2025 & 2026 Elections

[rodoheel]

As long as your party is polling at under 20% you have NO SHOT at flipping any damn seat!!!

Keep losing losers!!

 

[rodoheel]

I think this still reflects a kind of strategic defeatism. You’re evaluating states like MT and the Dakotas based on whether they currently support the full national platform, as if that’s fixed. But politics is about coalition-building over time. You start with what resonates locally (jobs, hospitals, infrastructure) and connect that to a broader material vision.

We’re not going to get Medicare for All or a Green New Deal unless we start building trust with the voters who’ve been told those ideas are coastal elitism. And if we don’t even try, if we treat whole states as lost causes, we’re not just giving up on elections. We’re giving up on reshaping the national political terrain, which is necessary work for any real future.

What you call defeatism, I call pragmatism. But I'm not talking about treating whole states as lost causes, I'm talking about not wasting resources in trying to adapt a national platform that will never appeal in certain places, at least under current national political conditions, to those places. Dems can and should still run vigorous campaigns in, say, the more left-leaning (or gettable) districts in those places. But until the Overton Window - or, if you don't like that term, the national political discourse - is shifted back left, it simply is not a good investment to be trying to compete in the most difficult-to-reach (literally and politically) parts of the electoral map. I simply don't think any organizing effort you can devise is going to take root, much less bear any fruit, in rural areas of deep-red states, unless and until it's a more favorable political environment for that message.

 

[superrific]

At some point, you have to plant seeds even in bad soil.

This, I agree with.

 

[nycfan]

 

[superrific]

You say this has all “failed repeatedly over 150 years,” but that flattens the actual history and the present. What Osborn is doing isn’t some utopian third-party fantasy. It’s a coalition strategy grounded in organizing, credibility, and post-party appeal in places where the national Democratic brand is toxic. You can’t tell that story through the same lens you’d use for a Green Party vanity run.

Yes, we’ve had two parties for most of American history. But the composition, posture, and function of those parties has changed dramatically. One reason Republicans dominate rural areas now is that they’re willing to run everywhere, meet voters on cultural ground, and treat local infrastructure seriously. Democrats have all but abandoned that terrain and then wonder why the map keeps shrinking.

You ask, “Why will it work this time when it hasn’t before?” My answer: because we’re already seeing signs that it is working. Osborn outperformed the national ticket in Nebraska. Mamdani just beat Cuomo’s machine in NYC by organizing around material needs. What both share is not a “new” idea, it’s the forgotten foundation of electoral politics: build trust, meet people where they are, and root yourself in local struggle.

You say the party won’t fund candidates like Osborn forever. Maybe not. But that’s not a reason to give up on the model. It’s a reason to rethink what the party is for. If it won’t adapt to new strategies in states where it’s collapsed, then it’s the failed experiment, not the candidate trying something new.

I'm not talking about a utopian third party fantasy either. I'm talking about the fact that virtually every federal office holder in the history of our country has belonged to one of the major parties. If you can't wrestle with that idea, and recognize that the "forgotten foundation" you describe was not forgotten for a century and yet here we are -- if you can't do that then what are you doing?

I refuse to accept the idea that "it's working." If you were a right winger, I'd call it risible but you deserve more respect than that. But losing by 7.5% in a Senate race is not "working." Winning a plurality of the vote in one of the most liberal places in America against a candidate who had to resign in disgrace three or four years ago signifies nothing outside of the specific context. Do you seriously believe that the NYC Dem primary for mayor is a harbinger of things to come nationally? I mean, dude. Even to say it is to realize how silly it is.

When pressed on specifics, your typical approach is to retreat into abstraction. Build trust, meet people where they are, etc. Those are catch phrases, not ideas. And when specifically pressed on questions like "how does this work with the racism that dominates our country right now," you just punt and retreat. Discourse isn't guerilla warfare.

This is a substantial problem with your theory. How can the Dems build trust in areas that hate black people and think of them as candidates for remigration? How can the Dems, who do not want a theocracy and who want to preserve abortion rights, meet the people where they are when literally those are the most important things to them. When you hand-wave away the objection, it makes me wonder what's the point of the discussion? You seem to have it all figured out in your mind.

Remember: by far the major concerns among rural residents, as expressed both in polls and in revealed preferences, are invasion by brown people, DEI somewhere in some fashion, and their toxic brand of Christianity. How is a meeting of the minds remotely possible?

 

[duluoz]

His campaign didn’t win because of identity politics

False. What’s not said out loud is that there is tremendous anti-Israeli/anti-Zionist sentiment growing in NYC due to Netanyahu’s reprehensible actions in Gaza since 10/7. It has brought other reprehensible past policies and actions of Israel to light as well, *especially* for young voters — college educated, under 45. This is the meat of what truly carried Mamdani in the primary, certainly not “free and fast buses” which NY’ers know is a joke for several reasons, or “affordability” which every candidate from either side parrots with promises they can’t keep.

The energy came from young voters who move here from all over the country to seek out one of the most progressive geographies anywhere, precisely because that aligns with their identities. Mandani in this setting is the very definition of identity politics. It’s the reason you hear people saying he’s the most charismatic young politician since Obama or AOC. IDENTITY. The “big donors” angle you keep harping on plays right into those identity politics, it’s not discrete from them as you keep saying over and over. These very progressive voters want big business out of their politics. So what did they do. They organized and volunteered and had conversations with others every chance they got. That’s great. It’s part of why I love living here.

But this simply can’t happen in this same way in nearly any other geography in the US. Successes can be had and ground regained in other ways in other areas, sure.

But the fact that you keep holding up Mamdani as a template just shows how deeply lost in your bubble you are. The bubble that still thinks using terms like “socialist” and Queens/Brooklyn’s “Commie Corridor” is a good idea, and refuses to acknowledge how the entire rest of the party is saddled with them as a result.

 

[rodoheel]

Yes, we’ve had two parties for most of American history. But the composition, posture, and function of those parties has changed dramatically. One reason Republicans dominate rural areas now is that they’re willing to run everywhere, meet voters on cultural ground, and treat local infrastructure seriously. Democrats have all but abandoned that terrain and then wonder why the map keeps shrinking.

I think this last part is wrong, or at least ignoring a ton of other things. By far the most important reason that Republicans dominate rural areas is that rural areas are the most conservative in the modern political calculus. They are, by and large, heavily Christian, heavily supportive of individual liberty, heavily pro-gun rights, staunchly opposed to big government of pretty much any form, and somewhere between suspicious of and outright xenophobic towards immigrants. Current Democratic politicians didn't make them that way by being bad at connecting with them. They have been that way for decades, if not longer. The "cultural ground" on which Republicans primarily have appealed to them is generally through conservative Christianity and nativism, all with a veneer of "traditional American/family values." Not by taking "local infrastructure" seriously.

 

[rodoheel]

You say we need to wait until the Overton Window shifts left, as if that just happens on its own. But it doesn’t. It shifts because people organize, challenge power, and expand what’s considered possible. That work doesn’t start after a crisis; it starts now, so that when the crisis hits, we’re not stuck with a Buttigieg reading cue cards while the right runs full populist.

This is not at all what I meant, and I'll take the blame for not explaining well. I'm not suggesting we should sit around and wait for the Overton Window to shift left, I'm saying the focus should be on shifting it left at the national level, not the local level. I simply do not think that trying to reach individual rural voters in red states is the way to try to shift the Overton Window. I understand that we disagree about that. But if you look back, again, at Obama 2008, I don't think you can credibly argue that the reason for Dems' blue wave election was built on groundwork organizing people in rural communities across the country.

 

[superrific]

It’s true that virtually every federal officeholder in U.S. history has belonged to one of the two major parties. But during the eras when those parties actually functioned, they were rooted in local institutions: unions, churches, fraternal groups, political clubs. The Democratic Party wasn’t just a label on a ballot. It was a vessel for organizing. That’s what gave it strength. That’s what allowed it to win elections in places like Montana, Arkansas, even Nebraska.

History doesn’t vindicate the party label on its own. What mattered was the structure underneath: the relationships, the trust, the embeddedness. That’s what made the brand viable. Now that those foundations have collapsed, clinging to the old label without rebuilding what sustained it is a fantasy. If the current approach is failing in massive swaths of the country, why not try something else?

You dismiss Osborn’s loss as meaningless. Compared to what? Democrats didn’t even field a candidate in Nebraska. Osborn outperformed Kamala Harris by a wide margin, forced the GOP to spend money they usually don’t, and laid the groundwork for a stronger run. That’s not a guaranteed path to victory, but it’s the start of something. Writing it off as failure is analysis by scoreboard, not strategy.

Mamdani’s win in New York is dismissed just as easily. But the point isn’t the geography, it’s the method. He beat a donor-backed juggernaut not with machine politics or national media, but through organizing. His campaign didn’t win because of identity politics or elite branding. It won because he built a coalition around material issues. That approach (meeting people where they are, knocking doors, listening) isn’t abstraction. It’s politics at its most basic level. If that sounds vague to you, it’s only because we’ve become so detached from real political practice that the fundamentals sound foreign.

As for places that are racist, theocratic, reactionary, yes, they exist. We’ve just arrived at the same unresolved debate we’ve had before. I believe people aren’t static. Beliefs evolve through struggle, contact, and shared interest. That’s not naïve; that’s literally how politics has always worked. The civil rights movement didn’t win by waiting for polling to catch up. Neither did the labor movement. They moved first, grounded in organizing, and pulled parts of the country with them.

You say I think I have it all figured out. I don’t. But I’m asking a basic question: if the current strategy is failing across half the country, why are we so afraid to experiment? Why is anything outside the party line treated as delusion?

What I do know is this: no mass democratic movement in American life waited around for the electorate to become morally pure. They organized in spite of racism, often directly against it, and won gains by building common material ground and forcing contradiction into the open.

What you seem to be demanding from me (a clean, fully mapped strategy that solves racism in rural America before politics can proceed) isn’t a standard anyone has ever met. Not SNCC, not the CIO, not the Populists, not the SCLC. And certainly not the Democratic Party today.

I’m not pretending to have all the answers. I’m arguing that there are answers to be found in motion, by doing the hard work of organizing. You mistake my refusal to declare entire swaths of the country unreachable as a lack of realism, when, in fact, it’s the only historically grounded realism on the table.

1. I agree 100% with this: "What I do know is this: no mass democratic movement in American life waited around for the electorate to become morally pure." This too: "But during the eras when those parties actually functioned, they were rooted in local institutions: unions, churches, fraternal groups, political clubs."

2. Yes, to some extent, we are back to the original question. Because I would argue that those local institutions do not exist any more. In part because of the internet and exurbs, and in part because of racism. You know very well how church maps onto racial attitudes, and fraternal groups even more. When I was growing up in the 1980s there was an Elk's Lodge that did not allow n**** inside. Unions had to be forced to integrate, at least some of them, but I wouldn't say they declined for that reason. If I was forced to accept something as neoliberal, the decline of labor unions would be a candidate. Republicans torched them on the law, and Democrats stopped standing up for them because unions were about as popular in the 80s as herpes. Well, it actually the early part of the decade was boomtime for herpes but you get the point. It was not a fair characterization, but unions were blamed for stagflation.

3. I'm not asking you for a clean mapped strategy. I just want to see you wrestling with complexity. You say you don't pretend to have all the answers. I don't doubt that. But you sound as though you do because you aren't taking objections seriously. In part that might reflect a basic miscommunication as to the nature of the discussion, which just occurred to me:

When I say: these are real problems that stand in the way of what you're talking about, and in my view you haven't adequately addressed them, you hear "Therefore the ideas aren't worth pursuing." That's not remotely what I'm trying to communicate. I think, upon reflection, that's at least partly on me. You think I pay lip service to "let's do something!" and I disagree, but the reality is that I probably come across that way. Because I don't talk about that too much. Part of it is that I'm a critic by nature. As people have noticed and observed, there are few better than me at ripping apart an argument or presentation. It comes easy, so it's more fun and more likely to engage me on a message board. The positive question is both harder and more important, and that's the one you're addressing. Every successful revolution has had thinkers and doers, lol.

4. I guess a point of tension for me is when you say, "Dems should do this," when "this" is speculative at best. And here too there's a mismatch of expectations. For me (and I'm guessing rodoheel too), the question of "what to do now" refers to 2025 and 2026, maybe 2028. Doing what you propose is unlikely to be successful on that time frame. Of course, as you've said, you're thinking not just to 2028 but 2038. And that's good.

I wonder if this specific tension could be resolved with simple semantic clarification. To me, "Dems should . . . " is a claim about the immediate future. "Liberals should . . . " has more of a claim to long-term focus. I also think that's the meaning you're going for. The other problem is that you're talking about current events from a long-term future-oriented perspective, which doesn't work very well. That isn't your fault; that's simply a function of this message board environment. Almost all discussion here is about the present. We just need to keep in mind what each other means.

5. In general, I think it would be useful for you to formulate some ideas about how to address race issues. They don't have to be "correct" (whatever that might mean). They just need to be serious (graded on a ZZL curve) and directly engaged with the issues that we've pointed out. As I said above, your posts can get very abstract when you're pressed. Specific examples would be better -- not specific examples of current events, but examples of the concrete things that can be done on the local level. They can be past examples, hopefully modified by our new tech society, or thoughts about things that could be done better, etc.

If you don't really have such ideas right now -- well, isn't that an indication of where you need to focus your thinking? I don't say that as fault but as advice.

 

[rodoheel]

I think this is where we really differ. You see organizing and candidate strategy as marginal, something to do around the edges while we wait for a GOP collapse. But the reality is, collapse doesn’t guarantee anything. After the 2008 financial crisis, Democrats won big, and then promptly lost the map by 2010. No infrastructure. No movement-building. Just technocrats and consultants assuming the country had “swung left.”

If we don’t do the work now (build local trust, run aligned candidates, try new coalition models like Osborn’s) there won’t be a map to swing back to. You say 2008 and 1932 happened because things fell apart. I’d argue they happened because leaders were ready with something new when they did. Waiting isn’t a strategy.

I'm not saying that the strategy is to sit around and wait and do nothing. I'm simply saying that nothing we do is going to matter much unless and until things fall apart. While I don't see how it could hurt l I really don't see "local trust" as nearly as important as you do in the modern political world. Certainly I don't think "local trust" has really anything to do with why right-wing politics has been so successful at the national level in the last 15 years or so.

 

[superrific]

That’s the core disagreement here. You think politics is about reflecting the current map. I think it’s about reshaping it. And the only way to do that is through presence, organizing, and building trust, especially in places we’ve written off for too long.

Yeah, this gets to my point in the longer post. There's a time horizon mismatch. It has to be about reflecting and reshaping. We're complements, not enemies.

 

[rodoheel]

And yes, Republicans do take local infrastructure seriously. I’m talking about roads and bridges but political infrastructure. They run everywhere. They speak the cultural language. They show up at county fairs and Rotary clubs. They make people feel seen. Democrats used to do that too, when the party was rooted in local institutions like unions, churches, and civic groups. Now they’ve ceded that ground, and you’re pointing to the result as if it were inevitable.

I honestly, sincerely, just do not believe this is true. Republicans have not made people "feel seen" by showing up at blue jeans at the county fair. They have done their cultural messaging mostly through cable news and social media, and usually through dog-whistles of various stripes. By telling people that they're not to blame for their problems, and that other people are - the deep state or immigrants or Muslims or gay people or trans people or whoever. That messaging is powerful and effective, but not because it is delivered at county fairs and rotary clubs.

I agree with many of your critiques of national Dems over the last 15 years. I simply do not agree with this particular idea that Republicans have increased their power in rural areas by talking with people via various local civic institutions and making them feel heard face-to-face. I think you are so convinced of what you believe is the right way to do this that you are trying to retrofit Republican success at the national level into that paradigm.

I am simply saying, big picture, that Dems have to focus their resources on the most winnable/approachable constituencies and go from there. Not "ignore" everyone else. Not refuse to run candidates in races. I'm talking about prioritizing the messaging, not making the messaging exclusive to different groups. Go organize in 1,000 resident towns in rural South Dakota if you want to; I do not think it will make a bit of difference, personally.

 

[rodoheel]

Your framework still assumes that national Overton shifts can happen without local organizing. That’s just not how politics works. National sentiment doesn’t shift in a vacuum. It shifts because people organize, win fights, and show what’s possible, often in unlikely places.

You mention Obama 2008, but you’re skipping over the massive local infrastructure that campaign built. The 50-state strategy put staff and volunteers in red and rural counties all over the country. Not to flip them blue overnight, but to show up, to engage, to organize. That work mattered, not just for Obama, but for downballot races, turnout, and credibility with voters who were used to being ignored. That was a national shift built on local organizing.

The idea that we can move national consciousness without touching local terrain is just fantasy. You don’t build trust, power, or new political possibilities by abandoning half the country and hoping the media climate changes. The right certainly isn’t doing that.

Again, I have never once talked about "abandoning" anything. I simply think you are over-indexing on the importance and viability of boots-on-the-ground organizing as the primary driver of change, especially in 2025.

 

[mpaer]

I know what I am about to say is not well thought out. But it is somehow a piece?
One of the problems rural Murica has is they think the cities spend all the tax money. And as much as they spend , in general urban/ blue counties actually subsidize every rural county in a given State and at the National level. Heavily . Without being condescending it would be nice for those folks to know that

 

[superrific]

Again, I have never once talked about "abandoning" anything. I simply think you are over-indexing on the importance and viability of boots-on-the-ground organizing as the primary driver of change, especially in 2025.

As usual, there is truth both ways. It's true that MAGA formed a community for people who otherwise felt displaced. There are a lot of stories of people who found community, which is why they started following Trump around like he was the Grateful Dead. This was back in 2016. Those community ties were what drove the turnout operation in 2024.

But it's also true that communities form best when they speak a common language -- not just vocabulary but emotionally -- and Fox News provides just that.

 

[duluoz]

You’re doing what so many others have done when faced with a challenge to their assumptions: reframing a political strategy as a cultural fluke so you don’t have to reckon with what actually happened.

Was Gaza a factor in Mamdani’s win? Absolutely. But sentiment alone doesn’t win elections. That energy had to be channeled through door knocking, canvassing, coalition-building, and organizing across communities. That’s what Mamdani did. That’s why he won. You’re treating this like he just rode a wave of opinion. He didn’t. He built something.

Dismissing fare-free buses and affordability as meaningless just shows how narrow your lens is. Maybe those policies sound unserious to your peer group, but they clearly resonate with working-class renters and immigrants in Queens. His coalition wasn’t just the “under 45 college-educated progressive transplants” you describe, it included people who struggle with real costs in daily life and responded to a campaign that met them there.

Your definition of “identity politics” is just as hollow. You seem to think that opposing big donors is about vibes. But Mamdani’s opponent was backed by millions in outside money. Mamdani won without it. That’s not a pose. That’s a material rejection of how politics normally works in this country.

The reason I keep pointing to Mamdani is not because I think Queens is just like Nebraska. It’s because the method (organizing, not branding; coalition, not triangulation) has power. You say this can’t work anywhere else but offer no reason why. Just insist I’m “deeply lost.”

Yeah, why would anyone consider Mamdani winning a primary in NYC a fluke relative to the national scene? Far more prudent to reframe it as a template!

And yeah I did offer reasons this can’t work as a template for nearly anywhere else. If your comprehension is that faulty, maybe try again. If it’s that selective, there’s no helping you.

 

[superrific]

I know what I am about to say is not well thought out. But it is somehow a piece?
One of the problems rural Murica has is they think the cities spend all the tax money. And as much as they spend , in general urban/ blue counties actually subsidize every rural county in a given State and at the National level. Heavily . Without being condescending it would be nice for those folks to know that

This is true. I'm not sure, though, that it's ever really about policy. I think it's a more lizard brain resentment. Remember GOP vocabulary. "Chicago" means "black people." They will deny it blah blah blah, but the code is obvious. They don't care about the policy. They care that money is being spent on people they don't like. "Big cities" are just code for that, as they have been in the South for two centuries.

 

[wmheel1287]

I think this still reflects a kind of strategic defeatism. You’re evaluating states like MT and the Dakotas based on whether they currently support the full national platform, as if that’s fixed. But politics is about coalition-building over time. You start with what resonates locally (jobs, hospitals, infrastructure) and connect that to a broader material vision.

We’re not going to get Medicare for All or a Green New Deal unless we start building trust with the voters who’ve been told those ideas are coastal elitism. And if we don’t even try, if we treat whole states as lost causes, we’re not just giving up on elections. We’re giving up on reshaping the national political terrain, which is necessary work for any real future.

Respectfully, I have spent a ton of time in all of those states and politically they absolutely are lost causes. You aren't getting ANYONE without an R beside their name and absolute fealty to Donald Trump from any of those.

 

[wmheel1287]

You know I appreciate your perspective. But I’ve got to say, treating them as hopeless feels deeply ahistorical. These were once strongholds of left populism. Montana sent radicals to the Senate. The Dakotas birthed cooperative movements and farm-labor parties. That didn’t vanish on its own. It was stamped out, and it can be organized back in. Not overnight, and not everywhere all at once. But if we write these places off entirely, we’re ceding ground that was once ours and what could be again.

Ground doesn't vote. People do. And the people who inhabit those states now have absolutely nothing in common with the people who inhabited those states even 30 years ago. The massive migration of folks fleeing urban areas for political and cultural reasons has hardened those states into impenetrable MAGA forts. You cant build common ground with people who dont want common ground. The people who live in the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, etc don't care to be aligned in any way with people from either coast.

 

[duluoz]

Dismissing fare-free buses and affordability as meaningless just shows how narrow your lens is. Maybe those policies sound unserious to your peer group, but they clearly resonate with working-class renters and immigrants in Queens. His coalition wasn’t just the “under 45 college-educated progressive transplants” you describe, it included people who struggle with real costs in daily life and responded to a campaign that met them there.

Affordability would be great if it actually meant anything in real terms and actionable policies. Nobody dismisses that. Mamdani wields the term without acknowledging that Albany actually controls the levers that can make it possible, not the mayor’s office.

Have you ever ridden a bus in NYC? If you had, you’d know that HALF of bus riders don’t pay, they evade fares. It’s comical, most hop on from back doors but some will just walk right past without acknowledging payment in any way. This is part of why his “buses” promise is an inside joke here. The other is that there is no way to speed up buses without adding more bus lanes and strictly enforcing them. Try doing that on NYC streets. So there goes his claims of “free and fast,” and that’s why NY’ers openly laugh about it. Even ones who voted for him. He has no real world plan for it, it’s just something he says, along with “affordability.”

You do not know what you are talking about, yet you do it constantly and confidently. Just like Mamdani.