Your central point is, of course, right and a critical one for us to understand. Democrats could dominate politics with a “Democratic focus on bread-and-butter issues like raising wages or defraying the cost of childcare”—again becoming the party of the working class.
And right again that this is precisely the problem:
Democrats “need to make a clean break with the narrow cultural milieu that has completely come to dominate the party.”
David Shor, the child prodigy, Obama’s data guru for his second win, has been screaming your winning strategy at the Democratic elite for years. But you well know that he got his ass canceled by “the narrow cultural milieu” aka CRT thugs, even though he’s a Marxist. He calls your idea “popularism.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/opinion/democrats-david-shor-education-polarization.html
So the real problem is actually the same old problem we focus on so often — How to shut down the radical authoritarian left who cloak themselves in niceness and concern for the oppressed. As you said June 30, 2020, we “need to rise to the fight of a lifetime. … to build a new community of thinkers, activists, and citizens.”
All of your essays are actually useful for this and encourage this (like this one does), but you need to help us make the links from theory to practice. This substack would be the perfect safe base for organizing thoughtful activism, if the door for that could be opened, as it almost was in 2020. Help us “rise to the fight of a lifetime.’
I think that Democrats are being punished, especially in the Senate, by failing to advance a bold and progressive program to help out rural communities. Republicans only offer them guns and appeals to patriotism and racism. FDR came up with the Tennessee Valley Authority. LBJ championed electrification and anti-poverty programs. The divide in America is more rural vs urban than anything else, and Dems are identified as the “city” party. Secondly, Dems need to reach out to small entrepreneurs. There is no good reason why Joe Blow who owns a John Deere dealership in Cornville is a diehard Republican, who in fact is an activist and possibly a Convention delegate. Universal health care would free small employers from the nightmare of employer sponsored health care. My two cents.
Alas, big ag has stolen the worlds of farming for a living. Scale is what matters, with maximum acreage and commodity savvy. Lacking those means and you're out of the game. Tough in the mountains of the upper South, tough in California where climate change is pounding the Valley along with the fires of forested regions of the West. Have to agree totally on Universal Healthcare. The child tax credit is a great start, and a strong emphasis on maximizing affordable housing--where it makes sense. Public lands... probably not so much. Location still matters.
The"It's the economy stupid..." of the Clinton years still holds, if one looks clearly at the record of the Biden Administration and its accomplishments on jobs, infrastructure, inshoring chips mfg. inflation trends--it's been a clear win for the Democrats--hands down. Especially comparing the neglect of the pandemic and the tax cutting mania of the Trump years. Crime is a Republican red herring, like many of their so called issues. It's down--homocides especially. And especially since the recent height of that particular crime under Trump.
Trump is Mr. Grievance. Pure baloney from Queens, never worked a genuine day's work in his life. Nuff said. The man's a fraud, who only knows how to lie and cheat on his taxes. Certainly never again to be trusted near the Oval Office.
I was raised to recognize the greed and scheming of the right. Now I see equally destructive forces of conspiracy and authoritarianism on the left. The Democrats appear to me to be closer to fascism with their absolutist attitudes towards ‘reproductive rights’ i.e. erasure of unborn children and nouveau conversion therapy. They have lost me with their lust for power and moral superiority. I still struggle with how to express my revulsion for this without voting for Trump. The Republicans could sweep the board if they had a better candidate.
The Democrats, more than the Republicans, wasted a golden opportunity following Trump's election. They allowed the progressive mainstream news media (and I say this as an exasperated progressive) to make stars of inconsequential leftist firebrands who thought they saw a chance to normalize democratic socialism and use widespread dislike of Trump as a springboard to revolution.
Ever since, we've been seeing the term "Democratic base" used in reference to an obstreperous minority faction that's well to the left of the median Democratic voter (though not of the median Democratic donor). The Biden administration and the national Democratic organization seem to have shared that view when they ought to have concentrated on gathering in the voters whom the Trumpist Republican Party had alienated. By sitting on their own party's firebrands and disavowing the external radicals who actually said, "It's not our job to help get Democrats elected," they might have made the Democratic Party into the one political home for all reasonable people.
I don’t read anyone who has a better grasp on American politics than Yascha. This is why I let my Atlantic subscription lapse. I don’t want to dig through 15 banal articles to find the handful of truly good ones. I like to read thoughtful articles with different perspectives. I learn nothing from people who agree with me and even less from red-meat political hacks.
This is why I want Yascha to get very rich, William Randolph Hearst rich. It needs to be shown that a market worth pursuing exists outside of bland political rhetoric. Nobody believes the nonsense spewed by our leaders and the major news outlets are expensive versions of Pig-Latin, kinda fun for adolescents but ridiculous when done by grownups.
The basic premise, at least for me, is to identify a common problem and to compete for the best solution. Compromise will be essential. Republicans/Democrats are evil is neither outlining a problem or suggesting a solution.
Lotsa, LOTSA words in this post and the responses.
Leftist progressives have come to define the Democrat Party in popular perception.
It’s inexcusable that The Party has allowed extremists sewage into the Democrat drinking water.
Stupidity? Cowardice? Cinicism?
Doesn’t matter.
The DNC must be SPANKED very hard in this 2024 election cycle.
Trump is not an existential threat.
He’s just one man. His term spans only four years.
Duly chastened, Trump buys four years for the DNC to come to its senses—if there’s any American constitutional sense remaining in their collective consciousness.
You still are not reading Yascha. This essay has nothing to do with this election. Once you understand that perhaps we can sort things out. I and Yascha agree with you about how dangerous Trump is.
You folks who revere the likes of Angela Davis -- who made excuses for the sacking of Oakland's Chinatown (and similar episodes) during the Summer of Floyd -- will (if you prevail) bring down the Democratic Party, and have created a backlash that's redounded in favor of the vile Trump.
Meanwhile, as we pick each other to pieces over "pronouns" and "privilege," the oligarchs keep laughing all the way to the bank.
Yascha knows EXACTLY what he's talking about -- far more than your own German counterpart, Marcuse.
I may not be quite as old as you, but I got arrested for supporting the Black Panthers in 1968, and was following our politics quite a while earlier. In my view, Yascha understands US politics better than you. But that's just my view, just like your view is just your view. And I'm not going to say "How dare you speak for America" or anything like that, because that's not persuasion.
I think the problem is actually just that you have not understood Yascha. He certainly understands how bad Trump is personally and he signaled that here. But everybody knows Trump's psycho problems and Yascha was making an important point that was not so well known. To make that point he needed to point out how Trump (in spite of his awfulness) was able to win support.
When you think you see a smart person, who's really thinking, say something obviously stupid, it is usually good to pause and try to figure out what you're missing. I'm not saying you'll find they are right. I'm just saying it may not be as simple as it looks on first blush.
When born Americans have screwed up so badly, they should refuse advice from a new highly educated and well- meaning citizen. That is to deny the American spirit. So how do you propose to pull yourself out of the quicksand of facile abuse and loathing towards others that marks this bloated, money driven election?
Your central point is, of course, right and a critical one for us to understand. Democrats could dominate politics with a “Democratic focus on bread-and-butter issues like raising wages or defraying the cost of childcare”—again becoming the party of the working class.
And right again that this is precisely the problem:
Democrats “need to make a clean break with the narrow cultural milieu that has completely come to dominate the party.”
David Shor, the child prodigy, Obama’s data guru for his second win, has been screaming your winning strategy at the Democratic elite for years. But you well know that he got his ass canceled by “the narrow cultural milieu” aka CRT thugs, even though he’s a Marxist. He calls your idea “popularism.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/opinion/democrats-david-shor-education-polarization.html
So the real problem is actually the same old problem we focus on so often — How to shut down the radical authoritarian left who cloak themselves in niceness and concern for the oppressed. As you said June 30, 2020, we “need to rise to the fight of a lifetime. … to build a new community of thinkers, activists, and citizens.”
All of your essays are actually useful for this and encourage this (like this one does), but you need to help us make the links from theory to practice. This substack would be the perfect safe base for organizing thoughtful activism, if the door for that could be opened, as it almost was in 2020. Help us “rise to the fight of a lifetime.’
I think that Democrats are being punished, especially in the Senate, by failing to advance a bold and progressive program to help out rural communities. Republicans only offer them guns and appeals to patriotism and racism. FDR came up with the Tennessee Valley Authority. LBJ championed electrification and anti-poverty programs. The divide in America is more rural vs urban than anything else, and Dems are identified as the “city” party. Secondly, Dems need to reach out to small entrepreneurs. There is no good reason why Joe Blow who owns a John Deere dealership in Cornville is a diehard Republican, who in fact is an activist and possibly a Convention delegate. Universal health care would free small employers from the nightmare of employer sponsored health care. My two cents.
Alas, big ag has stolen the worlds of farming for a living. Scale is what matters, with maximum acreage and commodity savvy. Lacking those means and you're out of the game. Tough in the mountains of the upper South, tough in California where climate change is pounding the Valley along with the fires of forested regions of the West. Have to agree totally on Universal Healthcare. The child tax credit is a great start, and a strong emphasis on maximizing affordable housing--where it makes sense. Public lands... probably not so much. Location still matters.
The"It's the economy stupid..." of the Clinton years still holds, if one looks clearly at the record of the Biden Administration and its accomplishments on jobs, infrastructure, inshoring chips mfg. inflation trends--it's been a clear win for the Democrats--hands down. Especially comparing the neglect of the pandemic and the tax cutting mania of the Trump years. Crime is a Republican red herring, like many of their so called issues. It's down--homocides especially. And especially since the recent height of that particular crime under Trump.
Trump is Mr. Grievance. Pure baloney from Queens, never worked a genuine day's work in his life. Nuff said. The man's a fraud, who only knows how to lie and cheat on his taxes. Certainly never again to be trusted near the Oval Office.
I was raised to recognize the greed and scheming of the right. Now I see equally destructive forces of conspiracy and authoritarianism on the left. The Democrats appear to me to be closer to fascism with their absolutist attitudes towards ‘reproductive rights’ i.e. erasure of unborn children and nouveau conversion therapy. They have lost me with their lust for power and moral superiority. I still struggle with how to express my revulsion for this without voting for Trump. The Republicans could sweep the board if they had a better candidate.
The Democrats, more than the Republicans, wasted a golden opportunity following Trump's election. They allowed the progressive mainstream news media (and I say this as an exasperated progressive) to make stars of inconsequential leftist firebrands who thought they saw a chance to normalize democratic socialism and use widespread dislike of Trump as a springboard to revolution.
Ever since, we've been seeing the term "Democratic base" used in reference to an obstreperous minority faction that's well to the left of the median Democratic voter (though not of the median Democratic donor). The Biden administration and the national Democratic organization seem to have shared that view when they ought to have concentrated on gathering in the voters whom the Trumpist Republican Party had alienated. By sitting on their own party's firebrands and disavowing the external radicals who actually said, "It's not our job to help get Democrats elected," they might have made the Democratic Party into the one political home for all reasonable people.
https://thefamilyproperty.blogspot.com/2021/07/bad-company.html
The title of this piece is offensive and does not do justice to the article.
I don’t read anyone who has a better grasp on American politics than Yascha. This is why I let my Atlantic subscription lapse. I don’t want to dig through 15 banal articles to find the handful of truly good ones. I like to read thoughtful articles with different perspectives. I learn nothing from people who agree with me and even less from red-meat political hacks.
This is why I want Yascha to get very rich, William Randolph Hearst rich. It needs to be shown that a market worth pursuing exists outside of bland political rhetoric. Nobody believes the nonsense spewed by our leaders and the major news outlets are expensive versions of Pig-Latin, kinda fun for adolescents but ridiculous when done by grownups.
The basic premise, at least for me, is to identify a common problem and to compete for the best solution. Compromise will be essential. Republicans/Democrats are evil is neither outlining a problem or suggesting a solution.
Lotsa, LOTSA words in this post and the responses.
Leftist progressives have come to define the Democrat Party in popular perception.
It’s inexcusable that The Party has allowed extremists sewage into the Democrat drinking water.
Stupidity? Cowardice? Cinicism?
Doesn’t matter.
The DNC must be SPANKED very hard in this 2024 election cycle.
Trump is not an existential threat.
He’s just one man. His term spans only four years.
Duly chastened, Trump buys four years for the DNC to come to its senses—if there’s any American constitutional sense remaining in their collective consciousness.
If not, stick a fork in them—they’re done.
You still are not reading Yascha. This essay has nothing to do with this election. Once you understand that perhaps we can sort things out. I and Yascha agree with you about how dangerous Trump is.
You folks who revere the likes of Angela Davis -- who made excuses for the sacking of Oakland's Chinatown (and similar episodes) during the Summer of Floyd -- will (if you prevail) bring down the Democratic Party, and have created a backlash that's redounded in favor of the vile Trump.
Meanwhile, as we pick each other to pieces over "pronouns" and "privilege," the oligarchs keep laughing all the way to the bank.
Yascha knows EXACTLY what he's talking about -- far more than your own German counterpart, Marcuse.
I may not be quite as old as you, but I got arrested for supporting the Black Panthers in 1968, and was following our politics quite a while earlier. In my view, Yascha understands US politics better than you. But that's just my view, just like your view is just your view. And I'm not going to say "How dare you speak for America" or anything like that, because that's not persuasion.
I think the problem is actually just that you have not understood Yascha. He certainly understands how bad Trump is personally and he signaled that here. But everybody knows Trump's psycho problems and Yascha was making an important point that was not so well known. To make that point he needed to point out how Trump (in spite of his awfulness) was able to win support.
When you think you see a smart person, who's really thinking, say something obviously stupid, it is usually good to pause and try to figure out what you're missing. I'm not saying you'll find they are right. I'm just saying it may not be as simple as it looks on first blush.
When born Americans have screwed up so badly, they should refuse advice from a new highly educated and well- meaning citizen. That is to deny the American spirit. So how do you propose to pull yourself out of the quicksand of facile abuse and loathing towards others that marks this bloated, money driven election?