Who is more responsible for this Democrat train wreck

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It's the DNC's fault for not keeping up with the times and rules of the game that is the modern election cycle.

The truth no longer matters as much as a snappy headline. The game changed and the GOP figured out the rules before we did and adapted to be able to win. The Dems are lagging and need to keep up.

The average attention span for an American adult is now only 8 seconds. It's decreased 25% over the last 12 years. We now have a lower attention span than the common goldfish. WTG, humans!

Young people aren't reading long, thought out articles with citied evidence. Young people go by what the latest influencer on TikTok tells them. Did you see how many young, hot (not appearance hot) TikTok influencers were invited to the DNC? They were given incredible access for vlogging and got more facetime with Harris than many donors did at other events. Young people care about the truth, but they want the TL;DR version of that truth.

Old people, the group most susceptible to fake news and misinformation, don't read the articles either. They go off what the headline tells them and what others in the comments are saying. They then parrot those mistruths in other places.

The Dems also hasn't fully embraced the fact that the largest voting body, Gen Z, grew up with Cancel Culture. The Gen Z voters literally said for months, we are not going to vote for Harris if she doesn't come out and fully support Palestine and denounce Isreal, but no one took them seriously. Well, they should have. They are the generation of "if you don't do/say/behave how *we* want you to, we're canceling you."

There's no more "when they go low, we go high" crap. I don't want to hear that BS. That was true when the rules were different. That was true before Trump had his first term but certainly not now. Now? Anything goes.


What snappy headline would have changed the outcome? What did people who chose to vote for Trump not know?

Agree with everything posted---I don't think it is "snappy headline" but the micro-targeting that might have helped. Remember the Post story a few ago re how Elon Musk funded sophisticated micro-targeting of different groups with content designed to steer them toward Trump based on the micro-group's biggest hot-buttons. Just as JFK was the first "television" president, Trump is our first social media president and the Dems need to get better at that game. There also needs to be a concerted effort to restore balance in media ---between the death of local newspapers, the hegemony of Sinclair media in owning local TV stations---there is very little EXCEPT conservative echo-chamber across wide swaths of the country. As someone noted on here---there is no left-version of Joe Rogan commanding millions of followers. Dems also need to restore the tradition of small town papers/media that expose local corruption and focus on local issues and demonstrate the value of that kind of vigilance to voters.

And Dems also need to build a ground game emphasizing the value of a two party system that comes up with compromises instead of the Newt Gingrich/Mitch McConnell Zero-sum approach to governance. Whenever I visit my hometown in South Carolina, I am struck by how much people complain about the unchecked and unmanaged development that has resulted in huge traffic jams and unsafe country roads---since developers have no obligations to contribute to road improvement. The same friends and family who are complaining to me reflexively vote Republican because they have been brainwashed into thinking that all Dems are evil. If there were two viable parties instead of one-party rule, some of those negative development externalities might be more controlled, but they won't be as long as the developer dominated Republican Party has sole control. (I also feel the same way about the extreme blue jurisdictions---they need more balance in the other direction).

In order to have a left-wing Joe Rogan with millions of followers, you need to have a message that millions of people want to hear. There are left-wing podcasters and media, but they cater to a small audience that is getting smaller. They aren’t particularly successful at reaching out beyond their core audience of progressives.

Joe Rogan is a symptom, not a cause. The lack of a left-wing Joe Rogan isn’t structural, it’s because the message from the left is so profoundly unappealing and uninspiring. If the left had an inspiring, unifying message, a left-wing Joe Rogan would exist overnight, probably multiple.

But the progressive wing of the party has become more religion than political party, so they are as impervious to criticism as the far-right evangelicals.

There is no progressive wing of the party at least not one that has any weight. Most of the recent democrat candidates make Nixon or Reagan seem liberal.

Come on. You are blind. Everyone has to kiss the progressive ring now. Look what happened to Seth Moulton, who timidly expressed an opinion that something like 80% of Americans agree with.

But even that is besides the point. You can’t create a left-wing Joe Rogan from the top down. You have to have a popular message, and then a left-wing Joe Rogan, probably multiple of them, will grow. The problem is that the Democrats have a very unpopular message which requires fealty to a quasi-religious identity-based belief structure.

So long as the Democrats have this evangelical quasi-religious belief structure at the heart of their messaging, there will be no left-wing Joe Rogan. There will be media, of course, but they will remain niche, not mainstream.

In essence the Democrats are going the route of the Republicans of the 1990s — building their political future on a passionate but relatively small religious movement. The progressives are the Focus on the Family of the Democrats. And like those evangelicals, they will pull the party in a direction that loses the middle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are several things at play. The democrats got boxed in on a few lose-lose issues. If they spoke out against trans women in sports and women's spaces, then they'd offend the pro trans and highly progressive wings. If they spoke in favor, they offend the moderates. For Israel, speaking out against anything Israel is doing gets you branded as antisemitic. Being pro-Israel makes you pro-genocide. I don't think it would have been possible for Harris to thread the needle on either of these issues in a way that didn't alienate a large chunk of voters.

One other issue is that while Harris/democrats in general were proposing actual solutions to issues, they're awful at making people feel heard and validated. Trump excels at making people feel heard, even if he isn't proposing anything that would actually help them.

This is it right here. That and Biden staying in way too long.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dems harmed themselves by leaning too far into progressive-driven purity tests and a lack of strong, concise, pithy messaging.

Republicans won with strong, concise, pithy messaging even if it was massively distorted or outright lies.

Dems need to back up and focus on the most basic (Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs) - jobs with good wages, affordable housing, healthcare, groceries, safety, transportation and have that be their strong foundation with the pithy one-liners around all of that - and it's Dems who in fact have the most strength, solid foundation and most to offer in those areas and build their strong messaging around that.

And let the Republicans flounder with their own platform of cultish Trumpism, homophobia, hatred of immigrants and so on.

Nope not even close. The Dems failed by accommodating “moderates” and Biden unconditional support of Israel. The moderates abandoned Biden/Harris. Everyone knew Biden was done the moment he hugged Netanyahu. Netanyahu is a hard right nut job who will do anything to undermine Democrats and American democracy(and he did). Israel humiliated Biden and the US.

It’s all Mr Magoo’s fault. Remember as president he controls the DNC, refused to reform SCOTUS, chose Joe Manchin over progressive, chose a stimulus bill instead of addressing January 6, etc.

Well, if they follow your advice then JD Vance will have a Reagan level victory in 2028.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I originally blamed the DNC for “anointing” HRC in 2016; then (basically) doing the same in 2020 for Biden. Not that the primary slate in 2020 was that great so I get why they promoted him.
And obviously he won. So DNC got it right.
Really, after the debate, Biden was defiant and pissed for a month or so then drops out. Biden basically dictating Harris as his replacement and DNC goes along with it, then DNC blows through all the money and loses.

The problem is Democrats haven't had an open primary since 2008. Even in 2008, the media stepped in and heavily favored Obama. Democrats can blame messaging all they like, but Democrats haven't had a real debate about issues in a generation. That's why they keep losing to a gross, grifting reality show host. Of course, to debate, Democrats would have to be willing to let their preferred classes (URMs, women, etc.) lose an argument. I don't think they're ready to go that far yet.

The lack of an open primary hasn't helped, but also the conspiracy to push these "centrist" (corporate democrats) instead of candidates that care about real issues makes it hard to get excited about their choices. Some people complain about liberals or progressives but they've never run a real liberal or progressive. Harris for example would probably say anything to get elected. Like their GOP counterparts many have no moral compass.

It's not the party's job to "push" any candidate, the people are supposed to choose. Of course neither party can resist (remember 2016 when the RNC wanted JEB BUSH?) The difference is that the RNC allowed themselves to be humiliated by those pesky voters while the DNC makes sure to orchestrate a win for their preferred candidate. Since the people aren't choosing, they end up with an unpopular candidate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It's the DNC's fault for not keeping up with the times and rules of the game that is the modern election cycle.

The truth no longer matters as much as a snappy headline. The game changed and the GOP figured out the rules before we did and adapted to be able to win. The Dems are lagging and need to keep up.

The average attention span for an American adult is now only 8 seconds. It's decreased 25% over the last 12 years. We now have a lower attention span than the common goldfish. WTG, humans!

Young people aren't reading long, thought out articles with citied evidence. Young people go by what the latest influencer on TikTok tells them. Did you see how many young, hot (not appearance hot) TikTok influencers were invited to the DNC? They were given incredible access for vlogging and got more facetime with Harris than many donors did at other events. Young people care about the truth, but they want the TL;DR version of that truth.

Old people, the group most susceptible to fake news and misinformation, don't read the articles either. They go off what the headline tells them and what others in the comments are saying. They then parrot those mistruths in other places.

The Dems also hasn't fully embraced the fact that the largest voting body, Gen Z, grew up with Cancel Culture. The Gen Z voters literally said for months, we are not going to vote for Harris if she doesn't come out and fully support Palestine and denounce Isreal, but no one took them seriously. Well, they should have. They are the generation of "if you don't do/say/behave how *we* want you to, we're canceling you."

There's no more "when they go low, we go high" crap. I don't want to hear that BS. That was true when the rules were different. That was true before Trump had his first term but certainly not now. Now? Anything goes.


What snappy headline would have changed the outcome? What did people who chose to vote for Trump not know?

Agree with everything posted---I don't think it is "snappy headline" but the micro-targeting that might have helped. Remember the Post story a few ago re how Elon Musk funded sophisticated micro-targeting of different groups with content designed to steer them toward Trump based on the micro-group's biggest hot-buttons. Just as JFK was the first "television" president, Trump is our first social media president and the Dems need to get better at that game. There also needs to be a concerted effort to restore balance in media ---between the death of local newspapers, the hegemony of Sinclair media in owning local TV stations---there is very little EXCEPT conservative echo-chamber across wide swaths of the country. As someone noted on here---there is no left-version of Joe Rogan commanding millions of followers. Dems also need to restore the tradition of small town papers/media that expose local corruption and focus on local issues and demonstrate the value of that kind of vigilance to voters.

And Dems also need to build a ground game emphasizing the value of a two party system that comes up with compromises instead of the Newt Gingrich/Mitch McConnell Zero-sum approach to governance. Whenever I visit my hometown in South Carolina, I am struck by how much people complain about the unchecked and unmanaged development that has resulted in huge traffic jams and unsafe country roads---since developers have no obligations to contribute to road improvement. The same friends and family who are complaining to me reflexively vote Republican because they have been brainwashed into thinking that all Dems are evil. If there were two viable parties instead of one-party rule, some of those negative development externalities might be more controlled, but they won't be as long as the developer dominated Republican Party has sole control. (I also feel the same way about the extreme blue jurisdictions---they need more balance in the other direction).

In order to have a left-wing Joe Rogan with millions of followers, you need to have a message that millions of people want to hear. There are left-wing podcasters and media, but they cater to a small audience that is getting smaller. They aren’t particularly successful at reaching out beyond their core audience of progressives.

Joe Rogan is a symptom, not a cause. The lack of a left-wing Joe Rogan isn’t structural, it’s because the message from the left is so profoundly unappealing and uninspiring. If the left had an inspiring, unifying message, a left-wing Joe Rogan would exist overnight, probably multiple.

But the progressive wing of the party has become more religion than political party, so they are as impervious to criticism as the far-right evangelicals.

There is no progressive wing of the party at least not one that has any weight. Most of the recent democrat candidates make Nixon or Reagan seem liberal.

Come on. You are blind. Everyone has to kiss the progressive ring now. Look what happened to Seth Moulton, who timidly expressed an opinion that something like 80% of Americans agree with.

But even that is besides the point. You can’t create a left-wing Joe Rogan from the top down. You have to have a popular message, and then a left-wing Joe Rogan, probably multiple of them, will grow. The problem is that the Democrats have a very unpopular message which requires fealty to a quasi-religious identity-based belief structure.

So long as the Democrats have this evangelical quasi-religious belief structure at the heart of their messaging, there will be no left-wing Joe Rogan. There will be media, of course, but they will remain niche, not mainstream.

In essence the Democrats are going the route of the Republicans of the 1990s — building their political future on a passionate but relatively small religious movement. The progressives are the Focus on the Family of the Democrats. And like those evangelicals, they will pull the party in a direction that loses the middle.

There's a lot of Democrats who agree with Moulton. The Democrats need to take a stance like Barry Goldwater did, when he said the zealots need to have a blanket thrown over them. The Republicans didn't listen and from that, we got the Tea Party and now the MAGA cult, and the Democrats seem to be headed the same way if they can't get ahead of the progressives. Democrats need to remember and remind themselves that the progressives are in fact a minority of Democrats, and that they do not have a mandate. Along with reminding the progressives that their ideology and purity tests are what's putting lunatics and felons like Trump in office.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Clyburn. He got Biden elected in the first place. He put Harris in as next in line. He had to know Biden's character.

Good call. Clyburn as Democratic kingmaker hasn’t aged well, pun intended. The guy is 84.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It's the DNC's fault for not keeping up with the times and rules of the game that is the modern election cycle.

The truth no longer matters as much as a snappy headline. The game changed and the GOP figured out the rules before we did and adapted to be able to win. The Dems are lagging and need to keep up.

The average attention span for an American adult is now only 8 seconds. It's decreased 25% over the last 12 years. We now have a lower attention span than the common goldfish. WTG, humans!

Young people aren't reading long, thought out articles with citied evidence. Young people go by what the latest influencer on TikTok tells them. Did you see how many young, hot (not appearance hot) TikTok influencers were invited to the DNC? They were given incredible access for vlogging and got more facetime with Harris than many donors did at other events. Young people care about the truth, but they want the TL;DR version of that truth.

Old people, the group most susceptible to fake news and misinformation, don't read the articles either. They go off what the headline tells them and what others in the comments are saying. They then parrot those mistruths in other places.

The Dems also hasn't fully embraced the fact that the largest voting body, Gen Z, grew up with Cancel Culture. The Gen Z voters literally said for months, we are not going to vote for Harris if she doesn't come out and fully support Palestine and denounce Isreal, but no one took them seriously. Well, they should have. They are the generation of "if you don't do/say/behave how *we* want you to, we're canceling you."

There's no more "when they go low, we go high" crap. I don't want to hear that BS. That was true when the rules were different. That was true before Trump had his first term but certainly not now. Now? Anything goes.


What snappy headline would have changed the outcome? What did people who chose to vote for Trump not know?

Agree with everything posted---I don't think it is "snappy headline" but the micro-targeting that might have helped. Remember the Post story a few ago re how Elon Musk funded sophisticated micro-targeting of different groups with content designed to steer them toward Trump based on the micro-group's biggest hot-buttons. Just as JFK was the first "television" president, Trump is our first social media president and the Dems need to get better at that game. There also needs to be a concerted effort to restore balance in media ---between the death of local newspapers, the hegemony of Sinclair media in owning local TV stations---there is very little EXCEPT conservative echo-chamber across wide swaths of the country. As someone noted on here---there is no left-version of Joe Rogan commanding millions of followers. Dems also need to restore the tradition of small town papers/media that expose local corruption and focus on local issues and demonstrate the value of that kind of vigilance to voters.

And Dems also need to build a ground game emphasizing the value of a two party system that comes up with compromises instead of the Newt Gingrich/Mitch McConnell Zero-sum approach to governance. Whenever I visit my hometown in South Carolina, I am struck by how much people complain about the unchecked and unmanaged development that has resulted in huge traffic jams and unsafe country roads---since developers have no obligations to contribute to road improvement. The same friends and family who are complaining to me reflexively vote Republican because they have been brainwashed into thinking that all Dems are evil. If there were two viable parties instead of one-party rule, some of those negative development externalities might be more controlled, but they won't be as long as the developer dominated Republican Party has sole control. (I also feel the same way about the extreme blue jurisdictions---they need more balance in the other direction).

In order to have a left-wing Joe Rogan with millions of followers, you need to have a message that millions of people want to hear. There are left-wing podcasters and media, but they cater to a small audience that is getting smaller. They aren’t particularly successful at reaching out beyond their core audience of progressives.

Joe Rogan is a symptom, not a cause. The lack of a left-wing Joe Rogan isn’t structural, it’s because the message from the left is so profoundly unappealing and uninspiring. If the left had an inspiring, unifying message, a left-wing Joe Rogan would exist overnight, probably multiple.

But the progressive wing of the party has become more religion than political party, so they are as impervious to criticism as the far-right evangelicals.

There is no progressive wing of the party at least not one that has any weight. Most of the recent democrat candidates make Nixon or Reagan seem liberal.

Come on. You are blind. Everyone has to kiss the progressive ring now. Look what happened to Seth Moulton, who timidly expressed an opinion that something like 80% of Americans agree with.

But even that is besides the point. You can’t create a left-wing Joe Rogan from the top down. You have to have a popular message, and then a left-wing Joe Rogan, probably multiple of them, will grow. The problem is that the Democrats have a very unpopular message which requires fealty to a quasi-religious identity-based belief structure.

So long as the Democrats have this evangelical quasi-religious belief structure at the heart of their messaging, there will be no left-wing Joe Rogan. There will be media, of course, but they will remain niche, not mainstream.

In essence the Democrats are going the route of the Republicans of the 1990s — building their political future on a passionate but relatively small religious movement. The progressives are the Focus on the Family of the Democrats. And like those evangelicals, they will pull the party in a direction that loses the middle.

There's a lot of Democrats who agree with Moulton. The Democrats need to take a stance like Barry Goldwater did, when he said the zealots need to have a blanket thrown over them. The Republicans didn't listen and from that, we got the Tea Party and now the MAGA cult, and the Democrats seem to be headed the same way if they can't get ahead of the progressives. Democrats need to remember and remind themselves that the progressives are in fact a minority of Democrats, and that they do not have a mandate. Along with reminding the progressives that their ideology and purity tests are what's putting lunatics and felons like Trump in office.

Good point. Republicans were almost done until Goldwater sacrificed himself to drive the Birchers out of the party. It’s going to take someone equally as selfless on the Democratic side to drive the DSA and progressives out. The problem for Democrats now is that there is no one that committed to the cause that would be willing to do so. It’s unfortunately right now an entire party of people out for themselves.

[Anonymous]

So my choice is having a felon in office who displays common sense and doesn't let other countries take advantage of the U.S tax payer or a slippery evil committee who runs the country by putting foreign interests and citizens above its own citizens in the name of globalism/equal redistribution around the world and weaponizes the judicial system to stay in power?

I know who I will choose every time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So my choice is having a felon in office who displays common sense and doesn't let other countries take advantage of the U.S tax payer or a slippery evil committee who runs the country by putting foreign interests and citizens above its own citizens in the name of globalism/equal redistribution around the world and weaponizes the judicial system to stay in power?

I know who I will choose every time.

Common sense? LOL yeah right, Trump is incoherent and keeps changing his positions and not coming through with his promises. Doesn't let other countries take advantage? LOL yeah right.

Slippery evil committee? Is this slippery evil committee in the room with us right now? Maybe consider seeing a therapist?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So my choice is having a felon in office who displays common sense and doesn't let other countries take advantage of the U.S tax payer or a slippery evil committee who runs the country by putting foreign interests and citizens above its own citizens in the name of globalism/equal redistribution around the world and weaponizes the judicial system to stay in power?

I know who I will choose every time.

The felon lets his billionaire friends take advantage of the US taxpayer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It's the DNC's fault for not keeping up with the times and rules of the game that is the modern election cycle.

The truth no longer matters as much as a snappy headline. The game changed and the GOP figured out the rules before we did and adapted to be able to win. The Dems are lagging and need to keep up.

The average attention span for an American adult is now only 8 seconds. It's decreased 25% over the last 12 years. We now have a lower attention span than the common goldfish. WTG, humans!

Young people aren't reading long, thought out articles with citied evidence. Young people go by what the latest influencer on TikTok tells them. Did you see how many young, hot (not appearance hot) TikTok influencers were invited to the DNC? They were given incredible access for vlogging and got more facetime with Harris than many donors did at other events. Young people care about the truth, but they want the TL;DR version of that truth.

Old people, the group most susceptible to fake news and misinformation, don't read the articles either. They go off what the headline tells them and what others in the comments are saying. They then parrot those mistruths in other places.

The Dems also hasn't fully embraced the fact that the largest voting body, Gen Z, grew up with Cancel Culture. The Gen Z voters literally said for months, we are not going to vote for Harris if she doesn't come out and fully support Palestine and denounce Isreal, but no one took them seriously. Well, they should have. They are the generation of "if you don't do/say/behave how *we* want you to, we're canceling you."

There's no more "when they go low, we go high" crap. I don't want to hear that BS. That was true when the rules were different. That was true before Trump had his first term but certainly not now. Now? Anything goes.


What snappy headline would have changed the outcome? What did people who chose to vote for Trump not know?

Agree with everything posted---I don't think it is "snappy headline" but the micro-targeting that might have helped. Remember the Post story a few ago re how Elon Musk funded sophisticated micro-targeting of different groups with content designed to steer them toward Trump based on the micro-group's biggest hot-buttons. Just as JFK was the first "television" president, Trump is our first social media president and the Dems need to get better at that game. There also needs to be a concerted effort to restore balance in media ---between the death of local newspapers, the hegemony of Sinclair media in owning local TV stations---there is very little EXCEPT conservative echo-chamber across wide swaths of the country. As someone noted on here---there is no left-version of Joe Rogan commanding millions of followers. Dems also need to restore the tradition of small town papers/media that expose local corruption and focus on local issues and demonstrate the value of that kind of vigilance to voters.

And Dems also need to build a ground game emphasizing the value of a two party system that comes up with compromises instead of the Newt Gingrich/Mitch McConnell Zero-sum approach to governance. Whenever I visit my hometown in South Carolina, I am struck by how much people complain about the unchecked and unmanaged development that has resulted in huge traffic jams and unsafe country roads---since developers have no obligations to contribute to road improvement. The same friends and family who are complaining to me reflexively vote Republican because they have been brainwashed into thinking that all Dems are evil. If there were two viable parties instead of one-party rule, some of those negative development externalities might be more controlled, but they won't be as long as the developer dominated Republican Party has sole control. (I also feel the same way about the extreme blue jurisdictions---they need more balance in the other direction).

In order to have a left-wing Joe Rogan with millions of followers, you need to have a message that millions of people want to hear. There are left-wing podcasters and media, but they cater to a small audience that is getting smaller. They aren’t particularly successful at reaching out beyond their core audience of progressives.

Joe Rogan is a symptom, not a cause. The lack of a left-wing Joe Rogan isn’t structural, it’s because the message from the left is so profoundly unappealing and uninspiring. If the left had an inspiring, unifying message, a left-wing Joe Rogan would exist overnight, probably multiple.

But the progressive wing of the party has become more religion than political party, so they are as impervious to criticism as the far-right evangelicals.

There is no progressive wing of the party at least not one that has any weight. Most of the recent democrat candidates make Nixon or Reagan seem liberal.

Come on. You are blind. Everyone has to kiss the progressive ring now. Look what happened to Seth Moulton, who timidly expressed an opinion that something like 80% of Americans agree with.

But even that is besides the point. You can’t create a left-wing Joe Rogan from the top down. You have to have a popular message, and then a left-wing Joe Rogan, probably multiple of them, will grow. The problem is that the Democrats have a very unpopular message which requires fealty to a quasi-religious identity-based belief structure.

So long as the Democrats have this evangelical quasi-religious belief structure at the heart of their messaging, there will be no left-wing Joe Rogan. There will be media, of course, but they will remain niche, not mainstream.

In essence the Democrats are going the route of the Republicans of the 1990s — building their political future on a passionate but relatively small religious movement. The progressives are the Focus on the Family of the Democrats. And like those evangelicals, they will pull the party in a direction that loses the middle.

There's a lot of Democrats who agree with Moulton. The Democrats need to take a stance like Barry Goldwater did, when he said the zealots need to have a blanket thrown over them. The Republicans didn't listen and from that, we got the Tea Party and now the MAGA cult, and the Democrats seem to be headed the same way if they can't get ahead of the progressives. Democrats need to remember and remind themselves that the progressives are in fact a minority of Democrats, and that they do not have a mandate. Along with reminding the progressives that their ideology and purity tests are what's putting lunatics and felons like Trump in office.

I don’t think Tea Party/MAGA is the correct comparison. For one thing, Tea Party/MAGA has been quite successful at elections, whereas progressives mostly just get Democrats to lose.

I think the closest parallel to the current progressives in the right are the Christian evangelicals, who also lost elections for their candidates until they managed to broaden their base. In other words, the Tea Party/MAGA resulted from the evangelicals losing power in the Republican Party and therefore creating more room and a bigger base.

I agree that the progressives have elected us a lunatic, unfortunately, but I don’t see any appetite in the current Democratic Party to push back on their religious left.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It's the DNC's fault for not keeping up with the times and rules of the game that is the modern election cycle.

The truth no longer matters as much as a snappy headline. The game changed and the GOP figured out the rules before we did and adapted to be able to win. The Dems are lagging and need to keep up.

The average attention span for an American adult is now only 8 seconds. It's decreased 25% over the last 12 years. We now have a lower attention span than the common goldfish. WTG, humans!

Young people aren't reading long, thought out articles with citied evidence. Young people go by what the latest influencer on TikTok tells them. Did you see how many young, hot (not appearance hot) TikTok influencers were invited to the DNC? They were given incredible access for vlogging and got more facetime with Harris than many donors did at other events. Young people care about the truth, but they want the TL;DR version of that truth.

Old people, the group most susceptible to fake news and misinformation, don't read the articles either. They go off what the headline tells them and what others in the comments are saying. They then parrot those mistruths in other places.

The Dems also hasn't fully embraced the fact that the largest voting body, Gen Z, grew up with Cancel Culture. The Gen Z voters literally said for months, we are not going to vote for Harris if she doesn't come out and fully support Palestine and denounce Isreal, but no one took them seriously. Well, they should have. They are the generation of "if you don't do/say/behave how *we* want you to, we're canceling you."

There's no more "when they go low, we go high" crap. I don't want to hear that BS. That was true when the rules were different. That was true before Trump had his first term but certainly not now. Now? Anything goes.


What snappy headline would have changed the outcome? What did people who chose to vote for Trump not know?

Agree with everything posted---I don't think it is "snappy headline" but the micro-targeting that might have helped. Remember the Post story a few ago re how Elon Musk funded sophisticated micro-targeting of different groups with content designed to steer them toward Trump based on the micro-group's biggest hot-buttons. Just as JFK was the first "television" president, Trump is our first social media president and the Dems need to get better at that game. There also needs to be a concerted effort to restore balance in media ---between the death of local newspapers, the hegemony of Sinclair media in owning local TV stations---there is very little EXCEPT conservative echo-chamber across wide swaths of the country. As someone noted on here---there is no left-version of Joe Rogan commanding millions of followers. Dems also need to restore the tradition of small town papers/media that expose local corruption and focus on local issues and demonstrate the value of that kind of vigilance to voters.

And Dems also need to build a ground game emphasizing the value of a two party system that comes up with compromises instead of the Newt Gingrich/Mitch McConnell Zero-sum approach to governance. Whenever I visit my hometown in South Carolina, I am struck by how much people complain about the unchecked and unmanaged development that has resulted in huge traffic jams and unsafe country roads---since developers have no obligations to contribute to road improvement. The same friends and family who are complaining to me reflexively vote Republican because they have been brainwashed into thinking that all Dems are evil. If there were two viable parties instead of one-party rule, some of those negative development externalities might be more controlled, but they won't be as long as the developer dominated Republican Party has sole control. (I also feel the same way about the extreme blue jurisdictions---they need more balance in the other direction).

In order to have a left-wing Joe Rogan with millions of followers, you need to have a message that millions of people want to hear. There are left-wing podcasters and media, but they cater to a small audience that is getting smaller. They aren’t particularly successful at reaching out beyond their core audience of progressives.

Joe Rogan is a symptom, not a cause. The lack of a left-wing Joe Rogan isn’t structural, it’s because the message from the left is so profoundly unappealing and uninspiring. If the left had an inspiring, unifying message, a left-wing Joe Rogan would exist overnight, probably multiple.

But the progressive wing of the party has become more religion than political party, so they are as impervious to criticism as the far-right evangelicals.

There is no progressive wing of the party at least not one that has any weight. Most of the recent democrat candidates make Nixon or Reagan seem liberal.

Come on. You are blind. Everyone has to kiss the progressive ring now. Look what happened to Seth Moulton, who timidly expressed an opinion that something like 80% of Americans agree with.

But even that is besides the point. You can’t create a left-wing Joe Rogan from the top down. You have to have a popular message, and then a left-wing Joe Rogan, probably multiple of them, will grow. The problem is that the Democrats have a very unpopular message which requires fealty to a quasi-religious identity-based belief structure.

So long as the Democrats have this evangelical quasi-religious belief structure at the heart of their messaging, there will be no left-wing Joe Rogan. There will be media, of course, but they will remain niche, not mainstream.

In essence the Democrats are going the route of the Republicans of the 1990s — building their political future on a passionate but relatively small religious movement. The progressives are the Focus on the Family of the Democrats. And like those evangelicals, they will pull the party in a direction that loses the middle.

There's a lot of Democrats who agree with Moulton. The Democrats need to take a stance like Barry Goldwater did, when he said the zealots need to have a blanket thrown over them. The Republicans didn't listen and from that, we got the Tea Party and now the MAGA cult, and the Democrats seem to be headed the same way if they can't get ahead of the progressives. Democrats need to remember and remind themselves that the progressives are in fact a minority of Democrats, and that they do not have a mandate. Along with reminding the progressives that their ideology and purity tests are what's putting lunatics and felons like Trump in office.

Maybe there are a lot of Democrats who agree with Moulton, but they are dead silent and are not supporting him. Meanwhile his campaign manager resigned immediately, which points to a structural issue — that is the move of someone who fears career consequences in the Democratic Party. I just don’t see any real pushback against the demands of the religious progressives at a structural level in the party.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It's the DNC's fault for not keeping up with the times and rules of the game that is the modern election cycle.

The truth no longer matters as much as a snappy headline. The game changed and the GOP figured out the rules before we did and adapted to be able to win. The Dems are lagging and need to keep up.

The average attention span for an American adult is now only 8 seconds. It's decreased 25% over the last 12 years. We now have a lower attention span than the common goldfish. WTG, humans!

Young people aren't reading long, thought out articles with citied evidence. Young people go by what the latest influencer on TikTok tells them. Did you see how many young, hot (not appearance hot) TikTok influencers were invited to the DNC? They were given incredible access for vlogging and got more facetime with Harris than many donors did at other events. Young people care about the truth, but they want the TL;DR version of that truth.

Old people, the group most susceptible to fake news and misinformation, don't read the articles either. They go off what the headline tells them and what others in the comments are saying. They then parrot those mistruths in other places.

The Dems also hasn't fully embraced the fact that the largest voting body, Gen Z, grew up with Cancel Culture. The Gen Z voters literally said for months, we are not going to vote for Harris if she doesn't come out and fully support Palestine and denounce Isreal, but no one took them seriously. Well, they should have. They are the generation of "if you don't do/say/behave how *we* want you to, we're canceling you."

There's no more "when they go low, we go high" crap. I don't want to hear that BS. That was true when the rules were different. That was true before Trump had his first term but certainly not now. Now? Anything goes.


What snappy headline would have changed the outcome? What did people who chose to vote for Trump not know?

Agree with everything posted---I don't think it is "snappy headline" but the micro-targeting that might have helped. Remember the Post story a few ago re how Elon Musk funded sophisticated micro-targeting of different groups with content designed to steer them toward Trump based on the micro-group's biggest hot-buttons. Just as JFK was the first "television" president, Trump is our first social media president and the Dems need to get better at that game. There also needs to be a concerted effort to restore balance in media ---between the death of local newspapers, the hegemony of Sinclair media in owning local TV stations---there is very little EXCEPT conservative echo-chamber across wide swaths of the country. As someone noted on here---there is no left-version of Joe Rogan commanding millions of followers. Dems also need to restore the tradition of small town papers/media that expose local corruption and focus on local issues and demonstrate the value of that kind of vigilance to voters.

And Dems also need to build a ground game emphasizing the value of a two party system that comes up with compromises instead of the Newt Gingrich/Mitch McConnell Zero-sum approach to governance. Whenever I visit my hometown in South Carolina, I am struck by how much people complain about the unchecked and unmanaged development that has resulted in huge traffic jams and unsafe country roads---since developers have no obligations to contribute to road improvement. The same friends and family who are complaining to me reflexively vote Republican because they have been brainwashed into thinking that all Dems are evil. If there were two viable parties instead of one-party rule, some of those negative development externalities might be more controlled, but they won't be as long as the developer dominated Republican Party has sole control. (I also feel the same way about the extreme blue jurisdictions---they need more balance in the other direction).

In order to have a left-wing Joe Rogan with millions of followers, you need to have a message that millions of people want to hear. There are left-wing podcasters and media, but they cater to a small audience that is getting smaller. They aren’t particularly successful at reaching out beyond their core audience of progressives.

Joe Rogan is a symptom, not a cause. The lack of a left-wing Joe Rogan isn’t structural, it’s because the message from the left is so profoundly unappealing and uninspiring. If the left had an inspiring, unifying message, a left-wing Joe Rogan would exist overnight, probably multiple.

But the progressive wing of the party has become more religion than political party, so they are as impervious to criticism as the far-right evangelicals.

There is no progressive wing of the party at least not one that has any weight. Most of the recent democrat candidates make Nixon or Reagan seem liberal.

Come on. You are blind. Everyone has to kiss the progressive ring now. Look what happened to Seth Moulton, who timidly expressed an opinion that something like 80% of Americans agree with.

But even that is besides the point. You can’t create a left-wing Joe Rogan from the top down. You have to have a popular message, and then a left-wing Joe Rogan, probably multiple of them, will grow. The problem is that the Democrats have a very unpopular message which requires fealty to a quasi-religious identity-based belief structure.

So long as the Democrats have this evangelical quasi-religious belief structure at the heart of their messaging, there will be no left-wing Joe Rogan. There will be media, of course, but they will remain niche, not mainstream.

In essence the Democrats are going the route of the Republicans of the 1990s — building their political future on a passionate but relatively small religious movement. The progressives are the Focus on the Family of the Democrats. And like those evangelicals, they will pull the party in a direction that loses the middle.

There's a lot of Democrats who agree with Moulton. The Democrats need to take a stance like Barry Goldwater did, when he said the zealots need to have a blanket thrown over them. The Republicans didn't listen and from that, we got the Tea Party and now the MAGA cult, and the Democrats seem to be headed the same way if they can't get ahead of the progressives. Democrats need to remember and remind themselves that the progressives are in fact a minority of Democrats, and that they do not have a mandate. Along with reminding the progressives that their ideology and purity tests are what's putting lunatics and felons like Trump in office.

Maybe there are a lot of Democrats who agree with Moulton, but they are dead silent and are not supporting him. Meanwhile his campaign manager resigned immediately, which points to a structural issue — that is the move of someone who fears career consequences in the Democratic Party. I just don’t see any real pushback against the demands of the religious progressives at a structural level in the party.

I think the core structural problem is that the progressives basically control the small donor funding machine that all Democrats now basically rely on. It’s the progressive messages and promotion by progressive social media that drives a lot donations through Act Blue to candidates. Democrats need to find a better way to raise money than to scare old women via email because that radicalizing fundraising machine is what’s driving the party towards the edge of irrelevance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It's the DNC's fault for not keeping up with the times and rules of the game that is the modern election cycle.

The truth no longer matters as much as a snappy headline. The game changed and the GOP figured out the rules before we did and adapted to be able to win. The Dems are lagging and need to keep up.

The average attention span for an American adult is now only 8 seconds. It's decreased 25% over the last 12 years. We now have a lower attention span than the common goldfish. WTG, humans!

Young people aren't reading long, thought out articles with citied evidence. Young people go by what the latest influencer on TikTok tells them. Did you see how many young, hot (not appearance hot) TikTok influencers were invited to the DNC? They were given incredible access for vlogging and got more facetime with Harris than many donors did at other events. Young people care about the truth, but they want the TL;DR version of that truth.

Old people, the group most susceptible to fake news and misinformation, don't read the articles either. They go off what the headline tells them and what others in the comments are saying. They then parrot those mistruths in other places.

The Dems also hasn't fully embraced the fact that the largest voting body, Gen Z, grew up with Cancel Culture. The Gen Z voters literally said for months, we are not going to vote for Harris if she doesn't come out and fully support Palestine and denounce Isreal, but no one took them seriously. Well, they should have. They are the generation of "if you don't do/say/behave how *we* want you to, we're canceling you."

There's no more "when they go low, we go high" crap. I don't want to hear that BS. That was true when the rules were different. That was true before Trump had his first term but certainly not now. Now? Anything goes.


What snappy headline would have changed the outcome? What did people who chose to vote for Trump not know?

Agree with everything posted---I don't think it is "snappy headline" but the micro-targeting that might have helped. Remember the Post story a few ago re how Elon Musk funded sophisticated micro-targeting of different groups with content designed to steer them toward Trump based on the micro-group's biggest hot-buttons. Just as JFK was the first "television" president, Trump is our first social media president and the Dems need to get better at that game. There also needs to be a concerted effort to restore balance in media ---between the death of local newspapers, the hegemony of Sinclair media in owning local TV stations---there is very little EXCEPT conservative echo-chamber across wide swaths of the country. As someone noted on here---there is no left-version of Joe Rogan commanding millions of followers. Dems also need to restore the tradition of small town papers/media that expose local corruption and focus on local issues and demonstrate the value of that kind of vigilance to voters.

And Dems also need to build a ground game emphasizing the value of a two party system that comes up with compromises instead of the Newt Gingrich/Mitch McConnell Zero-sum approach to governance. Whenever I visit my hometown in South Carolina, I am struck by how much people complain about the unchecked and unmanaged development that has resulted in huge traffic jams and unsafe country roads---since developers have no obligations to contribute to road improvement. The same friends and family who are complaining to me reflexively vote Republican because they have been brainwashed into thinking that all Dems are evil. If there were two viable parties instead of one-party rule, some of those negative development externalities might be more controlled, but they won't be as long as the developer dominated Republican Party has sole control. (I also feel the same way about the extreme blue jurisdictions---they need more balance in the other direction).

In order to have a left-wing Joe Rogan with millions of followers, you need to have a message that millions of people want to hear. There are left-wing podcasters and media, but they cater to a small audience that is getting smaller. They aren’t particularly successful at reaching out beyond their core audience of progressives.

Joe Rogan is a symptom, not a cause. The lack of a left-wing Joe Rogan isn’t structural, it’s because the message from the left is so profoundly unappealing and uninspiring. If the left had an inspiring, unifying message, a left-wing Joe Rogan would exist overnight, probably multiple.

But the progressive wing of the party has become more religion than political party, so they are as impervious to criticism as the far-right evangelicals.

There is no progressive wing of the party at least not one that has any weight. Most of the recent democrat candidates make Nixon or Reagan seem liberal.

Come on. You are blind. Everyone has to kiss the progressive ring now. Look what happened to Seth Moulton, who timidly expressed an opinion that something like 80% of Americans agree with.

But even that is besides the point. You can’t create a left-wing Joe Rogan from the top down. You have to have a popular message, and then a left-wing Joe Rogan, probably multiple of them, will grow. The problem is that the Democrats have a very unpopular message which requires fealty to a quasi-religious identity-based belief structure.

So long as the Democrats have this evangelical quasi-religious belief structure at the heart of their messaging, there will be no left-wing Joe Rogan. There will be media, of course, but they will remain niche, not mainstream.

In essence the Democrats are going the route of the Republicans of the 1990s — building their political future on a passionate but relatively small religious movement. The progressives are the Focus on the Family of the Democrats. And like those evangelicals, they will pull the party in a direction that loses the middle.

There's a lot of Democrats who agree with Moulton. The Democrats need to take a stance like Barry Goldwater did, when he said the zealots need to have a blanket thrown over them. The Republicans didn't listen and from that, we got the Tea Party and now the MAGA cult, and the Democrats seem to be headed the same way if they can't get ahead of the progressives. Democrats need to remember and remind themselves that the progressives are in fact a minority of Democrats, and that they do not have a mandate. Along with reminding the progressives that their ideology and purity tests are what's putting lunatics and felons like Trump in office.

Maybe there are a lot of Democrats who agree with Moulton, but they are dead silent and are not supporting him. Meanwhile his campaign manager resigned immediately, which points to a structural issue — that is the move of someone who fears career consequences in the Democratic Party. I just don’t see any real pushback against the demands of the religious progressives at a structural level in the party.

We’re still here, we just became independents and voted for Trump.

[Anonymous]

The democrats have the more broadly popular polices. Every poll gets to the same truth.
Voters prefer democratic policies and governance.
AND
voters often incorrectly ascribed the policies that they most prefer to republicans.
That’s why the answer is to just let the republicans govern. Stop protecting voters from the consequences of their votes.
That’s what puts the train back on track…. After the republicans inevitably derail it, like they do every. single. time.