Democratic (Party) Direction

i'm also not convinced about some of those salary numbers -- how is he defining "household"? and is he giving salaries in cities like new york and san francisco equal weight to ones in poor rural regions? how does income tax figure in? it's kinda vague.

Yeah, I'm not sure about the salary numbers either -- plenty of households still struggle on an income of $60,000 a year. The article gets it right that those people don't receive any government assistance, but that's just where the problem lies -- they end up too well off to get assistance but still unable to afford their debt and medical bills.

or hollywood actor

the article suggested that the dividing line between affluent and poor was $50K per household, but for a married couple where both spouses work that only comes out to $25K per person, which isn't much once you figure in the high cost of living in america. plus, the article doesn't say who in these salary ranges pay for their own insurance and retirement funds.

read: "we won't send your existing jobs to india."

it could happen, provided the elected politicians don't have any vested corporate interests. and monkeys might fly etc.

hahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
hohohohoHOHOHOHOHOHOOH
heheheheheHEHEHEHEEEHEHEEEHEEHAHAHAHAHAHASNORTSNORTSNORT!

sorry

Er wait, am I talking about Americans, or ILXors?

it is funny how many "affluent" "property owners" are up to their necks in mortgages and high-interest loans. it's like that commercial where the rich white suburban lawnmower dude says "i'm in debt up to my eyeballs!"

In the vast swaths of country between the megapolises there are people raising families of 5 on $57,000 a year and doing it relatively painlessly. And yeah, economic issues don't mean a goddamned thing to them.

Wow, what an incredible insight. Very novel!

"Environics found social values moving away from the authority end of the scale, with its emphasis on responsibility, duty, and tradition, to a more atomized, rage-filled outlook that values consumption, sexual permissiveness, and xenophobia. The trend was toward values in the individuality quadrant."

I've long thought that if the Democratic party would focus their message on individualism (and the resulting freedom it implies) that they might get somewhere.

Today’s average American “worker” is, in short, very much on his or her own -- too prosperous to be eligible for most government assistance programs and, because of job laws that date back three quarters of a century, unable to unionize. Such isolation and atomization have not led to a new wave of social solidarity and economic populism, however. Instead, these changes have bred resentment toward those who do have outside aid, whether from government or from unions, and an escalating ethos of every man for himself. Against that ethos, voters have increasingly flocked to politicians who recognize that the combination of relative affluence and relative isolation has created an opening for cultural appeals.

"Every man for himself" has been an American credo for hundreds of years. It's the essence of competition, of capitalism, of industry. There's a bridge somewhere between individualism and community--is the Democratic party forcing people over a bridge or seeking one?

American voters have taken shelter under the various wings of conservative traditionalism because there has been no one on the Democratic side in recent years to defend traditional, sensible middle-class values against the onslaught of the new nihilistic, macho, libertarian lawlessness unleashed by an economy that pits every man against his fellows.

Maybe they're taking shelter because they don't think it's an economy that's pitting man against man, it's shelter from the resulting culture war. What are "traditional, sensible middle-class values" anyway? The only hint we get from this article is that candidates should talk about religion and that will mitigate their stance on the death penalty (in Virginia.)

I am happy to see the wasteland that is the Democratic Party looking inward. The Republicans wouldn't dare stare into their own dark abyss.

As for the "average American household" that makes $60K a year, it would have been more informative to see the median income, because the average is skewed upwards by those at the top of the scale - ie., less than 50% of Americans make the "average" income.

Lakoff's extensively written about the need for Democratic candidates and progressives in general to start explicitly talking about values. Also, for campaigns to work at creating more of an overall narrative for a candidate than just a laundry list of policies. It's only his work on the framing aspect that's received attention lately, not so much his work on defining the values systems that right/left folks tend to hold(e.g. "maintaining authority" vs "care & responsibility").

He's offered up Schwarzneggar's campaign as an example of a guy who ran entirely on narrative & perceived identity, and expressively refused to offer up any policy suggestions. Most folks don't have the time/energy/inclination to get into policy specifics, but if they trust your guy, they're trust him to take care of the details.

As he says,

"The pollsters didn’t understand it because they thought that people voted on the issues and on self-interest. Well, sometimes they do. But mostly they vote on their identity -- on persons that they trust to be like them, or to be like people they admire"

which connects to that aspirational bit that the article mentions.

Jim Wallis has talked about several of these same issues over the last year as well, especially with on the whole "onslaught of the new nihilistic, macho, libertarian lawlessness unleashed by an economy that pits every man against his fellows" bit.

Wallis has written about conversations his group has had with Frank Luntz and some other Repub pollsters who were quite open about their m.o. being to get voters so caught in such intense issues that they vote against their economic interest.

As other folks have pointed out, the Republicans have been better that bring the polls to them(gay marriage is the biggest thing you care about) vs the Democrats moving to where the polls now seem to be(well i guess we need to move rightward on gay marriage).

That's the thing, innit? If you build up an entire apparatus to both promote & reinforce certain narratives, people will believe them even if they have no basis in fact. George W. Bush is steadfast & strong, Kerry's a weak-willed flip-flopper, Republicans are all about a smaller government, supply-side economics works, etc

oh fuck yeah this is a major bit of it, too. But since when did we start promoting self-reflection and critical thought?

For real despair, look at how Sen. Rodham Clinton is pandering to libs and righties on alternate days. "Congress run like a plantation," "I'd bomb Iran," etc.

xpost

Please God, take Hilary quietly so she won't fuck up the party with a presidential campaign. WORST POSSIBLE CANDIDATE EVER.

Huh? He's only been going this stuff in the press for about two years. Second, there are plenty of other folks who have made the connection, but have gotten shit for coverage(not fitting in with "religious = rightwing conservative" media narrative?), even when they got arrested for it on the Capitol steps.

For real despair, look at how Sen. Rodham Clinton is pandering to libs and righties on alternate days. "Congress run like a plantation," "I'd bomb Iran," etc.

DLC-candidate-in-centrist-message shocker

very much otm. The change will come from the outside.

Re the direction of the party, past actions indicate the party will be quicker to line up behind someone with Clinton's politics as opposed to Tasini's. I'm not too hopeful when it comes to the future of the Dems.

do you think it's necessary for dems to use the religious right's language ("morals" and "values")? would a less-loaded word like "ethics" skew too liberal?

my question is, when do they not? unless a voter has completely descended into some cynical nihilism, of course.

i mean, yeah, "values" has come to signify a very specific set of values, which just goes to further show that democratic types do need to start talking about theirs.

“The Washington Post is committed to an inclusive and respectful environment free of harassment, discrimination or bias of any sort"

ah the good old days

He can be smarmy and aloof, especially when "analyzing" the left. That said, he wrote a surprisingly good book about prog rock a few years ago.

― wipes chooser (unperson), Saturday, June 27, 2026 7:36 PM (two days ago)

ok i didn't really care about wiegel's politics until i was reminded of this. now i'm depressed. there are so few people who stan king crimson that i forget we're not all radical queer leftists.

What's fun about that book is that although Weigel absolutely loves Crimson, to the extent the book has a villain, that villain is Robert Fripp.

i mean the dude makes an incredible villain, he's got that supervillain rizz about him. if i was writing a fictional story about prog rock, i would definitely make fripp the robert e.o. speedwagon of prog.

idk, should i read it? i fucking _loved_ the 50 year king crimson movie... i was expecting a much more hagiographic docubio and that is _not_ what came out of it. i mean, again, i think this speaks to fripp, he got this guy to make a documentary about him and in the documentary fripp does _not_ come off well! honestly thinking about it, it's kind of a testament to toby amies' acumen as a documentarian that fripp _doesn't_ come off as the villain lol. amies really defies the manichean tropes of the rock doc.

fuck it, i don't have anything else planned this evening, maybe i'll read weigel's prog book

i think people like Weigel are the sorts of people who always made me feel comfortable with my total lack of interest in prog rock

there's nothing wrong with having a total disinterest in prog rock! there's nothing wrong with weigel's book, either. i read a couple chapters and it's fine, i guess. he's quoting and summarizing some other books i've already read, he cites them properly, etc., etc. big "side project" energy.

I don't listen to any genre of music that creeps and losers like. Therefore I listen to no music.

That Thomas concurrence will be quoted or indirectly filtered down to every bigot who believes trans people are fucking sickos on psychiatric medication. It'll get buried b/c of the citizenship decision. And it comes on the last day of Pride. It's enervating. Expecting the decision does nothing to mitigate its gleeful malice. He's practically giggling.

That Thomas concurrence will be quoted or indirectly filtered down to every bigot who believes trans people are fucking sickos on psychiatric medication. It'll get buried b/c of the citizenship decision. And it comes on the last day of Pride. It's enervating. Expecting the decision does nothing to mitigate its gleeful malice. He's practically giggling.

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, June 30, 2026 8:28 AM (fifty-three minutes ago)

lol this is actually the first i've heard of the decision.

and i'm not enervated by it because i can't allow myself to be. haven't read it. don't know what it says. don't want to. the only way i can survive is to ignore it. the bigots are lost causes. they are. they're impervious to logic, to reason, so why should justice matter?

his malice doesn't upset me. other people's judgements... i've come to view other people's judgements as reflecting on them. oh, is he giggling in gleeful malice? so noted. i guess he's not ever going to understand exactly how weak, fragile, and pathetic it looks, from where i stand. it's the act of someone who's misconstruing just what theodore roosevelt meant by "bully pulpit".

yes Fripp does make an excellent villain/foil. he's callous and mysterious and often a total prick but you do at least understand where he's coming from most of the time. its not so much that he has a big ego, he's often quite humble really, he just cares about music way more than people.

lots of cool parts in that book - reading about Richard Branson's excessive enthusiasm for Mike Oldfield was really something, crazy to think *that* was the album that launched a behemoth of a label. the long hangover phase was entertaining too, all these now middle-aged people looking back at their acclaimed 70s work and finding it a bit ridiculous, forming bands like Asia instead. you even had Daevid Allen going sober and becoming a curmudgeon for a decade-plus.

iirc the guy who comes off the best was Keith Emerson, he at least seemed to recognize the fun in the genre in a way most of the other major players didnt

iirc the guy who comes off the best was Keith Emerson, he at least seemed to recognize the fun in the genre in a way most of the other major players didnt

― frogbs, Tuesday, June 30, 2026 10:48 AM (thirty-six minutes ago)

that's kind of the thing, there are layers of sadness in there. sure, he was a fun guy, and...

BREAKING: Melat Kiros, a political newcomer and democratic socialist, defeated 15-term U.S. Rep Diana DeGette on Tuesday night in the Democratic primary to represent Colorado’s 1st Congressional District, a major upset in the nationally watched race.

-denver post

15 terms lmao later

And the predicted sources are freaking out about her carefully modulated response on I/P.

haa

Mar 19, 2026

Rep. DeGette gets heated with a constituent pressing her on why she voted to send bombs to Israel:

"If this the only issue that you care about is this issue, then you should not vote for me"

https://bsky.app/profile/sunrisemvmt.bsky.social/post/3mhguzxtin52z

From Axios: DeGette's loss in the Denver-based district came despite a deluge of outside spending in her favor from groups tied to the Democratic establishment and AIPAC.

I don't think "despite" is the right word there.

why do leftists hate donors so much

And naturally the two big arguments are already being deployed:

"This only works in a deep blue district - it's not replicable in rural Alabama." and "Now the Republicans are going to tar every Democrat with the DSA brush - they're going to call us all communists and this will cost us winnable seats in rural Alabama."

almost gotta feel bad for the dems with how fast the israel sitch shifted under their feet haha jk kicks rocks dummies

it's really not fair how much rural voters in Alabama love Israel

No, we certainly can't risk unfair accusations against Alabama Democrats.

https://www.al.com/politics/2026/06/tommy-tuberville-blames-residency-hoax-on-doug-jones-being-taken-over-by-marxist-mind-virus.html

“In 2020, I ran against a liberal Doug Jones, but he has since fallen deep into the socialist, Marxist mind virus taking over half of our country,” Tuberville said.

“Let’s hear Doug talk about men competing in women’s sports, DEI instead of merit-based hiring, child mutilation in the name of ‘transgenderism’, expanded welfare instead of workforce training, or open borders and defunding the police - which he has consistently supported - putting Alabama families at risk. Alabama’s streets need to be safe.”

So we have an interesting situation locally. The Democratic candidate for county mayor is a decent-seeming guy with an organized labor background. Hasn't really been involved in local politics much, but allowed himself to basically be the sacrificial candidate so the party can say it's contesting the race. (The odds of any Democrat getting elected countywide here are low.) Well it turns out that five years ago he was a member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a labor-adjacent group that explicitly describes itself as Marxist-Leninist.

Since this came out, the guy has kind of gone to ground and has not done a good job of talking about or explaining his involvement with the group. Which I find frustrating — and not only because he keeps saying he's going to call me to talk about it and hasn't yet done so. I think if you're going to run for office with that in your Googlable recent past, you should have a narrative prepared about it. Instead he's reacting to the predictable GOP barrage by being evasive, which is too bad.

But what's most interesting to me about it is that I bet that it won't dramatically affect his vote share, which countywide for Democrats is usually in the 40-to-45 percent range. If he does get 40 or even 35 percent of the vote, it will be by far the largest vote share of anyone with a Marxist-Leninist background in our local history.

dude should totally go for it, become the revolutionary vanguard leading the masses to communism

the phrase county mayor is killing me

Miami-Dade has one! Probably the state's most powerful Democrat.

my gf is in Dekalb County (Decatur) GA and they fucking call it the “CEO”. The goddam Dekalb County CEO. Makes me want to fly a plane into a building tbh

An interesting piece on institutional Democratic frustrations with Schumer.

Democratic frustration with Schumer goes far beyond Maine. To a previously unreported degree, the longtime Democratic leader, acting through the DSCC, has struggled to navigate a series of tumultuous primaries, beset by an angry base of voters, insurgent candidates and party officials who complain that he’s alternately done too little or too much to influence races.

The result has been the messiest collection of Democratic primaries in decades. The Senate minority leader faces another fraught primary in Michigan in August, where a Schumer-backed candidate is struggling to best lefty favorite Abdul El-Sayed. The DSCC tried and failed to hold off a third candidate, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, mirroring the scramble — and ultimately the failure — to shape the primary in Maine.

The tumult has amounted to a stunning rebuke of Schumer, who is seen by many Democrats as having controlled most primaries in battleground states with an iron grip for the last decade.

“The thing about iron is it rusts,” El-Sayed told NOTUS in a recent interview. “I’m proud to be the only candidate in my race that the Senate minority leader has said that he would not be OK with.”

I’m proud to be the only candidate in my race that the Senate minority leader has said that he would not be OK with.”

niiiiice, that’s the way to do it

that is pretty interesting stuff

yeah, I think at one point in time "Pelosi hates this candidate" might have been enough to tank a campaign, but "Schumer hates this candidate" is worth about +7 points these days.

schumers gotta be done right

I mean, Elissa Slotkin -- nobody's idea of a fire-breathing leftist -- basically implied the other day that Schumer and Jeffries have to go.

If the Democrats do win the House in November, I have to imagine there will at least be a challenge to Jeffries and not a coronation (even though I'd bet on him becoming speaker).

But Schumer, what I don't get is, aren't there other ambitious Democrats in the Senate? Some of them should start making moves.

the thing about senate dems is theyre the most apathetic people in the world thats why they love schumer he doesnt make them do anything

Minority Leader is kind of a shitty job. Majority Leader just a little less so.

the phrase county mayor is killing me

The backstory to this is kind of funny. In Tennessee they used to be called county executives, which is a better description of the job than mayor (they don't control schools or cops, they're mostly there to manage general services and put the budget together). Knox County where I live is the 3rd largest county in the state, and the largest with a Republican voting majority (the larger 2 being Nashville/Davidson and Memphis/Shelby). So Knox County is a logical launch pad for Republicans seeking state office, because they already start with a sizable base of voters and donors. And 25 years ago, we elected a Republican as county executive who really wanted to run for governor. And he thought it would sound much more impressive to his future gubernatorial campaign to have "mayor" on his resume. So he got Republicans in the Legislature to change the title of the position statewide, just to further his ambitions. Of course, that all fell flat when his county tenure ended in assorted scandals and he has had to make a living as a mildly disgraced lobbyist ever since. (Our current county mayor, the pro wrestler, is however the odds-on favorite to be our next senator after Marsha Blackburn gets appointed governor. He and Marsha seem to have a deal worked out where she'll appoint him to finish her term.)

Which is more than you want to know! But just an example of how much personal ambition tends to drive everything in politics.

that is pretty funny

Oops I meant after Blackburn gets elected governor, although for all that everyone assumes it as a given it might as well be an appointment.

why do leftists hate donors so much

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, July 1, 2026 7:21 AM (six hours ago)

because they have shit-tons of money and don't give us any

i will be frank and say that my attitude towards donors, as a leftist, is "fuck you, pay me". i understand this is a hard sell. i guess "replace all workers with AI slop" is an easier sell for the donor class?

...because the thing is i don't actually want them to give us tons of money, my radical leftism is about, like, _wanting a fucking job_. highest level of tzedekah. that's what i fuckin' want.

Kate, I was joking.

I mean

what was jeffries’ “legacy”?

and also, who would have been better, in the exact same timeline and history?

AND WHY

me, im cool

i’d vote for you

but first you have to move to south stl

well come on over! the arch turns out to be the 50th or 60th best thing about the city. you sure can see it though

i stayed in st louis for a couple days once i liked it cool old brick row houses and whatnot