cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22077561
“I’m not interested in anyone who is moving further away from the center,” said Cindy Bass, a Pennsylvania committee member from Philadelphia. “The center is where we have to be.”
They’re not going to change a thing unless people make them.
Find your local state delegate and personally tell them how you feel a centrist is only going to guarantee another Republican victory. They are listed here: https://ballotpedia.org/Democratic_National_Committee
Bernie Sanders is working behind the scenes to get a progressive in there but he can’t do it alone.
Jesus. They’ve learned nothing:
He added, “Trump really kind of ran up numbers everywhere, you know what I mean? There was clearly a strategy not focusing on one place or another. And as a party we have to do that.”
THATS NOT WHAT FUCKING HAPPENED.
Trumps numbers barely moved.
Harris’s numbers PLUMMETED compared to Trump’s 4 years ago. Start there. That’s where you need to start this postmortem.
As they begin to dissect their collapse in the presidential election, some Democratic National Committee members are concluding that the party is too “woke,” too focused on identity politics and too out of touch with broad stretches of America.
From the bottom of my heart, fuck these people. They’ve moved so far towards neoliberal policy positions that they no longer have an economic message to give their working-class base. In the absence of a coherent economic vision for the party, they keep doubling down on, “identity politics,” to keep the the Obama Coalition happy; they have nothing to unify their base, so their only option is to take up any position that is important to the demographic groups that make up the party. Now that this strategy has been thoroughly and decisively defeated, their reaction isn’t to return to the progressive economic policies that won them these groups in the first place, but instead to figure which minorities are, “unpopular,” so they can abandon them. What a bunch of stupid, shortsighted cowards.
Respectfully, when you wrote
They’ve moved so far towards neoliberal policy positions that they no longer have an economic message to give their working-class base. In the absence of a coherent economic vision for the party, they keep doubling down on, “identity politics,”
It seems like you agree with
some Democratic National Committee members are concluding that the party is too “woke,” too focused on identity politics and too out of touch with broad stretches of America
I also think that if the Dems want to win, they need to simplify their platform and messaging to focus on what will help working-class people the most. I agree that abandoning people is not the answer, but the messaging and focus needs to be more universal.
You’re right, but the nuance you’re discussing is not what’s being discussed here. Listen to this bit:
“The progressive wing of the party has to recognize — we all have to recognize — the country’s not progressive, and not to the far left or the far right. They’re in the middle,” said Joseph Paolino Jr., DNC committeeman for Rhode Island. “I’m going to look for a chair who’s going to be talking to the center and who’s going to be for the guy who drives a truck back home at the end of the day.”
Or as one DNC member from Florida put it: “I don’t want to be the freak show party, like they have branded us. You know, when you’re a mom with three kids, and you live in middle America and you’re just not really into politics, and you see these ads that scare the bejesus out of you, you’re like, ‘I know Trump’s weird or whatever, but I would rather his weirdness that doesn’t affect my kids.’”
These speakers aren’t distinguishing between socially left and economically left, and reading between the lines, it is very clear that the member from Florida is talking about dropping support for trans people (in a thinly veiled and very offensive way, I might add). They lost the working class because they don’t have a working class message, but they’re blaming the social policies for their loss.
There is an argument to be made that the way they are approaching socially progressive issues is hurting them. Kamala Harris telling the ACLU that she supports transition surgery for migrant detainees painted a very large target on her back for a policy that would have effected a very, very small number of people. That probably should have been a, “pick your battles,” moment for her.
If the argument was, “We’re not going to focus on trans people in sports for now, because a lot of people still don’t support that, but we’re going to talk about how Medicare for All helps everyone, and we’ll make sure that gender affirming care is covered,” OK, there’s a case to be made for that. But what they’re actually saying is, “Well, the economic policy is set by the donors, so there’s nothing we can do about that, but the trans stuff seems to be costing us more votes than it’s winning us, let’s drop that.” They’re trying to jettison the progressive groups they think aren’t helping them instead of building an agenda for progressives to rally behind.
Looked mine up… There’s part off the problem…
Compensation
Base salary $174,000
Net worth (2012) $54,251,531.50
They must never order avocado toast. /s
I love how they think the best way forward is to become the embodiment of the election strategy that just failed so spectacularly for Harris. Brilliant.
2016: “We don’t need to change! Look at our opponent, Trump!”
2020: “We’ll pretend to be M4A. But the main thing is beating Trump! Worry about change later!”
2024: “We lost, but we did everything right. Americans are the problem. Anyways, Trump is in his last term, so why change?”
Then make sure to tell the people actually voting for the chair to give the pushback they need to see that’s a mistake. Change is only going to come when we speak up
I’m more interested in mobilizing people outside of the electoral process at this point.
I will continue to vote but, on a national level, I no longer believe that lasting meaningful change will happen at the ballot box.
I have even less faith in the DNC ability to drive that change regardless of who is the chair. I think the best hope in that regard is an insurgent campaign a’la Bernie 2016/2020, and even then…idk.
There is power where there is people, the DNC seem to see this as an inconvenience. People are where I’m interested in spending my energy now.
Spending meaningful political capital on the DNC seems about as effective as that billion dollars in donations was for the Harris campaign this cycle.
Not discouraging anyone from doing it, as much as encouraging y’all to put the work in outside of the electoral process.
You do you.
And Clinton
Centrist Democrats are revolting.
As they begin to dissect their collapse in the presidential election, some Democratic National Committee members are concluding that the party is too “woke,” too focused on identity politics and too out of touch with broad stretches of America.
[…]
Or as one DNC member from Florida put it: “I don’t want to be the freak show party, like they have branded us. You know, when you’re a mom with three kids, and you live in middle America and you’re just not really into politics, and you see these ads that scare the bejesus out of you, you’re like, ‘I know Trump’s weird or whatever, but I would rather his weirdness that doesn’t affect my kids.’”
Aka the libs want to turn on trans people.
Point me to a moment during the last campaign that Kamala promoted identity politics. The very most important thing we should do is to nit listen to pundits.
Point me to a moment during the last campaign that Kamala promoted identity politics.
They can’t. But the alternative is admitting that moving to the right has failed, and centrists will never do that.
Middle America is about 20y behind the rest of us, this is the 90s gay marriage situation all over again. If the DNC actually wants to win elections they need to stop putting narrow identity groups front and center and run on their track record of positive economic policy for everyone or they’re going to lose every election for the next 20y (barring those won by voter backlash over catastrophic Republican admin fuck-ups.)
The DNC went too far down the identity politics rabbit hole and hasn’t quite realized that people in the identity demographics they want to Jenga together into 270 EC votes are willing to vote for the other side because they’re not happy with the DNC’s corporate profit economy.
The critical flaw in the DNC’s 20y old identity politics strategy is the assumption that these identity groups are monolithic. It’s a prejudiced as hell position to take that “these are the interests of all women” or “these are the interests of all black people” and yet that’s what the DNC has tried to do for the last three elections running. It should be painfully obvious at this point that this doesn’t work: women, PoC and Muslims voted for Trump in droves (or stayed home in protest) despite the front and center spending to bring those groups on side this election. Everyone’s tired of performative pandering and wants real economic and policy reform to help recover some of what was lost to the last couple of economic crashes and to inflation.
The meme is already stale but JFC they’ve learned nothing from the last two election losses - the Harris campaign was the 2016 Clinton campaign minus the fundraising dinners on Wall St.
Middle America is about 20y behind the rest of us, this is the 90s gay marriage situation all over again. If the DNC actually wants to win elections they need to stop putting narrow identity groups front and center
The RNC did that. Democratic candidates, in their trademark panicked cowardice, parroted right wing bigotry about boys in girls’ sports in their own campaign ads.
Most of the time, when Democrats mentioned trans people at all, they were making sure to let everyone know that they didn’t have their backs. Add that to breaking solidarity with Muslim voters, and you have a party that broadcasted that it was eager to throw vulnerable populations under the bus.
The conservative media machine has been splitting wedges between groups basically forever, it’s a convenient way to pit people against each other.
The DNC, in their infinite wisdom, took that political landscape and instead of bringing everyone together in a big tent decided to pick out specific identity groups to pander to and drove the original wedges clean through.
I’m almost convinced the DNC wants to lose at this point, they seem pretty content with the position of professional minority opposition - it’s a convenient place to be if you want to fundraise endlessly.
Hear fucking hear.
It’s ridiculous that these things even need to be pointed out. The DNC is packed full of highly educated high income people who have no fucking idea what the average person’s life is like and it shows in their priorities.
They need to drop their focus on identity pandering and neoliberal corporate blood sucking if they want any hope in hell of an EC win. All the slick consultants in the world won’t convince middle America to vote for more business as usual.
Aka the libs want to turn on trans people.
The DNC aren’t liberals. They’re center-right.
Both the DNC and RNC both operate within the framework of neoliberal ideology
SurprisePikachu.jpg
Surely no one here that y’all branded as tankies told you so.
Tankies will turn around and tell you Russia and China are something positive.
Best not to listen to broken clocks.
So, to solve the problem of the left not voting them, they are moving further to the right.
Yeah, America, I’m sorry to tell you but you are screwed. You have 4 years to either behead the dnc and turn it into a left wing party, or greate an actual left party.
Otherwise, you’re going to be eating fascism fo dinner until you implode.
Well for that to happen Nancy and Chuck have to kick the bucket first
The Left keeps not voting in hopes the Dems will come to them.
It’s not going to work next time either.
This is why I’m holding out hope that Sanders is working on the foundation of a new party. The DNC is clearly not the way forward, and doesn’t look like they’re going to pull themselves out of their death spiral.
Sanders is almost 90. You cant count on him to survive his term, much less create a new Party.
No 3rd party has won the Presidency in modern times.
If you want to see change, look at what’s actually worked in the past.
Back in the day, a guy named Jerry Falwell made himself a power in the GOP by a simple trick.
Both Parties, Dems and GOP have local clubs that make the small scale choices that keep things moving. They pick the county clerks and sheriffs. If the local GOP club had had twenty people at the meeting that chose the country clerk, Falwell’s folks would show up with fifty.
After a while, those county clerks were becoming Congresspeople.
Also consider running yourself too for those local down ballot races and or encouraging progressives you know to do the same!
Thanks for the links
So, to solve the problem of the left not voting them, they are moving further to the right.
I humbly disagree. This seems to be an overly simplified view.
The origins of “the far left” (as I understood it) was basically promoting heavy government involvement. For example, breaking up monopolies, many government subsidied programs for it’s people, which in turn needs higher taxes for it people (so the rich get taxed more, the poor get taxed less).
The origins of “the far right” was the polar opposite. No government involvement. Companies will do “what’s right” in order to compete for profit, less tax on it people, as there are fewer government processes/programs (because people have more personal wealth and can afford the programs that are relevant for them).
“the center” was in the middle of these two extremes. The understanding is that there needs to be some government involvement to prevent companies from going unchecked, not all people have equal chances in life resulting in some people needing more/less government assistance, ect. Yet, also acknowledging that the Stalin form of socialism fights against the basic human desire to “work to make their lives better” and companies (when left to their own devices) cannot be absolutely trusted to do “what’s right” for society.
The problem with the DNC and the 2024 election is that the media has perverted what “the far left” aka Democrats and “the far right” aka Republicans (and this has been going on for years).
Based on your line of “left vs right”, I’d argue that the Republican party is “close to” my definition of “the far right” (fascism aside). Yet, the Democratic Party is actually closer to “the far right” than they are “the far left”. I’d even go so far as to say, that the Democratic Party is far “right of center”.
So, yeah, I totally support moving the DNC towards the center, because it’ll (finally) make the Democratic Party closer to their “far left” ideals.
The origins of “the far left” (as I understood it) was basically promoting heavy government involvement. For example, breaking up monopolies, many government subsidied programs for it’s people, which in turn needs higher taxes for it people (so the rich get taxed more, the poor get taxed less).
People on the far left were actually interested in expropriation of private property and a more egalitarian distribution of those resources and decisionmaking. They also wanted actual democracy (as in power to the people) rather than Democracy™ where it’s only for a handful of the population who aren’t getting actively disenfranchised.
If you nationalize industries you get to use the profits directly, rather than messing around with taxes after the fact.
nationalizing industries will kill innovation and improvements and isnt necessary. you just need to structure the system to promote worker cooperatives instead of corporations. you get the best of both worlds.
The far right is also big government, just in a very different way.
If that were true then the people in this thread arguing for the DNC to move to the left would be agreeing with the DNC themselves saying they need to move to the center. But the DNC is disagreeing about moving to the left. Clearly they think they are further left of center than they want to be, e.g. their goals are to move to the right. This is the exact opposite of what you are saying will work. Yes, the Overton window has shifted, but the DNC wants to keep shifting it towards the right, and not have it shift back leftwards at all.
Frankly more people were excited about Tim Walz then Kamala Harris. Let’s get more MN politicians in there instead of people from the coasts. The focus on getting someone from the Midwest is the only good news I see. We need someone from Minnesota, Wisconsin or Michigan to lead the party from the inside. They might be fully progressive but understand how to organize and message to everyone. They can’t just float by on politics as usual
Yeah get a progressive Minnesotan.
They described him as a moderate in the article but I say we got a progressive agenda here in MN when we had our trifecta.
I was excited qbout Kamala back when she grilled Biden, but then she got tame, and was tampered down by the Biden admin.
Its Biden’s fault.
I really wish they would put out a survey for voters. Some way to collect data about what people actually want. Like a huge survey, let every registered dem fill it out.
If they’re talking about running some bland business-as-usual candidate then that’ll lose. People want change.
Based on their track record I have no faith in progress.
Here’s what I wrote to my delegate’s office:
I am writing to you because I am worried about the upcoming DNC chair elections, and I’m attempting to reach my local delegate. A recent piece in Politico seemed to suggest that many in the party believe that the takeaway from the 2024 election is that the party moved too far to the left, and that it became too involved in identity politics. As Joseph Paolino Jr., the DNC committeeman for Rhode Island, put it, “The progressive wing of the party has to recognize — we all have to recognize — the country’s not progressive, and not to the far left or the far right. They’re in the middle."
Of course, the idea that the Democratic Party has gone too far left is absurd. This is the party that passed NAFTA. This is the party that ended Glass-Steagall. This is the party that added work requirements to Welfare. This is the party that prioritizesd banks over homeowners during the subprime mortgage crisis. This is the party that adopted and passed the Heritage Foundation’s healthcare plan. On paper, this is a center-right party.
However, I believe it is true that this party has focused too much on identity politics, and we need to place that blame where it squarely belongs: on the center. It was centrist Democrats who, in the absence of any coherent economic message, increasingly adopted the language of identity politics. It was the center who used identity politics as a cudgel, not only against their right-wing opponents, but also those on the left who questioned the party’s priorities. It was Hillary Clinton (who no serious person would describe as, “far-left”) who said:
"If we broke up the big banks tomorrow…would that end racism? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community? Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?”
If the party were to decide that it was going to spend less time on identity politics and more time on a serious progressive platform, that would make sense. Polling indicates that many progressive policies, even those considered, “far-left,” like higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, a higher minimum wage, Medicare for All, and even Universal Basic Income, all command widespread support from across the electorate. They are certainly more popular than the crypto-based, “economic opportunity,” platform pitched by Mark Cuban this year.
However, based on what I have read from Politico, it does not seem like the party is interested in a progressive economic message. It seems that many in the party are simply concerned with abandoning the aspects of identity politics that they believe are unpopular. One Florida member made some offensive and thinly veiled attacks on the trans community, saying that he didn’t want to be a member of the, “freak show party.” It appears that, instead of reflecting on how the Democrats’ centrist economic policies have failed the working class, many members would like to abandon vulnerable members of the party that they believe are no longer politically useful.
The Democrats don’t need to start jettisoning demographic groups, they need a progressive platform that can bring the party together. They need to move to the left economically, not to the right socially. However, if the party does decide to stop protecting the most vulnerable Americans in the interest of being more, “centerist,” there is an upside; voters will finally be able to abandon the Democratic Party without harming marginalized groups.
You can vote for whomever you wish but they will continue to serve the rich donor class, as usual.
So either we are to believe they’ve learned nothing and will continue to alienate their base, while remaining inept fools on the international stage, OR their idea of rebuilding a carbon copy of the previous failures is by design.
A centrist DNC is a loser. A center-right DNC is a loser. The DNC will never beat the Republicans at their own game, so either these strategists are the densest people on the planet, or they are the mouthpieces of Controlled Opposition, exactly as expected.
There is no duality in which savvy, intelligent political players arrive at “Centrism wins,” without some inherent greasy, malfeasant ulterior motives.
It’s difficult to even pretend that they are serious in this endeavor; their every action and utterance is an admission of planned incompetence.
There is no duality in which savvy, intelligent political players arrive at “Centrism wins,”
Obama and Clinton were centrists. They won.
Clinton won in 1993. The late 1900s. 30+ years ago.
Obama’s entire campaign was on Hope for Change. And he’s the first black President ever.
Are you really trying to argue that these are equivalences?
Clinton and Obama are still alive today, they are still centrist, and they are still extremely popular.
If Trump got his way and was allowed to run for a third term in 2028, is there any doubt that Obama could defeat him?
Obama proved himself a centrist, but he ran as a progressive. That’s the crucial difference.
He ran as someone who would bring together Blue America and Red America in the spirit of bipartisanship.
From the beginning, he intentionally reached out to Republicans.
We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states and, yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the red states.
His 2008 acceptance speech at the DNC mentions “Republicans” five times, and never in a disparaging manner. It does not mention labor unions even once.
Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and independents across this great land — enough! This moment — this election — is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive.
The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans — Democrats and Republicans — have built, and we are here to restore that legacy.
I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a red America or a blue America – they have served the United States of America.
The challenges we face require tough choices, and Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past.
And I’ve seen it in this campaign. In the young people who voted for the first time, and in those who got involved again after a very long time. In the Republicans who never thought they’d pick up a Democratic ballot, but did.
He ran as someone who would bring together Blue America and Red America in the spirit of bipartisanship.
I really liked Obama in 2008, but his Presidency was unbelievably disappointing and hope crushing. He didn’t end the wars or give us universal healthcare, he didn’t tax the rich or give us the right to unionize without fearing for our jobs… also, Republicans hated Obama so much that the party elected Trump in 2016! So Obama’s “lie about being a progressive then pivot to centrist bipartisan bullshit” was absolutely a colossal failure.
You should reread his speeches. He didn’t lie about being a progressive. He was openly a centrist.
He never promised single-payer health care or a public option. He promised to stop insurance companies from excluding people with preexisting conditions, which he did.
He never promised to end all the wars. He promised to withdraw troops from Iraq and send more troops to Afghanistan, which he did.
And he didn’t say anything at all about taxing the rich or helping unions.
Is abolishing the DNC an option? Otherwise, we’re wasting valuable time.
I remain convinced that any effective resistance to Trump and MAGA will have to come from outside the Democratic Party.
I’m sure that the same people who couldn’t deliver Bernie Sanders an overwhelming win in 2020 can suddenly become savvy pols who can just put together a national third party.
If you want action, do what AOC and the others in her squad did. Work inside the Dem party.
Take a lesson from the right. Back in the 1970s Jerry Falwell decided to take control of the GOP. He did it from the ground up. If the local GOP club had had twenty people show up to the last meeting to pick the next county clerk, Falwell’s people would show up with fifty people. Soon those county clerks and sheriffs were becoming Congresspeople and Senators.
Politics is a game and the left sucks at playing it.
Please spread, cross post, share, whatever; wherever you can. People should have input into the democratic policy platform, but they’re so brazen as to say the “center is where we need to be”.
These people, these few hundred people, are a big problem with the democratic party.
We need to take the narrative back from centrists. It can be done by telling the DNC what to do, not the other way around.
Does the article tell us how to cast a vote? I skimmed it and couldn’t find a link to where I could at least send an email.
It’s not voted on directly, you are going to want to talk to your state’s party chair to try to convince them vote on the type of chair like you would a congress person on a vote for something. In the body of the post, you can find how to find your state’s party chair
Here’s the table copied over:
State Chair | State Chair Alabama Randy Kelley | Montana Robyn Driscoll Alaska Mike Wenstrup | Nebraska Jane Kleeb American Samoa Patrick Ti’a Reid[15] | Nevada Daniele Monroe-Moreno Arizona Yolanda Bejarano | New Hampshire Raymond Buckley Arkansas Grant Tennille | New Jersey LeRoy J. Jones, Jr. California Rusty Hicks | New Mexico Jessica Velasquez Colorado Shad Murib | New York Jay Jacobs Connecticut Nancy DiNardo | North Carolina Anderson Clayton Delaware Elizabeth D. Maron | North Dakota Adam Goldwyn District of Columbia Charles Wilson | Ohio Liz Walters Florida Nikki Fried | Oklahoma Alicia Andrews Georgia Nikema Williams | Oregon Rosa Colquitt Guam Anthony Babauta[16] | Pennsylvania Sharif Street Hawaii Derek Turbin | Puerto Rico Charles Rodriguez Idaho Lauren Necochea[17] | Rhode Island Liz Beretta-Perik Illinois Elizabeth Hernandez | South Carolina Christale Spain Indiana Mike Schmuhl | South Dakota Shane Merrill Iowa Rita Hart | Tennessee Hendrell Remus Kansas Jeanna Repass | Texas Gilberto Hinojosa Kentucky Colmon Elridge | U.S. Virgin Islands Carol M. Burke[18] Louisiana Randal Gaines | Utah Diane Lewis Maine Bev Uhlenhake | Vermont David Glidden Maryland Ken Ulman | Virginia Susan Swecker Massachusetts Steve Kerrigan | Washington Shasti Conrad Michigan Lavora Barnes | West Virginia Mike Pushkin Minnesota Ken Martin | Wisconsin Ben Wikler Mississippi Cheikh Taylor | Wyoming Joe Barbuto Missouri Russ Carnahan | Democrats Abroad Martha McDevitt-Pugh Can’t find a way to contact CA guy, only a way to give him $
chair@cadem.org or also rusty@cadem.org seemed to be listed on various California Democratic Party documents for him
If anyone else is having any issues finding the contact emails, reply to me with a state and I can try to help you find it!
Texas’ Hinojosa, when asked about Democrats’ willingness to stand for trans rights, said the only part out loud: “I think what the Democratic Party has to realize is that there’s some things that we can support and some things that we cannot. And when we’re pressed upon to take votes of these kinds that we need to be cognizant of the long term consequences of these kinds of votes.”
He has since announced that he will be resigning effective March 2025, which is after the party elects a new chair. He has no incentive to listen. Not that he ever did. At least he’s leaving. Good fucking riddance. It’s a shame it didn’t happen years ago, but he will not stand with trans people, and he absolutely will not move to the left under any circumstances.
I’m still going to do my bit and contact his office, but I harbor no illusions about him. What other avenues do Texans have?
Reading more about DNC chair elections, the state party’s vice chair usually also votes for chair too (among others). For Texas, that’s Shay Wyrick-Cathey (shay@txdemocrats.org)
For what it’s worth it looks like his comments about trans people are what produced a large push to get the Texas Democratic party chair to step down. He said he was stepping down the day after he gave an apology
Reading more about DNC chair elections, the state party’s vice chair usually also votes for chair too (among others). For Texas, that’s Shay Wyrick-Cathey (shay@txdemocrats.org)
Thank you. This is useful information.
It’s not like that boat will be tallied or even looked at, If you don’t have millions of bucks to give them, you don’t have a voice in government.
They have their big donors who give them their marching orders. They really don’t care if they win or not, so long as they are getting paid.
They lost the election by running an essentially republican candidate. Fingers crossed for a progressive chair.
Fingers crossed for a progressive chair.
“The best we can do is Debbie Wasserman Schultz.” -DNC
