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this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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politics
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First off, I want to say that I appreciated you telling your story here. I'm going to argue against some points, but I think it was a good comment even if there are points I disagree with.
No other leader has been this old. And there have been plenty of times where a party's leader didn't run for reelection. What's doomed is a challenge. If Biden had followed the rumor from 2020 and stepped down after a single term, Democrats would probably be in a much better position.
The "incumbent advantage" has led to 3 of the last 7 incumbents losing. It's not a bulletproof strategy, particularly if the incumber is very unpopular.
Nah, everyone loves a "convert". Tulsi Gabbard has been a featured speaker at CPAC since 2022. Just like Zell, it's not really a Democrat highlighting Democratic values while supporting a Republican, it's a conservative with a good story to tell about how the other side went too far.
Do you even remember who the 2020 DNC keynote speaker was? I don't. And that's not because we don't have inspiring speakers (AOC is a fantastic communicator, Ayanna Pressley is one of the best orators I've ever heard), it's because the party establishment finds Obama-level politicians threatening. Looking it up now, they had 17 different people all give part of a speech. No risk of a rising star in that mish-mash. That's why, despite several political disasters under their watch, the leadership was the same dinosaurs, only to very recently be replaced by their long term acolytes.
Remember, they didn't want Obama to be president. When he ran for president he was the outsider because the party establishment was all lined up behind Clinton.
Hey, I'm just glad someone read my comment lol...
What is a party if not just a group of people with similar values? Change the values of the Democratic party from within (which I believe is already happening, especially with all the ancients dying off) to the type of party that realizes when they need to start grooming new candidates sooner.
Easier said than done, sure. Young people need to show that they are a voting bloc that demands to be taken seriously, but that can't happen until they actually start voting. It's kind of infuriating. That's really the thing that could begin fixing all of this, and yet... Who knows, maybe Taylor Swift will throw a wrench in things and get enough young folks involved.
As for Obama, maybe he was a once in a lifetime phenomenon, I don't know... But like you said, the DNC didn't even want him. He was a black guy with an Arab name, but he had the money and power of the DNC (and, I believe at that time Howard Dean in charge who actually knew how to get progressives elected up and down ballot. Could be wrong though, it might have been after he lost his career for getting a little too excited), and that allowed him to mobilize people who had never thought about voting before.
That's what we need again. We need to start bringing up young, charismatic progressives from state and local politics, and give them the money and support they need to get their message (which, let's not forget, is correct) to those types Obama mobilized back in 08.
We should have been doing this for years already. In fact, I would say Howard Dean's removal as chair of the DNC especially doomed the party to years of tepid neiliberalism.
We need another Howard Dean running the DNC and we need it yesterday.
The party is very separate from the people who vote for it. I don't have a vote for who becomes Speaker, only a vote for my individual representative, who himself is chosen by both Democrats and Republicans (our primary is open and everyone knows the Democrat is going to win the general election so the real election is in the primary). He's in something like a D+30 district and still threatens to oppose Democratic legislation unless it's more fiscally conservative.
The ancients are dying off, but this isn't resulting in an open race for replacement, they're using their influence to pass it on to chosen successors that share their values. Theoretically there could be a revolution, but politics isn't really just a battle of ideas, but a complex web of relationships and fundraising. One of Hakeem Jeffries primary qualifications for succeeding Pelosi is simply that he can raise a lot of money.
But I agree that's not fixed, and a good chair could really lean into candidates who excite voters rather than are approved by donors. The Obama's of the party win while the machine politicians generally just maintain power in safe districts. You need someone who excites people to flip districts and states.
It's unfortunate that Katie Porter might be eliminated in the initial round in California. We need progressive successors to our own ancients in the senate. Massachusetts has a pretty good bench getting built. Hopefully when Warren steps down Ayanna Pressley will succeed her. I'm not sure if Bernie has anyone in Vermont lined up.
Can't really disagree with much there.... I would say that a party's views (should) reflect those of its voters. Ideally, that's what's supposed to happen in a representative democracy. They're supposed to represent the will of their constituents, and if they aren't, you vote in a new one (obv it doesn't really work out that way in the real world. Maybe Finland or something).
And this is kind of what I'm talking about.
There's this defeatism everywhere lately (much of it is astroturfing, but I believe it's been somewhat effective, unfortunately) with people being like, "I'm totally a leftist (often sus), and the conservative Democratic party is just going to run their establishment candidate no matter what and there's nothing I can do so I'll throw away my vote on a third party, if I vote at all."
Some'll throw in something about "Genocide Joe" too, somewhat betraying their actual intentions and the true reality that most of them want nobody left of Donald Trump in that office...
Yet everyone seems to forget that Hillary Clinton very much was the establishment candidate in 2008. It was "her turn." Obama was just another nobody's on a debate stage with like a dozen other relative nobodies, and Hillary Clinton. It would have been like (if Trump actually attended the debates, just a thought experiment) if Doug Burgum, or Will Hurd became the GOP candidate over Trump despite the party doing everything it can ($$) to get Trump as the candidate. It would be unheard of.
In other words, Democrats were making preparations for her coronation. And none of that ended up mattering, because Democratic primary voters wanted Obama. I personally switched my affiliation from "independent" to "Democrat" to make that vote.
None of that mattered because the liberals/progressive/the left/etc.(voting) public made it very clear that they didn't give a shit what the Democratic party wanted, they want "that guy who gave that speech at the 2004 DNC." And that's who we got, and Hillary Clinton didn't run as a third party candidate or anything silly like that. We almost got it to happen again with Bernie... Different situation and discussion, though I do think things could be very different at the DNC now that Hillary is out of electoral politics .
(To be fair, Obama's demographics, and social media teams were on point and like a decade ahead of their time. Probably pretty rudimentary compared to that (or literally just the fact that they had a social media team)