Destroying Dems has been so easy for Donald Trump, he didn't even bother to put down his Diet Coke. Dems knew immigration would hurt Working and Middle Class Americans most, and they simply did not care. They hated Trump and MAGA voters more. They knew it was insanity to import 10 million people without a single extra housing unit, doctor or bilingual teacher. They did it anyway.
Instead of facing reality, Dems first denied immigration was a problem. Then they admitted it was small, but overstated problem. Next, they attempted to kill the messenger. Migration was only a mirage, promoted by Fox News. By the time they came up for air, from their orgy of Trump and MAGA loathing, Dems had lost the WH, the House and Senate.
Fighting USAID revelations, and the many examples of gross government waste, that will be revealed over the new few years, will be immigration 2.0. Dems will deny, then insist the problem is overstated. Then demand the execution of the messenger, Musk. By the time they are done defending the indefensible, JD Vance will be highfiving his new VP.
Dems only hope is for a Dem moderate to immediately give a "We have Lost our Way" speech admitting the spending, immigration and green insanity. If Dems cheered the border closing, the end of billions wasted and impossible Net Zero, they might have a prayer of avoiding extinction.
The Dem Party will not survive another decade of Progressive insanity. All over liberal Europe, voters from Italy to uber liberal Sweden, and most places in between, Progressives are being shown the door.. If Dems want to continue, as a viable political party, they must purge the Progressives and atone, while there is still time.
Great Article. So great in fact I paid for a year's subscription. The "America-Last" Woke Democrat party is unsustainable - I live in Manhattan - and while I consider myself an independent moderate, a libertarian - I am also a Navy Vet, Christian, American nationalist and I voted for Trump, and so I keep my views close to the vest because being hated and canceled by my Democrat "friends" is a real thing. Very sad, given that I grew up in Queens where the concept of "I may disagree with what you say but I will fight to the death to protect your right to say it" was thought to be a rule set in stone.
But the cancel culture aspect is just one of the Democrats core problems - the bigger one is the outright racism, sexism and unfairness of the DEI culture which channels the Dems of 1860 and 1960 who thirsted for more and more segregation based on race and other immutable characteristics and now continue to do so...., as well as the outright stupidity of taking one of those immutable characteristics, the biological reality that there are only 2 genders, and somehow through some seriously warped convoluted thinking magically created 64+ genders, and a new protected class - which allows for men to play women's sports and rape women in female bathrooms and prisons. The Democrats are one hell of a stupid party.
I doubt your "sanity clause" will have much purchase with the Progressives running the Dems now - so be prepared to be stuck in the wilderness a few years more (at least) with the likes of Maher and Fetterman (who I predict will be an Independent by the time he runs for re-election)
I posted this elsewhere, but with forgiveness (and with ongoing admiration for your sanity) I’ll post it here as well. Speaking as the guy who wrote the Esquire article and the book that helped motivate the DLC’s birth, I think a DLC revival is a bit simplistic. There’s nothing particularly wrong in what Avlon says, but it’s also true that, overwhelmingly, the majority of Dems have been saying it for years. And sometimes it sticks; other times it doesn’t. The question is: Why?
One big answer is the centrist and left-centrist Dems have spent pitifully little time and effort building a base of future leaders, soldiers, and successful policies in the towns, counties, and states. Instead, they have been fixated on Washington. And not just Washington - they believe the Presidency is all that matters. The right, meanwhile, has spent decades infiltrating and bringing the culture wars to school boards, town councils, state election boards, and more. They’ve been drawing from all walks of society, not just lawyers, training their shock troops, and elevating them to higher positions, while continuing to replenish their base of angry MAGAtts.
I absolutely agree that there are young, aggressive Democratic Governors who rose to prominence during the last campaign, who provide hope for a vigorous Democratic future. But they cannot substitute for the multi-decade grass-roots party-rebuilding campaign that Dems, with their Washington fixation, have abjured. The party that used to celebrate the states as “laboratories of democracy” (ironically, a progressive Republican concept) has abdicated its grass roots to the laboratories of fascism. (Who gave plenty of targets to shoot at in dismally run cities.)
A second challenge that a “new DLC” can’t solve is the Dems’ left wing isn’t going away, and no centrist coalition is going to be able to wish them away. There will always be intra-party arguments (as well there should be) and the only way to overcome the inimical, absurd, and absurdist protocols you rightly call out is to fight hard and win those battles on the merits - kind of like Trump did, in his admittedly disgusting, duplicitous way. The thing is, centrist and even left-center Dems really want Bernie and AOC to shut up so they don’t spoil the next election. But they’re not willing to try to challenge them on policy (with the exception of Israel policy). Which means that, in the Dems’ big tent, the most outrageous ideas will continue to get the most public attention.
For the Dems to be known for common sense, effective governance, job creation, rising wages, affordable housing, and affordable health care, it’s going to take more than soul-searching, and a hell of a lot more than some Al From-like Washington consultants inventing a new D.C.-based organization. (Full disclosure: I greatly admired Al From.) They’ll need to fight and win their own internal policy battles, which they’ve been unwilling to do. Look at Biden’s Presidency as a case in point. Joe Biden, a lackluster right-center Senator, as President arguably governed further to the left than any President since FDR. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to like in the horribly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, especially the green energy investments and drug price negotiations But did he have a mandate to do it? No. Did it bring down inflation? Not visibly to most people.
Worse, did he sell it and its benefits by barnstorming the country both before and after its torturous passage, and serve as the vigorous face of progress against the continuous barrage of calumny hurled at him by Trump? Obviously not. Instead, he treated the Presidency as a legislative job: Once he negotiated his way past Manchin and Sinema, he considered his task done. And no one else stepped in to fill that communications void. What filled that void instead were the ceaseless attacks by the right on the social issues championed by the left.
The upshot: A left President got rejected because he could barely sell his policies to his own Congress, and didn’t even try to sell them to the American people.
Which gets at the third challenge facing any “new DLC”: The left Dems are a hell of a lot better at communicating than centrist Dems are.
A fourth and perhaps more material challenge that a “new DLC” can’t resolve is that the old DLC - exemplified by Bill Clinton - led straight to a Democratic Party dominated by upper-middle-class lawyers and financiers. “It’s the economy, stupid” morphed into coziness with Wall Street and to deregulation and trade arrangements that might have elevated US GDP growth but whose benefits only widened the gap between the wealthy and the majority. Recall that the DLC, upon its founding, was derided as “Democrats for the Leisure Class.” That wasn’t far off the mark.
In fact, you can argue that the Dems became an amalgam of two bad tendencies: a Wall Street-derived globalization strategy which was divorced from any policies that aimed to close the wealth gap; and an academic-left-derived social-identity strategy that divorced Americans from their common Americanness.
Which is why I think looking back to Bill Clinton and James Carville for inspiration about what to do now is misguided. They led the Democratic Party straight into its current pickle. The rejection of their upper-middle-class-oriented economic policies paradoxically empowered both The Squad left and the MAGAtt right. It’s hard to see it as a model for the future.
Truly depressing column but full of truth and common sense. I agreed with every word. The Democrats, my party of choice, have lost their way. Reading Jamie Harrison's gobbledygook membership details made me almost weep. Is this some kind of joke?
Good piece. Unfortunately, like the Liberal Patriot piece you shared, there is no mention of Musk and the coup. The Democrats should not cooperate on a single thing until Musk is thrown out of the country.
Re "DEI" etc (really just code for blacks.
I've been watching a Kennedy doc on the History channel .... It's Clear to me if MLK and Civil rights happened now? Trump would send in the troops to put down the freedom riders and blacks rather than protect them.... And scotus would never rule that blacks could go to the U of Mississippi. There would be no civil rights legislation and Jim Crow would still exist.
Ahh the old "the Dems were the party of racism" trope.. Duh. And then LBJ etc signed the civil rights act etc and those dems became Republicans in about 2 seconds.... As I said, today's republican party (yesterday's dems) would never defend the Freedom riders and today's scotus would never rule in favor of blacks going to white University... We would be in Jim crow forever. If you think that is good..? 🤔 🤔 🤔 🤔 🤔
Thank you for not sugar-coating how bad things are. Question -- are there any candidates on your radar screen who you think could go the distance in 2028?
Thanks for putting these ideas together. One issue I have doubts about is your argument for "no special breaks according to identity...unless that identity involves service and sacrifice." The GI bill indeed was good legislation, but it was first passed in 1944, when vast hordes of draftees returned home to uncertain prospects after facing horrifying warfare. At present, there is no draft, and the military is staffed by volunteers, who have chosen their path forward. Are (the current generation of) military veterans still unique in the magnitude of their sacrifice? Isn't it time to start to reduce benefits for future veterans?
I agree with the notion that the great challenge for the Dems is to dramatically -and demonstrably- improve the governance of the states they control, showing the nation that it is better to live in, say, Minnesota than Iowa. And, while we should continue the effort to make the cities ever safer, the essential service is education.
But I am not convinced that union members are the essential stumbling block. The teachers at Bronx Science are union members, the teachers in the cushy suburbs are union members - under the right circumstances, schools with unionized teachers can be effective.
The trouble comes when you combine powerful unions with a flabby bureaucratic educational administration - the result seems to be dominated by people whose driving concern is finding excuses for underperformance rather than improving anything. When the schools are dominated by trendy educational fads, fuzzy curricula, and social justice determinism (much of which bedevils even the wealthier districts), mediocrity is guaranteed.
The problem is mostly centered in the larger cities and the key issue there is accountability. Thus, one first step that should be tried is bringing back the district school boards. Eliminated largely due to the deplorable scandals of some of the boards, they nevertheless presented a lever in which interested parents and reformers could break the educational blob into manageable bites. When I was at the New York School Construction Authority , I noted that there were more students in the system than the population of my home state. Break the New York (and Chicago and Boston) into smaller components -and let each board negotiate its own union deal- and the power of the unions and the bureaucrats begins to dissapate.
Meanwhile, the job market for young college grads is about to crash - due to a combination of the destruction of the federal government and US economic marginalization. So the states have to engage in a deal in which young people can work off their student debt by teaching in distressed schools. Essentially a GI bill for teachers.
There are many long roads the Democrats have to walk in the next two years. This is the most important.
The state controlled schools that are considered great in the US are great by comparison to the overwhelming majority of state controlled schools that are failing. How would they compare to the great schools in any country that values educational results as opposed to valuing teachers union contracts.
Actually, no. Most public employees have civil service protections that will, in the long term, block the Musk madness in court. Their union work rules are a redundancy. Also, the money state and local public employees have "negotiated" for themselves--especially when it comes to pensions and some emoluments--should have gone to other public priorities like homelessness and addiction etc. I sympathize with the federal employees falling under Musk's axe, but it's a reaction to decades of abuse.
At one time the Democratic Party was run by Irish machine bosses like Tom Pendergast, Bob Hannegan and Dick Daley. Today it is run by rich Jewish kids. Irish machine bosses were better.
Good essay. Too much in there to answer anything specifically. Politics is the art of the possible, and though I truly feel a ground-up syndicate-anarchist socialism, is the fairest (theoretical) system, we just can't get there from here. Given the USA's socioeconomic parameters I would be in the same domain as Mr. Klein, a moderately left of center independent. Yet how the fur might fly if both of us sat down face to face with a little " in wine there is truth " between us! If I was dictator for a day ... Id be assassinated the next day, and rightly so.
While I wholly concur that the Democratic Party has lost its way you must remember they ran a cipher for President last year and Trump barely beat her. All this crap about the Trump "mandate" makes me nauseous. Many voters saw him as the lesser of two evils. I absolutely loathe Trump and can't imagine a circumstance where I would vote for him, yet I couldn't bring myself to vote for the cipher either. I guess I'm saying that I'm not totally surprised that they would think a real candidate could beat Trump.
I believe, it is the other way around. Trump barely beat her. DeSantis, Haley or
Youngkin would have won by 10 points, or more. Dems have a policy problem, not a Harris problem.
Dem's pathological loathing of Trump, prevents them from seeing what is right in front of their eyes. Progressivism doesn't work, anywhere. 140 Dems refused to support streamlining the deportation of US convicted migrant sexual predators. How does that expand the base? Horrendous policy is why Blue cities are a mess, and many Blue States will face economic armageddon, during the next stock market correction, if there is no Blue President to federalize their unsustainable debt.
Americans are voting with their feet. They are literally running away from the far Left. Imagine the populations of Blue States without 10 million new migrants. Trump is an old man, with a 4 year DC expiration date. Bad Dem policy, uncorrected, will live forever.
Don't disagree. But choosing Harris was part and parcel of their policy. Her only "qualification" was that she is a woman of color. No accomplishments, no program, no stature, no real beliefs. I didn't vote for her and I've been told by committed Democrats that it proves I'm sexist.
Thank you I totally agree. There are changes that need to be made in the Democratic Party, as there is with any party that loses an election, but I feel a lot of the panic over their situation is overblown. It was a close election, and Democrats won a majority of the closely contested Senate races, and picked up seats in the House. This election was not 1980.
The Democrats have a strong bench of candidates for 2028, including competent Governors like Shapiro, Moore, and Beshear. We have a two party system, and after four years of Trump chaos voters will turn to the only alternative they have, the Democrats.
Destroying Dems has been so easy for Donald Trump, he didn't even bother to put down his Diet Coke. Dems knew immigration would hurt Working and Middle Class Americans most, and they simply did not care. They hated Trump and MAGA voters more. They knew it was insanity to import 10 million people without a single extra housing unit, doctor or bilingual teacher. They did it anyway.
Instead of facing reality, Dems first denied immigration was a problem. Then they admitted it was small, but overstated problem. Next, they attempted to kill the messenger. Migration was only a mirage, promoted by Fox News. By the time they came up for air, from their orgy of Trump and MAGA loathing, Dems had lost the WH, the House and Senate.
Fighting USAID revelations, and the many examples of gross government waste, that will be revealed over the new few years, will be immigration 2.0. Dems will deny, then insist the problem is overstated. Then demand the execution of the messenger, Musk. By the time they are done defending the indefensible, JD Vance will be highfiving his new VP.
Dems only hope is for a Dem moderate to immediately give a "We have Lost our Way" speech admitting the spending, immigration and green insanity. If Dems cheered the border closing, the end of billions wasted and impossible Net Zero, they might have a prayer of avoiding extinction.
The Dem Party will not survive another decade of Progressive insanity. All over liberal Europe, voters from Italy to uber liberal Sweden, and most places in between, Progressives are being shown the door.. If Dems want to continue, as a viable political party, they must purge the Progressives and atone, while there is still time.
Great Article. So great in fact I paid for a year's subscription. The "America-Last" Woke Democrat party is unsustainable - I live in Manhattan - and while I consider myself an independent moderate, a libertarian - I am also a Navy Vet, Christian, American nationalist and I voted for Trump, and so I keep my views close to the vest because being hated and canceled by my Democrat "friends" is a real thing. Very sad, given that I grew up in Queens where the concept of "I may disagree with what you say but I will fight to the death to protect your right to say it" was thought to be a rule set in stone.
But the cancel culture aspect is just one of the Democrats core problems - the bigger one is the outright racism, sexism and unfairness of the DEI culture which channels the Dems of 1860 and 1960 who thirsted for more and more segregation based on race and other immutable characteristics and now continue to do so...., as well as the outright stupidity of taking one of those immutable characteristics, the biological reality that there are only 2 genders, and somehow through some seriously warped convoluted thinking magically created 64+ genders, and a new protected class - which allows for men to play women's sports and rape women in female bathrooms and prisons. The Democrats are one hell of a stupid party.
I doubt your "sanity clause" will have much purchase with the Progressives running the Dems now - so be prepared to be stuck in the wilderness a few years more (at least) with the likes of Maher and Fetterman (who I predict will be an Independent by the time he runs for re-election)
I posted this elsewhere, but with forgiveness (and with ongoing admiration for your sanity) I’ll post it here as well. Speaking as the guy who wrote the Esquire article and the book that helped motivate the DLC’s birth, I think a DLC revival is a bit simplistic. There’s nothing particularly wrong in what Avlon says, but it’s also true that, overwhelmingly, the majority of Dems have been saying it for years. And sometimes it sticks; other times it doesn’t. The question is: Why?
One big answer is the centrist and left-centrist Dems have spent pitifully little time and effort building a base of future leaders, soldiers, and successful policies in the towns, counties, and states. Instead, they have been fixated on Washington. And not just Washington - they believe the Presidency is all that matters. The right, meanwhile, has spent decades infiltrating and bringing the culture wars to school boards, town councils, state election boards, and more. They’ve been drawing from all walks of society, not just lawyers, training their shock troops, and elevating them to higher positions, while continuing to replenish their base of angry MAGAtts.
I absolutely agree that there are young, aggressive Democratic Governors who rose to prominence during the last campaign, who provide hope for a vigorous Democratic future. But they cannot substitute for the multi-decade grass-roots party-rebuilding campaign that Dems, with their Washington fixation, have abjured. The party that used to celebrate the states as “laboratories of democracy” (ironically, a progressive Republican concept) has abdicated its grass roots to the laboratories of fascism. (Who gave plenty of targets to shoot at in dismally run cities.)
A second challenge that a “new DLC” can’t solve is the Dems’ left wing isn’t going away, and no centrist coalition is going to be able to wish them away. There will always be intra-party arguments (as well there should be) and the only way to overcome the inimical, absurd, and absurdist protocols you rightly call out is to fight hard and win those battles on the merits - kind of like Trump did, in his admittedly disgusting, duplicitous way. The thing is, centrist and even left-center Dems really want Bernie and AOC to shut up so they don’t spoil the next election. But they’re not willing to try to challenge them on policy (with the exception of Israel policy). Which means that, in the Dems’ big tent, the most outrageous ideas will continue to get the most public attention.
For the Dems to be known for common sense, effective governance, job creation, rising wages, affordable housing, and affordable health care, it’s going to take more than soul-searching, and a hell of a lot more than some Al From-like Washington consultants inventing a new D.C.-based organization. (Full disclosure: I greatly admired Al From.) They’ll need to fight and win their own internal policy battles, which they’ve been unwilling to do. Look at Biden’s Presidency as a case in point. Joe Biden, a lackluster right-center Senator, as President arguably governed further to the left than any President since FDR. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to like in the horribly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, especially the green energy investments and drug price negotiations But did he have a mandate to do it? No. Did it bring down inflation? Not visibly to most people.
Worse, did he sell it and its benefits by barnstorming the country both before and after its torturous passage, and serve as the vigorous face of progress against the continuous barrage of calumny hurled at him by Trump? Obviously not. Instead, he treated the Presidency as a legislative job: Once he negotiated his way past Manchin and Sinema, he considered his task done. And no one else stepped in to fill that communications void. What filled that void instead were the ceaseless attacks by the right on the social issues championed by the left.
The upshot: A left President got rejected because he could barely sell his policies to his own Congress, and didn’t even try to sell them to the American people.
Which gets at the third challenge facing any “new DLC”: The left Dems are a hell of a lot better at communicating than centrist Dems are.
A fourth and perhaps more material challenge that a “new DLC” can’t resolve is that the old DLC - exemplified by Bill Clinton - led straight to a Democratic Party dominated by upper-middle-class lawyers and financiers. “It’s the economy, stupid” morphed into coziness with Wall Street and to deregulation and trade arrangements that might have elevated US GDP growth but whose benefits only widened the gap between the wealthy and the majority. Recall that the DLC, upon its founding, was derided as “Democrats for the Leisure Class.” That wasn’t far off the mark.
In fact, you can argue that the Dems became an amalgam of two bad tendencies: a Wall Street-derived globalization strategy which was divorced from any policies that aimed to close the wealth gap; and an academic-left-derived social-identity strategy that divorced Americans from their common Americanness.
Which is why I think looking back to Bill Clinton and James Carville for inspiration about what to do now is misguided. They led the Democratic Party straight into its current pickle. The rejection of their upper-middle-class-oriented economic policies paradoxically empowered both The Squad left and the MAGAtt right. It’s hard to see it as a model for the future.
Truly depressing column but full of truth and common sense. I agreed with every word. The Democrats, my party of choice, have lost their way. Reading Jamie Harrison's gobbledygook membership details made me almost weep. Is this some kind of joke?
Joe - one of your best ever. Thanks.
Good piece. Unfortunately, like the Liberal Patriot piece you shared, there is no mention of Musk and the coup. The Democrats should not cooperate on a single thing until Musk is thrown out of the country.
Re "DEI" etc (really just code for blacks.
I've been watching a Kennedy doc on the History channel .... It's Clear to me if MLK and Civil rights happened now? Trump would send in the troops to put down the freedom riders and blacks rather than protect them.... And scotus would never rule that blacks could go to the U of Mississippi. There would be no civil rights legislation and Jim Crow would still exist.
Actually Shaun, I think that it was the Democrats that were the party of slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, racial quotas and DEI.
Trump has plenty of faults but working for a colorblind America based on “the content of our character” isn’t one of them.
Ahh the old "the Dems were the party of racism" trope.. Duh. And then LBJ etc signed the civil rights act etc and those dems became Republicans in about 2 seconds.... As I said, today's republican party (yesterday's dems) would never defend the Freedom riders and today's scotus would never rule in favor of blacks going to white University... We would be in Jim crow forever. If you think that is good..? 🤔 🤔 🤔 🤔 🤔
That was my last column...and it'll probably be my next.
Another great column— happy anniversary Joe! Don’t ever think that you aren’t making a difference. 👍🏼
Thank you for not sugar-coating how bad things are. Question -- are there any candidates on your radar screen who you think could go the distance in 2028?
Thanks for putting these ideas together. One issue I have doubts about is your argument for "no special breaks according to identity...unless that identity involves service and sacrifice." The GI bill indeed was good legislation, but it was first passed in 1944, when vast hordes of draftees returned home to uncertain prospects after facing horrifying warfare. At present, there is no draft, and the military is staffed by volunteers, who have chosen their path forward. Are (the current generation of) military veterans still unique in the magnitude of their sacrifice? Isn't it time to start to reduce benefits for future veterans?
I agree with the notion that the great challenge for the Dems is to dramatically -and demonstrably- improve the governance of the states they control, showing the nation that it is better to live in, say, Minnesota than Iowa. And, while we should continue the effort to make the cities ever safer, the essential service is education.
But I am not convinced that union members are the essential stumbling block. The teachers at Bronx Science are union members, the teachers in the cushy suburbs are union members - under the right circumstances, schools with unionized teachers can be effective.
The trouble comes when you combine powerful unions with a flabby bureaucratic educational administration - the result seems to be dominated by people whose driving concern is finding excuses for underperformance rather than improving anything. When the schools are dominated by trendy educational fads, fuzzy curricula, and social justice determinism (much of which bedevils even the wealthier districts), mediocrity is guaranteed.
The problem is mostly centered in the larger cities and the key issue there is accountability. Thus, one first step that should be tried is bringing back the district school boards. Eliminated largely due to the deplorable scandals of some of the boards, they nevertheless presented a lever in which interested parents and reformers could break the educational blob into manageable bites. When I was at the New York School Construction Authority , I noted that there were more students in the system than the population of my home state. Break the New York (and Chicago and Boston) into smaller components -and let each board negotiate its own union deal- and the power of the unions and the bureaucrats begins to dissapate.
Meanwhile, the job market for young college grads is about to crash - due to a combination of the destruction of the federal government and US economic marginalization. So the states have to engage in a deal in which young people can work off their student debt by teaching in distressed schools. Essentially a GI bill for teachers.
There are many long roads the Democrats have to walk in the next two years. This is the most important.
The state controlled schools that are considered great in the US are great by comparison to the overwhelming majority of state controlled schools that are failing. How would they compare to the great schools in any country that values educational results as opposed to valuing teachers union contracts.
Mr Klein, you are my bridge over troubled waters ... your columns always provide insight and hope. Thank you ...
Can't help but ask: have recent events changed your views on public sector unions? Ex the teachers, of course.
Actually, no. Most public employees have civil service protections that will, in the long term, block the Musk madness in court. Their union work rules are a redundancy. Also, the money state and local public employees have "negotiated" for themselves--especially when it comes to pensions and some emoluments--should have gone to other public priorities like homelessness and addiction etc. I sympathize with the federal employees falling under Musk's axe, but it's a reaction to decades of abuse.
I hope your readers are aware of this: https://www.crisesnotes.com/treasury-secretary-bessents-lawlessness-sorry-readers-read-and-write-code-still-seems-in-play/?ref=notes-on-the-crises-newsletter
There's a modern day coup happening right in front of our eyes.
At one time the Democratic Party was run by Irish machine bosses like Tom Pendergast, Bob Hannegan and Dick Daley. Today it is run by rich Jewish kids. Irish machine bosses were better.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/09/david-shor-democrats-privileged-college-kid-problem-514992
Good essay. Too much in there to answer anything specifically. Politics is the art of the possible, and though I truly feel a ground-up syndicate-anarchist socialism, is the fairest (theoretical) system, we just can't get there from here. Given the USA's socioeconomic parameters I would be in the same domain as Mr. Klein, a moderately left of center independent. Yet how the fur might fly if both of us sat down face to face with a little " in wine there is truth " between us! If I was dictator for a day ... Id be assassinated the next day, and rightly so.
While I wholly concur that the Democratic Party has lost its way you must remember they ran a cipher for President last year and Trump barely beat her. All this crap about the Trump "mandate" makes me nauseous. Many voters saw him as the lesser of two evils. I absolutely loathe Trump and can't imagine a circumstance where I would vote for him, yet I couldn't bring myself to vote for the cipher either. I guess I'm saying that I'm not totally surprised that they would think a real candidate could beat Trump.
I believe, it is the other way around. Trump barely beat her. DeSantis, Haley or
Youngkin would have won by 10 points, or more. Dems have a policy problem, not a Harris problem.
Dem's pathological loathing of Trump, prevents them from seeing what is right in front of their eyes. Progressivism doesn't work, anywhere. 140 Dems refused to support streamlining the deportation of US convicted migrant sexual predators. How does that expand the base? Horrendous policy is why Blue cities are a mess, and many Blue States will face economic armageddon, during the next stock market correction, if there is no Blue President to federalize their unsustainable debt.
Americans are voting with their feet. They are literally running away from the far Left. Imagine the populations of Blue States without 10 million new migrants. Trump is an old man, with a 4 year DC expiration date. Bad Dem policy, uncorrected, will live forever.
Don't disagree. But choosing Harris was part and parcel of their policy. Her only "qualification" was that she is a woman of color. No accomplishments, no program, no stature, no real beliefs. I didn't vote for her and I've been told by committed Democrats that it proves I'm sexist.
Thank you I totally agree. There are changes that need to be made in the Democratic Party, as there is with any party that loses an election, but I feel a lot of the panic over their situation is overblown. It was a close election, and Democrats won a majority of the closely contested Senate races, and picked up seats in the House. This election was not 1980.
The Democrats have a strong bench of candidates for 2028, including competent Governors like Shapiro, Moore, and Beshear. We have a two party system, and after four years of Trump chaos voters will turn to the only alternative they have, the Democrats.