Thirty Democrats in the House are over the age of 75. The party leadership is all over 80. These elders need to retire and let a younger, more muscular, more energetic cohort take their place. Generally, Democrats need to stop focusing on policy, and start playing offense against authoritarianism and corruption. This is not a difficult problem. Last, trans people should not be discriminated against and tormented, neither should immigrants, nor people of color, nor women. Now stop talking about it, and win elections on the grounds that Republicans are corrupt fascists who hate Americans and want to wreck our government and steal everything from us. Once Dems win, they can make good policy happen, but the priority must be restoring Constitutional order.
Nope, nope and nope again. In generic polling when the public is asked about where they stand on issues, their views mostly align with the Dems. Gun control? yes Reproductive freedom? yes Taxpayer dollars to religious schools? no Should the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes? yes etc etc
There are a few outliers such as trans care/rights and it's probably true that Dems should backburner those issues for now (without abandoning them I might add).
The problem is that those who voted for Trump in 2024, including those who had not voted for him before, were low information voters and/or those who had bought the lies promoted so very well by the right wing media echo chamber which has been inescapable for a very long time now. Cats and dogs! Invasion! The price of eggs! White discrimination! Antiseminism! DEI! WOKE!!! The list is endless.
The Dems' real problem is that they haven't figured out how to combat the right wing media machine across all platforms. They've been playing defense v offense. Building a strong offense is where they should be heading. They're making some headway but it's a long, hard road.
When we talk about messaging we need to counter the fox-watcher contingent who salivate at any Republican who gets in front of any Fox camera at any time of the day and lie through their fucking teeth, something Dems seem very reluctant to do. Thankfully, I guess. Wrap your head around this:
1) Biden screwed us. (just when I was beginning to forgive him for Clarence Thomas)
2) we need more Chris Murphys and Cory Bookers
3) Move Woke to the back of the bus.
We will never reach my flat-earth son-in-law. but what the hell do I know?
There is a little bit of truth in many comments here, none of course encapsulates the totality what us required at hand but the one thing that is absolutely true us that Biden and his enablers need to basically shut the hell up and sit down. The only thing that needs to be said preferably not by Biden is that good programs and investments in the American people were made. The economy was not perfect but it was on good footing and it was wrecked by Trump.
Anything else really needs to come from the next generation - there are some out there doing a good job.
Last but not least can we PLEASE get our messaging down and present UNIFIED messaging?
The trans issue killed the Dems--especially boys playing girls sports, and proper pronoun shaming. I'm a life long Democrat and unbashed liberal who's not afraid to use the term, like most Democrats are. But the trans issue offended me and most of America. How are we helping trans people by losing elections? Otherwise, forget the Republican lite bullshit. Don't apologize for advocating the policies that will actually improve our lives. Don't let the enemy define you and your policies, Democrats. Go to the people and leave the focus groups and pollsters in D.C,.
It's bigger than Trans. Running around spray painting All Cops are Bastards right before a 3 year Covid inspired crime and un civility spree breaks out didn't help either. In times of fear or economic pinch Americans become instinctively "right wing". The same thing with Civil Rights. A good economy goes a long way to opening opportunities for reversing discrimination whether it was the 50's60's...for minorities or the 90's for Gay and Lesbian. I feel conflicted about Trans people but if you live in the real world you kind of know the difference. It was a huge ask to "center" and issue that effects 1% of the population. I don't want to throw anybody under the bus but boys in competitive sports and kind of radical non reversible medical procedures for people under 18 years old was just to much. On Trans we need to focus on no bullying and civil rights for Adults.
If the Democrats are as selfish as the Republicans with their own absolutism, you don't give voters anything to reach toward. Selfish in particular rhetoric (we must stand up for they/them pronouns!). Selfish in 2A concerns (we must wedge in an assault weapons ban now!). Selfish in national debt and taxes (the debt will be solved when the rich are taxed until they cry!). Selfish in who gets to speak for the team (Joe Biden must shut the hell up!) Selfish in religious matters (all believers are idiots who believe in a sky fairy.) Selfish in causality (everything is awful and it's all the right's fault.) I'm not saying that reason is absent at the heart of these things. But if you atomize the party platform, where all advocates speak up and scream, "I need to get my own way, or I won't show up at the polls," then you give candidates nothing to talk about, really, because they fear you not showing up. Because, the thing is, you didn't show up, and shame on you. We need to get back to the days when the Democrats stood for broad values. We stood for Civil Rights, period, all of them. We need to once again speak about the reality of life as a blue-collar worker and, as it is now, service worker - reality in regard to wages, housing costs, groceries, and the cost of educating their children. Care about families, in other words, but in the broad sense, and explain more clearly how the right has little interest in the well-being of middle- and working-class families, unless of course they belong to the right religion. In the 2024 election, Harris' handlers told her to say "yes" to every progressive mantra, and this gave her little time to simply identify with and talk about the broader things Democrats should stand for. Instead, she talked about paying money to have kids. She laid down her life for the right to transition kids. She couldn't be too Black, or too female, except for abortion rights. There was zero cohesion around the basic ideals the Democrats once held as important truths. So, the question is, do we still hold those ideals? Or do we need to splinter off and attract moderate Republicans, call ourselves something different, and hope that in 40-50 years enough money will show up to help us win an election. Because I agree with Walz, I hear nothing that gives me hope that we'll take the mid-terms. Outrage is not a compelling reason to get to the polls unless it is attached to an understanding of how life really is for the middle, working blue collar, working service classes. People are exhausted.
I don't know what you meant by what '...the comment says about Walz' and speaking as a person who is not familiar with the past inner workings of this Party but only learning as much as I can in the last few years, it sounds exhausting. I will tell you that something I have noticed going about my day and listening or reading various things, I am seeing nothing but love for Tim Walz. It surprised me actually but Suburban Women love him at least over 30 and up, Men think he says it like it is and it seems that way to me. I really am starting to wonder if he's simply cutting though all the noise and is doing what trump managed by talking to regular people. His comments and reactions seem natural and he may not be everyone's cup of tea but I'm glad he's out there. It's exhausting just to read about the angst around which issue or how much attention to pay to something. First, we need to stop letting a really unpopular Prezident dictate what is and isn't important! Let's get out there and tell people the truth about the Trans issue, it's less than 1% of the population and we have nuclear war to worry about! We let them drag us into these stupid Culture Wars and it's a waste of time. How hard is it to just speak frankly and to dispel the phony rage by saying, we can work together with individual communities locally on how they want to handle bathrooms and we can definitely sort out who plays on which team AFTER the more important things are dealt with. Sorry if that offends anyone but we're dealing with huge global issues, and frankly we are not going to win discussing the 'Culture Wars' but FFS, the ppl making headway are the ones who just speak plainly about the important things beginning with getting these Facists and billionaires out! I know this sounds simplistic but maybe it needs to be, because I'm sick of the noise. The other side is losing on their own and we have nothing to be afraid or ashamed of and letting them shout us down abt anything was our first mistake! I think we are on offense already and all this over-analyzing will drag us down. The Yeti did NOT win by a landslide and it doesn't have to be this hard!
The argument over whether Democrats should become more "centrist" or not is always annoying to me because its proponents are always arguing that minority groups should take one for the team and get shafted. (For example, Dearborn voters should be OK with a Harris administration that sends bombs to Israel; Black voters should stop talking about "woke.")
If Democrats REALLY wanted to be centrists, they would quick trying to push gun control. I live in Atlanta and have a lot of family in rural red areas. It's hard to convince people that they should support "reasonable gun restrictions" when:
1) Democrats sound like absolute idiots when they talk about guns and can't get basic terminology right, and
2) these restrictions would likely turn millions of people into criminals seemingly overnight.
With everything in my being, I think Democrats could solve all their problems overnight if they dropped gun control talk. If anything, Kamala should have talked about her guns MORE.
The Democratic Party can both win in "Middle America" *and* be the party of progress . . . but it just needs to agree on what "progress" actually means. And specifically, what issues are *NATIONAL*-level issues it will fight for, regardless if that means softly & incrementally or going to the mat.
Liberals are hopefully going to learn to appreciate our nation's concept of federalism these days, as it allows blue states to shield themselves (to a certain degree) from Trump's insanity. The flipside of that is Dems need to appreciate that certain issues or positions are going to have to be left at the state level. "Politics" is not only what happens in D.C. Last time I checked, it was considered important what happens in Michigan, PA, OH, Virginia, and FL.
Yes, Dems can & should stand up to Trump's outrages. Tim is quite right to point out that doing so may (or may not) make a difference *NOW* but is unlikely to be on most voters' minds come 2028--for better or worse. (And unless a Democrat takes a radical position, he also noted . . . if idiots start blabbering once again about defunding the police, for example, *that* will come back to haunt them).
All that said, you can't fight on everything (at least not guns blazing and/or at the federal level) and you do have to be strategic. The very first step is determining what you even mean--what are you actually saying. What does "protecting trans kids" actually mean as a federal issue? Using the federal gov't to punish parents who won't treat their pre-pubescent child as if "they" were the opposite sex? Refusing surgery? What does DEI really mean? Will Democrats be the party of 1990s Bill Clinton style equal *opportunity* or the party of the Critical Theory-loving academic Left demanding equal *outcomes*? (That's the difference, in stark terms, between equal *opportunity* and *equity*). In standing up to Trump's outrageous & illegal deportation policies, will Democrats nonetheless acknowledge that there genuinely was a border problem and that do nothing about illegal immigration is not an option? A "grand bargain" on comprehensive immigration reform should be the goal, but remember--that means there is an enforcement piece as well. Someone here illegally does not have a *right* to stay here--period. We need to acknowledge that as precursor for a comprehensive--but humane--immigration reform policy.
I don’t know who it is. Maybe the Dems just don’t HAVE anybody. But they need to scour their ranks and find somebody close to having charisma. Somebody that inspires. Somebody that fills the room, absorbs the political air, relates. Somebody bigger than gender, bigger than skin color, bigger than greed and nationalism. True leadership will be mandatory, not just an act. This person doesn’t have to have all the answers (but a few would help). Someone who can say WE and not be exclusive. I can’t even guess who would fill the bill, but I will know them when I see them.
Young people strongly favor AOC, FYI. I’m skeptical because the right and Democratic center has vilified her from the start. Still, it’s a mistake to rule out a popular politician. Democrats do that far too frequently.
I knew the day Harris was nominated that she would lose. I voted for her anyway, knowing that no woman or person of color is going to get the number of votes to overcome Trump's cultish followers. The Democratic nominee HAS to be a white man. Democrats, please do not make this mistake a third time.
Yes, identity politics is fragmenting Democrats into irrelevance.
But that's because the rules of the system have been reshaped by the Supreme Court to make elections much more susceptible to that fragmentation.
This is largely the work of John Roberts over his tenure.
Consider Roberts's handiwork:
The unitary executive theory with its immunity from prosecution made the Presidency a single point of failure for our Constitutional operating system. Gutting the Voting Rights Act, permitting political gerrymandering, ruling gifts to former office are ok, and Citizens United did the rest.
The principal consequences:
1. Supercharged the power of money and extremism to use primary elections to pre-filter moderates from the general elections. Trump, without the ability to "primary," would have been discarded long ago.
2. Enabled those in power to further game the systems using legal maneuvers powered by virtually unlimited money to evade accountability and mount denial of service attacks.
You always have to wait until you see how successful state-level politicians do on the national stage. Scott Walker, Ron DeSantis, and Kamala Harris are/were all state-level stars who crashed and burned under the lights of a national campaign. Whitmer will definitely be competitive in the Dem primary, maybe too competitive.
It's just that Trump ran for president three times. He was an awful person and an awful candidate. He won twice (against polarizing women) and lost once (to the aging white man). See a pattern?
Do you really want to take that chance again so soon?
Apparently that is pretty much the absolute floor for a Democrat when running against Donald Trump. Remember, she ran against Donald J. Trump, the worst person ever to run for president in the nation's history. A man who was a convicted felon on 34 counts, and who had been credibly accused of rape, business fraud, and a plethora of other crimes and illegalities. A man Joe Biden actually beat. And, remember, Joe Biden was an awful presidential candidate, who himself crashed and burned on three separate occasions when running for president pre-2020.
As Hillary Clinton also knows, it is a truly epic failure to lose to Donald Trump in a general election. Kamala crashed and burned even with Biden's war chest and campaign apparatus behind her.
And, Kamala Harris still has never received a single primary vote or delegate for a national office. Had she had to run in a primary in 2024, she would almost certainly have not only lost, but would probably have been out well before Super Tuesday. If she runs in 2028, she'll be out before February.
All this about what Dems must do doesn't hit the real reason a candidate wins. It's money. Ever since the Robert's court of 2010 passed Citizens United - our politics has become more corrupt and Trump has bought the lawyers and media.
Trump won mostly because the folk that had not been provided for by the Dems, voted vs the Dems because the lies of the big money and Musk promised much better. We had it great - now, no so much.
There are more registered Dems than GOP and even the GOP is dissatisfied with the performance of Trump and his less than qualified staff of former Fox announcers. And now Musk is gone, and we see Loomer, Hawley and Bannon criticizing Trump.
What Congress needs to do now (not only Dems)- reintroduce the bill to impeach Thomas, impeach Trump, remove the insurrectionists from the Senate and House Judiciary committees; Graham, Jordan, Cruz, Hawley, Biggs, Cornyn., Roy
There are near 430 in Congress that took an oath to support the Constitution but 140 Insurrectionists control. Can we sue Jordan and Graham for not remanding Bondi?
We do need to get the ethical Federalist lawyers to give up support for Leonard Leo and Project 2025 - they took the same oath to support the Constitution.
Thirty Democrats in the House are over the age of 75. The party leadership is all over 80. These elders need to retire and let a younger, more muscular, more energetic cohort take their place. Generally, Democrats need to stop focusing on policy, and start playing offense against authoritarianism and corruption. This is not a difficult problem. Last, trans people should not be discriminated against and tormented, neither should immigrants, nor people of color, nor women. Now stop talking about it, and win elections on the grounds that Republicans are corrupt fascists who hate Americans and want to wreck our government and steal everything from us. Once Dems win, they can make good policy happen, but the priority must be restoring Constitutional order.
Nope, nope and nope again. In generic polling when the public is asked about where they stand on issues, their views mostly align with the Dems. Gun control? yes Reproductive freedom? yes Taxpayer dollars to religious schools? no Should the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes? yes etc etc
There are a few outliers such as trans care/rights and it's probably true that Dems should backburner those issues for now (without abandoning them I might add).
The problem is that those who voted for Trump in 2024, including those who had not voted for him before, were low information voters and/or those who had bought the lies promoted so very well by the right wing media echo chamber which has been inescapable for a very long time now. Cats and dogs! Invasion! The price of eggs! White discrimination! Antiseminism! DEI! WOKE!!! The list is endless.
The Dems' real problem is that they haven't figured out how to combat the right wing media machine across all platforms. They've been playing defense v offense. Building a strong offense is where they should be heading. They're making some headway but it's a long, hard road.
When we talk about messaging we need to counter the fox-watcher contingent who salivate at any Republican who gets in front of any Fox camera at any time of the day and lie through their fucking teeth, something Dems seem very reluctant to do. Thankfully, I guess. Wrap your head around this:
1) Biden screwed us. (just when I was beginning to forgive him for Clarence Thomas)
2) we need more Chris Murphys and Cory Bookers
3) Move Woke to the back of the bus.
We will never reach my flat-earth son-in-law. but what the hell do I know?
There is a little bit of truth in many comments here, none of course encapsulates the totality what us required at hand but the one thing that is absolutely true us that Biden and his enablers need to basically shut the hell up and sit down. The only thing that needs to be said preferably not by Biden is that good programs and investments in the American people were made. The economy was not perfect but it was on good footing and it was wrecked by Trump.
Anything else really needs to come from the next generation - there are some out there doing a good job.
Last but not least can we PLEASE get our messaging down and present UNIFIED messaging?
The trans issue killed the Dems--especially boys playing girls sports, and proper pronoun shaming. I'm a life long Democrat and unbashed liberal who's not afraid to use the term, like most Democrats are. But the trans issue offended me and most of America. How are we helping trans people by losing elections? Otherwise, forget the Republican lite bullshit. Don't apologize for advocating the policies that will actually improve our lives. Don't let the enemy define you and your policies, Democrats. Go to the people and leave the focus groups and pollsters in D.C,.
It's bigger than Trans. Running around spray painting All Cops are Bastards right before a 3 year Covid inspired crime and un civility spree breaks out didn't help either. In times of fear or economic pinch Americans become instinctively "right wing". The same thing with Civil Rights. A good economy goes a long way to opening opportunities for reversing discrimination whether it was the 50's60's...for minorities or the 90's for Gay and Lesbian. I feel conflicted about Trans people but if you live in the real world you kind of know the difference. It was a huge ask to "center" and issue that effects 1% of the population. I don't want to throw anybody under the bus but boys in competitive sports and kind of radical non reversible medical procedures for people under 18 years old was just to much. On Trans we need to focus on no bullying and civil rights for Adults.
What actually is a "moderate" if a "conservative" is not really a conservative?
If the Democrats are as selfish as the Republicans with their own absolutism, you don't give voters anything to reach toward. Selfish in particular rhetoric (we must stand up for they/them pronouns!). Selfish in 2A concerns (we must wedge in an assault weapons ban now!). Selfish in national debt and taxes (the debt will be solved when the rich are taxed until they cry!). Selfish in who gets to speak for the team (Joe Biden must shut the hell up!) Selfish in religious matters (all believers are idiots who believe in a sky fairy.) Selfish in causality (everything is awful and it's all the right's fault.) I'm not saying that reason is absent at the heart of these things. But if you atomize the party platform, where all advocates speak up and scream, "I need to get my own way, or I won't show up at the polls," then you give candidates nothing to talk about, really, because they fear you not showing up. Because, the thing is, you didn't show up, and shame on you. We need to get back to the days when the Democrats stood for broad values. We stood for Civil Rights, period, all of them. We need to once again speak about the reality of life as a blue-collar worker and, as it is now, service worker - reality in regard to wages, housing costs, groceries, and the cost of educating their children. Care about families, in other words, but in the broad sense, and explain more clearly how the right has little interest in the well-being of middle- and working-class families, unless of course they belong to the right religion. In the 2024 election, Harris' handlers told her to say "yes" to every progressive mantra, and this gave her little time to simply identify with and talk about the broader things Democrats should stand for. Instead, she talked about paying money to have kids. She laid down her life for the right to transition kids. She couldn't be too Black, or too female, except for abortion rights. There was zero cohesion around the basic ideals the Democrats once held as important truths. So, the question is, do we still hold those ideals? Or do we need to splinter off and attract moderate Republicans, call ourselves something different, and hope that in 40-50 years enough money will show up to help us win an election. Because I agree with Walz, I hear nothing that gives me hope that we'll take the mid-terms. Outrage is not a compelling reason to get to the polls unless it is attached to an understanding of how life really is for the middle, working blue collar, working service classes. People are exhausted.
I don't know what you meant by what '...the comment says about Walz' and speaking as a person who is not familiar with the past inner workings of this Party but only learning as much as I can in the last few years, it sounds exhausting. I will tell you that something I have noticed going about my day and listening or reading various things, I am seeing nothing but love for Tim Walz. It surprised me actually but Suburban Women love him at least over 30 and up, Men think he says it like it is and it seems that way to me. I really am starting to wonder if he's simply cutting though all the noise and is doing what trump managed by talking to regular people. His comments and reactions seem natural and he may not be everyone's cup of tea but I'm glad he's out there. It's exhausting just to read about the angst around which issue or how much attention to pay to something. First, we need to stop letting a really unpopular Prezident dictate what is and isn't important! Let's get out there and tell people the truth about the Trans issue, it's less than 1% of the population and we have nuclear war to worry about! We let them drag us into these stupid Culture Wars and it's a waste of time. How hard is it to just speak frankly and to dispel the phony rage by saying, we can work together with individual communities locally on how they want to handle bathrooms and we can definitely sort out who plays on which team AFTER the more important things are dealt with. Sorry if that offends anyone but we're dealing with huge global issues, and frankly we are not going to win discussing the 'Culture Wars' but FFS, the ppl making headway are the ones who just speak plainly about the important things beginning with getting these Facists and billionaires out! I know this sounds simplistic but maybe it needs to be, because I'm sick of the noise. The other side is losing on their own and we have nothing to be afraid or ashamed of and letting them shout us down abt anything was our first mistake! I think we are on offense already and all this over-analyzing will drag us down. The Yeti did NOT win by a landslide and it doesn't have to be this hard!
The argument over whether Democrats should become more "centrist" or not is always annoying to me because its proponents are always arguing that minority groups should take one for the team and get shafted. (For example, Dearborn voters should be OK with a Harris administration that sends bombs to Israel; Black voters should stop talking about "woke.")
If Democrats REALLY wanted to be centrists, they would quick trying to push gun control. I live in Atlanta and have a lot of family in rural red areas. It's hard to convince people that they should support "reasonable gun restrictions" when:
1) Democrats sound like absolute idiots when they talk about guns and can't get basic terminology right, and
2) these restrictions would likely turn millions of people into criminals seemingly overnight.
With everything in my being, I think Democrats could solve all their problems overnight if they dropped gun control talk. If anything, Kamala should have talked about her guns MORE.
So wait, I'm confused. We now have to go to Substack to read Bulwark content (per Sam Stein's note" instead of reading it on The Bulwark's page?
The Democratic Party can both win in "Middle America" *and* be the party of progress . . . but it just needs to agree on what "progress" actually means. And specifically, what issues are *NATIONAL*-level issues it will fight for, regardless if that means softly & incrementally or going to the mat.
Liberals are hopefully going to learn to appreciate our nation's concept of federalism these days, as it allows blue states to shield themselves (to a certain degree) from Trump's insanity. The flipside of that is Dems need to appreciate that certain issues or positions are going to have to be left at the state level. "Politics" is not only what happens in D.C. Last time I checked, it was considered important what happens in Michigan, PA, OH, Virginia, and FL.
Yes, Dems can & should stand up to Trump's outrages. Tim is quite right to point out that doing so may (or may not) make a difference *NOW* but is unlikely to be on most voters' minds come 2028--for better or worse. (And unless a Democrat takes a radical position, he also noted . . . if idiots start blabbering once again about defunding the police, for example, *that* will come back to haunt them).
All that said, you can't fight on everything (at least not guns blazing and/or at the federal level) and you do have to be strategic. The very first step is determining what you even mean--what are you actually saying. What does "protecting trans kids" actually mean as a federal issue? Using the federal gov't to punish parents who won't treat their pre-pubescent child as if "they" were the opposite sex? Refusing surgery? What does DEI really mean? Will Democrats be the party of 1990s Bill Clinton style equal *opportunity* or the party of the Critical Theory-loving academic Left demanding equal *outcomes*? (That's the difference, in stark terms, between equal *opportunity* and *equity*). In standing up to Trump's outrageous & illegal deportation policies, will Democrats nonetheless acknowledge that there genuinely was a border problem and that do nothing about illegal immigration is not an option? A "grand bargain" on comprehensive immigration reform should be the goal, but remember--that means there is an enforcement piece as well. Someone here illegally does not have a *right* to stay here--period. We need to acknowledge that as precursor for a comprehensive--but humane--immigration reform policy.
And so on.
I'm not even going to read this bull.
Republicans don't win by appealing to moderates.
We should win the way they do, by having our own Murdock.
Make people angry as hell.
And have a plan, but one that isn't install Nazism.
I don’t know who it is. Maybe the Dems just don’t HAVE anybody. But they need to scour their ranks and find somebody close to having charisma. Somebody that inspires. Somebody that fills the room, absorbs the political air, relates. Somebody bigger than gender, bigger than skin color, bigger than greed and nationalism. True leadership will be mandatory, not just an act. This person doesn’t have to have all the answers (but a few would help). Someone who can say WE and not be exclusive. I can’t even guess who would fill the bill, but I will know them when I see them.
Young people strongly favor AOC, FYI. I’m skeptical because the right and Democratic center has vilified her from the start. Still, it’s a mistake to rule out a popular politician. Democrats do that far too frequently.
I knew the day Harris was nominated that she would lose. I voted for her anyway, knowing that no woman or person of color is going to get the number of votes to overcome Trump's cultish followers. The Democratic nominee HAS to be a white man. Democrats, please do not make this mistake a third time.
Yes, identity politics is fragmenting Democrats into irrelevance.
But that's because the rules of the system have been reshaped by the Supreme Court to make elections much more susceptible to that fragmentation.
This is largely the work of John Roberts over his tenure.
Consider Roberts's handiwork:
The unitary executive theory with its immunity from prosecution made the Presidency a single point of failure for our Constitutional operating system. Gutting the Voting Rights Act, permitting political gerrymandering, ruling gifts to former office are ok, and Citizens United did the rest.
The principal consequences:
1. Supercharged the power of money and extremism to use primary elections to pre-filter moderates from the general elections. Trump, without the ability to "primary," would have been discarded long ago.
2. Enabled those in power to further game the systems using legal maneuvers powered by virtually unlimited money to evade accountability and mount denial of service attacks.
You always have to wait until you see how successful state-level politicians do on the national stage. Scott Walker, Ron DeSantis, and Kamala Harris are/were all state-level stars who crashed and burned under the lights of a national campaign. Whitmer will definitely be competitive in the Dem primary, maybe too competitive.
It's just that Trump ran for president three times. He was an awful person and an awful candidate. He won twice (against polarizing women) and lost once (to the aging white man). See a pattern?
Do you really want to take that chance again so soon?
I’d have to argue about Harris ‘crashing and burning’…48% when running on the coattails of the most unpopular incumbent in history?
Really?
Apparently that is pretty much the absolute floor for a Democrat when running against Donald Trump. Remember, she ran against Donald J. Trump, the worst person ever to run for president in the nation's history. A man who was a convicted felon on 34 counts, and who had been credibly accused of rape, business fraud, and a plethora of other crimes and illegalities. A man Joe Biden actually beat. And, remember, Joe Biden was an awful presidential candidate, who himself crashed and burned on three separate occasions when running for president pre-2020.
As Hillary Clinton also knows, it is a truly epic failure to lose to Donald Trump in a general election. Kamala crashed and burned even with Biden's war chest and campaign apparatus behind her.
And, Kamala Harris still has never received a single primary vote or delegate for a national office. Had she had to run in a primary in 2024, she would almost certainly have not only lost, but would probably have been out well before Super Tuesday. If she runs in 2028, she'll be out before February.
All this about what Dems must do doesn't hit the real reason a candidate wins. It's money. Ever since the Robert's court of 2010 passed Citizens United - our politics has become more corrupt and Trump has bought the lawyers and media.
Trump won mostly because the folk that had not been provided for by the Dems, voted vs the Dems because the lies of the big money and Musk promised much better. We had it great - now, no so much.
There are more registered Dems than GOP and even the GOP is dissatisfied with the performance of Trump and his less than qualified staff of former Fox announcers. And now Musk is gone, and we see Loomer, Hawley and Bannon criticizing Trump.
What Congress needs to do now (not only Dems)- reintroduce the bill to impeach Thomas, impeach Trump, remove the insurrectionists from the Senate and House Judiciary committees; Graham, Jordan, Cruz, Hawley, Biggs, Cornyn., Roy
There are near 430 in Congress that took an oath to support the Constitution but 140 Insurrectionists control. Can we sue Jordan and Graham for not remanding Bondi?
We do need to get the ethical Federalist lawyers to give up support for Leonard Leo and Project 2025 - they took the same oath to support the Constitution.