The right wing already talks a big game about this. They use awful racial coding that I will not repeat here. It’s always in the context of anti-Semitism and it serves solely to drive more Republican votes.
Good point. And it’s the hard part. This is why I tried to loop in the local barons and small aristocrats. Because there it’s harder to racial code those.
The sports is just one example I thought of in a few minutes. You would have to be waging similar misinformation campaigns that yes, spread literal and vile lies. Just like the literal and vile lies that are already being spread about democrats and pizza parlors. But if there’s no other option, then last resort options come into play. Because giving up is never an option. Just like how good people living under autocracy keep trying to overthrow the dictator even though the odds are even more impossible than what we face here.
The fundamental point is that whatever the Democrats are actually doing, they appear to be weak and not trying hard enough. Changing that impression has to be pretty close to step one.
Playing as dirty as the republicans, literally turns off the Democrat voters many of whom are part of the Dem coalition because they like good governance and do not approve of what republicans are doing. Doing dirty tricks that are overt, demotivate the base democratic voter. They also do not tend to react well to appeals to fear which motivate the right.
For example Dem voters disapprove of Gerrymandering, so want to make it more fair, but by doing so they weaken their position. If it was only about power, they would only want to gerrymander even more in their direction but that position is unpopular with important Dem coalition members.
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That’s tough when even people we know and trust literally ignore big fights the Democrats are putting up, minimize the accomplishments of Democrats themselves, and add to this ridiculous idea that the Democrats aren’t fighting hard. You are part of this problem. You ignore a lot of news and are part of spreading that “no fight” narrative.
Biden issued more executive orders in his first week than any president in American history, heavily undoing a lot of damage that Trump did. He is, in practice, arguably one of the most active progressive presidents in all of American history.
https://www.federalregister.gov/presidential-documents/executive-orders/joe-biden/2021
Fear and lies motivate Republicans to vote even more frequently and conservatively.
Fear and lies motivate Democrats to not vote at all.
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You want another example? The big spending bill Democrats just passed.
It’s smaller than what we wanted, but it passed. It’s transformative. It’s one of the most significant pieces of legislation in modern American history.
Did you celebrate it online? Do you approve of it? It’ll make a lot of Americans’ lives rapidly and materially better.
And guess what. The GOP voted against it. And they’re celebrating the good it will do for their constituents. It literally doesn’t matter that they literally voted against it. They get to take the benefits, talk to their constituents about how they made it happen, and they get to complain that the Democrats passed “evil socialism.”
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And plotting to kick out or primary every one of the few Republicans who voted for it :-p
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You want another one? Pelosi and a completely unified House Democratic caucus referred criminal charges to the DoJ (which are being acted upon) for refusal to testify before them.
It’s unprecedented. Congress hasn’t really ever done this. It’s a huge deal. They’re asking for the maximum sentences. They are using the full extent of congressional power in that case, as fast as possible given the nature of a bureaucracy.
Is that fighting or not?
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Also, do you truly believe that Democratic operatives in the actual machine aren’t trying to come up with exactly the kinds of strategies you’re describing? Do you think you and the (extreme minority) of radically progressive activists are the only people who ever thought of this?
Do you honestly think they wouldn’t have tried this if it had any chance of working. Do you believe there haven’t been Democratic-funded misinformation campaigns to try and trick swing voters? Is there possibly some reason this has literally never worked?
What was the effect of the Lincoln Project in the end?
What do you think a more aggressive and less fact-based version of that would accomplish?
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Yea if you even celebrate a smaller win, you just get attacked for accepting a half measure. Instead of celebrating and pushing onward, using that win to build upon and motivate your base to achieve and make progress to other goals
Honestly you’d think some of those voices that can’t accept a win for the day, are almost working against most of the cases they are fighting for.
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If you believe in them so much, why are you still hopeless and resigned to doom?
Shouldn’t you be saying “The Democratic operatives are smart and know all the strategies and are going to win doing things the right way?”
I believe it’s more that every win is super difficult and there is no easy fix. Giving up is not really an option.
I think basically constantly about what could be done. This consumes a good chunk of my daily life.
Right now, the best non-coup ideas I have are around holding the line for a few decades to prevent a full fascist takeover, taking incremental wins that slowly make peoples’ lives better, and banking on some future critical moment that gives us a chance for material change.
Make more radical change where we hold power. In cities and blue states. Make them refuges for oppressed people all over America, and help them move to these places to minimize the harm and risk to them in the short-term.
I’m not willing to risk the lives of people far less insulated than me from the consequences of a failed coup or failed misinformation campaign.
And by coup, I don’t mean a violent one. I mean a judicial coup. Along the lines of a Democratic president ignoring SCOTUS and doing something to pack the court in order to restructure the Senate.
Any “coup” outside of a nonviolent judicial one would cause more harm than we can possibly imagine.
I try to celebrate the real wins Democrats are continuously making. Spread optimism, civic engagement, and a willingness to compromise when the choices are “slightly better vs extremely bad.”
Energize progressive voters and fund the people who are building movements. Most of my political donations go to Fair Fight right now.
If I had a better idea, you know me. I’d be all over it. But I don’t. And I also don’t think evil memes can be used to win progressive victories against a party that will literally see its base ignore sexual assault and “hold their nose” to vote for their vision of America.
You can’t blackmail people who are immune to pressure from their own constituencies.
Nothing harms the progressive movement more than Democrats blaming Democrats for failing to pass legislation that literally needs Republican votes to pass. I see more negative talk about the spending bill from the LEFT than I do from the right…
Imagine someone in a board game celebrating and making a big deal out of scoring more points than anyone else… on turn ten and only turn ten. News flash, turn ten is not the whole game. When you look at the score board, you can see they are losing by a lot. Those points weren’t enough. Kind hard to cheer for that! Even harder to cheer when the winner is cheating and getting away with it.
The negative feelings people have are because we see doom in the distance slowly getting closer. Even huge positive things like infrastructure bill passing do not have any impact on that doom. They do not affect the status quo of our society. The fundamental systemic injustices are as they have been. Climate change, fascism, economic collapse, all those dooms and more are still on the way!
And likewise, the infrastructure bill doesn’t make Republicans feel any worse. The status quo is great for them. They love the doom and want it to come. They’re not upset at all. In fact, they’re moving the doom closer all the time in places where they have control, see Texas.
Democrats in power have failed to push the doom further away. Republicans in power succeed at bringing it closer.
We really just need Democrats to do something big enough to move the doom further away. An actual systemic change to our society of any kind. Just one might be enough to energize people and give them real hope. Depending on the change, it might also be enough to change the shape of the playing field such that non-evil strategies might become more effective.
And so it goes back to earlier. Congresspeople are humans regardless of party. They can be influenced, somehow. Figure it out. Get the Manchin/Sinema votes and/or the Republican votes for something by some means. Time is running out. Make it happen. Even if you can’t make it happen because of the realities of the senate and the filibuster, at least show us that you feel the same level of urgency that we citizens feel.
Look at Schumer, our senator who I haven’t been happy with in the past. Recently he’s moved to the left, so I don’t really have any huge policy problems with him now. But when you see him speak, he’s just chilling! He shows no sign whatsoever that he feels the same anxiety of impending doom that I feel. He could be intentionally hiding those feelings, because leadership or whatever, but that’s not comforting! Again, it makes it look like he’s not trying, even if he’s trying as hard as humanly possible. Show me urgency, show me fight!
Democrats have not been in power in any material way for a long time. The moment they passed the ACA, their power completely and possibly permanently evaporated.
You mean like the broadly popular new Voting Rights Act? The radical bill that would enshrine representative democracy for generations to come? That Democrats overwhelmingly support, which the House has passed repeatedly, and which is blocked by the GOP and two Democratic Senators who for all intents and purposes are Republicans? The one the Republicans have filibustered several times?
Manchin was bribed by scaling back the infrastructure bill massively and protecting coal mining. Sinema can’t be bribed. She’s got basically unlimited money from her donors in pharmaceuticals and the GOP. She’s already likely to be primaried out so she gives zero fucks about what Democrats think. There is probably nothing that could motivate Sinema to change anything she’s doing.
As for the GOP, that’s what Biden was trying to do. He was meeting with individual GOP Senators, working on anything that could bring them around personally. The result? Zero defections, and hordes of leftists screaming that Biden is “just another Republican” for even talking to them. It was a complete disaster. They’re un-bribeable because they’re getting everything they ever wanted already.
Kick them out of the Senate? They’ll get re-elected by their own states.
Whenever a Democrat expresses any emotion, especially anguish or anxiety, both Democratic and Republican voters seize on that as weakness and it destroys them electorally…
Look what happened when he showed even a little bit of emotion and urgency:
Or what about the Jan 6th Committee? The Democrats are pulling out all the stops. They’re referring people who refuse to testify for Contempt of Congress (the maximum power they can exert). They’re making it as much of a spectacle as they can. Showcasing the violent mob, getting COPS to testify to make it clear how dangerous this was.
The hearings, which are public and widely played in the media, included terrifying and damning video. They’re exerting maximum pressure and maximum gravitas.
The results so far? A collective shrug from most Americans.
You want to look at an even thornier issue?
If Democrats run on “abolish the police” that is broadly unpopular even with most Democrats. Even in places like The Bronx. It loses elections.
If Democrats run on “pro police” to get cops to vote for them, it drives progressives out of the party and demoralizes them from voting at all. It also makes police violence worse.
If Democrats run on “the police who saved the country from a violent insurrection” (see the video above), the FOPs still unilaterally support the Republicans and actively oppose the Democrats. It doesn’t move the needle. Even worse, you have progressives complaining that the Democrats are “lionizing” the police by even talking about the role they played in preventing the coup from succeeding on that specific day.
The scare tactics of “Republicans hate the police” isn’t resonating anywhere despite the GOP unilaterally voting against and speaking against these officers.
So how do Democrats navigate an issue where the right thing to do is a minority opinion, the wrong thing to do is a majority opinion, and the hardliners are HARD Republicans?
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This may be a surface level analysis but I think it’s honestly pretty accurate:
When I see the doom and gloom kinda sentiment laid out here I think to myself. This is the kinda thinking that got us trump.
Basically if stuff gets bad enough for enough people, they’ll basically retaliate. Kinda doesn’t matter how they retaliate, the thought process is just ‘make other people feel our pain’. trump was definitely different from anything anyone who voted for him’d ever seen.
If material conditions don’t improve we might get another ‘protest vote’. At a certain point, folks don’t care how, don’t care what’s popular or any of your thorny issues. Stuff doesn’t get better we get the cool zone 2.
Yes, like that one. Ram it through. Use absolutely any shenanigan whatsoever.
There’s no such thing. A human mind is a human mind. I do not believe there is a person alive who can resist all forms of coercion, both carrot and stick. A person who really has everything they ever want? Every second of every day of their life is absolute joy and paradise? Their heart is impossibly strong, and nothing can possibly upset them? There’s a way. Find it.
This is the fundamental philosophical issue of representative democracy. As a representative should you just find out what your electorate believes and vote according to their will? Or should you vote according to your own will and allow them to vote you out for someone else if they don’t like it? There’s a name for this question, I just forget what it is.
My position is again, that the beliefs of humans aren’t something they are born with. People by and large do not spontaneously magically decide what they want. People are mostly told what to want, what to think, and what to believe. It is possible for people to change their minds, and have their minds changed. On a large scale it mostly works. You can get a big crowd to do the wave. We are not doing a great job of selling our ideas. Nobody said it would be easy, but as long as it is possible, at least try as hard as the opposition does.
Lastly, democracy is still about majority rules. If I hold a minority stance, of course I must simply accept that it’s not going to go my way. That’s nothing to be upset about. It’s democracy in action. I’ll have to just build more support and try again later. What I can be upset about is when things do have majority support of all voters, even across party lines, and do not become policy. What I can be upset about are when minority rights are infringed upon by the majority. What I can be upset about is when the democracy itself does not give equal weight to each voter. And what I can be upset about is when representatives act in bad faith. And I can be upset if I have people representing me who while they largely agree with me on policy, do not appear to acting in alignment with the same sense of urgency that I am feeling.
How would you feel if your house was on fire and the fire department was taking their sweet ass time? Then they compromise with the fire and let it eat just half the house. Yeah, without them I’d have no house. They also probably were working harder and taking more risks than it appeared they were from my laymans perspective. I do primarily blame the fire. And I’m grateful they at least saved half. But that doesn’t mean I’m not angry and asking to have firefighters who’ll work harder to save the whole house.
Do you all think you see all the negotiations?