Good points! Regarding immigration: I have been taking Ubers this week as I am Washington DC. I asked two of my drivers who they voted for. They both voted for Trump and so did their families. Both were immigrants from the middle east. Both talked about how they work hard, and always have, and how the money going to support the illegals is wrong. They talked about Medicaid for illegals. They also mentioned crime and welfare fraud in DC which they knew of personally - not from the media. Democrats seem to think that if they could shut down all the right wing media including the new media, they would be back in power. These Americans don't even listen to American media, but they are still voting for Trump.
One other piece for us is that we grow weary of progressives' victim sweepstakes. Everybody in their view, except white males, is a victim of........white males.
Look at articles in WaPo and NYT. One story after another about white males.
As (former) Democrats who are now Independents, one piece of what is now the Progressive, not Democratic, Party is putting down Trump supporters. The things said about them are often terrible, and we don't tolerate that. We don't care if someone insults us, but we won't be a part of insulting others. Our old proud Democratic Party used to advocate for those same folks progressives now are insulting.
"The things said about them are often terrible, and we don't tolerate that. We don't care if someone insults us, but we won't be a part of insulting others."
That may describe some of you, but let's not forget that--setting aside the folks who raided the capitol because someone other than Trump won an election--there's also a whole swathe of Trump voters who primarily luxuriate in "owning the libs": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owning_the_libs
Neither party has a very good track record of "not being a part of insulting others".
I wholeheartedly agree that the Democrats have a huge good-governance problem. But I’m no longer sure that it’s due to having too much Foucault in their ideological knapsack. Some of it is good old fashioned corruption. Billions of dollars of CA covid relief literally went missing. Audits of “green” energy initiative regularly reveal enormous sums of money up in smoke. Then there is the soft corruption - know the right bureaucrats and pay enough money and you can tap dance through all of the red tape. Red tape is profitable for corrupt petty pols. And beyond outright corruption, you have the major problem that every interest group in the Dem tent is allowed to put its greedy little fingers into the public works cookie jar. Want to get some government money to build a new factory? Well, how many transgender Native American subcontractors will you hire? Will it be in line with their .037% representation in the general population? Will you install costly electric heat pumps because of the climate emergency? Will you provide 24 hour child care? Not hiring enough union workers? Expect to get hit with a NEPA lawsuit. My ultimate point being that Democrats’ awful recent record at governance is not solely attributable to ideology. There are too many Dem-affiliated clients and officials who are profiting from the Dems’ awful governing.
As the LA fires demonstrated, the Democrats' priorities were symbolic gestures, not tangible results.
Who cares if you knock it out of the park on tertiary issues like inclusion when you don't even make contact with the ball on things like disaster preparedness.
Another good article. I love the emphasis on getting things done. It is so American. I suspect the reason that many Democrats can’t let go of their ideological beliefs that drive them is that they have become a religion for them versus principles to keep in mind as you govern well. That is why they are willing to politically “die” for them and hold them above “getting things done”.
Let's address the elephant in the room. There is an "understanding" in liberal circles that it is "racist" to criticize people less white than oneself. Crime in our "blue" cities cannot be addressed because most of the criminals are black. An attack on urban crime is automatically deemed to be an attack on blacks as a "race." Both white liberals and black elites encourage this attitude.
If the great majority of illegal migrants were "white," Democrats would have little trouble dealing with the problem. However, the majority of the illegals fall into the "brown" category. This means that a crackdown on illegal immigration is automatically classified as "racist," and no Democratic politician wants to be labeled with the scarlet "R."
In Portland, Oregon, which has violent, murderous gangs, the progressives in local government and the equally progressive local media maintain what is effectively a news blackout on gang activity. You see, talk of gangs is "stigmatizing."
Instead, the paper of record dutifully reports on murder after murder in a certain part of town without ever bothering to connect the dots by tying them to gang activity. The only time the self-censorship lifts is when the feds put gang members on trial. That is when we finally read the names of the gangs in our newspaper and learn about the petty insults and offenses that provoke gang bangers to kill one another. Then the trial ends and things go back to normal, such as the minimal reporting when a couple of 15-year-old boys were trying to carjack vehicles in the cool "Portlandia" part of town . It's racist to report suspects' race and the legislature has prohibited the media from publishing mug shots (again, stigmatizing). However, the distinctive black naming conventions are often a giveaway of inconvenient truths.
When things got really out of hand a few years ago, the county threw a few million dollars at minority nonprofits in the name of finding "upstream solutions." That is code for sweeping it under the minority rug. One solution was to tell the police to stand down while black men were dispatched to talk to known criminals in order to persuade them to change their ways. Not surprisingly, the press never asked the many questions this raised, including the success rate and the emissaries' qualifications.
Living in liberal land for most of my life, being surrounded by educated people that vote Democrat today, I have awarded myself a PHD in liberal studies. I know them like the back of my hand.
And here is the secret... with their common wiring they are obsessed with status and power acquisition while largely less capable to start and grow a business in the private sector and thus seek it in the public sector. But their lack of capability for success in the private sector identifies the same flaws that effect them in their public sector roles. Basically they are defective problems solvers and decision makers as their choices value their feeling and status pursuit goals over actual pragmatic outcomes.
I have long list of examples for how the liberal majority demands policies, rules, ordinances and regulations that make absolutely zero business sense, but they do it anyway. California for example has prioritized environmental issues over fire prevention and water retention projects. There used to be firebreaks cut on the ridges of the low mountains around where the recent fires have destroyed whole communities... but the liberals did not like it and stopped that and brush clearing. They also destroyed and rejected dam projects where more water could be held from the infrequent rains.
This list goes on and on and on. Democrats are really the political species that is unfit to control the levers and switches of government, but that also craves the power of government.
Dead on. I think immigration and wokism may be exceptions, but the fundamental problem with Democrat governance is Ronald Reagan's dividing line: is government mostly an impediment to ordinary life or an enhancement? Reagan said "Government IS the problem." That is absolutely true today. In almost every area of life, "good" vs. "bad" government is based 100% on HOW you view gubment. MAGA says in almost every way except defense and border security (same thing) gubment is the problem. When you begin with that approach, your solutions are MUCH more likely to take into account the impact of any gubment action on business, ordinary people, the environment, and the future. If you think gubment is good and beneficial, I think you begin with a predisposed bias toward evil gubment, for nothing gubment does can be "wrong," just a "mistake" that will be rectified with more gugment.
Do you think if left to their own devices the people of Texas would have allowed in millions of invaders? Or the people of California would have allowed good water to be flushed into the Pacific to save a likely non-existent fish?
I have said in my comments here that all the half-measures and "reforms" within the Democrat party cannot amount to anything until or unless they address the basics. And this is the most basic of them all.
"MAGA says in almost every way except defense and border security (same thing) gubment is the problem."
This is not true at all. Remember MAGA's primary distinction from standard GOP neoliberalism is a mercantilist subsidization of manufacturing achieved by throwing up impediments to trade, i.e. tariffs. That is quintessential state-led development via 'gubment' intervention. Reagan was very much a free trader, and saw mercantilism as a relic of the early 19th century.
Great article that names the central problem with the Democrats in elected positions, which is that they are not interested in governing any city, state, or our country, nor are they competent to do so.
I would be careful using the term "universalist" to describe policies that indicate to me a resistance to creating and defending any sort of boundaries. The Democrats punish people who believe in boundaries and self-defense. They support policies that are based on unconditional permission for criminals to violate the physical boundaries of our country and of innocent individuals who are walking down streets or taking public transportation. They also violate the rights of citizens to speak freely in accordance with their beliefs, which is a refusal to respect the boundary protecting those citizens' natural and Constitutional rights.
Without a strong, competitive two-party system striving to represent the best interests of Americans, democracy suffers more than either of its political parties.
The wayward Left drift by today's Democratic Party will either be reversed by a majority of professed Democrats or the party will remain an irrelevant out-of-power minority for the foreseeable future, and small "d" democracy will be the weaker and poorer for it.
Excellent piece! Ruy has been sounding the alarm for years to no avail. “A prophet is without honor in his own country.” It’s hard for me to understand why the Democrats continue down this path. There’s got to be something about their rewards system that causes this. Is it as simple as corruption? Or is it a twisted world view? I wish I knew.
A physicist, an engineer, and a mathematician survive a shipwreck, washing up on a deserted island with no supplies other than a case of canned beans and no tools to open the cans. The physicist says. "I can use my eyeglasses to focus the sun on the dried seaweed here and make a fire. If we put a can of beans on the fire, the steam pressure building inside will force it to burst open." The engineer says, "We should build a chimney of rocks to contain the bursting. If we build it at an angle, we can predict the trajectory of the beans and catch them on a mat of dried seaweed." The mathematician says, "Hold on. That's a lot of work, and we'll probably lose a lot of beans in experimenting with the heat of the fire and angle of the chimney. I suggest we simply assume a can opener."
The mathematician has a legislative mindset: pass a law and you can assume the intended benefit. This is why Democratic congress members crow about building hal;f a million EV chargers and bringing broadband to millions of rural Americans: they passed the laws, so they assume that everything funded under the laws was magically built (almost none of it was). The problem with Democratic governors and mayors is they share this mindset, assuming that their policies get implemented automatically when they are issued with no effort. Hence Gavin Newsom is completely bewildered that California spent $24 billion on homeless reduction programs that not only didn't reduce homelessness but actually vanished into thin air. Democratic politicians (especially DAs) assumed that criminal justice reforms would improve the lives of various communities they regarded as overpoliced and overimprisoned, and they didn't bother to see the evidence of their failures all around them.
Like you said, building things is hard - that doesn't just apply to construction in the face of onerous regulations, but to implementing, monitoring, and adjusting policies. A lot of Democratic leaders seem work-averse - and the Democratic Presidential nominee in 2024 seemed to exemplify this trait.
As you noted at the end, Republicans have their own problem with governance but it really doesn't apply to local issues in the Big Blue Cities since there are few Republicans governing in those places. Miami is an exception and I think Ft. Worth so it would be interesting to compare those places with other cities. Not the crazy outliers like Seattle and Chicago but more mainstream places like Atlanta and Pittsburgh. The same analysis would work for states that are politically dominated by Big Blue Cities and those that aren't.
National governance is screwed up not only by the factors you note but also the wild oscillations in policy with each election. You can see some of this in the swing states too. A few years ago I had an extended campfire conversation with the General Counsel of a big Arizona utility. Republicans win an election and start pushing conventional power plants, even coal which the Navajos have in abundance. Then the Democrats win and say no conventional power, it has to be all renewable. Rinse and repeat. Since utilities have long lead times and operate on a 20 year planning cycle, this creates an impossible situation for them and depresses overall investment.
The unspoken elephant in the room is corruption. You can see this again with the politics of power. A number of state dominated by Big Blue Cities have mandated that x% of power has to be renewable by y date. Combine this with electric car mandates and the demand for AI data centers and you have a big problem. So the response by the Biden administration was to cover all the BLM land in the West with solar panels. This is generating pushback by an unlikely and perhaps unstable coalition of preservationists, tribes, people opposed to renewables and NIMBYs. All this would be unnecessary if we would just walk away from utility level renewables and go back to putting the panels on roof tops. Less efficient than the grid but more resilient. It also puts the externalities where the power use is. The financing of this requires that homeowners be able to sell power to the utilities at a price that amortizes their investment. This in turn generates pushback from NGOs professing to be concerned about people who don't own roofs but pay utility bills. Behind all that, is government subsidies of the NGOs and campaign contributions by utilities. Further back is campaign contributions and outright bribes by upstream producers of components which basically means the CCP.
Another great piece, Ruy! But you left unaddressed a critical question: How do Democrats keep get elected despite this record of failure?
Two things stand out:
* They ally themselves with the greatest beneficiaries of inefficient and ineffective government--public-sector workers and government-funded grant-receiving NFPs/NGOs. This makes a circular problem--the more these allies help Democrats, the more Democrats are motivated to help them, no matter what the expense to the public.
* They've branded themselves as "the nice party," standing against "the mean party." Since childhood, we've all learned that "nice" is better than "mean,' and that a key element of being "nice" is standing for the underdog against the oppressors. By propagating a simple, easy-to-convey tale of (favored) minorities as perpetual underdogs and whites (and increasingly Asians) as oppressive overlords, they convince many voters that voting for them is the only way voters can feel good about themselves.
Good points! Regarding immigration: I have been taking Ubers this week as I am Washington DC. I asked two of my drivers who they voted for. They both voted for Trump and so did their families. Both were immigrants from the middle east. Both talked about how they work hard, and always have, and how the money going to support the illegals is wrong. They talked about Medicaid for illegals. They also mentioned crime and welfare fraud in DC which they knew of personally - not from the media. Democrats seem to think that if they could shut down all the right wing media including the new media, they would be back in power. These Americans don't even listen to American media, but they are still voting for Trump.
One other piece for us is that we grow weary of progressives' victim sweepstakes. Everybody in their view, except white males, is a victim of........white males.
Look at articles in WaPo and NYT. One story after another about white males.
As (former) Democrats who are now Independents, one piece of what is now the Progressive, not Democratic, Party is putting down Trump supporters. The things said about them are often terrible, and we don't tolerate that. We don't care if someone insults us, but we won't be a part of insulting others. Our old proud Democratic Party used to advocate for those same folks progressives now are insulting.
Great article Ruy!
"The things said about them are often terrible, and we don't tolerate that. We don't care if someone insults us, but we won't be a part of insulting others."
That may describe some of you, but let's not forget that--setting aside the folks who raided the capitol because someone other than Trump won an election--there's also a whole swathe of Trump voters who primarily luxuriate in "owning the libs": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owning_the_libs
Neither party has a very good track record of "not being a part of insulting others".
Minsky: thanks for your response.
I'm saying something different. Even if other people are doing it, we true liberals should not use that as a justification to do it back.
I wholeheartedly agree that the Democrats have a huge good-governance problem. But I’m no longer sure that it’s due to having too much Foucault in their ideological knapsack. Some of it is good old fashioned corruption. Billions of dollars of CA covid relief literally went missing. Audits of “green” energy initiative regularly reveal enormous sums of money up in smoke. Then there is the soft corruption - know the right bureaucrats and pay enough money and you can tap dance through all of the red tape. Red tape is profitable for corrupt petty pols. And beyond outright corruption, you have the major problem that every interest group in the Dem tent is allowed to put its greedy little fingers into the public works cookie jar. Want to get some government money to build a new factory? Well, how many transgender Native American subcontractors will you hire? Will it be in line with their .037% representation in the general population? Will you install costly electric heat pumps because of the climate emergency? Will you provide 24 hour child care? Not hiring enough union workers? Expect to get hit with a NEPA lawsuit. My ultimate point being that Democrats’ awful recent record at governance is not solely attributable to ideology. There are too many Dem-affiliated clients and officials who are profiting from the Dems’ awful governing.
How do crime rates in blue vs red-governed cities compare?
As the LA fires demonstrated, the Democrats' priorities were symbolic gestures, not tangible results.
Who cares if you knock it out of the park on tertiary issues like inclusion when you don't even make contact with the ball on things like disaster preparedness.
Another good article. I love the emphasis on getting things done. It is so American. I suspect the reason that many Democrats can’t let go of their ideological beliefs that drive them is that they have become a religion for them versus principles to keep in mind as you govern well. That is why they are willing to politically “die” for them and hold them above “getting things done”.
Let's address the elephant in the room. There is an "understanding" in liberal circles that it is "racist" to criticize people less white than oneself. Crime in our "blue" cities cannot be addressed because most of the criminals are black. An attack on urban crime is automatically deemed to be an attack on blacks as a "race." Both white liberals and black elites encourage this attitude.
If the great majority of illegal migrants were "white," Democrats would have little trouble dealing with the problem. However, the majority of the illegals fall into the "brown" category. This means that a crackdown on illegal immigration is automatically classified as "racist," and no Democratic politician wants to be labeled with the scarlet "R."
In Portland, Oregon, which has violent, murderous gangs, the progressives in local government and the equally progressive local media maintain what is effectively a news blackout on gang activity. You see, talk of gangs is "stigmatizing."
Instead, the paper of record dutifully reports on murder after murder in a certain part of town without ever bothering to connect the dots by tying them to gang activity. The only time the self-censorship lifts is when the feds put gang members on trial. That is when we finally read the names of the gangs in our newspaper and learn about the petty insults and offenses that provoke gang bangers to kill one another. Then the trial ends and things go back to normal, such as the minimal reporting when a couple of 15-year-old boys were trying to carjack vehicles in the cool "Portlandia" part of town . It's racist to report suspects' race and the legislature has prohibited the media from publishing mug shots (again, stigmatizing). However, the distinctive black naming conventions are often a giveaway of inconvenient truths.
When things got really out of hand a few years ago, the county threw a few million dollars at minority nonprofits in the name of finding "upstream solutions." That is code for sweeping it under the minority rug. One solution was to tell the police to stand down while black men were dispatched to talk to known criminals in order to persuade them to change their ways. Not surprisingly, the press never asked the many questions this raised, including the success rate and the emissaries' qualifications.
Living in liberal land for most of my life, being surrounded by educated people that vote Democrat today, I have awarded myself a PHD in liberal studies. I know them like the back of my hand.
And here is the secret... with their common wiring they are obsessed with status and power acquisition while largely less capable to start and grow a business in the private sector and thus seek it in the public sector. But their lack of capability for success in the private sector identifies the same flaws that effect them in their public sector roles. Basically they are defective problems solvers and decision makers as their choices value their feeling and status pursuit goals over actual pragmatic outcomes.
I have long list of examples for how the liberal majority demands policies, rules, ordinances and regulations that make absolutely zero business sense, but they do it anyway. California for example has prioritized environmental issues over fire prevention and water retention projects. There used to be firebreaks cut on the ridges of the low mountains around where the recent fires have destroyed whole communities... but the liberals did not like it and stopped that and brush clearing. They also destroyed and rejected dam projects where more water could be held from the infrequent rains.
This list goes on and on and on. Democrats are really the political species that is unfit to control the levers and switches of government, but that also craves the power of government.
Dead on. I think immigration and wokism may be exceptions, but the fundamental problem with Democrat governance is Ronald Reagan's dividing line: is government mostly an impediment to ordinary life or an enhancement? Reagan said "Government IS the problem." That is absolutely true today. In almost every area of life, "good" vs. "bad" government is based 100% on HOW you view gubment. MAGA says in almost every way except defense and border security (same thing) gubment is the problem. When you begin with that approach, your solutions are MUCH more likely to take into account the impact of any gubment action on business, ordinary people, the environment, and the future. If you think gubment is good and beneficial, I think you begin with a predisposed bias toward evil gubment, for nothing gubment does can be "wrong," just a "mistake" that will be rectified with more gugment.
Do you think if left to their own devices the people of Texas would have allowed in millions of invaders? Or the people of California would have allowed good water to be flushed into the Pacific to save a likely non-existent fish?
I have said in my comments here that all the half-measures and "reforms" within the Democrat party cannot amount to anything until or unless they address the basics. And this is the most basic of them all.
"MAGA says in almost every way except defense and border security (same thing) gubment is the problem."
This is not true at all. Remember MAGA's primary distinction from standard GOP neoliberalism is a mercantilist subsidization of manufacturing achieved by throwing up impediments to trade, i.e. tariffs. That is quintessential state-led development via 'gubment' intervention. Reagan was very much a free trader, and saw mercantilism as a relic of the early 19th century.
Great article that names the central problem with the Democrats in elected positions, which is that they are not interested in governing any city, state, or our country, nor are they competent to do so.
I would be careful using the term "universalist" to describe policies that indicate to me a resistance to creating and defending any sort of boundaries. The Democrats punish people who believe in boundaries and self-defense. They support policies that are based on unconditional permission for criminals to violate the physical boundaries of our country and of innocent individuals who are walking down streets or taking public transportation. They also violate the rights of citizens to speak freely in accordance with their beliefs, which is a refusal to respect the boundary protecting those citizens' natural and Constitutional rights.
Without a strong, competitive two-party system striving to represent the best interests of Americans, democracy suffers more than either of its political parties.
The wayward Left drift by today's Democratic Party will either be reversed by a majority of professed Democrats or the party will remain an irrelevant out-of-power minority for the foreseeable future, and small "d" democracy will be the weaker and poorer for it.
Agree with Dale about the lack of two-party competition harming governance.
Empirically, blue cities are much "bluer" than red cities are red. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/08/08/chart-of-the-week-the-most-liberal-and-conservative-big-cities/
Is there an empirical literature on party competition and governance? A one-minute search turned up this piece on Flanders (which supports the idea that stronger head-to-head competition benefits constituents). https://www.wzb.eu/system/files/docs/sine/political_competition_and_efficiency.pdf
Excellent piece! Ruy has been sounding the alarm for years to no avail. “A prophet is without honor in his own country.” It’s hard for me to understand why the Democrats continue down this path. There’s got to be something about their rewards system that causes this. Is it as simple as corruption? Or is it a twisted world view? I wish I knew.
A parable for Democratic governance:
A physicist, an engineer, and a mathematician survive a shipwreck, washing up on a deserted island with no supplies other than a case of canned beans and no tools to open the cans. The physicist says. "I can use my eyeglasses to focus the sun on the dried seaweed here and make a fire. If we put a can of beans on the fire, the steam pressure building inside will force it to burst open." The engineer says, "We should build a chimney of rocks to contain the bursting. If we build it at an angle, we can predict the trajectory of the beans and catch them on a mat of dried seaweed." The mathematician says, "Hold on. That's a lot of work, and we'll probably lose a lot of beans in experimenting with the heat of the fire and angle of the chimney. I suggest we simply assume a can opener."
The mathematician has a legislative mindset: pass a law and you can assume the intended benefit. This is why Democratic congress members crow about building hal;f a million EV chargers and bringing broadband to millions of rural Americans: they passed the laws, so they assume that everything funded under the laws was magically built (almost none of it was). The problem with Democratic governors and mayors is they share this mindset, assuming that their policies get implemented automatically when they are issued with no effort. Hence Gavin Newsom is completely bewildered that California spent $24 billion on homeless reduction programs that not only didn't reduce homelessness but actually vanished into thin air. Democratic politicians (especially DAs) assumed that criminal justice reforms would improve the lives of various communities they regarded as overpoliced and overimprisoned, and they didn't bother to see the evidence of their failures all around them.
Like you said, building things is hard - that doesn't just apply to construction in the face of onerous regulations, but to implementing, monitoring, and adjusting policies. A lot of Democratic leaders seem work-averse - and the Democratic Presidential nominee in 2024 seemed to exemplify this trait.
The usual "assume a canopener" protagonist in the joke is an economist ...
BRAVO!!! I am an independent voter who has been waiting for some honesty from the Left and this is it!!! Thank you Ruy!!!
Mark Kuvalanka
Great comment! But I prefer to refer to the Left as the Democrat Party because I don't believe the Party is democratic.
As you noted at the end, Republicans have their own problem with governance but it really doesn't apply to local issues in the Big Blue Cities since there are few Republicans governing in those places. Miami is an exception and I think Ft. Worth so it would be interesting to compare those places with other cities. Not the crazy outliers like Seattle and Chicago but more mainstream places like Atlanta and Pittsburgh. The same analysis would work for states that are politically dominated by Big Blue Cities and those that aren't.
National governance is screwed up not only by the factors you note but also the wild oscillations in policy with each election. You can see some of this in the swing states too. A few years ago I had an extended campfire conversation with the General Counsel of a big Arizona utility. Republicans win an election and start pushing conventional power plants, even coal which the Navajos have in abundance. Then the Democrats win and say no conventional power, it has to be all renewable. Rinse and repeat. Since utilities have long lead times and operate on a 20 year planning cycle, this creates an impossible situation for them and depresses overall investment.
The unspoken elephant in the room is corruption. You can see this again with the politics of power. A number of state dominated by Big Blue Cities have mandated that x% of power has to be renewable by y date. Combine this with electric car mandates and the demand for AI data centers and you have a big problem. So the response by the Biden administration was to cover all the BLM land in the West with solar panels. This is generating pushback by an unlikely and perhaps unstable coalition of preservationists, tribes, people opposed to renewables and NIMBYs. All this would be unnecessary if we would just walk away from utility level renewables and go back to putting the panels on roof tops. Less efficient than the grid but more resilient. It also puts the externalities where the power use is. The financing of this requires that homeowners be able to sell power to the utilities at a price that amortizes their investment. This in turn generates pushback from NGOs professing to be concerned about people who don't own roofs but pay utility bills. Behind all that, is government subsidies of the NGOs and campaign contributions by utilities. Further back is campaign contributions and outright bribes by upstream producers of components which basically means the CCP.
Another great piece, Ruy! But you left unaddressed a critical question: How do Democrats keep get elected despite this record of failure?
Two things stand out:
* They ally themselves with the greatest beneficiaries of inefficient and ineffective government--public-sector workers and government-funded grant-receiving NFPs/NGOs. This makes a circular problem--the more these allies help Democrats, the more Democrats are motivated to help them, no matter what the expense to the public.
* They've branded themselves as "the nice party," standing against "the mean party." Since childhood, we've all learned that "nice" is better than "mean,' and that a key element of being "nice" is standing for the underdog against the oppressors. By propagating a simple, easy-to-convey tale of (favored) minorities as perpetual underdogs and whites (and increasingly Asians) as oppressive overlords, they convince many voters that voting for them is the only way voters can feel good about themselves.