It’s certainly not obvious to many within the Democratic establishment sphere. historic_flawlessly_run_campaign

Exactly what it should look like next time is hard to say because it will to a large extent depend on the candidate and what issues have the public’s attention. There certainly should be a lot more engagement with independent media. Progressives had an early lead in that area, but that was mostly quashed by a coalition of Republicans and Democrats threatening regulation to get social media companies to dis-empower independent news in favor of corporate controlled sources. Republicans then spent a fortune promoting right wing channels while Democrats did nothing. This goes to the root issue that Republicans seek out engagement with their base, while Democrats avoid it as much as possible.

Another thing would be for Democrats to drop messaging with technocratic measures that don’t sync up with how voters feel about the economy. While the economy is technically in good shape, a lot of voters in any economy will be suffering. The message received becomes “we don’t plan to change our approach regardless of how the economy is working for you.” When interest rates skyrocket, the impact doesn’t go away once they are back under control. When inflation skyrocketed, Democrats tried to minimize the issue when they should have mirrored the outrage and focused on how Trump policies created it.

In the big picture, Democrats need to get serious about going after wealth inequality. This improved somewhat with Biden, but Biden was incapable of selling it, and Harris barely tried. She let Trump take the lead on working class economics and had to chase the “no tax on tips” and “no tax on Social Security”. Playing catch-up just made her look insincere. (Yes, ironic given Trump)

The American middle class has been under siege for decades, and they know it. It’s human nature that they need someone to blame. Republicans hand them immigrants, LGBTQ+ and DEI. Democrats step in on the defense, but they offer no competing villain. They could tell the truth and show how corporate money and Billionaires have bought legislation to give themselves an advantage over consumers, but Democrats don’t want to do that (for reasons you can speculate on). Democrats won’t even go after clear cases of Republican corruption with any level of conviction.

The town hall meeting Bernie did on Fox was a great example of how Democrats can reach a right wing audience with left wing rhetoric. Running to the center never works, but speaking to their struggles and frustration in a real way can.

It’s not like progressives haven’t been shouting the answer to this for the past 20 years, but here it is again from an apparently recent convert from within the Democratic establishment camp.

Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now?

What it doesn’t look like is campaigning with Liz Cheney. It doesn’t look like sending Bill Clinton to Michigan to lecture Muslims on how important it is to fund Israel’s genocide. It doesn’t look like Biden’s garbage gaff. It sure as hell doesn’t look like Harris having no answer to the question of how she would break with the Biden administration. All of these failures might have been irrelevant were it not for 50 years of Democrats looking down their nose at working Americans. A lot of it is policy, but a lot is just a failure of messaging.

That’s good advice no matter what the political situation is. However, it’s pretty irrelevant in facing a Trump presidency. It does nothing for economic turmoil, crumbling infrastructure, etc. It’s also irrelevant to facing down federal or state force. If the cops want into your house and have legal cover, you aren’t going to stop them by force of arms.

Organize my community to do what? Refocus on what? Revolution?

Until the next election is cancelled, I plan on trying to win it. That means understanding how the Democrats failed.

And what useful action does this information enable us to take? Next election, should we nominate better voters?

We have the voters we have. We need Democrats that can reach those voters. Blaming them wins us nothing.

This is awesome. You just absolutely nailed the exact cause. Now all we have to do is what? Eliminate the voters? That sounds like the Republican plan to me.

Or maybe your plan is to convince the voters to do otherwise? Don’t you think the politicians have a tiny little bit of responsibility in that area?

Neoliberalism leads to fascism via a well understood pattern that’s currently repeating all around the globe. If you want better voters, then you need better Democrats.

You aren’t looking for solutions, you’re looking for someone to blame. Quit bitching and start working towards something better, or you’re as useless as the Democratic establishment.

Oddly enough, Biden, Harris, and especially Walz are among the least rich politicians in DC. They are still way better off than middle class Americans though.

OK, let’s blame Trump voters. Sounds good. Now what? Replace the voters?

Trump voters are a symptom of a cultural and economic situation created entirely by neoliberals. Blame the voters all you want, but I don’t see how that’s supposed to get us anywhere.

Jumping the gun a bit on that post mortum analysis? Put up the data or shut the fuck up you wanker. This is 100% an establishment fuck up, and you are as cognitively twisted as any MAGA freak.

Despite the obvious common root in “populism” and “popular”, I don’t think that’s a fair “nutshell” description of populism at all.

The central core of populism is opposition to an elite ruling class. Right wing populism tends to attack education and expertise which does fit loosely with your description, but left wing populism is more focused on wealthy elites. Wealth has always been a terrible proxy for merit or the ability to rule.

To be against populism you either have to disagree that we are largely ruled by a class of elites, or think that being ruled by elites is not a bad thing. Anyone that thinks elites are not in control of the economy and political system in the US is borderline delusional. Anyone who thinks the elites got there by merit need to learn a lot more about figures like Elon Musk, Trump, or the Clintons.

I believe the spectrum from capitalism to communism (as both are generally understood) is an illusion and a distraction. In capitalism, capital eventually captures and controls government. In communism, (as it has materialized in the past) the government captures and controls capital. Capital and government become one in either case.

Relating this to Republicans, they are absolutely in favor of the union of corporate and government power. The aspects of communism that they rant about are exactly what they want to bring about. That’s how fascism and totalitarianism work.

A true social revolution must empower the people at the “bottom” to make decisions about their own lives as much as possible. The only justifiable excuse to take liberty away from individuals is to protect the liberty of others.

The society the right dreams of is exactly what we have seen under communist regimes, just with different branding. It’s just authoritarianism.

The worst part is the old nugget that every right wing accusation is really a confession. They have every intention of abusing military power against US citizens and want to muddy the waters first to make it another “both sides” thing.

Thanks for checking into it instead of doubling down. We need that today more than we ever have.

It’s optimistic of you to assume we’ll know the outcome by next Friday. Republicans are going to turn the whole election into a circus if they possibly can.

Is it though? I think it’s more of a cult than an ethos. Trump could do a complete 180 on any number of issues and most of his cult wouldn’t even notice.

No, he really didn’t. First of all, that would have to be done by congress. Second of all, the changes made were to rules within the military itself, and they did the exact opposite. Further restrictions were put in on how the military command structure would authorize engagements related to exceptions that have always been part of the Posse Comitatus Act. You were either fooled by the right wing spin machine, or you are part of it.

Possession is irrelevant too. Access to source code has not being restricted, and doing so wouldn’t even be realistically possible. The only practical change is that new updates from these developers will not be published by the Linux Foundation, and ongoing integration will not be done by mainline Linux developers.

If Russia wants, they can fork Linux at any time, call it Rusinux, and do whatever they want with it. They could even port future Linux updates back to their kernel. They still have to keep it under the GPL2 license, but only if they want to honor Western copyright laws and treaties.

Sure, if words are meaningless.

Who owns the copyright is irrelevant. Russian developers are still entirely entitled to use and modify the Linux source. The only thing they can’t do is submit their changes for inclusion in the main Linux development tree. The only real consequence for them is that their changes might be broken by future kernel updates and they will have to fix it themselves to use newer kernels. That, and they will have to maintain their own distribution system. I’ve also seen nothing to suggest anyone’s code is being removed.

The US didn’t invade Ukraine and, obviously, isn’t under US or European sanctions. I’m sure that you and I could agree on a great deal when it comes to American foreign policy, it’s just not relevant to this situation where Russia is the clear aggressor. (Setting aside the usual “buffer zone” bullshit that every aggressor state uses and Putin already abandoned).

Me too. I’ve had a sinus headache for over 10 years straight. I don’t even remember what it’s like to not be congested. Three surgeries and more drugs than I ever knew existed have done nothing. Good health is definitely underappreciated.

You left out “Russian invasion, Russian ethnic cleansing, and Russian war crimes.”