I'll try to keep this short. It's fairly clear now that voters do not care about politicians doing anything. As you note, the stock market has never been higher, jobs are plentiful, wages are up, they just passed an infrastructure bill, and yet the American people are not happy. The reality is that people clearly don't know what they wan…
I'll try to keep this short. It's fairly clear now that voters do not care about politicians doing anything. As you note, the stock market has never been higher, jobs are plentiful, wages are up, they just passed an infrastructure bill, and yet the American people are not happy. The reality is that people clearly don't know what they want, but they do know that they are never happy. Perhaps we should have figured this out by the fact that presidencies tend to change hands politically each time, because as Mayer said rather accurately, 'the american people have no political desire other than throw the bums out.' When things are good in America, the american people don't reward the party in power. When things are bad in America, they don't so much blame the people in power as tell themselves that they were right to begin with.
Second, on the 'normalizing Syria' bit. Look, there is no shortage of awful things to be said about Syria. you could apply nearly any evil adjective to describe their leader, and it would probably fit. But here's the thing: it doesn't matter if the US recognizes them or not. They're going to exist. Assad is going to be in power. And refusing to accept this is a bit like how the US didn't accept the CCP as the 'real' china and stubbornly acted like Taiwan was China, and not the billion people on the mainland. It revealed how impotent the US was, for not accepting reality.
Syria will be led by Assad, and the US won't do anything about it. It does the US no favors by pretending like this isn't the case. China is putting people in extermination camps, there's religious war going on in India, there's genocide in Myanmar; all of these places are in countries that the US recognizes. The same is true for the wars in the Balkans in the 90's. Terrible stuff happens all of the world by terrible people. But that doesn't mean that their governments and nations don't exist. We can say that's 'legitimizing' or 'normalizing' them, but the fact is, it doesn't matter if we accept them or not, they exist, and they'll do whatever they please. Not recognizing them just means they act with more impunity.
To use a somewhat messy metaphor, it's a bit like how after 2016 a whole host of liberals were like 'we can't normalize trumpism' and tried to pretend like he didn't exist or that the forces of illiberalism were rising. The same happened with a lot of center-right publications. The fact is, pretending like it doesn't exist isn't really an option. The problem is that by the time you're asking 'should we normalize this' it's already normalized. Once they're in power, congrats, they're already normalized. Refusing to grapple or engage with it only makes you look weaker, not them. They don't need your acceptance to do what they want, after all.
So is Syria awful? Yes. It's one of the worst regimes in a world of them. But pretending like they don't exist is a bit like trying to pretend that Franco wasn't in charge of Spain for all those years. It was pointless.
I'll try to keep this short too. Democrats are perennially bad at messaging. Do you think the vast majority of Americans follow the stock market? Do you think the vast majority of Americans have stock portfolios? Do you think the vast majority of Americans pay to subscribe to the NYT, Wapo, or the Bulwark +?
Democrats should stop over-explaining everything, come up with simple to-the-point messaging. That would go a long way towards getting people to understand what's going on and how it impacts their own lives.
I'll try to keep this short. It's fairly clear now that voters do not care about politicians doing anything. As you note, the stock market has never been higher, jobs are plentiful, wages are up, they just passed an infrastructure bill, and yet the American people are not happy. The reality is that people clearly don't know what they want, but they do know that they are never happy. Perhaps we should have figured this out by the fact that presidencies tend to change hands politically each time, because as Mayer said rather accurately, 'the american people have no political desire other than throw the bums out.' When things are good in America, the american people don't reward the party in power. When things are bad in America, they don't so much blame the people in power as tell themselves that they were right to begin with.
Second, on the 'normalizing Syria' bit. Look, there is no shortage of awful things to be said about Syria. you could apply nearly any evil adjective to describe their leader, and it would probably fit. But here's the thing: it doesn't matter if the US recognizes them or not. They're going to exist. Assad is going to be in power. And refusing to accept this is a bit like how the US didn't accept the CCP as the 'real' china and stubbornly acted like Taiwan was China, and not the billion people on the mainland. It revealed how impotent the US was, for not accepting reality.
Syria will be led by Assad, and the US won't do anything about it. It does the US no favors by pretending like this isn't the case. China is putting people in extermination camps, there's religious war going on in India, there's genocide in Myanmar; all of these places are in countries that the US recognizes. The same is true for the wars in the Balkans in the 90's. Terrible stuff happens all of the world by terrible people. But that doesn't mean that their governments and nations don't exist. We can say that's 'legitimizing' or 'normalizing' them, but the fact is, it doesn't matter if we accept them or not, they exist, and they'll do whatever they please. Not recognizing them just means they act with more impunity.
To use a somewhat messy metaphor, it's a bit like how after 2016 a whole host of liberals were like 'we can't normalize trumpism' and tried to pretend like he didn't exist or that the forces of illiberalism were rising. The same happened with a lot of center-right publications. The fact is, pretending like it doesn't exist isn't really an option. The problem is that by the time you're asking 'should we normalize this' it's already normalized. Once they're in power, congrats, they're already normalized. Refusing to grapple or engage with it only makes you look weaker, not them. They don't need your acceptance to do what they want, after all.
So is Syria awful? Yes. It's one of the worst regimes in a world of them. But pretending like they don't exist is a bit like trying to pretend that Franco wasn't in charge of Spain for all those years. It was pointless.
I'll try to keep this short too. Democrats are perennially bad at messaging. Do you think the vast majority of Americans follow the stock market? Do you think the vast majority of Americans have stock portfolios? Do you think the vast majority of Americans pay to subscribe to the NYT, Wapo, or the Bulwark +?
Democrats should stop over-explaining everything, come up with simple to-the-point messaging. That would go a long way towards getting people to understand what's going on and how it impacts their own lives.
Tried. And succeeded!