If you want to see the demise of the Democratic Party, look no further than the recent tour by AOC and Sanders and the Performance of Cory Booker.
None of these activities convinced a single voter to switch from Republican to Democrat, but Progressives went NUTS!!! over them. "Energizing the base!!!" "Thousands turned out!!!"
In not a single publication have we read about "Progressives" saying "We were wrong about..........We need to change our beliefs about what people want............" Instead, they say the same things they have been saying for years....which got us Trump twice.
It is why my wife and I, Democrats for 50 years, have recently switched to being Independents. The progressives who have infested the party don't want to win. Instead, they seek the warm inner glow of feeling morally superior and "right."
I have a lefty Democrat sister in Connecticut who recently inquired in an email whether I was going to attend any of the upcoming weekend’s “rally” events like she was, with all the typical “progressive” Democratic groups headlining the events. Rather than challenging her, I responded with one word: “Nope”. I have little interest in attending one of these groupthink “mob” events where everyone will be in a state of high dudgeon and waving their signs about typical Democratic pet peeves, defending the causes and promoting the leaders (Bernie, AOC) that are just going to continue having them lose future elections. Far better just to let Trump’s actions sink his own ship, and hopefully some victorious centrist coalition can emerge from it all.
It's been many years since most of us looked to the New York Times Editorial Board for wise counsel, but it scores big with its argument about many Democrats clinging to the delusion that the Party is merely the unlucky victim "of postpandemic inflation and that their party is more popular than it seems."
In fact, postpandemic inflation has actually been exceeded by the postpandemic propaganda and coverups that Democrats cling to, as if they are going to still convince Americans of what they have since learned beyond any reasonable doubt were orchestrated untruths about the origins of and safeguards against Covid.
Adding insult to injury, and compounding lack of trust in Democrats, has been their relentless embrace of what Ruy Teixeira identifies as their cultural issues' agenda -- transgender sports, open borders, DEI, etc. -- which most Americans, including most Democrats, have not and never will share the Party's obsession with. Cultural issues too often play loose not just with common sense, but constitutional principle.
The one thing today's Democratic Party may hate even more than Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Republicans in general is losing elections. It's going to take a few more stinging losses before Americans again enjoy the tangible benefits of a viable, civil and competitive two-party system.
Yes when it wasn’t a constant slam of the democrats. I have his book ( where have all the democrats gone) and it has some fine advice but if you want real constructive advice please check out Matthew Iglesias Substack Slow Boring. He is not obsessed with putting down people like Bernie and Aoc. Democrats need to be fighters not risk averse hacks like chuck Schumer
Oh, the radical Left wing of the Democratic Party has fight. Just look at the string of burned and vandalized Teslas in their tantrum-induced wake. What they lack is ideas; or at least ideas that a majority of Americans like enough to give them an election vote of confidence. It's basic math.
I am not part of the antifa, Tesla burning, police defunding radicals. They are not real progressives and are not part of anyone's long term solution. But I want progressive economic policies like Bernie's to get a lot more traction! Like Ruy, I want the dems to capture the working class/non. college educated voters that the Dems even in Obama's administration were able to win over and not be suckered in by MAGA.....
I appreciate that and don't believe I ever suggested you were a part of the "antifa, Tesla burning, police defunding radicals." But those of us who, for a nation's sake, want to see a strong, vibrant and idea-driven two-party system, including those of us who once identified more with the Democratic Party, aren't finding an audience for ridding the Democratic Party of its radicals. And, please, spare me any comparisons between the antifa radical arsonist Democrats and "MAGA" Republicans, of which I am not one.
People have to be "suckered"? They could not have looked at the 4 years of the Biden administration, and decided the 40 year high inflation and 10 million unvetted migrants, did not improve their living standards, so they would try something else?
Dei for one. It’s a perfect right wing dog whistle but the reality is that if it’s done right it can actually help people. I will never apologize or disown the principles behind diversity and inclusion and equality. They are morally good and economically sound
But it's not equality, it's equity. How do you feel about mandatory diversity statements from professors, where you have to pledge allegiance to the altar of DEI? Univ of Nebr left an engineering position open because no one submitted a sufficiently woke statement.
True. I changed it deliberately because Equity implies an equality of outcome that can not really be guaranteed. Equality is a better value to have as a goal.
Totally agree, bad DEI trainings are totally counterproductive and some of the worst seem to be in academia. Even Pete Buttigieg mocked these trainings that looked like they featured the cast from Portlandia! (which is hilarious if you have’t already caught it). My point was that DEI hire is used by right wingers as a dog whistle for a non straight white male hire and I think the OP was using it in kind of a right wing media way. It needs to be reframed and reimplemented going forward by progressives/Democrats.
Last year's Conn, Hawaii and Washington State Track Championships, all had trans girl State Champions. In Conn, 2 trans girls picked up multiple State Championships. West Virginia had a trans girl shot putter, that won by 3' , again, in an event of inches.
I misspoke. The trans triple jumper won the Ontario Relays in CA. They will win the CA State Championship in May. No other girl's triple jump, has been anywhere close. There are also trans girl State Champion pole vaulters, and I'm sure, many more. My research lasted all of 5 minutes.
I have great compassion for these kids, but the answer is not to put 12-18 year olds with differing private parts, in the same locker rooms, or on the same athletic field. It is not safe or fair, to biologically born girls. Allow trans athletes to compete against other trans athletes, and to utilize their own facilities.
In 2023-2024 alone, the number of women participating in NCAA sports was estimated to be 235,735. The number of women participating in high school sports was 3.42 million.
So let's fudge things and assume *every* transgender person participating in sports was a transgender woman. (they're not) It would mean that this phenomenon applies to about 0.01% of the total number of women competing in college and high-school sports in the country.
There are, to put it mildly, waaaaay more relevant things to be campaigning on. If 0.01% constitutes a crisis, what about Hidradenitis Suppurativa and *SKIN INFLAMMATION*?! This horrific epidemic affects a terrifying 0.1% of the population--*ten times* the number of people involved in the trans sports epidemic! (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9170363/)
If, after years of dedication and practice, you daughter lost a $200K scholarship, because she placed 4th, and not 3rd in a championship track meet, won by a trans girl, you might feel differently. Ditto for girls injured or leaving sports teams, if they are required to share a locker room with teammates, with different genitalia.
There is an easy fix, create a 3rd category in individual sports like swimming, and allow schools to band together to create trans teams, the same way small private schools form athletic teams.
Biden dumped an extra $200 billion Covid dollars on schools, much of it unspent. Build a few individual bathroom/locker rooms for kids who do not wish to use the bath/ locker room of their birth. Trans girl athletes would be far more universally accepted, under those circumstances. Their presence would not displace or endanger smaller, less strong, biological girls.
That’s one possible way of dealing with the situation, and there are others—given the vanishingly small number of instances in which this is actually an issue, why not just let the local community decide what to do about it?
Again, you’re not acknowledging how miniscule the numbers are. 0.1% of the US population suffers from hypochondria. That’s ten times the number of trans athletes. Why aren’t we talking about it? Hypochondria can lead to self-destructive behaviors—it might lead someone to make choices that kill themselves or kill others. Where is the outrage? Why didn’t the president talk about it in his campaign? What if the next person to die of hypochondriac-related behavior is someone you know?
The numbers don't have to be large to regarded as unfair. Trying to change the subject won't make it go away as long as left dogmatically clings to this losing issue.
Yes, I know. Just ignoring the issue of hypochondria won’t make it go away. And just because 0.1% of people suffer from it doesn’t mean that it’s any less terrible.
I really don't think they understand. I would happily pay 5% more in taxes and cut some unnecessary spending to do away with identity politics, men in women's spaces, and looking at America through the most negative lense imaginable. The cultural issues change the fabric of the nation. They are at the top of my concern about Democrats.
Just before the election, Mr. Teixeira wrote a brilliant piece entitled , "The Progressive Moment is Over". I do not recall the exact specifics , but I remember thinking he basically identified Immigration, Defund the Police, DEI and Climate as the reasons Dems would lose the election, if Trump happened to win. His premise was spot on.
For half of the Dem Party, rather quickly, DEI seems to have been memory holed, like the Covid lockdowns. Climate Change, an issue that Dems funded with a trillion tax dollars, under Biden, is mentioned much less in Dem headlines. Defund the Police, seems to have gone the way of the Dodo. Only deportations, remain much of a Dem immigration issue. However, even those Dems, no longer seem to support Open Borders, or at least they will not openly advocate, for their return.
Another portion of the Party, has been listening to Tim Walz, AOC and Bernie, as they explain Dems lost, not because Dems were too progressive, but because Dems were not Progressive enough. They seem to believe in more open borders, more DEI, more bail reform and more Climate policy. They are convinced better messaging, is the Dem ticket back to power.
The question would seem to be, what percentage of the Dem Party supports Mr. Teixeira policies, and what percentage of the Party holds the Walz and AOC prospective. The latter, appears unelectable, assuming Trump does not involve us in an actual war or stoke an economic Depression.
As a former moderate Republican, my reason for now being a centrist independent is my sense that the nominating process in both parties is dominated by activists who are more extreme than the people who "just vote," mostly in general elections. My main hope for seeing more power restored to centrist candidates is through ranked choice voting at both the primary and general election level. This is opposed by the activists of both parties, who would rather take the risk of losing to an extremist of the other party than reduce the chances of electing an extremist of their own party (such as Trump or Harris).
I'm not an activist but definitely don't support ranked choice voting. Someone wins who gets fewer votes? Voters have to go to school to learn how it works? NO THANKS.
You would prefer to have candidates win who may be highly unpopular with a majority of voters? Think Trump. Any candidate who has a majority on the first counting will win outright under ranked choice voting.
I'll acknowledge that the many people who can't read or do arithmetic at a grade school level might have a problem in expressing more than a first choice in voting. But most people who are the least bit interested in whom they vote for can figure it out, and the process of analyzing the outcome of an election can readily be performed by computers (with as much security as with conventional voting tabulation).
Both parties when in power hate ranked choice voting. It diminishes the king making properties of parties. It was on the ballot in my state which is a D+11 state (good grief). Democrats were vocally opposed, Republicans were silent. There is a better chance of a moderate Republican winning here.
You don't have to vote for the candidate you don't like, but you can vote for one who isn't perfect but might well be someone you can live with and a heck of a lot better than the crazy one you hate. Usually there is a majority by the time it gets to second choice.
Your vote doesn't get thrown out, ranked choice allows someone who gets a majority to win. If we had ranked choice here Dems would have to tone down the crazy things they say in the primaries because it could kill them in the general election. Less anti gun, less crazed genderism.
If you only mark your first choice, that selection is counted in the initial round of counting. If you do not rank any other candidates and your first-choice candidate gets eliminated, your ballot becomes exhausted and will not count in any later round. What if you don't like the other candidates, you're supposed to vote for them anyway? Our country has been one man one vote for what, 250+ years? Quit trying to manipulate to get the result you want.
The MSM and Dems made a hugely deal out of Musk burning through bigly dollars, but fail to mention the very bigly dollars that flooded MN and FL via Soros and the Dem liberal party out-of-state fundraising machine. P.S., great money quote, "Parties these days do tend to over-read their “mandates” Biden was FDR iV. Not. Same for Trump twice and Obama once.
Any Democrat taking solace in the WI Supe race is fooling himself. Rs outvoted Ds. Pure and simple. Schmiel lost due to the swing voters, who went 2:1 for Crawford, largely because Schmiel ran a traditional "law and order" campaign, ignoring social and cultural issues. The MAGA swing voter is still there, but you have to appeal to him.
Meanwhile, in the last 60 days or so Rs have won 6/9 specials (I know, WI wasn't technically a special election) and if you throw in the WI voter ID issue, they've won 7/10. No, the WI Supes will not make a difference in redistricting. (You can ask the NC Supes how their effort went). And don't forget the Ds are now down a net of FOUR more seats in the House since Nov (2 FL seats for Rs, -2 D seats due to death that won't be replaced any time soon) bringing Mike Johnson's lead up to 7 now.
Rs continue to absolutely pile up the voter registration numbers. At some point, these become nearly insurmountable requiring massive D advantages with indies. In PA, another 6,000 net swung to the Rs, making "liberation day" for PA when it swings from blue to red July 2026. Same in Jersey, where Rs shaved another 4,500 net off Ds. Maybe not a ton, but the trend is absolutely undeniable---everywhere.
Democrats can't count on bad Schmiel-type candidates in every race. Indeed, in most races.
Schimel lost because most low propensity Trump voters did not vote, and because he has an extreme position on abortion that is opposed by 65+% of Wisconsin voters. You can't defy the clear will of the people in a swing state like Wisconsin (where I lived the first 29 years of my life and still pay attention to politics there).
If it's Democratic delusions you're looking for, they don't get more deluded than the ones reported in Matt Osborne's April 3rd Substack piece titled "Democrats Double Down On Trans Sports Cheats, Totalitarian Language Policing." The lede is: "The party has adopted Queer Theory as their civic religion."
The Kelley Loving Act (HB25-1312) passed a Colorado legislative committee on party lines yesterday. If enacted, it would “define deadnaming and misgendering as discriminatory acts in the ‘Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act’, and prohibit these discriminatory acts in places of public accommodation.”
In other words, it would be illegal for a spa to throw a man out of the area where women are nude if he claims to have a ‘gender identity.’ It would be illegal for your grandmother to complain about a man in the public pool shower area if he said he was a woman. Colorado would fine or even prosecute a Game Stop employee who called a man in makeup “sir.”
All of these things have already happened. What Colorado Democrats want to do now is enshrine them as “protections” in law for the sacred gender class. Democrats have given up on working class politics because they have adopted the luxury belief that human sex is not binary. Now they want to impose their worship and ritual practices on everyone who is not a member of their woo cult. They know that the public is getting wise. They know they are running out of time.
Noncompliance will be punished. Democrats are all about punishing the noncompliant, right now. “I suspect it will pass,” Erin Friday, director of Protect Kids Colorado, said of the bill on X. “So we must keep fighting.” Resist, do not comply.
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In the second section of the legislation, which is the first part that contains actual law, Colorado would require family courts to “consider deadnaming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual's gender-affirming health-care services as types of coercive control” in child custody cases. This is contrary to the constitutional principle that parents have authority over the education and upbringing of their children.
On the other hand, Section 3 would prohibit the same courts “from applying or giving any force or effect to another state's law that authorizes a state agency to remove a child from the child's parent or guardian because the parent or guardian allowed the child to receive gender-affirming health-care services.” This is likely contrary to the “Full Faith and Credit” clause of Article IV, Sec. 1 of the United States Constitution.
Of course, whenever ‘gender identity’ is involved, Democrats immediately forget all about the Constitution, the rule of law, and democracy. Being the new sacred class of their new civic religion, ‘transgender people’ are exempt from all normal standards, all normal procedures, all normal responses, all normal boundaries.
The sacred trans people are ‘queering’ the boundaries between man and woman, between child and adult, between government and family. Politics are intrinsic to the project.
Dem party insiders are right to an extent that we would ignore cultural issues if they were with us on economic ones, problem is they try to substitute policies for actual action. They say they are for an increase in the min wage, but it goes nowhere. They say they are building all these charging stations and none get built. They say they are building chip factories but they can't hire the required percentages of female construction workers. Ten percent of people in the USA are still functionally without health care, and of the remaining ninety percent see how fast you lose your house when you catch cancer.
The biggest failure however is immigration, which is an economic issue not a cultural one. Shor suggests Democrats might well have lost the immigrant vote. We don't hate Mexicans, we are Mexicans. In a country with a terrible social safety net jobs are everything to the working class, and the Democratic party has whiffed it on jobs.
If the tariffs increase manufacturing employment to the point where it pushes wages up, not on paper up, but so that it's obvious up to workers, the Democratic party will pay a price.
I think candidates who want to run for president get this. It would not surprise me at all if Josh Shapiro, Beshear, Polis, or Fetterman are pushing back on lefty cultural issues by mid 2027. Progressives will howl, but so what. They’re a paper tiger until proven otherwise by my lights.
I find it curious that, as Ruy keeps recycling this same analysis over and over again, even after the thousandth iteration, there is one thing we never see--which is longitudinal analysis. I keep seeing projections like "The Democrats will be toxic for the foreseeable future", but never see a consideration of U.S. politics that spans longer than four to eight years.
Consider the last 25 years of U.S. politics and show me how the patterns therein portend a permanently toxic Democratic party, and I'll be convinced. From what I can see, when you look at things through the lens of this longer timespan, it is clear that the thermostatic effect is the primary driver of politics since the end of the Cold War, and cultural issues are not autonomous at all, but constantly reorganized in response to exogenous sociopolitical shocks. The coalitional changes we've seen in the past 8 years can be portrayed as supporting Ruy's thesis; the coalitional changes we've seen over the past 25 years actually refute it, and prove the *opposite*.
Ruy nice job attracting all these Soros pilled Dino’s . I’m going to stick with Slow Boring for serious advice on how the democrats can claw their way back to power
The democrats need to build on and be inspired by Bernie’s appeal to younger voters. They need to stop being an elitist gerontocracy and stop talking in politically correct language . And they need to drop their faculty lounge language and obsession with intersectionality 😎
The one thing the Democrats aren't delusional about is that the Republican Party is the Stupid Party and, on the evidence, always will be. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is their party brand. It remains to be seen whose dysfunction is the greatest.
Not at all. Good work being done on the IQ of the typical college graduate Democrat theses days within their typical degree program and it isn't any better than the average Republican.
If you want to see the demise of the Democratic Party, look no further than the recent tour by AOC and Sanders and the Performance of Cory Booker.
None of these activities convinced a single voter to switch from Republican to Democrat, but Progressives went NUTS!!! over them. "Energizing the base!!!" "Thousands turned out!!!"
In not a single publication have we read about "Progressives" saying "We were wrong about..........We need to change our beliefs about what people want............" Instead, they say the same things they have been saying for years....which got us Trump twice.
It is why my wife and I, Democrats for 50 years, have recently switched to being Independents. The progressives who have infested the party don't want to win. Instead, they seek the warm inner glow of feeling morally superior and "right."
We miss our beloved Democratic Party.
I have a lefty Democrat sister in Connecticut who recently inquired in an email whether I was going to attend any of the upcoming weekend’s “rally” events like she was, with all the typical “progressive” Democratic groups headlining the events. Rather than challenging her, I responded with one word: “Nope”. I have little interest in attending one of these groupthink “mob” events where everyone will be in a state of high dudgeon and waving their signs about typical Democratic pet peeves, defending the causes and promoting the leaders (Bernie, AOC) that are just going to continue having them lose future elections. Far better just to let Trump’s actions sink his own ship, and hopefully some victorious centrist coalition can emerge from it all.
Grey hairs screaming the "F" bomb and shouting "shame" at Tesla rallies? Repulsivel
Well, it did energize the progressives to vote in primaries and make the problem worse.
It's been many years since most of us looked to the New York Times Editorial Board for wise counsel, but it scores big with its argument about many Democrats clinging to the delusion that the Party is merely the unlucky victim "of postpandemic inflation and that their party is more popular than it seems."
In fact, postpandemic inflation has actually been exceeded by the postpandemic propaganda and coverups that Democrats cling to, as if they are going to still convince Americans of what they have since learned beyond any reasonable doubt were orchestrated untruths about the origins of and safeguards against Covid.
Adding insult to injury, and compounding lack of trust in Democrats, has been their relentless embrace of what Ruy Teixeira identifies as their cultural issues' agenda -- transgender sports, open borders, DEI, etc. -- which most Americans, including most Democrats, have not and never will share the Party's obsession with. Cultural issues too often play loose not just with common sense, but constitutional principle.
The one thing today's Democratic Party may hate even more than Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Republicans in general is losing elections. It's going to take a few more stinging losses before Americans again enjoy the tangible benefits of a viable, civil and competitive two-party system.
Straight outta right wing media, thanks chief . Now I can continue my unbroken streak of non watching 😎
And yet you are on this blog.
Yes when it wasn’t a constant slam of the democrats. I have his book ( where have all the democrats gone) and it has some fine advice but if you want real constructive advice please check out Matthew Iglesias Substack Slow Boring. He is not obsessed with putting down people like Bernie and Aoc. Democrats need to be fighters not risk averse hacks like chuck Schumer
Oh, the radical Left wing of the Democratic Party has fight. Just look at the string of burned and vandalized Teslas in their tantrum-induced wake. What they lack is ideas; or at least ideas that a majority of Americans like enough to give them an election vote of confidence. It's basic math.
I am not part of the antifa, Tesla burning, police defunding radicals. They are not real progressives and are not part of anyone's long term solution. But I want progressive economic policies like Bernie's to get a lot more traction! Like Ruy, I want the dems to capture the working class/non. college educated voters that the Dems even in Obama's administration were able to win over and not be suckered in by MAGA.....
I appreciate that and don't believe I ever suggested you were a part of the "antifa, Tesla burning, police defunding radicals." But those of us who, for a nation's sake, want to see a strong, vibrant and idea-driven two-party system, including those of us who once identified more with the Democratic Party, aren't finding an audience for ridding the Democratic Party of its radicals. And, please, spare me any comparisons between the antifa radical arsonist Democrats and "MAGA" Republicans, of which I am not one.
People have to be "suckered"? They could not have looked at the 4 years of the Biden administration, and decided the 40 year high inflation and 10 million unvetted migrants, did not improve their living standards, so they would try something else?
Matty is fun, and often sensible, but has a huge chasm of a blind spot when it comes to people who are not wealthy. His name begins with a Y too.
What is he wrong about?
Dei for one. It’s a perfect right wing dog whistle but the reality is that if it’s done right it can actually help people. I will never apologize or disown the principles behind diversity and inclusion and equality. They are morally good and economically sound
But it's not equality, it's equity. How do you feel about mandatory diversity statements from professors, where you have to pledge allegiance to the altar of DEI? Univ of Nebr left an engineering position open because no one submitted a sufficiently woke statement.
True. I changed it deliberately because Equity implies an equality of outcome that can not really be guaranteed. Equality is a better value to have as a goal.
Totally agree, bad DEI trainings are totally counterproductive and some of the worst seem to be in academia. Even Pete Buttigieg mocked these trainings that looked like they featured the cast from Portlandia! (which is hilarious if you have’t already caught it). My point was that DEI hire is used by right wingers as a dog whistle for a non straight white male hire and I think the OP was using it in kind of a right wing media way. It needs to be reframed and reimplemented going forward by progressives/Democrats.
Is your definition of "right winger" anyone who is not a Progressive?
It's blatantly racist.
Last year's Conn, Hawaii and Washington State Track Championships, all had trans girl State Champions. In Conn, 2 trans girls picked up multiple State Championships. West Virginia had a trans girl shot putter, that won by 3' , again, in an event of inches.
I misspoke. The trans triple jumper won the Ontario Relays in CA. They will win the CA State Championship in May. No other girl's triple jump, has been anywhere close. There are also trans girl State Champion pole vaulters, and I'm sure, many more. My research lasted all of 5 minutes.
I have great compassion for these kids, but the answer is not to put 12-18 year olds with differing private parts, in the same locker rooms, or on the same athletic field. It is not safe or fair, to biologically born girls. Allow trans athletes to compete against other trans athletes, and to utilize their own facilities.
...or how about let the communities and sports organizations in which these extremely rare phenomena pop up determine how to deal with them?
And then stop pretending like they are remotely widespread enough to make them the #1 issue political parties need to be talking about.
Estimates put the number of trans athletes in the NCAA, on the high-end, at about 32. (https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2023/03/09/national-ban-on-transgender-athletes-in-girls-sports-passed-by-u-s-house-panel/) High-end estimates of the number in high-school sports puts the number at 35,000. (https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/32115820/young-transgender-athletes-caught-middle-states-debates)
In 2023-2024 alone, the number of women participating in NCAA sports was estimated to be 235,735. The number of women participating in high school sports was 3.42 million.
So let's fudge things and assume *every* transgender person participating in sports was a transgender woman. (they're not) It would mean that this phenomenon applies to about 0.01% of the total number of women competing in college and high-school sports in the country.
There are, to put it mildly, waaaaay more relevant things to be campaigning on. If 0.01% constitutes a crisis, what about Hidradenitis Suppurativa and *SKIN INFLAMMATION*?! This horrific epidemic affects a terrifying 0.1% of the population--*ten times* the number of people involved in the trans sports epidemic! (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9170363/)
If, after years of dedication and practice, you daughter lost a $200K scholarship, because she placed 4th, and not 3rd in a championship track meet, won by a trans girl, you might feel differently. Ditto for girls injured or leaving sports teams, if they are required to share a locker room with teammates, with different genitalia.
There is an easy fix, create a 3rd category in individual sports like swimming, and allow schools to band together to create trans teams, the same way small private schools form athletic teams.
Biden dumped an extra $200 billion Covid dollars on schools, much of it unspent. Build a few individual bathroom/locker rooms for kids who do not wish to use the bath/ locker room of their birth. Trans girl athletes would be far more universally accepted, under those circumstances. Their presence would not displace or endanger smaller, less strong, biological girls.
That’s one possible way of dealing with the situation, and there are others—given the vanishingly small number of instances in which this is actually an issue, why not just let the local community decide what to do about it?
Again, you’re not acknowledging how miniscule the numbers are. 0.1% of the US population suffers from hypochondria. That’s ten times the number of trans athletes. Why aren’t we talking about it? Hypochondria can lead to self-destructive behaviors—it might lead someone to make choices that kill themselves or kill others. Where is the outrage? Why didn’t the president talk about it in his campaign? What if the next person to die of hypochondriac-related behavior is someone you know?
No one is arguing the numbers are large. Only that when its' your kid, the numbers are not relevant.
Mrs
The numbers don't have to be large to regarded as unfair. Trying to change the subject won't make it go away as long as left dogmatically clings to this losing issue.
Yes, I know. Just ignoring the issue of hypochondria won’t make it go away. And just because 0.1% of people suffer from it doesn’t mean that it’s any less terrible.
I really don't think they understand. I would happily pay 5% more in taxes and cut some unnecessary spending to do away with identity politics, men in women's spaces, and looking at America through the most negative lense imaginable. The cultural issues change the fabric of the nation. They are at the top of my concern about Democrats.
Just before the election, Mr. Teixeira wrote a brilliant piece entitled , "The Progressive Moment is Over". I do not recall the exact specifics , but I remember thinking he basically identified Immigration, Defund the Police, DEI and Climate as the reasons Dems would lose the election, if Trump happened to win. His premise was spot on.
For half of the Dem Party, rather quickly, DEI seems to have been memory holed, like the Covid lockdowns. Climate Change, an issue that Dems funded with a trillion tax dollars, under Biden, is mentioned much less in Dem headlines. Defund the Police, seems to have gone the way of the Dodo. Only deportations, remain much of a Dem immigration issue. However, even those Dems, no longer seem to support Open Borders, or at least they will not openly advocate, for their return.
Another portion of the Party, has been listening to Tim Walz, AOC and Bernie, as they explain Dems lost, not because Dems were too progressive, but because Dems were not Progressive enough. They seem to believe in more open borders, more DEI, more bail reform and more Climate policy. They are convinced better messaging, is the Dem ticket back to power.
The question would seem to be, what percentage of the Dem Party supports Mr. Teixeira policies, and what percentage of the Party holds the Walz and AOC prospective. The latter, appears unelectable, assuming Trump does not involve us in an actual war or stoke an economic Depression.
As a former moderate Republican, my reason for now being a centrist independent is my sense that the nominating process in both parties is dominated by activists who are more extreme than the people who "just vote," mostly in general elections. My main hope for seeing more power restored to centrist candidates is through ranked choice voting at both the primary and general election level. This is opposed by the activists of both parties, who would rather take the risk of losing to an extremist of the other party than reduce the chances of electing an extremist of their own party (such as Trump or Harris).
I'm not an activist but definitely don't support ranked choice voting. Someone wins who gets fewer votes? Voters have to go to school to learn how it works? NO THANKS.
You would prefer to have candidates win who may be highly unpopular with a majority of voters? Think Trump. Any candidate who has a majority on the first counting will win outright under ranked choice voting.
I'll acknowledge that the many people who can't read or do arithmetic at a grade school level might have a problem in expressing more than a first choice in voting. But most people who are the least bit interested in whom they vote for can figure it out, and the process of analyzing the outcome of an election can readily be performed by computers (with as much security as with conventional voting tabulation).
What a snotty comment. There are plenty of reasons to oppose RCV, but you go with "voters are stupid"?
Here's a good counter argument summary:
https://thefga.org/research/ranked-choice-voting-partisan-plot-to-disrupt-elections/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw47i_BhBTEiwAaJfPplTmdhLGhYgcYQff-4YF0YHbzCEu-LGPomIHczAEhIEWDyGO8BXGLhoC2IsQAvD_BwE
Both parties when in power hate ranked choice voting. It diminishes the king making properties of parties. It was on the ballot in my state which is a D+11 state (good grief). Democrats were vocally opposed, Republicans were silent. There is a better chance of a moderate Republican winning here.
You don't have to vote for the candidate you don't like, but you can vote for one who isn't perfect but might well be someone you can live with and a heck of a lot better than the crazy one you hate. Usually there is a majority by the time it gets to second choice.
Your vote doesn't get thrown out, ranked choice allows someone who gets a majority to win. If we had ranked choice here Dems would have to tone down the crazy things they say in the primaries because it could kill them in the general election. Less anti gun, less crazed genderism.
If you only mark your first choice, that selection is counted in the initial round of counting. If you do not rank any other candidates and your first-choice candidate gets eliminated, your ballot becomes exhausted and will not count in any later round. What if you don't like the other candidates, you're supposed to vote for them anyway? Our country has been one man one vote for what, 250+ years? Quit trying to manipulate to get the result you want.
The MSM and Dems made a hugely deal out of Musk burning through bigly dollars, but fail to mention the very bigly dollars that flooded MN and FL via Soros and the Dem liberal party out-of-state fundraising machine. P.S., great money quote, "Parties these days do tend to over-read their “mandates” Biden was FDR iV. Not. Same for Trump twice and Obama once.
MAGA man go the hell away 😩👌😔
Any Democrat taking solace in the WI Supe race is fooling himself. Rs outvoted Ds. Pure and simple. Schmiel lost due to the swing voters, who went 2:1 for Crawford, largely because Schmiel ran a traditional "law and order" campaign, ignoring social and cultural issues. The MAGA swing voter is still there, but you have to appeal to him.
Meanwhile, in the last 60 days or so Rs have won 6/9 specials (I know, WI wasn't technically a special election) and if you throw in the WI voter ID issue, they've won 7/10. No, the WI Supes will not make a difference in redistricting. (You can ask the NC Supes how their effort went). And don't forget the Ds are now down a net of FOUR more seats in the House since Nov (2 FL seats for Rs, -2 D seats due to death that won't be replaced any time soon) bringing Mike Johnson's lead up to 7 now.
Rs continue to absolutely pile up the voter registration numbers. At some point, these become nearly insurmountable requiring massive D advantages with indies. In PA, another 6,000 net swung to the Rs, making "liberation day" for PA when it swings from blue to red July 2026. Same in Jersey, where Rs shaved another 4,500 net off Ds. Maybe not a ton, but the trend is absolutely undeniable---everywhere.
Democrats can't count on bad Schmiel-type candidates in every race. Indeed, in most races.
Schimel lost because most low propensity Trump voters did not vote, and because he has an extreme position on abortion that is opposed by 65+% of Wisconsin voters. You can't defy the clear will of the people in a swing state like Wisconsin (where I lived the first 29 years of my life and still pay attention to politics there).
"largely because Schmiel ran a traditional "law and order" campaign, ignoring social and cultural issues."
...Larry, I don't know why anyone should have to tell you this, but law and order are sociocultural issues. See: history of human society
Richard Nixon back from the dead ladies and gents. Law and order and just us, remember that bit 😁😂🤪
If it's Democratic delusions you're looking for, they don't get more deluded than the ones reported in Matt Osborne's April 3rd Substack piece titled "Democrats Double Down On Trans Sports Cheats, Totalitarian Language Policing." The lede is: "The party has adopted Queer Theory as their civic religion."
These are the opening paragraphs:
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The Kelley Loving Act (HB25-1312) passed a Colorado legislative committee on party lines yesterday. If enacted, it would “define deadnaming and misgendering as discriminatory acts in the ‘Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act’, and prohibit these discriminatory acts in places of public accommodation.”
In other words, it would be illegal for a spa to throw a man out of the area where women are nude if he claims to have a ‘gender identity.’ It would be illegal for your grandmother to complain about a man in the public pool shower area if he said he was a woman. Colorado would fine or even prosecute a Game Stop employee who called a man in makeup “sir.”
All of these things have already happened. What Colorado Democrats want to do now is enshrine them as “protections” in law for the sacred gender class. Democrats have given up on working class politics because they have adopted the luxury belief that human sex is not binary. Now they want to impose their worship and ritual practices on everyone who is not a member of their woo cult. They know that the public is getting wise. They know they are running out of time.
Noncompliance will be punished. Democrats are all about punishing the noncompliant, right now. “I suspect it will pass,” Erin Friday, director of Protect Kids Colorado, said of the bill on X. “So we must keep fighting.” Resist, do not comply.
Subscribed
In the second section of the legislation, which is the first part that contains actual law, Colorado would require family courts to “consider deadnaming, misgendering, or threatening to publish material related to an individual's gender-affirming health-care services as types of coercive control” in child custody cases. This is contrary to the constitutional principle that parents have authority over the education and upbringing of their children.
On the other hand, Section 3 would prohibit the same courts “from applying or giving any force or effect to another state's law that authorizes a state agency to remove a child from the child's parent or guardian because the parent or guardian allowed the child to receive gender-affirming health-care services.” This is likely contrary to the “Full Faith and Credit” clause of Article IV, Sec. 1 of the United States Constitution.
Of course, whenever ‘gender identity’ is involved, Democrats immediately forget all about the Constitution, the rule of law, and democracy. Being the new sacred class of their new civic religion, ‘transgender people’ are exempt from all normal standards, all normal procedures, all normal responses, all normal boundaries.
The sacred trans people are ‘queering’ the boundaries between man and woman, between child and adult, between government and family. Politics are intrinsic to the project.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-160503468
What do Democrats need to do? What should a winning platform look like. Your articles/thinking don’t seem to translate to that
The Democrat party is dead. Forget about 2026. It is 2028 that matters.
Dem party insiders are right to an extent that we would ignore cultural issues if they were with us on economic ones, problem is they try to substitute policies for actual action. They say they are for an increase in the min wage, but it goes nowhere. They say they are building all these charging stations and none get built. They say they are building chip factories but they can't hire the required percentages of female construction workers. Ten percent of people in the USA are still functionally without health care, and of the remaining ninety percent see how fast you lose your house when you catch cancer.
The biggest failure however is immigration, which is an economic issue not a cultural one. Shor suggests Democrats might well have lost the immigrant vote. We don't hate Mexicans, we are Mexicans. In a country with a terrible social safety net jobs are everything to the working class, and the Democratic party has whiffed it on jobs.
If the tariffs increase manufacturing employment to the point where it pushes wages up, not on paper up, but so that it's obvious up to workers, the Democratic party will pay a price.
I think candidates who want to run for president get this. It would not surprise me at all if Josh Shapiro, Beshear, Polis, or Fetterman are pushing back on lefty cultural issues by mid 2027. Progressives will howl, but so what. They’re a paper tiger until proven otherwise by my lights.
I find it curious that, as Ruy keeps recycling this same analysis over and over again, even after the thousandth iteration, there is one thing we never see--which is longitudinal analysis. I keep seeing projections like "The Democrats will be toxic for the foreseeable future", but never see a consideration of U.S. politics that spans longer than four to eight years.
Consider the last 25 years of U.S. politics and show me how the patterns therein portend a permanently toxic Democratic party, and I'll be convinced. From what I can see, when you look at things through the lens of this longer timespan, it is clear that the thermostatic effect is the primary driver of politics since the end of the Cold War, and cultural issues are not autonomous at all, but constantly reorganized in response to exogenous sociopolitical shocks. The coalitional changes we've seen in the past 8 years can be portrayed as supporting Ruy's thesis; the coalitional changes we've seen over the past 25 years actually refute it, and prove the *opposite*.
Ruy nice job attracting all these Soros pilled Dino’s . I’m going to stick with Slow Boring for serious advice on how the democrats can claw their way back to power
The democrats need to build on and be inspired by Bernie’s appeal to younger voters. They need to stop being an elitist gerontocracy and stop talking in politically correct language . And they need to drop their faculty lounge language and obsession with intersectionality 😎
The one thing the Democrats aren't delusional about is that the Republican Party is the Stupid Party and, on the evidence, always will be. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is their party brand. It remains to be seen whose dysfunction is the greatest.
Not at all. Good work being done on the IQ of the typical college graduate Democrat theses days within their typical degree program and it isn't any better than the average Republican.