What moves swing voters

[crazy canuck]

The appeal Berkut makes to a Blarite move the the middle is a good example of the danger of simply wanting to win elections for winning sake.  Blair and for that matter Clinton did a lot of harm by buying into the right wing ideology of the day that markets should be made free.  The deregulation that occurred in the name of the third way and appeasing centre right voters did a lot of harm.

The better thing to do is not give in to silly public policy choices and instead organize a base that will support public policy choices that make sense.

Yeah, the 90s sure were a terrible time...

But mroe seriously, your analysis only holds if you think that losing an election only to fight on in the next is a valid strategy.  When you're concerned that if the wrong side wins US democracy will be fatally wounded you can't afford to take that risk.

That is a valid point.  But I guess I am more pessimistic that the Dems can save US democratic institutions by moving even more to the right.

Who has suggested that anyone move more to the right though? You just made that up out of whole cloth.

The entire point is that there are progressive, left wing messages that can and do appeal to blue collar workers. There are other messages that do not.

We should focus more on the progressives messages that appeal to them then the ones that turn them off.

That is not moving to the right at all.

You seem to forget what you posted not long ago when you called for a move to the centre.  Since the move is from the left, by definition that is a move further to the right. 

It is certainly a good a idea to have progressive policies that can be better pitched.  But that is a different thing from moving politically further to the right in order to inhabit some mythical middle ground or the Blarite rhetoric of the third way.

The subject of conversation here has nothing to do with moving anywhere.

And I love the idea that the middle ground is a myth. That is so delightful!

Ok, if it has nothing to do with moving anywhere I am not sure why you said moving to the middle (whatever that means) is what should be done.

[Sheilbh]

The middle ground isn't a myth - it's just not where people think it is.

When they say middle ground they mean politically centrist, vaguely technocratic wonks like the people round Clinton. In polling, at least in the UK, the middle ground wants nationalised energy and transport, far higher taxes on the rich, lots of state spending AND strict limits on immigration, law and order and the death penalty. The middle ground is actually fund the NHS, hang the paedos

[The Minsky Moment]

The fuzziness is that we don't know exactly what the error rates they are reporting represent or how they are calculated.

That actually doesn't matter at all.

Of course it matters if you defining statistical significance in a certain way (e.g. X% confidence interval) but the error bars are calculated based on a different assumption.

[Zoupa]

The entire point is that there are progressive, left wing messages that can and do appeal to blue collar workers. There are other messages that do not.

Why don't these "other" messages appeal to blue collar workers?

[Berkut]

The entire point is that there are progressive, left wing messages that can and do appeal to blue collar workers. There are other messages that do not.

Why don't these "other" messages appeal to blue collar workers?

Because they are susceptible to tribal identities, the message is easily re-cast as being against them, it is at its root an attack on their privilege, and some part of that message is fucking stupid.

But again, the debate about whether or not the message is right is a different discussion entirely. Even if you grant that the most woke of the wokiest wokesters are 100% correct...it is still dumb to lose elections over the insistence that the message be front and center, since losing means you don't get to do anything about it anyway.

And the left has been losing. A lot. A lot a lot a lot. And I am not talking about Virginia - I am talking about the last two decades.

[DGuller]

The fuzziness is that we don't know exactly what the error rates they are reporting represent or how they are calculated.

That actually doesn't matter at all.

Of course it matters if you defining statistical significance in a certain way (e.g. X% confidence interval) but the error bars are calculated based on a different assumption.

If you read the same page you quoted from earlier, but go one paragraph up, you would find out that error bars are exactly the visualization of confidence intervals.  Frankly, given the context of other things discussed, it wouldn't make sense for them to be anything else, even if that paragraph weren't there.

[Zoupa]

The entire point is that there are progressive, left wing messages that can and do appeal to blue collar workers. There are other messages that do not.

Why don't these "other" messages appeal to blue collar workers?

Because they are susceptible to tribal identities, the message is easily re-cast as being against them, it is at its root an attack on their privilege, and some part of that message is fucking stupid.

But again, the debate about whether or not the message is right is a different discussion entirely. Even if you grant that the most woke of the wokiest wokesters are 100% correct...it is still dumb to lose elections over the insistence that the message be front and center, since losing means you don't get to do anything about it anyway.

And the left has been losing. A lot. A lot a lot a lot. And I am not talking about Virginia - I am talking about the last two decades.

Apart from Bernie and 5-10 Democrat congress members, I'm not aware of any politicians that ran on any platform that would perhaps qualify.

What does exist is grassroots movement, like for example BLM, where some of their members wrote pieces, demonstrated or voiced their opinion on defunding the police for example. That message of redistributing a percentage of the frankly obscene police budget dollars to other services quickly got picked up by the standard gop liars.

That (white) voters can be so easily scared and convinced by obviously false or disingenuous talking points... It speaks to a deeper rot, perhaps in education or what have you, I have no idea.

The main problem is one of the two parties has decided to gradually stop playing by the rules. It's very hard to revert back once 35-45% of your citizens believe in all this shit.

I recognize your point that if you don't win, you can't do anything. But you can't ask, for example, brown people to sit down and be quiet or else whitey is gonna scare and vote for the fascists. Kind of a big ask.

All that to say I don't really see a way out as I think the US is too far gone. Maybe it was always doomed, with structural fault lines which were always going to crack the system eventually.

[Berkut]

The entire point is that there are progressive, left wing messages that can and do appeal to blue collar workers. There are other messages that do not.

Why don't these "other" messages appeal to blue collar workers?

Because they are susceptible to tribal identities, the message is easily re-cast as being against them, it is at its root an attack on their privilege, and some part of that message is fucking stupid.

But again, the debate about whether or not the message is right is a different discussion entirely. Even if you grant that the most woke of the wokiest wokesters are 100% correct...it is still dumb to lose elections over the insistence that the message be front and center, since losing means you don't get to do anything about it anyway.

And the left has been losing. A lot. A lot a lot a lot. And I am not talking about Virginia - I am talking about the last two decades.

Apart from Bernie and 5-10 Democrat congress members, I'm not aware of any politicians that ran on any platform that would perhaps qualify.

What does exist is grassroots movement, like for example BLM, where some of their members wrote pieces, demonstrated or voiced their opinion on defunding the police for example. That message of redistributing a percentage of the frankly obscene police budget dollars to other services quickly got picked up by the standard gop liars.

That (white) voters can be so easily scared and convinced by obviously false or disingenuous talking points... It speaks to a deeper rot, perhaps in education or what have you, I have no idea.

The main problem is one of the two parties has decided to gradually stop playing by the rules. It's very hard to revert back once 35-45% of your citizens believe in all this shit.

I recognize your point that if you don't win, you can't do anything. But you can't ask, for example, brown people to sit down and be quiet or else whitey is gonna scare and vote for the fascists. Kind of a big ask.

All that to say I don't really see a way out as I think the US is too far gone. Maybe it was always doomed, with structural fault lines which were always going to crack the system eventually.

You might be right. It might be too far gone.

And I totally understand the point that we cannot ask minorities to shut up or anything like that.

I just think we have to pick our battles and pick our message. If there is any hope, it can only be based on winning elections in an already unfair electoral environment.

Note that what I am saying here is only about messaging and elections. What is done once power is achieved is an entirely different thing.

I do think that if my optimism is correct, things are bad, but could actually swing the right way very quickly (potentially) with the Democratic/Progressive party taking significant control for some time, while the GOP re-sorts itself back out into something less grotesque. That may not be likely, but it's the only chance we have other then sitting back and watching things get a LOT worse before they ever get better.

[Admiral Yi]

What does exist is grassroots movement, like for example BLM, where some of their members wrote pieces, demonstrated or voiced their opinion on defunding the police for example. That message of redistributing a percentage of the frankly obscene police budget dollars to other services quickly got picked up by the standard gop liars.

That (white) voters can be so easily scared and convinced by obviously false or disingenuous talking points... It speaks to a deeper rot, perhaps in education or what have you, I have no idea.

The main problem is one of the two parties has decided to gradually stop playing by the rules. It's very hard to revert back once 35-45% of your citizens believe in all this shit.

This is false.

First some BLM protestors chanted "defund the police."  Then someone else at the NYT wrote that they didn't actually mean that, that *really* meant redirect police budgets to social workers that can nonviolently deal with the homeless and psychos.  No one of course asked the orginal chanters what they actually meant or what they actually wanted.

Then there was congresswoman Omar who tweeted "abolish the police" and then quickly deleted the tweet.  Remember that discussion?  GOP liars didn't hijack her twitter account.

Then there was AOC tweeting to "abolish ICE."  Here on Languish Joan and others claimed that she *actually* meant reform the culture of ICE.  How do they know that' what she actually meant?

[Zoupa]

You and I remember that chanting and the NYT article very differently. I'd be interested to know if there was any polling/interviews done with BLM organizers or prominent members to establish exactly what they want. Of course the GOP doesn't need that level of detail, they need the chanting as is for their dog whistle.

As for Omar and AOC, clearly they don't have as much weight as you think. How many other congress members took up their talking points? 3? How many senators? 1, maybe? The top 3 democrats are Biden, Pelosi and Schumer. You'd be hard-pressed to convince anybody these 3 old geezers are revolutionaries...

I don't see what's wrong about abolishing ICE. It was founded in 2003. Hardly indispensable to the survival of the nation...

[DGuller]

First some BLM protestors chanted "defund the police."  Then someone else at the NYT wrote that they didn't actually mean that, that *really* meant redirect police budgets to social workers that can nonviolently deal with the homeless and psychos.  No one of course asked the orginal chanters what they actually meant or what they actually wanted.

I do recall some of the other chanters going "yeah, no, when we say defund the police, we mean defund the police".  I imagine people at NYT went "FFS, grab on when someone throws you a rope, you numbskulls", before collective facepalming.

[DGuller]

I don't see what's wrong about abolishing ICE. It was founded in 2003. Hardly indispensable to the survival of the nation...

It's not like nothing of the kind was there before.  In fact, before ICE there was INS.

[Zoupa]

What AOC states is that ICE's regulatory oversight is lacking/baked into its mandate, hence her call to abolish it and not reform it. She also suggested replacing it by a new agency, independent from the DHS, with a different mandate and heavier oversight.

Not exactly open borders here.

[garbon]

Of course, the Dems are never going to get 100% message discipline as they can't control what grassroot movements and there will always be some progressive officials. Similar situation for Republicans except that it seems to be okay to swing to crazier and crazier positions.

[Josquius]

Defunding and abolishing the police it must be remembered isn't exactly extreme fringe anarchist insanity as much as it is painted that way.
Northern Ireland shows that this is a workable solution when the established police force is too baked into one side of a divide. In their case religious, so why not racial?
But this is an example of the problem being talked about. The overwhelming majority of left wing politicians have nothing to do with this at all. One or two politicians gave a little thumbs up to the slogans but even for them it isn't a policy they hold.
Yet listen to the media and its adherents and Biden is gunning for killing all the police.