Progressive activists can't conceive of a problem that can't be fixed by talking about 'billionaires and corporate greed,' but that's what Democrats have.
As a gay man, I appreciate the support of our straight allies, I really do, but honestly they’re a little naive. I’m not even that old—I came of age in the mid 2000s— and yet I distinctly remember my classmates saying the f-slur 25 times a day, parents in the town campaigning against the school’s gay-straight alliance, and President Bush’s reelection campaign focusing on gays being the biggest threat to the American family the world had ever seen. And while I’m happy about the progress we’ve made since then, especially on gay marriage, I have always known that all that homophobia didn’t just magically disappear in ten years. Yet our straight allies, many of whom hilariously don’t seem to have realized until like, 2012, that gays were facing discrimination, decided in like 2015 to start broadcasting rainbow flags everywhere and having pride events at Target and in middle schools. I appreciated that, of course, but I immediately knew that the backlash would inevitably come, and it’s just a little funny to me how our well meaning, naive progressive allies seem so shocked by it. If they want to keep advocating for LGBT rights issues, I wish, frankly, that they would be a little more strategic and a lot less naive.
So, I wasn't precisely keeping track of the history here, but I feel like there was a point when it seemed pretty clear that gay rights had won and bigotry was mostly the preserve of old and/or very religious people and gay rights as an issue seemed to be dying out. And it feels like all the pride stuff actually increased after that point. It's never been as "in your face" as right wing twitter pretends, no one has ever forced me to genuflect before a rainbow, but it's like yeah, starting in 2015 pride started entering middle schools and Target and I don't know why.
Like, I can make up explanations. The gay rights organizations still existed and needed something to do. Some gays were sad about what Andrew Sullivan called the impending "end of gay culture" and felt a need to assert themselves as a distinct group. The straights wanted to pat themselves on the back for what tolerant people they were. Transgenderism became somehow far more common and became a new battleground. I have no idea which of these things is actually true and I'm curious what you Stephen and what people on this site think.
I don’t really know. All sound like good guesses to me. I just know that I saw that anecdote about the (apparently mandatory) human pride flag activity at school and audibly groaned. This is exactly the kind of stuff that is NOT helping, and I strongly suspect that actual gay or trans people, who unfortunately are ever mindful of the potential for backlash, are not the ones behind it.
There is not a queer person in this entire world who would force kids in school to make a "human pride flag." We all have a greater sense of self-preservation than to do something like that.
IDK, my nieces who are growing up in Park Slope do all kinds of wholesome rainbow-flag related activities in elementary school. On the order of "pride month is when you get to wear a rainbow pin, some people have two mommies or two daddies." I think this is fine but if a muslim (or Catholic) parent didn't want their kid to participate nobody should force them.
To clarify, I also think it's fine to learn about it, and in fact, kids should learn about it and be able to talk about it, and queer kids should be supported in school (i.e., GSA's, etc). But no kid should be forced to participate in any kind of "rainbow-themed" activity they don't want to be, just like I wouldn't want to be forced to participate in anything religious, even if I have zero problem with religious people engaging in those activities.
I guess you can never be perfectly neutral: the NYC Muslim dad interviewed in the article was able to get his kids exempted from the pride flag activity but he was still offended enough to send them to a different school.
I'm very pro-pride flags in public school if the community accepts them but you do have to meet people where they're at, respect parents with traditional beliefs and be aware that you might give offense. (This is probably harder for people to realize in NYC than it would be in a red state because here the traditionalists often aren't white and never used to vote Republican.)
As a gay man who came of age in the 80’s and 90’s I remember so well how Republicans used gays rights as a wedge issue to great effect. These days, denigrating gays or lesbians is unacceptable, so they have found a new group, trans people, who are like one percent of the population, to demonize for electoral benefit.
To be fair, trans activists and Democratic law makers put a target on themselves by demanding and passing some pretty weird policies and laws. Doing things like making it so that teachers can't tell parents if their child is trans and letting trans girls play women's sports was bound to piss people off. It could have all been handled much more thoughtfully.
Eh, I don’t know on that first one. Laws banning teachers from telling parents their kid is trans are bad, yes, but so are laws that *force* teachers to immediately tell parents if a kid confides in them. And some of the laws being enacted are really designed to counteract mandatory forced outing policies enacted by right wing school boards. That CA law you’re thinking of is not what Elon Musk has spun it as.
Trans issues were completely invisible and only became an issue when the Charlotte City Council declared that businesses couldn't keep people out of women's bathrooms if they decided they were female.
Pride flags in middle school seem good and worth fighting for: puberty is hard for everyone and even in a very tolerant world it tends to be harder if you're gay.
I don't think gay culture is in any danger of dying, Sullivan is just projecting his anxieties. (Admittedly lesbian culture seems to have changed profoundly, but that's not my world.)
Andrew Sullivan did a lot of great work in the 90's, but man, that guy has really gone off the deep end. As he self-proclaimed that the Gays Had Officially Won, and AIDS Was Officially Over (both completely idiotic statements on their surface), his own identity went into crisis, and he started pouring all of that anxiety into anti-trans activism and completely lost his mind. It's quite sad what has happened to him, I think. Because his own thesis about the gay rights wars officially being won and over was so stupid and wrong, he now sees any sort of backlash through the lens of trans rights, and they have become his #1 scapegoat.
Actually, I think time will tell that Andrew is 100% right on what he's saying today - just like he's been proven right, time and time again, with what he's said in the past.
Children have a right to puberty - this statement should not be controversial. Women's sport should be defended against the participation of genetic males. Gender dysphoria in children should NEVER be treated with puberty blockers and no child under 18 should ever be allowed to consent to the removal of either their breasts or genitalia,
NONE of what I just wrote should be in the least bit controversial.
As a 47-year-old gay man, I completely agree with you on this. Even I get really embarrassed sometimes at how performative so many straight people I know are about how gay-affirming they are. But to your larger point about straight people just "discovering" homophobia - I work in healthcare, and at my last job I had a prominent role in hospital administration. I worked really hard to create more affirming and equitable policies for LGBT employees and our patients, and I had a fair amount of success in doing so, including entire service lines dedicated to trans health that didn't exist before. I became the unofficial Gay Czar where I worked, and everyone kind of knew me as that. But so much of what people wanted to do to help were these very visible and performative displays of "support" while at the same time telling me we couldn't actually do real outreach to the most vulnerable populations because it wasn't in line with our image, or we couldn't be outspoken about governmental discrimination because we couldn't look political.
When the state I live in started cracking down on trans health issues in the last couple of years, the number of straight co-workers who came to me absolutely SHOCKED that this was happening and looked to me to give them hope and reassurance was infuriating. My own identity, my person, my career, and my livelihood were all being debated in the state capitol and my straight friends kept saying, "It's 2024, how is this happening?" It didn't surprise me one bit. I was not at all shocked, and then, shocker of shockers, all these straight allies started in on the "I swear I'm moving out of this state."
I wish straight people understood that when you claim to be a fierce LGBT ally, and sometimes build your own identity around it, but then when shit starts hitting the fan, you say, "Well, I'm just gonna move," it does not instill any trust from your LGBT friends. It feels like abandonment and fair-weather allyship. Nothing going on will directly impact you, and yet your first response is to simply leave the situation and abandon your queer friends - that ain't allyship. And it fell on me so often to be these people's emotional safe space because they just couldn't believe it. Like, read some fucking (very recent) history. None of this should shock you.
I feel like I'm rambling now, but I wanted to just support your point. What feels most disenheartening is their being shocked, and then immediately falling back on the giving up. No one knows how to politick anymore, or be strategic, or see a long game anywhere. It's like, "Welp, the legislators have suddenly turned to troglodytes, so I guess we've lost. Better pick up and go somewhere else." It's maddening, and does not make any of those people feel very safe to me. (And incidentally, I'm not in that job anymore.)
Right. I just strongly suspect there are a lot of tepid allies and bandwagon-jumpers who won’t support us when the going gets rough. To analogize, it’s like, there are the Lady Gaga allies (strong consistent support for LGBT people, risked her career in her prime to sing a gay anthem), but then there are the Katy Perry allies (released a lot of songs with homophobic lyrics 15 years ago, then decided to jump on the bandwagon late.)
Yah, in the discourse we gay men have become so white bread so fast I don't know what to say.
I think a lot of the trends that are unsettling people are downstream of the fact that we're beginning to enter a world where there's no stigma attached to being a gay teenager. This is obviously a good thing, but it will lead to a lot more people experimenting with their sexuality before discovering what their real preferences are: the vast majority of the time they'll be for the opposite sex. (Like imagine you're a 13 year old boy and your favorite pop star is gay or something like that.) This tendency is great, although some of its expressions will be dumb, like how everybody wants to be "queer" and have their own special neologism put on the pride flag. We should just be very sensitive about how these changes will unsettle people and (in this safe space I'll admit to believing) cautious about puberty-delaying drugs or irreversible surgery.
On: “they have to be willing to get on the popular side of 70-30” - I think it’s a little more complicated than that. It’s okay to be on a the 30 side of an issue- but you have to be willing to resolutely defend it. Mario Cuomo repeatedly vetoed (popular) laws to reinstate the death penalty in New York and was still repeatedly reelected. But he didn’t do what Harris did with Prop 36- try to slink away- he owned his decision as consistent with his values. I think you can do that on a handful of issues if you are largely on the popular side of everything else. But you do have to own it.
This is an underrated point. In the Kamala campaign and in Democratic politics in general there is such an emphasis on message testing. And it's good to run polling, run on popular policies and have message discipline. But I think part of the reason Kamala didn't go on Rogan or do much media at all was that they were terrified of being asked a question that might cause them to go off message.
So while it's bad for politicians to take unpopular stances, I think the fear of taking such stances can be even worse, and can cause candidates to come across as phony and weak.
It was apropos for Harris to try and not take a position on Prop 36. Deeply inauthentic and in thrall to The Groups, it'd have been completely shocking if she HAD come out and taken a position on it one way or another. As it was, it has passed by the largest percentage of any proposition in California history - and it was THIS proposition she struggled with so mightily. Anyone want to guess how she voted?
Agree. Kamala’s prop 36 problem wasn’t that she had the unpopular position, it’s that it reinforced her liability as a wishy-washy candidate who wouldn’t (couldn’t?) show that she could think critically about an issue and make a decision. Not a good quality of a candidate and especially a President!
and this is why democrats often coming off as "preachy". no one wants to be preached to by a politician or an activist (though activists are worse as they never even think there is another rationale for why people hold a different position).
It also explains why governors like Jared Polis and Josh Shaprio do better than most. They focus on fixing the actual problems and being real.
Here is the catch 22: If moderate Dems break from progressives, then do progressives revolt and undermine the whole coalition? What is the answer to this dilemma? I mean, look at what Arab voters in Dearborn, Michigan did. They voted more *for* Trump (not more for third party) because they were pissed at Biden-Harris about Gaza—a textbook example of cutting off your nose to spite your face. And yet, here we are.
If they go about it with tact and a conciliatory spirit, that will help I’m sure, but only some.
I say let them revolt. One of two things will happen, progressives will show that they truly represent a critical mass of voters and the Dem party will come back on their hands and knees or they will show that they are a small but vocal fringe that the centrists can officially cut off.
I know the progressives hate it, but I say let the market work it out
It's vastly more credible for the centrists to switch who they vote for, or not vote. By definition, they are less upset by a Trump victory than the progressive would be. For many, the threat of the GOP is essentially "oh, I didn't want this kind of pizza, oh well, I'll still eat it."
I hate to break it to you but outside of progressive circles in deep blue areas, advocacy groups, academia & Dem staffer cohorts, Gaza is not an issue that animates Dem or leaning Dem voters. To the extent anyone has an opinion on the Middle East, it’s an amorphous but strong lean towards Israel.
And as Josh’s piece notes, even some voters opposed to Israel’s actions voted R this time because they were angrier at the Dems for not addressing basic quality of life issues.
I agree. Cost of living and immigration were the top two issues for all voters. I’m simply thinking about what pushing back against unpopular progressive positions means for the Democratic governing coalition.
I guess one example is to not be bullied into staking out extreme positions, like “I support a total ban on fracking” or any of the trans stuff that hurt Harris. On issues like Gaza, it probably also means that Dems cannot issue wishy-washy statements about violent campus protests, display of Hamas flags & such
what the dems need to explain to the american people is that the economy is cooking right now and yes it's not working for you. It works for the rich and the only thing the middle class can do besides orgnize unions is to organize through government to tax the rich and force them to share the profits fairly. The free market obviously doesn't do that. It is a game of Monopoly where one person ends up with everything. The people would undertand that analogy. The free market creates wealth and it does that very well here in the good old USA. But it all goes to the rich. If trickle down were a thing we would all be swimming in wealth right now. We need to debunk the myth of trickle down and debunk Reagan's lie that government is the problem not the solution. The working class have no other option than their government. The dems have been unable to make the government work for the people because they have only had the slimmest of margins since the conservative movement began. The answer to democrats struggling to make things better for the middle class is not to give power back to those who give billionaires tax breaks but rather to give democrats a larger majority so that they can do more for the middle class. Before the conservative movement FDR & the liberals in government were able to deliver for the middle class. Make THAT America great again. More Democrats in Washington, fewer obstructonist republicans, and more effective government providing for the majority of Americans. Tough sell, I know, especially when voters still think the republicans are good for the economy. But I think Obama and Biden have disproved that.
You know, it's interesting. I have a friend from Colorado, a gay veteran, federal government employee previously married to an undocumented Mexican whose immigration status was normalized as a result of their marriage. He absolutely cannot stand Venezuelans in Denver, claims they're all aggressive con artists who stole all the squeegees from gas stations. My experience is the opposite, in California my electrician is a former Venezuelan state oil company employee who refugeed to the States and got his electrician's license. Amazing guy who's deeply anti-Marxist and a real go-getter. So - opinion seems deeply polarized around Venezuelans in a way I don't remember it being around other groups of immigrants.
I don’t have any experience with recent Venezuelan immigrants, but my friend who is a restaurant manager in Texas is similar to yours. He loves them as employees who consistently bust their asses and never call in sick. And he is a MAGA own the libs kind of guy that drives me nuts.
I strongly suspect you're getting different attitudes in different places because different migrants are arriving there for different reasons. We have particular trouble in New York because we have extensive social services and a legal mandate to provide shelter housing (which the city has now, controversially, time-limited) but if you're going to (for example) establish yourself as an electrician, you're probably going to leave here and head somewhere with cheaper housing.
That makes a lot of sense. I’m of the opinion that the United States mostly gets the best immigrants in the world. To the extent that a migrant has real control over their migration, an immigrant choosing to settle in Europe is more likely interested in the stronger welfare state whereas the immigrant choosing to settle in the United States is more interested in entrepreneurship. No reason that same framework wouldn’t apply to intra-state migration decisions.
In the Bay Area all the Venezuelans I know have gotten themselves new careers - electrician, dental hygienist etc.. so my opinion of them as a group is quite high.
Josh is, in the words of sportscaster Dan Patrick, “en fuego!”
Just yesterday we saw a mentally ill homeless felon on parole stab and kill three innocent people in Manhattan. This guy was deemed fit for release. Prison overcrowding and indefinite pretrial detention are real issues but do solutions for those always come with a loss of public safety?
I bet that progressive electeds in NYC will try to point to lack of funding for mental health or gaps in safety nets for the homeless, but that line of argument is exactly the type of deflection that Josh is talking about.
It’s true that there are no easy solutions. But, those in power are judged not by their words but by which among the imperfect set of outcomes they are willing to accept or not accept.
It’s entirely reasonable for deep blue urban area voters to infer that Dems are perfectly willing to accept public disorder & the occasional crazy guy murder spree rather than discuss involuntary confinement and other means of enforcing order in public spaces.
Its kinda puzzling to me how NYC governance stays that bad. One could make an argument that governance quality has consistently been dropping since at least 2016.
There are some people that are trying to fix it but the vast majority of city workers just don't care. I can only assume that their leaders don't care either. And I actually like the city, I am not saying it is all bad.
As a gay man, I appreciate the support of our straight allies, I really do, but honestly they’re a little naive. I’m not even that old—I came of age in the mid 2000s— and yet I distinctly remember my classmates saying the f-slur 25 times a day, parents in the town campaigning against the school’s gay-straight alliance, and President Bush’s reelection campaign focusing on gays being the biggest threat to the American family the world had ever seen. And while I’m happy about the progress we’ve made since then, especially on gay marriage, I have always known that all that homophobia didn’t just magically disappear in ten years. Yet our straight allies, many of whom hilariously don’t seem to have realized until like, 2012, that gays were facing discrimination, decided in like 2015 to start broadcasting rainbow flags everywhere and having pride events at Target and in middle schools. I appreciated that, of course, but I immediately knew that the backlash would inevitably come, and it’s just a little funny to me how our well meaning, naive progressive allies seem so shocked by it. If they want to keep advocating for LGBT rights issues, I wish, frankly, that they would be a little more strategic and a lot less naive.
So, I wasn't precisely keeping track of the history here, but I feel like there was a point when it seemed pretty clear that gay rights had won and bigotry was mostly the preserve of old and/or very religious people and gay rights as an issue seemed to be dying out. And it feels like all the pride stuff actually increased after that point. It's never been as "in your face" as right wing twitter pretends, no one has ever forced me to genuflect before a rainbow, but it's like yeah, starting in 2015 pride started entering middle schools and Target and I don't know why.
Like, I can make up explanations. The gay rights organizations still existed and needed something to do. Some gays were sad about what Andrew Sullivan called the impending "end of gay culture" and felt a need to assert themselves as a distinct group. The straights wanted to pat themselves on the back for what tolerant people they were. Transgenderism became somehow far more common and became a new battleground. I have no idea which of these things is actually true and I'm curious what you Stephen and what people on this site think.
I don’t really know. All sound like good guesses to me. I just know that I saw that anecdote about the (apparently mandatory) human pride flag activity at school and audibly groaned. This is exactly the kind of stuff that is NOT helping, and I strongly suspect that actual gay or trans people, who unfortunately are ever mindful of the potential for backlash, are not the ones behind it.
There is not a queer person in this entire world who would force kids in school to make a "human pride flag." We all have a greater sense of self-preservation than to do something like that.
IDK, my nieces who are growing up in Park Slope do all kinds of wholesome rainbow-flag related activities in elementary school. On the order of "pride month is when you get to wear a rainbow pin, some people have two mommies or two daddies." I think this is fine but if a muslim (or Catholic) parent didn't want their kid to participate nobody should force them.
To clarify, I also think it's fine to learn about it, and in fact, kids should learn about it and be able to talk about it, and queer kids should be supported in school (i.e., GSA's, etc). But no kid should be forced to participate in any kind of "rainbow-themed" activity they don't want to be, just like I wouldn't want to be forced to participate in anything religious, even if I have zero problem with religious people engaging in those activities.
I guess you can never be perfectly neutral: the NYC Muslim dad interviewed in the article was able to get his kids exempted from the pride flag activity but he was still offended enough to send them to a different school.
I'm very pro-pride flags in public school if the community accepts them but you do have to meet people where they're at, respect parents with traditional beliefs and be aware that you might give offense. (This is probably harder for people to realize in NYC than it would be in a red state because here the traditionalists often aren't white and never used to vote Republican.)
As a gay man who came of age in the 80’s and 90’s I remember so well how Republicans used gays rights as a wedge issue to great effect. These days, denigrating gays or lesbians is unacceptable, so they have found a new group, trans people, who are like one percent of the population, to demonize for electoral benefit.
To be fair, trans activists and Democratic law makers put a target on themselves by demanding and passing some pretty weird policies and laws. Doing things like making it so that teachers can't tell parents if their child is trans and letting trans girls play women's sports was bound to piss people off. It could have all been handled much more thoughtfully.
Eh, I don’t know on that first one. Laws banning teachers from telling parents their kid is trans are bad, yes, but so are laws that *force* teachers to immediately tell parents if a kid confides in them. And some of the laws being enacted are really designed to counteract mandatory forced outing policies enacted by right wing school boards. That CA law you’re thinking of is not what Elon Musk has spun it as.
Trans issues were completely invisible and only became an issue when the Charlotte City Council declared that businesses couldn't keep people out of women's bathrooms if they decided they were female.
Pride flags in middle school seem good and worth fighting for: puberty is hard for everyone and even in a very tolerant world it tends to be harder if you're gay.
I don't think gay culture is in any danger of dying, Sullivan is just projecting his anxieties. (Admittedly lesbian culture seems to have changed profoundly, but that's not my world.)
Andrew Sullivan did a lot of great work in the 90's, but man, that guy has really gone off the deep end. As he self-proclaimed that the Gays Had Officially Won, and AIDS Was Officially Over (both completely idiotic statements on their surface), his own identity went into crisis, and he started pouring all of that anxiety into anti-trans activism and completely lost his mind. It's quite sad what has happened to him, I think. Because his own thesis about the gay rights wars officially being won and over was so stupid and wrong, he now sees any sort of backlash through the lens of trans rights, and they have become his #1 scapegoat.
Actually, I think time will tell that Andrew is 100% right on what he's saying today - just like he's been proven right, time and time again, with what he's said in the past.
Children have a right to puberty - this statement should not be controversial. Women's sport should be defended against the participation of genetic males. Gender dysphoria in children should NEVER be treated with puberty blockers and no child under 18 should ever be allowed to consent to the removal of either their breasts or genitalia,
NONE of what I just wrote should be in the least bit controversial.
As a 47-year-old gay man, I completely agree with you on this. Even I get really embarrassed sometimes at how performative so many straight people I know are about how gay-affirming they are. But to your larger point about straight people just "discovering" homophobia - I work in healthcare, and at my last job I had a prominent role in hospital administration. I worked really hard to create more affirming and equitable policies for LGBT employees and our patients, and I had a fair amount of success in doing so, including entire service lines dedicated to trans health that didn't exist before. I became the unofficial Gay Czar where I worked, and everyone kind of knew me as that. But so much of what people wanted to do to help were these very visible and performative displays of "support" while at the same time telling me we couldn't actually do real outreach to the most vulnerable populations because it wasn't in line with our image, or we couldn't be outspoken about governmental discrimination because we couldn't look political.
When the state I live in started cracking down on trans health issues in the last couple of years, the number of straight co-workers who came to me absolutely SHOCKED that this was happening and looked to me to give them hope and reassurance was infuriating. My own identity, my person, my career, and my livelihood were all being debated in the state capitol and my straight friends kept saying, "It's 2024, how is this happening?" It didn't surprise me one bit. I was not at all shocked, and then, shocker of shockers, all these straight allies started in on the "I swear I'm moving out of this state."
I wish straight people understood that when you claim to be a fierce LGBT ally, and sometimes build your own identity around it, but then when shit starts hitting the fan, you say, "Well, I'm just gonna move," it does not instill any trust from your LGBT friends. It feels like abandonment and fair-weather allyship. Nothing going on will directly impact you, and yet your first response is to simply leave the situation and abandon your queer friends - that ain't allyship. And it fell on me so often to be these people's emotional safe space because they just couldn't believe it. Like, read some fucking (very recent) history. None of this should shock you.
I feel like I'm rambling now, but I wanted to just support your point. What feels most disenheartening is their being shocked, and then immediately falling back on the giving up. No one knows how to politick anymore, or be strategic, or see a long game anywhere. It's like, "Welp, the legislators have suddenly turned to troglodytes, so I guess we've lost. Better pick up and go somewhere else." It's maddening, and does not make any of those people feel very safe to me. (And incidentally, I'm not in that job anymore.)
Right. I just strongly suspect there are a lot of tepid allies and bandwagon-jumpers who won’t support us when the going gets rough. To analogize, it’s like, there are the Lady Gaga allies (strong consistent support for LGBT people, risked her career in her prime to sing a gay anthem), but then there are the Katy Perry allies (released a lot of songs with homophobic lyrics 15 years ago, then decided to jump on the bandwagon late.)
Yah, in the discourse we gay men have become so white bread so fast I don't know what to say.
I think a lot of the trends that are unsettling people are downstream of the fact that we're beginning to enter a world where there's no stigma attached to being a gay teenager. This is obviously a good thing, but it will lead to a lot more people experimenting with their sexuality before discovering what their real preferences are: the vast majority of the time they'll be for the opposite sex. (Like imagine you're a 13 year old boy and your favorite pop star is gay or something like that.) This tendency is great, although some of its expressions will be dumb, like how everybody wants to be "queer" and have their own special neologism put on the pride flag. We should just be very sensitive about how these changes will unsettle people and (in this safe space I'll admit to believing) cautious about puberty-delaying drugs or irreversible surgery.
On: “they have to be willing to get on the popular side of 70-30” - I think it’s a little more complicated than that. It’s okay to be on a the 30 side of an issue- but you have to be willing to resolutely defend it. Mario Cuomo repeatedly vetoed (popular) laws to reinstate the death penalty in New York and was still repeatedly reelected. But he didn’t do what Harris did with Prop 36- try to slink away- he owned his decision as consistent with his values. I think you can do that on a handful of issues if you are largely on the popular side of everything else. But you do have to own it.
This is an underrated point. In the Kamala campaign and in Democratic politics in general there is such an emphasis on message testing. And it's good to run polling, run on popular policies and have message discipline. But I think part of the reason Kamala didn't go on Rogan or do much media at all was that they were terrified of being asked a question that might cause them to go off message.
So while it's bad for politicians to take unpopular stances, I think the fear of taking such stances can be even worse, and can cause candidates to come across as phony and weak.
It was apropos for Harris to try and not take a position on Prop 36. Deeply inauthentic and in thrall to The Groups, it'd have been completely shocking if she HAD come out and taken a position on it one way or another. As it was, it has passed by the largest percentage of any proposition in California history - and it was THIS proposition she struggled with so mightily. Anyone want to guess how she voted?
Agree. Kamala’s prop 36 problem wasn’t that she had the unpopular position, it’s that it reinforced her liability as a wishy-washy candidate who wouldn’t (couldn’t?) show that she could think critically about an issue and make a decision. Not a good quality of a candidate and especially a President!
Such a good post, Josh is on fire recently.
and this is why democrats often coming off as "preachy". no one wants to be preached to by a politician or an activist (though activists are worse as they never even think there is another rationale for why people hold a different position).
It also explains why governors like Jared Polis and Josh Shaprio do better than most. They focus on fixing the actual problems and being real.
Here is the catch 22: If moderate Dems break from progressives, then do progressives revolt and undermine the whole coalition? What is the answer to this dilemma? I mean, look at what Arab voters in Dearborn, Michigan did. They voted more *for* Trump (not more for third party) because they were pissed at Biden-Harris about Gaza—a textbook example of cutting off your nose to spite your face. And yet, here we are.
If they go about it with tact and a conciliatory spirit, that will help I’m sure, but only some.
Anyone have a solution?
I say let them revolt. One of two things will happen, progressives will show that they truly represent a critical mass of voters and the Dem party will come back on their hands and knees or they will show that they are a small but vocal fringe that the centrists can officially cut off.
I know the progressives hate it, but I say let the market work it out
It’s risky, but I agree and I don’t see any other way. Good point.
It's vastly more credible for the centrists to switch who they vote for, or not vote. By definition, they are less upset by a Trump victory than the progressive would be. For many, the threat of the GOP is essentially "oh, I didn't want this kind of pizza, oh well, I'll still eat it."
I hate to break it to you but outside of progressive circles in deep blue areas, advocacy groups, academia & Dem staffer cohorts, Gaza is not an issue that animates Dem or leaning Dem voters. To the extent anyone has an opinion on the Middle East, it’s an amorphous but strong lean towards Israel.
And as Josh’s piece notes, even some voters opposed to Israel’s actions voted R this time because they were angrier at the Dems for not addressing basic quality of life issues.
I agree. Cost of living and immigration were the top two issues for all voters. I’m simply thinking about what pushing back against unpopular progressive positions means for the Democratic governing coalition.
I guess one example is to not be bullied into staking out extreme positions, like “I support a total ban on fracking” or any of the trans stuff that hurt Harris. On issues like Gaza, it probably also means that Dems cannot issue wishy-washy statements about violent campus protests, display of Hamas flags & such
what the dems need to explain to the american people is that the economy is cooking right now and yes it's not working for you. It works for the rich and the only thing the middle class can do besides orgnize unions is to organize through government to tax the rich and force them to share the profits fairly. The free market obviously doesn't do that. It is a game of Monopoly where one person ends up with everything. The people would undertand that analogy. The free market creates wealth and it does that very well here in the good old USA. But it all goes to the rich. If trickle down were a thing we would all be swimming in wealth right now. We need to debunk the myth of trickle down and debunk Reagan's lie that government is the problem not the solution. The working class have no other option than their government. The dems have been unable to make the government work for the people because they have only had the slimmest of margins since the conservative movement began. The answer to democrats struggling to make things better for the middle class is not to give power back to those who give billionaires tax breaks but rather to give democrats a larger majority so that they can do more for the middle class. Before the conservative movement FDR & the liberals in government were able to deliver for the middle class. Make THAT America great again. More Democrats in Washington, fewer obstructonist republicans, and more effective government providing for the majority of Americans. Tough sell, I know, especially when voters still think the republicans are good for the economy. But I think Obama and Biden have disproved that.
Josh,
I don’t know how election markets work exactly, but I will short the anti-Venezuelan boobs out voter every day of the week.
You know, it's interesting. I have a friend from Colorado, a gay veteran, federal government employee previously married to an undocumented Mexican whose immigration status was normalized as a result of their marriage. He absolutely cannot stand Venezuelans in Denver, claims they're all aggressive con artists who stole all the squeegees from gas stations. My experience is the opposite, in California my electrician is a former Venezuelan state oil company employee who refugeed to the States and got his electrician's license. Amazing guy who's deeply anti-Marxist and a real go-getter. So - opinion seems deeply polarized around Venezuelans in a way I don't remember it being around other groups of immigrants.
I don’t have any experience with recent Venezuelan immigrants, but my friend who is a restaurant manager in Texas is similar to yours. He loves them as employees who consistently bust their asses and never call in sick. And he is a MAGA own the libs kind of guy that drives me nuts.
I strongly suspect you're getting different attitudes in different places because different migrants are arriving there for different reasons. We have particular trouble in New York because we have extensive social services and a legal mandate to provide shelter housing (which the city has now, controversially, time-limited) but if you're going to (for example) establish yourself as an electrician, you're probably going to leave here and head somewhere with cheaper housing.
That makes a lot of sense. I’m of the opinion that the United States mostly gets the best immigrants in the world. To the extent that a migrant has real control over their migration, an immigrant choosing to settle in Europe is more likely interested in the stronger welfare state whereas the immigrant choosing to settle in the United States is more interested in entrepreneurship. No reason that same framework wouldn’t apply to intra-state migration decisions.
In the Bay Area all the Venezuelans I know have gotten themselves new careers - electrician, dental hygienist etc.. so my opinion of them as a group is quite high.
Josh is, in the words of sportscaster Dan Patrick, “en fuego!”
Just yesterday we saw a mentally ill homeless felon on parole stab and kill three innocent people in Manhattan. This guy was deemed fit for release. Prison overcrowding and indefinite pretrial detention are real issues but do solutions for those always come with a loss of public safety?
I bet that progressive electeds in NYC will try to point to lack of funding for mental health or gaps in safety nets for the homeless, but that line of argument is exactly the type of deflection that Josh is talking about.
It’s true that there are no easy solutions. But, those in power are judged not by their words but by which among the imperfect set of outcomes they are willing to accept or not accept.
It’s entirely reasonable for deep blue urban area voters to infer that Dems are perfectly willing to accept public disorder & the occasional crazy guy murder spree rather than discuss involuntary confinement and other means of enforcing order in public spaces.
Voters
Its kinda puzzling to me how NYC governance stays that bad. One could make an argument that governance quality has consistently been dropping since at least 2016.
There are some people that are trying to fix it but the vast majority of city workers just don't care. I can only assume that their leaders don't care either. And I actually like the city, I am not saying it is all bad.