Democrats almost explicitly say out loud that the purpose of moderate Democrats is to put on a moderate act during election season so that they can win and be an additional party-line vote.
And ultimately the people who decide what the party-line vote is going to be are not the moderates, but the people who talk like KJP and who insist that land acknowledgements should be at the top of the party platform.
As a result, in order to get enough cred to win elections, moderates have to go above and beyond to buck this establishment. One example is Spanberger getting the endorsement of Virginia's state police union. The KJPs of the party hate police unions and police unions hate them, so Spanberger earning that endorsement likely gained her some points, regardless of what you think about police unions.
In the same vein as a devil’s advocate, I think the Democratic Party could benefit from having a designated Token Straight White Guy in meetings who exists solely to call out when Democrats go off the rails into weird identity stuff.
Just a somewhat normal dude who is empowered to chime in and say “hey guys? You’re doing the BS land thing again.” Food for thought.
Yeah Ken Martin is a straight white guy and he doesn't seem to have gotten a handle on this. But what I do think is in order is a version of Chuck Schumer's "what would the Baileys think?" or Matt Yglesias's suggestion that everyone needs a post-it note saying the median voter is a non-college educated person over 50 living in a suburb of an unfashionable city.
Reminder that every candidate while running for DNC chair said they would commit to identity based quotas except Bernie’s campaign manager Faiz Shakir lol
I listened to your Central Air pod and I understand why Josh Shapiro might be the best moderate available. However, I worry that in order to keep the left flank at bay, Dems will again nominate a moderate with no juice or charisma. This is the story of 2016, 2020 and 2024, it is striking how bad at talking all 3 Dem presidential candidates were. I watched Shapiro on Charlemagne and while the questions about AIPAC were unfair, Shapiro handled it poorly. He came across irritant and condescending. Watching Zohran able to hold his own in hostile territory (for example Fox News) reminded me that Dems used to have charismatic leaders too. We have had charismatic moderates like Bill Clinton and Obama, I do hope there’s a moderate charismatic outsider that shows up in 2028.
RE Zohran and holding own on unfriendly-to-hostile territory - I think this aligns with several comments (probably Josh, but Silver, probably Slow Boring) that the Dem. Pols. need to get out of the habit of staying only in safe media spaces, and not going places where they fear the Proggy Activists will get upset (e.g. the not-doing-Rogan by Harris as per many reports due to Staffers not liking idea, as impure venue...)
if one stays in "safe-spaces" one never learns to engage and the ongoing usage by Dems of really arch and alienating academese language continues.
IMO it is also just that the Dem politicians were not talented, I don’t think Kamala going on more shows would’ve helped her? The more I see her giving interviews right now, the worse I think of her lol. Zohran did get himself into controversies but on a whole, he came across well because he’s just innately talented. Some of this stuff can’t be taught imo
Probably some things can't be taught, but some things one only learns by doing (or learns one is not good at it by trying).
Hard to know which is which overall in any specific person, but I think clearly between this, the embarrassing word salad / dorm room performance of the ex-Press Secretary, it's painfully evident that one or two decades of taking a safe-spaces don't dirty hands with Deplorables and Deplorable Media etc. - and overly Activist oriented mode (scold, shame, hector rather than sell-to/convince the non-convinced) has engendered a lack of skills. A flabbiness at best.
She got caught flat-footed during a friendly puff-piece interview on The View. Assuming you're stuck with her as a candidate, it's smart to not have her do any interviews, but much better is to have a candidate with a competent team. It was malpractice for that interview to happen.
Idk this seems pathetic tbh. I’m all for bashing the groups but I think this discourse obscures why Dems have been producing such low quality candidates since Obama. It should be possible for a talented politician to have the skills to simultaneously inspire your base AND signal moderation, that is what Obama did and all successful politicians do. The activists will always be around, why can’t present day Dems navigate this?
> But nothing I’ve said in this paragraph is about issue emphasis; it’s just a number of different ways of saying don’t propose unpopular things.
>
> The somewhat-unsatisfying answer, I think — and as we discussed this week on Central Air with Liam Kerr, one of the co-authors of the Welcome report — is about making message discipline a consistent practice across an entire political career. You cannot control what your opponent says about you, and if you’ve said something on tape, you cannot control who replays it. But you can control what you talk about day-to-day, and the image you cultivate through your own free and paid media.
There’s a big difference between message discipline and “never do a gaffe.” Fear of saying the wrong thing is one of the things that makes Democrats seem mealy-mouthed, and drives them into elite circumlocutions that make them sound out of touch.
Good message discipline is being consistent in your self-presentation when you control the agenda, and finding a way to drag things back to your message when you’re responding to questions. But candidates also need to be able to be freewheeling, and to take questions from skeptical to hostile questioners. If you can mix it up, you get some grace when you say the occasional poorly-calibrated thing. If you’re always super scripted, any (inevitable) slip gets treated as a revelation of your true beliefs.
Right. What Kamala did wasn't a gaffe though -- she said what she said on purpose. The key here is not to try to quietly take positions that would cause you trouble if they were loud. And to flood the zone with the messages that shape the image you want -- this is what Zohran Mamdani, for example, has done with affordability, and it's made it hard for his opponents to paint him as obsessed with any other issue.
Yeah, one thing the Welcome report does well is play against type and use left wingers as their examples of message discipline. It needs another teaspoon or two of Sinema-punching, but it gestures in the right direction there too.
In leftist spaces the groupthink pressure is especially strong on straight white guys so you actually want someone with a marginalized identity to serve as devil's advocate. Get a based black guy or a based queer person as that will be more sustainable and get a more serious reception than a straight white guy.
Now, Before the Midterms: There should be a massive effort to place a billboard on every major highway on the outskirts of every major town in every Red District in the Country identifying by name the U.S. Representative who voted for the Big Ugly Bill listing the eventual damages it will do to its citizens. The same should be done in every State with a Republican Senator up for reelection. Much of the bad stuff will not be apparent to voters until after the midterms; consequently, Democratic Party messaging between now and then is critical! We need to be in Republican Faces Every Day like they are in ours. I Think Mobile Billboards Would Also Work Well.
JUST AN EXAMPLE: "Your Representative in Congress, (first name, last name) Just Voted to slash Your Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP Benefits to Pay for Tax Cuts for the Rich! VOTE HIM (HER) OUT."
Is that a slight overstatement of facts? Certainly, but that's what Republicans do all the time and we need to counterattack using the same tactics and be UBIQUITOUS about it, e.g., Billboards.
Each Billboard's message presupposes that Democrats in each District are smart enough to identity the hot button issues that will resonate with the intended Republican audience, be it Taxes, FEMA Support, Economy, ICE Overreach, Medical Coverage, infrastructure, Tariffs, etc. If Dems can't pinpoint the right issues, then billboards will have little effect.
Democrats almost explicitly say out loud that the purpose of moderate Democrats is to put on a moderate act during election season so that they can win and be an additional party-line vote.
And ultimately the people who decide what the party-line vote is going to be are not the moderates, but the people who talk like KJP and who insist that land acknowledgements should be at the top of the party platform.
As a result, in order to get enough cred to win elections, moderates have to go above and beyond to buck this establishment. One example is Spanberger getting the endorsement of Virginia's state police union. The KJPs of the party hate police unions and police unions hate them, so Spanberger earning that endorsement likely gained her some points, regardless of what you think about police unions.
In the same vein as a devil’s advocate, I think the Democratic Party could benefit from having a designated Token Straight White Guy in meetings who exists solely to call out when Democrats go off the rails into weird identity stuff.
Just a somewhat normal dude who is empowered to chime in and say “hey guys? You’re doing the BS land thing again.” Food for thought.
You’re also doing this identity politics thing. You don’t have to be white or straight or a guy to have normie political views.
Yeah Ken Martin is a straight white guy and he doesn't seem to have gotten a handle on this. But what I do think is in order is a version of Chuck Schumer's "what would the Baileys think?" or Matt Yglesias's suggestion that everyone needs a post-it note saying the median voter is a non-college educated person over 50 living in a suburb of an unfashionable city.
Reminder that every candidate while running for DNC chair said they would commit to identity based quotas except Bernie’s campaign manager Faiz Shakir lol
This is true, but that was a deliberate choice in reversing one of the more common tropes of Democratic identity politics.
I volunteer as tribute.
I listened to your Central Air pod and I understand why Josh Shapiro might be the best moderate available. However, I worry that in order to keep the left flank at bay, Dems will again nominate a moderate with no juice or charisma. This is the story of 2016, 2020 and 2024, it is striking how bad at talking all 3 Dem presidential candidates were. I watched Shapiro on Charlemagne and while the questions about AIPAC were unfair, Shapiro handled it poorly. He came across irritant and condescending. Watching Zohran able to hold his own in hostile territory (for example Fox News) reminded me that Dems used to have charismatic leaders too. We have had charismatic moderates like Bill Clinton and Obama, I do hope there’s a moderate charismatic outsider that shows up in 2028.
RE Zohran and holding own on unfriendly-to-hostile territory - I think this aligns with several comments (probably Josh, but Silver, probably Slow Boring) that the Dem. Pols. need to get out of the habit of staying only in safe media spaces, and not going places where they fear the Proggy Activists will get upset (e.g. the not-doing-Rogan by Harris as per many reports due to Staffers not liking idea, as impure venue...)
if one stays in "safe-spaces" one never learns to engage and the ongoing usage by Dems of really arch and alienating academese language continues.
IMO it is also just that the Dem politicians were not talented, I don’t think Kamala going on more shows would’ve helped her? The more I see her giving interviews right now, the worse I think of her lol. Zohran did get himself into controversies but on a whole, he came across well because he’s just innately talented. Some of this stuff can’t be taught imo
Probably some things can't be taught, but some things one only learns by doing (or learns one is not good at it by trying).
Hard to know which is which overall in any specific person, but I think clearly between this, the embarrassing word salad / dorm room performance of the ex-Press Secretary, it's painfully evident that one or two decades of taking a safe-spaces don't dirty hands with Deplorables and Deplorable Media etc. - and overly Activist oriented mode (scold, shame, hector rather than sell-to/convince the non-convinced) has engendered a lack of skills. A flabbiness at best.
She got caught flat-footed during a friendly puff-piece interview on The View. Assuming you're stuck with her as a candidate, it's smart to not have her do any interviews, but much better is to have a candidate with a competent team. It was malpractice for that interview to happen.
Idk this seems pathetic tbh. I’m all for bashing the groups but I think this discourse obscures why Dems have been producing such low quality candidates since Obama. It should be possible for a talented politician to have the skills to simultaneously inspire your base AND signal moderation, that is what Obama did and all successful politicians do. The activists will always be around, why can’t present day Dems navigate this?
> But nothing I’ve said in this paragraph is about issue emphasis; it’s just a number of different ways of saying don’t propose unpopular things.
>
> The somewhat-unsatisfying answer, I think — and as we discussed this week on Central Air with Liam Kerr, one of the co-authors of the Welcome report — is about making message discipline a consistent practice across an entire political career. You cannot control what your opponent says about you, and if you’ve said something on tape, you cannot control who replays it. But you can control what you talk about day-to-day, and the image you cultivate through your own free and paid media.
There’s a big difference between message discipline and “never do a gaffe.” Fear of saying the wrong thing is one of the things that makes Democrats seem mealy-mouthed, and drives them into elite circumlocutions that make them sound out of touch.
Good message discipline is being consistent in your self-presentation when you control the agenda, and finding a way to drag things back to your message when you’re responding to questions. But candidates also need to be able to be freewheeling, and to take questions from skeptical to hostile questioners. If you can mix it up, you get some grace when you say the occasional poorly-calibrated thing. If you’re always super scripted, any (inevitable) slip gets treated as a revelation of your true beliefs.
Right. What Kamala did wasn't a gaffe though -- she said what she said on purpose. The key here is not to try to quietly take positions that would cause you trouble if they were loud. And to flood the zone with the messages that shape the image you want -- this is what Zohran Mamdani, for example, has done with affordability, and it's made it hard for his opponents to paint him as obsessed with any other issue.
Yeah, one thing the Welcome report does well is play against type and use left wingers as their examples of message discipline. It needs another teaspoon or two of Sinema-punching, but it gestures in the right direction there too.
In leftist spaces the groupthink pressure is especially strong on straight white guys so you actually want someone with a marginalized identity to serve as devil's advocate. Get a based black guy or a based queer person as that will be more sustainable and get a more serious reception than a straight white guy.
E.g. a Musa al Gharbi (not that he would do such)
BILLBOARDS #2:
Now, Before the Midterms: There should be a massive effort to place a billboard on every major highway on the outskirts of every major town in every Red District in the Country identifying by name the U.S. Representative who voted for the Big Ugly Bill listing the eventual damages it will do to its citizens. The same should be done in every State with a Republican Senator up for reelection. Much of the bad stuff will not be apparent to voters until after the midterms; consequently, Democratic Party messaging between now and then is critical! We need to be in Republican Faces Every Day like they are in ours. I Think Mobile Billboards Would Also Work Well.
JUST AN EXAMPLE: "Your Representative in Congress, (first name, last name) Just Voted to slash Your Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP Benefits to Pay for Tax Cuts for the Rich! VOTE HIM (HER) OUT."
Is that a slight overstatement of facts? Certainly, but that's what Republicans do all the time and we need to counterattack using the same tactics and be UBIQUITOUS about it, e.g., Billboards.
Each Billboard's message presupposes that Democrats in each District are smart enough to identity the hot button issues that will resonate with the intended Republican audience, be it Taxes, FEMA Support, Economy, ICE Overreach, Medical Coverage, infrastructure, Tariffs, etc. If Dems can't pinpoint the right issues, then billboards will have little effect.