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Is this why Dem’s Approval Rating Polls are so bad?

Zoo_View said:
I respect you for running. That takes a lot of guts.

Dubya was not getting impeached. There wasn’t a groundswell of support for impeaching Dubya.
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My other beef with David was that he would not sign the Murtha resolution to withdraw/redeploy our troops outside Iraq. Murtha was an ex-marine and defense hawk and concluded that our invasion was a fool's errand. He was right. Unfortunately, it took our country several more years of wasted blood and treasure to reach the same conclusion.

Will Dems make the same mistake and demur when it comes to Iran ?

As an side, I also pushed for turning our attention to using our leverage and develop a diplomatic strategy to contain Iran's nuclear weapons pursuit. Thank goodness GPOAT did such several years later
 
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heelinhell said:
First female president will be a transgender lesbian Democrat...deal with it :cool:
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I seriously doubt whether Republicans will be willing to nominate a woman for POTUS anytime soon. Given the unhappy experiences of Hillary and Kamala, I now wonder if the first woman to become POTUS will be a Vice-President who takes over when the POTUS dies or is forced to step down for some reason. And that could happen in either party, although the Democrats have certainly been more willing to nominate women for veep (and president) as opposed to Republicans.
 
Centerpiece said:
This is why I contend NC is a very purple State. Somehow we keep voting for Trump (3x in a row) but yet vote Dem Guvs. Of course the Pubs helped Stein this last go around by nominating the worst candidate in history for the office…
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I think most purple states aren't strictly purple, they're often closer to magenta (more red than blue) or violet (more blue than red). I think of NC as a magenta state in that it leans red while having a real opportunity to go blue in most elections.
 
Mulberry Heel said:
One curious fact about NC politics is that we have a long tradition of electing moderate/centrist Dem governors while increasingly voting Republican (aided by gerrymandering in legislative and House races) for just about everything else, except the State Attorney General's office. In fact, McCrory's single term as governor (2013 to 2017) was the only GOP interruption in a series of Democratic governors dating back to 1992. Hunt served a second series of two terms in the 90s, Mike Easley served from 2001 to 2009, Bev Perdue from 2009 to 2013, Cooper his two terms (although as Snoop pointed out, he barely won in 2016 by just 0.2%), and now Stein. This pattern hasn't been replicated in other Southern states, so we're rather unique in that regard.
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My hunch on this is that we have a small but significant group of Pub/Pub-lean voters - likely urban, pro-business Pubs - who tend to vote centrist Dem for governor as a firewall against what they know will be a fairly conservative GA due to the votes of the rural areas around NC. They want an overall conservative state government, but they want the governor to be a check against the worst impulses of NC Pubs. Pubs in the GA have completely obliterated the strength of that firewall by restricting the powers of the governor, but it was probably a good balance for more centrist Pubs in NC.

Of course, they don't do the same thing in national elections (POTUS, Senate) because they fear a Dem-led federal government and prefer crazy Pubs to centrist Dems at that level.
 
Zoo_View said:
We won’t vote for centrist milquetoasts for US Senator.
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That’s a stretch too far… if we did that we might turn more blue than purple. Right now we seem more red than anything. Except the white milquetoast and of course Dems as Superintendent of DPI, Atty Gen., Sec. State and a newly certified SSCJustice… that’s a lot of blue right there…. To counter balance the flaming red House, Senate and State legislatures.
 
Paine said:
I appreciate your honesty and the depth of your response. Our backgrounds aren’t so different. I also grew up in a rural, working-class community in North Carolina, surrounded by many of the same attitudes and traditions you describe. Perhaps the key difference is that my community was more racially diverse: Black, white, and Latino families all living through the same economic precarity. Maybe that shaped me in a different way. I did see how solidarity could form across race and difference when people shared material struggles and treated each other with decency. I also saw how easily that solidarity could be disrupted by fear, scapegoating, and political manipulation. But I don’t think that has to be permanent. That’s the difference between us, and that’s a choice I made.

Your response confirms that our disagreement isn’t just strategic, it’s philosophical. You don’t just oppose populism; you reject the idea that politics can be about building trust, changing minds, or shifting emotional terrain. You describe a population that’s ideologically frozen and morally unreachable. But people aren’t stone tablets. You changed. Why assume others can’t?

[snip: for space]

The real danger isn’t trying to build a cross-racial working-class coalition. The real danger is giving up on that project and ceding the field to the demagogues.

You say you want to win. So do I. But I want to win more than elections. I want to win power and use it to materially improve the lives of working people across this country. That doesn’t happen through management. It happens through meaning and through movement.
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A little feedback that's meant to be positive and not critical..you read into my posts a lot of assumptions that are not only not there, but are incorrect. (That's not just true in this post, in nearly all of our discussions over time. It really makes it difficult to hold a discussion with you.) I'll address a few of those first...

1) I don't "reject the idea that politics can be about building trust, changing minds, or shifting emotional terrain". But I think it is very tough for politicians or political parties to connect with voters in a way that actually accomplishes this goal/action. And it's rare enough that you can't reliably build political campaigns - in one election or across elections - on the idea of doing so. If a political party is relying on that level of connection to voters, I think that political party is more far more likely to lose more elections than they win. Having that kind of connections to voters would be great, it's the kind of thing that changes society, but it's not a reliable way to win elections or impact society because of how rare it is.

2) I don't think that populism is inherently authoritarian. I do think that authoritarianism is one of the greatest dangers of populism because once a group has decided that their goals are "just" and believe the majority agrees with them, then it is very easy to justify authoritarian means to achieve those goals. Let's face it, most folks just don't operate at the philosophical level where the "rights of those who disagree with me" are valued highly if it means that I don't get what I perceive as my "rights". And that is a recipe for authoritarianism because from there it is but a short stroll to using force to achieve my "rights" against those who would keep them from me.

3) It's not that I don't assume that others can't change from their bigoted/retrograde views, it's that I think the process of doing so is difficult to create and therefore most people aren't going to do it. It happened for me because I was smart enough to be taken from BFE rural NC to Chapel Hill and exposed to a completely different world plus I was open to the ideas being espoused. I know plenty of conservative folks from rural areas of NC who went through CH and didn't change their views because they weren't open to the ideas being presented, they remained surrounded by other conservatives in CH, and/or because they left CH to go right back to conservative areas of the state/country. The kind of change I made is not atypical for rural conservatives that go to Carolina, but it is atypical for all of the conservatives that live in rural areas as most remain in their conservatism in their rural areas. There's a good analogy to this from The Simpsons in S8E15 "Homer's Phobia". In the episode, the Simpson family meets "John" (voiced by John Waters) who owns the local kitschy antiques store. John is gay and once Homer realizes this, he is against the family continuing to socialize with John. Homer is also concerned that John will turn Bart gay and take steps to prevent this, which all go hilariously wrong, and eventually lead to a situation where Homer & Bart are in significant physical danger from one of the efforts Homer takes. John ends up saving both of them (plus Barney and Moe) from injury/death, leading to Homer accepting John. John then quips back: "Homer, I won your respect, and all I had to do was save your life. Now, if every gay man could just do the same, you'd be set." If only every rural conservative were to spend 4 years in Chapel Hill open to the competing views around them, maybe we could drastically change society.

4) It's not that I don't think folks in rural communities won't help their neighbors, it's that I think they tend to be really, really narrowly biased about who is their "neighbor". Most of the ones I know would give their neighbor the shirt off their back and would provide significant resources to help their neighbor...but they don't see the black/brown person, the LGBTQ person, or other marginalized folks at their "neighbor". They tend to live in very, very homogenous neighborhoods surrounded by folks like themselves and so the black/brown, LGBTQ, and other folks are viewed as outsiders and therefore not deserving of their help. It's not that most of conservative working class folks won't help their neighbor fix their car or that they disagree their kid or the kid next door should be able to go to the doctor without going bankrupt; it's that they don't care if the black man that lives 10 miles away in a different neighborhood gets his car fixed and they certainly don't care if his kid gets to go to doctor without him going bankrupt. I work in the non-profit sector in smaller NC counties and a major thing I repeatedly hear is about how "those people" take all the resources and "don't leave help for those that really need it"...and if you ask a few questions, "those people" are inevitably folks who don't look, believe, and behave like the speaker. One of the things that amazes me most about a large number of Christians, largely conservatives ones, is how they inevitably miss the point of the story of the Good Samaritan. It could not be any clearer, but nearly all the ones I know either never get it or completely ignore it. And it could not be clearer how much they miss it when you look at their voting patterns and see how they inevitably choose to be the Priest & Levite in that story rather than the Samartian.

I think a large thing that separates us is how likely we think your type of approach to be successful vs creating a situation where Pubs are actually the beneficiaries of such an effort. It's not the main reason I think we have Trumpism, but I do think that efforts by Bernie and other progressives to say that government, especially Dem-led government, isn't sufficiently effective contributed to the rise of Trumpism. I also think that the distinct advantages that Pubs hold due to geography and having a more homogenous party make it so that Dems start with an electoral disadvantage and therefore it is highly unlikely that Dems can create a sweeping electoral victory that would allow for real changing of our government. Dems got that situation in 2008 and still got a government that only created 1 lasting change...Obamacare/ACA. The idea that Dems can overcome their electoral disadvantages to create the successive electoral victories needed to establish a "change-making" government seems highly, highly unlikely to me. And so I will not support efforts in that direction that also create a greater chance that Pubs win significant elections that enable them to not only thwart Dem initiatives but also enact initiatives that harm groups Dems seek to protect. In essence, I'm not willing to swing for the fences of "institutional change" when I think the likelihood of success is very low and the likelihood of disasterous results (like Trumpism) are much higher.

So, yes, I will continue to advocate for "triangulation" and narrow wins (and hopefully narrow losses) that keeps government focused on a rather centrist, slow-changing path as opposed to a "go for broke" strategy that also increases the likelihood of significant electoral victories by opponents. And the rise of Trumpism is exactly why I will continue to do so, in that I think progressive actions over the last 25 years have done more to assist Trumpism than it has to bring about the results they're seeking. Imagine where we'd be if Hillary losing in 2016 would have led to a Mitt Romney-like Republican POTUS rather than Trump; it would have stunk to have lost, but we wouldn't be in midst of fascist authoritarian revolution in the US.
 
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heelinhell said:
Going through the process was a learning experience indeed.

1 ) I learned that the press/news reporters are not very motivated to do legwork and interact face to face . They prefer to be spoonfed press releases.

Now it was 2006, an off year election with no state wide offices on the ballot. I called several news folks to inform them I was filing for Congress to challenge the incumbent Democrat in my district. I said I had a rather provocative platform and would be available for a Q&A after filing. MSM said just fax us a press release. I called several college newspapers. Only the dook** Chronical responded and asked when I would be filing. I told him (the editor ? ) that I would be filing at 10am. I shit you not that he said his reporters don't get up that early so fax us a press release.

2 ) I learned that self funding campaigns loses would be supporters who agree with you on the issues

3 ) I was able to interview with several liberal political groups who told me that we agree with your policy proposals and are not thrilled with the incumbent, but he can give us crumbs. After the interview with the Indy, I was counting on their important endorsement. When the time came for endorsements, the Indy published a very positive view of my platform, but like every other group , they said we will be endorsing the incumbent and hope he steps up.

So that was my experience going through the process.
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Interesting stuff. Were you not jaded by the experience? What’s a congressional campaign cost? Did the incumbent win the general election?
 
Callatoroy said:
Interesting stuff. Were you not jaded by the experience? What’s a congressional campaign cost? Did the incumbent win the general election?
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The incumbent, David Price, won the General Election 65-35; he won the primary 90-6-4.

He often was unopposed in primaries; he often won 58-65 percent of the vote in General Elections.

How much does a congressional campaign cost? It depends.
 
SnoopRob said:
A little feedback that's meant to be positive and not critical..you read into my posts a lot of assumptions that are not only not there, but are incorrect. (That's not just true in this post, in nearly all of our discussions over time. It really makes it difficult to hold a discussion with you.) I'll address a few of those first...
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Since you laid this out in numbered sections, I’ll respond in kind. But I also want to return to the historical examples you’ve consistently avoided engaging. They’re not decorative. They’re central to the debate.

1. On emotional connection and political change:

You call emotional resonance rare and unreliable. Sure, it’s hard to generate. I’ve acknowledged that repeatedly. But when it lands, it reshapes the terrain. Reagan, Obama, Trump, Sanders; none of them led with white papers. They told stories that felt true. That’s not a fluke; it’s how mass politics works. Dismissing that as “unreliable” is like saying we shouldn’t shoot threes because they don’t always go in.

You now say you don’t reject the emotional dimension of politics, but in your earlier post, you explicitly argued that populist messages like “the government isn’t working for you” may motivate people, but lead to destabilization and negative outcomes. You linked that style of messaging to the rise of Trumpism. That’s not a neutral assessment. It’s a statement of deep skepticism toward emotional appeals as a political tool. If I concluded that you don’t trust emotion as a force for progress, that wasn’t me reading something into your argument. That was me just reading it.

We’re not in an era of trust and deference. We’re in an era of collapse. If you ignore the emotional side of politics, you’re just a technician trying to game turnout while the other side speaks to people’s souls.

2. On populism and authoritarianism:

You now say populism isn’t inherently authoritarian. But here’s what you actually wrote:

“Let me be clear about my stance: I am anti-revolution. I am even more deeply anti-populist. Populism is inevitably governance by the worst suited among us.”

That’s not a hedge, it’s a rejection. If you believe there’s a democratic, solidaristic populist tradition worth reclaiming, like the kind that built the labor movement or powered the Civil Rights era, you didn’t say so. You described populism as a gateway to authoritarianism. I took you at your word. If you’re revising that position now, fine, but that’s not on me. That’s your shift.

Technocracy doesn’t get a pass here either. It can become authoritarian too, especially when it treats the public as a problem to manage rather than a constituency to serve.

3. On changing minds:

You say you believe people can change, just rarely. But your own story of political transformation is framed as the exception, facilitated by exposure to elite institutions and new social norms. You then describe your neighbors as so deeply embedded in a traditionalist, hierarchical worldview that economic appeals won’t move them unless they specifically exclude the people those voters resent.

If that’s not a theory of political immovability, I don’t know what is. You’re not just saying change is hard. You’re arguing most people can’t be reached without reinforcing the very social order we’re trying to change. That’s a dead end.

4. On rural moral boundaries:

You now say rural folks are capable of generosity, just within narrow bounds. I agree. But in your post, you go much further. You describe a worldview rooted in preserving racial, gender, and religious hierarchy, and say that appeals to solidarity that don’t reaffirm that worldview will be rejected. You’re not just noting limits. You’re declaring solidarity impossible unless it accommodates bigotry. Again, that’s not me twisting your words. That’s the plain implication of your argument.

5. On electoral odds and risk:

You argue that left populist critiques helped birth Trumpism. I argue Trumpism filled the vacuum left by elite liberalism. You say populist strategy risks failure. But what do you call the current situation? Half the country lost, the courts captured, democratic faith crumbling; all under the technocratic, triangulated approach you’re defending.

You say the 2008 wave yielded only the ACA. I agree. But why? Not because the public wasn’t ready for change. It’s because no one was pushing from the left. Obama had the numbers. He lacked the will.

That’s the problem with your model: it treats politics as careful management, not as struggle. But history says otherwise: durable gains come from conflict, disruption, and moral pressure.

And you still haven’t answered the question:

Why do you think the 1930s labor uprisings, the Civil Rights movement, or the Poor People’s Campaign don’t apply today? You keep ignoring these examples because they break your model. These movements didn’t win by playing defense. They made demands, raised hell, and forced change. And when they won, they changed the country.

You’ve accused me of misreading your views, but you haven’t pointed to a single argument I distorted. What you’ve done is shift the tone of your position after I laid out its consequences. That’s not me being unfair, that’s you backing off the implications of your arguments.

This isn’t a tactical disagreement. It’s a different theory of change and democracy. You believe politics is about risk management and institutional stability. I believe it’s about shaping meaning, building pressure, and challenging the order that’s failing people. You treat movements as dangerous. I treat them as necessary.

And credit where it’s due: you said you’re anti-populist. Most liberals wouldn’t admit that. But the implications matter. That’s why I’m pressing them.
 
SnoopRob said:
My hunch on this is that we have a small but significant group of Pub/Pub-lean voters - likely urban, pro-business Pubs - who tend to vote centrist Dem for governor as a firewall against what they know will be a fairly conservative GA due to the votes of the rural areas around NC. They want an overall conservative state government, but they want the governor to be a check against the worst impulses of NC Pubs. Pubs in the GA have completely obliterated the strength of that firewall by restricting the powers of the governor, but it was probably a good balance for more centrist Pubs in NC.

Of course, they don't do the same thing in national elections (POTUS, Senate) because they fear a Dem-led federal government and prefer crazy Pubs to centrist Dems at that level.
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You basically described me to a tee in this post. And I’m not alone!
 
Paine said:
Since you laid this out in numbered sections, I’ll respond in kind. But I also want to return to the historical examples you’ve consistently avoided engaging. They’re not decorative. They’re central to the debate.

1. On emotional connection and political change:

You call emotional resonance rare and unreliable. Sure, it’s hard to generate. I’ve acknowledged that repeatedly. But when it lands, it reshapes the terrain. Reagan, Obama, Trump, Sanders; none of them led with white papers. They told stories that felt true. That’s not a fluke; it’s how mass politics works. Dismissing that as “unreliable” is like saying we shouldn’t shoot threes because they don’t always go in.

You now say you don’t reject the emotional dimension of politics, but in your earlier post, you explicitly argued that populist messages like “the government isn’t working for you” may motivate people, but lead to destabilization and negative outcomes. You linked that style of messaging to the rise of Trumpism. That’s not a neutral assessment. It’s a statement of deep skepticism toward emotional appeals as a political tool. If I concluded that you don’t trust emotion as a force for progress, that wasn’t me reading something into your argument. That was me just reading it.

We’re not in an era of trust and deference. We’re in an era of collapse. If you ignore the emotional side of politics, you’re just a technician trying to game turnout while the other side speaks to people’s souls.

2. On populism and authoritarianism:

You now say populism isn’t inherently authoritarian. But here’s what you actually wrote:

“Let me be clear about my stance: I am anti-revolution. I am even more deeply anti-populist. Populism is inevitably governance by the worst suited among us.”

That’s not a hedge, it’s a rejection. If you believe there’s a democratic, solidaristic populist tradition worth reclaiming, like the kind that built the labor movement or powered the Civil Rights era, you didn’t say so. You described populism as a gateway to authoritarianism. I took you at your word. If you’re revising that position now, fine, but that’s not on me. That’s your shift.

Technocracy doesn’t get a pass here either. It can become authoritarian too, especially when it treats the public as a problem to manage rather than a constituency to serve.

3. On changing minds:

You say you believe people can change, just rarely. But your own story of political transformation is framed as the exception, facilitated by exposure to elite institutions and new social norms. You then describe your neighbors as so deeply embedded in a traditionalist, hierarchical worldview that economic appeals won’t move them unless they specifically exclude the people those voters resent.

If that’s not a theory of political immovability, I don’t know what is. You’re not just saying change is hard. You’re arguing most people can’t be reached without reinforcing the very social order we’re trying to change. That’s a dead end.

4. On rural moral boundaries:

You now say rural folks are capable of generosity, just within narrow bounds. I agree. But in your post, you go much further. You describe a worldview rooted in preserving racial, gender, and religious hierarchy, and say that appeals to solidarity that don’t reaffirm that worldview will be rejected. You’re not just noting limits. You’re declaring solidarity impossible unless it accommodates bigotry. Again, that’s not me twisting your words. That’s the plain implication of your argument.

5. On electoral odds and risk:

You argue that left populist critiques helped birth Trumpism. I argue Trumpism filled the vacuum left by elite liberalism. You say populist strategy risks failure. But what do you call the current situation? Half the country lost, the courts captured, democratic faith crumbling; all under the technocratic, triangulated approach you’re defending.

You say the 2008 wave yielded only the ACA. I agree. But why? Not because the public wasn’t ready for change. It’s because no one was pushing from the left. Obama had the numbers. He lacked the will.

That’s the problem with your model: it treats politics as careful management, not as struggle. But history says otherwise: durable gains come from conflict, disruption, and moral pressure.

And you still haven’t answered the question:

Why do you think the 1930s labor uprisings, the Civil Rights movement, or the Poor People’s Campaign don’t apply today? You keep ignoring these examples because they break your model. These movements didn’t win by playing defense. They made demands, raised hell, and forced change. And when they won, they changed the country.

You’ve accused me of misreading your views, but you haven’t pointed to a single argument I distorted. What you’ve done is shift the tone of your position after I laid out its consequences. That’s not me being unfair, that’s you backing off the implications of your arguments.

This isn’t a tactical disagreement. It’s a different theory of change and democracy. You believe politics is about risk management and institutional stability. I believe it’s about shaping meaning, building pressure, and challenging the order that’s failing people. You treat movements as dangerous. I treat them as necessary.

And credit where it’s due: you said you’re anti-populist. Most liberals wouldn’t admit that. But the implications matter. That’s why I’m pressing them.
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I'll do my answers by number, since it works so well.

1) I don't reject outright "that politics can be about building trust, changing minds, or shifting emotional terrain", but I do have deep reservations that it is an effective on-going political strategy, especially if we're talking about the kind that creates movements. I know that it can work, and when it does work it is often capable of making the greatest political change, but I don't think it is reliable way of generating positive electoral results and therefore wouldn't build political efforts around it. There's a reason that someone like Obama, who had that ability, is called a "generational" politician. I guess my take would be...when an Obama comes along, take full advantage of the moment, but build your greater electoral efforts around figuring out how to consistently elect Bidens or Harrises or even Betos.

2. The mistake you made here was assuming that "worst suited" equaled authoritarian. It certainly includes authoritarians, but it also includes folks that can't effectively use government structures, can't make necessary compromises with opposition parties, and let personal ambitions/failings compromise them (among other potential issues). Essentially, the issue here is that movement leaders don't always (or even often) make great political leaders and movement goals often are opposed to political realities.

3. I've said consistently that I don't think (white) working class folks are reachable on a grand scale. You tried to use my individual story to challenge that assertion. I merely showed why I don't think my story is likely to be replicated on a mass level. This is essentially a repeat of number 1 in that while I recognize that certain outcomes can happen in small numbers, I am highly skeptical they can be effective on a mass scale. So I don't reject these things (emotional appeals or changing minds) at a philosophical level, but I am unwilling to build a political strategy on them at a pragmatic level.

4. You were the one that suggested that folks being willing to help their neighbors meant they were capable and willing to change their views away from bigotry. My explanation that many of them don't consider minorities their "neighbor", which is why I don't think they'll give up their bigotries at the ballot box...especially if the Republican Party is offering them economic policies that appeal to them (rugged individualism with them given special status) AND continued bigotry.

5. We simply disagree at the larger causes of Trumpism. I'm not sure that either of us can prove our views, as the causes of Trumpism are multiple and varied. I simply acknowledge that our differences mirror our different beliefs about the best solution.

I've already addressed the issue of the movements you describe. I fully admit that these movements helped lead to political changes. However, they were part of greater actions - political, governmental, religious - that also helped lead to the permanent changes in our society. These movements, alone, did not create the change that we have today and they weren't the political basis for the permanent change. Your goal is to create a social/issue movement that acts as a political party, which isn't what the examples you list show. Additionally, there are plenty of social movements that did not create political advancement for those issues; one recent prominent example is that BLM had some significant success as a movement, but the political outcome may very well be the anti-DEI actions we currently see from the Republican Party. There is no guarantee that social movements will have political success nor do you have examples of social/economic movements that effectively function as political parties (or effective political parties built upon movement principles). That is why I find your examples unpersuasive and disagree about "movement" actions as the basis of an entire political party.
 
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SnoopRob said:
I'll do my answers by number, since it works so well.

1) I don't reject outright "that politics can be about building trust, changing minds, or shifting emotional terrain", but I do have deep reservations that it is an effective on-going political strategy, especially if we're talking about the kind that creates movements. I know that it can work, and when it does work it is often capable of making the greatest political change, but I don't think it is reliable way of generating positive electoral results and therefore wouldn't build political efforts around it. There's a reason that someone like Obama, who had that ability, is called a "generational" politician. I guess my take would be...when an Obama comes along, take full advantage of the moment, but build your greater electoral efforts around figuring out how to consistently elect Bidens or Harrises or even Betos.
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1. You explicitly argued that emotionally resonant messaging like “the government isn’t working for you” can lead to destabilizing outcomes like Trumpism. You warned that emotional strategies “don’t create the conditions for positive change.” So when I say you’re skeptical of emotional politics as a strategic tool, I’m not putting words in your mouth, I’m describing your view accurately.

You admit as much here: it’s rare, unreliable, and you wouldn’t build around it. That’s the core difference between us. I think emotional storytelling is the only thing that shifts terrain at scale, especially in a broken system.

You treat emotional politics like a bonus. I’m saying it’s the foundation. We don’t need every candidate to be Obama, we need a politics where even a Beto can ride the wave of a clear, resonant story. Republicans do that. Democrats don’t. And you’re proposing more of what’s already failing.

2. You say I misunderstood “worst suited” to mean authoritarian. But the real issue isn’t definitional, it’s sweeping generalization. You labeled populism “inevitably” governed by incompetents and demagogues. That’s a rejection of populism as a democratic force. If you think there’s a distinction between movement energy and governance capacity, just say that from the beginning. But don’t pretend you were making a narrow procedural point. You dismissed populism wholesale, and now you’re trying to narrow the charge.

3. You say you believe people can change, just rarely. But your own story of political transformation is framed as the exception: enabled by exposure to new people, institutions, and experiences. My point in referencing your shift at UNC wasn’t meant in that narrow frame, it was to make a broader argument about how change happens: not through argument alone, but through contact, contradiction, and new frames of meaning. That’s what movement politics does when it’s working.

But instead of drawing out those possibilities, you describe your neighbors as too rooted in hierarchy to change unless the message flatters their place in the social order. You’re not just saying change is hard. You’re saying it’s largely futile unless it reinforces existing power. That’s the dead end I’m pushing back against.

4. You say I was the one who assumed rural kindness equals openness to change. I’m not confusing personal generosity with political solidarity, I’m saying the two aren’t mutually exclusive. One can lead to the other with the right emotional frame.

You responded by saying that many people literally don’t view marginalized groups as neighbors. I agree. That’s why the moral storytelling of politics matters. That’s how you redraw the circle of “we.” I agree the boundaries are narrow, but they’re not fixed.

5. You say movements didn’t make change on their own. Of course not. That’s a strawman. No one said movements exist in a vacuum. My argument is that mass movements have historically forced political, religious, and institutional actors to move, not the other way around. You say these other actors helped secure lasting gains. Sure. But the pressure didn’t come from inside the system. The CIO didn’t wait for party elites to invite them in. The Montgomery bus boycott wasn’t a product of Democratic Party messaging. FDR didn’t create the labor upsurge of the ’30s, he responded to it.

You’re trying to reduce these movements to mere supplements, as if they were background noise to the “real” work of governance. But that reverses the historical sequence. These movements didn’t politely request change. They reshaped the political terrain so that change became inevitable.

You claim my project is to build a movement that acts as a political party, and you say that’s historically unprecedented. But that’s just not true. The original Populist Party was born of agrarian and labor organizing. The CIO created political formations that pressured Democrats and even helped found the American Labor Party in New York. The Civil Rights Movement didn’t create a standalone party, but it did fundamentally realign the Democratic coalition. These weren’t passive protest groups. They were engines of political reordering.

As for BLM: yes, the backlash was swift. That’s what happens when power is threatened. But that’s not the same as failure. Movements are long-term projects. Part of BLM’s failure was the absence of a coherent left to absorb, channel, and organize that energy. That’s a critique of our current weakness, not a reason to abandon movement politics altogether.

You end by saying that “movement actions” can’t form the basis of a political party. But what do you think the conservative movement did? The modern Republican Party is a movement party: rooted in reactionary grievance, organized through churches, media, and donor networks. It’s not that movement politics is unproven, it’s that the left hasn’t had a coherent, durable version of it in decades. That’s the vacuum I’m trying to fill.

You treat movement energy as volatile and dangerous. I see it as the only way anything has ever really changed. You keep pointing to risk. I keep pointing to history.

We’re not going to agree, but let’s at least be honest about the stakes. You want to manage decline. I want to fight for something better.
 
For the love of God.

It's about white supremacy. We'll set racism and universal anti-blackness to the side and lump the non ethno Europeans in with the white supremacists.

For immigrants, the path to the American dream and acceptance is embracing the most toxic aspects of white supremacy.

I've seen it. I've seen swarthy eastern European, African, Latin and Indian immigrants twist themselves into logic pretzels defending white supremacy.

It ain't the dems. They're essentially Republicans. If the elections haven't been rigged, the problem is the ppl. They're unreachable. This is why I personally ignore ppl. I also feel the utmost sympathy for regular white ppl that aren't anti black or practice white supremacy. They get lumped in with the trash.
 
Callatoroy said:
Interesting stuff. Were you not jaded by the experience? What’s a congressional campaign cost? Did the incumbent win the general election?
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The cost for me was a $1500 filing fee and another $5000 in yard signs which included my name and " Protect the Constitution "

So my ROI was $1 per vote :)... I used to joke that if I had kicked in another million dollars I would be in Congress today ( before you respond, Zoo, it was a joke )

Was I jaded by the experience ? Somewhat...I thought with an off year election with no statewide races that the press might see some value in my primary race as a narrative in an otherwise blah political campaign. They did not get it.

I was also disappointed that progressive chat groups/blogs had a mixed response. I remember a thread on Orange Politics which was an Orange County progressive message board. There was a thread addressing whether my run against the meek incumbent was a positive or a distraction. The responses were about 50/50

I do remember one suggesting forming a PAC on my behalf despite me refusing to accept direct contributions:cool:

So to sum up my experience, I made the mistake of assuming those Dems who opposed the Iraq war and believed the president had committed impeachable acts eg. illegal war, torture/war crimes would express their concern by voting for me to send a message to the incumbent and maybe be a vote that would be additive to the growing national concern about our actions in Iraq and waterboarding captives.

Was the campaign inartful on my part ? Was the stereotypical tunnel vision notion of a horse race election to blame ? Maybe a combo ? I guess 20 years later it doesn't really matter other than my contention that "everything old is new again"

ETA : My campaign may have scared the incumbent a bit. The usual construction of a ballot was to be in alphabetical order which would have placed my name at the top, but that changed that year and the incumbent's name was placed at the top.

Why is name placement important ? because voters tend to vote for the top name on the ballot in off year elections.The incumbent may have been a meek back bench rep. but he did understand election politics ;)
 
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