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Re: "lessons learned", reckoning with the new political landscape, and internal recriminations... [1]
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Date: 2025-01-13
This “diary” started as a comment, but started getting long enough that I decided to (slightly) polish it into a short, but poorly-organized, stream-of-consciousness diary.
This is a collection of my random thoughts in response to the diary here accusing dkos of turning into an “anti-Democrat Russian troll farm”, which itself was largely a criticism of the front-page diary here asking whether Democrats “learned nothing” from the 2024 election. While I found a lot to agree with in both articles, and I initially didn’t read the FP diary because the title was so clickbaity/inflammatory, I decided to read both to try to understand what all the fuss was about.
I didn’t find the substance of the front-page article nearly so bad as its title or the critical reclist diary led me to believe it was. I agree with those who argue “messaging” isn’t the main problem; it’s the lying/propaganda/media consolidation, stupid! But at the same time, in light of the actual results of the 2024 election, the 2017 playbook of knee-jerk blanket opposition and sustained outrage over every little trial balloon/distraction is clearly not going to work. It (sort-of) worked when we had the legitimate argument that Trump’s election went against the popular will due to HRC’s clear victory in the popular vote in 2016. And one may certainly argue that the intensity of Democratic opposition during the first Trump administration worked to prevent some of the worst ideas from being enacted. But it seems clear to me at least that the 2017 style of opposition politics won’t work this time around, since the second Trump administration clearly carries more small-d “democratic” legitimacy than the first (as appalling as that reality is to most of us), and the actual lived experience of the Trump economy was not nearly so bad as we (reasonably) expected it to be based on the experience of the previous Republican administration. That things “weren’t so bad” under the first Trump administration damaged the credibility of Democratic politics, and we need to adjust our tactics and strategies appropriately, as does every party that suffers a loss in such a consequential/high-stakes election.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I have at least a few random thoughts/ideas in no particular order of relevance or importance:
Counting on the billionaire-owned, corrupt legacy media to cover the second Trump administration the way they (sort-of) covered the first (i.e., with even a modicum of objectivity/integrity), is a fool’s game. Establishment and outsider Democrats alike need to understand that the media are not on our side, they are not our friends (there is no “liberal media”), and they do not take the responsibilities of the free press in a representative democracy seriously. Accept that legacy media have fallen to fascist control, and start playing the long game of “working the refs”, rebuilding an independent liberal media ecosystem, and using our considerable economic/cultural/institutional power and influence constructively to bend the long-term trajectory of American politics and culture back toward our vision and values (once we agree on what those are, lol). Use the language of freedom and individual liberty, and economic justice/working-class solidarity. We have the advantage of having the truth on our side, and the truth is a powerful ally. Practice passive resistance and “malicious compliance” as appropriate. Also, stop using/listening to the out-of-touch beltway Democratic strategist/consultant class who’ve been wrong about almost everything for the last 50 years. Democratic electeds and voters should have and show some self-respect and clearly and unapologetically state what our principles are and stand up for them. To use a labored sports analogy, play to win, don’t play not to lose. Voters reward those who project strength and confidence, even when they are wrong.
We should ask ourselves, being now in the minority as an opposition party, what is the purpose of the Democratic Party? What are its core values and principles and reasons to exist? What goals do we hope to achieve via participation in electoral politics? What are the best tactics and strategies to position ourselves to capitalize on the coming backlash against the inevitable Republican overreach? How do we move the ball down the field and advance our goals in the LONG RUN regardless of election results? “Winning all future elections” is not a viable short-term or long-term strategy in a democratic system, and “reducing the power and influence of the Republicans to where we can leave them on the ash heap of history like the Whigs” is clearly not a viable short-term (or even long-term) strategy as long as we live in a highly polarized society with our first-past-the-post two-party system, absent some “black swan” event that completely upends the current alignments. How do we reorient the terms of American political debate around class interest, where the vast majority of the electorate ought to be receptive to our message, as opposed to culture-war distractions, without abandoning our vulnerable/marginalized populations to the racists/bigots?
As the “base” constituencies of the two parties evolve, we should also ask ourselves who, exactly, are we supposed to be helping and whose interests are we supposed to be representing/protecting/prioritizing at this point? We cannot keep getting triggered/worked up/outraged about things that haven’t actually happened and we should focus on what elected officials DO, not what they SAY. Trump’s superpower is to wear down/exhaust his opponents with frivolous lawfare and endless distraction from his very REAL corruption and criminality (as always, every accusation is a confession). They only have the energy and the legal ability to follow through on a small fraction of their half-baked, terrible “ideas”. Don’t give oxygen to facially absurd/unconstitutional ideas by pretending that they are serious proposals and then getting outraged and writing 10,000-word essays about them (like I’m doing here). Keep it short and sweet. To the extent Democrats are asked our opinions about the most insane ideas. “That’s unconstitutional. He can’t do that. That’s a distraction from the kitchen-table issues I’m laser-focused on. Next question.” and move on. Yes, the SCOTUS is corrupt and prepared to green-light a lot of abuses of power, but that’s no excuse to pre-surrender without a fight or entertain or legitimize nonsense by responding and giving oxygen to every incoherent brain fart Agolf Shitler craps out into the news cycle. Depriving them of attention and enemies to rail against by ignoring them when they are merely talking (as opposed to actively doing) denies them power over us. Passive resistance is an essential tool.
They’re working against the clock on the midterm elections from day 1. Take a page from the GOP playbook and make them work hard to accomplish every stupid little thing they want to do, gum up the procedural works to run out the clock until the midterms. They will accomplish very little of the “project 2025” scope before the midterms are upon us. The time of maximum danger for lasting harmful legislation and executive orders/policies is 2025. Understanding Trump’s MO of exhausting his opposition by sending up 1,000 trial balloons and threatening/filing 100 frivolous lawsuits heightens the importance of choosing our battles wisely.
We should also accept/understand that much of what happened in the 2024 election was entirely beyond our control (or Biden’s or Harris’s for that matter) and not spend too much time blaming ourselves or engaging in internal recriminations. Trump benefited from the nostalgic perceptions of the pre-COVID economy which was genuinely good in many ways, and for better or worse, voters didn’t blame Trump in 2024 for the worst aspects of how our society and government handled COVID (the effect of COVID on 2020 is a different story—COVID probably cost Trump the 2020 election in hindsight). You can, with good reason, blame voters’ short memories for forgetting why they fired him in 2020, but it isn’t all amnesia, some is honest reassessment with meaningful historical distance, and comparison of the recent past to the present. You can try to explain until you’re blue in the face how Trump inherited Obama’s good economy and how Congress was responsible for Trump’s good economy DESPITE his policy instincts, because they IGNORED his policy wishlist other than tinkering with the tax code even during their 2017-2018 trifecta. You can point out how the COVID relief checks signed by Trump were passed by the Democratic congress over Republican opposition, and how Biden sent out more checks in early 2021, but when you’re explaining, you’re losing.
Democrats DO good things for voters and either refrain from taking credit for their achievements or, worse yet, let Republicans take the credit. Then they prevent the Republicans from doing bad things and Republicans don’t get the blame/pay no political price for their mendacity. The media will always help the Republicans deceive voters unless Democrats force the issue and point out the lies/hypocrisy/double standards over and over again, TO THEIR FACES. Voters didn’t like the corruption, chaos, and incompetence of the first Trump admin, or, in hindsight, its SCOTUS appointments, but they liked the “Trump economy”, to a large extent with good reason. Conversely, people largely hated the Biden economy despite the gangbusters GDP and job market numbers, because of inflation, and it isn’t just imaginary. According to government statistics, real median household income peaked in 2019 at just over $81k (in 2023 dollars) and only in 2023 did inflation slow down enough and incomes catch up enough for that number to regain something close to its previous peak. When the 2024 numbers come in, that will probably show this measure reaching a new high.
But the fact that real median household income recovered by late 2024 to surpass it’s previous 2019 peak, five years later, is a thin reed on which to hang a defense of the Biden economic record. On that statistic, the median household was treading water or at break-even for the last 5 years, and falling behind (albeit not by much) from 2020-2022. Ideally you want incomes meaningfully and consistently increasing faster than inflation for people to rate their own finances and the overall economy positively. To defend the Biden economic record, you have to come up with a story that largely blames COVID and/or Trump policies for the Biden-era inflation, while discounting the role of the COVID relief packages passed under both Trump and Biden in driving inflation. That story primarily blames pandemic supply chain disruptions and monopoly/greedflation/corporate price gouging, and there is a lot of truth to it, but good old-fashioned supply and demand and massive fiscal stimulus played a role too. The story of the post-COVID economy is that of an overstimulated/overheated economy, and it is very difficult to argue that the policy response to COVID had nothing to do with it. To defend the resulting temporary burst of inflation, which was unheard of in the lifetime of most working adults not of a certain age, one also needs to argue counterfactual history; namely that the alternative to the 2021-2022 inflation was a long, painful bout of unemployment and recession, and one can cite other underperforming economies around the world in support of this thesis, but as always, if you’re explaining, you’re losing. We probably overdid it somewhat on fiscal stimulus, and the Powell Fed was initially behind the curve on using monetary policy to cool demand and curb inflation. Finally, as much as I hate to admit it, even the stock market had a better four-year performance under the first Trump administration than under the Biden administration, thanks to 2022 and the Fed’s rate-hiking cycle, which hammered ALL financial assets. I say that knowing that in the long-term, almost all measures of economic performance have historically done better under Democratic presidents.
To the extent I have a point with this retrospective comparison of the Biden and Trump economic records, it is the following: When, as Democrats, we consistently run around with our hair on fire predicting, nay screaming, that Republican governance will lead to economic catastrophe (it always does in the long run, but in the long run we’re all dead) and then it doesn’t immediately materialize, and when life under Republican governance for the average voter doesn’t turn out as bad as our dire predictions, we look silly, hysterical, and weak, and we lose the trust of voters, even in an environment where most voters live in a disinformation bubble where they hear almost nothing but lies and slander about Democrats to begin with. Our warnings are not unfounded; they are based on experience, but most people don’t know history or learn from their own mistakes, let alone from society’s recent experience. We should understand that fact and adjust our political strategy and tactics accordingly. Our message “Trump is running to stay out of prison and wants to turn America into a fascist dictatorship with himself as the dictator”, while true to a significant extent, fell flat. It’s the “boy who cried wolf” effect.
A large and growing fraction of the electorate is young enough that they have no memory or concept of what a legitimate recession/stock market crash/deflationary environment and a REALLY bad job market and economy look like. The inevitable crash of the current crypto/AI mania-driven tech bubble, accelerated by Republican policies, will provide them a real-life education in what happens when we don’t regulate the financial sector properly, that no history lesson could provide.
If I were trying to come up with suggestions for what Democrats navigating the second Trump administration politically should do, I’d suggest trying to steer policy in a constructive direction in the minority, voting uniformly against the bad ideas, running against the bad ideas and the resulting harms (and against the quisling media and their double standards and obfuscation), and fighting unconstitutional/illegal actions in the (also corrupted) courts (even if and when you lose, at least you expose the corruption, heighten the contradictions, and force the media to cover it), etc, etc.
What I think we shouldn’t do is engage in a bunch of loud, angry, counterproductive street protests; those are like media catnip and attract right-wing saboteurs intent on fomenting violence and generating negative media attention (like flies to shit). As many of the protestors against Biden’s Israel/Gaza policies are now finding out, these kinds of protests almost never generate sympathy or popular support and almost always generate negative media attention. Protests/counterprotests that use mockery or satire to point out the contradictions of the right seem harmless, at best. But angrily protesting a new, legitimately elected administration before they have even taken office or done anything, as others seem to be trying to organize, is the most illogical form of protest imaginable. Just as “anticipatory obedience” is wrong, so too is “anticipatory protest”. Protesting a new administration before it’s even sworn in is basically protesting the decisions of the plurality of American voters who elected them. It comes off as a hypocrisy/contradiction when our message is “we need to save democracy” but then only supporting democracy if and when it produces the outcomes/results we like. That’s what Republicans do.
We also probably shouldn’t waste any more time and energy trying to convince “low-information” voters to care about the things we think they SHOULD care about (high-minded principles like the rule of law, national security, democratic legitimacy, etc). As appropriate, shift conversations away from imaginary grievances and batshit-insane conspiracy theories and toward potential areas of common ground (don’t let insane falsehoods go unchallenged, but be tactful in debunking them and/or planting the seeds of doubt in trying to bring brainwashed cult members back to reality), but avoid maximal, apocalyptic rhetoric that is difficult to back down from if and when you need to adjust to a new political landscape (see all the “WTF? Elected Democrats are behaving as if they didn’t believe their own rhetoric” reactions all over dkos).
We should accept that the voters we need to win back (as well as too many partisan voters on both sides) mostly do not and will not understand the tax code, our system of government, or the first thing about macroeconomics or history, and will not educate themselves. Knowing this, we must learn how to speak to these voters on their level without condescending, even when it is like trying to reason with a child or toddler and takes a comparable amount of patience. We should also work under the assumption that their information bubble is so fucked that they are simply unaware of most of Trump’s (and by extension the Republican Party’s) rampant corruption and serious criminality. Moreover, we must understand that most voters are so innumerate and bad at risk assessment and judging the significance/importance of various political “scandals” as to be easily distracted by petty fake outrages like “Gavin Newsom dined maskless at a fancy restaurant while you were under lockdown orders” or “Hillary Clinton’s private email server” while ignoring the massive corruption and criminality of the Republicans (Jared’s $2 BILLION “investment” from the Saudis as the first example that pops into my head).
“Trump will raise your taxes and cut your benefits and give all your hard-earned money to billionaires. Vote for Democrats, and we’ll tax the billionaires, cut your taxes, and pay you the benefits you earned by paying into social security and medicare!“
is a better message than
“Actually, that’s not how graduated income taxes work, stupid! You don’t actually become poorer by making more money and getting into a higher tax bracket. The marginal tax rate in any given income bracket only applies to the taxable income earned above the threshold for that bracket. Why do you keep voting against your own interests? Are you really this bad at math?”
which is the kind of thing I like to say.
As always, we should continue to educate as many people as possible who are actually educable, but as a matter of political strategy, don’t waste time/energy trying to explain to people why they’re wrong even when their beliefs/opinions are demonstrably false. Just “here’s what we believe and why”, not “actually, you’re stupid and wrong because that’s not how any of this works...”. Personally, my instincts always tend strongly toward the latter approach because continually shooting down the same zombie lies and bad ideas over and over again is an exhausting, Sisyphean burden and my patience for bullshit, ignorance, and stupidity wears thin pretty quickly. But to achieve persuasion, the former attitude is what’s needed in our interactions with persuadable, “low-info” voters who may be susceptible to learning. Even the term “low-info” voters is condescending, so we should probably use a more neutral term like “disengaged” or “disillusioned” voters or something similar.
The election results tell us that most American voters will ONLY ever learn the lessons of history the hard way. If even half of the most insane campaign promises actually happen, then it WILL negatively impact a solid majority of “low-information” voters’ lives directly in such a way that they will lash out against incumbents (again), largely to Democrats’ benefit. Democrats should position themselves to capitalize on the next wave of confused voters’ impotent anti-incumbent rage.
When Democrats get back in power (and eventually they will), as noted above, they should have the self-respect and courage of their convictions to stand up for their principles and actually exercise that power on behalf of the people who voted for them (playing to win, not to avoid losing). Because political power is fleeting, and is a “use-it-or-lose-it” proposition. But that’s a topic for another day.
If you read this far, sorry this rant got a little lengthy and repetitive and “stream of consciousness”… Like all Democrats/liberals, I’m still coming to terms with what happened in November.
[END]
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[1] Url:
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