Excellent post Peter! One of your thoughts truly capsulizes the Democratic Party’s failure -
“It's a zero-sum worldview that's disconnected from reality, but it makes wealthy urban elites and privileged young people feel good about themselves while giving them an excuse to look down on everyone else, so it persists.”
This is a relatively small group of self appointed superiors who have become wealthy and now want the power to tell everyone else how to live. The woke ideology is repulsive to normal people and until the leadership of the Dem Party realizes their issue, admits their mistake and strips power from those who created the problem, there will be continued shrinkage of the party.
Either power, money or both are almost always at the core of political issues and this one has both in spades. It is rare for the powerful to willingly give up their power and it is also rare for those who think they’re the smartest people on earth to admit an error. The most powerful contingent in the Dem Party seems to be the AWFLs (affluent, white, female leftists). Many are single and those who aren’t typically have few offspring, leading me to conclude that their shrinkage will continue until the Dems become irrelevant in most parts of the county. It can’t happen soon enough.
The Left is indeed a small segment. Its success is based on being loud, bullying, and fear-leveraging. People have stopped being afraid, though, and that's an existential threat to them.
You are so on-target when you describe the Democrat message as "zero sum". This has always been the Marxist way. A politics of envy. Economics is limited to "just what there is today". The same with political power. Or technology. Or health care. Society's capacity to provide is always "full" and the job at hand is to divide up what is there - "fairly". With *us* in charge!
Trump offers the alternative - genuine growth. Unmistakable growth. Opportunity for all, regardless of whatever "ism" might exist. By building, innovating and growing, not taking from others. Build your own pile, for yourself, your loved ones and to help others as you see fit. This is the American dream and always has been.
Unfortunately, not all his policies support that. Deregulation, absolutely. Sane energy policy, absolutely. But, it's clear to me that he sees trade as zero-sum, and that's a giant mistake. It's the likeliest thing to derail the GOP come the mid-terms, and to avoid that he needs to get over it.
They won’t change ways or message to win back men’s votes. They can’t do so without alienating a probably equal but opposite set of demographics. Simply stated, they’ve embraced a message that appeals to something less than 50% of the general electorate. The math just doesn’t work. They’ve boxed themselves into a corner, and it’s delicious.
The only way out is to shift to more general moderation on a number of issues. So you lose the wokest voters, but you regain some of the saner moderates. Victory lies in the middle.
It’s a lesson the Republicans would do well to heed themselves.
It really is a massive civil war inside the party. The Left has, beginning with Obama, done massive harm to the party, but its influence remains outsize and its all-or-nothing nature means that the moderate majority inside the party is left with the very difficult calculus of trying to figure if losing the Left votes can be recouped by regaining moderate votes.
Not to mention the endless attacks the Left will aim at the Dems in the wake of such a rift.
"we need to deliver our message better" This is straight out of Obama’s playbook! It has always been his belief that we just don’t understand what he’s saying and he needs to frame it better. His arrogance knows no bounds!
Let’s hope the Dems continue to dither … maybe for a full generation! 😁👍
Excellent post Peter! One of your thoughts truly capsulizes the Democratic Party’s failure -
“It's a zero-sum worldview that's disconnected from reality, but it makes wealthy urban elites and privileged young people feel good about themselves while giving them an excuse to look down on everyone else, so it persists.”
This is a relatively small group of self appointed superiors who have become wealthy and now want the power to tell everyone else how to live. The woke ideology is repulsive to normal people and until the leadership of the Dem Party realizes their issue, admits their mistake and strips power from those who created the problem, there will be continued shrinkage of the party.
Either power, money or both are almost always at the core of political issues and this one has both in spades. It is rare for the powerful to willingly give up their power and it is also rare for those who think they’re the smartest people on earth to admit an error. The most powerful contingent in the Dem Party seems to be the AWFLs (affluent, white, female leftists). Many are single and those who aren’t typically have few offspring, leading me to conclude that their shrinkage will continue until the Dems become irrelevant in most parts of the county. It can’t happen soon enough.
The Left is indeed a small segment. Its success is based on being loud, bullying, and fear-leveraging. People have stopped being afraid, though, and that's an existential threat to them.
You are so on-target when you describe the Democrat message as "zero sum". This has always been the Marxist way. A politics of envy. Economics is limited to "just what there is today". The same with political power. Or technology. Or health care. Society's capacity to provide is always "full" and the job at hand is to divide up what is there - "fairly". With *us* in charge!
Trump offers the alternative - genuine growth. Unmistakable growth. Opportunity for all, regardless of whatever "ism" might exist. By building, innovating and growing, not taking from others. Build your own pile, for yourself, your loved ones and to help others as you see fit. This is the American dream and always has been.
Unfortunately, not all his policies support that. Deregulation, absolutely. Sane energy policy, absolutely. But, it's clear to me that he sees trade as zero-sum, and that's a giant mistake. It's the likeliest thing to derail the GOP come the mid-terms, and to avoid that he needs to get over it.
They won’t change ways or message to win back men’s votes. They can’t do so without alienating a probably equal but opposite set of demographics. Simply stated, they’ve embraced a message that appeals to something less than 50% of the general electorate. The math just doesn’t work. They’ve boxed themselves into a corner, and it’s delicious.
The only way out is to shift to more general moderation on a number of issues. So you lose the wokest voters, but you regain some of the saner moderates. Victory lies in the middle.
It’s a lesson the Republicans would do well to heed themselves.
It really is a massive civil war inside the party. The Left has, beginning with Obama, done massive harm to the party, but its influence remains outsize and its all-or-nothing nature means that the moderate majority inside the party is left with the very difficult calculus of trying to figure if losing the Left votes can be recouped by regaining moderate votes.
Not to mention the endless attacks the Left will aim at the Dems in the wake of such a rift.
I don't think they have the stomach for it.
Perfect description: ‘…only Orwell's doublethink can explain how their heads don't explode.‘
If only the Dems would run Mare Pete and AOC in 2028 we could finally be free of this!
"we need to deliver our message better" This is straight out of Obama’s playbook! It has always been his belief that we just don’t understand what he’s saying and he needs to frame it better. His arrogance knows no bounds!