Someone should ask Shor to separate the LGB from the TQ in his polling and see if the opinions shake out differently. I'd expect to see the TQ being a bigger issue and leaning more toward trusting GOP.
I think that's almost certainly correct. I do wonder if it's still a touchy enough subject that even Blue Rose doesn't really want to dig into it (though I don't think they usually shy away from tough questions, even when the answers aren't what they want to hear).
Yes, I think polling is doing a severe disservice here. I recognize, as Michael Baharaeen notes, that it is seen by many as a touchy subject. At the same time, shying away from addressing it head on exacerbates the problem, because the Democrats are not getting a good window in and so therefore don’t realize how badly they need to course correct. An underlying problem is conflation of people, however they may identify, with an ideology that has been thoughtlessly woven into law and public policy. What this has forced women and families to do who have been harmed directly and/or who are aware of the harms is to put all their energy into fighting against the unfairness and harms this has created: males who identify as females in female sports, women’s prisons, and other critically important female spaces required for dignity, privacy and safety, and terrible harm to troubled and non-conforming young people through inappropriate medical interventions that damage their bodies permanently. Women and families like these are not going to give up on battling against this, and it is because they are right. What that means, among other things, is that women who in the past have been a strong part of the engine that drove, eg, the blue wave in 2018, are currently having to fight against their own party. Until and unless the Democrats come to their senses on this, I strongly fear they will continue losing elections. I know that this is not the sole problem Democrats face, but it is one that is vastly under-appreciated. I write this as a lifelong Democrat who voted for Harris because I knew we faced a world of woe if Trump returned to office.
Insightful observation. A lot of the LG group ( particularly older members) are attempting to distinguish themselves from TQ and recognize that all those various elements in the alliance do not have identical interests. Several comments on various substacks by Lesbians and Gays have made this specific point, and harshly criticized the shrill , extreme and activist T’s. .
Not really. Gender, as we know, is socially constructed. It's science. That's why it is taught in college. Many ethnic minorities, particularly "men" may not be aware of this. They need to be taught this by college educated "women".
Additionally, it is important to remember that minorities are essentially like children, and must be looked after as such. They may, for example, not understand when certain things are safe and effective for them. This is another opportunity for college educated "women" to step up to the plate and educate them.
There will be some initial pushback, but remember those are just the more reactionary elements lashing out. The important thing is that we keep hammering on the message.
It is critically important that we all work toward deconstructing the cisheteronormative patriarchy among BIPOC testicle havers who identify as "youth."
These Magats who incessantly howl "you are destroying my material wellbeing and using my paycheck to crap all over my civil liberties" are really just afraid of change and unaware of the utopia we plan on providing to them and to BIPOC testicle havers.
They all need to go back to the trailer park with their confederate flags and cishet Charlie Daniels memorabilia, and let us, the grown ups, think the big thoughts.
Our extensive record of success speaks for itself.
It's quite interesting, isn't it? The people trust the GOP on a lot of important issues, and yet the GOP has consistently been bleeding EHC to the Left, which means that it's being more and more deprived of its traditional intellectual elite.
I looked and looked for any mention here of the Biden vs Trump policies on gender identity. It's such a third rail that it is absent from a lot of reporting and I don't like that.
The Democrats need to not be crazy, but they can't seem to help themselves.
For example, fanatical support for the "trans women are women" line is crazy. Cheering the judge who ordered a plane load of illegal alien killers returned is crazy. Supporting the arrival of millions of illegal aliens is crazy.
The Democrats have been taken over by people with very radical ideas. These ideas seem not radical but simply crazy to a substantial number of people. As long as these ideas are the pillars of Democrat policy, they will be in the electoral wilderness.
I saw a video yesterday of some Democrat leader saying that their problem was bad messaging. No, it's not the messaging, it's the message itself that is the problem.
Unless something really significant happens in Democrat land, Vance will be the next President.
They're rounding up pretty much any Venezuelan with a tattoo, denying them due process and disappearing them to a horrific mega prison. A bunch of them are not gang members. That should concern every American.
It's not just messaging. It's their actions. Thinking that open borders and inviting in Tren De aragua is a great move? That gives voters the right to seriously question Democrat sanity. Especially since the ones who suffer the most from this idiocy are the poorer areas.
Perhaps voters didn’t like a party that cancelled primaries, ran an intellectually impaired candidate, lied about it and the anointed a proven unpopular candidate in his stead without a vote. Maybe they aren’t dumb and shouldn’t be treated as such going forward.
It was obvious to everyone on the right that Biden was impaired, while the Democrat Party pretended otherwise. I couldn't believe it when they crowded out everybody from the Democrat primary in order to protect Biden, who was clearly mentally unable to do the job In 2024. That was where their screw up began.And then they picked an unqualified person like Kamala, apparently figuring they could just use her as a placeholder and tell her what to do just like they did with Biden, had she won.
Fascinating stuff. However, is correlation causation, necessarily? And will issues that matter in 2024 matter in 2028?
I know Schor mentioned that Trump's popularity on the economy is waning, but how sticky was that in the first place? And could some of Trump's success at the ballot box be attributable to just him - i.e., his charisma, "IDGAF" personality, his goofy-crazy-uncle-at-the-Thanksgiving-table sense of humor? Can Vance, for instance, replicate this? I'm not...sure?
Also, what does moving center-right on cultural issues mean, specifically? I recall the same argument being made after Kerry lost in 2004 re Gay Marriage. And are the cultural rightward shifts parallel to the economic views, or (as I suspect) is the former the result of the latter? In '08, after everyone lost their homes and savings, suddenly no one cared about "the sanctity of marriage." As for non-white voters - again, Bush in '04 boasted similar gains, percentage wise, only for the GOP to see them evaporate the minute Obama showed up.
I don't doubt the empirical veracity of Schor's findings, nor their qualitative implications for the Democratic party, but I'm a bit skeptical of the doomerism implied here, especially given the closeness of the 24 race and the good performance by democrats downticket during a "bad vibes" election.
All fair questions. The reason I'd say it's worth reading a little more into the data than just "it was a bad year/Trump has unique appeal/things change quickly" (just to quickly simplify what seem to be some common objections) is that several of these trends have been in the works for years, especially on the demographic front. We also have 4–6 years of data now showing that the public has moved in a more conservative direction culturally as well as in self-ID.
Sure, some of this may be "thermostatic public opinion," as they say, and it's possible Trump overreach will buoy the Dems in 26/28. But some of this is much more structural. I want to make sure it's not lost that this isn't just about the presidential election but about how Dems have been struggling down the ballot as well because they're increasingly unable to be competitive with working-class voters and in rural/exurban communities. Again, that's not really new/unique to 2024 but has been happening for some time. And because of the country's center-right nature as well as the biases favoring rural states/areas in many of its political institutions, Dems have a higher hill to climb to win than Rs often do.
"We also have 4–6 years of data now showing that the public has moved in a more conservative direction culturally as well as in self-ID."
But that's my point - this trend neatly coincides with the time that Trump has been on the scene, and PRECISELY coincides with the economic/sociocultural fallout from COVID. Don't get me wrong - I agree with you (and by extension Shor) on your overall points, but I can't help but think this "Rightward vibe shift" is some weird-assed trend that, like support for Bush and the Iraq war in 2003, lots of Americans are gonna pretend they didn't support 20 years from now.
This is of course NOT to say that the Democratic party shouldn't improve - the record speaks for itself, after all, and even if I'm right, it's embarrassing that the democratic party can easily fall of a cliff the minute public sentiment sours.
It's just that whenever I see, "Democrats have to move to the center," or, "Democrats need to adopt popular ideas," or "Democrats have to appeal to the working class," I worry about what the specifics look like in practice. Yes, making Blue cities affordable and effective helps, but will that be enough to convince swing voters in Michigan that, no, Democrats don't drink the blood of babies? Or that teachers are actually good people? Yes, democrats should appeal to popular social ideas. But (pardon me for being melodramatic) slavery was a popular social idea for a long time too. Should we throw trans people under the bus? Also, Biden did try to appeal to the working class - but because American voters don't understand how economics work, he got all the blame for inflation. Meanwhile, Joe Rogan is putting on Nazi apologists on his show and gets barely any pushback from mainstream press.
Do we start rationalizing school shootings because Americans love guns? Etc.
You get my point - I'm worried that Democrats are going to abandon principles. Meanwhile, Republicans have spent the last 10 year becoming post modern weirdos, whining and screaming and lying, and yet STILL manage to shift overton's window rightward. Pardon me if I'm hesitant to "move to the center" if that's what moving to the center means.
I get what you're saying. I think when I (and others) say "move to the center," it doesn't even necessarily mean move to the middle of the current ideological spectrum but rather step back from the craziness that has come to consume the party on questions related to race, gender, immigration, crime, etc. since ~2020, give or take a couple years. (Maybe it's more accurate to say move *toward* the center, not necessarily *to* it.) Sure, some voters are always going to think of Democrats as the worst people in the world, but there's no need to give Republicans ammunition by saying, say, that you support decriminalizing border crossings, defunding the police, or subsidizing sex changes for incarcerated migrants. As some have previously said, "If it sounds like an Onion headline, maybe reconsider what you're doing."
Not to relitigate Harris's 2024 campaign, because obviously she tried to moderate on that stuff, but Trump's attacks on her were so effective because she'd previously supported all three of those things and there was tape to prove it. So that's what I think many of us have in mind when it comes to moderating. Don't feel pressured to adopt the most ridiculous-sounding views of academics and activists; have a little spine to say, no, that stuff lacks all common sense and will also hurt us politically.
Maybe the right balance resembles something akin to second-term Obama (fighting for universal rights, e.g., gay marriage, equal treatment of blacks) but just before the start of the "Great Awokening" period when things started going off the rails. I think that's both a morally justifiable place to be and also better politics for the long term.
I obviously don't think Dems can expect win over all detractors. But they increasingly comprise and cater to the views of a highly educated, urban-dwelling professional class whose social and cultural are sometimes quite out of step with those of the median American. E.g., it's one thing to say we should treat trans Americans with dignity and respect and that they should be protected to the fullest extent civil rights law the same as anyone else. It's another to argue there's no debate to be had at all on the sports question, pediatric gender care, etc. Similarly, advocating for more legal immigration, a streamlined application process, and a pathway to citizenship for people already in the country is something many Americans support, but decriminalizing border crossings or even just showing little interest in proactively deterring illegal migration is not.
It seems like you'd probably agree on balance with what I'm saying. I think a sensible Dem party could find a reasonable medium on these questions and others, and it doesn't have to be a matter of throwing any groups "under the bus." It's just staying within the bounds of common sense, even getting back to their roots from not that long ago.
It’s really hard to read that craziness is consuming the Democratic Party - and that’s why they’re losing. When the craziest of all political parties that has existed to date is quite literally the DJT/MAGA/GOP. This is just an absurd assertion , in the truest sense of the meaning of absurdity.
We have faith leaders from Mega churches claiming drag queens are grooming whilst they simultaneously sexually abuse minors and hawk crypto. Candidates from a major party asserting in live debates that immigrants are eating cats and dogs. Former celebrity wrestlers ripping their shirts off at a main convention. Swiping every file at the DoD of references to “gay” which included a WWII bomber named Enola Gay. Removing 4star gens who are black or female and replacing with white male 3star gens. Taking the release of 2 rapist and sex traffickers from a foreign country and transporting them here, while simultaneously deporting a Dr who is actually a citizen. Spending millions of tax $ to have POTUS attend NASCAR and his own fake gold tournament . The list goes on and on and on
It is ABSURD. We are living in Idiocracy bc of DJT- it is an assinine reality show- but the Dems, the DEMS-they’ve gone off the deep end with craziness. I want to just unplug the system and reboot when I read this 😉
This “center” is really right, and not empirically centrist at all, but we’re being gaslighted into thinking that it is, when in fact it’s been manufactured and manipulated, and framed as “cool” and edgy. We must not accept this.
Sure, but which principles, exactly? Unless you’re going to argue something so broad as “supporting the powerless” or the like, then you have to acknowledge how, across say five decades, they have become the party of the rich and culturally elite, and, across the last decade, they’ve abandoned specific issues both focused and broad: do you hear about fear of “dark money” from democrats anymore, now that most of it goes to them? Ten years ago Obama was not advocating essentially open borders. And “science is real,” I’d like to think. But can we not find a way to support trans people that acknowledges a thing called evolution? Here you might think it’s me being melodramatic, but I think the question offers a good thought experiment.
I’m being serious when I say that on first read I assumed you were saying that Democrats have spent the last decade becoming “post modern weirdos.” I mean, haven’t they/we? I grew up in a Marxist commune in the 70s, and even I am completely gutted by how out of touch the progressive wing is. Be well, all.
I agree that what I’m complaining about certainly opens the proverbial door to even more potential problems and rhetorical pitfalls.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I don’t want to see Democrats either become GOP lite, or for democrats to chase a center that is always in flux. my worry is that potential 2028 candidates, like Gavin Newsom, are going out of their way trying to “rush to the middle” that they’re nodding along to bullshit from Charlie Kirk and others, or engaging in cringe nonsense (dropping more f bombs in their speeches to sound more Trumpy, attacking immigration in nativist tones, etc) that will a) not end up accomplishing what they want, b) further moving Overtons window rightward, and c) leaving us with two right wing parties in our Duvergers Law governed/first past the post electoral college voting system.
Contrast this with the GOPs strategy- they introduce their toxic ideas into the mainstream, ensure the slings and arrows, and then when the other party drops the ball for a second, go all in, and shift the discourse to their liking.
This is exactly right. There’s a popular tweet that said when Dems lose they look in the mirror and say well we gotta get more racist. My fear is they’re misreading the electorate and will ala Gavin Newsom jettison minority groups showing that they have no principles - which is the true reason Kamala “Liz Cheney” Harris lost. A few weeks ago a prominent centrist pundit with a big following gave his diagnosis, and his followers immediately followed up with the old finally we got rid of woke and will be able to increase police presence in black communities. This wasn’t even a topic in the piece - but his centrist followers were eager for black punishment. No talk of healthcare, no talk of AA and the eradication civil rights protections, no social programs, just a centrist (center right) set of punitive policies for minorities to play to an angry white electorate.
Your comment leaves the impression that you believe that racism is as virulent as it was 50 years ago and in fact that it may be on the increase. Both the trending of nonwhite voters to Trump and a lot of other data do not support this conclusion. I believe that your generalizations are overly broad, such as the implication that those who feel that defund the police was misguided and want to increase police presence in minority neighborhoods are a priori racist. Yet many blacks who I know and certainly many more that I have interviewed by columnists and TV reporters totally decry theinctrasedcrinevinthrur neighborhoods since police presence was reduced. Are there racist police? Certainly. Are there instances of being stopped and mistreated when DWB ( driving when black) ? Absolutely. But as the perhaps apocryphal following story indicates, is there also justification for such tactics on occasion maybe. The older black policeman told the story of the young black driver who he stopped and as the cop approached the car and asked for his license belligerently stated - ‘you stopped me because I am a black teenager driving a muscle car” , and to which the policeman calmly responded “ no, I,stopped you because you just ran that red light”. Actually heard the story told by a cop, no idea if it was true, but it sure makes the point that the creation and promulgation of CRT has probably been more harmful than helpful both to the fabric of society and to the attempt to make continued progress towards MLK’s dream of a color blind , or if your prefer skin color irrelevant , society.
If politics is downstream of culture, then culture is downstream of economics. The shift in non-white people towards Trump had more to do with the latter than the former. Yes, non-white voters told pollsters “democrats care more about trans issues than Inflation,” but that doesn’t mean they hate Trans people - it means, well, they just wanted more attention paid to inflation than anything else.
This is exactly right. The minority shifts among black voters (meager as they were) has more to do with neoliberalism running its course in terms of solutions. I was reading comments from people not voting for Kamala because they saw their protections erode (AA, voting rights etc) and didn’t trust that Dems had solutions or the conviction to execute. In this economic climate they decided to risk it all in the casino capitalism economy and see what happens.
Your post, if I’m generous, is only tangentially related to what I wrote. I’m assuming you wanted to get some MLK cliche stuff off your chest. Go for it. Good luck.
Another thing to consider is that “moving to the center” is the political version of the old warning Generals would say about “fighting the last war.” The center you thought you were moving to is now moved rightward. Who knows what the salient issues of 2028 will be?
Meanwhile the GOP NEVER moves to the center, instead doubling down after losing elections to capitalize when circumstances swing their way.
That bit about Trump as ideological moderate was… bracing. I agree with it, but I never would’ve framed it that way myself when Harris was like “fuck yeah, I got a gun. I’ll shoot a motherfucker in my house.”
I’m all for moderating on cultural issues, but how do we do that without selling out marginalized groups, like trans kids? I get that repubs don’t want their daughters seeing dicks in the locker room. That’s understandable and valid af (and the Left should acknowledge it), but I’ve seen some local votes where even private unisex changing rooms, recommended by school admin, were rejected by parents in favor of complete ban. I’m done assuming that Americans are decent moderates in regards to others.
A big part of the problem is that the Left has not acknowledged one iota of nuance on trans issues for most of the past decade. I can’t recall a single Democratic politician saying “Self-ID presents potential for abuse by people operating in bad faith” or “We need more quality studies around medically transitioning minors to make informed policy choices”.
There were plenty of decent, persuadable moderates who got sick of being called bigots and watching Democrats act like whatever maximalist demand they just learned about 5 minutes ago was a self-evident civil rights issue.
This is where my thinking goes aswell. I hear about the need to fill research gaps everywhere but at the top. Like the repubs, Dems have a maximalist streak driven by our zero-sum system. That can work, but only on the right issues. Doing it on culture war shit is gross. Plus, tacking center on certain issues gets you points with the majority. Individual rights are still a common language.
wtf are you talking about ? The shiny culture war object again ? People are dying already and will die bc of these asinine policies - people will be put into poverty - but sure keep discussing the shiny culture war topic.
As the article mentions, it’s one of several shiny culture war issues the Democrats staked huge amounts of political capital on, alienating both swing voters and members of their own coalition in the process.
The current asinine policies will likely continue until Democratic leadership learns how to occasionally say “No” to activists who only know how to continually ratchet up their demands.
What a crock. Harris was a terrible candidate. When she actually ran in a primary,she was so unpopular that she dropped out in Iowa. She had no new vision for her candidacy. And she was installed, not selected. Democrats think they have a messaging problem. They are wrong. Almost all major cities are run by Democrats. People can see how they govern. And they have decided to demand you completely agree with what they want or they will attack you. I hope they continue down the same path, until they have lost long enough to reform
The radical crazies need to be shut down and sidelined. When you have to explain your support for tampons in boy's rooms, Trans men in women's bathrooms/locker rooms, secretly transitioning kids etc., you have already lost the conversation
1) Kamala was not qualified. I recall that early on it was reported that she was frustrated with Biden because he was giving her assignments that were "too hard". Doesn't bode well seeing her as president.
2) Democrats could try getting their terror wing to stop attacking Tesla owners and Tesla dealerships.Terror doesn't sell and it's grotesque. Some Dems openly cheer it. Jimmy Kimmel tacitly made fun of it while pretending he wasn't doing so.
I just want someone to dig deep into why immigrants are tacking hard to the right. I know some are pro-life, but it can’t be just that. I think it’s crucial to understand this.
First generation immigrants tend to be more conservative in some key ways than future generations. As someone else noted below, this includes on immigration. There's been this misguided idea for some time that Hispanic immigrants, specifically, support more liberal immigration laws, which seemed to be rooted in little more than shared identity (most people trying to come here since 1965 have been from Latin America). But it turned out that was a gross oversimplification of Hispanic Americans' attitudes.
I'm going to guess a big issue was undocumented immigrants. A constant refrain that I was reading when Immigrants were quizzed on their reasoning was that "I did everything legally to be in America. I waited my turn, did all the paperwork, got all the proper permissions. These 'illegals' bypassed all that and get to stay anyway? Why did I work so hard?! Get them out of the country."
I mean, it's stupid as it sounds, as for some there in no/limited pathway to citizenship, but it mainly was out of "disgust" for how the undocumented immigrated, unfortunately.
I read this piece with interest and tried to read all the commentary with an open mind, and I will admit to a "radically moderate" bias that will seem left-of-center to some here...
... but nowhere did I see mention of the disconnect between the intellectually dishonest Murdoch-led information ecosystem in which Trump and the GOP have thrived for decades versus the *relatively* balanced approach on the center and in liberal circles. For example, there is absolutely no equivalent to the exposure of manipulative mendacity when it came to the 2020 election and especially the 700+ million dollar judgement against Fox News.
I agree with the comments that racisim and misogyny, among other things, were exploited successfully by Trump and the GOP. I would also suggest that Trump's smartest moves in the 2024 cycle - and the entire period from Jan '21 to Nov '24 - was to avoid as much as possible frontal confrontations with unfriendly interviewers in unfriendly venues and face-to-face debates with his political opponents whether Republicans in primaries or Democrats in the general elections.
I agree that there are some hot-button issues that drove some leaning Democrats to not vote at all or to even vote against Harris while some of the latter voted for their Democratic candidate for Congress and have shown support for the institutions that the GOP has bashed for years and the Trump has been trashing. I simply think the Trump-led FOX-filtered GOP campaigning was successful at avoiding anything close to a complete discussion and confrontational debate over the issues that concern us all.
I strongly believe that the Democrats lost in the culture war, especially DEI and transgender ideology. Progressives contributed enormously to the Democratic candidate's defeat. It's too bad that the moderates can't manage more influence. Unfortunately, extremes in both parties act more aggressively and, therefore, have more impact than their smaller numbers deserve.
Great article. I will admit I am cheerleading the findings of this article as a traditionalist conservative. I would like to add that there is one thing not mentioned in this article that matters --- Birth Rates of Conservatives vs Birth Rates of Liberals. I know that in my very conservative Christian denomination, there is an emphasis on winning the culture through having more children, and this is very observable. Liberal/Left folks are simply not having as many children. There have been a number of stories/posts about this issue from both right and left writers/researchers. Perhaps there is a heavy down wind cost for Democrats who encourage women to prioritize career over having children?
I’m sure this was meant well, but I find all democratic polling specious. The democrats lost, and the reason was people preferred Trump to Biden and/or Harris. Dem’s hadn’t vetted Biden’s ability to appear coherent near a camera, a critical skill in a President. Those background things are usually tested through oppo research and with debate role play.
They forgot to test the role where Biden is awake.
Someone should ask Shor to separate the LGB from the TQ in his polling and see if the opinions shake out differently. I'd expect to see the TQ being a bigger issue and leaning more toward trusting GOP.
I think that's almost certainly correct. I do wonder if it's still a touchy enough subject that even Blue Rose doesn't really want to dig into it (though I don't think they usually shy away from tough questions, even when the answers aren't what they want to hear).
Yes, I think polling is doing a severe disservice here. I recognize, as Michael Baharaeen notes, that it is seen by many as a touchy subject. At the same time, shying away from addressing it head on exacerbates the problem, because the Democrats are not getting a good window in and so therefore don’t realize how badly they need to course correct. An underlying problem is conflation of people, however they may identify, with an ideology that has been thoughtlessly woven into law and public policy. What this has forced women and families to do who have been harmed directly and/or who are aware of the harms is to put all their energy into fighting against the unfairness and harms this has created: males who identify as females in female sports, women’s prisons, and other critically important female spaces required for dignity, privacy and safety, and terrible harm to troubled and non-conforming young people through inappropriate medical interventions that damage their bodies permanently. Women and families like these are not going to give up on battling against this, and it is because they are right. What that means, among other things, is that women who in the past have been a strong part of the engine that drove, eg, the blue wave in 2018, are currently having to fight against their own party. Until and unless the Democrats come to their senses on this, I strongly fear they will continue losing elections. I know that this is not the sole problem Democrats face, but it is one that is vastly under-appreciated. I write this as a lifelong Democrat who voted for Harris because I knew we faced a world of woe if Trump returned to office.
Insightful observation. A lot of the LG group ( particularly older members) are attempting to distinguish themselves from TQ and recognize that all those various elements in the alliance do not have identical interests. Several comments on various substacks by Lesbians and Gays have made this specific point, and harshly criticized the shrill , extreme and activist T’s. .
Not really. Gender, as we know, is socially constructed. It's science. That's why it is taught in college. Many ethnic minorities, particularly "men" may not be aware of this. They need to be taught this by college educated "women".
Additionally, it is important to remember that minorities are essentially like children, and must be looked after as such. They may, for example, not understand when certain things are safe and effective for them. This is another opportunity for college educated "women" to step up to the plate and educate them.
There will be some initial pushback, but remember those are just the more reactionary elements lashing out. The important thing is that we keep hammering on the message.
It is critically important that we all work toward deconstructing the cisheteronormative patriarchy among BIPOC testicle havers who identify as "youth."
Yes, they should definitely push harder on this. That will win votes.
Yes, sister WilliamD.
These Magats who incessantly howl "you are destroying my material wellbeing and using my paycheck to crap all over my civil liberties" are really just afraid of change and unaware of the utopia we plan on providing to them and to BIPOC testicle havers.
They all need to go back to the trailer park with their confederate flags and cishet Charlie Daniels memorabilia, and let us, the grown ups, think the big thoughts.
Our extensive record of success speaks for itself.
WilliamD: what in heavens name are you trying to say here?
Well I see someone here has never taken a class on gender or Sociology. He's providing helpful advice to the Democratic party, obviously.
It's quite interesting, isn't it? The people trust the GOP on a lot of important issues, and yet the GOP has consistently been bleeding EHC to the Left, which means that it's being more and more deprived of its traditional intellectual elite.
There are few ideas that are more insufferble than EHC. Keep talking that point up and watch your fortunes drop even further among the Working Class.
What the hell is EHC? Even the Urban Dictionary has no idea.
I looked and looked for any mention here of the Biden vs Trump policies on gender identity. It's such a third rail that it is absent from a lot of reporting and I don't like that.
The Democrats need to not be crazy, but they can't seem to help themselves.
For example, fanatical support for the "trans women are women" line is crazy. Cheering the judge who ordered a plane load of illegal alien killers returned is crazy. Supporting the arrival of millions of illegal aliens is crazy.
The Democrats have been taken over by people with very radical ideas. These ideas seem not radical but simply crazy to a substantial number of people. As long as these ideas are the pillars of Democrat policy, they will be in the electoral wilderness.
I saw a video yesterday of some Democrat leader saying that their problem was bad messaging. No, it's not the messaging, it's the message itself that is the problem.
Unless something really significant happens in Democrat land, Vance will be the next President.
They're rounding up pretty much any Venezuelan with a tattoo, denying them due process and disappearing them to a horrific mega prison. A bunch of them are not gang members. That should concern every American.
It's not just messaging. It's their actions. Thinking that open borders and inviting in Tren De aragua is a great move? That gives voters the right to seriously question Democrat sanity. Especially since the ones who suffer the most from this idiocy are the poorer areas.
Perhaps voters didn’t like a party that cancelled primaries, ran an intellectually impaired candidate, lied about it and the anointed a proven unpopular candidate in his stead without a vote. Maybe they aren’t dumb and shouldn’t be treated as such going forward.
It was obvious to everyone on the right that Biden was impaired, while the Democrat Party pretended otherwise. I couldn't believe it when they crowded out everybody from the Democrat primary in order to protect Biden, who was clearly mentally unable to do the job In 2024. That was where their screw up began.And then they picked an unqualified person like Kamala, apparently figuring they could just use her as a placeholder and tell her what to do just like they did with Biden, had she won.
What makes you say Kamala was unqualified? I'm not disagreeing; I'm just curious.
Fascinating stuff. However, is correlation causation, necessarily? And will issues that matter in 2024 matter in 2028?
I know Schor mentioned that Trump's popularity on the economy is waning, but how sticky was that in the first place? And could some of Trump's success at the ballot box be attributable to just him - i.e., his charisma, "IDGAF" personality, his goofy-crazy-uncle-at-the-Thanksgiving-table sense of humor? Can Vance, for instance, replicate this? I'm not...sure?
Also, what does moving center-right on cultural issues mean, specifically? I recall the same argument being made after Kerry lost in 2004 re Gay Marriage. And are the cultural rightward shifts parallel to the economic views, or (as I suspect) is the former the result of the latter? In '08, after everyone lost their homes and savings, suddenly no one cared about "the sanctity of marriage." As for non-white voters - again, Bush in '04 boasted similar gains, percentage wise, only for the GOP to see them evaporate the minute Obama showed up.
I don't doubt the empirical veracity of Schor's findings, nor their qualitative implications for the Democratic party, but I'm a bit skeptical of the doomerism implied here, especially given the closeness of the 24 race and the good performance by democrats downticket during a "bad vibes" election.
All fair questions. The reason I'd say it's worth reading a little more into the data than just "it was a bad year/Trump has unique appeal/things change quickly" (just to quickly simplify what seem to be some common objections) is that several of these trends have been in the works for years, especially on the demographic front. We also have 4–6 years of data now showing that the public has moved in a more conservative direction culturally as well as in self-ID.
Sure, some of this may be "thermostatic public opinion," as they say, and it's possible Trump overreach will buoy the Dems in 26/28. But some of this is much more structural. I want to make sure it's not lost that this isn't just about the presidential election but about how Dems have been struggling down the ballot as well because they're increasingly unable to be competitive with working-class voters and in rural/exurban communities. Again, that's not really new/unique to 2024 but has been happening for some time. And because of the country's center-right nature as well as the biases favoring rural states/areas in many of its political institutions, Dems have a higher hill to climb to win than Rs often do.
"We also have 4–6 years of data now showing that the public has moved in a more conservative direction culturally as well as in self-ID."
But that's my point - this trend neatly coincides with the time that Trump has been on the scene, and PRECISELY coincides with the economic/sociocultural fallout from COVID. Don't get me wrong - I agree with you (and by extension Shor) on your overall points, but I can't help but think this "Rightward vibe shift" is some weird-assed trend that, like support for Bush and the Iraq war in 2003, lots of Americans are gonna pretend they didn't support 20 years from now.
This is of course NOT to say that the Democratic party shouldn't improve - the record speaks for itself, after all, and even if I'm right, it's embarrassing that the democratic party can easily fall of a cliff the minute public sentiment sours.
It's just that whenever I see, "Democrats have to move to the center," or, "Democrats need to adopt popular ideas," or "Democrats have to appeal to the working class," I worry about what the specifics look like in practice. Yes, making Blue cities affordable and effective helps, but will that be enough to convince swing voters in Michigan that, no, Democrats don't drink the blood of babies? Or that teachers are actually good people? Yes, democrats should appeal to popular social ideas. But (pardon me for being melodramatic) slavery was a popular social idea for a long time too. Should we throw trans people under the bus? Also, Biden did try to appeal to the working class - but because American voters don't understand how economics work, he got all the blame for inflation. Meanwhile, Joe Rogan is putting on Nazi apologists on his show and gets barely any pushback from mainstream press.
Do we start rationalizing school shootings because Americans love guns? Etc.
You get my point - I'm worried that Democrats are going to abandon principles. Meanwhile, Republicans have spent the last 10 year becoming post modern weirdos, whining and screaming and lying, and yet STILL manage to shift overton's window rightward. Pardon me if I'm hesitant to "move to the center" if that's what moving to the center means.
I get what you're saying. I think when I (and others) say "move to the center," it doesn't even necessarily mean move to the middle of the current ideological spectrum but rather step back from the craziness that has come to consume the party on questions related to race, gender, immigration, crime, etc. since ~2020, give or take a couple years. (Maybe it's more accurate to say move *toward* the center, not necessarily *to* it.) Sure, some voters are always going to think of Democrats as the worst people in the world, but there's no need to give Republicans ammunition by saying, say, that you support decriminalizing border crossings, defunding the police, or subsidizing sex changes for incarcerated migrants. As some have previously said, "If it sounds like an Onion headline, maybe reconsider what you're doing."
Not to relitigate Harris's 2024 campaign, because obviously she tried to moderate on that stuff, but Trump's attacks on her were so effective because she'd previously supported all three of those things and there was tape to prove it. So that's what I think many of us have in mind when it comes to moderating. Don't feel pressured to adopt the most ridiculous-sounding views of academics and activists; have a little spine to say, no, that stuff lacks all common sense and will also hurt us politically.
Maybe the right balance resembles something akin to second-term Obama (fighting for universal rights, e.g., gay marriage, equal treatment of blacks) but just before the start of the "Great Awokening" period when things started going off the rails. I think that's both a morally justifiable place to be and also better politics for the long term.
I obviously don't think Dems can expect win over all detractors. But they increasingly comprise and cater to the views of a highly educated, urban-dwelling professional class whose social and cultural are sometimes quite out of step with those of the median American. E.g., it's one thing to say we should treat trans Americans with dignity and respect and that they should be protected to the fullest extent civil rights law the same as anyone else. It's another to argue there's no debate to be had at all on the sports question, pediatric gender care, etc. Similarly, advocating for more legal immigration, a streamlined application process, and a pathway to citizenship for people already in the country is something many Americans support, but decriminalizing border crossings or even just showing little interest in proactively deterring illegal migration is not.
It seems like you'd probably agree on balance with what I'm saying. I think a sensible Dem party could find a reasonable medium on these questions and others, and it doesn't have to be a matter of throwing any groups "under the bus." It's just staying within the bounds of common sense, even getting back to their roots from not that long ago.
It’s really hard to read that craziness is consuming the Democratic Party - and that’s why they’re losing. When the craziest of all political parties that has existed to date is quite literally the DJT/MAGA/GOP. This is just an absurd assertion , in the truest sense of the meaning of absurdity.
We have faith leaders from Mega churches claiming drag queens are grooming whilst they simultaneously sexually abuse minors and hawk crypto. Candidates from a major party asserting in live debates that immigrants are eating cats and dogs. Former celebrity wrestlers ripping their shirts off at a main convention. Swiping every file at the DoD of references to “gay” which included a WWII bomber named Enola Gay. Removing 4star gens who are black or female and replacing with white male 3star gens. Taking the release of 2 rapist and sex traffickers from a foreign country and transporting them here, while simultaneously deporting a Dr who is actually a citizen. Spending millions of tax $ to have POTUS attend NASCAR and his own fake gold tournament . The list goes on and on and on
It is ABSURD. We are living in Idiocracy bc of DJT- it is an assinine reality show- but the Dems, the DEMS-they’ve gone off the deep end with craziness. I want to just unplug the system and reboot when I read this 😉
This “center” is really right, and not empirically centrist at all, but we’re being gaslighted into thinking that it is, when in fact it’s been manufactured and manipulated, and framed as “cool” and edgy. We must not accept this.
Spot on - they’ve moved the center
Nothing is cooler and edgier these days than normality. I know it's hard to hear, but there it is.
Sure, but which principles, exactly? Unless you’re going to argue something so broad as “supporting the powerless” or the like, then you have to acknowledge how, across say five decades, they have become the party of the rich and culturally elite, and, across the last decade, they’ve abandoned specific issues both focused and broad: do you hear about fear of “dark money” from democrats anymore, now that most of it goes to them? Ten years ago Obama was not advocating essentially open borders. And “science is real,” I’d like to think. But can we not find a way to support trans people that acknowledges a thing called evolution? Here you might think it’s me being melodramatic, but I think the question offers a good thought experiment.
I’m being serious when I say that on first read I assumed you were saying that Democrats have spent the last decade becoming “post modern weirdos.” I mean, haven’t they/we? I grew up in a Marxist commune in the 70s, and even I am completely gutted by how out of touch the progressive wing is. Be well, all.
Touché - You ask fair questions.
I agree that what I’m complaining about certainly opens the proverbial door to even more potential problems and rhetorical pitfalls.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I don’t want to see Democrats either become GOP lite, or for democrats to chase a center that is always in flux. my worry is that potential 2028 candidates, like Gavin Newsom, are going out of their way trying to “rush to the middle” that they’re nodding along to bullshit from Charlie Kirk and others, or engaging in cringe nonsense (dropping more f bombs in their speeches to sound more Trumpy, attacking immigration in nativist tones, etc) that will a) not end up accomplishing what they want, b) further moving Overtons window rightward, and c) leaving us with two right wing parties in our Duvergers Law governed/first past the post electoral college voting system.
Contrast this with the GOPs strategy- they introduce their toxic ideas into the mainstream, ensure the slings and arrows, and then when the other party drops the ball for a second, go all in, and shift the discourse to their liking.
👏👏👏👏👏👏
This is exactly right. There’s a popular tweet that said when Dems lose they look in the mirror and say well we gotta get more racist. My fear is they’re misreading the electorate and will ala Gavin Newsom jettison minority groups showing that they have no principles - which is the true reason Kamala “Liz Cheney” Harris lost. A few weeks ago a prominent centrist pundit with a big following gave his diagnosis, and his followers immediately followed up with the old finally we got rid of woke and will be able to increase police presence in black communities. This wasn’t even a topic in the piece - but his centrist followers were eager for black punishment. No talk of healthcare, no talk of AA and the eradication civil rights protections, no social programs, just a centrist (center right) set of punitive policies for minorities to play to an angry white electorate.
Your comment leaves the impression that you believe that racism is as virulent as it was 50 years ago and in fact that it may be on the increase. Both the trending of nonwhite voters to Trump and a lot of other data do not support this conclusion. I believe that your generalizations are overly broad, such as the implication that those who feel that defund the police was misguided and want to increase police presence in minority neighborhoods are a priori racist. Yet many blacks who I know and certainly many more that I have interviewed by columnists and TV reporters totally decry theinctrasedcrinevinthrur neighborhoods since police presence was reduced. Are there racist police? Certainly. Are there instances of being stopped and mistreated when DWB ( driving when black) ? Absolutely. But as the perhaps apocryphal following story indicates, is there also justification for such tactics on occasion maybe. The older black policeman told the story of the young black driver who he stopped and as the cop approached the car and asked for his license belligerently stated - ‘you stopped me because I am a black teenager driving a muscle car” , and to which the policeman calmly responded “ no, I,stopped you because you just ran that red light”. Actually heard the story told by a cop, no idea if it was true, but it sure makes the point that the creation and promulgation of CRT has probably been more harmful than helpful both to the fabric of society and to the attempt to make continued progress towards MLK’s dream of a color blind , or if your prefer skin color irrelevant , society.
If politics is downstream of culture, then culture is downstream of economics. The shift in non-white people towards Trump had more to do with the latter than the former. Yes, non-white voters told pollsters “democrats care more about trans issues than Inflation,” but that doesn’t mean they hate Trans people - it means, well, they just wanted more attention paid to inflation than anything else.
This is exactly right. The minority shifts among black voters (meager as they were) has more to do with neoliberalism running its course in terms of solutions. I was reading comments from people not voting for Kamala because they saw their protections erode (AA, voting rights etc) and didn’t trust that Dems had solutions or the conviction to execute. In this economic climate they decided to risk it all in the casino capitalism economy and see what happens.
Your post, if I’m generous, is only tangentially related to what I wrote. I’m assuming you wanted to get some MLK cliche stuff off your chest. Go for it. Good luck.
Another thing to consider is that “moving to the center” is the political version of the old warning Generals would say about “fighting the last war.” The center you thought you were moving to is now moved rightward. Who knows what the salient issues of 2028 will be?
Meanwhile the GOP NEVER moves to the center, instead doubling down after losing elections to capitalize when circumstances swing their way.
That bit about Trump as ideological moderate was… bracing. I agree with it, but I never would’ve framed it that way myself when Harris was like “fuck yeah, I got a gun. I’ll shoot a motherfucker in my house.”
I’m all for moderating on cultural issues, but how do we do that without selling out marginalized groups, like trans kids? I get that repubs don’t want their daughters seeing dicks in the locker room. That’s understandable and valid af (and the Left should acknowledge it), but I’ve seen some local votes where even private unisex changing rooms, recommended by school admin, were rejected by parents in favor of complete ban. I’m done assuming that Americans are decent moderates in regards to others.
A big part of the problem is that the Left has not acknowledged one iota of nuance on trans issues for most of the past decade. I can’t recall a single Democratic politician saying “Self-ID presents potential for abuse by people operating in bad faith” or “We need more quality studies around medically transitioning minors to make informed policy choices”.
There were plenty of decent, persuadable moderates who got sick of being called bigots and watching Democrats act like whatever maximalist demand they just learned about 5 minutes ago was a self-evident civil rights issue.
This is where my thinking goes aswell. I hear about the need to fill research gaps everywhere but at the top. Like the repubs, Dems have a maximalist streak driven by our zero-sum system. That can work, but only on the right issues. Doing it on culture war shit is gross. Plus, tacking center on certain issues gets you points with the majority. Individual rights are still a common language.
wtf are you talking about ? The shiny culture war object again ? People are dying already and will die bc of these asinine policies - people will be put into poverty - but sure keep discussing the shiny culture war topic.
As the article mentions, it’s one of several shiny culture war issues the Democrats staked huge amounts of political capital on, alienating both swing voters and members of their own coalition in the process.
The current asinine policies will likely continue until Democratic leadership learns how to occasionally say “No” to activists who only know how to continually ratchet up their demands.
Why she lost? The simplest common denominator! She is an idiot.
What a crock. Harris was a terrible candidate. When she actually ran in a primary,she was so unpopular that she dropped out in Iowa. She had no new vision for her candidacy. And she was installed, not selected. Democrats think they have a messaging problem. They are wrong. Almost all major cities are run by Democrats. People can see how they govern. And they have decided to demand you completely agree with what they want or they will attack you. I hope they continue down the same path, until they have lost long enough to reform
The radical crazies need to be shut down and sidelined. When you have to explain your support for tampons in boy's rooms, Trans men in women's bathrooms/locker rooms, secretly transitioning kids etc., you have already lost the conversation
1) Kamala was not qualified. I recall that early on it was reported that she was frustrated with Biden because he was giving her assignments that were "too hard". Doesn't bode well seeing her as president.
2) Democrats could try getting their terror wing to stop attacking Tesla owners and Tesla dealerships.Terror doesn't sell and it's grotesque. Some Dems openly cheer it. Jimmy Kimmel tacitly made fun of it while pretending he wasn't doing so.
I just want someone to dig deep into why immigrants are tacking hard to the right. I know some are pro-life, but it can’t be just that. I think it’s crucial to understand this.
First generation immigrants tend to be more conservative in some key ways than future generations. As someone else noted below, this includes on immigration. There's been this misguided idea for some time that Hispanic immigrants, specifically, support more liberal immigration laws, which seemed to be rooted in little more than shared identity (most people trying to come here since 1965 have been from Latin America). But it turned out that was a gross oversimplification of Hispanic Americans' attitudes.
I'm going to guess a big issue was undocumented immigrants. A constant refrain that I was reading when Immigrants were quizzed on their reasoning was that "I did everything legally to be in America. I waited my turn, did all the paperwork, got all the proper permissions. These 'illegals' bypassed all that and get to stay anyway? Why did I work so hard?! Get them out of the country."
I mean, it's stupid as it sounds, as for some there in no/limited pathway to citizenship, but it mainly was out of "disgust" for how the undocumented immigrated, unfortunately.
I know Mexican immigrants that have been in this country for twenty years illegally fuming at all the benefits that the new immigrants were receiving.
Don’t underestimate the power of misogyny.
Yes, that had to be it. Say that loudly and often to the public.
I read this piece with interest and tried to read all the commentary with an open mind, and I will admit to a "radically moderate" bias that will seem left-of-center to some here...
... but nowhere did I see mention of the disconnect between the intellectually dishonest Murdoch-led information ecosystem in which Trump and the GOP have thrived for decades versus the *relatively* balanced approach on the center and in liberal circles. For example, there is absolutely no equivalent to the exposure of manipulative mendacity when it came to the 2020 election and especially the 700+ million dollar judgement against Fox News.
I agree with the comments that racisim and misogyny, among other things, were exploited successfully by Trump and the GOP. I would also suggest that Trump's smartest moves in the 2024 cycle - and the entire period from Jan '21 to Nov '24 - was to avoid as much as possible frontal confrontations with unfriendly interviewers in unfriendly venues and face-to-face debates with his political opponents whether Republicans in primaries or Democrats in the general elections.
I agree that there are some hot-button issues that drove some leaning Democrats to not vote at all or to even vote against Harris while some of the latter voted for their Democratic candidate for Congress and have shown support for the institutions that the GOP has bashed for years and the Trump has been trashing. I simply think the Trump-led FOX-filtered GOP campaigning was successful at avoiding anything close to a complete discussion and confrontational debate over the issues that concern us all.
The question isn’t why Harris lost, the question is why did Harris get a single vote?
Nonsense. You lefties are doing everything right. Keep on, keeping on.
I strongly believe that the Democrats lost in the culture war, especially DEI and transgender ideology. Progressives contributed enormously to the Democratic candidate's defeat. It's too bad that the moderates can't manage more influence. Unfortunately, extremes in both parties act more aggressively and, therefore, have more impact than their smaller numbers deserve.
Great article. I will admit I am cheerleading the findings of this article as a traditionalist conservative. I would like to add that there is one thing not mentioned in this article that matters --- Birth Rates of Conservatives vs Birth Rates of Liberals. I know that in my very conservative Christian denomination, there is an emphasis on winning the culture through having more children, and this is very observable. Liberal/Left folks are simply not having as many children. There have been a number of stories/posts about this issue from both right and left writers/researchers. Perhaps there is a heavy down wind cost for Democrats who encourage women to prioritize career over having children?
ssshhhhhhhh......
I’m sure this was meant well, but I find all democratic polling specious. The democrats lost, and the reason was people preferred Trump to Biden and/or Harris. Dem’s hadn’t vetted Biden’s ability to appear coherent near a camera, a critical skill in a President. Those background things are usually tested through oppo research and with debate role play.
They forgot to test the role where Biden is awake.
So where does team D vote straight party line? Men in women's sports.