Interesting - can the party resist the lure of class envy and address real issues directly? I doubt it
Deciding to Win: A Common Sense Renewal of the Democratic Party
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Re: Deciding to Win: A Common Sense Renewal of the Democratic Party
#12Most of the advice sounds a bit like they should become the new Republican Party. Which makes sense bc the old one is pretty much dismantled at this point.
The Republican party's ideology may be unrecognizable, but the party itself has all of the same membership. The Democratic party has had little success courting Republicans who claim to be disaffected with the current administration, and I don't think that leaning into that even harder is likely to work.
The Democrats had big successes earlier this month by doing exactly the opposite: pandering to the left. That's anathema to the Clinton-era Democrats who created this proposal, but at this point it may be the best hope they have. They just demonstrated that they do have the ability to win, and they offer a much more exciting platform than moderate center-right.
I myself am more ideologically in line with the authors of this site than with the left. If the Democratic party does shift that direction there will be a lot of conflict. But that conflict gets me at least some of what I want, while continuing to lose to a highly-energized far right leaves me unequivocally worse off.
Re: Deciding to Win: A Common Sense Renewal of the Democratic Party
#13Most of the advice sounds a bit like they should become the new Republican Party. Which makes sense bc the old one is pretty much dismantled at this point.
That was kinda Clinton's plan all along. For better and for worse he continued Reagan's legacy and made the Democratic party more palatable to donors than Republicans. Problem is that they now win national elections by just a hair when they do win, and downballot there has been a long term trend of losing state-level elections and a struggle to maintain any ability to be effective in the Senate.
There are a lot of Clinton-era names on that site.
Re: Deciding to Win: A Common Sense Renewal of the Democratic Party
#14I think this concept is good from the perspective of focus and targeting issues, meaning that de-emphasizing certain issues seen out of touch with the mainstream is important. But remember that a lot of that is the fruit of the right's propaganda arm, Fox News and all the rest, hanging cultural albatross in order to push the perception that candidates are extreme left. One of the most successful things about Mamdani is message focus - he's as good if not better than Bill Clinton - which if managed correctly can become shared talking points. Having a central messaging office like Fox News is what sits behind most of the Republican Party's success. Of course, one must be careful to ensure the messaging does not start to warp reality, which explains much of what has gone wrong with the Republicans. (e.g., They believe their own Bullsh*t)