Sorry. I always seem to have something to say. Maybe we should retire the term white working class voters, or split it into different categories. If it were only economics - not what some of these voters perceive as economics - Democrats would win almost all of the vote. Every policy in history that helps the "working class" has been championed by progressives and liberals and fought against by conservatives. Every one. And yet Republicans win "white working class voters". That's because it's not economics even when someone says it is. It's white supremacy, racism, misogyny, church hierarchy, "god", cultural issues, xenophobia, guns, the overwhelming RW ecosystem that's insists Democrats are socialists (as if that's a bad thing) and it would ruin the life of these average people, though it would instead help them immensely. Republican politics have made them poorer, more in debt, working multiple jobs to afford working class places to live. All Republican led counties for many years are the poorest and least educated. And yet they keep asking Republicans to beat them up again. A white working class voter in a big city is not the same as one in rural Mississippi. Only populists can break the Republican spell. But I fear it's too late.
I agree. A lot of the consultant class seems to think it just means “be more moderate on everything” like you mentioned with pro life candidates. But people aren’t on binaries anymore (lol take that transphobes). Another reason besides vibes (which also matter). People wanna smash the elites’ power who control everything but care less about what people do in their homes or doctors offices. But the consultants are all rich themselves so they have no idea what economic issues motivate people or what’s considered down to earth
That’s the issue right there—noncollege voters. Democrats have even slipped among nonwhite noncollege voters, particularly Hispanics, and it’s important to figure out why. Blaming racism is unconvincing (even if you think many black and Hispanic voters decided to become white supremacists recently), and it’s not really a matter of political stances as Democrats haven’t exactly adopted less “populist” policies in recent decades nor have Republicans gone the other way.
Could it be image and vibes—Dems coming across more like college professors and lawyers (admittedly many of their most visible pols are exactly that), than mechanics and exterminators? Could it be a lack of any communication apparatus that makes it so that most people are getting Democrats defined for them by the Right, rather than defined by themselves?
Makes as much sense as any other theory, and does fit my firm belief that Democrats today collectively just suck at the business of politics and we need fresh meat.
I think it’s classic divide and conquer. They right knows they can’t be too racist without also bringing some people into the fold. So anti Black policies have to be tempered with anti trans, anti queer and anti woman policies. Get a few asses off of the couch, splinter off bits of traditional voting blocs. You just have to fracture off a few percentage points to make the flip. And a few percentage points of the hispanic vote is very much the way to do this too, after all, they’re white and perhaps also listening to their non-profit church leaders tell them about abortion, the family, and that the Man is the head of the family.Not all of them of course, but just a few percentage points.
Same with the women who want to take away women’s sufferage. It only takes a few with the districs drawn “just so” to win. Between the gerrymander and the Electoral College, divide and conquer is still a winning strategy.
It’s unite and shape the future we want, or time to sing the dirge for the past (which centrists long to return to) and the future.
There is no going back, so what future shall we have?
I don't see how tweaks to the underlying structure, which relied on norms, can work. The entire thing needs to have laws where norms used to be, like plugs in a sinking ship. And then what? We have a rickety vessel that can easily be dismantled?
This isn't about winning elections under a constitution that was written by enslavers that also kept women out of political life.
This is about something new. The fascists know this and don't obey the constitution. When does one call time of death? I recently picked up a part time gig as a switchboard operator at a small, rural hospital. I've taken in and passed on information about deaths to be documented by the right people. There is the time someone dies, then there is the time death is pronounced. There is often a couple of hours difference.
That in between time, the body is dead, it just isn't official.
Well your problem here is that America's Pilonidal Cyst unlocked the permission structure to fully embrace sadopopulism. Before him many Republicans were content to just rely on Lee Atwater-style innuendo, help craft that "reasonable adults in the room, wink wink" style that works for the professionally credulous until they got Faux News (and the rest of the rightwing media human centipede) up.
But now that APC is the one Presidential candidate that was unafraid to use the tactical nuclear weapon of politics, other Republicans see that as the keys to the kingdom. Protected by Murc's Law, they are free to be *openly,* *flagrantly* bigoted and crank the eliminationist rhetoric up to 11. They're openly seeking to destroy trans people—sadopopulism requires the destruction of minorities. And since their appeal for ethnic cleansing was successful in 2024, it's just open season.
Polls are a lie—they are what people SAY. What matters is what Americans DO. And when Americans give this permission structure for the unreconstructed to wild out, it's no surprise we're in this situation.
What we do know is always, to protect the cottage industry of people prescribing the One Magic Trick of Democratic Messaging, a lot of people have to ignore the whole specter of sadopopulism. Because it just has to be Democrats' fault that people embraced bigoted fanfiction that aligned with their priors. Everything hinges on Democrats' ability to counter the message that {minority} should not exist in America. And I maintain that if you are on that playing field we're in a BAD place.
Definitely doesn't help that in order to do the things that Democratic voters want, you need statute, which requires more than two years of Congressional control in a post-Gingrich Congress.
You’re wrong about the Missouri thing. Ezra’s suggestion might have been a decade or two too late, but it was the purge of pro-lifers that made MO Dems uncompetitive statewide. I watched it happen growing up there.
The state has a large number of pro-life leaning squishes who would vote against the abortion ban but wouldn’t vote for an outright pro-choice Democrat. The “research” you insist Ezra do is simply not as simple as you make it out to be.
I don't disagree that trust matters a great deal (it's part of the "vibe") and Dems likely lost the trust of anti-abortion "squishes" as you say. I think it's also a larger issue of where people believe the power structure is. It's a Bill Clinton nominating a very liberal RBG versus a President RBG with a Bill Clinton VP or attorney general. The latter is the direction the party started heading a decade ago.
Okay, now I’m curious… what exactly do you mean with that latter thing? Not sure I fully get your meaning, but it sounds like we have an incredibly useful dialog here.
I think, back in the 1990s, someone like Kamala Harris is a Cabinet nominee at most -- and not simply because she's a Black woman but because she's a cultural and political liberal from California. The president is a clear, objective moderate (someone more like Shapiro than even Walz). Consider the West Wing, as an idealized example of this.
Many liberals resent this dynamic. I think nothing symbolizes this more than Bill Clinton putting RBG on the court but her reportedly resisting a strategic retirement so that a more liberal, woman president (Hillary Clinton) could replace her.
Ahh okay, I was a little tripped up because I was unaware that Clinton had been up to replace RBG at all.
But even then, the reason I assumed otherwise was because… well, WHY?? It makes no sense.
I say that as an Obama convert, not a cradle lib, so maybe there’s context there that I’m missing, but I thought I had a decent enough handle on it by the late Obama era to think it woulda been wierd to replace RBG with Clinton.
Moreover, what would’ve been the point? Sidelining Clinton to… make the way for Bernie or something?
Also, why do you think there’s been this shift from the “West Wing” conception of how to fill an admin, to the conception of having it led by the Harrises of the world?
RE that last bit, MY answer would be that the party was captured by its gerontocracy/establishment, and they wanted to strangle challenges to their power and reward insiders like Harris, instead of taking risks on younger candidates. Obama was a *fluke* to them, and it’s really understated just how much he upset the internal party power centers, beyond just having triggered all the racist white right wingers (which he’s usually credited with).
Sorry, the confusion is my part. RBG reportedly wanted to wait until after 2016 when President Hillary Clinton would appoint her replacement. A symbolic gesture that blew up in all our faces.
Funny how all of the self-proclaimed pro-life people really don't care about life at all. They don't care if a pregnant woman gets healthcare or not, but if she miscarries, they will hound her to jail. They don't care if the fetus gets healthcare (if the mother can't get healthcare, neither does the fetus) and they sure don't care if a baby gets healthcare or not.
One reason I like Stephen's work is that he seems a lot like me in that his idealism is tempered with pragmatism, lol. Republicans can win by being insular and exclusionary because they already own what is still the largest demographic in the country-white people, who also vote at higher levels-and so they really have no need to change their approach to winning elections. Democrats simply don't have the luxury of just scooping up everyone else (also to the point, the darkening of the country in the last few decades hasn't exactly led to the enduring coalition Dems were expecting in the early 2000s either) and expecting lasting power out of that. They *need* to find ways to get more white people to vote for them if they ever want to be more than just the alternative when the GOP invariably goes off the rails and pisses everyone off. I know a lot of people will see that statement as being anti-trans or needing a Sister Souljah moment or whatever, but I simply don't believe that's the case-if the tent is big enough for cretins like Joe Walsh and George Conway, it's big enough for an Iowa farmer or a Texas rancher too.
The assumption that people would vote based on their race was a tenuous one that has not borne out. Trump was flat out racist towards Hispanics in 2016 and did no worse than Romney with that demo. The message was “there’s no price to pay for this.”
People seem to be voting by “class” with class being more cultural than economic—noncollege voters who identify as “rural” or “outside the urban core” vs urban/inner suburbs and college educated. Dems need a new theory of the electorate because the Obama era assumptions won’t hold.
I recall someone remarking on Election Night 2016 that if white voters started viewing the Democrats as a "minority identity party" (something that wasn't the case as recently as the 1990s) they would start to form a tribal relationship with the GOP as the "white identity" party, but that is obviously not sustainable for Democrats.
I think it has been the case since the 60s, and Republican pols like Nixon, as well as strategists like Atwater, were never very shy about that framing. There is a reason Clinton et al pushed Jesse Jackson and his allies out after 1992.
One thing I think is true is that the GOP (and not without some justification from some corners) successfully managed to brand the Democratic party as the “anti-white” party, as well as the ones who forced you to give up your traditions and shared values based on homogeneity, like Christmas holiday parties in school. The GOP became, by default, the party of the white person with the occasional Clarence Thomas and Tim Scott thrown in for cover.
I’m good with farmers and ranchers but anybody who has made money off being a right wing asshole should not be allowed in the tent, at least for a very long time. I’m looking at Conway, Walsh and all the Bulwark people. We are here because of them and they will go right back to being republicans the minute the cult collapses.
Sorry. I always seem to have something to say. Maybe we should retire the term white working class voters, or split it into different categories. If it were only economics - not what some of these voters perceive as economics - Democrats would win almost all of the vote. Every policy in history that helps the "working class" has been championed by progressives and liberals and fought against by conservatives. Every one. And yet Republicans win "white working class voters". That's because it's not economics even when someone says it is. It's white supremacy, racism, misogyny, church hierarchy, "god", cultural issues, xenophobia, guns, the overwhelming RW ecosystem that's insists Democrats are socialists (as if that's a bad thing) and it would ruin the life of these average people, though it would instead help them immensely. Republican politics have made them poorer, more in debt, working multiple jobs to afford working class places to live. All Republican led counties for many years are the poorest and least educated. And yet they keep asking Republicans to beat them up again. A white working class voter in a big city is not the same as one in rural Mississippi. Only populists can break the Republican spell. But I fear it's too late.
I agree. A lot of the consultant class seems to think it just means “be more moderate on everything” like you mentioned with pro life candidates. But people aren’t on binaries anymore (lol take that transphobes). Another reason besides vibes (which also matter). People wanna smash the elites’ power who control everything but care less about what people do in their homes or doctors offices. But the consultants are all rich themselves so they have no idea what economic issues motivate people or what’s considered down to earth
That’s the issue right there—noncollege voters. Democrats have even slipped among nonwhite noncollege voters, particularly Hispanics, and it’s important to figure out why. Blaming racism is unconvincing (even if you think many black and Hispanic voters decided to become white supremacists recently), and it’s not really a matter of political stances as Democrats haven’t exactly adopted less “populist” policies in recent decades nor have Republicans gone the other way.
Could it be image and vibes—Dems coming across more like college professors and lawyers (admittedly many of their most visible pols are exactly that), than mechanics and exterminators? Could it be a lack of any communication apparatus that makes it so that most people are getting Democrats defined for them by the Right, rather than defined by themselves?
Makes as much sense as any other theory, and does fit my firm belief that Democrats today collectively just suck at the business of politics and we need fresh meat.
I think it’s classic divide and conquer. They right knows they can’t be too racist without also bringing some people into the fold. So anti Black policies have to be tempered with anti trans, anti queer and anti woman policies. Get a few asses off of the couch, splinter off bits of traditional voting blocs. You just have to fracture off a few percentage points to make the flip. And a few percentage points of the hispanic vote is very much the way to do this too, after all, they’re white and perhaps also listening to their non-profit church leaders tell them about abortion, the family, and that the Man is the head of the family.Not all of them of course, but just a few percentage points.
Same with the women who want to take away women’s sufferage. It only takes a few with the districs drawn “just so” to win. Between the gerrymander and the Electoral College, divide and conquer is still a winning strategy.
It’s unite and shape the future we want, or time to sing the dirge for the past (which centrists long to return to) and the future.
There is no going back, so what future shall we have?
The Republic is in decline. Will it bounce back?
I don't see how tweaks to the underlying structure, which relied on norms, can work. The entire thing needs to have laws where norms used to be, like plugs in a sinking ship. And then what? We have a rickety vessel that can easily be dismantled?
This isn't about winning elections under a constitution that was written by enslavers that also kept women out of political life.
This is about something new. The fascists know this and don't obey the constitution. When does one call time of death? I recently picked up a part time gig as a switchboard operator at a small, rural hospital. I've taken in and passed on information about deaths to be documented by the right people. There is the time someone dies, then there is the time death is pronounced. There is often a couple of hours difference.
That in between time, the body is dead, it just isn't official.
This is how the republic feels to me right now.
That's the vibe.
Well your problem here is that America's Pilonidal Cyst unlocked the permission structure to fully embrace sadopopulism. Before him many Republicans were content to just rely on Lee Atwater-style innuendo, help craft that "reasonable adults in the room, wink wink" style that works for the professionally credulous until they got Faux News (and the rest of the rightwing media human centipede) up.
But now that APC is the one Presidential candidate that was unafraid to use the tactical nuclear weapon of politics, other Republicans see that as the keys to the kingdom. Protected by Murc's Law, they are free to be *openly,* *flagrantly* bigoted and crank the eliminationist rhetoric up to 11. They're openly seeking to destroy trans people—sadopopulism requires the destruction of minorities. And since their appeal for ethnic cleansing was successful in 2024, it's just open season.
Polls are a lie—they are what people SAY. What matters is what Americans DO. And when Americans give this permission structure for the unreconstructed to wild out, it's no surprise we're in this situation.
What we do know is always, to protect the cottage industry of people prescribing the One Magic Trick of Democratic Messaging, a lot of people have to ignore the whole specter of sadopopulism. Because it just has to be Democrats' fault that people embraced bigoted fanfiction that aligned with their priors. Everything hinges on Democrats' ability to counter the message that {minority} should not exist in America. And I maintain that if you are on that playing field we're in a BAD place.
Definitely doesn't help that in order to do the things that Democratic voters want, you need statute, which requires more than two years of Congressional control in a post-Gingrich Congress.
It's not impossible but it's a hell of an ask.
You’re wrong about the Missouri thing. Ezra’s suggestion might have been a decade or two too late, but it was the purge of pro-lifers that made MO Dems uncompetitive statewide. I watched it happen growing up there.
The state has a large number of pro-life leaning squishes who would vote against the abortion ban but wouldn’t vote for an outright pro-choice Democrat. The “research” you insist Ezra do is simply not as simple as you make it out to be.
I don't disagree that trust matters a great deal (it's part of the "vibe") and Dems likely lost the trust of anti-abortion "squishes" as you say. I think it's also a larger issue of where people believe the power structure is. It's a Bill Clinton nominating a very liberal RBG versus a President RBG with a Bill Clinton VP or attorney general. The latter is the direction the party started heading a decade ago.
Okay, now I’m curious… what exactly do you mean with that latter thing? Not sure I fully get your meaning, but it sounds like we have an incredibly useful dialog here.
I think, back in the 1990s, someone like Kamala Harris is a Cabinet nominee at most -- and not simply because she's a Black woman but because she's a cultural and political liberal from California. The president is a clear, objective moderate (someone more like Shapiro than even Walz). Consider the West Wing, as an idealized example of this.
Many liberals resent this dynamic. I think nothing symbolizes this more than Bill Clinton putting RBG on the court but her reportedly resisting a strategic retirement so that a more liberal, woman president (Hillary Clinton) could replace her.
Ahh okay, I was a little tripped up because I was unaware that Clinton had been up to replace RBG at all.
But even then, the reason I assumed otherwise was because… well, WHY?? It makes no sense.
I say that as an Obama convert, not a cradle lib, so maybe there’s context there that I’m missing, but I thought I had a decent enough handle on it by the late Obama era to think it woulda been wierd to replace RBG with Clinton.
Moreover, what would’ve been the point? Sidelining Clinton to… make the way for Bernie or something?
Also, why do you think there’s been this shift from the “West Wing” conception of how to fill an admin, to the conception of having it led by the Harrises of the world?
RE that last bit, MY answer would be that the party was captured by its gerontocracy/establishment, and they wanted to strangle challenges to their power and reward insiders like Harris, instead of taking risks on younger candidates. Obama was a *fluke* to them, and it’s really understated just how much he upset the internal party power centers, beyond just having triggered all the racist white right wingers (which he’s usually credited with).
Sorry, the confusion is my part. RBG reportedly wanted to wait until after 2016 when President Hillary Clinton would appoint her replacement. A symbolic gesture that blew up in all our faces.
Ahhh yeah that was dumb AF. The obsession with symbolic gestures really kills us.
The right just kind of makes shit up on the fly and acts like it’s symbolic.
Funny how all of the self-proclaimed pro-life people really don't care about life at all. They don't care if a pregnant woman gets healthcare or not, but if she miscarries, they will hound her to jail. They don't care if the fetus gets healthcare (if the mother can't get healthcare, neither does the fetus) and they sure don't care if a baby gets healthcare or not.
They are forced-birthers.
One reason I like Stephen's work is that he seems a lot like me in that his idealism is tempered with pragmatism, lol. Republicans can win by being insular and exclusionary because they already own what is still the largest demographic in the country-white people, who also vote at higher levels-and so they really have no need to change their approach to winning elections. Democrats simply don't have the luxury of just scooping up everyone else (also to the point, the darkening of the country in the last few decades hasn't exactly led to the enduring coalition Dems were expecting in the early 2000s either) and expecting lasting power out of that. They *need* to find ways to get more white people to vote for them if they ever want to be more than just the alternative when the GOP invariably goes off the rails and pisses everyone off. I know a lot of people will see that statement as being anti-trans or needing a Sister Souljah moment or whatever, but I simply don't believe that's the case-if the tent is big enough for cretins like Joe Walsh and George Conway, it's big enough for an Iowa farmer or a Texas rancher too.
The assumption that people would vote based on their race was a tenuous one that has not borne out. Trump was flat out racist towards Hispanics in 2016 and did no worse than Romney with that demo. The message was “there’s no price to pay for this.”
People seem to be voting by “class” with class being more cultural than economic—noncollege voters who identify as “rural” or “outside the urban core” vs urban/inner suburbs and college educated. Dems need a new theory of the electorate because the Obama era assumptions won’t hold.
I recall someone remarking on Election Night 2016 that if white voters started viewing the Democrats as a "minority identity party" (something that wasn't the case as recently as the 1990s) they would start to form a tribal relationship with the GOP as the "white identity" party, but that is obviously not sustainable for Democrats.
I think it has been the case since the 60s, and Republican pols like Nixon, as well as strategists like Atwater, were never very shy about that framing. There is a reason Clinton et al pushed Jesse Jackson and his allies out after 1992.
One thing I think is true is that the GOP (and not without some justification from some corners) successfully managed to brand the Democratic party as the “anti-white” party, as well as the ones who forced you to give up your traditions and shared values based on homogeneity, like Christmas holiday parties in school. The GOP became, by default, the party of the white person with the occasional Clarence Thomas and Tim Scott thrown in for cover.
I’m good with farmers and ranchers but anybody who has made money off being a right wing asshole should not be allowed in the tent, at least for a very long time. I’m looking at Conway, Walsh and all the Bulwark people. We are here because of them and they will go right back to being republicans the minute the cult collapses.
Yes, I agree. That was made abundantly clear by the tsunami of ballwashing that happened when Dick Cheney died, may he rot in hell.
They insist that what should persuade voters are detailed plans, rousing Senate floor speeches, and whiteboards
I feel seen.