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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCan we craft a stronger economic justice message WITHOUT throwing anyone under the bus?
Questions for the thread:
1)If you don't think so, why not? And what do you think "a stronger economic justice" message means?
2)If you do think so, what do you think we need to do to make sure such a message is inclusive rather than exclusive?
| 13 votes, 1 pass | Time left: Unlimited | |
| We can create a stronger economic justice message WITHOUT throwing anyone under the bus or abandoning "social justice" | |
12 (92%) |
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| We can't create a stronger economic justice message WITHOUT throwing anyone under the bus or abandoning "social justice" | |
1 (8%) |
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| I'm not sure if we can or not...I need some reassurance(and I'll list what I need to hear in the thread) | |
0 (0%) |
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| 1 DU member did not wish to select any of the options provided. | |
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bettyellen
(47,209 posts)That all could change but I don't think sanders raising middle class taxes is a winner.
elleng
(131,136 posts)but we MUST step away from earlier attitudes that propel toward negative approaches to candidates, possible candidates, and points of view on issues.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)Nobody in any official capacity is really saying anything all that radical that should be wildly upsetting to most people with the possible exception of the transgendered issue that even some otherwise liberal people struggle with.
The issue is regardless of what is coming out of our candidates mouths, whenever the cultural left runs amok it is hanged around our neck. This is why the right loves the dirty hippie and ungrateful student tropes so much.
She is ours whether we want her or not.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)So many people from outside Columbia think they know more about those protests than they do. Students were threatened. Faculty were threatened. The RW was spouting off their opinions and the students wanted to tell their story not through a cable infotainment medium. Through media sources that were willing to do the research and tell the story rather than get a shot for FOX to use and develop talking points about. White people sick of racism and seeing our students demonized are criticized by FOX and Democrats are not immune to participating and or enabling the same kind of racism.
Her behavior is worthy of criticism, but there is way more to the story than reactionary Democrats and republicans were willing to take time to understand. Republicans in the area were the only ones who were fond of your talking point, BTW.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I suspect he's going to keep banging on about that professor until we agree to treat everyone to the left of his comfort level as the enemy.
The professor apologized AND was fired. And this was months ago. That incident didn't cost us the election-we weren't going to get votes from anyone who was hostile to the Columbia protesters anyway(no one who was agrees with us on anything)and that was long-forgotten by Election Day.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)you are the enemy.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Are we supposed to sound exactly like Spiro Agnew when talking about activists?
There's no way to be progressive AND anti-protest.
And that woman wasn't trying to breathe life into any Nixon-era stereotypes. She was just trying to stand with the students.
We'd have lost Missouri anyway.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)It is just a good illustration of the phenomenon because it was so widely reported. Until the Democrats can cleave themselves away from the radical left (such as the European center-left has successfully done) we have very little control over what message is received by the public at large.
Our candidates can stand up and deliver the most centrist and inclusive platform that should resonate with all but billionaires heirs and snake handlers and the media is going to be out on the street breathlessly covering the half dozen anarchists smashing a Starbucks and the message received by a significant swath of the country will be "look them there liberals are riled up and rioting again."
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)As to the "European center-left", it's been in decline for decades now. Every "social democratic" party on the European mainland is stuck below 25% and id either in opposition or in a fairly pathetic "junior partner" status in a coalition with a center-right party, other than the "center-left" governing party of Italy, which is itself certain to suffer massive losses at the next general election there, and the "center-left" party in France which not only won't make it to the second round of the presidential election but may finish behind the further left party led by a former Communist.
And those "center-left" parties are, in every single case, governing on a right-wing program-massive cuts in social services, mearures that weaken job security and make it easier to lay people off, and anti-union legislation.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)"the left" are fickle and unreliable supporters, the status quo sees us take all the liabilities without at least getting a solid base of support in exchange.
Was Obama little different from the right? He wasn't lining up to kiss the left's ring much to the anger of people like Cornel West.
If my memory serves me correctly, what you're accusing the European center-left parties of doing is precisely what most elected Democrats have been doing for the last quarter century.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)If the Republicans can put "dirty hippies" and "ungrateful students" on high-rotation they have already won.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)In fact, we wouldn't be able to disagree with the GOP on anything significant, because if you're tailoring your message to activists haters, you're tailoring it to people who have no non-reactionary views and never will have any.
Folks who say "I hate students and hippies" aren't going to vote for ANY Dem. They didn't even vote for Bill.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)Anything, anything at all that is ostensibly on the left is ours, all we can do is cringe as the Republicans run away with the narrative.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)There's no such thing as an Agnew Democrat.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)Every country in Europe has a dozen eccentric parties left and right that siphon off the fringe. Nobody in France associates Francois Hollande with the French Communist Party. They have their seven seats in the National Assembly and they can have their spirited debate over whether they're going to display the hammer and sickle among themselves.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)None of them fight elections on programs that are remotely "center-left"-they all back austerity and "labor market flexibility''(i.e., the end of job security for working people). Those parties sometimes run behind parties to their left.
What, exactly, is there to LIKE about those parties? In what way are they different from the plain old center-right? It's not as though it matters whether it's a center-right or center-left government slashing the welfare state or attacking the power of the labor movement. All austerities are the same.
(Oh, and virtually no one on the actual European Left....the socialist and left-Green parties whose support has actually been increasing..is anywhere close to a Stalinist...Stalinism is an extinct political tradition in the world today. Nobody is paranoid about "the Reds" anymore, because there's no reason TO be.)
(Meanwhile, Francois Hollande had to withdraw from the presidential race because he had virtually no remaining public support. His party will, at best, finish third in next year's presidential election and go on to lose most of its seats in the next National Assembly elections...largely because Hollande abandoned every non-conservative policy he ever supported and has ended up to the right of the Gaullists on economics.)
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)Is Jeremy Corbyn showing the way?
Has bringing a whole bunch of riff-raff into the Labour Party accomplished anything at all other than effectively render Great Britain a single party state during a time where a really, really strong opposition is required.
The issues that see Europe leaning to the right today need little explanation.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Certainly not anyone who still defended the Iraq War or the Blair government's continuation of the Tory privatization program, OR Labour's refusal to repeal the anti-union(and thus anti-worker)laws passed by Margaret Thatcher. OR anyone who supported(as Labour's post-Ed Miliband interim leader, Harriet Harman)abstaining on Tory benefit cuts legislation rather than trying to fight it-in other words, anyone who supported Labour agreeing to support the Tory assault on the most powerless people in the UK).
Corbyn was elected leader because the overwhelming majority of Labour supporters(and even a majority of full PAID Labour party members)were horrified by the post-2015 election push by the Parliamentary Labour Party to move the party's positions on the issues even FURTHER to the right...far enough that no one would have been able to recognize them as Labour policies at all anymore-after all, all austerity is the same and all cuts and additional rules and hurdles imposed on benefit claimants are equally immoral and indefensible.
Half of the problem is that the Blairite wing of the party never accepted that Corbyn's victory in the Labour leadership contest was legitimate and have done nothing but try to undermine and remove him ever since.
After passing a meaningless and non-binding motion against Corbyn, the PLP(a group that hasn't disagreed with the Tories on much of anything since 1997) started simply demanding that Corbyn resign and be replaced in a contest in which only members of the party's right wing(that's what a "moderate" is in a social democratic party-an ultraconservative), and in which most of the people who voted for Corbyn would have been barred from voting. No one who cared about working people and the poor would have been permitted to win such a contest-the only sort of candidate allowed would have been a quasi-Tory like Yvette Cooper-the sort of person who would immediately have whipped the PLP into voting FOR bombing Syria and for supporting most of the Tory cuts(in other words, into ceasing to BE the Labour Party, since the party could never have offered any non-Tory policies again after supporting the bombing of Syria and supporting the continued bombing of Yemen).
Labour does not need to be a party that says "we love war and hate socialism" to get elected-and if it gets elected by saying that, what could it still DO that was Labour?
BTW. the people he has brought into and BACK to the party are not "riff-raff"-they're good, committed democratic socialists who were driven away in the late Eighteies and Nineties for no good reason, leaving no one behind but apologists for austerity and militarism, and they are the young who seek to create a better world. If people like that are made unwelcome in a "center-left" party(as you advocate)that doesn't leave anyone else, really. It's pointless to try to be the party of people who obsess about controlling spending and "projecting force"-one Tory party is enough.
Labour would be in even worse shape if were led by someone the Right would prefer, like Ed Miliband's right-wing brother David Miliband...a guy who not only slandered his own brother by refusing to condemn the lie that Ed "stabbed him in the back" by running against him for the Labour leadership-a slur that implies that David was simply ENTITLED to move into the leadership unopposed-essentially agrees with the Tories on everything but just wants to be slightly less brutal about it(and who still thinks there can be a "progressive" case for continued Western military intervention in the Arab/Muslim world). No significant group of voters wanted Labour to "stay the course" with the "just slightly not Tory" program it lost the 2010 and 2015 elections with, OR to move to the right of the program(as it would have if Liz Kendall, the PLP's favored candidate, had been elected leader).
Tell me Walter...do you want the "center left" to actually be DIFFERENT than the "center right"? Do you feel it needs to be to the let of the "center right" on any MAJOR issues? And if you don't, why do you think the "center left" should even exist? It's not as though the people are ever served by having a choice between two parties that are more alike than different.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)The Opposition in the UK at the moment might as well be The Guardian, Corbyn is nearly invisible on a day to day basis. The duty of the Opposition leader is to lead a government in waiting. Corbyn is incapable of this. A third of those who supported Ed Miliband in the last election have just disappeared. I was in England last week when Labour lost a byelection and placed fourth. This does not work, what Corbyn has created doesn't work and there is nobody who can leverage it in a way that does, it is Bernie Broism to the nth degree.
Post-War European socialism is dead and buried and has been for decades, Corbyn isn't going to turn that around no matter how many former members of the Communist Party rush to his side. When Labour finds their feet it will be as a party advocating for re-engagement with Europe, not re-nationalizing the railroads.
The world has changed, you can't run an economy where a third of the labor is employed by the state-owned railroad, airline and phone company and all go on strike every six months. You can't have an unemployment rate in the mid-teens for perpetuity and you can't throw money into a black hole for perpetuity either.
I would say the fundamental difference between the center left and center right globally is probably their approach to or embrace of unions and taxation. Other issues there isn't tremendous differences such healthcare and most social issues. There is no cause what-so-ever that is better served by the left being in the political wilderness.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)An election or two is not evidence of "Long Term and Irreversible Decline"
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)In Germany, the SPD, the oldest "social democratic" party on the continent, has been stuck at 25% or less in the polls for a decade now. It's stuck in a powerless and irrelevant "junior partner" status under the Christian Democrats and its leader doesn't even sound like he WANTS to win the next election(if he did, he'd actually try offering policies that would attract voters who vote for Die Linke(The Left Party)many of whom WERE SPD voters before Gerhard Schroeder made the SPD a social democracy-free zone). In Ireland, the Labour Party was reduced to a pathetic 7 seats out of 158 in the Dail. Nothing but decline for years in Belgium, little but decline in the Netherlands, in Austria(the Social Democrats didn't even make it into the presidential runoff there this time, for the first time in history)
In France, the Socialists have been in decline for years. Same in Spain. Same in most of Scandinavia, for that matter. And the only answer ANY of their leaders ever comes up with in response to this is "move FURTHER right"-then they can't understand why their support CONTINUES to drop.
Nobody in Europe WANTS to be governed by a "center-left" party that continues to cut social benefits and privatize state industries, while continuing to support pointless, unwinnable military interventions in the Arab/Muslim worl
THAT's the type of party you see as our model for success?
The only way the "center-left" can recover from the current situation is to actually start DEFENDING the social wage and the idea that the state has a role to play in, if nothing else, at least saving the economy from total barbarism.
There's no support on the continent for "social progressive, fiscal conservative" policies.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Hollande's party in France is considered center left there and Hollande obviously is President.
The Center Left coalition "Common Good" leads both houses of parliament in Italy.
The Center Left Parti Socialist in Belgium was the second place vote getter out of multiple parties with seated representatives in the Belgian Parliament and are part of the ruling coalition with the center right New Flemish Alliance Party.
Center left Social Democrats in Germany have 193 seats in Bundestag, the second most of five parties who have representation. They are part of the Governing coalition with center right CDU which is Merkel's party.
Those were just the first four I doublechecked. Center left is hardly in decline in Europe.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Holland himself had to give up on his efforts to seek a second term.
In Italy, the "center left" prime minister just had to resign after his package of right-wing constitutional changes was overwhelmingly defeated by the voters in a referendum. His party will lose to both the right and the politically ambiguous "Five Star Alliance" at the next election.
The SPD is in a WEAK second place in Germany and is already certain to make no significant gains in this year's elections(it will probably lose ground to both the Greens and Die Linke).
The general trend is clear...it does NOT win votes for the "center left" to support austerity, privatization, and perpetual militarism.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)the actual facts I posted and which are not in dispute. BTW, SPD is not a weak second place in Germany. They have 30% of the seats in the Bundestag vs CDUs 40%. That is not an overwhelming difference.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)The SPD is polling three points LOWER than its vote share in the last federal election. Four years since the last vote and not only has the SPD not GAINED ground(something the second-largest party should automatically be doing at this point), it's getting LESS support.
And Hollande was elected in 2012...four YEARS ago. He had to drop out of the re-election campaign, and no one else in his party has any chance of even making it into the final round of voting in the presidential race.
The austerity "center left" is dying. It has no real reason to exist.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)party success rate in Europe. You know, the folks who you think have a better message than the center left.
Where are they?
I'll answer for you. They are a totally unsupported and insignificant force throughout Europe. People do not support their positions. Yet, those are the very positions you propose the center left adopt.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Syriza did get elected and re-elected(and they didn't abandon their principles, they were forced to put them aside by Merkel's arrogant stubbornness in forcing the Greek people to pay the debts incurred solely by the elites and the banks).
In Germany, the combined support for the Greens and Die Linke(BOTH of which are well to the left of the SPD)matches and sometimes exceeds the SPD's vote share.
In France, the Left Front candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon, a former Socialist Party member(the sort who still supports socialism) is currently getting twice as much support in the polls as Manual Valls, the Blairite who's going to be the SP candidate. In the Irish Republic, Sinn Fein(yes, THAT Sinn Fein), which is committed to an anti-austerity program, is getting more than twice the support the Blairite Irish Labour Party is pulling in(Labour there is still stuck around 7% of the vote). In Spain, "Podemos", the anti-austerity party, is running even with or ahead of the PSOE(the old Spanish Socialists who haven't been remotely "socialist" since Felipe Gonzalez pointlessly yoked them to NATO and embraced "market values"
. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party(running on a program that is anti-austerity AND anti-nuclear)all but wiped out Third Way Labour in Scottish constituencies at the 2015 UK general election.
There are many other parties to the left of the "center-left"
and no, these parties can't be classified as "far left" in the sense that YOU would like to imply-none of them are Stalinist or apologists for North Korea or the Khmer Rouge) that have made consistent gains in most of Europe over the years.
If a party is NOT anti-austerity, if it is NOT for helping to strengthen the labor movement, if it is not for something close to peace, in what way can that party even be "center-left"? It hardly means anything that such a party might be pro-LGBTQ or antiracist, because that party can't be popular enough to get into power or stay in power long enough to preserve even those gains.
Who do you think a "center-left" party should fight FOR. steven(I use lower case for your name there because that's how YOU use it in the post)? Is it really worth even HAVING a "center-left" party if that party's program is reduced to nothing more than not being as nasty about building a more unequal society? Or about pretending that war CAN somehow still have progressive objectives?
Do you want the "center left" to be different from the right in any meaningful way? In any way that significantly helps people's lives? How can it be "center left" to say "history is over...nothing can ever really be much different than the way things are right now, and it's enough that it's US cutting your benefits and making your jobs less secure"? What can possibly be "center left" about being a pillar of the status quo?
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Anti-austerity parties are generally gaining ground in Europe..."center left" parties that agree to continue austerity aren't.
In practical political terms, it's been a disastrous decision for the "center left" parties of Europe to agree to embrace Thatcherism-Reaganism.
They will only recover if they break with that decision.
Trekologer
(997 posts)One of the right's constant refrain is that the left hates the United States. I don't think that is the case but we've let them win on this point by letting them own patriotism and symbols of the United States, such as the flag. For some reason, the left tends to shy away from that.
When we protest, we need to make a show of our patriotism and we need to wrap ourselves in the flag. There's nothing more patriotic than peacefully working to make our society better.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)Like these?
Jurors found the clergy guilty of first-degree trespassing, a misdemeanor, but not guilty of charges of disrupting government operations.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/330bbe3b2fbb4bf78dd1d4911848f96a/missouri-clergy-protesters-found-guilty-trespassing
The Nixonian tactic of demonizing protesters is the republican rhetoric that drives incidences such as the one above credibility. Demonize one and you are one board with demonizing them all.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)If you create an image of social unrest the Republicans can leverage it.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)What you are recommending is like not supporting the civil rights movement because of sympathy for the racial anxiety that allowed Nixon to peel off souther Democrats one by one.
Compromising principles and abandoning people seeking justice in order to court some conservative would-be Democrats would only cause people who thought they had some allies to turn away. Zero sum.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)Only observing that civil disobedience by the left is generally unhelpful to us because it plays to the America is going to hell in a handbasket confirmation bias that serves the Republicans so very well. They don't need to address the grievance, they just need to promise law and order and the anxious white simpleton will feel warm, fuzzy and safe.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)to discourage him from signing the Civil Rights act and enabling them n---- "Look what they did on teevee! And, they got some white people killed on the Freedom Ride."
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)LBJ was taking a deeply principled stand at tremendous cost. In these situations we as Democrats are completely passive and just suffering from our stupid, simplistic political dichotomy and a media that is going to show these images of social unrest and advance the Republican narrative wittingly or unwittingly.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)and that was the point of my comment. What I was pointing to was the voices I am sure he heard encouraging LBJ to distance himself from Freedom Riders, and the people practicing civil disobedience. That seems to me that you are expressing exactly your sentiment.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)We as Democrats are mere bystanders in all this.
My position is civil disobedience is unhelpful to us because it plays into the Republicans preferred narrative so perfectly, I personally believe a lot of this is actually the product of Republican provocateurs because I find it unlikely that progressive millennials would have independently revived Roger Ailes greatest hits. Wheres angry old people see the "dirty hippies" and "ungrateful students" and it clicks with them immediately. There is no point at which we can interject ourselves into this and either distance ourselves or explain the merits of the issue.
So Democrats fighting one another to the death over whether to prioritize an economic or social message is ridiculous, because it isn't our message that is alienating middle america from us in the first place.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)You oppose systemic racism or you don't. If someone would rather demonize the protesters than stand with them, they have decided not to oppose injustice. They have decided to support it.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)stevenleser
(32,886 posts)that neutralizes the effects of protests. Either they didn't have that back in 1960, or it wasn't working. Their strategy is definitely working now.
How do you propose we deal with that?
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)Because of those particular protests, the president of the university system stepped down, and the university has committed funds to hire more people of color as faculty.
They did work and the only people who complained about the protests here were republicans. In fact, during a town hall legislative update, they called for her to be fired. The Democrats disagreed and the the audience applauded.
So, your answer is "no, throw them under the bus." For someone to do so is reflects a sickening level of comfort with oppression of at least some people. The republicans have a long list from which to choose if some democrats who are willing to participate in their tactics would like to make a selection.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)I don't have a solution how to fix this, but as long as the left is generating images tailor made to advancing the Republican's preferred narrative about the left we have a problem as Democrats.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)If that's a problem, then the opposition to oppression is identified as problem. Republicans favor oppression, and that is the source of their narrative.
Fighting against oppression is a rejection of the belief that it is okay. Accepting the narrative and placing blame on oppressed people is an endorsement of oppression.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)We're going in circles, the issue is the left enthusiastically generates the precise images that the Republicans would create themselves to discredit the left. In America that means discrediting Democrats at the same time.
Deep introspection and trying to parse every word ever spoken by Hillary Clinton looking for moments where she might have come across as aloof or indifferent to middle America is a waste of energy. The forces that alienate Americans from the Democrats are not internal to us as a party but come out of the left independently. I doubt many of these characters are even Democrats if the first place but that nuance is lost on the public at large.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)They are progressives and are continuing to work to dismantle systemic racism. They are also focused on intersections.
You seem to just have a beef with people who are oppressed and want us to be invisible so that we don't upset republicans.
It would be a mistake to abandon us in fear and submission to a republican agenda that excludes us and the injustices we face.
I don't care if I upset anyone who desperately wants to maintain their privilege.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)I have a beef with anyone who wittingly or unwittingly is helping elect Republicans, this includes many activists today who's little spectacles are unhelpful.
It doesn't matter if we abandon these groups, they're going to be doing this regardless and we as Democrats are going to be painted with it regardless. We can overcome this and win elections, but as long as we are held responsible for everything the left broadcasts to the world there are going to be some barriers to entry in a lot of the country.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)It would help republicans more to abandon people who are oppressed. Doing so is rejecting demands for justice and equity and simply joining the agenda of republican haters.
When there is no difference between the parties, why would people vote at all or vote for Democrats.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)This is about the left and how they communicate with the rest of the country and how the country incorrectly perceives the left to be a Democrat led monolith. The Democrats are mere bystanders in all of this, we don't control the message or the outcomes we just suffer when the American public looks at Occupy for instance and sees Democrats.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)It's less about partisanship than you seem to believe. What you are criticizing is a pursuit of justice which affects people no matter their political leanings. If it bothers you that Democrats support movements for justice, then it appears it is okay with you that just policies favor heterosexual, nondisabled, Christian, white men. Your partisan positions typically align with the people who think life was ideal before the civil rights and women's movements.
I don't think it would help us to travel into that intellectual cess pool.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)If you're willing to aide the Republicans nationally just to make a point on a very local level that is entirely up to you. I'm not here to critique your personal priorities.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)It's not about you and making you feel comfortable as a bystander. You either support oppressed people and oppose oppression or you are complicit in what republicans more actively impose with their hate.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And how many more do you PLANT to spam it into?
It has nothing to do with the discussion in THIS thread.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)The official message, whatever that message is usually isn't the problem to any reasonable person. The problem is in our simplistic dichotomy there is left and right, we own the left. No matter how moderate or inclusive a message is when the left that is either indifferent or not terribly invested in the Democrats plight we're going to be smeared when their antics make the news.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)and HE got an EC majority anyway.
It's not as though we could gain votes by saying "we HATE protesters and we think anyone should be able to use any slur they want without anyone questioning it", or by getting McCarthyite towards the left.
How about countering what you describe there by actually defending the idea of activism and the validity of BEING an activist? Why not try honoring the idea of spending a part of your life(or all your life, if need be)working to change this country for the better?
People who think the only legitimate use of one's time on this earth is "getting a job and raising a family" are going to be hard core reactionaries that no Dem could ever reach. Folks like that didn't even vote for Bill.
The votes we can get are from "normal" people who aren't activists themselves(or at least aren't YET)but who accept that change can be a good thing and that it's not inherently ridiculous to TRY to work for change.
Did you even read the post from the other person who responded to you there? She showed that it wasn't as simple as you painted it.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)In the 2016 we didn't suffer because of a message that was inherently flawed from either a social or economic perspective. We suffered because of a candidate who just wasn't competitive in the vulnerable states we had to win. You may recall I didn't support either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton in the primaries.
The images people see that turn them off the Democrats are not things under our control. We have however take solace in that they tend to go dormant for decades at a time.
I did read it, but it is as simple as I painted it. That stupid video clip was played over and over again for weeks and it hit every single checkbox that made it useful to the right. The archetypal blue-collar middle American saw everything the Republicans wanted them to see and made sure they saw it repeatedly.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)The best approach is to defend the activist tradition as a vital part of the American story. We're supposed to be the party of change, activism is just part of that.
We can make a case that changing the country for the better is actually a good thing.
BTW, it wasn't protest that caused the '72 Nixon landslide-it was the China trip and the regular Dems totally unjustifiable iinsistence on cutting our nominee loose that did that. We'd have done just as badly if Scoop Jackson or Hubert Humphrey had been imposed as nominees and if every speech at the convention had demonized hippies, blacks, feminists and "peaceniks".
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)But those images are going to be out there and that is a lot to overcome when the media is going to be showing images tailor made for the public's hell in a handbasket confirmation bias and this just naturally favors Republicans.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)I think that classifying people as deplorables backfires because it turns them into an enemy. I also don't think we have to desert people whose civil rights have come far to late and inadequate to avoid that trap.
We were on the defensive against a basket full of bigotry, but classifying everyone who has ever had a bigoted thought as enemies we sabotaged a possible message that Obama and Howard Dean promoted. Dean said it least eloquently, but most vividly when he said that people with confederate flags on their trucks should be voting for Democrats because their kids don't have insurance, either.
"We are all better than the worst thing we have thought or done" is an idea to work with. I don't mean that as a sappy platitude. It comes from a book by Bryan Stevenson about his work as a pro bono defense attorney. Civil rights are systemic. We have to continue to fight the culture wars and embrace "identity politics" as a moral imperative. But, we don't have to completely demonize people either. What Trump appealed to turns my stomach. At the same time, I want their kids to have a good education and be able to see a good and healthy future ahead of them.
It's a tough road to negotiate but we have until 2018 to begin to put something more helpful to work.
elleng
(131,136 posts)
ismnotwasm
(42,014 posts)Some of us just apparently prefer to toss historically oppressed and subjugated populations right under a big white bus.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)
kcr
(15,320 posts)Which is why I don't understand the whole "Pander to the white working class" nonsense. It's not the economic message message that's the problem. How do you not get that?
