I talked to Lakshya a bit about this; he said he wasn’t necessarily advocating centrism; more that candidates would have to distance themselves from the party somehow, which might be through sanders esque positioning, I think.
He also clarified that Ds do really well running strong candidates in purple states. It’s winning in solid red states that’s more and more of a problem as ticket splitting becomes rarer.
Yeah, agreed. I think Sanders had some success with certain red state voters in 2016 but I worth that Dems lost their window since then as many of those voters went MAGA and mainstream Dem rhetoric (esp on social media) treats them as a lost cause. That would have to change (yes, even toward WWC white men)
As a progressive resident of a deep red rural OH district, I agree with @JessPiper's assessment that red state Dem parties have largely abandoned their rural base, and that a path to making, say, OH competitive in Senate races involves getting 10-20% of the rural vote, where Ds are in the minority but by no means a absent.
I also feel strongly that liberal pundits tone-policing elected Ds seems more than a bit tone-deaf in the present moment...
There’s no easy fix but if Dems can’t boost their share of the non-college vote significantly they’re doomed to minority status. If their policies are unpopular among that demographic, then they’d better learn to sell them. Maybe hire some commercial ad professionals if that’s what it takes. Learn to speak the language of the people they’re trying to sell to, and get your message where they’re listening. And above all, project strength—people admire fighters even if they don’t agree with what they’re fighting for, far more than weaklings.
Invest in that at the ground level in every state, and hone your national profile—voters in red states will still be thinking of your national leaders when they’re looking at your local candidate, no matter how much that candidate tries to distance themselves from the national party (a tactic that doesn’t work as well as simply hammering the opposition).
I think trying to “sell” the policies, as if they’re the crooked salesman from Glengarry Glen Ross is why a lot of voters reject Democrats. They sound fake ... often because they are. When Democrats treat parts of the country like 19th Century missionaries in "darkest Africa,” you have a problem.
Democrats need to recruit and elevate more politicians who come from rural America, maybe even some who don’t have college degrees.
You do have to learn to speak the language of the people you’re appealing to, though. Dems often use the language of the college seminar and not the bowling alley, and maybe that goes to recruiting people who are more naturally comfortable in such settings. But I think even more than that, coming across as a fighter who will knock the crap out of your enemies and get things done no matter the obstacle is what sells. How else does a patrician—who sounded like one, he had that Katherine Hepburn accent!—like FDR become so beloved of the working class? That “fighter” image is essential.
Oh, by the way, even if you do get your ballot passed, the state legislators will just overturn the will of the people like what’s happening in Missouri.
If the average voter went by what would be best for them, you’d have a Senator Sanders representing pretty much every state. Too bad Americans on the whole are too brain dead to see that the oligarch overlords have us in tidy little rows, hooked to their media machines while our life essence is sucked out of us like in The Matrix.
Yeah, your article is accurate. Dreaming about a centrist Dem that could win Red states simply ignores the current climate. Unfortunately the people you reference in your article can't admit they don't have an actual solution, so they have to say something, anything.
It's possible that the Senate is entirely lost in this Current political era unless more Blue voters move to Red states, such as Georgia and NC.
I'm never voting for a centrist Democrat ever again. The people I'll vote for must have very bold and steadfast intentions, including a promise to hold Republicans from this administration accountable for their crimes. I don't want any attempts at hand-holding with these traitors. Biden tried to pull MAGA back towards the center to absolutely no avail. I'm not sure there even is a center anymore. Because lots of people voted for the anti-centrist, Donald Trump. You don't vote again and again for an extremist then decide, oh hey I really like this guy who is trying to bring us all together. I'm sick of insisting Democrats need to be centrist when clearly people handed the country to an extremist. I'm not saying our next candidates also need to be extremists, but clearly people are responding to - ahem - bold leadership.
Even if the odds are long, they still should at least try.
That said I understand the reluctance for some people to be the sacrificial lamb, But the only guaranteed way not to win is to not run.
The American electorate really must upgrade though, and people have to stop voting (or non-voting) in the service of their privilege, prejudice, and even clout.
On top of this, don't let anyone play in your face and lie that there was some economic or practical reason they had to get President Klan Robe in for a second go at destroying the USA. They didn't turf out Tester and Brown for any practical reason. They ignored Biden and Harris' ACTUAL beneficial policy and went for racist vaporware, because they didn't want to vote for a Black woman.
President Klan Robe's sadopopulist campaign simply pledged to hurt the minorities that they hate. They wanted the ethnic cleansing. That's why so many people in Ohio were more than happy to let their Haitian neighbors be blood libeled and left twisting in the wind, even after they rescued one of Ohio's broken cities.
And of course, when it comes to getting votes, Democrats must be perfect. Republicans only need excuses. Nevertheless, Democrats should at least try to field candidates because you never know.
And we have seen in North Carolina...so many races, how every vote is important.
When oh when will the people of our nation understand that our government and the politics that run it are horribly, irretrievably corrupt and broken? Only a complete and total reboot can save us from the fascist Republicons and the impotent, status quo motivated Democrats. There’s no fixing this! The freaking Corrupt Supreme 6 will see to that.
“That was one major problem with the Harris campaign’s “weird” messaging. More Americans, especially in key swing states, believe that Democrats like Harris and even Walz are “weirder” than Trump and J.D. Vance.”
They might have THOUGHT that Dems were weirder, but they couldn’t make a coherent argument to express that thought to save their lives.
To this day.
Which is why whoever the media consultant was who told Harris-Walz to tamp down on the “weird” line should be smacked and never allowed to advise Dems again.
I don’t know. I think there are coherent arguments for why liberals are “weird.” I live in PDX and can certainly provide many examples. People in swing states think land acknowledgements, affinity groups, and so on are “weird.”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that there weren’t coherent arguments to be made.
I’m saying that MAGAs couldn’t make any without revealing something even weirder that THEY believed in.
Like, how does one coherently cry about liberal affinity groups when the most common description of the MAGA party nowadays is “cult,” aka, the ultimate affinity group?
It just doesn’t work. Which is why the “weird” label stuck. Until Team Harris just…dropped it.
My problem with a "complete and total reboot" is that given the state of this electorate I don't see what would come in that would actually be beneficial, Many Americans don't know and crucially, *don't care to know* how things work.
That's one reason, for example, a Constitutional Convention in this electoral climate (with sadopopulism ruling the roost) would get extra dangerous (like the Constitution actually applies when one is the representative of the unreconstructed).
And I'll leave with this...personal styles aside with Democrats (I know that the impotence is about that and the 'sternly worded letters.'). Harsh words for Republicans don't do anything nor does effectively gumming up the works as a minority because accountability only accrues to Democrats. At best the framing is, "Congress is broken." Impotence is a function of the power voters give you.
AOC and Bernie Sanders warned us what was at stake in shoving Joe Biden on the ice floe. I even warned about this, because the transformational progressive legislation and forward-thinking initiatives already in place were going to change the status quo. But that wasn't the status quo that a lot of Americans wanted changed. The status quo they wanted changed was that minorities were given too big a seat at the table in the Biden/Harris administration. They wanted those minorities to be oppressed; wanted them silenced and HURTING.
I talked to Lakshya a bit about this; he said he wasn’t necessarily advocating centrism; more that candidates would have to distance themselves from the party somehow, which might be through sanders esque positioning, I think.
He also clarified that Ds do really well running strong candidates in purple states. It’s winning in solid red states that’s more and more of a problem as ticket splitting becomes rarer.
Yeah, agreed. I think Sanders had some success with certain red state voters in 2016 but I worth that Dems lost their window since then as many of those voters went MAGA and mainstream Dem rhetoric (esp on social media) treats them as a lost cause. That would have to change (yes, even toward WWC white men)
As a progressive resident of a deep red rural OH district, I agree with @JessPiper's assessment that red state Dem parties have largely abandoned their rural base, and that a path to making, say, OH competitive in Senate races involves getting 10-20% of the rural vote, where Ds are in the minority but by no means a absent.
I also feel strongly that liberal pundits tone-policing elected Ds seems more than a bit tone-deaf in the present moment...
There’s no easy fix but if Dems can’t boost their share of the non-college vote significantly they’re doomed to minority status. If their policies are unpopular among that demographic, then they’d better learn to sell them. Maybe hire some commercial ad professionals if that’s what it takes. Learn to speak the language of the people they’re trying to sell to, and get your message where they’re listening. And above all, project strength—people admire fighters even if they don’t agree with what they’re fighting for, far more than weaklings.
Invest in that at the ground level in every state, and hone your national profile—voters in red states will still be thinking of your national leaders when they’re looking at your local candidate, no matter how much that candidate tries to distance themselves from the national party (a tactic that doesn’t work as well as simply hammering the opposition).
I think trying to “sell” the policies, as if they’re the crooked salesman from Glengarry Glen Ross is why a lot of voters reject Democrats. They sound fake ... often because they are. When Democrats treat parts of the country like 19th Century missionaries in "darkest Africa,” you have a problem.
Democrats need to recruit and elevate more politicians who come from rural America, maybe even some who don’t have college degrees.
You do have to learn to speak the language of the people you’re appealing to, though. Dems often use the language of the college seminar and not the bowling alley, and maybe that goes to recruiting people who are more naturally comfortable in such settings. But I think even more than that, coming across as a fighter who will knock the crap out of your enemies and get things done no matter the obstacle is what sells. How else does a patrician—who sounded like one, he had that Katherine Hepburn accent!—like FDR become so beloved of the working class? That “fighter” image is essential.
Oh, by the way, even if you do get your ballot passed, the state legislators will just overturn the will of the people like what’s happening in Missouri.
But their data…!
If the average voter went by what would be best for them, you’d have a Senator Sanders representing pretty much every state. Too bad Americans on the whole are too brain dead to see that the oligarch overlords have us in tidy little rows, hooked to their media machines while our life essence is sucked out of us like in The Matrix.
Gerrymander and voter suppression will keep the Repubs in office for years yet... until this gets fixed, 'messaging' won't make a lick of difference
Yeah, your article is accurate. Dreaming about a centrist Dem that could win Red states simply ignores the current climate. Unfortunately the people you reference in your article can't admit they don't have an actual solution, so they have to say something, anything.
It's possible that the Senate is entirely lost in this Current political era unless more Blue voters move to Red states, such as Georgia and NC.
But how will they ever know what their principles are if they don't have a team of consultants and focus groups to tell them what they are?
I'm never voting for a centrist Democrat ever again. The people I'll vote for must have very bold and steadfast intentions, including a promise to hold Republicans from this administration accountable for their crimes. I don't want any attempts at hand-holding with these traitors. Biden tried to pull MAGA back towards the center to absolutely no avail. I'm not sure there even is a center anymore. Because lots of people voted for the anti-centrist, Donald Trump. You don't vote again and again for an extremist then decide, oh hey I really like this guy who is trying to bring us all together. I'm sick of insisting Democrats need to be centrist when clearly people handed the country to an extremist. I'm not saying our next candidates also need to be extremists, but clearly people are responding to - ahem - bold leadership.
Even if the odds are long, they still should at least try.
That said I understand the reluctance for some people to be the sacrificial lamb, But the only guaranteed way not to win is to not run.
The American electorate really must upgrade though, and people have to stop voting (or non-voting) in the service of their privilege, prejudice, and even clout.
On top of this, don't let anyone play in your face and lie that there was some economic or practical reason they had to get President Klan Robe in for a second go at destroying the USA. They didn't turf out Tester and Brown for any practical reason. They ignored Biden and Harris' ACTUAL beneficial policy and went for racist vaporware, because they didn't want to vote for a Black woman.
President Klan Robe's sadopopulist campaign simply pledged to hurt the minorities that they hate. They wanted the ethnic cleansing. That's why so many people in Ohio were more than happy to let their Haitian neighbors be blood libeled and left twisting in the wind, even after they rescued one of Ohio's broken cities.
And of course, when it comes to getting votes, Democrats must be perfect. Republicans only need excuses. Nevertheless, Democrats should at least try to field candidates because you never know.
And we have seen in North Carolina...so many races, how every vote is important.
When oh when will the people of our nation understand that our government and the politics that run it are horribly, irretrievably corrupt and broken? Only a complete and total reboot can save us from the fascist Republicons and the impotent, status quo motivated Democrats. There’s no fixing this! The freaking Corrupt Supreme 6 will see to that.
Here’s the problem:
“That was one major problem with the Harris campaign’s “weird” messaging. More Americans, especially in key swing states, believe that Democrats like Harris and even Walz are “weirder” than Trump and J.D. Vance.”
They might have THOUGHT that Dems were weirder, but they couldn’t make a coherent argument to express that thought to save their lives.
To this day.
Which is why whoever the media consultant was who told Harris-Walz to tamp down on the “weird” line should be smacked and never allowed to advise Dems again.
I don’t know. I think there are coherent arguments for why liberals are “weird.” I live in PDX and can certainly provide many examples. People in swing states think land acknowledgements, affinity groups, and so on are “weird.”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that there weren’t coherent arguments to be made.
I’m saying that MAGAs couldn’t make any without revealing something even weirder that THEY believed in.
Like, how does one coherently cry about liberal affinity groups when the most common description of the MAGA party nowadays is “cult,” aka, the ultimate affinity group?
It just doesn’t work. Which is why the “weird” label stuck. Until Team Harris just…dropped it.
My problem with a "complete and total reboot" is that given the state of this electorate I don't see what would come in that would actually be beneficial, Many Americans don't know and crucially, *don't care to know* how things work.
That's one reason, for example, a Constitutional Convention in this electoral climate (with sadopopulism ruling the roost) would get extra dangerous (like the Constitution actually applies when one is the representative of the unreconstructed).
And I'll leave with this...personal styles aside with Democrats (I know that the impotence is about that and the 'sternly worded letters.'). Harsh words for Republicans don't do anything nor does effectively gumming up the works as a minority because accountability only accrues to Democrats. At best the framing is, "Congress is broken." Impotence is a function of the power voters give you.
AOC and Bernie Sanders warned us what was at stake in shoving Joe Biden on the ice floe. I even warned about this, because the transformational progressive legislation and forward-thinking initiatives already in place were going to change the status quo. But that wasn't the status quo that a lot of Americans wanted changed. The status quo they wanted changed was that minorities were given too big a seat at the table in the Biden/Harris administration. They wanted those minorities to be oppressed; wanted them silenced and HURTING.
And that's why sadopopulism works so well.