I'm really sympathetic to the idea that there might have been some quality of "screwed" baked into the Harris campaign when she took over in July, and I was optimistic that the actual policy record of the Biden Administration vs. the actual history of.... uh whatever TrumpWorld is, would dawn on people as being a no-brainer.
The reason I believed that is because I'm a hardcore Democratic Party schmuck. I've had a party preference since I was 18. The party of Rush Limbaugh and Phyllis Schlafly vs. the party of ::waves hands in the direction of not entire shithead bigots::?
You've got to be kidding me.
But here's what I noticed--I truly think that everyone who was going to cross over from the GOP to vote on principle for Harris because Trump was a horrowshow--appeared in a digital ad online some time during the campaign and there wasn't a a goddamn other one. It was great to be appreciative to former Rep. Liz Cheney--but the reason her party did her the way they did is because they could.
If someone was comfy in the party of Limbaugh and Schlafly, it would take a lot to embrace the actual mess that is the actual Democratic Party., our political figures (Not AOC! Not San Fransisco liberal Nancy Pelosi!), and find themselves on the same side as our base. (You know: welfare queens, flaming homos, childless cat ladies, the Black Panthers and dope-smoking commies--don't look at me like that--you know I love you. But some conservatives were raised to HATE YOUR ASS AND MINE.).
It would take more than a "Sistah Souljah" moment to turn that basic difference around--and for that matter--that happened over a quarter of a century ago. There's a pool of young folks voting now who don't really know any of the names I just mentioned
I'm not just kind of a Democratic Party schmuck--I'm an old...etc.
But the problem isn't "getting a Joe Rogan" or listening to Pod Save America. I appreciate what groups like The Lincoln Project "seem" to be doing and those ads are cool when I watch them (but I'm me--an old Democratic Party schmuck)--but let's face it: we are not the GOP lite, and it hurts us to try to be, because if the GOP has doubled down on White, Christian, and male ID politics and resentment, that audience is in a harder mental space to reach during any campaign. Those folks are already conditioned 24/7. Not by podcasts, talk radio and the like--in their community. In the churches and so on.
I get that it's football-fucking tedious to argue with "Bernie would have won" folks, but you have to admit, it gets harder for us to deliver a message that the party can safeguard abortion rights and will less painfully resolve the situation in Gaza when some part of our base already feels let down and now our candidate is standing next to Republicans and trying to win their vote.
It's a mixed signal, and the big message is--people don't have time for that ambiguity. And "social media isn't real life"--the Great Turned-Off folks aren't necessarily the trolly "I'll vote for Jill Stein instead!" folks in the Twitter mentions.
They are the people who turned out in 2018. It wasn't the DNC that did that--it was rage against the Trump machine.
It isn't about building a campaign (by election year--it's too late) or even rallying around some kind of single media idea--the conservative side has created an entire environment. It looks like a shitty, incestuous howling mad echo chamber TO ME, but then again.... etc.
We need a truly liberal/left coalition that stops being apologetically Democratic. Their side isn't out here apologizing for SHIT.
And yet it seems historically like we're the party the comes in and has to fix shit the GOP breaks. Why don't we act like it? You can't blame individuals for that--sure, it's the mainstream media, etc. It's the already gerry-mandered this, it's the unfair money politics that. It's a whole counter culture to what they've got. Because a culture war was what THEY wanted.
And now we have to be in it.
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