue people turn color when they move south. Realignment is always ongoing.

[Grifman]

I’m not certain your statement is true - maybe people from from blue to red states are red voters, not blue ones. I haven’t seen evidence, one way or another. And FL has been getting more red despite the inflows. And every election I keep hearing that TX is turning purple but without any results. And I’m not certain we can wait for this supposed change to happen.

[Kraken]

Well I personally know two Massholes who became Florida Men and didn't flip, so that proves it.

[LordMortis]

In the West, neoliberalism — that blend of free trade, deregulation and deference to financial markets — hollowed out communities while enriching a global oligarchy. Meanwhile, a homogenized and often crass popular culture eroded traditional national and religious identities. After 9/11, the war on terror was embraced by autocrats such as Mr. Putin, who used it as a frame to justify power grabs while forever wars fueled mass migration. The financial crisis came through like a hurricane, wrecking the lives of people already struggling to get by while the rich profited on the back end. Then social media’s explosion offered a vehicle to spread grievance and conspiracy theories, allowing populist leaders to radicalize their followers with the precision of an algorithm.

The playbook for transforming a democracy into a soft autocracy was clear: Win power with a populist message against elites. Redraw parliamentary districts. Change voting laws. Harass civil society. Pack courts with judges willing to support power grabs. Enrich cronies through corruption. Buy up newspapers and television stations and turn them into right-wing propaganda. Use social media to energize supporters. Wrap it up in an Us versus Them message: Us, the “real” Russians or Hungarians or Americans, against a rotating cast of Them: the migrants, the Muslims, the liberals, the gays, George Soros and on and on.

This confirms my bias. It must be true. Seriously. This is exactly how the world looks to me.

[Skinypupy]

In the West, neoliberalism — that blend of free trade, deregulation and deference to financial markets — hollowed out communities while enriching a global oligarchy. Meanwhile, a homogenized and often crass popular culture eroded traditional national and religious identities. After 9/11, the war on terror was embraced by autocrats such as Mr. Putin, who used it as a frame to justify power grabs while forever wars fueled mass migration. The financial crisis came through like a hurricane, wrecking the lives of people already struggling to get by while the rich profited on the back end. Then social media’s explosion offered a vehicle to spread grievance and conspiracy theories, allowing populist leaders to radicalize their followers with the precision of an algorithm.

The playbook for transforming a democracy into a soft autocracy was clear: Win power with a populist message against elites. Redraw parliamentary districts. Change voting laws. Harass civil society. Pack courts with judges willing to support power grabs. Enrich cronies through corruption. Buy up newspapers and television stations and turn them into right-wing propaganda. Use social media to energize supporters. Wrap it up in an Us versus Them message: Us, the “real” Russians or Hungarians or Americans, against a rotating cast of Them: the migrants, the Muslims, the liberals, the gays, George Soros and on and on.

This confirms my bias. It must be true. Seriously. This is exactly how the world looks to me.

Same. I’d take it a step further and say that May the most apt “how we got here” summaries I’ve ever read.

[Grifman]

In the West, neoliberalism — that blend of free trade, deregulation and deference to financial markets — hollowed out communities while enriching a global oligarchy. Meanwhile, a homogenized and often crass popular culture eroded traditional national and religious identities. After 9/11, the war on terror was embraced by autocrats such as Mr. Putin, who used it as a frame to justify power grabs while forever wars fueled mass migration. The financial crisis came through like a hurricane, wrecking the lives of people already struggling to get by while the rich profited on the back end. Then social media’s explosion offered a vehicle to spread grievance and conspiracy theories, allowing populist leaders to radicalize their followers with the precision of an algorithm.

The playbook for transforming a democracy into a soft autocracy was clear: Win power with a populist message against elites. Redraw parliamentary districts. Change voting laws. Harass civil society. Pack courts with judges willing to support power grabs. Enrich cronies through corruption. Buy up newspapers and television stations and turn them into right-wing propaganda. Use social media to energize supporters. Wrap it up in an Us versus Them message: Us, the “real” Russians or Hungarians or Americans, against a rotating cast of Them: the migrants, the Muslims, the liberals, the gays, George Soros and on and on.

This confirms my bias. It must be true. Seriously. This is exactly how the world looks to me.

Same. I’d take it a step further and say that May the most apt “how we got here” summaries I’ve ever read.

I know that small towns in my home state of NC were devastated by globalization. Hardly a one didn't have a textile mill or furniture factory, and now there are hardly any as all that manufacturing moved overseas. The big cities did fine, as globalization increased jobs in finance, tech, etc. but it was the working people in the small towns that were left behind.

What the govt should have done is applied a surtax on companies that would benefit, such as the tech industry (Microsoft, Google, etc), banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan, etc), and other beneficiaries and then used that money for a fund to help communities most impacted negatively by globalization. That should have been the price big companies had to pay to get WTO/NAFTA/etc passed. But instead nothing was done for these communities and we are suffering from the results now of that negligence.

[Blackhawk]

It's a tough balancing act, supporting those affected, but not simply paying them to not change with the times.

[Grifman]

It's a tough balancing act, supporting those affected, but not simply paying them to not change with the times.

You have a high school education and you live in a small town with a textile mill as the main employer and it closes. How do you “change with the times”? There’s nothing to replace that factory. No business is going to be able to replace that in the short to medium term. And where do you move to? That costs money which you probably don’t have. How do you get additional training? There are no easy answers to “changing with the times”.

[Blackhawk]

There are no easy answers to “changing with the times”.

That was my point. I live in a small town that was built on coal, farming, and railroads. One of those is dead, one became a tertiary option, and the other isn't enough to support the town. I consider Reno to the only place that's really 'home', but the proliferation of gambling nationwide has mostly killed it, and what's left is a mess clinging to the edge of the desert, trying to find a reason to exist. I get it.

But at the same time, over the years industries rise and fall. We don't have much of a market for lamplighters or wainwrights anymore. Coal (for example) needs to go away. When that happens, there won't be a market for coal miners or their support networks. That's going to hurt a lot of people. But what do we do about it? We can provide training, we can provide for relocation, but if they insist on staying in a location that was built on coal, and there's no coal mining, and no other industries have moved in - well, that's a choice they're making, and, sad as it is, that's them choosing not to change with the times.

And no, there are no easy answers, but the right's answer seems to be to hold onto the past, to try and force the future to look like the past.

[Holman]

I don't understand the way Coal Mining has come to stand for industries that somehow need to be protected because of their heartland core American identity.

(BH, this isn't a response to you but to someone like, I don't know, Joe Manchin.)

Coal Mining is already dead. The "coal country" states of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania have fewer than 25,000 people employed in the entire coal industry. Not in each state; in total.

We really could just declare coal dead and give everyone in the industry a generous lifetime pension. There, done.

[Grifman]

Another interesting analysis of what ails the Democretuc Party:

https://www.slowboring.com/p/a-common-s ... -manifesto

[Blackhawk]

Another interesting analysis of what ails the Democretuc Party:

https://www.slowboring.com/p/a-common-s ... -manifesto

Race is a social construct, but biological sex is not. Policy must acknowledge that reality and uphold people’s basic freedom to live as they choose.

Sex is a biological function, but it's important to note that it's not binary. Biological sex is more than male and female, and genitals are only one aspect of that. And the less common variants are just that - variants, not flaws to be fixed. Furthermore, although gender is a social construct, the variants of biological sex directly influence gender-like behaviors.

It's more than 'live as they choose.' It's 'live as they are, rather than what others expect them to be.'

[Grifman]

[Max Peck]

Clearly what progressives need to do is colonize those low-population red states.

[Unagi]

The 'shithole' states.

[Grifman]

Democrats lost ground with Asians:

[LawBeefaroni]

Is this a margin shift only? I mean did the GOP pick up a higher % of voters because there were fewer votes for Harris (say at home) or because there were move votes for Trump (actively voted Trump)? It looks like just margin from the graph. Which isn't nothing but it doesn't' really tell us a lot.

"Exit polls/interviews were wrong so we're going to show you some un-sourced quotes that appears to be from some other poll/interview."

[Grifman]

Please Mr. leopard, eat my face:

[LawBeefaroni]

Tax the poor!

[LordMortis]

I'm sure this is so "job creators" can "trickle down" their wealth generation and "streamline the state's tax code" to "cut government bloat" and "increase efficiency."

[Kraken]

One extreme school of thought says the MAGAts want to eliminate income taxes entirely and finance their rump government with tariffs alone -- purely paid for by consumers. I doubt that they could do that in two years if it even were their secret agenda...but it's certainly the direction they're leaning toward.

[Blackhawk]

And again, disabled people will get the even shorter end of the stick. We will pay the higher prices on products, but we won't gain the benefits of the cuts - with no earned income, we don't pay income taxes.

[Grifman]

The two America’s:

[LordMortis]

While it's interesting. Cause and effect of each instance is the real interesting question.

Also, clicked on a Xhitter link. I feel dirty.

[LawBeefaroni]

Yeah, but which states have cheaper eggs and gas?

[Grifman]

Blue states need the fix themselves:



https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... ing-crime/

[Grifman]

Another excellent article on what is happening - and will continue to happen - to the Demcratic Party, with a prescription for change:

“IT IS TIME TO STOP talking about 2024.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of opinions about the campaign and the years leading up to it. But that isn’t the conversation Democrats need to be having. The real conversation is how my party went from the broadest electoral mandate of the previous twenty-five years, with the biggest majority in the Senate in the previous thirty years, to a shell of itself—a political organization that can hardly be classified as a national entity anymore.

There are a lot of metrics we can cite for this, but this may be the most telling: Of Barack Obama’s 332 electoral votes in 2012, 53 of them came from states that aren’t really in play anymore: Florida, Ohio, and Iowa.

All three states have gone Republican three elections in a row. Prior to 2012, Iowa had gone Democratic in five of the previous six presidential elections, Ohio had gone to Democrats in four of six, and Florida in three of six (though it probably was four out of six had my state known how to count ballots).

That’s not just a canary in a coalmine. It is a massive boulder landing in front of you on the only road home.”

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/democratic ... nationally

[GreenGoo]

Wait. There's a democratic party in Florida now? When did that happen?

[El Guapo]

Wait. There's a democratic party in Florida now? When did that happen?

No, the point is that there *was* a Democratic Party in Florida.

[Grifman]

The Dems need to break through alternative media:



https://newrepublic.com/article/189147/ ... gn-finance

For Wikler, the party’s central problem became visible back in April, when a little-noticed NBC News poll showed Trump with the support of 53 percent of people who don’t follow news at all and 55 percent of those who get news from YouTube and Google. By contrast, President Biden (who hadn’t yet left the race) earned 55 percent from those who follow network news and 70 percent from those who read newspapers.

[Smoove_B]

The Dems need to break through alternative media:

Have we considered the uninterested, unmotivated population is actually the problem?

I get that people aren't interested in classic media in general, but overall my experience after nearly 3 decades of public service is the general public does not give a crap about anything related to politics or the political process. I'm not sure a TikTok about the importance of voting rights or immigration is going to fix the disinterest.

[LordMortis]

The Dems need to break through alternative media:

Have we considered the uninterested, unmotivated population is actually the problem?

I get that people aren't interested in classic media in general, but overall my experience after nearly 3 decades of public service is the general public does not give a crap about anything related to politics or the political process. I'm not sure a TikTok about the importance of voting rights or immigration is going to fix the disinterest.

A constant barrage of tictoks by someone who has trendy engagement to get people inside of larger networks of engagement about the latest brand new outrage (real, imagined, or completely fabricated) against the GOP over the course of several years might do it, though.

[GreenGoo]

The Dems need to break through alternative media:

Have we considered the uninterested, unmotivated population is actually the problem?

Lol. This. I get that it's the Dems problem, but the Dems *aren't* the problem.

When my sewer line is clogged, it's my problem. But I'm not the problem.

[Kurth]

The Dems need to break through alternative media:

Have we considered the uninterested, unmotivated population is actually the problem?

I get that people aren't interested in classic media in general, but overall my experience after nearly 3 decades of public service is the general public does not give a crap about anything related to politics or the political process. I'm not sure a TikTok about the importance of voting rights or immigration is going to fix the disinterest.

Hmmm. Like, maybe democracy is the problem???

[Smoove_B]

Hmmm. Like, maybe democracy is the problem???

I think we've reached a point as a society (America) where the democratic system has been hijacked by those that want power to further their own needs (economic, social or religious). And the public let them because we're otherwise distracted or largely disinterested.

In short, we don't deserve the responsibility of democracy...at least how we've come to understand it.

I completely understand why people are disillusioned with government (at all levels) and with anyone in public service (any party). More so than ever I understand the Drazzil's of the world.

[Grifman]

Voters just hit the sense that Dems didn’t care about them. The thing is, it was the Dems that passed another round of Covid belief, Biden increased ACA subsidies, and other programs. How do they break through and get this info out because their messaging is obviously so bad?