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Bob Eno's avatar

I feel the same frustrations that Shawn does in his post above. But I think "Popularism" (awful word) is not senseless, and does not mean surrender. It means looking for ways to optimize political advocacy to produce leverage for legislative and policy action. Because the basis of leverage is ultimately votes, the only alternatives are persuading voters to like what you want them to like or to persuade them you are advocating what they already like.

The first is much harder. Democratic progressives have made heroic efforts to do it, but managed to undermine their efforts through counterproductive tactics, intentional (I'm thinking of strident rhetoric, censorious attacks on routinely complacent voters, extremist proposals like "defund the police," deciding this is a great time to focus on racial equity and gender complexity), and unintentional (the "riots" of 2020 brought huge numbers of voters into the GOP in the county I live in).

The second is easier, but the playing field is unfairly tilting against it: (1) The political focus has moved towards extremes, and the Right is far more skilled in manipulating those tools that turn these to advantage--the MAGA news bubble and its white nationalist and QAnon associates have made The Squad, HRC, and company far more menacing to its audience than anything the Left is able to do with MTG and crew (who are often treated, like DJT, as figures of fun--the far Right is reading Alinsky; the Left has forgotten him); (2) Democrats' interest in actual government is far more challenging for political success than the MAGA goals of disruption and exploitation.

Fairness and frustration have nothing to do with real outcomes. Most voters have always been complacent, poorly informed, and subject to fraudulent manipulation. The simple fact is that Democratic goals are harder to achieve and require maximal discipline, focused simply on getting more votes. Nothing good will happen without them. The MAGA world doesn't need discipline: even negative disruption serves their goal of shifting attention away from governing and towards conspiracy fantasies, fear, and reaction. The Democrats have done a great deal over the past year and a half, but the lack of discipline among the Party writ large has subverted it. It's too bad, but good government is for its own sake; political theater is only a means to get as much of it as possible.

I'm sure it's too late for 2022, but for 2024, I think the entire Left needs to ask itself, "Are you pro-democracy?" Because if you are, then it's going to be necessary to realize that continuing to divert political news with the new version of anti-racism, with anti-capitalism, and with other progressive positions that may have great value but that feed the agenda of the right, all reduce to anti-democracy positions, because in this context, that's where they are leading us.

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