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Jesus. They’ve learned nothing:
He added, “Trump really kind of ran up numbers everywhere, you know what I mean? There was clearly a strategy not focusing on one place or another. And as a party we have to do that.”
THATS NOT WHAT FUCKING HAPPENED.
Trumps numbers barely moved.
Harris’s numbers PLUMMETED compared to Trump’s 4 years ago. Start there. That’s where you need to start this postmortem.
I love how they think the best way forward is to become the embodiment of the election strategy that just failed so spectacularly for Harris. Brilliant.
2016: "We don't need to change! Look at our opponent, Trump!"
2020: "We'll pretend to be M4A. But the main thing is beating Trump! Worry about change later!"
2024: "We lost, but we did everything right. Americans are the problem. Anyways, Trump is in his last term, so why change?"
Then make sure to tell the people actually voting for the chair to give the pushback they need to see that's a mistake. Change is only going to come when we speak up
I'm more interested in mobilizing people outside of the electoral process at this point.
I will continue to vote but, on a national level, I no longer believe that lasting meaningful change will happen at the ballot box.
I have even less faith in the DNC ability to drive that change regardless of who is the chair. I think the best hope in that regard is an insurgent campaign a'la Bernie 2016/2020, and even then...idk.
There is power where there is people, the DNC seem to see this as an inconvenience. People are where I'm interested in spending my energy now.
Spending meaningful political capital on the DNC seems about as effective as that billion dollars in donations was for the Harris campaign this cycle.
Not discouraging anyone from doing it, as much as encouraging y'all to put the work in outside of the electoral process.
You do you.
As they begin to dissect their collapse in the presidential election, some Democratic National Committee members are concluding that the party is too “woke,” too focused on identity politics and too out of touch with broad stretches of America.
From the bottom of my heart, fuck these people. They've moved so far towards neoliberal policy positions that they no longer have an economic message to give their working-class base. In the absence of a coherent economic vision for the party, they keep doubling down on, "identity politics," to keep the the Obama Coalition happy; they have nothing to unify their base, so their only option is to take up any position that is important to the demographic groups that make up the party. Now that this strategy has been thoroughly and decisively defeated, their reaction isn't to return to the progressive economic policies that won them these groups in the first place, but instead to figure which minorities are, "unpopular," so they can abandon them. What a bunch of stupid, shortsighted cowards.
Centrist Democrats are revolting.
As they begin to dissect their collapse in the presidential election, some Democratic National Committee members are concluding that the party is too “woke,” too focused on identity politics and too out of touch with broad stretches of America.
[…]
Or as one DNC member from Florida put it: “I don’t want to be the freak show party, like they have branded us. You know, when you’re a mom with three kids, and you live in middle America and you’re just not really into politics, and you see these ads that scare the bejesus out of you, you’re like, ‘I know Trump’s weird or whatever, but I would rather his weirdness that doesn’t affect my kids.’”
Aka the libs want to turn on trans people.
Point me to a moment during the last campaign that Kamala promoted identity politics. The very most important thing we should do is to nit listen to pundits.
Point me to a moment during the last campaign that Kamala promoted identity politics.
They can't. But the alternative is admitting that moving to the right has failed, and centrists will never do that.
Middle America is about 20y behind the rest of us, this is the 90s gay marriage situation all over again. If the DNC actually wants to win elections they need to stop putting narrow identity groups front and center and run on their track record of positive economic policy for everyone or they're going to lose every election for the next 20y (barring those won by voter backlash over catastrophic Republican admin fuck-ups.)
The DNC went too far down the identity politics rabbit hole and hasn't quite realized that people in the identity demographics they want to Jenga together into 270 EC votes are willing to vote for the other side because they're not happy with the DNC's corporate profit economy.
The critical flaw in the DNC's 20y old identity politics strategy is the assumption that these identity groups are monolithic. It's a prejudiced as hell position to take that "these are the interests of all women" or "these are the interests of all black people" and yet that's what the DNC has tried to do for the last three elections running. It should be painfully obvious at this point that this doesn't work: women, PoC and Muslims voted for Trump in droves (or stayed home in protest) despite the front and center spending to bring those groups on side this election. Everyone's tired of performative pandering and wants real economic and policy reform to help recover some of what was lost to the last couple of economic crashes and to inflation.
The meme is already stale but JFC they've learned nothing from the last two election losses - the Harris campaign was the 2016 Clinton campaign minus the fundraising dinners on Wall St.
Middle America is about 20y behind the rest of us, this is the 90s gay marriage situation all over again. If the DNC actually wants to win elections they need to stop putting narrow identity groups front and center
The RNC did that. Democratic candidates, in their trademark panicked cowardice, parroted right wing bigotry about boys in girls' sports in their own campaign ads.
Most of the time, when Democrats mentioned trans people at all, they were making sure to let everyone know that they didn't have their backs. Add that to breaking solidarity with Muslim voters, and you have a party that broadcasted that it was eager to throw vulnerable populations under the bus.
The conservative media machine has been splitting wedges between groups basically forever, it's a convenient way to pit people against each other.
The DNC, in their infinite wisdom, took that political landscape and instead of bringing everyone together in a big tent decided to pick out specific identity groups to pander to and drove the original wedges clean through.
I'm almost convinced the DNC wants to lose at this point, they seem pretty content with the position of professional minority opposition - it's a convenient place to be if you want to fundraise endlessly.
So, to solve the problem of the left not voting them, they are moving further to the right.
Yeah, America, I'm sorry to tell you but you are screwed. You have 4 years to either behead the dnc and turn it into a left wing party, or greate an actual left party.
Otherwise, you're going to be eating fascism fo dinner until you implode.
Well for that to happen Nancy and Chuck have to kick the bucket first
Looked mine up... There's part off the problem...
Compensation
Base salary $174,000
Net worth (2012) $54,251,531.50
They must never order avocado toast. /s
I really wish they would put out a survey for voters. Some way to collect data about what people actually want. Like a huge survey, let every registered dem fill it out.
If they're talking about running some bland business-as-usual candidate then that'll lose. People want change.
Based on their track record I have no faith in progress.
Frankly more people were excited about Tim Walz then Kamala Harris. Let's get more MN politicians in there instead of people from the coasts. The focus on getting someone from the Midwest is the only good news I see. We need someone from Minnesota, Wisconsin or Michigan to lead the party from the inside. They might be fully progressive but understand how to organize and message to everyone. They can't just float by on politics as usual
Yeah get a progressive Minnesotan.
They described him as a moderate in the article but I say we got a progressive agenda here in MN when we had our trifecta.
So either we are to believe they've learned nothing and will continue to alienate their base, while remaining inept fools on the international stage, OR their idea of rebuilding a carbon copy of the previous failures is by design.
A centrist DNC is a loser. A center-right DNC is a loser. The DNC will never beat the Republicans at their own game, so either these strategists are the densest people on the planet, or they are the mouthpieces of Controlled Opposition, exactly as expected.
There is no duality in which savvy, intelligent political players arrive at "Centrism wins," without some inherent greasy, malfeasant ulterior motives.
It's difficult to even pretend that they are serious in this endeavor; their every action and utterance is an admission of planned incompetence.
You can vote for whomever you wish but they will continue to serve the rich donor class, as usual.
Is abolishing the DNC an option? Otherwise, we're wasting valuable time.
I remain convinced that any effective resistance to Trump and MAGA will have to come from outside the Democratic Party.
I'm sure that the same people who couldn't deliver Bernie Sanders an overwhelming win in 2020 can suddenly become savvy pols who can just put together a national third party.
If you want action, do what AOC and the others in her squad did. Work inside the Dem party.
Take a lesson from the right. Back in the 1970s Jerry Falwell decided to take control of the GOP. He did it from the ground up. If the local GOP club had had twenty people show up to the last meeting to pick the next county clerk, Falwell's people would show up with fifty people. Soon those county clerks and sheriffs were becoming Congresspeople and Senators.
Politics is a game and the left sucks at playing it.
Please spread, cross post, share, whatever; wherever you can. People should have input into the democratic policy platform, but they're so brazen as to say the "center is where we need to be".
These people, these few hundred people, are a big problem with the democratic party.
We need to take the narrative back from centrists. It can be done by telling the DNC what to do, not the other way around.
Does the article tell us how to cast a vote? I skimmed it and couldn’t find a link to where I could at least send an email.
It's not voted on directly, you are going to want to talk to your state's party chair to try to convince them vote on the type of chair like you would a congress person on a vote for something. In the body of the post, you can find how to find your state's party chair
Here's the table copied over:
| State | Chair | | | State | Chair |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | Randy Kelley | | | Montana | Robyn Driscoll |
| Alaska | Mike Wenstrup | | | Nebraska | Jane Kleeb |
| American Samoa | Patrick Ti'a Reid[15] | | | Nevada | Daniele Monroe-Moreno |
| Arizona | Yolanda Bejarano | | | New Hampshire | Raymond Buckley |
| Arkansas | Grant Tennille | | | New Jersey | LeRoy J. Jones, Jr. |
| California | Rusty Hicks | | | New Mexico | Jessica Velasquez |
| Colorado | Shad Murib | | | New York | Jay Jacobs |
| Connecticut | Nancy DiNardo | | | North Carolina | Anderson Clayton |
| Delaware | Elizabeth D. Maron | | | North Dakota | Adam Goldwyn |
| District of Columbia | Charles Wilson | | | Ohio | Liz Walters |
| Florida | Nikki Fried | | | Oklahoma | Alicia Andrews |
| Georgia | Nikema Williams | | | Oregon | Rosa Colquitt |
| Guam | Anthony Babauta[16] | | | Pennsylvania | Sharif Street |
| Hawaii | Derek Turbin | | | Puerto Rico | Charles Rodriguez |
| Idaho | Lauren Necochea[17] | | | Rhode Island | Liz Beretta-Perik |
| Illinois | Elizabeth Hernandez | | | South Carolina | Christale Spain |
| Indiana | Mike Schmuhl | | | South Dakota | Shane Merrill |
| Iowa | Rita Hart | | | Tennessee | Hendrell Remus |
| Kansas | Jeanna Repass | | | Texas | Gilberto Hinojosa |
| Kentucky | Colmon Elridge | | | U.S. Virgin Islands | Carol M. Burke[18] |
| Louisiana | Randal Gaines | | | Utah | Diane Lewis |
| Maine | Bev Uhlenhake | | | Vermont | David Glidden |
| Maryland | Ken Ulman | | | Virginia | Susan Swecker |
| Massachusetts | Steve Kerrigan | | | Washington | Shasti Conrad |
| Michigan | Lavora Barnes | | | West Virginia | Mike Pushkin |
| Minnesota | Ken Martin | | | Wisconsin | Ben Wikler |
| Mississippi | Cheikh Taylor | | | Wyoming | Joe Barbuto |
| Missouri | Russ Carnahan | | | Democrats Abroad | Martha McDevitt-Pugh |
They have their big donors who give them their marching orders. They really don't care if they win or not, so long as they are getting paid.
They lost the election by running an essentially republican candidate. Fingers crossed for a progressive chair.
Fingers crossed for a progressive chair.
"The best we can do is Debbie Wasserman Schultz." -DNC
Here's what I wrote to my delegate's office:
I am writing to you because I am worried about the upcoming DNC chair elections, and I'm attempting to reach my local delegate. A recent piece in Politico seemed to suggest that many in the party believe that the takeaway from the 2024 election is that the party moved too far to the left, and that it became too involved in identity politics. As Joseph Paolino Jr., the DNC committeeman for Rhode Island, put it, “The progressive wing of the party has to recognize — we all have to recognize — the country’s not progressive, and not to the far left or the far right. They’re in the middle."
Of course, the idea that the Democratic Party has gone too far left is absurd. This is the party that passed NAFTA. This is the party that ended Glass-Steagall. This is the party that added work requirements to Welfare. This is the party that prioritizesd banks over homeowners during the subprime mortgage crisis. This is the party that adopted and passed the Heritage Foundation's healthcare plan. On paper, this is a center-right party.
However, I believe it is true that this party has focused too much on identity politics, and we need to place that blame where it squarely belongs: on the center. It was centrist Democrats who, in the absence of any coherent economic message, increasingly adopted the language of identity politics. It was the center who used identity politics as a cudgel, not only against their right-wing opponents, but also those on the left who questioned the party's priorities. It was Hillary Clinton (who no serious person would describe as, "far-left") who said:
"If we broke up the big banks tomorrow...would that end racism? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community? Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?”
If the party were to decide that it was going to spend less time on identity politics and more time on a serious progressive platform, that would make sense. Polling indicates that many progressive policies, even those considered, "far-left," like higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, a higher minimum wage, Medicare for All, and even Universal Basic Income, all command widespread support from across the electorate. They are certainly more popular than the crypto-based, "economic opportunity," platform pitched by Mark Cuban this year.
However, based on what I have read from Politico, it does not seem like the party is interested in a progressive economic message. It seems that many in the party are simply concerned with abandoning the aspects of identity politics that they believe are unpopular. One Florida member made some offensive and thinly veiled attacks on the trans community, saying that he didn't want to be a member of the, "freak show party." It appears that, instead of reflecting on how the Democrats' centrist economic policies have failed the working class, many members would like to abandon vulnerable members of the party that they believe are no longer politically useful.
The Democrats don't need to start jettisoning demographic groups, they need a progressive platform that can bring the party together. They need to move to the left economically, not to the right socially. However, if the party does decide to stop protecting the most vulnerable Americans in the interest of being more, "centerist," there is an upside; voters will finally be able to abandon the Democratic Party without harming marginalized groups.
Remember when they picked Tom Perez, the croaking geezer, over Kieth Ellison. Your voice won't be heard because that's not who they're listening for.
They've already decided who's taking over, nothing the progressives do will shift the needle.
Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is the Democrat way.
Y'all have to let the DNC go. They are never going to do what is right for the people.
It's time for a new party. How many times are we going to watch them fail us before we make a change?
Y'all are like Charlie Brown running up to kick the football right before Lucy pulls it away.
We've seen them fail us time and time again on issues that they absolutely had the power to fix.
This is the party of corporate interests. They don't care about us. They've completely abandoned any platform of universal healthcare, they don't give a flying fuck about the environment, and their border policy is worse than Trump's somehow.
By repeatedly and blindly voting blue no matter who, we are enabling them to never make any changes for the good.
Your idealist solution is impossible in the practical world that we live in since first past the post voting will always favor the two gigantic parties. It is far easier to change the DNC into what we want then to create a third party
That's funny that you believe that your voice will be heard if you're not amongst the donor class. They only answered the money, something none of us have.
So uh, why is there an NY representative in the CA seat again? So much for local representation I guess.