Unfortunately for Dems, the party and it's base are so far from chastened by the election result, I doubt seriously there's going to be that kind of internal change so rapidly. They still haven't accepted the idea that doing things ways besides their way will result in anything but disaster. I see tons of people on Reddit declaring tariffs will tank the economy and cause a depression (and I'm not looking for tariff talk specifically, they're bringing this up unbidden in every political forum). The mildest of changes to the neoliberal system cause alarm and outrage among the base (none of these Redditors know anything about the economy, they're just 18-25 yr-olds who repeat what they hear from the party) because the liberals in power don't believe they can be wrong or don't know everything. We all know how stubborn people who are in middle age or older behave, they go down with the ship. We already had a first Trump term, including tariffs (!!!) and you'd think most liberal Dems were all off on a mission in space and didn't see any of it. A political party so rigid in the ways it does things cannot realistically pursue the bullet list you have above, they have no means to do so except more of the same things they've already tried. Delusional groups take decades to fix.
I think you are completely on target. The defining characteristic of the regressive “progresssives” is that, unburdened by any perceived need to actually understand anything, they are absolutely certain that they know everything and are correct about everything. As such, they are incapable of even grasping, let alone admitting, that they have been promoting stupendously bad ideas and are just wrong, these days, on most things. The chasm between conviction and competence has never been so vast.
I don’t know what the solution is for the Democrats other than to completely sideline this contingent, but unfortunately I see no indication that they have the will to do that.
Great article. I have not voted for a Democrat in a long time because I am center/left on economics, but moderate on most social issues, and conservative on cultural issues. They haven't been the party for me. Wish they were so I could have a true choice.
One sensed the Democratic Party in time was going to be in big trouble with Joe Biden's 2020 election. It marked, or history will duly note, a critical juncture for the Democratic Party and the start of its fall from grace.
Why? Because faced with an intra-party challenge in 2020 from self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders, who had the support of the party's dedicated progressive Leftists like the Squad, Biden and Democrats built their winning coalition by reaching politically Left. Ironically, had they chosen to coalesce toward the politcal middle -- creating a stronger alliance with the millions of moderate Republicans wary of Donald Trump's antics and building on the support with the smart steps John Halpin has layed out for them in his excellent analysis, Democrats would have built a winning national coalition for decades to come.
Instead, they are now stuck with the stink of a dangerously out of touch and rather kooky progressive Left that even Bernie Sanders can find fault with. That there will be at least the coming 12 years or more of Trump/Vance and a stronger GOP bench seems more probable if last week's election is any indication.
Also, if I were Democrats, I would put pressure on Starmer to stop arresting people for social media posts, silently praying no matter where, and demonizing the British people over their dislike of immigration. Why? Because the American people they could win back will look what has happened since he was elected and think they will do what he has done. The entire censorship apparatus has to go.
Americans do not know or care that other countries are doing about social media posts. I am pretty online and I did not know about this until just now.
The analogy to Labour in Britain is a good one. And, in fact, the reaction to Trump's second coming is very similar to the reaction to the Brexit vote by most rational people (I lived in Britain at the time). And of course, almost all of the negative predictions for Brexit ("project fear", i.e. objective economic analysis of what would happen) have come true. The Democrats should take seriously Starmer's courage and resolve in the face of tough criticism in purging, ruthlessly, Corbin and his ilk, which was essential to their being able to capitalize on the Tories' disarray and the damage done by 14 years of Conservative government to win the recent election. Of course, just scraping the mud off the Labour Party was not enough and much more must be done -- in politics and culture -- to secure the kinds of changes that the Labour Government wants to make, much hampered by the fiscal burden left by the Tories (another lesson for the future Democrats, I am sure). The biggest problem now seems to be to get the people to realize that there are no miracles and recovery will be costly and will take time. The danger is that Farage's new party will succeed in starting a Trumpian snake-oil campaign that will undermine the Labour government and perhaps take over the Tories before the next general election.
Blue Labour may have been a sensible reset but it little to do with the "landslide" since Labour got fewer votes than in their epic defeat in the previous election. The outcome was a product of the Conservative Party betrayal of its base leading to voters either staying home or defecting to Reform. That and first past the post led to Labour getting a far greater share of seats than votes.
True, but Starmer and company had to turn the ship around in order to capitalize on disgruntlement and Blue Labour ideas and values shaped a lot of their approach.
They didn't turn the ship around enough to convince more people to vote for them. It would be an interesting counterfactual to imagine an election where Labour didn't change. I posit that the results would have been much same. Labour was a beneficiary of Voltaire's prayer.
Progressives are in love with the idea of ‘opposition’ and ‘resistance’, because progressive teachers were taught by stupid Gen X leftist parents in love with stupid hippies’ stories about protests. Doesn’t matter that those actions brought the domination of US presidency by the GOP from 1968-1992 with a single 4 year interruption. These people are the self-defeating instinct of the Democratic Party in action. What else would you call Biden making his day one decision to force trans “female” athletes into women’s sports and trans “women” into women’s lockers, bathrooms, prisons, etc? That and appointing Levine… are not the actions of anyone who wants to win an election in a country far more moderate or even conservative than Biden’s far-leftist staffers.
The Democrats Party will not rid itself of the CPC, and the CPC house members will not rid themselves of far-leftist staffers, who are behind all this elections-blowing stupidity. The kooks will run the show until CPC members start losing their primaries. Personally I have stopped donating to Democrats in elections (and they did just fine out-raising Trump by many hundreds of millions), and put it all into efforts to defeat Jaamal Bowman and Cori Bush. There are still 74 CPC members. If donors want to avert this party from itself, they should focus on destroying as many progressives as possible, or else the Trump clones are here to stay, and progressives can indulge in holier-than-thou toothless, useless ‘resistance’ - their favorite form of politics.
Pretty accurate review. I would say, though, that Democrats are facing a civil war (another one---they still haven't resolved the first two, but I won't go into it) of techhies vs. greens over AI grid power. The two are entirely incompatible unless Democrats enthusiastically embrace nuclear power. They obviously won't embrace fossil fuels (and in reality we'll need both). Any efforts at solar, wind, battery are going to be dead ins. But no one in the Democrat Party has seen this yet.
Reasonable enough article, but the Democrats are not going to become anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and anti-immigration because a few percent of potentially persuadable voters want them to. In spite of all the talk of a Red Wave, this was a very close election, decided by at most, two percentage points. And this was in an election where voters were in a “throw the bums out” mood.
If Trump governs well and picks up House seats in 2026, then it will be reasonable to talk of a Democratic Party reset.
Supporting what Trans activist wants isn’t anti Gay. I know Lesbian women who don’t want any biological men in women’s spaces. Going against 100+ years of women’s rights advances to appease a fringe of Queer activists has been political suicide and will continue to be.
A slight majority of Republicans oppose trans rights and gay marriage, while a large majority of Americans support them. Two-thirds of Americans back laws protecting transgender people from job discrimination, and 70% support gay marriage. It would be politically unwise for the Democratic Party to abandon these issues, as it would represent a major shift for a historically pro-civil rights party, especially since younger people are strongly pro-LGBTQ+ rights. Public opinion is split on whether transgender issues have gone too far, making it a potential wedge issue.
Most people do not see your specific concern as a high priority. When asked if issues related to transgender and nonbinary people were a key priority for elected officials or a distraction from more pressing matters, 77% viewed them as a distraction. It smells like a wedge culture issue that no one will care about in a few years.
You intentionally (I'm sure) avoided whether the public supports Trans athletes competing against women (they don't), or whether Trans "women" should be in the women's gym locker room (no), or whether Trans "women" should be housed in female prisons (again, there is no such support). That's before we even get into whether young children should be exposed to trans-positive education (no such support), or whether children who want to transition can do that without parental consent (zero support for that, even in blue states).
Yes, the public supports the right of people to chop off their breasts or dick - that's true. The public is against employment discrimination - though ask them if they want a public school trans teacher with giant implants, and you won't get the answer you want. Yes, the Democratic Party's incarnation under Biden was super into promoting fringe trans-activism ideas, and it's part of why the party got kicked in the balls so hard.
Younger people moved right in the first time ever thanks to identity politics pushed by the far-left. You can keep gambling on that and losing.
I agree. This whole 'you don't agree with me so you are filled with hate' has been proven to be so ineffective, laughable even. Yet people continue to try to manipulate others with it.
A majority of Republicans used to support same-sex marriage, and now only 45% do. Congratulations (?) are in order, I guess.
What you call manipulation, I call winning politically.
From another source:
"The poll also finds that 40 percent of Americans say greater social acceptance of transgender people is “good for society,” while 25 percent say it is “bad for society,” and another 35 percent say it is “neither good nor bad.”
"Nearly two-thirds of Democrats (64 percent) believe that greater social acceptance of transgender people is good for society, compared with 40 percent of Independents and 14 percent of Republicans."
So, there is a legitimate difference of opinion here. I am confident that civil liberties will win out in the long run. Of course, I can use my manipulative message while you can talk lovingly about chopping off dicks and breasts, and we will see where public opinion goes.
Young people have not moved to the right for the first time. Where do you get such strange ideas? Young people were more conservative during the Reagan era, for instance. Like all demographics, young people move back and forth on the political spectrum.
Here is a good source for information about how the public feels about transgenderism that you probably won't like to see, but it would be good for you to read it carefully if you want to understand the issue some more politically:
Your animus towards trans people is certainly not universal. Looking at the evidence, I would say that most Americans don't care that much, though obviously, it inflames you.
Specifically, to address your claims: about 58% believe that transgender athletes should compete on the team of their assigned gender, only 45% think that learning about transgenderism at school is bad (this drops to 33% for middle schoolers). The Biden Administration never promoted any straw man positions that you claim they did.
Americans generally are pretty tolerant and have a live-and-let-live attitude toward most things. Your campaign of hate isn't going to get much traction, and if I can be personal here, it is not a very good look on you personally.
Josh Hawley is closer to Blue Labour than anyone in the current Democrat party. Sad. I’m sure George Clooney can figure it all out since he decides who is the nominee in the party.
I keep reading on The Liberal Patriot some version of the seven-point prescription in this column, but none of the writers admit that virtually all of those points are met by the Trump neo-Republican Party. It's going to be tough to convince voters that the Democratic Party is "same but different" and can execute better on a program that they only adopted as an electoral strategy than the people who actually believe in it.
It's taken 50 years to get to where we are, I can't see things improving in my lifetime. I don't think Trump will be successful, there is no money left and half his Republican coalition is only interested in a tax cut.
The post is wrong about Biden spending causing inflation; supply chain and pandemic effects were drivers. But I wonder why Harris (and Biden) didn’t emphasize economic security more, including Social Security, retirement, and Medicare
Unfortunately for Dems, the party and it's base are so far from chastened by the election result, I doubt seriously there's going to be that kind of internal change so rapidly. They still haven't accepted the idea that doing things ways besides their way will result in anything but disaster. I see tons of people on Reddit declaring tariffs will tank the economy and cause a depression (and I'm not looking for tariff talk specifically, they're bringing this up unbidden in every political forum). The mildest of changes to the neoliberal system cause alarm and outrage among the base (none of these Redditors know anything about the economy, they're just 18-25 yr-olds who repeat what they hear from the party) because the liberals in power don't believe they can be wrong or don't know everything. We all know how stubborn people who are in middle age or older behave, they go down with the ship. We already had a first Trump term, including tariffs (!!!) and you'd think most liberal Dems were all off on a mission in space and didn't see any of it. A political party so rigid in the ways it does things cannot realistically pursue the bullet list you have above, they have no means to do so except more of the same things they've already tried. Delusional groups take decades to fix.
I think you are completely on target. The defining characteristic of the regressive “progresssives” is that, unburdened by any perceived need to actually understand anything, they are absolutely certain that they know everything and are correct about everything. As such, they are incapable of even grasping, let alone admitting, that they have been promoting stupendously bad ideas and are just wrong, these days, on most things. The chasm between conviction and competence has never been so vast.
I don’t know what the solution is for the Democrats other than to completely sideline this contingent, but unfortunately I see no indication that they have the will to do that.
Great article. I have not voted for a Democrat in a long time because I am center/left on economics, but moderate on most social issues, and conservative on cultural issues. They haven't been the party for me. Wish they were so I could have a true choice.
One sensed the Democratic Party in time was going to be in big trouble with Joe Biden's 2020 election. It marked, or history will duly note, a critical juncture for the Democratic Party and the start of its fall from grace.
Why? Because faced with an intra-party challenge in 2020 from self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders, who had the support of the party's dedicated progressive Leftists like the Squad, Biden and Democrats built their winning coalition by reaching politically Left. Ironically, had they chosen to coalesce toward the politcal middle -- creating a stronger alliance with the millions of moderate Republicans wary of Donald Trump's antics and building on the support with the smart steps John Halpin has layed out for them in his excellent analysis, Democrats would have built a winning national coalition for decades to come.
Instead, they are now stuck with the stink of a dangerously out of touch and rather kooky progressive Left that even Bernie Sanders can find fault with. That there will be at least the coming 12 years or more of Trump/Vance and a stronger GOP bench seems more probable if last week's election is any indication.
I presume the Americanized "Blue Labor" bullets list is not in order. The Dems hate America, so no love of country.
Also, if I were Democrats, I would put pressure on Starmer to stop arresting people for social media posts, silently praying no matter where, and demonizing the British people over their dislike of immigration. Why? Because the American people they could win back will look what has happened since he was elected and think they will do what he has done. The entire censorship apparatus has to go.
Americans do not know or care that other countries are doing about social media posts. I am pretty online and I did not know about this until just now.
I care. I care about all the people I’ve watched be arrested.
The analogy to Labour in Britain is a good one. And, in fact, the reaction to Trump's second coming is very similar to the reaction to the Brexit vote by most rational people (I lived in Britain at the time). And of course, almost all of the negative predictions for Brexit ("project fear", i.e. objective economic analysis of what would happen) have come true. The Democrats should take seriously Starmer's courage and resolve in the face of tough criticism in purging, ruthlessly, Corbin and his ilk, which was essential to their being able to capitalize on the Tories' disarray and the damage done by 14 years of Conservative government to win the recent election. Of course, just scraping the mud off the Labour Party was not enough and much more must be done -- in politics and culture -- to secure the kinds of changes that the Labour Government wants to make, much hampered by the fiscal burden left by the Tories (another lesson for the future Democrats, I am sure). The biggest problem now seems to be to get the people to realize that there are no miracles and recovery will be costly and will take time. The danger is that Farage's new party will succeed in starting a Trumpian snake-oil campaign that will undermine the Labour government and perhaps take over the Tories before the next general election.
Blue Labour may have been a sensible reset but it little to do with the "landslide" since Labour got fewer votes than in their epic defeat in the previous election. The outcome was a product of the Conservative Party betrayal of its base leading to voters either staying home or defecting to Reform. That and first past the post led to Labour getting a far greater share of seats than votes.
True, but Starmer and company had to turn the ship around in order to capitalize on disgruntlement and Blue Labour ideas and values shaped a lot of their approach.
They didn't turn the ship around enough to convince more people to vote for them. It would be an interesting counterfactual to imagine an election where Labour didn't change. I posit that the results would have been much same. Labour was a beneficiary of Voltaire's prayer.
Progressives are in love with the idea of ‘opposition’ and ‘resistance’, because progressive teachers were taught by stupid Gen X leftist parents in love with stupid hippies’ stories about protests. Doesn’t matter that those actions brought the domination of US presidency by the GOP from 1968-1992 with a single 4 year interruption. These people are the self-defeating instinct of the Democratic Party in action. What else would you call Biden making his day one decision to force trans “female” athletes into women’s sports and trans “women” into women’s lockers, bathrooms, prisons, etc? That and appointing Levine… are not the actions of anyone who wants to win an election in a country far more moderate or even conservative than Biden’s far-leftist staffers.
The Democrats Party will not rid itself of the CPC, and the CPC house members will not rid themselves of far-leftist staffers, who are behind all this elections-blowing stupidity. The kooks will run the show until CPC members start losing their primaries. Personally I have stopped donating to Democrats in elections (and they did just fine out-raising Trump by many hundreds of millions), and put it all into efforts to defeat Jaamal Bowman and Cori Bush. There are still 74 CPC members. If donors want to avert this party from itself, they should focus on destroying as many progressives as possible, or else the Trump clones are here to stay, and progressives can indulge in holier-than-thou toothless, useless ‘resistance’ - their favorite form of politics.
Pretty accurate review. I would say, though, that Democrats are facing a civil war (another one---they still haven't resolved the first two, but I won't go into it) of techhies vs. greens over AI grid power. The two are entirely incompatible unless Democrats enthusiastically embrace nuclear power. They obviously won't embrace fossil fuels (and in reality we'll need both). Any efforts at solar, wind, battery are going to be dead ins. But no one in the Democrat Party has seen this yet.
Reasonable enough article, but the Democrats are not going to become anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, and anti-immigration because a few percent of potentially persuadable voters want them to. In spite of all the talk of a Red Wave, this was a very close election, decided by at most, two percentage points. And this was in an election where voters were in a “throw the bums out” mood.
If Trump governs well and picks up House seats in 2026, then it will be reasonable to talk of a Democratic Party reset.
Supporting what Trans activist wants isn’t anti Gay. I know Lesbian women who don’t want any biological men in women’s spaces. Going against 100+ years of women’s rights advances to appease a fringe of Queer activists has been political suicide and will continue to be.
A slight majority of Republicans oppose trans rights and gay marriage, while a large majority of Americans support them. Two-thirds of Americans back laws protecting transgender people from job discrimination, and 70% support gay marriage. It would be politically unwise for the Democratic Party to abandon these issues, as it would represent a major shift for a historically pro-civil rights party, especially since younger people are strongly pro-LGBTQ+ rights. Public opinion is split on whether transgender issues have gone too far, making it a potential wedge issue.
Most people do not see your specific concern as a high priority. When asked if issues related to transgender and nonbinary people were a key priority for elected officials or a distraction from more pressing matters, 77% viewed them as a distraction. It smells like a wedge culture issue that no one will care about in a few years.
You intentionally (I'm sure) avoided whether the public supports Trans athletes competing against women (they don't), or whether Trans "women" should be in the women's gym locker room (no), or whether Trans "women" should be housed in female prisons (again, there is no such support). That's before we even get into whether young children should be exposed to trans-positive education (no such support), or whether children who want to transition can do that without parental consent (zero support for that, even in blue states).
Yes, the public supports the right of people to chop off their breasts or dick - that's true. The public is against employment discrimination - though ask them if they want a public school trans teacher with giant implants, and you won't get the answer you want. Yes, the Democratic Party's incarnation under Biden was super into promoting fringe trans-activism ideas, and it's part of why the party got kicked in the balls so hard.
Younger people moved right in the first time ever thanks to identity politics pushed by the far-left. You can keep gambling on that and losing.
I agree. This whole 'you don't agree with me so you are filled with hate' has been proven to be so ineffective, laughable even. Yet people continue to try to manipulate others with it.
"the public supports the right of people to chop off their breasts or dick" "part of why the party got kicked in the balls so hard"
How do I not see the love? Almost Christlike.
28 percent supported same-sex marriage in 1992 and 68% now, which is down from 71% a couple of years ago. So I guess you are winning (?).
https://news.gallup.com/poll/646202/sex-relations-marriage-supported.aspx
A majority of Republicans used to support same-sex marriage, and now only 45% do. Congratulations (?) are in order, I guess.
What you call manipulation, I call winning politically.
From another source:
"The poll also finds that 40 percent of Americans say greater social acceptance of transgender people is “good for society,” while 25 percent say it is “bad for society,” and another 35 percent say it is “neither good nor bad.”
"Nearly two-thirds of Democrats (64 percent) believe that greater social acceptance of transgender people is good for society, compared with 40 percent of Independents and 14 percent of Republicans."
So, there is a legitimate difference of opinion here. I am confident that civil liberties will win out in the long run. Of course, I can use my manipulative message while you can talk lovingly about chopping off dicks and breasts, and we will see where public opinion goes.
Young people have not moved to the right for the first time. Where do you get such strange ideas? Young people were more conservative during the Reagan era, for instance. Like all demographics, young people move back and forth on the political spectrum.
Here is a good source for information about how the public feels about transgenderism that you probably won't like to see, but it would be good for you to read it carefully if you want to understand the issue some more politically:
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/28/americans-complex-views-on-gender-identity-and-transgender-issues/
Your animus towards trans people is certainly not universal. Looking at the evidence, I would say that most Americans don't care that much, though obviously, it inflames you.
Specifically, to address your claims: about 58% believe that transgender athletes should compete on the team of their assigned gender, only 45% think that learning about transgenderism at school is bad (this drops to 33% for middle schoolers). The Biden Administration never promoted any straw man positions that you claim they did.
Americans generally are pretty tolerant and have a live-and-let-live attitude toward most things. Your campaign of hate isn't going to get much traction, and if I can be personal here, it is not a very good look on you personally.
Josh Hawley is closer to Blue Labour than anyone in the current Democrat party. Sad. I’m sure George Clooney can figure it all out since he decides who is the nominee in the party.
I keep reading on The Liberal Patriot some version of the seven-point prescription in this column, but none of the writers admit that virtually all of those points are met by the Trump neo-Republican Party. It's going to be tough to convince voters that the Democratic Party is "same but different" and can execute better on a program that they only adopted as an electoral strategy than the people who actually believe in it.
It's taken 50 years to get to where we are, I can't see things improving in my lifetime. I don't think Trump will be successful, there is no money left and half his Republican coalition is only interested in a tax cut.
The post is wrong about Biden spending causing inflation; supply chain and pandemic effects were drivers. But I wonder why Harris (and Biden) didn’t emphasize economic security more, including Social Security, retirement, and Medicare