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 trump administration sure didn’t take a deliberate “let’s focus on a few things”—they came at us on all fronts

also, I’d like to think of the Kennedy center thing as a labor issue too because their staff was unionized and even the members of the national Symphony are unionized

48 million people in the US are food insecure.
28 million have no health insurance.
65% live paycheck to paycheck.

but sure, politicians should spent time making sure (checks notes) Trump’s name isn’t on a building.

makes sense that you’re an assumed tenured academic, because you’re acting completely out of touch with reality.

^^^

all that museum stuff is nice but we need to be 100% on important stuff like what table itemized. it's not about doing more than one thing at once it's about not wasting time/resources on less important stuff

like, i also agree this doesn't have to be a binary, but the naming stuff simply does not matter given the scope of the problems this country is facing.

now, do i think that restoring placards, Smithsonian and LOC positions, etc. is super important? sure, and this stuff should be done and in due time.

but first things first, maybe try to address the issues that actually matter to me.

Tabes, will you please shut the fuck up with the name calling?

Every one of your valid poojtd works without it.

If anything you sound like a self-righteous academic yourself.

some very ungenerous takes on people’s motivations.

i want an all out assault on every front

lol fun slip there, meant to write "to people" but me, too, obv.

the problem is that the “some democrats” who want to do the low stakes performative bs are likely the ones in leadership & steering committees handing out assignments.

why can't you can do both? why can't you do the performative bs stuff like fixing the renaming the Kennedy Center and preventing Trump from aking any more changes and then you still can go after Trump big time. like do you all not know how politics works?

you can do the little shit like potholes and the big stuff too, this is *exactly* what Mamdani is doing.

and yes an all out assault is what is needed.

point taken, Alfred, sorry Doc Casino. we just disagree.

You’re asking me? You should ask the leadership who will absolutely not do anything about the big ticket items. They’re already telegraphing it.

If I’m wrong I’ll bookmark and come back and apologize. Happily! But my god, have we not all been living in the same universe the last decade? What do these clowns have to do to convince you their priorities fundamentally conflict with the avg Dem voter?

xpost

why can't you can do both?

because time is finite?

zohran providing every day new yorkers access to things like the met opera and world cup works because it is local politics.

yeah see this is thing. i think the Kennedy Center is likely a big deal and similar to the met opera for DC folks, and just because the feds technically run the KC doesn't mean whomever is president should get to slap his name on it, and as Dr. C says it would not take long and the amount of hysteria present on this thread about it, again, points to a reading comprehension problem for some folks, as i do not get the sense that the KC is a big "priority" for the Dems, but it is something they want to take of, because people who live in DC deserve to have a place like the Kennedy Center.

it's just really funny to me how *up in arms* people are about it

All good, tables

Whenever I am in DC the national monuments are something my eye becomes accustomed to but every time I see the Kennedy Center IRL, there’s something so graceful about the architecture that resonates for me, compared to everything else.

makes sense that you’re an assumed tenured academic, because you’re acting completely out of touch with reality.

wrong! also: when did i even say shit about his name being on the building? that is not the issue with the Kennedy Center, although it is obviously annoying and stupid. and what in my posts gave you the slightest indication that i think this is more important than poverty, food insecurity, or the other profound injustices and structural inequities of our society? or do you see the words "Kennedy Center" and just auto-generate a bunch of positions you assume i'm arguing? come on man. we're grownups here, please act like you're trying to have a real conversation.

re: time being finite: no one has yet addressed my "three congresspeople and their aides work this out in the space of four meetings" scenario. is this not plausible? or do you anticipate all 253 Democratic house members spending the entire working day in one immense, fractious conference room, with a single item of business, for months on end? as others have pointed out, when the Republicans are in charge, they certainly don't seem stuck doing only one thing per quarter. they carpet-bomb America with godawful policy. i don't see why we can't imagine a "hundred days" where the new Congress just goes to town with every single thing that's within their power to fix.

Dr. C otm, flood the zone with the opposite of shit, the playbook is right there

yeah, i was projecting frustrations onto your post that had nothing to do with your post, Doctor C. it was unfair and uncalled for— i really am sorry.

i am just seeing a dynamic play out again that is frankly as frightening to me as what has happened in the past two years, and that is Dems getting some semblance of power and that power being completely squandered on total BS.

A.) obviously there are many more important and urgent issues to focus on and show progress on (or at least attempts at progress on, for the next two years) than the Kennedy Center, I don't see anyone saying otherwise; and B.) a broad anti-monarchial reformist package of bills to more explicitly limit the powers of the president on everything from impounding funding for foreign aid to bullying colleges and universities to treating public resources like his own personal property is one of many needed responses to the Trump era. The Kennedy Center is one tiny example of that, but I think something like a, I don't know, No Kings Act would be much more than performative bourgeois bullshit. We have a Supreme Court ready to hand nearly unlimited power to the presidents of their choosing, we need to put whatever roadblocks we can in their way.

The only time Congress has ever got big things done in a hurry has been directly after a massive wave election, but these big fast movements have always been accompanied by a new president as well, so the branches of government are all working to one end. Wave elections like 1994 or 2006 where the presidency remained in opposition hands were far less productive of change. At best they threw up an effective roadblock halting the current president's agenda and initiated a period of arm-wrestling between Congress and the president that pitted the strength of each branch against one another.

Yes but they can spend the next two years writing and passing those bills and getting them vetoed and then run on them in 2028. I mean, if they're good and popular bills.

^ which becomes a battle of messaging more than a relentless incoming tide of change.

Sure, that's how you create the actual incoming tide of change.

table, i appreciate that. i know i've had my own moments where i fall into letting the abstract names-on-a-screen of ILX stand in for other people/groups/discourses that drive me batty. apology accepted.

Aimless, i think what i'm looking for is exactly a massive flurry of "effective roadblocks halting the current president's agenda." that would be great! and seems do-able imho. i agree with the skeptics here that there are many Dems who don't really have the appetite for it. there are others that do, though!

the one additional wrinkle is that i think Trump is dumb/vain/whatever enough that he might also actually sign some useful, positive legislation if Congress sends it out, if it can be framed as him "making a great deal" and that he will get to be on TV signing it and a bunch of people will cheer. he is notoriously gullible and susceptible to manipulation, and i really don't know that the GOP old guard will be able to stop him from signing things they hate.

Whenever I am in DC the national monuments are something my eye becomes accustomed to but every time I see the Kennedy Center IRL, there’s something so graceful about the architecture that resonates for me, compared to everything else.

― einstürzende louboutin (suzy), Friday, 6 November 2026 20:25 (forty-three minutes ago)

That section of the parkway where you drive between the potomac river on one side and the kennedy center on the other side is very beautiful.

I don't think the Democrats have over-promised on what they can accomplish with Trump still sitting in the WH. What is going to work against them is that the economic pressures on the voting population that swept them into Congress makes them impatient of effective action and so long as this is true there will be very real and growing anger and frustration until big changes happen to take the pressures off. This atmosphere of impatience and anger can be leveraged by a fascist/authoritarian messaging even more easily than it can be by messaging based on change within Constitutional channels. If the system isn't working for you, I'll break the system in order to deliver results ("the trains will run on time"). That's been a big part of MAGA appeal, even if Trump has blown himself up as their darling standard bearer. The MAGA voters haven't gone away an securing the future is not a done deal, yet.

Yeah but Trump's president for the next two years. It's true the Dems will be limited in what they can pass, but the economy and people's overall feelings will be primarily hung on Trump. That's how it works with presidents. But it's also why they need to actually pass things even when he vetoes them, to show what they will do if they get a president who will sign the legislation.

otm

Bernie made the point that you just never know what Trump is going to do...pass healthcare and make him make a decision, he's weird sometimes

also, sending out real legislation forces the House/Senate Republicans to vote "no" on popular things that would help people. good to have that on record and be ready to remind people of it, often and loudly. "it's not just Trump, folks" etc.

Including milquetoast Dems who can then be primaried.

Bernie made the point that you just never know what Trump is going to do...pass healthcare and make him make a decision, he's weird sometimes

Again I remind you that Trump was a registered Democrat from 2001-2009. It is absolutely not outside the realm of possibility that he changes parties again just to appear to be on the winning team.

One more thing about the Kennedy Center - for me it is less a story about a treasured institution and more a story aboit how to occupy the office.

It's the way Trump went about the takeover in such an enormous whiny poopy fucking BABY way. And topped it with the enormous middle-school pettiness of taking his name off but not letting people see the place it was. (Still tarped, last I checked.)

Similarly, Amy Acton's tragic childhood, by itself, is not wgat qualifies her to be governor. But Vivek's disgusting use of her past definitely DISqualifies him, that's ferdam sure.

Similarly even if I were not Cap'n Save-an-Opera-Venue, I would still feel it worthwhile to address the banal petty evil of T's regime. Ditto the Reflecting Pool. It's not that that the marble box of slime was sacred; it's that the way the man governs is by lies and crime.

Again I remind you that Trump was a registered Democrat from 2001-2009

and what happened in Jan 2009 to make him switch again?

Trump was much too worried about Obama's birth certificate to stay a Democrat

His investigators in Hawaii accidentally disturbed a tiki figurine unlocking an ancient curse that turns you evil

Saw it on the Braady Bunch

Reasonable point about Trump - he does care about his legacy, maybe he could be convinced to sign some good legislation for that purpose

Magnacarta.jpg

he does care about his legacy, maybe he could be convinced to sign some good legislation for that purpose

It would fuck up p much all 4 points of Garcia’s missive in the short term, but if the Dems get it together they could try and appeal to his sundowning vanity and get him to sign off on actual decent legislation.. He’s not long for this world (?🤞)and Talrico Sayed Colom and famously Mamdani have all made overtures wrt working with him if he’s game. If he balks then press the corruption and sex pervert button.

and then obv go hard in the paint on his kids and lackeys after he’s been spent

sex pervert *child rapist button *

Might be worth seeing what he’d sign in exchange for critical ballroom support.

he does love that ballroom

He's very weak and easily manipulated. I think the Democrats could definitely get some serious stuff passed if they were a functional opposition party interested in advancing an agenda that meaningfully reflects their voters' interests.

narrator voice:

Handing the reins to Stephen Miller isn't exactly a sign of a president looking to make bipartisan deals. I wouldn't expect or hope for much on that front. The last two years of the Trump era (if he even survives them) will be as bad and dumb as the rest of it, if not worse. All these guys know how to do is double down on their bad and terrible ideas. Democrats should definitely not go into it thinking "Maybe we can make deals," they should assume that it will be all hand-to-hand combat with bad-faith fascists. (I said should, not will.)

yes

I've been listening to conservative Cuban AM radio for the first time in years just so I can uh feel the temperature. The host, a man I've been following for 25 years, was livid on Thursday that the president kept Stephen Miller ("a self-admitted white supremacist!") by his side and wanted to eat the walls when he learned about the promotion yesterday.

He was also terrified "about the future of my adopted country" thanks to the election of El-Sayed.