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Nels's avatar

Expanding the child tax credit is popular. Paid family leave is popular. Not banning gas pipelines at a time of record high gas prices would be popular. Allowing more legal immigration while providing more funding to preventing illegal immigration would be popular. Increasing taxes on the rich can be popular, and raising the minimum wage is popular. Helping labor unions is popular. There are a lot of democratic positions that are popular, and there are a lot that are unpopular. Lots of moderates want to do these things but they can only happen if leadership picks one and moves on it.

Realistically though it's not enough to pass legislation and it's not enough to support popular positions. It's also important not to loudly broadcast unpopular positions. It's not enough to pass a bill that provides additional funding to police, you need to give speeches saying how much you support them and give fiery rhetoric about the importance of law and order. Back when crime rates were falling it was popular for Democrats to support police reform and reduce prison populations. Now that crime is rising Democrats can't afford that any more. People already associate them with defunding the police, they can't just stop talking about it, they need to actively counter that narrative. At the same time Democrats became associated with spending massive amounts of money while the biggest economic problem we face is inflation. They need to stop talking about spending more money on big programs and talk about combatting inflation and helping people cope with it. That's what popularism means.

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