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Posted
1 hour ago, Surly Bevo said:

Lotta people showed up to Kamala rallies also.....so we'll see.

Kamala rallies were all weeks before a major election. These are happening nowhere near an election.

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Posted
2 hours ago, chainsaw said:

Kamala rallies were all weeks before a major election. These are happening nowhere near an election.

And?  There have been lots of election post mortems that show that the people who pay attention to government and politics most were in support of Harris and the Ds....those people are still paying attention to government and politics and showing up while the masses eat their WWE soundbites behind their computer screen

 

Before we get into why Democrats lost the 2024 election, let’s talk about how they lost it: Which voting blocs shifted the furthest right over the past four years?

The most important thing is that we saw incredible polarization on political engagement itself. There’s a bunch of different ways to measure this: There’s how many elections you vote in, or how important politics is to your identity. There’s how closely you follow the news. But across all of these, there’s a consistent story: The most engaged people swung toward Democrats between 2020 and 2024, despite the fact that Democrats did worse overall.

Meanwhile, people who are the least politically engaged swung enormously against Democrats. They’re a group that Biden either narrowly won or narrowly lost four years ago. But this time, they voted for Trump by double digits.

And I think this is just analytically important. People have a lot of complaints about how the mainstream media covered things. But I think it’s important to note that the people who watch the news the most actually became more Democratic. And the problem was basically this large group of people who really don’t follow the news at all becoming more conservative.

https://www.vox.com/politics/403364/tik-tok-young-voters-2024-election-democrats-david-shor

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Posted
3 hours ago, Surly Bevo said:

And?  There have been lots of election post mortems that show that the people who pay attention to government and politics most were in support of Harris and the Ds....those people are still paying attention to government and politics and showing up while the masses eat their WWE soundbites behind their computer screen

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Posted
27 minutes ago, Firemans4Horn said:

Dems finding a tiny bit of spine? Need about 300 other elected reps up and down the board to make the same demand (and expand it to the other morons on the text thread). 
 

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Now moar.  And louder.  And meaner.  

 

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Posted
7 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:

200w.gif?cid=6c09b9522zx99et6trm7axwhgzb

Now moar.  And louder.  And meaner.  

 

They have to be relentless.  They have to be everywhere, saying this over and over again.  They have to say hot words, like "treason" and "risking the lives of our brave warfighters."  The exact same words, over and over, so they drown out everything else.  

In a world where all that matters is noise....be a fucking heavy metal concert.

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Posted

The brazen lies in the last 24 hours from Hegseth, Gabbard, Waltz, Ratcliffe, etc. have opened a door of opportunity. They all believe they are untouchable. They are fucking daring somebody to do something about it. The battle has been presented, time to sack up and go to war. 

 

 

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Posted
4 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

The brazen lies in the last 24 hours from Hegseth, Gabbard, Waltz, Ratcliffe, etc. have opened a door of opportunity. They all believe they are untouchable. They are fucking daring somebody to do something about it. The battle has been presented, time to sack up and go to war. 

 

 

This too.  Call them what they are.  "The Secretary of Defense responded to evidence of his treason and utter disregard for our brave warfighters with lies.  Our fighting men and women deserve better.  The ones who sacrificed their lives and rest in Arlington deserve better.  If the SECDEF doesn't resign immediately, he'll end up sending more brave Americans to be buried at Arlington, killed by his mistakes and disregard for the truth."

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Posted
1 minute ago, Jive Turkey said:

Jasmine Crockett got the memo. She knows the rules of the game have changed. She has MAGA in a tizzy over this. Good. She’s speaking a language MAGA understands  There’s video out there.

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Yep.  Be mean.  BE FUCKING MEAN.  Mean gets attention.  Attention is the sole commodity of value in the modern political economy.  Seize it, and don't ever let it go.

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Posted
Jasmine Crockett got the memo. She knows the rules of the game have changed. She has MAGA in a tizzy over this. Good. She’s speaking a language MAGA understands  There’s video out there.
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She’s my rep and I’m proud of it.

On a local Dallas page they were saying not to forget that the Republicans called him “hot wheels” first. Don’t know if it’s true, but it seems truthy. Which works in the current environment.
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Posted
On 3/20/2025 at 1:11 PM, turtlepond said:

Nope, citizens that don't line up with your politics don't want people to suffer.  You're just being obtuse.  They're tired of the can being kicked down the road, again, and hoping that something can be done to lessen the blow when the bill is due.  You seem to be rather easily swayed by the MSM talking points, yourself, I think. MSNBC/FOX NEWS, they're on opposite ends of the same rope, meant to stir up frenzies.  A majority of the population doesn't give a flying fuck about what they talk about and browbeat.  That's the part of the population you're painting with a firehose, not just a broad brush.

 

Bullshit. Your denial flies in face of reality.

https://www.surlyhorns.com/board/topic/38923-the-leopards-eating-faces-and-unlubed-dildo-of-consequences-thread/#comments

The common denominator in the linked thread is that Republicans wanted the regime to hurt the others, not them.

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Posted

you can tell she thought about it right before she pulled the trigger.  she knew there would be blowback from the MAGA Twitterverse. but she said fuck it.

 

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Posted

Ossoff should get some more mention of bigger things in the future. He’s white, young, straight, serious, fucking smart and not an asshole.  Also from a Southern state.  

 

 

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Posted
2 minutes ago, tx ind said:

Ossoff should get some more mention of bigger things in the future. He’s white, young, straight, serious, fucking smart and not an asshole.  Also from a Southern state.  

 

 

I mean they have to go all in on this. This is it, you can gut the majority of his shitty cabinet right here right now. I think CIA guy realizes how fucked he is and is throwing a hail Mary, as fucking shitty as Tulsi Gabbard is, is she the only one that spoke to a lawyer before this hearing? Lol

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Posted
1 hour ago, immamac said:

I mean they have to go all in on this. This is it, you can gut the majority of his shitty cabinet right here right now. I think CIA guy realizes how fucked he is and is throwing a hail Mary, as fucking shitty as Tulsi Gabbard is, is she the only one that spoke to a lawyer before this hearing? Lol

Agreed. This is THE opportunity and the Democrats need to draw blood. 

 

 

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Posted
5 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Agreed. This is THE opportunity and the Democrats need to draw blood. 

 

 

Draw blood?  No.  These fuckers need to slash so many goddamned throats that the blood-soaked floor becomes too slick to walk on any more.  Quit.  Playing.  Nice.  The Republic is under full-frontal assault by literal fucking murderous fascists.  Use every tool in your disposal, ethics and norms not only be damned, but be damned to hell.

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Posted
5 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Draw blood?  No.  These fuckers need to slash so many goddamned throats that the blood-soaked floor becomes too slick to walk on any more.  Quit.  Playing.  Nice.  The Republic is under full-frontal assault by literal fucking murderous fascists.  Use every tool in your disposal, ethics and norms not only be damned, but be damned to hell.

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Posted
16 hours ago, Jive Turkey said:

you can tell she thought about it right before she pulled the trigger.  she knew there would be blowback from the MAGA Twitterverse. but she said fuck it.

 

I'm torn on if she should own it more or pretend she didn't mean it to be referencing the wheelchair. I read she was walking it back and pretending she wasn't talking about him being in a wheelchair. But whatever, it's still awesome and funny because we know what she really meant because saying "hot wheels" was about the wheels of planes, trains and automobiles is such a stretch she's basically "winking" at us.

Quote

"I was not thinking about the governor’s condition…I was thinking about the planes, trains, and automobiles he used to transfer migrants to communities run by Black mayors and stoke tensions and fear among the most vulnerable. Literally the next line I said was that he was a Hot A** Mess referencing his terrible policies. NEVER at any time did I reference his condition. So, now, I am even more appalled that the people that unequivocally support Trump, who is known for racially insensitive nicknames & mocking the uniquely abled are outraged. Keep this energy up for all people, not just your political adversaries. Finally, this is yet another distraction. Instead of obsessing & hanging on my every word, maybe my political foes should focus on the work of the people that elected us to better their lives."

 

Posted
12 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

I'm torn on if she should own it more or pretend she didn't mean it to be referencing the wheelchair. I read she was walking it back and pretending she wasn't talking about him being in a wheelchair. But whatever, it's still awesome and funny because we know what she really meant because saying "hot wheels" was about the wheels of planes, trains and automobiles is such a stretch she's basically "winking" at us.

 

That’s just smart pivoting. Come at me with my own statement? Watch as I brush you off and get some good shit out there in my soundbite. Far from walking it back, that was a politico mini-clinic. 

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Posted
3 hours ago, tx ind said:

Ossoff should get some more mention of bigger things in the future. He’s white, young, straight, serious, fucking smart and not an asshole.  Also from a Southern state.  

 

 

I'd like to think if I was caught with my pants down, and my hair getting mussed, I'd go full Gen. Buck Turgidson - chew gum hard, scowl.

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Posted

If democrats can't run successfully on what is happening right now, then I'm not sure they ever will again. "We want to be the party of the working class again". Well, we're currently being stripped for parts by republicans, with the broken shells of what's left sold off to billionaires. I might lead with that.

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Posted

We lost cause Americans wanted change and running the semi-coherent sitting president, then doing a last-minute bait-and-switch with the current VP sent a message louder than any words or speech that there would not be change. 

Brett Stevens wrote this editorial in the NY Times. I agree with all of it.

"First, they should admit that their party mishandled Mr. Biden’s age. Leading Democrats insisted that he had mental acuity for a second term when most Americans believed otherwise. Party leaders even attempted to shout down anybody who raised concerns, before reversing course and pushing Mr. Biden out of the race. Already, many voters believe that Democrats refuse to admit uncomfortable truths on some subjects, including crime, illegal immigration, inflation and Covid lockdowns. Mr. Biden’s age became a glaring example. Acknowledging as much may be backward looking, but it would send an important signal.

Second, Democrats should recognize that the party moved too far left on social issues after Barack Obama left office in 2017. The old video clips of Ms. Harris that the Trump campaign gleefully replayed last year — on decriminalizing the border and government-funded gender-transition surgery for prisoners — highlighted the problem. Yes, she tried to abandon these stances before the election, but she never spoke forthrightly to voters and acknowledged she had changed her position.

Even today, the party remains too focused on personal identity and on Americans’ differences — by race, gender, sexuality and religion — rather than our shared values.

Third, the party has to offer new ideas. When Democrats emerged from the wilderness in the past, they often did so with fresh ideas. They updated the proud Democratic tradition of improving life for all Americans. Bill Clinton remade the party in the early 1990s and spoke of “putting people first.” In 2008, Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton and John Edwards offered exciting plans to improve health care, reduce inequality and slow climate change. These candidates provided intellectual leadership."

We need fresh leadership, lose the identity politics crap, and run people who can win.  

  

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

"The Democrats need to stop doing what the Republicans disingenuously accuse them of doing."

Well said, haha, but unfortunately, we keep serving up softball pitches to the Republicans by allowing peripheral morons to have too much influence on the platform and promoting causes that normal people just don't care about.

Posted
3 minutes ago, TreatyOak said:

Well said, haha, but unfortunately, we keep serving up softball pitches to the Republicans by allowing peripheral morons to have too much influence on the platform and promoting causes that normal people just don't care about.

Yes, dumbfucks like Brett Stevens want to hold Democrats accountable while Trump burns everything to the ground with zero pushback. 

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Posted
16 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

"The Democrats need to stop doing what the Republicans disingenuously accuse them of doing."

Just because there is a double standard doesn't mean that Dems haven't made big miscalculations on the timing and method of embracing "identity" issues.

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Yes, dumbfucks like Brett Stevens want to hold Democrats accountable while Trump burns everything to the ground with zero pushback. 

Two things can be true. Trump is a facism-loving monster and the Democrats ran the most inept campaign since Walter Mondale. And if Democrats (of which I count myself one) want to even have a glimmer of a chance moving forward, they had better hold themselves accountable and get new leadership. 

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Posted (edited)
13 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Yes, dumbfucks like Brett Stevens want to hold Democrats accountable while Trump burns everything to the ground with zero pushback. 

I think we should hold Dems accountable for strategy and marketing.  You can do that while still supporting Dem policies.

I was in DC this weekend, and we were driving into a parking garage and there was a sign about going to a "Trans Visibility March".  (The pasta station in Union Market at NoMa was pretty good.)  

Politically, sometimes it's good for the march, sometimes not.  Politically, sometimes it is the hot issue of the day, and sometimes it's not.

Edited by The Original Greaser Bob
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Posted
3 minutes ago, The Original Greaser Bob said:

I think we should hold Dems accountable for strategy and marketing.  You can do that while still supporting Dem policies..

100% agree. 

Posted (edited)
35 minutes ago, TreatyOak said:

We lost cause Americans wanted change and running the semi-coherent sitting president, then doing a last-minute bait-and-switch with the current VP sent a message louder than any words or speech that there would not be change. 

Brett Stevens wrote this editorial in the NY Times. I agree with all of it.

"First, they should admit that their party mishandled Mr. Biden’s age. Leading Democrats insisted that he had mental acuity for a second term when most Americans believed otherwise. Party leaders even attempted to shout down anybody who raised concerns, before reversing course and pushing Mr. Biden out of the race. Already, many voters believe that Democrats refuse to admit uncomfortable truths on some subjects, including crime, illegal immigration, inflation and Covid lockdowns. Mr. Biden’s age became a glaring example. Acknowledging as much may be backward looking, but it would send an important signal.

Second, Democrats should recognize that the party moved too far left on social issues after Barack Obama left office in 2017. The old video clips of Ms. Harris that the Trump campaign gleefully replayed last year — on decriminalizing the border and government-funded gender-transition surgery for prisoners — highlighted the problem. Yes, she tried to abandon these stances before the election, but she never spoke forthrightly to voters and acknowledged she had changed her position.

Even today, the party remains too focused on personal identity and on Americans’ differences — by race, gender, sexuality and religion — rather than our shared values.

Third, the party has to offer new ideas. When Democrats emerged from the wilderness in the past, they often did so with fresh ideas. They updated the proud Democratic tradition of improving life for all Americans. Bill Clinton remade the party in the early 1990s and spoke of “putting people first.” In 2008, Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton and John Edwards offered exciting plans to improve health care, reduce inequality and slow climate change. These candidates provided intellectual leadership."

We need fresh leadership, lose the identity politics crap, and run people who can win.  

  

I'm so sick of this shit. Dems run a centrist platform every fucking time and every fucking time some fucking Republicans go "well I just couldn't vote Dem because they ran on a radical leftist platform and they need to come back to the center" and every fucking time literally millions of people buy that bullshit and regurgitate it online.  If you're not paying any attention to what candidates are saying or doing, stop offering uninformed opinions about what they need to fucking do. 

Jesus christ, imagine reading Bret Stephens and thinking he's offered anything of value. That's literally the opposite of his job. 

Edited by wildcat09
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Posted
3 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

I'm so sick of this shit. Dems run a centrist platform every fucking time and every fucking time some fucking Republicans go "well I just couldn't vote Dem because they ran on a radical leftist platform and they need to come back to the center" and every fucking time literally millions of people buy that bullshit and regurgitate it online.  If you're not paying any attention to what candidates are saying or doing, stop offering uninformed opinions about what they need to fucking do. 

Jesus christ, imagine reading Bret Stephens and thinking he's offered anything of value. That's literally the opposite of his job. 

So you're happy with the results?

I may not know much about politics, but I do know a lot about marketing. Voters wanted change and we offered up the same people, same ideas, etc. It's not that hard. 
And identity politics have polluted the Democratic platform to the point that they hand easy victories to the Republicans.

Posted

Of course I'm not fucking happy with the results. I'm saying that the shitty results are the results of your proposed solution because the campaign strategists that run political campaigns for Democrats have been doing what you propose since fucking 1992.

Posted
8 minutes ago, TreatyOak said:

And identity politics have polluted the Democratic platform to the point that they hand easy victories to the Republicans.

Identity politics are just a way to appear leftwing while not offending their big money donors. It isn't just that identity politics is there, it is that it isn't even authentic. They Democrats don't believe in it really. The Republicans DO enthusiastically embrace identity politics and that seems to work for them.

And outside of the most blue districts they have been downplaying it for decades anyway, choosing to focus on how bad the Republicans are and the barbarians are at the gates and they are the last line of defense and blah blah. So they are the party that defends the status quo when they are not doing the identity politics thing which...has its own problems.

Most of the sorts of issues that I think would make the Democrats popular and an actual party just aren't feasible politically because it goes against their donors, even if it would be popular among their voters. So what to do? I don't know. If I knew the answer to that I wouldn't be sitting here on Surly.

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Posted
4 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Of course I'm not fucking happy with the results. I'm saying that the shitty results are the results of your proposed solution because the campaign strategists that run political campaigns for Democrats have been doing what you propose since fucking 1992.

So your solution is to tack left?

I reluctantly read that same Brett Stephens op-Ed I the Times, even though I know better, because it had a sexy headline, and he did his usually great job of assuming his opinion is representative of larger group than an elite east coast/mexican Jew boarding school kid. 
 

All that said, he’s mostly right in the diagnosis if always wrong about the solution (his solution is always that the Dems should be more like, well, Brett himself).  
 

But I don’t disagree that the Dems need to re-organize around a center that has abandoned them.  

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Posted
7 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Of course I'm not fucking happy with the results. I'm saying that the shitty results are the results of your proposed solution because the campaign strategists that run political campaigns for Democrats have been doing what you propose since fucking 1992.

I disagree.

We won in 2020 by representing change. 

We lost in 2024 by defending the status quo when voters wanted change. 

And we set up ourselves for failure in 2016 and 2024 by allowing identify politics to lead over issues people actually care about. 

Posted

Biden should have signed an EO to lock down the border. Easy win.

He also should have distanced himself from the trans in sports and bathroom issue. It is a losing proposition for the majority of the country. These are two own goals. 
 

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Posted
2 minutes ago, TreatyOak said:

issues people actually care about.

I can’t recall which of the 100 podcasts I’ve been listening to had an interview with Colorado governor Jared Polis on, but his solution is a version of “constantly look for ways to make government better and make it cheaper.”  
 

Obviously every race and region has its own specifics, but that speaks far more to the kitchen table concerns of most families than protecting the rights of transgender athletes or any other (let me clear, valid and worthwhile) civil right under threat (including abortion rights, of which the fight to protect appears to have lost steam).  

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Posted
1 minute ago, 6th Street said:

Biden should have signed an EO to lock down the border. Easy win.

He also should have distanced himself from the trans in sports and bathroom issue. It is a losing proposition for the majority of the country. These are two own goals. 
 

100%. 

Posted
2 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

So your solution is to tack left?

I reluctantly read that same Brett Stephens op-Ed I the Times, even though I know better, because it had a sexy headline, and he did his usually great job of assuming his opinion is representative of larger group than an elite east coast/mexican Jew boarding school kid. 
 

All that said, he’s mostly right in the diagnosis if always wrong about the solution (his solution is always that the Dems should be more like, well, Brett himself).  
 

But I don’t disagree that the Dems need to re-organize around a center that has abandoned them.  

No. My point is that issues largely don't even matter. It's not a matter of turning the dial left or right, because there isn't a center. People don't go into the voter booth and look at a spreadsheet of issues a candidate supports and opposes and choose the candidate that aligns with their preferences the most. The overwhelming majority of potential voters in each election won't even choose between candidates, they'll choose the candidate from the party they prefer or they'll stay home. What's left, probably no more than 10% of voters, have completely incoherent politics and vote based on vibes. Do they really like a candidate or at least hate the other?

So campaigns are about two things: 1) turning out your base, and 2) winning the undecideds. You hurt both goals by trying to triangulate around some imagined optimum collection of "centrist" or "moderate" positions. That shit turns off your base and gets a lot of them to stay home and it tells the undecided voters that you don't really believe in anything. That you don't care about anything. Undecided voters love "change" candidates because those candidates give the impression that they'll care enough about something to get shit done.

Issues largely don't matter, how you message them does. The Dems are absolute dogshit at messaging them. 

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