Gavin Newsom addresses the nation

[SnoopRob]

You say you had not defined what you meant by “connection” until your last post, as if that frees you from the entire frame this conversation has been operating in. But come on. The discussion around Newsom was clearly centered on the emotional and affective connection candidates have, or fail to have, with voters. It was about how someone like Newsom comes across to disaffected people, not simply how many people show up to vote for him or buy his merch.

If you were not talking about emotional connection, then why enter a conversation where that was the central focus and only now, several posts in, claim you meant something else entirely? That is not clarifying.

Your earlier comments clearly relied on an implied definition: mocking Vance for being inauthentic, calling him a muppet, and saying that “connection implies a two-way relationship.” That wasn’t nothing. You were drawing on a moral and emotional framework, the same one I was engaging in good faith. But now that I’ve pushed you to clarify and defend it, you’ve retreated to a totally different definition: connection as mere voter turnout. That shift allows you to dismiss Vance as disconnected while preserving Trump as a kind of outlier, without grappling with the emotional mechanisms that fuel both of them. It’s not that you haven’t defined connection, it’s that you’re switching definitions when the conversation gets inconvenient.

You also try to reframe my argument as being about what I personally desire from a politician. But this is not just some private preference I made up. Emotional connection, the ability to tell a story, to resonate, to build symbolic trust, has always been central to modern politics. Reagan had it. Trump has it. Obama had it, though in a very different register. The issue with Newsom is that he lacks it. He does not seem like he has lived the things he is talking about. And in today’s environment, how a politician makes people feel is not a minor concern. It becomes a signal for whose side they are actually on.

At any rate, your new definition of connection as “gets people to the polls” is a shallow and reductive way of understanding political appeal. It is not even internally consistent. You say Vance does not connect, yet he won a statewide race in Ohio. He did that while running on populist aesthetics and cultural grievance. You admit that Trump motivates people to act, but then pretend that this is not because of emotional connection. Of course it is. People buy into Trump because they feel, whether rightly or wrongly, that he understands them, that he shares their enemies, that he speaks from the gut. That is not just a turnout operation. That is myth-making.

You can’t have it both ways. The moment you say Democrats shouldn’t try to reach certain voters, you’re offering a strategy. You say we should not try to reach out to right-wing or working-class voters in any way that might challenge the current liberal moral framework. That is a strategy. It is a strategy based on exclusion. It assumes that large parts of the electorate, including former Democrats, are beyond redemption. If you are going to argue for that position, then at least own it. Do not pretend you are simply observing from the sidelines.

You’re trying to strip the whole concept of “connection” of any meaning by shifting between affective, symbolic, and mechanical models of “connection” while accusing me of muddying the waters. Then you turn around and declare that we should not bother with voters who are alienated from the Democratic Party unless they already accept the entire moral framing of professional-class liberalism. This is the same rhetorical move you made last night. You cloud the terms of the debate, redefine the topic, then claim that the other side is just confused.

Truth is, millions of Americans are politically homeless. They are alienated from both parties. Not all of them are unreachable racists. Many are disillusioned, cynical, struggling, and desperate for something real. If Democrats want to win again, especially in the places where they have been bleeding support for years, they need candidates who come across as genuine. Not because we are abandoning our values, but because we are showing people that we actually believe in them. That requires emotional trust, not just a policy menu or a polished speech. Without that, there is no connection at all.

Good grief, I didn't change any previously agreed upon definition, we both used a common phrase and discovered we were using it with different nuances. There was no previously provided "definitions" section to this discussion and we were both using the word within acceptable understandings of the word. Also, I never accused you of "muddying the waters"; you're again arguing against an opponent that only exists in your mind.

I called Vance a muppet because he's cosplaying as a rural, white working class person when he's clearly no longer that person in any appreciable way. But the reason I say he doesn't connect is because he can't get voters to turn out for him or his message. There are several ways to forge a connection with voters that can get them to turn out. One is to create a "deep, meaningful connection" that assures them you understand them. Another is to present plans that convince them you can provide them the best future. Another is to scapegoat others to blame them for perceived ills. Another is to bash others and use fear/hatred to get them to the polls. And another is to show up at the right time and simply not be "the other guy". I would agree that a "deep, meaningful connection" likely provides the most sure way to ensure they turn out, but it is also the most difficult to achieve and most politicians - even successful ones - don't achieve that.

Reagan, Obama, and Trump did make deep connections to voters. Bill Clinton kinda/maybe/sorta did. HW Bush, Dubya, and Biden did not. But all of them were successful in gaining election as POTUS and achieving some of their proposed platform.

I also never said we "should not bother" to reach out to working class Pub-leaners, just that we shouldn't give them any special outreach. Dems should put forth plans and strategies that will improve life - economic and social - for all Americans, which includes working class folks. (I'd argue that's what Obama did and found some success with.) But Dems will not get anywhere trying to appeal specifically to working class, right-wing voters because Dems would need to sell out too many other important Dem consituencies. As you've said elsewhere on this thread, these voters will respond to a "bad story" over legitimate offers of proper assistance. The Dems should certainly engage in offering valid policies and programs that will benefit these voters, but shouldn't compromise other constituencies to appeal specifically to this voting block because what this voting block has routinely shown is that they prefer bigotry, scapegoating, and special status over programs which could be of assistance to them simply because they do not want to be required to change their expectations regarding their own economic opportunities.

I agree that millions of Americans are roughly "politically homeless" and that Dems should create policies, programs, and voter appeals that seek to benefit and draw in those folks, although I would argue that number does not include the working class right-leaning folks we've been discussing. That group is solidly on the side of the Republican Party, who caters to and enables their bigotries and unrealistic economic dreams. Dem messaging should be done in such a way that doesn't exclude any portion of the electorate at a philosophical level, but also should not privilege a group that has shown it does not agree with the overarching aims of the Democratic Party. The right-leaning working class has shown that unless they are privileged, they will take a comforting lie over an uncomfortable truth. We should show them the respect that Pubs do not by not providing them that comfortable lie.

 

[Paine]

We just watched Trump win with white working class voters with a message of "they/them." Every conservative on this site constantly wants to talk about trans issues instead of anything else. Politicians all over the county are demagoguing against the "gay agenda" or "woke agenda."

Organizing LGBTQ and working class Americans together is not going to work. It just isn't. One of those groups hates the other; and one is justifiably suspicious of the other.

What you’re describing isn’t a law of nature, it’s a political failure. Yes, the right is aggressively demagoguing trans issues. But the response can’t be to throw up our hands and declare coalition-building impossible. That’s just ceding the battlefield.

You say “one of those groups hates the other,” but that hatred isn’t innate. It’s been cultivated by decades of right-wing propaganda and liberal neglect. Working-class people have been fed a steady diet of scapegoating, while Democrats have failed to offer a compelling counter-story that ties the fight for LGBTQ rights to a shared struggle for dignity, security, and power.

You don’t beat that kind of division by walking away from the challenge. You beat it by doing the hard work of solidarity; of showing people, not just telling them, that their futures are bound up together. That no one wins while we’re all fighting over scraps.

Saying “this can’t work” is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s also a luxury belief. The right doesn’t care if their coalition makes you uncomfortable. They’re out there building power. And if the left gives up on multiracial, cross-class solidarity, then we’ve already lost.

 

[hedge]

If AI and automation end up doing to white-collar work what deindustrialization did to blue-collar towns, we’re going to see a new wave of disillusionment and reaction, not just from the working class.

What I really meant was is AI ever going to get to the point of running on fear, pride, dislocation, nostalgia, and a desire to matter. It's actually a decently interesting philosophical question as to whether that sentence even makes sense when applied to AI, or if it does make any sense, how? But I see what you're saying too.

"If we don’t start telling a story that gives people a sense of belonging and purpose in the face of that, someone else will."

My dream is that the stories people will one day tell themselves that give them a sense of belonging and purpose won't primarily involve work or their role and identity as a worker. Ideally it won't involve work at all. Brave new world indeed. Well, new, anyway...

 

[donbosco]

What if we as a nation are what the numbers say we are?

 

[Paine]

Bernie tapped into white working class anger and left-wing anger.

Bernie has yet to offer a solution. He’s good at ginning up anger. He sucks at solving anything.

Anger isn’t the problem. It’s a political resource, especially when it’s rooted in legitimate betrayal and used to build solidarity instead of scapegoating. The right has understood that for decades. The left often treats it like something to manage or distance from.

Bernie didn’t invent the anger. He just refused to ignore it. And unlike Trump or the right, he didn’t weaponize it against immigrants, trans people, or the poor, he pointed it at the billionaires and institutions that have actually rigged the system. That matters.

As for “solutions,” you’re holding Bernie to a bizarre double standard. He championed Medicare for All, tuition-free college, a Green New Deal, a living wage, public housing; those are solutions. They’re not pie-in-the-sky fantasies; they’re bold answers to real problems that affect tens of millions of people. The fact that they haven’t passed doesn’t mean they’re unserious, it means entrenched interests are very good at protecting the status quo.

You say Bernie tapped into anger. I’d say he offered a channel for it. That’s the point of the conversation we’ve been having about emotional and affective communication.

 

[superrific]

You say “one of those groups hates the other,” but that hatred isn’t innate. It’s been cultivated by decades of right-wing propaganda and liberal neglect. Working-class people have been fed a steady diet of scapegoating, while Democrats have failed to offer a compelling counter-story that ties the fight for LGBTQ rights to a shared struggle for dignity, security, and power.

This is copium.

The hatred isn't innate because no hatred is. But it has not been only or even primarily cultivated by decades of "right wing propaganda." It's been cultivated by hundreds of years of evangelical Christianity. The politicians and the right-wing talking heads are responding to the churches. The WI Synod of Lutheran church, for instance, doesn't even ordain women. There are only a few hundred thousand of them, but the Missouri Synod ain't much better these days and it's got like 1.5M members. The Southern Baptists, as you know, recently voted to pursue overturning Obergefell. I will credit you the knowledge of the SBC's history. They are drivers, not victims, of propaganda.

 

[superrific]

They’re not pie-in-the-sky fantasies; they’re bold answers to real problems that affect tens of millions of people. The fact that they haven’t passed doesn’t mean they’re unserious, it means entrenched interests are very good at protecting the status quo.

The confluence of those policies is pie in the sky. You'd have to pick one, do it, then retrench and do it again. Which is fine, but I bet the coalition gets weaker when you settle on priorities and get real cost estimates (current cost estimates being unmoored to any specific legislation, of course, so they are inaccurate).

 

[hedge]

If we don’t start telling a story that gives people a sense of belonging and purpose in the face of that, someone else will.

I am really wary of any inclination that the government or a political party should be the chief arbiter and provider of stories that give meaning and purpose to people. Or have much of any role at all in that regard. Surely having a sense of and being on the side of social justice is important, but it just seems kinda sad to me that someone would look to a political party to be the primary provider and decider of what is meaningful in their lives. And anyway one need not be a member of any political party to be a striver for justice, social or otherwise..

MACBETH:
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

Doctor:
Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.

 

[Paine]

Good grief, I didn't change any previously agreed upon definition, we both used a common phrase and discovered we were using it with different nuances. There was no previously provided "definitions" section to this discussion and we were both using the word within acceptable understandings of the word. Also, I never accused you of "muddying the waters"; you're again arguing against an opponent that only exists in your mind.

I called Vance a muppet because he's cosplaying as a rural, white working class person when he's clearly no longer that person in any appreciable way. But the reason I say he doesn't connect is because he can't get voters to turn out for him or his message. There are several ways to forge a connection with voters that can get them to turn out. One is to create a "deep, meaningful connection" that assures them you understand them. Another is to present plans that convince them you can provide them the best future. Another is to scapegoat others to blame them for perceived ills. Another is to bash others and use fear/hatred to get them to the polls. And another is to show up at the right time and simply not be "the other guy". I would agree that a "deep, meaningful connection" likely provides the most sure way to ensure they turn out, but it is also the most difficult to achieve and most politicians - even successful ones - don't achieve that.

Reagan, Obama, and Trump did make deep connections to voters. Bill Clinton kinda/maybe/sorta did. HW Bush, Dubya, and Biden did not. But all of them were successful in gaining election as POTUS and achieving some of their proposed platform.

I also never said we "should not bother" to reach out to working class Pub-leaners, just that we shouldn't give them any special outreach. Dems should put forth plans and strategies that will improve life - economic and social - for all Americans, which includes working class folks. (I'd argue that's what Obama did and found some success with.) But Dems will not get anywhere trying to appeal specifically to working class, right-wing voters because Dems would need to sell out too many other important Dem consituencies. As you've said elsewhere on this thread, these voters will respond to a "bad story" over legitimate offers of proper assistance. The Dems should certainly engage in offering valid policies and programs that will benefit these voters, but shouldn't compromise other constituencies to appeal specifically to this voting block because what this voting block has routinely shown is that they prefer bigotry, scapegoating, and special status over programs which could be of assistance to them simply because they do not want to be required to change their expectations regarding their own economic opportunities.

I agree that millions of Americans are roughly "politically homeless" and that Dems should create policies, programs, and voter appeals that seek to benefit and draw in those folks, although I would argue that number does not include the working class right-leaning folks we've been discussing. That group is solidly on the side of the Republican Party, who caters to and enables their bigotries and unrealistic economic dreams. Dem messaging should be done in such a way that doesn't exclude any portion of the electorate at a philosophical level, but also should not privilege a group that has shown it does not agree with the overarching aims of the Democratic Party. The right-leaning working class has shown that unless they are privileged, they will take a comforting lie over an uncomfortable truth. We should show them the respect that Pubs do not by not providing them that comfortable lie.

You’ve now repeated some version of this several times: that Democrats should not bother with right-leaning working-class voters specifically because they are too far gone; too bigoted, too irrational, too addicted to comforting lies. You hedge it with phrases like “shouldn’t give them special outreach” or “don’t exclude anyone at a philosophical level,” but the logic is clear: if someone doesn’t already fit within the moral parameters of the current Democratic coalition, they’re not worth investing in. That’s a strategy, whether you own it or not.

I think that’s a dangerous misread of where this country is politically and emotionally. Not because bigotry doesn’t exist, it obviously does, but because the real dividing line isn’t between “good people” and “bad people,” it’s between those who still feel seen by any political party and those who don’t. You’ve turned disconnection into a diagnosis of moral failure. But that gets it backwards. People don’t disconnect because they’re immoral. They disconnect because they no longer believe anyone in power gives a damn about them. And in that vacuum, yes, lies and scapegoating thrive.

The question is whether we leave that vacuum in place, or whether we offer something more powerful and real to take its place.

You say we should offer policies that improve people’s lives, good. I agree. But you then insist we shouldn’t reach out in ways that might actually persuade those people to believe that Democrats have their back. That’s a contradiction. Policies don’t sell themselves. People need to feel that the person offering help is on their side. That’s the basis of emotional trust, and, in politics, that trust is forged through stories, symbolism, presence, and yes, affective connection.

This goes deeper than one election cycle or one personality. The Democratic Party used to be the party of working people. Black and white, rural and urban, union and unemployed. It had its faults, but it spoke to people where they lived. It offered them a story about their lives that made sense. That connection has frayed, not just among the white working class, but among working people in general. If we don’t reckon with that loss and fight to rebuild it, then the only people left in the room will be the already converted, talking to each other while the country burns.

If the right can tell people a lie that feels emotionally true, the left has to learn to tell the truth in a way that feels just as powerful. Otherwise, we’re not serious about winning nor change.

 

[Paine]

The confluence of those policies is pie in the sky. You'd have to pick one, do it, then retrench and do it again. Which is fine, but I bet the coalition gets weaker when you settle on priorities and get real cost estimates (current cost estimates being unmoored to any specific legislation, of course, so they are inaccurate).

Maybe. What made Bernie’s campaign powerful wasn’t just the laundry list of policies, it was the moral clarity behind them. People felt like he was fighting for them instead of just managing expectations. Of course a governing coalition has to make trade-offs. But you don’t build one by starting with limits. You start with a vision people can believe in, and then you negotiate. That’s what the right has done with reactionary politics. The left too often starts at the compromise and wonders why no one’s inspired.

 

[Paine]

This is copium.

The hatred isn't innate because no hatred is. But it has not been only or even primarily cultivated by decades of "right wing propaganda." It's been cultivated by hundreds of years of evangelical Christianity. The politicians and the right-wing talking heads are responding to the churches. The WI Synod of Lutheran church, for instance, doesn't even ordain women. There are only a few hundred thousand of them, but the Missouri Synod ain't much better these days and it's got like 1.5M members. The Southern Baptists, as you know, recently voted to pursue overturning Obergefell. I will credit you the knowledge of the SBC's history. They are drivers, not victims, of propaganda.

Sure, evangelical theology plays a major role. But even that isn’t static. It’s shaped by material conditions, leadership, and political context. The same Southern churches that once opposed civil rights now run food pantries, addiction ministries, and community programs. They’re not monoliths. The question isn’t whether the bigotry exists, it’s whether we treat it as immovable or challengeable.

If your position is that politics is downstream of culture and culture is downstream of theology, then yeah, there’s nothing to be done. But history says otherwise. The most powerful movements in this country have crossed racial, regional, and even religious lines when they were anchored in shared material interests and a larger moral vision.

The divisions are real. So is the anger. But the challenge isn’t to pretend those things don’t exist, it’s to build something bigger than them. That’s what solidarity is. Not an abstract ideal, but a practical tool for building power in a fractured society. If we give up on that, we’ve already lost.

 

[superrific]

Another problem here is delivering on an agenda once you've made people identify with you. And communicating to people about that agenda, which can be hard. Obama's presidency is a story in the difficulty of doing that when your primary appeal is emotional. Not that Obama did everything perfectly; obviously he didn't. He was also unprepared for the unprecedented filibuster everything strategy of the GOP.

1. But Obamacare is a case in point. Everyone was really, really excited about universal health insurance! But then the rubber hit the road when they crafted the legislation. Even though it was a huge leap forward in American health care -- probably the most beneficial change since Medicare or perhaps COBRA -- a lot of people were disappointed. Their expectations, nurtured by emotional appeals of the sort you're talking about, were too high. Obamacare didn't deliver what they promised, and thus was it widely seen as a failure in 2014.

Obamacare didn't become actually popular until the GOP tried to take it away. That both supports your point and cuts against it, in different ways.

2. You can also go back to Clinton's health care plan. You can't blame neoliberalism for that fiasco. Dems were still the party of the non-religious working class; union guys like Gephardt and Harkin (neither of whom you probably remember/studied) were major party leaders and presidential candidates. Clinton campaigned on universal health insurance. As much as the campaign is remembered for "it's the economy, stupid," it spent an awful lot of time talking about health care. And that was considered an important part of his agenda.

Well, what happened to it? The insurance industry ran its kitchen table ads. I remember seeing one at the time and thinking, "this is the stupidest thing in the world. Who cares if the TV actors don't think it's 'right for them'"? It turned out to be one of the most successful political ad campaigns of all time (especially if you exclude campaign ads). One lesson I drew: political messaging is not my forte. Another: boy, people will fall for anything.

3. In any event, that hostility toward the Dem program wasn't neoliberal. It wasn't driven by decades of right-wing propaganda (it was the propaganda!). It was in part the hostility against HRC (who was not popular as a first lady after her widely misinterpreted and abused "bake cookies" remark), but it was in part a lack of empathy. Unions were supportive, but union members? Not so much, at least not in Missouri where I was based at the time. I did a lot of retail politics in a Dem Senate primary back then, going to county fairs all over the state. Again, me + county fair + county fair goers = a whole lot of awkward silence, but anyway: I must have heard a hundred times, "our health care is good. why do we need anything else." Well, not everyone has good health care, and your health care could be cheaper, and also what happens if you lose your job? This counterargument did not move the needle. I couldn't get past "our health care is good" as much as I would try.

Now maybe part of the problem was what you're talking about: I'm not the guy to make a connection with people at a county fair. But I don't think that was it. It was really the first time I had seen ostensible liberals show callousness, and it was eye opening. These were Dem voters.

4. Back then, Missouri was as swingy a state as there was. Clinton won it in 92 and 96. IIRC W barely squeaked it out in 2000. And it hasn't looked back since. Maybe it was the trade deals, but what I saw preceded NAFTA or WTO.

Look at St. Louis City voting totals. In the 1980s, it was 90+% Dem. By 2004, it had fallen to high 70s. You know what happened in the interim? A black man was elected mayor of St. Louis for the first time in like 5 decades. And immediately after that, the Dem vote share in St. Louis City started falling. And mind you, those were just the people who stuck around in the city -- it doesn't even count the folks who moved out to the burbs or, in the case of St. Louis County, the far exurbs.

It's also true that the GOP emphasis on military buildup and wars helped in these parts of the country. This is one reason why the Dems stopped being anti-Pentagon. It didn't win them much but scorn from the blue collar types who lived through Nam (especially if they served there) and never really got over what they saw as a betrayal from the hippie left.

Side note: It's interesting how many people have stories about being spat upon when returning from service. One scholar tried to track down what happened and he couldn't find a single confirmed incident of spitting incidents near any of the return ports. I had a colleague who said he was definitely spat upon, and when I showed him the article, he said he had come through LA (not SF) because he was an AF officer. So technically, it might have happened. But 95% of the stories about being spat upon were little more than confabulation.

 

[donbosco]

Did the mayor steal his thunder yesterday?

 

[Kingpin]

Paine wrote: “People don’t disconnect because they’re immoral. They disconnect because they no longer believe anyone in power gives a damn about them. And in that vacuum, yes, lies and scapegoating thrive.”

I think you are correct. Steve Bannon saw these people and groomed Trump to speak to them. Many of these MAGAs were disengaged politically. They were on the sidelines and got involved once Trump emerged. 36% of eligible voters (none of them MAGA) did not vote last November. A politician who can tap into those voters (only need some of them) can win big.

 

[Calheel]

And people were dragging me for derailing this thread? I think we lost the plot 10 pages back.

 

[superrific]

The most powerful movements in this country have crossed racial, regional, and even religious lines when they were anchored in shared material interests and a larger moral vision.

That was before 24/7 news and the stoking of constant outrage about everything. Before bothsiding was a real thing. Look how easy it is for them to whip white straight people into frenzies about the least important shit.

Look: I like your program. Absolutely talk to everyone. Don't let me be the messenger and you don't have to worry about my cynicism. But there are too many issues for us to bank on it working. There's a historical legacy of success, but also a long historical legacy of failure. Developments in social organization since the 1960s have made the task much harder.

As has gerrymandering, which is another problem. The effect of the 2010 gerrymandering was to make it possible for Pubs to win without getting votes from pretty much any liberals, as you well know. And as you also know, the effect was to push the GOP further and further to the extreme right -- and they carried millions of voters with them. The same voters being deluged the right-wing propaganda you mentioned. So many of these people, once gettable, no longer are. It's just not right to say, "the Dems failed to reach them" as if it was a Dem problem.

 

[Paine]

And people were dragging me for derailing this thread? I think we lost the plot 10 pages back.

Meh. As Healing said a few days ago, these conversations are the most constructive thing that's been on the board in a long time. Your criticisms of Newsom opened up a great discussion.

 

[Paine]

Another problem here is delivering on an agenda once you've made people identify with you. And communicating to people about that agenda, which can be hard. Obama's presidency is a story in the difficulty of doing that when your primary appeal is emotional. Not that Obama did everything perfectly; obviously he didn't. He was also unprepared for the unprecedented filibuster everything strategy of the GOP.

1. But Obamacare is a case in point. Everyone was really, really excited about universal health insurance! But then the rubber hit the road when they crafted the legislation. Even though it was a huge leap forward in American health care -- probably the most beneficial change since Medicare or perhaps COBRA -- a lot of people were disappointed. Their expectations, nurtured by emotional appeals of the sort you're talking about, were too high. Obamacare didn't deliver what they promised, and thus was it widely seen as a failure in 2014.

Obamacare didn't become actually popular until the GOP tried to take it away. That both supports your point and cuts against it, in different ways.

2. You can also go back to Clinton's health care plan. You can't blame neoliberalism for that fiasco. Dems were still the party of the non-religious working class; union guys like Gephardt and Harkin (neither of whom you probably remember/studied) were major party leaders and presidential candidates. Clinton campaigned on universal health insurance. As much as the campaign is remembered for "it's the economy, stupid," it spent an awful lot of time talking about health care. And that was considered an important part of his agenda.

Well, what happened to it? The insurance industry ran its kitchen table ads. I remember seeing one at the time and thinking, "this is the stupidest thing in the world. Who cares if the TV actors don't think it's 'right for them'"? It turned out to be one of the most successful political ad campaigns of all time (especially if you exclude campaign ads). One lesson I drew: political messaging is not my forte. Another: boy, people will fall for anything.

3. In any event, that hostility toward the Dem program wasn't neoliberal. It wasn't driven by decades of right-wing propaganda (it was the propaganda!). It was in part the hostility against HRC (who was not popular as a first lady after her widely misinterpreted and abused "bake cookies" remark), but it was in part a lack of empathy. Unions were supportive, but union members? Not so much, at least not in Missouri where I was based at the time. I did a lot of retail politics in a Dem Senate primary back then, going to county fairs all over the state. Again, me + county fair + county fair goers = a whole lot of awkward silence, but anyway: I must have heard a hundred times, "our health care is good. why do we need anything else." Well, not everyone has good health care, and your health care could be cheaper, and also what happens if you lose your job? This counterargument did not move the needle. I couldn't get past "our health care is good" as much as I would try.

Now maybe part of the problem was what you're talking about: I'm not the guy to make a connection with people at a county fair. But I don't think that was it. It was really the first time I had seen ostensible liberals show callousness, and it was eye opening. These were Dem voters.

4. Back then, Missouri was as swingy a state as there was. Clinton won it in 92 and 96. IIRC W barely squeaked it out in 2000. And it hasn't looked back since. Maybe it was the trade deals, but what I saw preceded NAFTA or WTO.

Look at St. Louis City voting totals. In the 1980s, it was 90+% Dem. By 2004, it had fallen to high 70s. You know what happened in the interim? A black man was elected mayor of St. Louis for the first time in like 5 decades. And immediately after that, the Dem vote share in St. Louis City started falling. And mind you, those were just the people who stuck around in the city -- it doesn't even count the folks who moved out to the burbs or, in the case of St. Louis County, the far exurbs.

It's also true that the GOP emphasis on military buildup and wars helped in these parts of the country. This is one reason why the Dems stopped being anti-Pentagon. It didn't win them much but scorn from the blue collar types who lived through Nam (especially if they served there) and never really got over what they saw as a betrayal from the hippie left.

Side note: It's interesting how many people have stories about being spat upon when returning from service. One scholar tried to track down what happened and he couldn't find a single confirmed incident of spitting incidents near any of the return ports. I had a colleague who said he was definitely spat upon, and when I showed him the article, he said he had come through LA (not SF) because he was an AF officer. So technically, it might have happened. But 95% of the stories about being spat upon were little more than confabulation.

I appreciate the historical detail. Drawing on lived experience and observation is valuable. But I think the story you're telling about Clinton’s health reform and Obamacare actually cuts against the broader point you’re trying to make.

Let’s start with Clinton. Yes, his healthcare push failed, not because the goal was misguided, but because the political groundwork hadn’t been laid. There was no mass movement to fight for it, no narrative connecting the policy to people’s everyday fears and aspirations. The “Harry and Louise” ads worked not because they were brilliant, but because there wasn’t a compelling counter-story. You said it yourself: you couldn’t get past people saying “our healthcare is good.” That wasn’t just callousness. That was a failure of emotional and political connection. People weren’t shown why this fight was their fight.

And Obama didn’t campaign on universal healthcare in the way people often remember. From the beginning, his 2008 plan was more modest than single-payer or even a public option. He focused on expanding private coverage through marketplaces and subsidies. That’s what he ran on, and that’s essentially what he delivered.

You’re right that the ACA was a real step forward, but the rollout was a communications failure. Democrats sold it in the technocratic language of exchanges, mandates, and subsidies. The result was confusion, disappointment, and missed opportunity. They promised transformational change and delivered a complex patchwork that felt disconnected from people’s lives. The law only became popular when Republicans tried to take it away, which is telling. The underlying demand for healthcare security was always there. What was missing was a narrative that helped people feel ownership over the policy.

So no, the disappointment wasn’t because emotional appeals raised expectations too high. It’s that the emotional connection people felt to Obama wasn’t matched by the ambition of the policies or the storytelling needed to sustain them. The hunger for structural change was real, but the strategy avoided direct confrontation with entrenched interests.

That’s why I keep returning to the emotional and symbolic dimensions of politics. It’s not fluff. It’s how people form attachments to ideas. If you don’t make people feel like a policy is for them, they won’t fight for it, and they may not even trust it. That’s not a new problem. It’s a recurring failure of Democratic leadership since the 1990s: treating politics like management instead of movement.

I’m not saying emotion is enough. We need credible policy. But we also need to build emotional trust; the sense that leaders are actually on your side, not just in theory but in gut-level solidarity. That was Bernie’s insight. It’s why Trump’s phony promises landed. It’s why the right wins on cultural terrain even when they deliver nothing. And it’s why the next era of successful politics has to marry bold material solutions with an emotional register that feels real, rooted, and responsive.

 

[Paine]

I am really wary of any inclination that the government or a political party should be the chief arbiter and provider of stories that give meaning and purpose to people. Or have much of any role at all in that regard. Surely having a sense of and being on the side of social justice is important, but it just seems kinda sad to me that someone would look to a political party to be the primary provider and decider of what is meaningful in their lives. And anyway one need not be a member of any political party to be a striver for justice, social or otherwise..

MACBETH:
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

Doctor:
Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.

I don’t disagree that meaning and purpose ultimately have to come from within or from communities, families, faith, art, whatever gives people real grounding. I’m not saying the government or a political party should be the sole author of people’s lives.

But in a society this fragmented and unequal, politics does play a role in shaping the emotional terrain people live on. If you’re ignored, mocked, or treated like collateral damage, that creates its own kind of meaning, albeit a dark one. When people feel invisible, someone will show up to give them a story. The right has understood this for decades. “You’re the real Americans.” “You’ve been betrayed.” “Take your country back.” That’s meaning-making too.

The left can’t compete with that just by offering better policy white papers. We need a story, not to replace people’s private sources of meaning, but to make public life feel like it’s about them again. That doesn’t mean the party becomes a religion, it means politics becomes a place where people feel seen, respected, and part of something larger than themselves.

Or to borrow from Macbeth: yes, the patient must minister to himself. But if every institution around him makes the sickness worse, there's not going to be much healing going on.

 

[Paine]

That was before 24/7 news and the stoking of constant outrage about everything. Before bothsiding was a real thing. Look how easy it is for them to whip white straight people into frenzies about the least important shit.

Look: I like your program. Absolutely talk to everyone. Don't let me be the messenger and you don't have to worry about my cynicism. But there are too many issues for us to bank on it working. There's a historical legacy of success, but also a long historical legacy of failure. Developments in social organization since the 1960s have made the task much harder.

As has gerrymandering, which is another problem. The effect of the 2010 gerrymandering was to make it possible for Pubs to win without getting votes from pretty much any liberals, as you well know. And as you also know, the effect was to push the GOP further and further to the extreme right -- and they carried millions of voters with them. The same voters being deluged the right-wing propaganda you mentioned. So many of these people, once gettable, no longer are. It's just not right to say, "the Dems failed to reach them" as if it was a Dem problem.

I hear you. The obstacles you describe are real but I think you’re drawing the wrong lesson from them. If anything, they make the case for a more ambitious political project, not against it.

Yes, we live in a fractured, hyper-mediated landscape. Yes, right-wing propaganda has pulled millions of voters deeper into reaction. But, as I've said, that didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened in part because Democrats ceded too much of the emotional and cultural terrain. When people feel ignored, condescended to, or just left behind, they don’t stay neutral; they go looking for someone who speaks to their experience, even if it's a bad-faith actor.

I’m not arguing that every voter is gettable, or that all this can be reversed overnight. But when you say “it’s not a Dem problem,” I have to push back. Of course it is. Not in the sense that Democrats created all these forces but in the sense that they have too often failed to meet them with a story and strategy of their own. That failure leaves a vacuum that the right knows how to fill.

We shouldn’t confuse difficult with impossible. The fact that social organization has changed since the 1960s doesn’t mean solidarity is dead. It means the tools need to be updated, the language sharper, and the emotional register more grounded in lived experience. We’ve seen glimpses of that work, from labor campaigns to mutual aid efforts to moments when politicians like Bernie or others have broken through.

If we write off entire chunks of the electorate as lost forever, we’re doing exactly what the right wants: abandoning the fight. I don’t think we can afford that morally or strategically.