Quo Vadis, Democrats?

[The Brain]

They are cunningly making plans for winning the 2026 and 2028 elections. They will be as successful for the opposition as the 1936 and 1938 German elections, you'll see.

[Sheilbh]

Trump admin has followed up on its easy success and lack of pushback to pull funding from Penn.  They are systematically destroying the academic independence of the entire American university system, institution by institution.  The appeasers need to be shoved aside.

The detail that the university is "negotiating with the administration to call the receivership something more agreeable and present it as a win-win, according to people familiar with the school's thinking" feels grimly exemplary of many - not least Schumer.

As I say I've got my views on what the Democrats should do - don't be afraid of your voters, build party organisations in and of every state and community, particularly working people, ditch the celebs and consultants, focus on an analysis of politics not policy wonkery (ie the humanities: history, philosophy, cultural criticism not the social sciences, policy experts or lawyers).

But sometimes I read things like Schumer or the "good billionaire"/"bad billionaire" distinction or party leaders heading to Silicon Valley to "mend fences" ("These donors are also pissed, watching former and current colleagues have unlimited, unchecked power, and getting richer off of this and they're not") - and I just think the party's broken. It is not capable of doing politics anymore. In fairness that maybe goes back to point one and what they really need are party (and coalition and movement) builders - a modern van Buren - but then I go back to those points and I just think they're allergic to that idea.

Edit: Also, to be really blunt on Columbia, what is the point of a $15 billion endowment and budget of over $6 billion if not to maintain your independence? It's so craven.

[Legbiter]

As I say I've got my views on what the Democrats should do - don't be afraid of your voters, build party organisations in and of every state and community, particularly working people, ditch the celebs and consultants, focus on an analysis of politics not policy wonkery (ie the humanities: history, philosophy, cultural criticism not the social sciences, policy experts or lawyers).

The Democrat party voters are almost entirely college-educated whites at this point in suburbs and black women. You could lure lower socioeconomic strata to the banner with some radical (compared to today) universal healthcare promise. If juicy enough it would maybe overcome the rotten stench of...Tumblr, pronouns-in-bio, fetishist perverts seeking access to our children/trans...

Play dead and let time do it's thing it is then.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

But sometimes I read things like Schumer or the "good billionaire"/"bad billionaire" distinction or party leaders heading to Silicon Valley to "mend fences" ("These donors are also pissed, watching former and current colleagues have unlimited, unchecked power, and getting richer off of this and they're not") - and I just think the party's broken. It is not capable of doing politics anymore. In fairness that maybe goes back to point one and what they really need are party (and coalition and movement) builders - a modern van Buren - but then I go back to those points and I just think they're allergic to that idea.

It's the two-party system that is fundamentally broken.  I think what we're seeing today is a direct result of a system that forces two big-tent parties to form; one was usurped by a well-organized faction and bent to its will, while the other is schizophrenic and disorganized because it keeps trying to either make all the factions happy or meld them into some kind of melting pot platform.  Meanwhile, both actions drive an increasing number of voters to either political apathy or the nebulous "independent voter" bucket.

Fixing that is obviously much harder than fixing the current Democratic Party, but my likely futile hope is that we can actually make some progress on that front to reduce the chances of this happening again.

On the subject of fixing the Democratic Party, and to some degree on the subject of loosening the big tent nature, I think the Party needs to tear down the machine.  I know Bernie Bros have been squealing about it for a decade, but I think it's the root cause of the Democrats' problems post-Obama (and even to some degree in the latter half of his Presidency).

Specifically, I think the party needs to decentralize, and allow its factions to operate more as quasi-independent parties under the banner of the Democratic Party.  Remove the detailed, rigid platform and replace it with a more concise, more flexible set of guiding principles.  Allow the partilets to develop non-comprehensive platforms under these guiding principles, platforms with can otherwise disagree on details.  Weaken the Party leadership such that the Party is no longer in a position to bless particular candidates in particular races until after they have been selected by Party voters.  Essentially, turn each primary into a mini election where the partilets explicitly endorse particular candidates for Party nomination.

This is a tricky proposition, as it requires good coalition leadership to manage the components.  It also needs to come with a willingness to disengage with factions that stray too far away from the core principles.  I don't think it would require much more out of leadership than just unfucking the current Party would, though.

This is only a semi-informed opinion, though, so there are probably some large holes in it I'm not considering.

[frunk]

I think the problem is exactly the opposite.  There is no centralized power in the Democrats.  There's a centralized platform, but that's as far as it goes.  In the face of an authoritarian takeover there needs to be a coherent and strong resistance, and the Democrats are not the ones providing it.

I do agree there needs to be more effort for "grass roots" initiatives and making greater strides to compete in areas that the Democrats have given up, but a big part of that requires coordination, centralization and long term planning/propaganda to provide the funds and support to those candidates. 

[Neil]

The problem with decentralizing the Democrats is that it becomes a political nightmare from a messaging standpoint.  When you have a large part of the party that is broadly aligned with the American voter, but you have headline-grabbing pronouncements from the 'Squad' sub-party about how when they seize power they're going to open the borders, eliminate the police, ban guns, gasoline and heterosexuality, they end up tainting the whole brand.  Kind of like what happens now.  Because many of the stances of the smug college kid wing of the party are anathaema to most voters, the insane wing of the Democrats hurts them more than the insane wing of the Republicans hurts that party.  The Democrats are held to a higher standard, and have been probably since 1968, which means that they need more discipline, not less. 

[Oexmelin]

I disagree. Unsurprisingly.

The Democrats' messaging has been abysmal for the last twenty years or so, allowing the Republicans to dominate the narrative while Democrats meekly attempted to perpetually counter it through technocratic appeasement. Regardless of whether or not this made for good policy, it made for mediocre messaging.

Regardless of what one may think of the progressive wing of the party, this will always be spun in the most extreme ways by the propaganda arm of the Republican party. I think the last 20 years are testament to the idea that trying to spin a moderate message - *in the absence of any other strong commitment to anything else other than pragmatism* - is bound for failure, or, at the very best, is going to win thin margins that won't be enough to render Republicans impotent. 

On the other end of the spectrum, one of the core issues with online activism is that it never has to be confronted with actual politics. It's much easier to be pure from behind your computer than when comes the need to build coalitions and reach out to people. Centralizing the message (and the campaigning) has led the Democrats to basically abandon middle America, and has made those voices liable to be heard, precisely because there is no space, no infrastructure, no venue, to accommodate people who would like to be heard about local issues. This has been part of a deliberate strategy by the Democratic leadership to strangle a base they *do not want* in favor of the reasonable people molded in the shape of Clintonian politics from thirty-five years ago.

Either the Democrats (and other non-authoritarian people) wait for a political messiah that will not come, a reckoning that will come too late, or continue to lose themselves in endlessly intricate centralized messaging concocted by a committee made up of people who will never feel a sense of urgency; or they maybe, harbor dozens of varied initiatives - this is the primordial soup from which political messaging is born, and leaders are honed.     

[crazy canuck]

But sometimes I read things like Schumer or the "good billionaire"/"bad billionaire" distinction or party leaders heading to Silicon Valley to "mend fences" ("These donors are also pissed, watching former and current colleagues have unlimited, unchecked power, and getting richer off of this and they're not") - and I just think the party's broken. It is not capable of doing politics anymore. In fairness that maybe goes back to point one and what they really need are party (and coalition and movement) builders - a modern van Buren - but then I go back to those points and I just think they're allergic to that idea.

It's the two-party system that is fundamentally broken.  I think what we're seeing today is a direct result of a system that forces two big-tent parties to form; one was usurped by a well-organized faction and bent to its will, while the other is schizophrenic and disorganized because it keeps trying to either make all the factions happy or meld them into some kind of melting pot platform.  Meanwhile, both actions drive an increasing number of voters to either political apathy or the nebulous "independent voter" bucket.

Fixing that is obviously much harder than fixing the current Democratic Party, but my likely futile hope is that we can actually make some progress on that front to reduce the chances of this happening again.

On the subject of fixing the Democratic Party, and to some degree on the subject of loosening the big tent nature, I think the Party needs to tear down the machine.  I know Bernie Bros have been squealing about it for a decade, but I think it's the root cause of the Democrats' problems post-Obama (and even to some degree in the latter half of his Presidency).

Specifically, I think the party needs to decentralize, and allow its factions to operate more as quasi-independent parties under the banner of the Democratic Party.  Remove the detailed, rigid platform and replace it with a more concise, more flexible set of guiding principles.  Allow the partilets to develop non-comprehensive platforms under these guiding principles, platforms with can otherwise disagree on details.  Weaken the Party leadership such that the Party is no longer in a position to bless particular candidates in particular races until after they have been selected by Party voters.  Essentially, turn each primary into a mini election where the partilets explicitly endorse particular candidates for Party nomination.

This is a tricky proposition, as it requires good coalition leadership to manage the components.  It also needs to come with a willingness to disengage with factions that stray too far away from the core principles.  I don't think it would require much more out of leadership than just unfucking the current Party would, though.

This is only a semi-informed opinion, though, so there are probably some large holes in it I'm not considering.

I am reading that Bernie Sanders proposes the solution that candidates on the left run is independents.  But I guess the problem is that they miss out on the funding the party would've otherwise given them and not everybody can raise money the way Bernie can.

[Razgovory]

But sometimes I read things like Schumer or the "good billionaire"/"bad billionaire" distinction or party leaders heading to Silicon Valley to "mend fences" ("These donors are also pissed, watching former and current colleagues have unlimited, unchecked power, and getting richer off of this and they're not") - and I just think the party's broken. It is not capable of doing politics anymore. In fairness that maybe goes back to point one and what they really need are party (and coalition and movement) builders - a modern van Buren - but then I go back to those points and I just think they're allergic to that idea.

It's the two-party system that is fundamentally broken.  I think what we're seeing today is a direct result of a system that forces two big-tent parties to form; one was usurped by a well-organized faction and bent to its will, while the other is schizophrenic and disorganized because it keeps trying to either make all the factions happy or meld them into some kind of melting pot platform.  Meanwhile, both actions drive an increasing number of voters to either political apathy or the nebulous "independent voter" bucket.

Fixing that is obviously much harder than fixing the current Democratic Party, but my likely futile hope is that we can actually make some progress on that front to reduce the chances of this happening again.

On the subject of fixing the Democratic Party, and to some degree on the subject of loosening the big tent nature, I think the Party needs to tear down the machine.  I know Bernie Bros have been squealing about it for a decade, but I think it's the root cause of the Democrats' problems post-Obama (and even to some degree in the latter half of his Presidency).

Specifically, I think the party needs to decentralize, and allow its factions to operate more as quasi-independent parties under the banner of the Democratic Party.  Remove the detailed, rigid platform and replace it with a more concise, more flexible set of guiding principles.  Allow the partilets to develop non-comprehensive platforms under these guiding principles, platforms with can otherwise disagree on details.  Weaken the Party leadership such that the Party is no longer in a position to bless particular candidates in particular races until after they have been selected by Party voters.  Essentially, turn each primary into a mini election where the partilets explicitly endorse particular candidates for Party nomination.

This is a tricky proposition, as it requires good coalition leadership to manage the components.  It also needs to come with a willingness to disengage with factions that stray too far away from the core principles.  I don't think it would require much more out of leadership than just unfucking the current Party would, though.

This is only a semi-informed opinion, though, so there are probably some large holes in it I'm not considering.

Well, what you are describing is the way the party already is.  The leadership of the party doesn't have much say in most elections.  What the more radical elements of the party have never understood is that they are a minority, not because they are being held back by the party elites, but because they fundamentally unpopular.  They represent maybe a third of the Democrats, who in turn make up less than half the voting public.

[Neil]

That's a fair rebuttal, Oex.  I'm sympathetic to your point about how it's impossible to build new leadership up if you cut back on the score of political discourse.  Indeed, that's kind of what you see in Canada, where tight party discipline has generally made Cabinet ministers more or less irrelevant compared to where they were sixty years ago.  And it also holds some explanatory power about how the Democratic Party has failed to develop new leadership over the last few decades, saving only the political messiah Obama, who was poorly suited to be president.

[The Minsky Moment]

Jim Jordan is a honking loon, and he is Chairman of a House power committee.  The Speaker of House has publicly advocated bonkers things up to and including the US annexing Gaza.  The GOP does not give a shit whether and how letting the extreme voices out affects their electability = they use it to appeal to their base, and then get on Fox Business to wink at Wall Street and assure everyone that they don't really mean this.  And they have parlayed that strategy into control of every facet of the federal government.

I am and always have been a moderate Democrat in the Clinton-Obama mold. But that kind of wonkery works in a properly functioning constitutional Republic.  It does not play when the Republic itself is under threat. Passion and energy are needed and even misguided passion is better than holding seminars on triangulation, lobbying the Senate cloakroom to make minor changes to horrific bills, responding to core institutions under existential threat by stabbing them in the back with weaponized bothsideisms, and occasionally emerging into daylight to participate in a half-hearted demonstration and white-man rap out a few tired and trite slogans.

OSC may be too left for my personal taste, but she is one the few that seems to grasp the urgency of the situation.  If she primaried Schumer tomorrow, she'd have my virtual vote.  And if some more radical proposals get thrown out - it's about time the Democrats start pushing the Overton window back there way.  I'm not saying do it stupid like "defund the police" - which is the GOP platform now anyways. But how about send out Bernie or some younger firebrand to advocate a "Patriot Tax" - a one-time 100% tax on all personal wealth over $100 million, used to fund tax cuts for the working stiffs and expanded health care and childcare coverage?  Stir shit up.  Seize the agenda.  Flood their fucking zone.

[Neil]

The fact that the electorate is more forgiving of Republican insanity than Democratic insanity is something that the Democrats will have to overcome.  But it's a political reality nonetheless.  They've spent the last decade trying to dunk of Trump being a lunatic that says crazy things, and he's gotten stronger.  It's crazy reading an interview with the head of Blue Rose Research, and he's saying that the numbers have shifted to the point that increased turnout is now a boon to Republicans, not Democrats. 

[Oexmelin]

But how about send out Bernie or some younger firebrand to advocate a "Patriot Tax" - a one-time 100% tax on all personal wealth over $100 million, used to fund tax cuts for the working stiffs and expanded health care and childcare coverage?  Stir shit up.  Seize the agenda.  Flood their fucking zone.

Indeed. A recent town hall in Wyoming (Wyoming!) had people chanting "Tax the Rich!" with the incredulous Republican saying "So that's your solution? Tax the Rich?" to applause.

[Zoupa]

In other news, Obama is tweeting about his March Madness picks. Nothing about Trump in months.

[The Brain]

I was just gonna ask if Obama is doing anything. The same for Bush on the other side. But I guess neither is interested in fighting the dismantling of democracy and rule of law.