@Memor-X hm. You are right. Of course she is not a sentient being that could predict. But the signs were all there, that's what I meant. 🙂
> The first thing Democrats should do is find the consultant whose idea it was to campaign with Liz Cheney in Michigan, and put that person on an iceberg where they can’t do any more harm. This should then lead to a deeper rethink of a consistently failed strategy of reaching out to an imagined constituency of moderate Republicans at the expense of Democrats’ own base.
> Recruit working-class candidates who reflect the pain and the understanding of people who live paycheck-to-paycheck
> Populism — an organic desire to connect with emotions and conditions of grassroots working-class people — must ignite the rebuild of the Democratic Party.
> The Democratic Party can’t continue to define itself simply as the party of “anyone but [Republican candidate].” It needs to establish core, unifying principles and policies that remain steady regardless of political winds or the temptation to court more Dick Cheney-type endorsements.
> Young voters, who represent the largest growing voting bloc but remain most apprehensive about trusting and participating in political systems, can be mobilized through bold, populist policies that improve people’s lives. By speaking directly to people’s material needs — their struggles with housing, healthcare and education — with tangible, consistent policy plans, the party can build true support and power.
> This isn’t just about Democrats winning or losing one election, and the path forward isn’t through consultant-speak or focus groups or placing blame on our marginalized communities who do not feel heard or included — but in bold, clear policies that speak to people’s real lives and create lasting change in American communities.
Liberal pundits have started bashing the minority communities, without even bothering why they voted for Trump in the first place.
> Fox News and the podcast brosphere tell them we are weak
> Democrats need to understand what is broken here: not their policies, not their ideological positioning, but the American information environment. Much of what voters believe about politics — even about fundamental questions like the character of their leaders, or the strength of the national economy — is inevitably learned secondhand.
> With the rise of the internet and partisan media, our traditional, staid sources of political information have fragmented. Americans can now opt into whichever phantasmagorical bubble of facts they find most agreeable.
> What we’ve seen is that tens of millions have opted into a right-wing information bubble, largely online, that has grown to eclipse almost the entire traditional media infrastructure. Often, in that bubble, they’ve become the willing consumers of lies and outrage.
> Trump’s real misdeeds are whitewashed while audiences are encouraged to embrace cathartic rage against rotating groups of enemies — many of which seem to suspiciously mirror historically unpopular minorities.
> In this fractured information environment, clownish strongmen thrive, their meme-like public personas enrapturing otherwise disengaged voters — a trend we’ve seen across the globe, as social media increasingly displaces traditional media.
> Democrats need to recognize that it is impossible to win votes by improving voters’ lives, when your opponent has a national rage machine it can toggle on or off at will. We will see the next iteration of this game soon enough, when the right switches to praising the precise economy they blasted for years, likely spiking economic satisfaction through the roof.
> This capacity — dominating media and social media, and its power to shape public opinion — has been the obsessive focus of the right for years. Democrats have almost completely ignored these questions in favor of wonky policy and kitchen-table economics.
> If the party continues to ignore this problem, it courts oblivion. Democrats must find a way to make headway in modern media, and wrest more control of the national information environment from Trump and his band of thugs.
Democrats lost the information war badly.
