Quo Vadis, Democrats?

[DGuller]

The authoritarianism on display doesn't even make sense. I might accept strict party discipline if it the party wasn't making moronic choices for no clear reason.

Authoritarianism from Democrats makes sense to me in some way. Democrats thinks that not being decisive is a weakness of theirs, so they feel tempted to act differently.  However, the problem with doing things out of character is that you don't have a lifetime experience of acting in such a way, so you get all the negatives with none of the positives out of that.

[crazy canuck]

There are different degrees of obviously bad decisions, and there are different degrees of mental decline.  At no point did I think it was a good idea for Biden to run again, but at the time I didn't think it was a criminally incompetent idea, just a stupid one.  However, if the extent of Biden's mental decline was as it is presented now, and that it was known to enough people in its full extent, then that cross the line from a bad to an unfathomably reckless idea.  You can't have a nuclear superpower be run by an unofficial regency council.

And it is now becoming clear that it was the latter.

You might find this interesting. An interview with Tapper.

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id1548604447?i=1000709243197

[Valmy]

There are different degrees of obviously bad decisions, and there are different degrees of mental decline.  At no point did I think it was a good idea for Biden to run again, but at the time I didn't think it was a criminally incompetent idea, just a stupid one.  However, if the extent of Biden's mental decline was as it is presented now, and that it was known to enough people in its full extent, then that cross the line from a bad to an unfathomably reckless idea.  You can't have a nuclear superpower be run by an unofficial regency council.

Yeah man, I don't know. But you see this all over the party. Obviously physically and mentally incapable leaders being kept in office. It seems crazy they would try it with the President just due to how the Presidential election works. He has to get out there and give speeches and travel the country and do debates. And he was starting from a really bad place. This isn't 1944 and Roosevelt is so obviously going to win you don't need him to do much so the country won't notice his bad health. There is no way they thought he would win in that state. Even if they had some irresponsible plan to manage him via a robust technocratic staff doing the work.

[Valmy]

Authoritarianism from Democrats makes sense to me in some way. Democrats thinks that not being decisive is a weakness of theirs, so they feel tempted to act differently.  However, the problem with doing things out of character is that you don't have a lifetime experience of acting in such a way, so you get all the negatives with none of the positives out of that.

Sure. Sometimes you have to be ruthless to win political power, especially in this crazy country where the stakes are high for everybody in the world. But be ruthless in ways that win, not lose.

I have yet to see these positives. If anything whenever the Democrats have stepped back and let the voters choose the candidates they want, like Obama in 2008 for example, they tend to do better.

[Razgovory]

My subscription to the Atlantic is running out and I haven't renewed because I don't have money anymore, so I won't be posting many articles from there unless they are posted on MSN or something.  So here is the last one:

American Realignment
The country is sliding from an era of politics forged by social connections at the neighborhood level to one where cultural and ideological polarization dominates.
By Patrick Ruffini

Along the banks of the Rio Grande River lies Starr County, Texas, a key to understanding the political realignment that sent Donald Trump back to the White House. Both the most Hispanic county in the nation and one of the poorest, Starr was also once one of the most resoundingly Democratic; Barack Obama won it by 73 points in 2012. In 2020, the county swung harder rightward than any other county in the U.S., by 55 points. And in 2024, it voted Republican for the first time in 132 years: Trump was on top by 16 points.

Two years before, on the eve of the 2022 midterm elections, I decided to pay Starr County a visit. As someone who's worked in professional politics for more than two decades, most recently as a pollster studying realignment, I expected to see a pitched two-party fight in this newly minted political battleground.

In Rio Grande City, the county seat, I instead found a politics more parochial than anywhere else I've visited in America: Elections for the school board capture the public's attention far more than elections for governor or Congress. And this parochialism is a big part of the reason Starr County's politics shifted so far so fast.

Politics throughout much of the country used to be like Starr County's, a patchwork of localized traditions only tangentially connected to voters' ideological leanings. In many cases defined by ethnicity and religion, these "ancestral" local party attachments produced quirky and random results—a Democratic West Virginia, a Republican Vermont. And although Hispanics had been a solidly Democratic group until recently, the one-party nature of Democratic rule along the Rio Grande Valley was an outlier—especially in relation to other Texas regions with large concentrations of Hispanic residents, who were always a competitive voting bloc.

The realignments of recent years—the midwestern white working class toward Trump's GOP and the suburbs toward the Democrats—can be understood as the process of ideological and education sorting coming for groups that were the most out of place in the new political realm: rich suburban Republicans and culturally conservative working-class Democrats. In 2020 and 2024, this realignment came for the nonwhite voters once at the center of Barack Obama's coalition, especially working-class Hispanics, and most especially those in the rural outskirts of the Rio Grande Valley.


Starr County's tradition of machine politics, manifest in an unusually strong preoccupation with local elections, marked a place ripe for a sudden political shift. Not unlike the Democratic majorities in the big cities of mid-century, which continue at some level into the present day, political dominance in the region was built not through allegiance to liberal ideals but through political machines that delivered tangible benefits and shaped the political identity of new immigrant groups. This is evident in polling today showing that nonwhite Democrats are much more moderate and conservative than their white counterparts. For a time, ideological differences were subsumed to the work of advancing group interests through machine politics. But in an era of declining party organization and an emptying out of majority-minority cities in favor of more integrated suburbs, the tide of ideological voting could be held at bay for only so long. Once it poured in, America shifted into a new era of politics, from one forged by social connections at the neighborhood level to today's cultural and ideological polarization, where you vote Republican if you have conservative cultural beliefs, regardless of race.


For Black voters, voting for Democrats as an act of group solidarity didn't require urban machines like Tammany Hall. A Republican Party that was viewed as leading the backlash to civil rights was summarily dismissed—and those who strayed were subject to social sanction. In South Texas, the rationale revolved around class; the Democrats were viewed simply as the party that would do right by the poor.

As these old partisan ties begin to weaken, it's worth remembering that something similar has happened before, when the white working class's status as the bulwark of the old Democratic Party began to unravel in the 1960s. That was also a time of rapid social change, when a politics once focused on meeting the material needs of the working class instead started to revolve around questions more abstract: of war and peace, of race and sex. And on key points, the working class—meaning the white working class early on and a more diverse group today—was not on board with the Democrats' growing cultural liberalism.


The realignment of the working class, which helped Trump win in 2016, would not stop with white voters. In 2020 and 2024, the realignment came for nonwhite voters. A basic tenet of the Democratic Party—that of being a group-interest-based coalition—was abandoned as the party's ideologically moderate and conservative nonwhite adherents began to peel off in a mass re-sorting of the electorate. The Democratic analyst David Shor estimates that Democrats went from winning 81 percent of Hispanic moderates in 2016 to just 58 percent in 2024. And these voters were now voting exactly how you would expect them to, given their ideologies: conservatives for the party on the right, moderates split closer to either party.


This explanation for political realignment should concern Democrats deeply, because it can't be fixed by better messaging or more concerted outreach. The voters moving away from the Democrats are ideologically moderate to conservative. Their loyalty to the Democratic Party was formed in a time of deep racial and inter-ethnic rivalry, when throwing in with one locally dominant political party could help a once-marginalized group secure political power. The system worked well when local politics was relatively insulated from ideological divides at the national level. But this wouldn't last forever—and national polarization now rules everything around us.


Starr County was one of the last holdouts from ideological sorting, and I could feel the tension between new and old-school politics when I visited. The early- voting centers I visited in the Rio Grande Valley's urban areas were plastered with signs for congressional races that were competitive for the first time in generations. But the farther I ventured out into rural areas—places such as Starr County—the less voters seemed to care about national races. Here, the focus was close to home, and the smiling faces of school-board and county-office candidates covered nearly every available public surface.

From his office—a clubhouse on the main drag in Rio Grande City—Ross Barrera led the nascent county Republican organization. When we met, I asked him why local elections here seemed to garner such outsized attention.

His answer helped me solve a piece of the puzzle of Starr County's sudden political shift.


Rio Grande City is run not so much by parties, Barrera explained, but by rival factions with a strong resemblance to the machines of old. School-board elections are officially nonpartisan, but the voting is organized around competing candidate slates. The slates are like parallel political parties, but able to endorse across party lines for partisan races. These factional operations are far more sophisticated than the formal party structures. Candidates for the statehouse in Austin will simply pay these slates to serve as their get-out-the-vote operation, forgoing traditional campaign activity.

Why do the slates matter so much? In many of the poorest counties in the nation, with little private industry, the No. 1 employer is the local school district. And whoever wins the school-board elections decides who gets the relatively well-paying patronage jobs that come with those seats. That means the school-board races are uniquely high-stakes; incumbents will go to extreme lengths to safeguard their power.

The area outside the county courthouse where people were already casting their ballots was abuzz with activity from the candidate slates. Each had its own tent where volunteers were cooking up chicken dishes for voters passing by. Which tent a voter went to and spent time at signaled their loyalty. Confrontations between the two camps were not uncommon.

In the Rio Grande Valley, whom you vote for is a secret, but the list of who voted is scrutinized by political bosses doling out jobs. The same goes for primary elections, when your choice to pull a Democratic or Republican ballot is public. In 2018, all but 13 voters countywide who participated in the primary pulled a Democratic ballot. One Republican told me he was once handed a Democratic ballot in the primary—and was refused a Republican ballot when he requested one. Because all of the local officials were Democrats and general elections were frequently uncontested, people saw no point voting in the Republican primary.


Elections in this part of the state had not been free in the fullest sense of the word, unfolding in an atmosphere of persistent surveillance. After the 2012 elections in the nearby town of Donna, several area campaign workers, known locally as politiqueras, pleaded guilty for bribing voters with cash and dime bags of cocaine. South Texas has a long history of this kind of activity, going back to the notorious political boss George Parr, who, in 1948, manufactured the votes that put Lyndon B. Johnson in the Senate.

Although national politics was something of an afterthought, the region's default was enduring loyalty to a Democratic Party known simply as a tribune for the region's poor. Republicans, meanwhile, were dismissed as the party of the white person and the rich, something Barrera called "our own form of racism." As McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos, a Republican elected in 2021, explained it to me, at the dinner table growing up, he would hear about the necessity of voting for the Democrats as the "party of the poor." His response: "We don't have to be poor."

Something seemed to break in 2020. That pandemic year, candidates had to improvise new ways to reach voters. Barrera recalls locals' reactions when a "Trump train"—a caravan of cars and trucks flying Trump flags—one day drove down the main county highway. People emerged quietly from their homes to witness the spectacle. And then, much to Barrera's surprise, they started applauding.


This small display was an early warning of the political sea change that would take Trump from winning 19 percent of the county's vote in 2016 to 58 percent in 2024. Although Trump made gains across the country with Hispanic voters, a shift of this magnitude signals something much bigger than changes in policy or positioning; it's a preference cascade that comes about when social norms dictating group loyalty to a single party start to crumble. The Republican Party did not somehow persuade people to switch their votes with new policy positions. In areas where political machines long reigned supreme, like Starr County and the South Bronx, Republicans needed to switch votes by showing voters that their neighbors were switching as well. Two previous cycles of working-class shifts, combined with Trump campaigning in urban areas and in media popular with young nonwhite men, appeared to do the trick.

Beyond South Texas, the Democratic Party in America's old industrial cities was built by political machines that delivered tangible benefits to working-class and immigrant voters, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood. One day in the life of George Washington Plunkitt, the famed Tammany Hall district leader in New York, revealed the work it took to secure votes: At 2 a.m., he aroused from sleep to bail out a saloon keeper; at 6 a.m., he awakened to the sound of fire trucks and rose to give assistance and arrange housing for those affected; at 8:30 a.m., he went to the courthouse and secured the release of several "drunks"; at 9 a.m., he paid the rent for a poor family about to be evicted; at 11 a.m., he met with four men seeking employment and "succeeded in each case"; at 3 p.m., he attended the funerals of constituents; at 7 p.m., he presided over a district meeting; at 8 p.m., he attended a church fair and took the men out for a drink after; at 9 p.m., he was back at the office, attending to various constituent matters; at 10:30 p.m., he attended a Jewish wedding.


Today, machine politics are not held in high esteem. But they did have a way of finding overlooked voting blocs and putting them under protection. Other such examples of political organization and advocacy are remembered more fondly, such as the migration of Black voters into the Democratic Party following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which cemented a more than 9-to-1 Democratic advantage in many Black neighborhoods. But more recently, this political solidarity has been held together by social forces—the expectation by other Black Americans that their friends and neighbors will support Democrats—than by an ideological affinity for the party, as documented in the political scientists Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird's book, Steadfast Democrats.

In an era of nationalized politics and growing polarization, the social basis for Democratic majorities is looking more and more tenuous. Yes, the particular appeal with which Trump was able to attract Hispanics and young Black men may last for only an election cycle or two, but the fact that those communities are realigning to a party that matches their views on issues, particularly on cultural issues such as gender, means that many are likely to stick around.

A populist shift in the form of Donald Trump's larger-than-life persona was enough to make many nonwhite voters shed decades-long partisan loyalties. Absent a big change in how these voters perceive the Democratic Party, they aren't going back.

[Valmy]

Look man we are never going to persecute people on the basis of gender better than the Republicans. We are never going to be anti-immigrant to the extent Republicans can be. We will never be white nationalist to the extent Republicans are.

If it just comes down to be extremely right wing culturally, well I guess it is over. We can never beat the Republicans on that field.

Obama tried by doing massive deportations, and Biden continued that for the most part and even advanced some of Trump's border policies. But the Democrats still get killed for being "open borders" and the effect is not to reduce the pressure but to make everything far worse for everybody. Nevermind the fact that being anti-immigrant is a irrational and economically disastrous policy. Doing stupid things to try to win popular support and then not even winning that support is doubly bad.

If the problem is everybody just naturally loves far right wing cultural values then the Democrats are in a tough spot.

But they have been in this very tough spot since 1968. Unless the Republicans really fuck up they are going to win every time. And pretty much have. They just fuck up more than you would think.

This article could have been written in the the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, or 2010s talking about similar problems with different communities.

[Valmy]

And of course if the Democrats could somehow out extreme right wing the Republicans well...people like me would flee the party in droves. So there is that to.

[Razgovory]

I don't think black people are moving to the Republican party to be White Nationalists.  White democrats have moved quite a bit to the left since 2010 or so.  People holding the same positions as they did 20 years ago doesn't qualify as extreme or far-right.  Democrats weren't far-right back then.  We've embraced post material politics, because they appeal to the core democratic constituency:  Affluent, well-educated professionals.  But they don't appeal to most other people, and the result is we are losing elections.  The cost may be the loss of a Democratic form of government.

[Valmy]

I don't think black people are moving to the Republican party to be White Nationalists.  White democrats have moved quite a bit to the left since 2010 or so.

Bullshit. On what? What have they moved left on? Nothing. Name a leftwing policy or set of laws they have passed. Come on. They didn't even raise the minimum wage. I just gave an example, immigration, where they have become enormously more right wing since then. Not that it matters.

Democrats from decades ago were more leftwing on tons of issues. This is nonsense.

People holding the same positions as they did 20 years ago doesn't qualify as extreme or far-right.  Democrats weren't far-right back then.  We've embraced post material politics, because they appeal to the core democratic constituency:  Affluent, well-educated professionals.

Right and the reason they embraced "post-material" things was because they moved to the right on economic issues. That was the Clinton/Obama strategy. It did make the Republicans start embracing crazy communist ideas like autarky in response, so it made the country far worse without actually delivering long term electoral victories. It did eventually get the affluent suburban vote to some extent. But it came at a cost didn't it?

But they don't appeal to most other people, and the result is we are losing elections.  The cost may be the loss of a Democratic form of government.

This has been the same critique for 60 years. If the Democrats just embrace this mythical center and conservative voter, things can go back to the mythical time of Democratic dominance...that nobody under 70 can remember.

If we just do the same failed idea for 60 more years maybe someday it will work. I don't know man. LBJ won a landslide in 1964 by doing radical leftwing things that nobody in today's party would touch (well and dirty tricks...).

[Razgovory]

No, it's not Bullshit.  Black people are not becoming White Nationalists!  I swear to you.  As for the Democrats moving left:

In April 2022, Elon Musk tweeted a cartoon made by US evolutionary biologist Colin Wright. The image shows a stick figure representing Wright, a self-described "centre-left liberal", becoming politically stranded as the American left shifts ever further leftward during the 2010s, leaving him closer to the right despite his ideology not changing. The graphic was mocked at the time. But recent events suggest it may have a grain of truth to it.

To be clear: the main reason the Democrats lost the US election is that inflation kills political incumbents. But that doesn't mean there are not other lessons in the results.

Data suggests the Democrats lost ground with moderates, while holding steady among progressives. Charges that racism propelled voters to Donald Trump are at odds with the rightward swing among Black and Hispanic voters, and with a raft of data showing that racial prejudice is in steady decline among Americans of all political stripes.

Instead, the data shows Democrats taking a sharp turn leftward on social issues over the past decade. This has distanced them from the median voter, just as Wright's cartoon depicted. We see this not only in Democratic voters' self-reported ideology, but in their views on issues including immigration and whether or not minorities need extra help to succeed in society. Notably, the shift began in 2016. This suggests that Trump's election radicalised the left, not the right.





    Some counter that this is simply what progressive politics is, but the evidence suggests otherwise. America's decades-long progress towards racial and sexual tolerance and equality has been a gradual shift, led by progressives with the centre and right quickly following.

The pivots of the past decade, by contrast, have been abrupt and are leaving the majority behind. They are better characterised not as moves towards greater tolerance and equality but as shifts in rhetoric or proposed solutions for addressing disparities, where there is plenty of room for disagreement without bigotry.

Many of these pivots originated with the activists and non-profit staffers that surround the Democratic party. In an invaluable piece of research carried out in 2021, political scientists Alexander Furnas and Timothy LaPira at the think-tank Data for Progress found that these "political elites" or tastemakers hold views often well to the left of the average voter — and even the average Democratic voter — on cultural issues.





    This can create situations where policies and rhetoric alienate the very groups they're aimed at. While 73 per cent of white progressive Democrats favour cutting the size and scope of police forces, only 37 per cent of Black Americans agree. A new study by Amanda Sahar d'Urso and Marcel Roman, at Georgetown and Harvard universities respectively, found that the use of the gender-neutral term "Latinx" used by some progressives was not only deeply unpopular with many Hispanic Americans but may have actively pushed some towards Trump.

Political party leaders may counter that such gestures come from activists, not politicians. But there is now widespread concern about speech-policing among every group of Americans apart from the progressive left.

There was a graphic here, but it would not let me save it.  Basically White progressive have moved far to the left of minorities on issues of immigration and policing



    US voters also perceive the Democrats as having moved much further left than the Republicans have shifted right in recent years.

These shifts, layered on top of increasing education polarisation, are changing the image of the Democratic party in voters' minds. Survey data shows that in every election from 1948 to 2012, American voters' image of the Democrats was as the party that stood up for the working class and the poor. In 2016 that flipped. Now it is seen primarily as the party of minority advocacy.





   This evolution has reduced the salience of class and economic solidarity — a domain in which Furnas and LaPira find Democratic elites more in tune with the public than their Republican counterparts — and elevated sociocultural issues, where the GOP is on firmer ground.

As predicted, this resulted in racial realignment on November 5, with Hispanic and Black conservatives voting increasingly in line with their social values rather than their economic priorities.



Whether or not progressives are ready to accept it, the evidence all points in one direction. America's moderate voters have not deserted the Democrats; the party has pushed them away.

https://www.ft.com/content/73a1836d-0faa-4c84-b973-554e2ca3a227

The reason they embraced post material things is because they had their material needs met.  They have moved right on economics because the base of the party is now affluent.  They aren't competing for the working class jobs, so those interests don't interest them that much.  The people it does interest are leaving the Democrats.

[Valmy]

No, it's not Bullshit.  Black people are not becoming White Nationalists!  I swear to you.

Ok this is the second time you have launched this bizarre bullshit at me. What is this shit about black people becoming white nationalist? What is this garbage? Ok we have Kanye but come on.

What I said was that Democrats cannot go further right wing than Republicans on issues like gender and white nationalism. What I meant was that to the extent a voter is going to vote on those things with a right wing bias there is nothing the Democrats can do to win those people...at least on those issues. So when the article mentioned those black people were going to stay Republicans because of gender...well the Democrats could call for all trans people to be shot, they probably still wouldn't be more preferable to people with strong right wing views on that issue. Probably not the way to get them back.

Whether or not progressives are ready to accept it, the evidence all points in one direction. America's moderate voters have not deserted the Democrats; the party has pushed them away.

Ok well I see polls and vibes but I don't see anything of substance. The Democratic Party have been supporting expanded funding for police forces. They aren't cutting police funding. The Democratic Party has not done anything to re-introduce affirmative action. The Democratic Party has gone very right wing on immigration issues by policy, though granted they are not gathering up people and shipping them to foreign gulags without trial. The Democratic party has not taken the position that 'Latinx' is a term anybody should use that I am aware of.

But generally this is the kind of bullshit I hear all the time. White progressives are out there saying things in social media and therefore the Democratic Party is far left. And of course only rich white people are progressive, which is a bizarre assumption...but anyway. Meanwhile the Republicans are actually passing far right wing LAWS and POLICIES. I am not judging them based on what weirdos post on social media. I am judging them based on the LAWS THEY PASS. There is a difference between what people loosely associated with you online say and the actual laws and policies of the party.

The reason they embraced post material things is because they had their material needs met.  They have moved right on economics because the base of the party is now affluent.  They aren't competing for the working class jobs, so those interests don't interest them that much.  The people it does interest are leaving the Democrats.

Well that shift happened in the 1990s. But there is something really ridiculous in you telling me that they shifted far left and that explains why they shifted far right. What are we even talking about here?

And the answer is always go right, always right. But it doesn't work. And why I think you have perfectly explained. It does not matter at all what the Democrats do because they will always be perceived as the party of the left and whatever random leftists do, whether the Democrats like it or not.

So maybe they should stop this fruitless effort and actually fight for those issues. Why not explain why the brutal and inhumane persecution of gender minorities is anti-American and bad? Why not explain how immigration is vital for our country's future and economy and is good? Because people are just going assume you support those issues anyway, no matter how many people you deport. So you might as well make those positions as popular as possible.

And yes take leftwing views on the economy. All going right here did was turn off working class voters. And seem to have made the Republicans embrace bizarre autarkic positions.

Democrats feel fake and corrupt because they are not being leftwing.

[Razgovory]

You say that Republicans are white nationalist, but I don't think that black people are joining the Republican party to become White nationalists.  

We do put our beliefs into policy and laws.  After the George Floyd protests did cut police funding.  Many cities are sanctuary cities, Democrats do have policies that celebrate Trans individuals.  It's not just vibes.  We actually do things sometimes.  I think you hold a double standard here, Republicans haven't passed laws that endorse white Nationalism, but you still ascribe that belief to them.

Look, we lost the last election.  We lost to a felon and a racist.  We are losing black and Hispanics voters to a racist.  Maybe we need to take a look at what we are doing wrong.

[Bauer]

My 2cents is that progressive politics has been slipping into permissive politics.  People want progress towards solutions on issues like drugs, crime, immigration but they don't want to be permissive of them.

In the Canadian election I saw an interview with Chrétien talking about restoring the liberal party as the "radical right",  ie progressive conscience but practical...

[DGuller]

I don't think Democrats need to out-right the right.  I think they just need to realize that the extremes on the right often have a root in legitimate grievance, and take positions that acknowledge rather than inflame them.

[Josquius]

The idea the Democrats lost because they are far left is certifiably insane. Nonsense clearly pulled from vichy-twitter.
All indications are the complete opposite is the reality. They lost because they offered nothing but business a usual. Little to clearly make working people's lives better.
Out righting the far right isn't going to happen and just defending against fascists favourite topics is a bad move.
The Democrats need to move left.
Especially in light of America's recent Truss on acid experiences.

I don't think Democrats need to out-right the right.  I think they just need to realize that the extremes on the right often have a root in legitimate grievance, and take positions that acknowledge rather than inflame them.

They do. But this grievance usually isn't what it surfaces as. It's clear to be seen that paranoia about immigrants tends to be stronger in economically struggling areas rather than in areas with higher immigration.