Democratic (Party) Direction

Wow, what an incredible insight. Very novel!

"Environics found social values moving away from the authority end of the scale, with its emphasis on responsibility, duty, and tradition, to a more atomized, rage-filled outlook that values consumption, sexual permissiveness, and xenophobia. The trend was toward values in the individuality quadrant."

I've long thought that if the Democratic party would focus their message on individualism (and the resulting freedom it implies) that they might get somewhere.

Today’s average American “worker” is, in short, very much on his or her own -- too prosperous to be eligible for most government assistance programs and, because of job laws that date back three quarters of a century, unable to unionize. Such isolation and atomization have not led to a new wave of social solidarity and economic populism, however. Instead, these changes have bred resentment toward those who do have outside aid, whether from government or from unions, and an escalating ethos of every man for himself. Against that ethos, voters have increasingly flocked to politicians who recognize that the combination of relative affluence and relative isolation has created an opening for cultural appeals.

"Every man for himself" has been an American credo for hundreds of years. It's the essence of competition, of capitalism, of industry. There's a bridge somewhere between individualism and community--is the Democratic party forcing people over a bridge or seeking one?

American voters have taken shelter under the various wings of conservative traditionalism because there has been no one on the Democratic side in recent years to defend traditional, sensible middle-class values against the onslaught of the new nihilistic, macho, libertarian lawlessness unleashed by an economy that pits every man against his fellows.

Maybe they're taking shelter because they don't think it's an economy that's pitting man against man, it's shelter from the resulting culture war. What are "traditional, sensible middle-class values" anyway? The only hint we get from this article is that candidates should talk about religion and that will mitigate their stance on the death penalty (in Virginia.)

I am happy to see the wasteland that is the Democratic Party looking inward. The Republicans wouldn't dare stare into their own dark abyss.

As for the "average American household" that makes $60K a year, it would have been more informative to see the median income, because the average is skewed upwards by those at the top of the scale - ie., less than 50% of Americans make the "average" income.

Lakoff's extensively written about the need for Democratic candidates and progressives in general to start explicitly talking about values. Also, for campaigns to work at creating more of an overall narrative for a candidate than just a laundry list of policies. It's only his work on the framing aspect that's received attention lately, not so much his work on defining the values systems that right/left folks tend to hold(e.g. "maintaining authority" vs "care & responsibility").

He's offered up Schwarzneggar's campaign as an example of a guy who ran entirely on narrative & perceived identity, and expressively refused to offer up any policy suggestions. Most folks don't have the time/energy/inclination to get into policy specifics, but if they trust your guy, they're trust him to take care of the details.

As he says,

"The pollsters didn’t understand it because they thought that people voted on the issues and on self-interest. Well, sometimes they do. But mostly they vote on their identity -- on persons that they trust to be like them, or to be like people they admire"

which connects to that aspirational bit that the article mentions.

Jim Wallis has talked about several of these same issues over the last year as well, especially with on the whole "onslaught of the new nihilistic, macho, libertarian lawlessness unleashed by an economy that pits every man against his fellows" bit.

Wallis has written about conversations his group has had with Frank Luntz and some other Repub pollsters who were quite open about their m.o. being to get voters so caught in such intense issues that they vote against their economic interest.

As other folks have pointed out, the Republicans have been better that bring the polls to them(gay marriage is the biggest thing you care about) vs the Democrats moving to where the polls now seem to be(well i guess we need to move rightward on gay marriage).

That's the thing, innit? If you build up an entire apparatus to both promote & reinforce certain narratives, people will believe them even if they have no basis in fact. George W. Bush is steadfast & strong, Kerry's a weak-willed flip-flopper, Republicans are all about a smaller government, supply-side economics works, etc

oh fuck yeah this is a major bit of it, too. But since when did we start promoting self-reflection and critical thought?

For real despair, look at how Sen. Rodham Clinton is pandering to libs and righties on alternate days. "Congress run like a plantation," "I'd bomb Iran," etc.

xpost

Please God, take Hilary quietly so she won't fuck up the party with a presidential campaign. WORST POSSIBLE CANDIDATE EVER.

Huh? He's only been going this stuff in the press for about two years. Second, there are plenty of other folks who have made the connection, but have gotten shit for coverage(not fitting in with "religious = rightwing conservative" media narrative?), even when they got arrested for it on the Capitol steps.

For real despair, look at how Sen. Rodham Clinton is pandering to libs and righties on alternate days. "Congress run like a plantation," "I'd bomb Iran," etc.

DLC-candidate-in-centrist-message shocker

very much otm. The change will come from the outside.

Re the direction of the party, past actions indicate the party will be quicker to line up behind someone with Clinton's politics as opposed to Tasini's. I'm not too hopeful when it comes to the future of the Dems.

do you think it's necessary for dems to use the religious right's language ("morals" and "values")? would a less-loaded word like "ethics" skew too liberal?

my question is, when do they not? unless a voter has completely descended into some cynical nihilism, of course.

i mean, yeah, "values" has come to signify a very specific set of values, which just goes to further show that democratic types do need to start talking about theirs.

I don't think it's necessarily too liberal, but it definitely lacks the primal grip of "values"

I mean, we all value things, right? We value ethics, for example, since honesty, fairness, & justice are core principles.

not necessarily, but quite possibly, and yes, respectively.

name one

I don't think they need to use the words "morals" or "values" at all, but on the other hand I don't think "ethics" is necesarily what we're talking about either. "Ethics" to me connotes a branch of philosophy - ie., sterile debates which have little to do with people's daily lives. What they need to communicate is that they are decent people who voters would admire/like/agree with. If the voters think you're a good person, then they will gloss over lots of little policy details. If they don't think you're a good person, you can promise them the moon, but they won't believe you. Unfortunately, things like abortion and gay rights have become a short-hand for some voters on figuring out whether a candidate has values. That is probably a moral fundamentalist fringe whose votes the Dems will not be able to win and probably shouldn't even want to win. But they do need to capture the votes of more moderate voters who worry about rampant sex on TV and loose values among their childrens' friends.

also, we should probably clarify who we're talking about here. "Dems" includes everybody from DLC types like Clinton & Biden to guys like Feingold...

Also, it seems like we're only limiting this to talking about a very specific range of national politics(akin to referring to states as "red" or "blue"), but this doesn't address the other aspects, like state elections(e.g. Montana electing a Democratic governor and Democratic State House & Senate)

There was some major (spring?) 2005 poll all the progressive press was reporting on that found Americans favor Canada-style healthcare, taxing the rich, full domestic rights for gays, etc. Was it Quinnipiac? Can't find it...

It's pretty simple - the population is much more interested in pulling troops out asap. The Dem leadership is not - in fact, many still appear to be trying to out tough Republicans. You know things are odd when it's people like Murtha who are the furthest left on an issue like the war.

yeah, exactly. I think these things just get talked about in some simplified media narrative(again, "your state is RED," etc), and this narrowing just plays into the hands of guys like Rove who are pretty good at taking advantage of such limitations.

OTMFM

Yes, OTM.
I read an article to the effect that Dean is putting most of his effort & resources into rebuilding the party at the local level, precinct level basically, which seems urgent and key. Karl Rove has prob always been a right wing ideologue but he started out doing direct mail, not working on message or on policy. I am not a huge fan of Dean whenever he opens his mouth but if he's getting stuff done at the ground level, it's about time.

I'm not sure which one this was either, but there have been numerous similar studies going back years that support this. In fact the point made upthread about the Dems latching on to movements like civil rights, women's rights, etc supports this as well.

to be really reductive, perhaps unfairly, Lakoff is essentially arguing that Democrats should reframe their most liberal policy positions in a secular language of values and presto change-o, they win. the people in Ruta's article are arguing that Democrats shouldn't just give passionless names to their values, they should talk about where those values come from - family, community, place, country, religion, work, as relevant.

tombot's observation is most otm. while i don't think the work discussed in the piece is free from problems or contradictions, the key takeaway is that there are lots of potential Dem voters who aren't voting Dem because they really believe in the myth that Dems are hedonists, or at least permissiveness freaks, found most often in your big bad cities or somewhere else where people act in ways that folks like you don't (or can't). the Tim Kaine example suggests that if you show them upfront that their stereotype doesn't apply, they will revert to their better nature and vote for you, which they kinda sorta want to do.

xxpost

yeah, i think that what needs to be mentioned that since the rightwingers are really good at controlling media discussion and promoting complete bullshit, Democrats seem to be responding to that, as opposed to what their voters actally think.

Example: Dick Durbin's thing last year, where the rightwing noize machine drummed up so much shit that he felt the need to apologize for a statement he never actually made(calling u.s. troops nazis, as opposed to a comment on Gitmo treatment)

This is probably the party's only hope. Nothing gave me greater pleasure than renouncing my Democratic affiliation on my voter registration card a few years ago. It's ridiculous to me that positions and the discussion of positions trumps philosophy, i.e. "I'm a Democrat cuz I'm pro-choice, support gay rights, against the death penalty..." Millions of Americans like this kind of reductive thinking and good for them; it makes me queasy because, at the end of the day, positions are stupid when expert politicans like FDR, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton get elected and make a hash out of your precious positions.

Maybe this goes to the "values" issue = Feingold perceived (accurately?) as someone with an independent streak who votes what he thinks is right and doesn't stick to the party line.

this defeatist, victimized myopia that the Republicans are somehow playing by a different set of rules (or tactics) has got to end.

being a decent human being is impossible when your life is so short

And biden *did* have progressive accomplishments in domestic policy achievements from the first half of the term and she did run on those.

― treeship 2, Thursday, 7 November 2024 bookmarkflaglink

The vote says something else. Now to try someone new.

tell me more about these “progressive” accomplishments that did anything for the working class that they could actually feel in their day to day lives. as i said before the election, the insistence that Biden actually did so much is gaslighting bullshit when 60% of the population are living paycheck to paycheck. come back when the Dems start talking about THAT.

this is what I agree with. I feel like I've got a foot in both camps and can see this...I see where the economy IS good and how I benefit, and I see where it is terrible and where I struggle, and I can see privileged folks with too much money with stable jobs and bloated 401ks...and I see people with precarious jobs (if any) and no savings.

I'm very lucky, but even in my relatively comfortable perch, I know I can't easily switch jobs, I know I'm paying tons of money to keep myself and my family healthy and am always one step from losing that and I know how much work it is just to reap the rewards of this privilege. How many phone calls it takes to work out whether my insurance is going to cover something that costs 1500 dollars or not. And I think about people who don't even have insurance that good. Or any.

Anyway, it's crystal clear that no matter what numbers or metrics say the economy is good, people do not feel it, and it's not from a lack of being educated about it.

Basically to get elected a Democrat is going to have to promise to do a bunch of things that big Democratic donors don't want.

The idea that Bernie would have won makes zero sense to me. Pretty demographic shifted right.

I get that may have felt better to some folks to lose with a genuinely progressive platform, but common, man.

* pretty much every demographic

Depends whether you think they actually shifted right or voted for the anti-elite candidate

probably a bit of both

I think the path would have to be an economic populism that can't easily be characterized as "far-left." But I'm not sure how you do that as a Democrat without actively distancing yourself from the party.

zactly

voters will vote for someone with ideas that are less mainstream if they're packaged with mainstream ideas that are important to them.

i.e. someone who isn't a fan of Medicare for All might still vote for a candidate that is proposing it if they tick enough of their other boxes. the problem with Dems is they feel like if the one issue is unpopular (which, M4A actually IS popular, which is the infuriating part), voters will throw the candidate out with the bathwater.

i think we've seen this year that some non-MAGA voters were ok with getting their friends and neighbors deported and having the entire rule of law collapse based on what they thought he'd do w/ the economy. that still makes them bad people but we do need their vote.

The Trump Administration (with Dem help, let me add) gave out checks, froze rent, etc. during the pandemic -- and people loved it. Those are leftist policy positions.

also the easiest way to get someone to come around to something theyh think they hate is to force them to experience it in their own lives. rather than constantly experiencing it as an abstract concept

Bernie Sanders in 2003.

Worth the watch. pic.twitter.com/V2dTYlUiDS

— B.W. Carlin (@BaileyCarlin) November 7, 2024

had never seen this clip before just now, but man considering the conversation about the dems and how much they suck watching this is just painful

had these kids in the palm of his fucking hand man

> tell me more about these “progressive” accomplishments that did anything for the working class

The great beauty of Biden's accomplishments is that they are long term investments that will now fully pay off over the course of Trump's term.

But before that was the American Rescue plan in 2021 put a lot of money in people's pockets. $90B in extra child tax credits, $400B in cash to families making less than ~$80,000. $80B to union pensions. Also kicked off like $75B in infrastructure work, all with unions required. I think we've forgotten about how great it was to have that amount of money at once. Too bad it wasn't more carefully thought out b/c combined with various other things well outside Biden's control it set off inflation.

Unions also required in projects funded by Chips Act, along with company-paid child-care for both employees of the factories ultimately being built and for the union workers building the factories themselves (if Trump kills anything about the bill, it'll be that). Building trade unions have added more members in the past year than any year in the last ~75 years. The amount of construction projects that will come online between the Infrastructure and Chips Act over the next few years will be staggering -- $1.5T worth. These will put a lot of people to work in red states b/c it's easier to build there. Trump will be at ribbon-cuttings talking about how only he could get this done.

I was gonna post this before the election but int he last five months I've seen electrical crews working on poles and lines and contractors replacing sewer pipes all over Miami-Dade; one site had a "Paid for by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act." For political purposes these bills are terrible because the gap between signing and implementation can take a few years.

“the great beauty of these accomplishments is that no one will feel their effects for years” might be true but doesn’t actually translate to most people WHO NEED HELP YESTERDAY. it’s infuriating that some of you still can’t understand this

The idea that Bernie would have won makes zero sense to me. Pretty demographic shifted right.

I mean, the actual story is a bit more complex than that, I live in a city that went like 62-38 for Trump, but they did approve a big spending project for the middle schools. ultimately I think this whole left-right axis is something that only really makes sense to the sickos like us who actually follow this stuff

> it’s infuriating that some of you still can’t understand this

Oh, no. I understand it well. The Trump payoff part was sarcastic. When I say the "great beauty" I mean, "the part that sucks".

I keep thinking back to that big knock against Bernie in 2020--that he supposedly told Warren that he didn't think a woman could be elected President.

But also, the American Rescue Plan helped working class people quite a bit while also sowing the seeds of his demise.

Table, no one's arguing with you, jeez