This is just the same old wine poured into a new bottle. If only Democrats would be quiet about people of color, or queer people, or unarmed people getting murdered by the police, or children being murdered in schools and movie theaters - maybe then Real Americans in places like Tennessee would like us. Maybe then they wouldn't find us so screechy.
There is nothing new to this argument. Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act and they have been running away from them ever since, and here we are at last, on the brink of fascism. There have been Democrats like Chris Murphy and Adam Jentleson and Lis Smith for a very long time. Are they offering hope? No they're offering fear and pretending it's hope.
What would be truly different is if national Democrats would say this: that America is for all Americans, no matter what. Everyone's on the bus. And if anyone wants to say that the bus could go faster if we had a fewer of the wrong people on it and more of the right people...well those people can expect a fight. We are all entitled to security, prosperity, dignity, and self-government. No exceptions.
I'm waiting for Chris Murphy to say that, and if he does, I will look at him very differently.
And because I'm one of those screechy smarty-pants liberals, let me show how smart I am. When I say that the Chris Murphys of the world have been around for a long time, I mean a very long time.
This is the kind of thing I want to hear from Senator Murphy. This is what a leader sounds like. Not the hand-clasped sad eyes, but this:
*
If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man - such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care - such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance - such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.
*
We've tried to appease our way to popularity. It's wrong and it doesn't work. Stop doing it and show some courage instead.
There continues to be this dangerous conceit out there that positions taken by political parties actually matter to election outcomes.
They don't.
While high-information voters do care about these things, most of this chunk of the electorate is intractable and whatever swings occur amongst this group from election to election tends to happen at the margins.
But what actually *determines* the outcomes of elections these days is the performance of mid-to-low-information voters. These are people who are ill-informed on topics of the day and have little understanding or institutional knowledge of how politics or government works. As a result, they get most of their cues on how to vote from their social groups, work friends, immediate family and of course the endless wave of culturally-coded slop they read on social media.
The US Fascist Party (USFP) was the first to understand this in 2016. They hit this group hard with disinformation (with help from Russia) and continue to do so today. While normies have fled their party and aligned with the Democrats, the USFP has made up for those losses by activating previously non-activated voters who experience their political awakenings through the lens of red-pilled culture war.
Trump lost in 2020 because the problem of Covid was too chaotic for him to overcome, but it's noteworthy that he still almost won in a setting where his mismanagement of Covid and the economy was causing real world harm. But the Covid disinformation wars taught him new lessons about how to reach the previously unreachable voter.
And that's what happened in 2024. Trump didn't win because the Democratic Party held position X or Y while Trump's party held positions D and E. He won because the USFP controlled the narrative that was being fed to the electorate. It didn't matter what Kamala believed or what positions she espoused, low information voters weren't going to get an accurate depiction of them because all the noise, static and chum created by the vast far right propaganda machine drowned all of it out.
So when I see these imbecilic think tankers and analysts lecturing about holding this position or that, I think "This person is completely clueless." You can have the best candidate in history holding the perfect positions and if that person's campaign is not allowed to be seen unfiltered by a massive chunk of the electorate, that candidate is going to lose.
Until Democrats (and the rest of the anti-Trump coalition) learn how to wrest control of the ways low-information voters are exposed to news and information, the USFP will continue to win. Simple as that. Go look at Mamdani. He gets it. So does AOC.
Breitbart was right: Politics lies downstream of culture. The USFP focused first on culture then it focused on the means by which that culture is disemminated. And here we are. If I have to read one more piece about how Dems need to change to this position or that, I'm going to scream.
Not exactly disagreeing with you, but it's amazing how contingent history and politics are. Imagine if COVID had come out exactly one year earlier, and everything else unfolded on the same (elapsed) timeline we experienced, so the events of 2021 would have occurred in 2020.
Instead of the vaccine rolling out after the election but before Biden was inaugurated, Trump would have had almost a full year to take credit for it before the election. He and the GOP establishment would have pressured Red state governors to implement it fully and rapidly, and conservative media to accept and promote it instead of pretending it was ineffectual or toxic.
The worst of the anti-vax fringe would still have resisted, but with the POTUS and his lackeys going all-in on the vaccine all year, I expect that the traction those ideas would have gained would have been VERY different. No states trying to resist it, no brainwashing of 25% or more of the country into thinking that ivermectin was better than the vaccine. Almost half a million excess deaths occurred in 2021, so likely a 100,000 or more could have been prevented by higher compliance in Republican populations.
And based on the great success of the vaccine, Trump probably would have been re-elected in 2020…
Great comment and points all around. Similarly, if Trump had won in 2020, we don’t have a Jan 6, we get vax compliance, the inflation gets pinned on him and there’s not a Presidency based solely on vengeance and retribution.
Good point. In addition to less vengeance and all-around craziness from Trump, a continuous administration wouldn't have left them stewing and scheming up Project 2025. Not saying the 2020 Trump administration wouldn't have been worse than the first, but they might have been A LITTLE less crazy, beyond just not putting that fucking Kennedy in the cabinet.
I think there is a truth to individuals in the party wanting to become a bigger tent, but you need only look at their treatment of Mandami to know the party itself as a political and financial force has come to no such conclusion, sadly. It's so frustrating to watch.
Yep. Moving to the right worked for the Democrats once...in 1992...when a third party candidate helped push the Democrat over the finish line.
It really bums me out that the Bulwark pays for Egan to try to convince us that the Dems should throw trans folk under the bus or move the center of the Overton Window further to the Right. Maybe she can push us to accept the elimination of just SOME vaccines, you know...to appeal to the conservative voter.
Statements like the following or dishonest: "The party has suffered from a perception that it has become intolerant of different perspectives and preoccupied with identity politics and language policing." Not because this perception doesn't exist, but because this is clearly what Egan actually believes herself, but she tries to present all this as just facts she uncovered in her reporting. She's much more a pundit than a reporter.
And her punditry has consistently been an echo of the Democratic consultant class's drivel, For example:
"“People finally realize that for the Democratic party to be a durable majority party, it has to change,” said Democratic strategists Lis Smith, who was a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. “Candidates don’t need to check every progressive litmus test to deserve party support.”
Candidates have never had to check every progressive litmus test. In fact, when candidates do present as actual progressives, the party has worked to yank support (e.g., the pushback against Mamdani, the pushing through of Biden in the 2020 primary, the pushback against Bernie in 2016, etc.). I don't know if Smith is lying here or if consultants really think that the establishment hasn't been rabidly anti-progressive for decades now, but I do know why Egan chose to include this quote...it reflects a perspective she wants to keep in the mainstream (by pulling the same Republican style faux-victim schtick of, "the left has gone too far, and we need to make room for more right wing Democrats)".
Voting in Dems who won't fight hard against fascism only serves to strengthen fascism. So, no, I don't plan to open up a permission structure for transphobia or any other "centrist" ideal. I don't need socialists, but anti-progressive liberals are why the non-conservatives in our country see the Dems as feckless politicians.
Maybe Egan should more clearly label her columns as opinion pieces.
I was hard on you for some past articles that I thought were unfair. This analysis is very spot on to me. Well presented and hit at the places we all know have to change. But I am encouraged by the candidates in my world
I am sorry but the gop is every bit built on "purity" & "rigidity". Do what dear leader says or else. This is not a democrat problem. This is an electorate problem and a gerrymandering problem. The current administration is odious and it reflects the odious people who voted for it. This is more structural than just the democrats.
They are, to a certain degree. The problem is, there’s simply more hardcore conservatives than there are hardcore liberals in this country, so the Republicans don’t need to put as much effort into reaching to the center to win as Dems to if they want to win a nationwide election or take the Senate. Find a few wedge social issues that resonate with the center, and they’re basically there.
"How about pro-life Democrats? There used to be some, but then the party decided that litmus tests were more important than winning elections in red states. The Dems keep hitting the culture war tar baby. Will they ever learn?"
Millions of Black Americans who have centrist and even traditionally conservative views seem to feel perfectly comfortable voting for Democrats. Reckon why that is? Could it be because they have faith that the Dems are more likely to protect their fundamental rights and enact legislation that helps ordinary working people?
Listen, I'm all for a big tent, one where rural and urban voters, college and non-college voters, and people of all ethnicities, religions, and sexual orientations can feel heard, if not always perfectly catered to. The current Democratic party is not that, but it is damn close, certainly far closer than the Republicans have been at any point in my lifetime. When I hear cries for the Dems to "move to the center" on things like LGBTQ rights and "identity politics," what I hear is a plea to make the party a comfy place for sexism, homophobia, and white grievance.
I will be the first to say that Dem messaging is often bad and apparently concocted by people who have little familiarity with how much of America lives. They need to work on that, but the remedy cannot be throwing the stalwart supporters of the party — women, minorities, and LGBTQ people — under the bus to pacify bigoted white voters and sexist men.
Too late for me - I have decided to switch my voter registration back to Independent, largest voting block the notoriously fickle American electorate. Talk about a big tent, there is one.
On the one hand, I can understand the appeal of this kind of approach. On the other, it feels like diluting the things I believe in to make them more palatable to people who will disagree with me regardless.
Going right to get back left seems...odd. I don't disagree with relaxing the Democrat "purity of ideology" (the amount of times I've rolled my eyes over semantic arguments of a larger issues that the arguers actually *agree* on, writ large, is not small) but also not standing up for what you believe in to woo voters feels disingenuous, and dare I say, weak.
There are things the Democratic party disagrees with the Republican party on that aren't able to be diluted to appeal to right-leaning centrists or independents. The rights of all peoples, the need for truth and justice, the assurance of government support; to water any of those down (and others) is tantamount to waving a white flag.
Stand up for what you believe in. Be steadfast and stalwart. Push back, lest the ground be eroded from your feet. I thought the problem last election was that we weren't left *enough*, and now we're supposed to get more centrist? I'm not buying it.
"The party has suffered from a perception that it has become intolerant of different perspectives and preoccupied with identity politics and language policing."
The key word in this sentence is "impression."
The following negative trends will not disappear as our attention is absorbed by Trump's ominious fascistic perversions of our system:
1. Wealth disparities partly caused by capital returns outpacing economic growth.
2. Healthcare disfunction
3. Climate change
4. Global immigration patterns
5. Pandemics and diseases
6. Food insecurity and hunger
7. Water contamination
Democrats would do well to expose that the MAGA GOP has no vision of the future.
MAGA is not for the working class --- it favors the oligarchy and capital returns.
MAGA is not interested in the science of health -- its obsessed with conspiracy theories.
MAGA is doesn't care about the climate -- it facors corporate exploitation of the environment.
MAGA doesn't understand that climate change is entangled with migration and terrorism.
MAGA is unprepared for the next pandemic -- it wants to live in denial.
MAGA lied about its interest in food security or potable water -- it killed USAID.
MAGA is backward looking -- it's obsessed with resentment.
Thank you for this very interesting and thought-provoking article. It is heartening to see that conversations are taking place which might eventually lead to a clearer mission for the Democratic Party. Or maybe they won't. Is it possible that the Democratic Party as an organization has structural issues which prevent it from being an effective "learning organization" (a term I learned from reading Peter Senge's book, The Fifth Discipline)? It's one thing to see what needs to be done, but it's very much another thing to get it done. Hasn't it been obvious for a long time that the Democratic Party needs to have a bigger tent and a clearer, simpler mission with broad appeal? What is preventing the Party as an organization from getting that done?
Some of these so-called "toxic positions" represent an inherent understanding by Democrats on "the left" that there are segments of American society which, historically and more recently, have been unfairly treated, and that still are, and that "fair play for everyone" requires still more progress towards "These Truths", as Jill Lepore would put it. I think many Democrats in the middle, such as Chris Murphy, would agree with that, but they are becoming less willing to say so, in the interests of being re-elected. Republicans, I think, would prefer to ignore many of these topics, also in the interests of being re-elected, especially since their unfortunately powerful MAGA voting base decidedly wants to ignore these topics.
One would like to think that continued pursuit of a "more perfect union" would have the support of a substantial majority of Americans, but the success of Trump and his followers seems to indicate that may not be the case, which is greatly troubling. I am concerned that many of the position shifts described in this column may represent a weakening of principles that America needs if it is to continue as a country admired for the quality of its democracy.
The ends versus the means is often a very thorny conflict.
Like many other pieces I see on this topic (what do dems need to fix) resent two opposing ideas as the answer - 1) drop litmus tests and 2) move to the center (which generally includes lower the tone on “culture” stuff). If one accepts that litmus tests should be dropped, then it seems that one is acknowledging that the dems are more than just “the center”; and if one wants everyone to move to the center, then there are litmus tests to worry about.
Because most offices (except for president/vice president) represent varying degrees of local populations then we (dems) really should accept variety (center and left) and tone down litmus tests. Let Mamdani represent NYC and let Gallego represent AZ).
And I happen to think democrats have a great cultural message: fair play for everyone. We just seem to be afraid to own it.
This is just the same old wine poured into a new bottle. If only Democrats would be quiet about people of color, or queer people, or unarmed people getting murdered by the police, or children being murdered in schools and movie theaters - maybe then Real Americans in places like Tennessee would like us. Maybe then they wouldn't find us so screechy.
There is nothing new to this argument. Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act and they have been running away from them ever since, and here we are at last, on the brink of fascism. There have been Democrats like Chris Murphy and Adam Jentleson and Lis Smith for a very long time. Are they offering hope? No they're offering fear and pretending it's hope.
What would be truly different is if national Democrats would say this: that America is for all Americans, no matter what. Everyone's on the bus. And if anyone wants to say that the bus could go faster if we had a fewer of the wrong people on it and more of the right people...well those people can expect a fight. We are all entitled to security, prosperity, dignity, and self-government. No exceptions.
I'm waiting for Chris Murphy to say that, and if he does, I will look at him very differently.
And because I'm one of those screechy smarty-pants liberals, let me show how smart I am. When I say that the Chris Murphys of the world have been around for a long time, I mean a very long time.
This is the kind of thing I want to hear from Senator Murphy. This is what a leader sounds like. Not the hand-clasped sad eyes, but this:
*
If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man - such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care - such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance - such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.
*
We've tried to appease our way to popularity. It's wrong and it doesn't work. Stop doing it and show some courage instead.
There continues to be this dangerous conceit out there that positions taken by political parties actually matter to election outcomes.
They don't.
While high-information voters do care about these things, most of this chunk of the electorate is intractable and whatever swings occur amongst this group from election to election tends to happen at the margins.
But what actually *determines* the outcomes of elections these days is the performance of mid-to-low-information voters. These are people who are ill-informed on topics of the day and have little understanding or institutional knowledge of how politics or government works. As a result, they get most of their cues on how to vote from their social groups, work friends, immediate family and of course the endless wave of culturally-coded slop they read on social media.
The US Fascist Party (USFP) was the first to understand this in 2016. They hit this group hard with disinformation (with help from Russia) and continue to do so today. While normies have fled their party and aligned with the Democrats, the USFP has made up for those losses by activating previously non-activated voters who experience their political awakenings through the lens of red-pilled culture war.
Trump lost in 2020 because the problem of Covid was too chaotic for him to overcome, but it's noteworthy that he still almost won in a setting where his mismanagement of Covid and the economy was causing real world harm. But the Covid disinformation wars taught him new lessons about how to reach the previously unreachable voter.
And that's what happened in 2024. Trump didn't win because the Democratic Party held position X or Y while Trump's party held positions D and E. He won because the USFP controlled the narrative that was being fed to the electorate. It didn't matter what Kamala believed or what positions she espoused, low information voters weren't going to get an accurate depiction of them because all the noise, static and chum created by the vast far right propaganda machine drowned all of it out.
So when I see these imbecilic think tankers and analysts lecturing about holding this position or that, I think "This person is completely clueless." You can have the best candidate in history holding the perfect positions and if that person's campaign is not allowed to be seen unfiltered by a massive chunk of the electorate, that candidate is going to lose.
Until Democrats (and the rest of the anti-Trump coalition) learn how to wrest control of the ways low-information voters are exposed to news and information, the USFP will continue to win. Simple as that. Go look at Mamdani. He gets it. So does AOC.
Breitbart was right: Politics lies downstream of culture. The USFP focused first on culture then it focused on the means by which that culture is disemminated. And here we are. If I have to read one more piece about how Dems need to change to this position or that, I'm going to scream.
Not exactly disagreeing with you, but it's amazing how contingent history and politics are. Imagine if COVID had come out exactly one year earlier, and everything else unfolded on the same (elapsed) timeline we experienced, so the events of 2021 would have occurred in 2020.
Instead of the vaccine rolling out after the election but before Biden was inaugurated, Trump would have had almost a full year to take credit for it before the election. He and the GOP establishment would have pressured Red state governors to implement it fully and rapidly, and conservative media to accept and promote it instead of pretending it was ineffectual or toxic.
The worst of the anti-vax fringe would still have resisted, but with the POTUS and his lackeys going all-in on the vaccine all year, I expect that the traction those ideas would have gained would have been VERY different. No states trying to resist it, no brainwashing of 25% or more of the country into thinking that ivermectin was better than the vaccine. Almost half a million excess deaths occurred in 2021, so likely a 100,000 or more could have been prevented by higher compliance in Republican populations.
And based on the great success of the vaccine, Trump probably would have been re-elected in 2020…
Great comment and points all around. Similarly, if Trump had won in 2020, we don’t have a Jan 6, we get vax compliance, the inflation gets pinned on him and there’s not a Presidency based solely on vengeance and retribution.
Good point. In addition to less vengeance and all-around craziness from Trump, a continuous administration wouldn't have left them stewing and scheming up Project 2025. Not saying the 2020 Trump administration wouldn't have been worse than the first, but they might have been A LITTLE less crazy, beyond just not putting that fucking Kennedy in the cabinet.
I think there is a truth to individuals in the party wanting to become a bigger tent, but you need only look at their treatment of Mandami to know the party itself as a political and financial force has come to no such conclusion, sadly. It's so frustrating to watch.
Yep. Moving to the right worked for the Democrats once...in 1992...when a third party candidate helped push the Democrat over the finish line.
It really bums me out that the Bulwark pays for Egan to try to convince us that the Dems should throw trans folk under the bus or move the center of the Overton Window further to the Right. Maybe she can push us to accept the elimination of just SOME vaccines, you know...to appeal to the conservative voter.
Statements like the following or dishonest: "The party has suffered from a perception that it has become intolerant of different perspectives and preoccupied with identity politics and language policing." Not because this perception doesn't exist, but because this is clearly what Egan actually believes herself, but she tries to present all this as just facts she uncovered in her reporting. She's much more a pundit than a reporter.
And her punditry has consistently been an echo of the Democratic consultant class's drivel, For example:
"“People finally realize that for the Democratic party to be a durable majority party, it has to change,” said Democratic strategists Lis Smith, who was a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. “Candidates don’t need to check every progressive litmus test to deserve party support.”
Candidates have never had to check every progressive litmus test. In fact, when candidates do present as actual progressives, the party has worked to yank support (e.g., the pushback against Mamdani, the pushing through of Biden in the 2020 primary, the pushback against Bernie in 2016, etc.). I don't know if Smith is lying here or if consultants really think that the establishment hasn't been rabidly anti-progressive for decades now, but I do know why Egan chose to include this quote...it reflects a perspective she wants to keep in the mainstream (by pulling the same Republican style faux-victim schtick of, "the left has gone too far, and we need to make room for more right wing Democrats)".
Voting in Dems who won't fight hard against fascism only serves to strengthen fascism. So, no, I don't plan to open up a permission structure for transphobia or any other "centrist" ideal. I don't need socialists, but anti-progressive liberals are why the non-conservatives in our country see the Dems as feckless politicians.
Maybe Egan should more clearly label her columns as opinion pieces.
I wish there was a double-like button.
I was hard on you for some past articles that I thought were unfair. This analysis is very spot on to me. Well presented and hit at the places we all know have to change. But I am encouraged by the candidates in my world
I am sorry but the gop is every bit built on "purity" & "rigidity". Do what dear leader says or else. This is not a democrat problem. This is an electorate problem and a gerrymandering problem. The current administration is odious and it reflects the odious people who voted for it. This is more structural than just the democrats.
They are, to a certain degree. The problem is, there’s simply more hardcore conservatives than there are hardcore liberals in this country, so the Republicans don’t need to put as much effort into reaching to the center to win as Dems to if they want to win a nationwide election or take the Senate. Find a few wedge social issues that resonate with the center, and they’re basically there.
From Sept. 8:
"How about pro-life Democrats? There used to be some, but then the party decided that litmus tests were more important than winning elections in red states. The Dems keep hitting the culture war tar baby. Will they ever learn?"
https://substack.com/@logosandliberty/note/c-153661030
Millions of Black Americans who have centrist and even traditionally conservative views seem to feel perfectly comfortable voting for Democrats. Reckon why that is? Could it be because they have faith that the Dems are more likely to protect their fundamental rights and enact legislation that helps ordinary working people?
Listen, I'm all for a big tent, one where rural and urban voters, college and non-college voters, and people of all ethnicities, religions, and sexual orientations can feel heard, if not always perfectly catered to. The current Democratic party is not that, but it is damn close, certainly far closer than the Republicans have been at any point in my lifetime. When I hear cries for the Dems to "move to the center" on things like LGBTQ rights and "identity politics," what I hear is a plea to make the party a comfy place for sexism, homophobia, and white grievance.
I will be the first to say that Dem messaging is often bad and apparently concocted by people who have little familiarity with how much of America lives. They need to work on that, but the remedy cannot be throwing the stalwart supporters of the party — women, minorities, and LGBTQ people — under the bus to pacify bigoted white voters and sexist men.
Too late for me - I have decided to switch my voter registration back to Independent, largest voting block the notoriously fickle American electorate. Talk about a big tent, there is one.
On the one hand, I can understand the appeal of this kind of approach. On the other, it feels like diluting the things I believe in to make them more palatable to people who will disagree with me regardless.
Going right to get back left seems...odd. I don't disagree with relaxing the Democrat "purity of ideology" (the amount of times I've rolled my eyes over semantic arguments of a larger issues that the arguers actually *agree* on, writ large, is not small) but also not standing up for what you believe in to woo voters feels disingenuous, and dare I say, weak.
There are things the Democratic party disagrees with the Republican party on that aren't able to be diluted to appeal to right-leaning centrists or independents. The rights of all peoples, the need for truth and justice, the assurance of government support; to water any of those down (and others) is tantamount to waving a white flag.
Stand up for what you believe in. Be steadfast and stalwart. Push back, lest the ground be eroded from your feet. I thought the problem last election was that we weren't left *enough*, and now we're supposed to get more centrist? I'm not buying it.
I don't understand the appeal. With the exception of '92, it's been a losing strategy.
"The party has suffered from a perception that it has become intolerant of different perspectives and preoccupied with identity politics and language policing."
The key word in this sentence is "impression."
The following negative trends will not disappear as our attention is absorbed by Trump's ominious fascistic perversions of our system:
1. Wealth disparities partly caused by capital returns outpacing economic growth.
2. Healthcare disfunction
3. Climate change
4. Global immigration patterns
5. Pandemics and diseases
6. Food insecurity and hunger
7. Water contamination
Democrats would do well to expose that the MAGA GOP has no vision of the future.
MAGA is not for the working class --- it favors the oligarchy and capital returns.
MAGA is not interested in the science of health -- its obsessed with conspiracy theories.
MAGA is doesn't care about the climate -- it facors corporate exploitation of the environment.
MAGA doesn't understand that climate change is entangled with migration and terrorism.
MAGA is unprepared for the next pandemic -- it wants to live in denial.
MAGA lied about its interest in food security or potable water -- it killed USAID.
MAGA is backward looking -- it's obsessed with resentment.
Na. Egan thinks we'd do better seeing if wee can go far enough Right to pick up 1 or 2 Trump voters.
Thank you for this very interesting and thought-provoking article. It is heartening to see that conversations are taking place which might eventually lead to a clearer mission for the Democratic Party. Or maybe they won't. Is it possible that the Democratic Party as an organization has structural issues which prevent it from being an effective "learning organization" (a term I learned from reading Peter Senge's book, The Fifth Discipline)? It's one thing to see what needs to be done, but it's very much another thing to get it done. Hasn't it been obvious for a long time that the Democratic Party needs to have a bigger tent and a clearer, simpler mission with broad appeal? What is preventing the Party as an organization from getting that done?
Some of these so-called "toxic positions" represent an inherent understanding by Democrats on "the left" that there are segments of American society which, historically and more recently, have been unfairly treated, and that still are, and that "fair play for everyone" requires still more progress towards "These Truths", as Jill Lepore would put it. I think many Democrats in the middle, such as Chris Murphy, would agree with that, but they are becoming less willing to say so, in the interests of being re-elected. Republicans, I think, would prefer to ignore many of these topics, also in the interests of being re-elected, especially since their unfortunately powerful MAGA voting base decidedly wants to ignore these topics.
One would like to think that continued pursuit of a "more perfect union" would have the support of a substantial majority of Americans, but the success of Trump and his followers seems to indicate that may not be the case, which is greatly troubling. I am concerned that many of the position shifts described in this column may represent a weakening of principles that America needs if it is to continue as a country admired for the quality of its democracy.
The ends versus the means is often a very thorny conflict.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions," to bring back an old adage.
Um, can someone not simply run against Eleanor? Is her permission needed?
Like many other pieces I see on this topic (what do dems need to fix) resent two opposing ideas as the answer - 1) drop litmus tests and 2) move to the center (which generally includes lower the tone on “culture” stuff). If one accepts that litmus tests should be dropped, then it seems that one is acknowledging that the dems are more than just “the center”; and if one wants everyone to move to the center, then there are litmus tests to worry about.
Because most offices (except for president/vice president) represent varying degrees of local populations then we (dems) really should accept variety (center and left) and tone down litmus tests. Let Mamdani represent NYC and let Gallego represent AZ).
And I happen to think democrats have a great cultural message: fair play for everyone. We just seem to be afraid to own it.
Fantastic article.
Great to hear Democratic Party considering dropping purity tests and pursuing representation of a wider swath of citizens.
I believe Democrats have the skills for E Pluribus Unum.