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.

xp to rob

Sure, I was just keeping the original context of the discussion in focus. I don't care what people call Democrats or the party, I'm not a Democrat and the party isn't important to me except as the only available mass vehicle for any kind of progressive-left politics in the U.S. at this point in time. So I'm interested in what advances those interests more than arguing about dots on political spectrums.

*on TO the FDR part

A lot of this convo just feels academic/semantic. Maybe there is some political scientist who has placed the current U.S. Democratic Party on the right. Maybe this makes placement sense in your own conception of politics. My point is simply that this is not common usage. As a professional fact-checker, if I came across a description of the Democratic Party as "center-right" in anything other than an opinion piece, I would probably change to it "center-left" and cite Wikipedia and any number of scholarly sources, such as this paper in the European Journal of Public Policy and this description of a presentation by a Yale political scientist.

PK: that's fair up to a point but probably just means we needs a couple of shades worth of "center-right," or perhaps "center" is indeed useful to fill this gap in some way. there are plenty of individual Democrats who in terms of policy have a tonnnnnnnnnnn in common with the pre-Trump GOP, as has been pointed out ad infinitum and not just by Ralph Nader and Rage Against the Machine. that doesn't mean the differences between parties overall aren't meaningful --- but it could still be worth distinguishing between, say, Henry Wallace, AOC, Ted Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Hillary Clinton, and Harry Byrd.

jaymc: IMO, the idea that an elected Democrat is by default "on the left" is just ludicrous on its face - the entire history of the Conservative Coalition that governed the country from 1938 until (at least) the 1960s, revolves around the existence of right-wing elected Democrats. their constituencies were southern segregationists, the agrarian and small-town petit-bourgeois in the South and beyond, Archie Bunkers in the cities and new suburbs, etc. by the late 20th century, most of those politicians had joined their fellow-coalitionists by becoming Republicans. but Manchin is proof that some didn't. to say he's on the left because he votes "with the Democrats" X% of the time first presumes that senatorial Democrats are on the "left," which is the thing you're trying to argue for. it also presumes that the other Y% of votes probably aren't significant enough to change where, specifically, we might position him, which seems weird. what if it was 90% votes to preserve Reagan/Bush/Trump tax cuts and preserve the shrunken post-Reagan state, and 10% votes to further deregulate business and expand capitalist power? doesn't that put him on the right of people who voted against even the original tax cuts? or people who ran on doing that and didn't make it into office to contribute to this aggregate picture of what "voting with the Democrats" entails?

Manchin is proof that some didn't. to say he's on the left because he votes "with the Democrats

He never said this -- he said Manchin was a Democrat

He said "it's hard for me to accept that any Democrat is "right-wing"; the fact that they are a Democrat is what puts them on the left, even if it's close to the center. Even Joe Manchin, who left the Democratic Party in 2024 to become an independent, voted with Democrats like 80-90% of the time." That seems to pretty plainly indicate that Manchin, at least before he left the party, would be "on the left, even if it's close to the center," because he was "a Democrat," which "puts him on the left."

That's fair.

lol we really are bored this morning

haha yes very much avoiding my actual to-do list of semester prep.

jaymc, if you find this all semantic or abstract, is there some language you would find helpful to distinguish between the politics of my list just now - Wallace/AOC/Kennedy/Johnson/Hillary Clinton/Byrd? do you think they are meaningfully different enough that we should distinguish them, or is it sufficient to say they are all "on the left"?

bored and hating Democrats

Correction, I'm not bored I'm procrastinating.

I have, like, three tables open and am multitasking like a Dem operative.

*tabs too!

Of course, they are meaningfully different. Look, maybe I find the terminology of "right-wing" and "left-wing" unhelpful because it can either refer to some international standard by which the ideological positions of the world's political parties are defined, or it can refer to factions within a specifical national context. Within contemporary U.S. politics, and especially with the partisan sorting that has occurred over the past few decades that has resulted in fewer Democrats like Joe Manchin, I find it very easy to map "left-wing" and "right-wing" onto the two major parties: one tends to the left, and the other tends to the right. Quite literally, they sit on the left and right sides of the center aisle in Congress, and that has become a familiar metaphor. And I guess maybe for this reason, I usually refer to people like Manchin and the Southern politicians who preceded him as "conservative" rather than "right-wing."

jaymc. of course wikipedia and the new york times will say the democratic party is “centre left” - they the key repositories of received wisdom. the whole point of this discussion (imo) is that received wisdom about left and right is playing a malign role in limiting the possibility for political change in america

and quite possibly hastening the destruction of palestinian society and life as we know it on this planet

i think to ed's point, it's the US that is the biggest outlier when it comes to definining the "left-ness" of liberalism. icbw, idk

a MAGA high school acquaintance uses Democrap.

― boners for bombs (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, August 27, 2026 9:47 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

didnt know you went to hs with morbs

go smoke your democrack

Continuing my response to Doctor Casino: We can certainly say that Jared Golden is further to the right than Hakeem Jeffries, who is further to the right than AOC. I don't have a problem with these relative distinctions on the ideological spectrum. But I would not call any of them "right-wing" because that makes it sound like they are ideologically equivalent to Republicans.

jaymc. of course wikipedia and the new york times will say the democratic party is “centre left” - they the key repositories of received wisdom. the whole point of this discussion (imo) is that received wisdom about left and right is playing a malign role in limiting the possibility for political change in america

I'm glad someone at least acknowledges that describing the Democratic Party as center-left is conventional wisdom. I was feeling like I'd stumbled into bizarro world earlier.

I think we all want there to be a more robust left-wing politics in the U.S. As with tipsy, I am not convinced that agreeing to call the Democratic Party "right-wing" is a way to solve that problem, as opposed to continuing to elect leftist Democrats who can transform the ideological makeup of the party.

of course it’s conventional wisdom, but those conventions should be fucking abolished

the US that is the biggest outlier when it comes to definining the "left-ness" of liberalism

This is true but also hasn't the meaning of "liberalism" drifted left in the U.S. more than it has in European contexts? Most Americans think of the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, civil rights, environmental protection, progressive income tax rates, labor protections and so forth as fundamentally "liberal" projects and priorities. Where I think in a lot of European contexts those are thought of as more "social democratic" than "liberal" per se. My sense is that European politics mostly invokes liberalism as 19th century laissez faire economics. But maybe I'm wrong about that.

the whole point of this discussion (imo) is that received wisdom about left and right is playing a malign role in limiting the possibility for political change in america

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, August 27, 2026 11:49 AM (eight minutes ago)

This is how I read most of the posts arguing for "right-wing" — i.e., is it theoretically correct to call the Dems "left" if you take left to mean something socialist? is calling them left or center-left working as an alibi for doing a lot of right-wing politics? — but this was also happening:

--Should we call the Dems right-wing? Will this help move the party leftward? (tipsy)
--What is the general consensus on where the Dems sit on the left-right spectrum? What would an average voter call them? (jaymc)

And imo tipsy and jaymc were both correctly answering their own questions, but those questions aren't v interesting to me because the answers are p obvious. The obviousness is probably why you guys are frustrated

The democrat party is a right wing party, by any global standard, for all my life a party right of the centre, right of any centre the rest of the world might recognise. And not a party in e sense that a political party is a collective of people with a common sense of view and values. It’s a state institution, one of two arms of corporate capture of the levers of power. Mussolini couldn’t have conceived of a more fully realised corporatist state.

What’s more, Democrat governments since Truman have worked hard to extinguish, disrupt, destroy and murder democratically elected and revolutionary left wing governments across the world.

It’s the party that has repeatedly demonstrated that it would prefer people die in a ditch than receive healthcare at a fair price, let alone paid for by society as part of a universal social contract.

That the DSA and others exist and are starting to cut through is remarkable and hopeful. The system is designed to exclude new ideas and new structures so people are forced to work within the existing ones.

Of course nowhere else is a shining light on the hill, but we all suffer from the consequences of the spineless weasels that represent the left wing of a right wing edifice that exports reaction and works hard to extinguish progress beyond its borders.

Trying to imagine reading this post as an adult and without disputing any of the facts coming to the conclusion that it is obviously “trolling” and the ppl responsible for the above very right wing things are self-evidently leftists because, well, they are, based on airtight circular reasoning, and also look what side of the big room they sit on. It is putting it kindly a deeply silly way to think

Most Democrats are not "leftists," and I don't think anyone would argue that they are.

those questions aren't v interesting to me because the answers are p obvious

I don't think the answer is obvious at all lol. I think coming into an existing political landscape with broadly if somewhat hazily understood distinctions between the only two major parties we have and saying "You people are calling these the wrong things, and also both of these parties are mostly the same" is not only not helpful, I've seen it actively turn off people trying to engage in discussions on the left in good faith.

But you know, I live in a state with functional one-party rule that is actively ripping away civil rights and economic protections from poor people, queer people, people of color, immigrants, and non-Christian people, and the only people in the elected political realm actively and vocally standing up against all of that are from the other party. So I'm not as invested as some people here in debating the failings of that other party, except inasmuch as it has to do with how they can more effectively wage that fight. I do not think that haranguing people about how liberals are fascists is among the useful strategies. But of course ymmv.

xpost "Trolling" is probably unfair. I think one thing I have taken away from this thread is that people have different definitions of "right-wing" and "left-wing," and that's fine. I understand the points being made in Ed's post, even if I would not use the same terminology.

xp yeah I mean one problem with this convo is the spectre of some kind of off-board context I don't have access to. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not gonna reread the thread, but was anyone here actually arguing in favour of *publicly* calling the Democrats right-wing as some kind of political strategy? Who are the people you're talking about "coming into the landscape"? I'm sorry but all I can remember from the thread is one self-id'd communist

I do not think that haranguing people about how liberals are fascists is among the useful strategies. But of course ymmv.

I literally said I agree with you about this!

xpost Like, I originally brought this up to complain about people on Bluesky calling Democrats "right-wing," and later I realized that the person I was arguing with on there was German and that probably gives them a different perspective than the one I have adopted as an American.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not gonna reread the thread, but was anyone here actually arguing in favour of *publicly* calling the Democrats right-wing as some kind of political strategy?

I think I missed this, too. I thought I was the one who started the conversation with my Bluesky vent.

Yes, PBKR (I think?) — and maybe you too, rob? — was bothered by calling the Democratic leadership "corrupt" rather than "right wing," specifically as a political talking point. They made the case that conservatives successfully moved the GOP further right by demonizing their more moderate members as RINOS/liberals/etc. Which is true, and is one way the coalitions that make up the two parties are pretty different.

And I mean, Democrats in my state are actively and vocally calling for expanded healthcare coverage, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, gun regulations, higher corporate taxes, environmental protections, protecting public schools from vouchers, restoring the rights of convicted felons ... so some long debate about whether they're actually "right wing" just doesn't mean much in my context. What I see is a lot of local organizing and energy, and a lot of corrupt corporate squishiness at the top of the party. If calling Hakeem Jeffries "right wing" makes it easier to get rid of him and his entire Third Way/AIPAC class, that's fine by me, but it doesn't ring any bells around here.

Same here, tipsy. And they hate the state party.

I can't use "socialism" in any context here, though. Too many voters fled Cuba and Venezuela.

jaymc: appreciate these clarifications! the issue i was focused in on wasn't so much calling them "right-wing" as the specific value of calling them "center-right," which seemed to also be part of your objection. i'm glad we agree that it's useful to distinguish the positions of these various Democrats --- so what nomenclature would you use? if you want to talk about, say, Manchin and Hillary Clinton as "conservative Democrats" and I want to call them "center-right," that seems like potato-potahto --- but only if there are some other positions available besides "liberal Democrats" where we can sort out the people left of Clinton.

but the real reason i'm pushing on this is that if we're not able to put any Democrats anywhere to the "right" of the "center," we can end up with a very cramped spectrum. without intending it, we can arrive at the Fox News position, where anyone to the left of Jimmy Carter is "far left." which is not a useful way of distinguishing the varied positions of these people. this is why i don't think it's a purely semantic discussion, where what's disputed is which set of labels to use - it's how many labels are on the chart.

all this, to me, is very separate from the question of "what language and slogans would be useful in a political campaign to defeat the corporate center-right people who are doing harm to society?" to be clear, that's the more urgent question, especially for those who are actively doing that work, like tipsy and Alfred. professionally speaking, i'm a historian, and my mind is drawn to the value of describing things as they are, separate from the task of refining rhetoric and strategy. if "corporate-friendly squishmallow" or "DINO" or "pals around with corrupt billionaires" works better than "right-wing sellout," then i would neither be surprised nor upset. get 'em!!! but i think the left/right metaphor, like the Overton Window metaphor, are useful for snapping back to a zoomed-out sense of, where are we, and how detached is the current elected/mainstream/national political consensus from (a) the desires at the local/grassroots level, and (b) the historical range of positions we know is possible.

ok I don't remember what PBKR wrote, but if you got that impression from any of my posts then something went wrong on my end. I have zero objection to calling Dem leadership corrupt as a political talking point rather than right-wing. I agree that the Democratic base is much less invested in RINO-type dynamics, so that wouldn't work the way it did for the GOP.

If we're thinking of the same post, my point was that a *non-talking-point* description of the Democratic leadership as existing to preserve and expand the power of corporate elites / the capitalist bourgeoisie conforms extremely closely to a reasonable understanding of "right-wing." Describing that as "corruption" isn't wrong but it's less comprehensive imo, as corruption is more of a political vice or behaviour than an ideological project or governing rationality. Corruption also tends to describe personally beneficial crimes rather than class warfare by the rich.

Here's wikipedia fwiw:

Right-wing politics, or rightism, is the range of political ideologies that view certain social stratifications and orders as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position in favour of conservatism, natural law, economics, authority, property, religion, or tradition. Hierarchy and inequality may be seen as natural results of traditional social differences or competition in market economies.

The GOP are more on the religion, tradition, and "natural" side of things, the Dems are more on the market economics side.

Also want to back up Doctor Casino on the subtext that calling a discussion "academic" isn't going to make me less interested in it lol

Sure well see above what I said about the trajectory of the Democratic Party, it has never been or even seriously flirted with being a socialist party. What it has been at some times in the past, more than it is now, is willing to use the very large levers of government to counteract forces of social and economic inequality. That's why I also said somewhere near the start of the discussion/digression that you can absolutely frame the Democrats as right wing if you're using a commitment to socialism as a baseline for being "on the left." Or like the other guy I mentioned who I talked with online, you can say that being "on the left" requires a commitment to abolishing private property. That's intellectually coherent, it's just not politically very useful within the contemporary U.S. context.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not gonna reread the thread, but was anyone here actually arguing in favour of *publicly* calling the Democrats right-wing as some kind of political strategy?

I am not arguing for calling the Democrats as a whole a right-wing party. I am arguing for calling certain Democrats "right-wing Democrats" and abandoning the myth of a "center" that somehow always turns out to be weirdly right-wing.

Yes, PBKR (I think?) — and maybe you too, rob? — was bothered by calling the Democratic leadership "corrupt" rather than "right wing," specifically as a political talking point. They made the case that conservatives successfully moved the GOP further right by demonizing their more moderate members as RINOS/liberals/etc. Which is true, and is one way the coalitions that make up the two parties are pretty different.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Thursday, August 27, 2026 12:28 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm not bothered by it, I just think its kind of weak and ineffective without defining what is corrupt about them. What is corrupt about them is that they serve the same masters as the right wing. Also, it's not just the leadership.

This entire discussion started with policing of labels so as not to offend normies for their terrible political opinions.

yeah, i'm hesitant about "corrupt" too. the Bouie "here's some winning positions for non-progressive Democrats to take" video got me thinking about this. maybe it's because i just picture Tom Hardy as Bane, wearing his furry parka and cynically claiming to be taking back Gotham from "THE CORR-UPT!" while actually plotting the city's destruction.

but more seriously, it's the kind of thing that has several distinct, specific meanings. we DO need people promising to go after the corruption of the Trump administration - there's a ton of people who should absolutely be going to jail, hounded out of public life, and forced to give up the ill-gotten millions they picked up in these years. and that would definitely appeal to a lot of people who are fired-up, and who feel like the Dems haven't been "doing anything."

but it's separate (IMHO) from something else we need, which is a rooting-out of the big-donor money that has corrupted electoral politics writ large. this is an emergency of a different kind - a democracy that has no chance of implementing popular will, if that will runs up against the wishes of The Donor Class. it's never not been an issue in US politics, but i think right's now it's maybe worse than it's been since the Gilded Age. and i'm not sure the "moderate" Democrats to whom Bouie's trying to appeal will do diddly squat about it. i stand by my theory that the Sanders message is the right message: the whole system is rigged, i can tell you who rigged it, how they benefit, how you've been getting screwed for fifty years --- and if you vote for me and my faction, we will do the following things to un-rig it.

Doctor Casino otm.

I think folks that normally don't vote because its all rigged, folks that Trump activated to a degree, are susceptible to this message, too (at least the few that aren't huffing straight racism).

Meanwhile, in response to all recent polling, the Party is busy putting Bell, Moskowitz and Wasserman-Schulz on the House foreign affairs committee.

All solid, center-left folks.

but it's separate (IMHO) from something else we need, which is a rooting-out of the big-donor money that has corrupted electoral politics writ large.

I don't think this is separate from the corruption of the Trump administration, some of it is the exact same corrupting influences. As for how well corruption as an issue resonates, an Ipsos poll from four days ago found that Americans rank it as the second-most important government issue, after inflation and ahead of healthcare: https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/how-americans-feel-about-corruption

Of course, what people mean by that or are thinking about when they say it varies by party preference. But it's not something you have to do a lot of selling on to persuade people it's a problem, people know it's a problem.

momentarily thought will's post was about Belle Moskowitz, which would certainly be a change of direction.

ha!

@tipsy - i agree that there are a lot of points of overlap between the general corruption and the specific Trump admin corruption, but i do think there are distinct phenomena. the one is an outright kleptocratic administration, using the government to give sweetheart deals to themselves and their friends and family, or taking bribes for things the briber wants to happen. the Clarence Thomas bribery stuff is in this category since he's not up for reelection.

the other is this thing that's been omnipresent for years, where nearly every politician at the national level is effectively bought off, in the sense that they need millions and millions of dollars to run for office, and the campaign-finance machinery now allows corporations and billionaires are allowed to spend infinitely on this, and so it's very unlikely those politicians will vote against the interest of those donors. i know you know all of this - just talking my way through it. i think the differences matter, because someone could be all fired up about the former, and a few people could go to jail, or new guardrails could get put in place, which NEEDS to happen, but could also all happen without ANYTHING being done about the latter.

so, as you indicate, what people mean by corruption could matter a lot. and for other people i think it's honestly at the level of "they raise all these taxes, to make themselves rich!" like, the people who think the money from congestion pricing literally goes into Kathy Hochul or Zohran Mamdani's bank account. "corruption" in this case kinda just means "politicians from the party i already don't agree with are up to no good." maybe this is a simplistic caricature but i do think it's out there. so for these reasons i worry that "corruption" has broad appeal but might prove a shaky foundation to build a really strong coalition for policy change as opposed to prosecution. but hey --- if it helps build a wave big enough that we can actually do something about Citizens United, i'm all for it!

Yeah for sure, you have to move from "I know you don't like corruption" to "and here's the corruption we're gonna fight!" But at least the first step of that is not hard to establish.

totally. i mean again, Trump ran on "drain the swamp," appealing to many people convinced there was a whole bunch of corruption down there in Washington/"the government." some of that was because for them "swamp/corrupt" really meant that people they didn't like were in power, or that the line at the DMV was too long, or that demographic groups they disliked were going unpunished for existing. but some of it was also because they'd been personally screwed by the system and were looking for answers. Trump wasn't dumb to try and grab voters who'd leaned towards Sanders in 2016. deeply cynical. but not crazy if you're trying to run up the numbers in places where Sanders's message resonated very strongly, but the organizing work of bringing them into a coherent leftist consciousness had not been completed.

so i would say corruption is absolutely a theme into which a "here's how you're getting ripped off" narrative can be plugged --- but that the "here's the corruption we're gonna fight!" work is absolutely crucial. if it's skipped, you end up with inchoate anti-system rage. and maybe that helps some good legislation get passed (like immediately after Watergate), but i don't think it can sustain a long political fight against basically all the money in the world. the divide-and-conquer will be too easy.

but really --- i'm fine with it. what's needed are wedge issues that can get enough actual, non-bought left politicians into office, right around the same time a few of the fascist Supreme Court judges die or retire. that's like, step 1 to a new reconstruction. if "corruption" is one of those issues then bring it on.

In case anyone’s still thinking Democrats need to move toward “the center”: I live in Montana’s reddest county and I just got dinner from a guy wearing a T-shirt reading

OBAMA 2028
SINCE RULES DON’T MATTER ANYMORE