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Want to prove you're out of touch? Meet in luxury hotels to discuss reconnecting. [1]
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Date: 2025-05-26
This article from the NYT says it all in three paragraphs: Six Months Later, Democrats Are Still Searching for the Path Forward (gift link)
For now, Democratic donors and strategists have been gathering at luxury hotels to discuss how to win back working-class voters, commissioning new projects that can read like anthropological studies of people from faraway places. The prospectus for one new $20 million effort, obtained by The Times, aims to reverse the erosion of Democratic support among young men, especially online. It is code-named SAM — short for “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan” — and promises investment to “study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces.” It recommends buying advertisements in video games, among other things. “Above all, we must shift from a moralizing tone,” it urges.
Has anyone thought of, you know, maybe talking with the people!? Honestly, if I were invited to those dinners or luncheons or whatever, I might well show up for a free meal at the donors’ expense, but do you know who I’d actually be talking with? The waitstaff, bussers, cleaning staff, front desk people, etc. To tell you the truth, whenever I travel, that is exactly what I do and I’ve met a lot of wonderful people and had amazing conversations that way. I can tell you that the staff at the Hampton Inn in Manning, SC absolutely loved me back when I was down there regularly. 🤣
That’s held true pretty much everywhere I’ve ever been — the best conversations I’ve had have been with the people who worked wherever I was. It’s true of multiple places I go right here in Brooklyn. These folks are way smarter than many give them credit (and they can tell some damned funny stories sometimes 😂). The truth is that they are often so overworked that they don’t have the luxury of time to follow the news like I do. No one barely making ends meet on two or three jobs can afford to read the 50-100 articles I do every day.
The obvious, and only, way for Democrats to get out of this mess is to meet people where they are. Talk to them, listen to their concerns, and describe how our efforts can better improve their lives than those of the other side. Sometimes something as simple as showing people what is actually happening can open eyes and inspire people to get engaged in at least whatever capacity they are able. I have done this successfully myself more than once. Talk with people, not just to/at them.
We have to show people what we intend to do vs what the other side is already doing. Try to show how deeply interconnected everything is and why what happens in government touches their lives every day. Show them how they themselves can make a profound difference in their own lives and those of their neighbors.
I described some of this to a young friend of mine — less than half my age! 😀 — the other day that I met in a rehab (relapse after nearly five years sober) down in Florida who texted to ask where I was on 9/11:
I remember exactly where I was like it was yesterday. I was driving to work on I-64 across the Hampton Roads Bay Bridge Tunnel from Norfolk VA to Newport News and had Don Imus on the radio as I often did back in those days. He sidekick Bernard McGuirk (or however the fuck that's spelled 🤣) cut in to say, and I quote, "Some idiot flew a plane into the World Trade Center!" Obviously, they thought it was an accident. When I got to the office (VisiNet in those days), I got someone to turn on the radio shortly before the second plane hit. Before long, we were all pulled into the founder's office where he had two TVs and a TiVo so he could switch between all three major cable networks at the time. I remember later being back at my desk repeatedly pulling up the nbc.msn.com site (this was the early days of MSNBC) and maybe one out of every ten attempts got through. CNN would barely load either. We (being a regional ISP) were right on a major internet backbone so the issue obviously wasn't on our end or our upstream providers - the news sites simply got clobbered in an era before modern caching techniques. The next morning I drove across that same bridge and just started crying like nobody's business. I was a wreck for a while after that. I did support the invasion of Afghanistan - I think we pretty much all did, and especially living in the home of the largest navy base in the world not to mention facilities for everything else but the Marines. I cooled pretty quickly toward Bush after that (and I'd voted for Gore in my first presidential election anyway) but when he started going after Iraq, I about lost my shit. I told my best friend at the time (who had a PhD in political science from UVA no less and still supported that invasion), and I quote my words exactly, re Bush, "The only thing he's going to accomplish is create more terrorists." [this is why I joined Daily Kos] I am deeply sad that I wasn't wrong. 😢 Iraq also made Trump possible. Know that. Also, go back and watch the televised footage of Eisenhower's farewell address and you'll get an understanding of how this shit happened. He fucking warned about it over fifty years prior but apparently no one listened. 😡😭 You have to understand that these "permawars" you grew up with are not a natural occurrence. Some of this was driven by external forces certainly, but a huge factor can be traced to the MIC itself, which like any capitalist endeavor must find a way to sustain itself. What you're witnessing now is at least partially due to the undue influence of those people over multiple generations. For example almost all major military building projects have parts made in nearly every congressional district in the country. Spreading out the supply chain like that has some benefit in terms of resiliency but the real win for them is that you won't find a congresscritter willing to vote this stuff down for fear of losing jobs in their own district. When I talked down there about how deeply interconnected everything is I wasn't remotely kidding. The perpetuation of fear of the "other" is absolutely necessary to perpetuate the arms industry. It also feeds directly into Trumpism. Nicely convenient for his friends back in that same industry. Basically, what we've been facing since my dad was a kid is a negative feedback loop. The Cold War of course was a huge part of it but we as a nation (as we do individually in the program [meaning the twelve steps]) need to do quite a bit of self-reflection. Remember that everything you do touches everything else. That is both the awesome power and horrific responsibility of politics, but in our own lives it gives us the chance to transform the world around us. We are living in very dark times indeed, but that is enabled just as much by our inaction as by our actions. Just like my conversation with my old friend Richard about Iraq over two decades ago, each of us can move the needle but it takes serious collective effort. In those initial days after 9/11, there was a profound sense of unity and collective effort. Let us find that again not in fear of the other but in support of each other. Lift up everyone you can and restore the connections that can save us from that dark path. We do still have a chance to fix this crap but it cannot be done individually.
I was able to speak to him in such detail because of a connection and mutual respect built up over the course of three months in person dealing with some truly difficult personal shit. He saw who I was and understood why I cared so much. Those relationships take work and honesty but are existential.
The thing I want to drive home is that connection really matters. A huge part of the reason we’ve lost so much electorally as a party and as a society more generally is that we’ve lost that connection. People don’t understand us or why we care or in many cases even know that we do. This party stands so apart from the people that we care about that many of them don't even know that we do and don’t see it in their daily lives. That is what we have to fix. You don’t do that by convening in luxury hotels unless the people you’re convening with are the staff.
I will add in reference to that Twelve Step mention above: step four is making “a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves” (I myself am on that step again now as it so happens). Well, most AA groups do that collectively on an annual basis as well in relation to the twelve traditions. Groups ask themselves a whole series of questions about what they are doing well, where are they falling show, who are they failing to adequately serve, etc. That is a whole-of-group conversation. I got to witness one last week and it was impressive. Very hard questions and conversations come up in any such group that need to be dealt with constructively, making amends for our shortcomings through our actions.
Both our party and our country need to have those conversations (starting with the party and its supporters, IMO). The Truth and Reconciliation committee is rightly famous for what it accomplished in South Africa. We need one of our own. Like I said, you won't do that in luxury hotels unless you’re talking to the staff, not the donors. 😉
Be well and do good. 🙂
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[1] Url:
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