If we win, but we throw brown people, immigrants and trans people to the wolves, what will we have won? I will not be giving up my values to vote for what this asshole thinks is electable. What good is winning if you have lost your moral center?
Being a 'centrist' means having to adopt ever more regressive reactionary policies as 'being in the center' between the 'left' and the 'right' as the right plunges headlong into autoritarian fascist territory.
Even when they weren't outright fascists, Dems always lost when they tried to be 'Republican Lite' to appeal to the red states, because it's so patently a lack of any sort of political convictions as any thing but opportunist.
It only ever worked for Bill Clinton because the vote was split between Bush Sr. and Ross Perot, and he was a very charismatic candidate.
The responses by most Democratic politicians to the racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and religious intolerance voiced by Republican politicians every damn day are usually weak-assed and self-defeating. They react to Republican lies about policies, science, religion and sex as if it would be too impolite to call them out for what they are. Fewer voters would fall the Republican social policies if they heard clear denunciations of the moral and historical failings embodied in those policies. They won’t hear it from the corporate media, they need to hear it from every Dem speaker on every platform. That requires the opposite of what choads like Yglesias are recommending.
Bigotry of every kind is as powerful as it is because our news media are weak and prefer to pander to bigotry -- and to give it a microphone at every opportunity, for the sake of "entertainment" -- rather than to fight against it.
"If you're explaining, you're losing," said President Ronald Reagan. Ever since Reagan, it is not only politicians who have taken this advice. Broadcast media journalists have done the same.
Today's commercial news media explain as little as possible. Their primary motive seems to be the same as the motive of politicians. Each commercial news media channel or website wants to be popular. Its owners and shareholders want to increase their viewership quota, which is all that their corporate sponsors care about. And they have learned, from Reagan, that if you try to explain too much, you will lose people's attention.
And so, for decades, our news media have given up trying to explain things. Whatever people want to believe is OK. They can believe that Haitian immigrants are "eating the dogs and eating the cats." They can believe that public school teachers want to turn everybody's children transgender. They can believe that Affirmative Action protects disqualified Browns against qualified Whites. All these beliefs are wrong, but the commercial news media are no longer in the business of helping people know what is true and what is not.
People who consume news media that never explain anything, for decades, will end up not understanding how anything works. And these people are of course highly prone to bigotry. It's easy to blame other people for your problems when you have absolutely zero understanding of what really caused your problems. The wide-spread reality denial that we can observe, especially among Republicans whose formal education ended decades ago, is, in my view, strong evidence of catastrophic commercial news media failure.
And into all this come the opportunistic pundits, like Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias, who recommend the same strategy for the Democratic Party that has worked so "well" for the news media. Don't explain anything. Just let bigots be bigots. Nobody ever got rich fighting bigotry. Or telling the truth.
Are people like Klein and Yglesias actually bigots? I don't know. I recall that during George W. Bush's War on Terror, which was also in many ways a War on Truth, there was a phrase called "incestuous amplification" that emerged from the Pentagon. This intentionally opaque phrase means the error of believing your own b*llsh*t. Military propagandists do not consider it a mistake to create b*llsh*t. On the contrary, b*llsh*tting is standard operating procedure. It's OK to tell the US-American public that the war will be over in two weeks and that the people we bomb will greet our troops as liberators. But it's NOT OK if you actually BELIEVE the war will be as easy as you say. If you believe this, you will underestimate the enemy, you will fail to achieve anything that looks like a victory, the costs of the war will become too great to ignore, and finally, not even the best lies will be enough to save your reputation.
Possibly, Klein and Yglesias did not start out as bigots. But pandering to bigots for so long (and getting paid to do it) has softened their brains and poisoned their hearts. They have come to believe their own b*llsh*t. Maybe this was a conscious choice. Hypocrisy takes too much energy.
To be fair to the “popularist” argument, it wasn’t so much “adopt conservative or moderate views” on issues but rather “talk more about the issues where your side is more popular rather than the issues where you’re less popular (eg, if conservatives are more popular on immigration and less popular on health care, liberals shouldn’t change their stance on immigration but should steer the conversation towards health care because they win more on it). It’s not necessarily a good theory (seems to concede certain issues to the Right and you can’t always steer the conversation) but it’s quite different from “change where you stand on an issue”.
I favor most center-left positions so it’s certainly possible that my ideas for what will win over voters are influenced by what policies I’d like to see. I think most pundits (not just Yglesias) should ask themselves the same. What is it that helps Democrats get more votes? Tactically taking more “popular” stances on key things (eg, Clinton supporting death penalty)? Presenting a more relatable image (Talarico eating BBQ and quoting Gospel)? Finding ways to sell what you believe to make it more popular (eg how gay marriage went from a fringe position in 1996 to broadly popular now)?
Personally I think the third option works best, though that’s also because it’s how I would like to see Democrats fight (the first two options are signs of weakness IMO).
Centrism did not hold the line against extremism. It retreated. Extremists pushed right. It ceded ground. Extremists continued to push and erode previous norms. It strategically redeployed. The American Taliban continued to march and Centrists collapsed.
Now the centrist position appears to be further compromise and some sort of Vichy suzerain meekly maintaining a toxic and poisonous status quo should Democrats get into office.
And I think the people advocating it are quite comfortable. The status quo suits them. Even the status quo of a right-wing regime. They believe they remain secure and are willing to look the other way and give up their fellow man to the lynch mob as long as their personal comfort and position is not disturbed.
I think this confuses MY’s trollish Twitter persona for his actual “glee” at kicking down, and also ignores his evolution from one of the original leftie bloggers into a supposed neoliberal shill.
Bluesky has the memory of a mosquito, so it’s not surprising they don’t remember a writer’s street cred from 20 years ago, but also it’s not like he’s been marinating in the same think tank circuit as the stale Third Way types this whole time either — he’s been way too independent for anyone to take allegations about the provenance of his paycheck seriously. (And relative to a grifter like Jeff Hauser… yeesh)
I think his main mistake is his quixotic belief in some really shoddy studies on moderation. But that’s not the same as being an actual shill.
I see why Yglesias is confused as he is one of those people paid $$$ to be professionally credulous...and get lots of clicks doing the same. I'm honestly not sure how many of the people out there he has the ear of. I'm not online enough I suppose and I've really just been burned out on social media. Does he actually have influence? Do Democratic politicians (well not all, obviously) follow him?
I think the Twitter files trashed what credibility he had among people involved in democratic politics for the most part. My guess is his entire shtick is being the token "good Democrat" that hyper online Republicans can point to as the reasonable alternative to the scary radical left.🙄
And he probably gets a lot of milage as a layup guest for shitty political podcasts where he can be the Democrat that joins the right wing host in the inevitable circle jerk of trashing the left.
"Center-left journalist Matt Yglesias has relentlessly pushed the Democratic Party to embrace socially conservative positions (specifically on trans rights, immigration, and even abortion) as the best way for the party to perform well in “red” states"
Which only works if you assume that blue people in red states are LESS blue than they are in blue states...As someone who lived most of his life in a red state (that has been turning blue over the past 20 years YAY Virginia!) that is utter crap
When you back away from standard democratic positions like gender equality, abortion rights, immigrant rights, you send a CLEAR 'fuck you' to blue dots in red states...you know, the dem voters who are quite 'literally' on the front lines...The democratic voters who are holding the fort while the centrists pontificate on what will or wont work in elections in red states.
So to the centrists...You NEED these democratic voters MUCH MORE than you need some theoretical never Trumper that may or may not actually exist, one that probably wouldn't vote for ANY dem in any case...
Wonderfully insightful, and bluntly explains why pundits like Yglesias continue to tout "moving to the right on some issues" as a vote-getter. It's not that it is; it's that he, and others like them, actually support these bigoted positions (notably, all the names I can think of off the top of my head who have made a career pushing this are white men, which may be more due to them overwhelmingly dominating op-ed sections, but, well, how better to ensure they continue to do so than to write pieces earnestly explaining that Democrats just need to put a leetle pressure on the necks of those not white and male?).
And thanks for the deep dive into Clinton and the push for gay equality in the 1990s. In 2016, there was a lot of vitriol thrown online at Hillary Clinton over Don't Ask Don't Tell (which, as First Lady, she didn't even get a vote on), and I really felt the weight of my Gen-X years (1992 was the election I voted in, too). I remember the absolute uproar over Bill's push to allow gay people to serve in the military. Don't Ask Don't Tell wasn't great, for sure, but it really was the best he could do at that time, and compared to what was before? Good grief, kids. They have no idea. I disagree with a lot of Clinton's policies, especially in the 2nd term, but he was swimming hard upstream against a lot of entrenched prejudice when it came to queer Americans, and his Administration really did make some progress.
Why is anybody still listening to any of those clowns? Yglesias, Klein and the Pod Save bros should all tuck their tails between their legs and slink away after the mess they made of 2024. They have been nothing but wrong.
Most, if not all, Democratic positions, are popular with most Americans. That includes positions taken by the DSA. However, too many Dems, especially establishment Dems, accept right wing framing on issues, especially cultural issues, so either defend their positions poorly, or whine about whatever marginalized group that the cons are whining about. Is it a messaging problem, a cowardice problem, or an honesty problem? The answer is "yes," to all three, for some establishment Dems - they suck at messaging, they lack a spine to stand up for what they really believe in, and they can't be honest about what they really believe.
For some Dems, it's a messaging problem. I'm not an expert on messaging, but step one would be to NOT accept right wing framing on anything, and to call both them out and the media, which accepts right framing as the norm. If those Dems could do that, if they have a spine and are honest about wanting healthcare for all, affordable housing, human rights for all - including the marginalized, and holding lawbreakers (especially those at the highest levels) accountable for their actions, they would do well in elections.
Those hacks you wrote about aren't leftists at all, they are right wingers, giving Dems bad advice.
He does though I'm going to put on my political science hat too and say that Mamdani's situation is quite different than what Congressional/federal Democrats face:
New York City, like (I believe) all cities in New York State, operates under a strong-mayor -council framework, so mayors get a lot more sway in what they can do.
New York City Council also is not controlled by an ethnonationalist, racist, transnational criminal syndicate. That's particularly important.
New York City, unlike other cities in New York State except Yonkers IIRC, has its own income tax. This is a much wider possibility space especially with the number of richy rich people that live there.
Mamdani has very special circumstances that I am heartened to see that he can take advantage of. In upstate New York, our progressive mayors are hampered by our funding sources being property tax primarily, and the numerous macroeconomic and socioeconomic factors that have us smashed flat.
In contrast Congress is in a broken post-Gingrich state, hampered by both pay-go and the loss of earmarks. And of course, via the magic of gerrymandering (or the deliberate creation of states to ensure that racist slavers would always have outsized power in the Senate), Congress is controlled by that nihilistic death cult.
"Mamdani has very special circumstances that I am heartened to see that he can take advantage of"
indeed
That in itself should be the takeaway from this...Note to dem leaders everywhere...Simply use what you DO have to the fullest extent that you can. There are SO many balls dropped by dem leaders by simply NOT using the tools that readily and LEGALLY available to them
If we win, but we throw brown people, immigrants and trans people to the wolves, what will we have won? I will not be giving up my values to vote for what this asshole thinks is electable. What good is winning if you have lost your moral center?
Being a 'centrist' means having to adopt ever more regressive reactionary policies as 'being in the center' between the 'left' and the 'right' as the right plunges headlong into autoritarian fascist territory.
Even when they weren't outright fascists, Dems always lost when they tried to be 'Republican Lite' to appeal to the red states, because it's so patently a lack of any sort of political convictions as any thing but opportunist.
It only ever worked for Bill Clinton because the vote was split between Bush Sr. and Ross Perot, and he was a very charismatic candidate.
The responses by most Democratic politicians to the racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and religious intolerance voiced by Republican politicians every damn day are usually weak-assed and self-defeating. They react to Republican lies about policies, science, religion and sex as if it would be too impolite to call them out for what they are. Fewer voters would fall the Republican social policies if they heard clear denunciations of the moral and historical failings embodied in those policies. They won’t hear it from the corporate media, they need to hear it from every Dem speaker on every platform. That requires the opposite of what choads like Yglesias are recommending.
Bigotry of every kind is as powerful as it is because our news media are weak and prefer to pander to bigotry -- and to give it a microphone at every opportunity, for the sake of "entertainment" -- rather than to fight against it.
"If you're explaining, you're losing," said President Ronald Reagan. Ever since Reagan, it is not only politicians who have taken this advice. Broadcast media journalists have done the same.
Today's commercial news media explain as little as possible. Their primary motive seems to be the same as the motive of politicians. Each commercial news media channel or website wants to be popular. Its owners and shareholders want to increase their viewership quota, which is all that their corporate sponsors care about. And they have learned, from Reagan, that if you try to explain too much, you will lose people's attention.
And so, for decades, our news media have given up trying to explain things. Whatever people want to believe is OK. They can believe that Haitian immigrants are "eating the dogs and eating the cats." They can believe that public school teachers want to turn everybody's children transgender. They can believe that Affirmative Action protects disqualified Browns against qualified Whites. All these beliefs are wrong, but the commercial news media are no longer in the business of helping people know what is true and what is not.
People who consume news media that never explain anything, for decades, will end up not understanding how anything works. And these people are of course highly prone to bigotry. It's easy to blame other people for your problems when you have absolutely zero understanding of what really caused your problems. The wide-spread reality denial that we can observe, especially among Republicans whose formal education ended decades ago, is, in my view, strong evidence of catastrophic commercial news media failure.
And into all this come the opportunistic pundits, like Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias, who recommend the same strategy for the Democratic Party that has worked so "well" for the news media. Don't explain anything. Just let bigots be bigots. Nobody ever got rich fighting bigotry. Or telling the truth.
Are people like Klein and Yglesias actually bigots? I don't know. I recall that during George W. Bush's War on Terror, which was also in many ways a War on Truth, there was a phrase called "incestuous amplification" that emerged from the Pentagon. This intentionally opaque phrase means the error of believing your own b*llsh*t. Military propagandists do not consider it a mistake to create b*llsh*t. On the contrary, b*llsh*tting is standard operating procedure. It's OK to tell the US-American public that the war will be over in two weeks and that the people we bomb will greet our troops as liberators. But it's NOT OK if you actually BELIEVE the war will be as easy as you say. If you believe this, you will underestimate the enemy, you will fail to achieve anything that looks like a victory, the costs of the war will become too great to ignore, and finally, not even the best lies will be enough to save your reputation.
Possibly, Klein and Yglesias did not start out as bigots. But pandering to bigots for so long (and getting paid to do it) has softened their brains and poisoned their hearts. They have come to believe their own b*llsh*t. Maybe this was a conscious choice. Hypocrisy takes too much energy.
It is a truth universally aknowledged that people won't pick Republican 'Lite' over Republican.
See: Mamdani
To be fair to the “popularist” argument, it wasn’t so much “adopt conservative or moderate views” on issues but rather “talk more about the issues where your side is more popular rather than the issues where you’re less popular (eg, if conservatives are more popular on immigration and less popular on health care, liberals shouldn’t change their stance on immigration but should steer the conversation towards health care because they win more on it). It’s not necessarily a good theory (seems to concede certain issues to the Right and you can’t always steer the conversation) but it’s quite different from “change where you stand on an issue”.
This is why I never thought of Yglesias as center-left but more like plain old right-wing.
I favor most center-left positions so it’s certainly possible that my ideas for what will win over voters are influenced by what policies I’d like to see. I think most pundits (not just Yglesias) should ask themselves the same. What is it that helps Democrats get more votes? Tactically taking more “popular” stances on key things (eg, Clinton supporting death penalty)? Presenting a more relatable image (Talarico eating BBQ and quoting Gospel)? Finding ways to sell what you believe to make it more popular (eg how gay marriage went from a fringe position in 1996 to broadly popular now)?
Personally I think the third option works best, though that’s also because it’s how I would like to see Democrats fight (the first two options are signs of weakness IMO).
Where is the center? https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/10/the-polarization-in-todays-congress-has-roots-that-go-back-decades/
Always moving rightward.
Centrism did not hold the line against extremism. It retreated. Extremists pushed right. It ceded ground. Extremists continued to push and erode previous norms. It strategically redeployed. The American Taliban continued to march and Centrists collapsed.
Now the centrist position appears to be further compromise and some sort of Vichy suzerain meekly maintaining a toxic and poisonous status quo should Democrats get into office.
And I think the people advocating it are quite comfortable. The status quo suits them. Even the status quo of a right-wing regime. They believe they remain secure and are willing to look the other way and give up their fellow man to the lynch mob as long as their personal comfort and position is not disturbed.
I think this confuses MY’s trollish Twitter persona for his actual “glee” at kicking down, and also ignores his evolution from one of the original leftie bloggers into a supposed neoliberal shill.
Bluesky has the memory of a mosquito, so it’s not surprising they don’t remember a writer’s street cred from 20 years ago, but also it’s not like he’s been marinating in the same think tank circuit as the stale Third Way types this whole time either — he’s been way too independent for anyone to take allegations about the provenance of his paycheck seriously. (And relative to a grifter like Jeff Hauser… yeesh)
I think his main mistake is his quixotic belief in some really shoddy studies on moderation. But that’s not the same as being an actual shill.
I see why Yglesias is confused as he is one of those people paid $$$ to be professionally credulous...and get lots of clicks doing the same. I'm honestly not sure how many of the people out there he has the ear of. I'm not online enough I suppose and I've really just been burned out on social media. Does he actually have influence? Do Democratic politicians (well not all, obviously) follow him?
I think the Twitter files trashed what credibility he had among people involved in democratic politics for the most part. My guess is his entire shtick is being the token "good Democrat" that hyper online Republicans can point to as the reasonable alternative to the scary radical left.🙄
And he probably gets a lot of milage as a layup guest for shitty political podcasts where he can be the Democrat that joins the right wing host in the inevitable circle jerk of trashing the left.
"If you read enough of Yglesias’s newsletter and social media posts"
I don't, and I'm better off for it!
(:
"Center-left journalist Matt Yglesias has relentlessly pushed the Democratic Party to embrace socially conservative positions (specifically on trans rights, immigration, and even abortion) as the best way for the party to perform well in “red” states"
Which only works if you assume that blue people in red states are LESS blue than they are in blue states...As someone who lived most of his life in a red state (that has been turning blue over the past 20 years YAY Virginia!) that is utter crap
When you back away from standard democratic positions like gender equality, abortion rights, immigrant rights, you send a CLEAR 'fuck you' to blue dots in red states...you know, the dem voters who are quite 'literally' on the front lines...The democratic voters who are holding the fort while the centrists pontificate on what will or wont work in elections in red states.
So to the centrists...You NEED these democratic voters MUCH MORE than you need some theoretical never Trumper that may or may not actually exist, one that probably wouldn't vote for ANY dem in any case...
So true!!! Thank you, red-state Dems, for your constancy and courage.
Wonderfully insightful, and bluntly explains why pundits like Yglesias continue to tout "moving to the right on some issues" as a vote-getter. It's not that it is; it's that he, and others like them, actually support these bigoted positions (notably, all the names I can think of off the top of my head who have made a career pushing this are white men, which may be more due to them overwhelmingly dominating op-ed sections, but, well, how better to ensure they continue to do so than to write pieces earnestly explaining that Democrats just need to put a leetle pressure on the necks of those not white and male?).
And thanks for the deep dive into Clinton and the push for gay equality in the 1990s. In 2016, there was a lot of vitriol thrown online at Hillary Clinton over Don't Ask Don't Tell (which, as First Lady, she didn't even get a vote on), and I really felt the weight of my Gen-X years (1992 was the election I voted in, too). I remember the absolute uproar over Bill's push to allow gay people to serve in the military. Don't Ask Don't Tell wasn't great, for sure, but it really was the best he could do at that time, and compared to what was before? Good grief, kids. They have no idea. I disagree with a lot of Clinton's policies, especially in the 2nd term, but he was swimming hard upstream against a lot of entrenched prejudice when it came to queer Americans, and his Administration really did make some progress.
Why is anybody still listening to any of those clowns? Yglesias, Klein and the Pod Save bros should all tuck their tails between their legs and slink away after the mess they made of 2024. They have been nothing but wrong.
You can never be wrong in punditry because there’s always some reason why what you proposed was not really implemented.
I need to get in on that racket….
Its just a very small echo chamber swimming in cope
Most, if not all, Democratic positions, are popular with most Americans. That includes positions taken by the DSA. However, too many Dems, especially establishment Dems, accept right wing framing on issues, especially cultural issues, so either defend their positions poorly, or whine about whatever marginalized group that the cons are whining about. Is it a messaging problem, a cowardice problem, or an honesty problem? The answer is "yes," to all three, for some establishment Dems - they suck at messaging, they lack a spine to stand up for what they really believe in, and they can't be honest about what they really believe.
For some Dems, it's a messaging problem. I'm not an expert on messaging, but step one would be to NOT accept right wing framing on anything, and to call both them out and the media, which accepts right framing as the norm. If those Dems could do that, if they have a spine and are honest about wanting healthcare for all, affordable housing, human rights for all - including the marginalized, and holding lawbreakers (especially those at the highest levels) accountable for their actions, they would do well in elections.
Those hacks you wrote about aren't leftists at all, they are right wingers, giving Dems bad advice.
IOW, WWMD?
What would Mamdani do?
1. learn what that is
2. fucking DO IT
He does though I'm going to put on my political science hat too and say that Mamdani's situation is quite different than what Congressional/federal Democrats face:
New York City, like (I believe) all cities in New York State, operates under a strong-mayor -council framework, so mayors get a lot more sway in what they can do.
New York City Council also is not controlled by an ethnonationalist, racist, transnational criminal syndicate. That's particularly important.
New York City, unlike other cities in New York State except Yonkers IIRC, has its own income tax. This is a much wider possibility space especially with the number of richy rich people that live there.
Mamdani has very special circumstances that I am heartened to see that he can take advantage of. In upstate New York, our progressive mayors are hampered by our funding sources being property tax primarily, and the numerous macroeconomic and socioeconomic factors that have us smashed flat.
In contrast Congress is in a broken post-Gingrich state, hampered by both pay-go and the loss of earmarks. And of course, via the magic of gerrymandering (or the deliberate creation of states to ensure that racist slavers would always have outsized power in the Senate), Congress is controlled by that nihilistic death cult.
"Mamdani has very special circumstances that I am heartened to see that he can take advantage of"
indeed
That in itself should be the takeaway from this...Note to dem leaders everywhere...Simply use what you DO have to the fullest extent that you can. There are SO many balls dropped by dem leaders by simply NOT using the tools that readily and LEGALLY available to them
Always insightful Seth.
"New York City Council also is not controlled by an ethnonationalist, racist, transnational criminal syndicate. That's particularly important."
this point alone shores up your argument quite well
LOL!