Many Americans Say the Democratic Party Does Not Share Their Priorities

[UNCatTech]

You know how it is. Principals can draw interest.

Yes, just seems like the kind of spelling errors I would make.

 

[Paine]

Whose fault is that tribalism? Do you think that if the left didn't focus on identity politics, the GOP would let go of race-baiting and white identity politics?

I said it on a thread a few days ago (don't remember which one now) and I'll say it again: the problem with the New Deal ALWAYS was it was racially exclusionary. The New Deal's base was in the solid south.

So when people say they want to return to New Deal politics, is that possible? My intuition says that the New Deal only worked because it existed alongside Jim Crow. The New Deal coalitions and racial equality are politically incompatible in the US.

So, I absolutely agree with you on the first point. I think it's critical to not let cynicism overtake us and to cede political battlefields forever just because they presently look unwinnable. It's very hard to do in practice sometimes, especially right now when we look all around us and see the constant advance of right-wing extremism and authoritarianism, and the way the right wing manipulates people with culture-war wedges, and can't see the political path forward to universal health care. But giving up on real progressive political ambitions like that just because they are politically unrealistic sort of allows the Overton window to be shifted against us.

I do disagree if you believe the recent history of Dems is "focusing on identity politics over other things." I'm not saying Dems haven't made mistakes in that regard but I don't think that's the story of the 2024 election in particular. Pubs led with identity politics far more than Dems and it won them the election. If there's anything the Dems miscalculated in going too hard on in 2024, personally I think it's the "threat to Democracy" stuff, which was important to lawyers like me but not to many other people, for whom it was simply too abstract. It's not that the fears weren't legitimate - the last two weeks have made that abundantly clear - but that the message simply wasn't working for voters in the way the Dems thought it would.

If I implied Dems focused too much on identity politics in 2024 then I misstated. I think they tried to course correct in 2024 but it was too late. Yes, a big part of the focus on identity issues is forced by the right. However, Democrats have been willing and pliable to these progressive identity focused groups in a way that has made them more susceptible to right-wing attacks.

Again, Yascha Mounk does a much better job of laying out the history of this than I ever could.

 

[superrific]

If I implied Dems focused too much on identity politics in 2024 then I misstated. I think they tried to course correct in 2024 but it was too late. Yes, a big part of the focus on identity issues is forced by the right. However, Democrats have been willing and pliable to these progressive identity focused groups in a way that has made them more susceptible to right-wing attacks.

Again, Yascha Mounk does a much better job of laying out the history of this than I ever could.

I think it's fair to say -- maybe I think this because I said it -- that trans was a trap that Dems walked into.

 

[wmheel1287]

Republicans: Republicans great, Democrats are the lying, horrible party. We do everything right they are destroying our country.

Democrats: Democrats great, Republicans are the lying, horrible party. We do everything right they are destroying our country.

Rinse repeat for every time elections are held. Never again shall the two meet in the middle again.

You regularly seem to be an active participant in this dynamic. Does that mean you think it's a healthy one?

 

[roostra]

So let's take one single issue: transgender rights. Many of the board's conservative leaning members have stated that the Democratic party's stance on this is too extreme and out of step with the general American public and that is part of the reason why Trump won the election.

Can anyone name one concrete step that the Democratic party can do to fix this? If the general public believes this, what action will change this belief?

Bonus question - if the concrete step is doing something that is a 180 degree change, how does the party not immediately get accused of pandering/hypocrisy and suffer the same electoral setbacks?

 

[Zoo_View]

Possibly. I can’t bring myself to say that we’d never have one. People need to be convinced that they have more in common than they don’t. That’s why I think it’s pure folly for the left to focus on identity politics over other things. The natural conclusion of that type of thinking is tribalism.

Where many (most?) of us disagree with you is here:

• “People need to be convinced that they have more in common than they don’t.”
• “That’s why I think it’s pure folly for the left to focus on identity politics over other things.”

By “the left” do you mean Democrats?

 

[superrific]

Where many (most?) of us disagree with you is here:

• “People need to be convinced that they have more in common than they don’t.”
• “That’s why I think it’s pure folly for the left to focus on identity politics over other things.”

By “the left” do you mean Democrats?

I don't think either of those statements is wrong. Well, the pure folly part might be too strong, but in theory both ideas are laudable.

In practice, it hasn't been working that way for a long time -- at least that's my experience. There's an assumption in there that people want to form common bonds with their fellow man, and that they have been deceived by right-wing divide-and-conquer media. While that's not wholly wrong, it's incomplete. There are plenty of people, especially in the South, still fighting the Civil War in their minds, or at least Jim Crow. They like punching down.

 

[TullyHeel]

If it's about the economy then people are idiots if they think Trump s going to make it better for the majority of Americans. It also says a lot about people that voted for him due to money and ignoring everything else about the kind of person he is.

 

[superrific]

If it's about the economy then people are idiots if they think Trump s going to make it better for the majority of Americans. It also says a lot about people that voted for him due to money and ignoring everything else about the kind of person he is.

I don't think it is about the economy, and it never has been.

 

[Paine]

Where many (most?) of us disagree with you is here:

• “People need to be convinced that they have more in common than they don’t.”
• “That’s why I think it’s pure folly for the left to focus on identity politics over other things.”

By “the left” do you mean Democrats?

Democrats, progressive activists, whoever.

There are segments of the socialist left who traffic in parts of the identity synthesis and segments of the liberal Democratic left who do so.

There is often a conflation between the materialist socialist left and the identity focused left. There is overlap, but these are distinct camps.

I don’t like using the term woke because it’s little more than a right-wing cudgel at this point, but I think a good definition of wokeness is social justice politics with class removed. This is how the liberal identity focused segments of the Democratic Party were able to wield this strain of progressivism against Bernie in 2016.

To say that Democrats haven’t engaged at all in this kind of language is just wrong. They moved away from it a bit in 2024, but the damage had already been done.

 

[Paine]

I think it's fair to say -- maybe I think this because I said it -- that trans was a trap that Dems walked into.

Agreed. It comes from a good place. A desire to advance social justice for marginalized people. But it is a trap nonetheless.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, that doesn’t mean that we ignore these issues. It’s that we embrace rights for all as the vehicle for moving forward the rights of marginalized people.

 

[HeelYeah2012]

This conversation has been had constantly since the election, and even before. Perhaps you haven't been paying attention?

In any event all this really demonstrates is how gullible people continue to be. Republicans spend way more time talking about social issues than Democrats. The Republican president who just got elected has been doing way more to fight "DEI" and "woke" than in fixing the economy, and in fact is likely harming the economy right now. But people will continue to eat up the culture war BS, so Pubs keep doing it.

Sure, blame the voters - that’ll help!

Trump did exactly what he should have done on social issues to win the election: hammered the opposition on their least popular stances. The one that was most effective of all was the taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners. That put the ball in the Democrats’ court and instead of saying she did not support such a thing, Harris went silent on it. Why she stayed silent is anyone’s guess but at least part of the reason is that a good chunk of her party supports that nonsense. Hence the issue Dems currently have.

 

[lawtig02]

Sure, blame the voters - that’ll help!

Trump did exactly what he should have done on social issues to win the election: hammered the opposition on their least popular stances. The one that was most effective of all was the taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners. That put the ball in the Democrats’ court and instead of saying she did not support such a thing, Harris went silent on it. Why she stayed silent is anyone’s guess but at least part of the reason is that a good chunk of her party supports that nonsense. Hence the issue Dems currently have.

Nonsense?

Under Trump, U.S. Prisons Offered Gender-Affirming Care

The Trump administration’s approach is notable in light of a campaign ad that slams Vice President Kamala Harris for supporting taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners and migrants.

www.nytimes.com

Trump appointees at the Bureau of Prisons, a division of the Justice Department, provided an array of gender-affirming treatments, including hormone therapy, for a small group of inmates who requested it during Mr. Trump’s four years in office.

In a February 2018 budget memo to Congress, bureau officials wrote that under federal law, they were obligated to pay for a prisoner’s “surgery” if it was deemed medically necessary.

 

[BubbaOtis]

So let's take one single issue: transgender rights. Many of the board's conservative leaning members have stated that the Democratic party's stance on this is too extreme and out of step with the general American public and that is part of the reason why Trump won the election.

Can anyone name one concrete step that the Democratic party can do to fix this? If the general public believes this, what action will change this belief?

Bonus question - if the concrete step is doing something that is a 180 degree change, how does the party not immediately get accused of pandering/hypocrisy and suffer the same electoral setbacks?

I'll make a stab at it.
When you're using in a hole, quit digging.

Biden Accountability Tracker | GLAAD

GLAAD is monitoring the Biden administration’s executive orders, legislative support, speeches and nominations that affect LGBTQ people and rights.

glaad.org

Harris was tagged as the LGBTQ darling because the title was bought and paid for.
Most of the stuff on the list is symbolic PR material rather than of any consequential effect.
Why do all that PR? You think that community is going to get mad and vote Republican?

 

[CFordUNC]

Lmao Good Lord. Biden Derangement Syndrome has morphed into full fledged Transgender Derangement Syndrome at this point for Republicans. I’d wager that there were far more Democratic voters who didn’t even know what the hell Republicans were talking about when they reference “taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners” than there were who “supported that nonsense.” I am an ultra high information voter and I had no idea what the fuck that was about- and still don’t. Just because the entire Republican Party seems to have been infected with Transgender Tourette’s doesn’t mean that most Democratic voters outright support all of the transgender craziness that they are accused of supporting- they just don’t believe in continuing to punch down until the entire transgender community, what little there actually is of it, is beaten into a bloody pulp all for political shits and gigs. What an unbelievably bizarre obsession.

But this is precisely why the left has to completely and totally surrender on it for the time being. Just completely quit talking about it. Don’t fight it. Just completely go silent. It’s not a fight they can win, and it’s a fight that distracts from the fact that Republicans are well on their way to plunging us into another economic recession that might make 2008 look like child’s play.

 

[finesse]

For one thing, I think only two prisoners have had a federally funded reassignment surgery. Just another case of much ado about nothing. Oh, these were court ordered surgery.

 

[superrific]

Sure, blame the voters - that’ll help!

Trump did exactly what he should have done on social issues to win the election: hammered the opposition on their least popular stances. The one that was most effective of all was the taxpayer funded sex changes for prisoners. That put the ball in the Democrats’ court and instead of saying she did not support such a thing, Harris went silent on it. Why she stayed silent is anyone’s guess but at least part of the reason is that a good chunk of her party supports that nonsense. Hence the issue Dems currently have.

Good for you. Now the country is broken. You broke it. We did not break it. You did that. Because you have no ability to think for yourself and just grab onto whatever shiny hate object the GOP plutocrats shove in front of your face.

Everything we told you that would happen -- everything you said WOULD NOT happen and even to suggest it was TDS -- is happening and worse. In the entirety of world history there has never been such an enormous "I told you so" owed to so many people.

You should be mortified to have voted for this assclown and in a just world you would have forfeited the right to participate in the country's future governance. Let the smart people manage things. Since that isn't going to happen, maybe a consolation prize would be a little bit of humility for what has proven to be a catastrophic mistake.

 

[superrific]

Nonsense?

In a February 2018 budget memo to Congress, bureau officials wrote that under federal law, they were obligated to pay for a prisoner’s “surgery” if it was deemed medically necessary.

This fellow HY12 is a poster child for the decline of the University of North Carolina. It used to be a world class institution, until the GA started packing it with DEI applicants from rural areas.

There's this perception out there that somehow he can do better, but I'm just not sure that's true. None of these assclowns can keep more than one idea in their head at once, and so all rationality goes out the window as soon as someone shows them something they don't like.

 

[superrific]

Most of the stuff on the list is symbolic PR material rather than of any consequential effect.

So why are you getting so worked up about it? Your team is more addicted to symbolic PR bullshit than anyone. Gulf of America. Fort Bragg. I mean, STFU.

You broke the country because you are mad about what you now admit to be symbolic PR material. Great fucking job. And then you wonder why we see you as hateful morons. You are indisputably hateful or moronic, because there is no other explanation for doing what you have done. Probably both.

 

[CFordUNC]

For one thing, I think only two prisoners have had a federally funded reassignment surgery. Just another case of much ado about nothing. Oh, these were court ordered surgery.

Goes to show the power and efficacy of right wing media and advertising. I expect my MAGA family members with high school educations to believe shit about transgender surgeries on people in prison. I don’t expect people with multiple degrees from places like UNC to swallow it so eagerly.