“Dems in Crisis” Narratives Running Rampant, Natch
Phillies great Mike Schmidt described playing in Philadelphia as experiencing “the thrill of victory and the agony of reading about it the next day.”
As a proud Democrat, I can relate to that sentiment. Republicans are always in attack mode and the media is always eager to internalize every GOP attack and enshrine every conservative talking point as unassailable conventional wisdom.
In turn, Dem “moderates” “strategists” and “consultants” are always eager to rush to show how much they agree with the GOP talking points.
So is this morning’s biggest threat to the Republic Trump and his half-assed coup? Is it the worsening pandemic? No. Of course not.
It is AOC. It is the term “Defund the Police”
Here’s a Daily Kos diary that takes lazy white guy Bill Maher to task for doing the very thing I’m talking about. The author is pissed off — quite rightly — about Maher claiming that Democrats have to own “social justice warrior” rhetoric, even though almost none of them actually endorse that rhetoric. He then both-sides it by saying Republicans have to own the things their elected officials actually say.
Bill Maher isn’t the only one who does it; indeed, he does it because the entire media complex does.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/13/1995676/-I-m-Done-with-Bill-Maher
Defund the police was a terrible slogan (though not created by the Democratic Party). It was alarmist, even it it shouldn’t have been. And it didn’t even convey what most of those who adopted the slogan actually meant. We can’t rely on voters to always understand the subtleties. The Politico story simply quotes Democrats who think this hurt the cause of beating Republicans. Nobody’s saying it’s the only reason. We need to learn from our mistakes.
The mistake is, the mistake has always been, watering down the party’s values into 99.9% water AND then wondering why the base stays home.
I can’t fucking believe I am still having to educate you on this simple fact.
If you don’t like “defund the police” call it whatever the fuck you want, but don’t try to be slightly less bad that Republicans on police reform. That shit doesn’t work.
Couldn’t disagree with Jason more. Defund the Police was a horribly detrimental choice of phrase to describe reallocation of resources to help ensure fairness for public safety and community support. Defund the Police denotes No Police and that’s absurd. Who would pull over stop sign-runners, for example?
lol, who is this idiot? Does someone who pulls over stop-sign runners need to be armed to the teeth? Defund the police. Traffic stops do not require a gun, dopey.
@jill – can you identify which Democratic candidates actually ran on “defund the police,” or did you just hear that from Republicans?
FYI, Reagan was elected on “eliminate the Department of Education.”
But as you said, it’s not “our” (the Democratic Party’s) mistake.
The Democrats who think this hurt their cause are right — because their cause is staying in office by compromising with Republicans. They have no fundamental problem with Republican policies, or else they’d fight them to the death.
As an example, consider abortion. The morning-after pill should have rendered the issue mostly moot — a significant number of abortions, if not a majority, wouldn’t be needed. Republicans could have taken that as an off-route for a compromise. They didn’t, because this is fundamental to them. They really do think, however mistakenly, that it’s murder.
Democrats don’t have that kind of commitment to progressive policies, and the proof is in the pudding.
Another point: It’s the media that takes these liberal slogans and weaponizes them. I don’t recall the media getting in the face of every Republican in office and demanding to know whether they agreed with “Lock her up!” It was treated as hyperbole, an option progressives are never accorded.
But “Eat the rich” is still OK, right?
Joe & Kamila are rich… Just sayin
Kamala Harris is not rich, or even close to it. Her net worth: $2.1M in assets, some of it in pension funding, and $1.7M in liabilities.
https://www.latimes.com/projects/how-much-are-they-worth/kamala-harris/
Well Trump isn’t rich except in fraudulent values. He is, however, hoggishly fat and probably well-marbled. Getting past the stench of treason might require some serious seasoning. Probably make a tasty meal for a Nosferatu like Giuliani.
Representative John Kowalko
Yes, I like Eat the Rich. Crunchy
I guess the Dems are saying they didn’t water down the values enough — or, really, didn’t present the image of watering them down. If they had, we might have more Democrats going to Congress in January. If the base stays home because the Dems don’t say “socialism” or “Black Lives Matter” enough then it deserves what it gets, and Biden’s victory wouldn’t have been such a nail-biter. Besides, this is really about slogans and image rather than the party’s core values. Anyway you cut it, Democratic values are more to the left than Republican values are.
I know you guys think moderate Democrats are as bad as Neanderthal Democrats because they keep more “progressive” Democrats out of office and keep progressive values in the shade. But I don’t think progressive Democrats would be the ones replacing the moderate Democrats.
The media is just telling us what people say. If the Republicans hadn’t done as well as they did, the media would be asking if they thought their stance on race or immigration hurt them. In fact, they are asking those questions about Trump and other Republicans who lost. The media is not “weaponizing” anything. It does quote people who do.
It quotes selectively. It decides what to quote. They have crumbled like papier mache before the canard that they are biased. Ever since Reagan they have flinched like a beaten dog every time someone says “liberal media.”
Democratic politicians were forced to defend “defund the police.” Republican politicians were not forced to defend “Jews will not replace us.”
How about simply acting like winners who won an election? That never really occurs to Democrats for some reason.