Excellent take. Maybe this Robert Rossney post will fit here:
Robert Rossney
Engineer at Google
How did Democrats get voted out in 2024?
I think there were really two significant issues.
The first was that the Democratic party leadership didn’t want to risk their position in the political ecology. Losing the general election is far from the worst thing that can happen if you’re a national Democratic leader. Genuinely focusing the party on the needs of the working class commits you to a course of action you may be held accountable for, and for a lot of the gerontocracy, being held accountable means losing their prestige, their social position, and above all the sinecure that provides them with essentially unlimited health and elder care for the rest of their days. A realignment in the DNC would have a similar impact on the people running it: they’d have to go back to some kind of real job.
And so party and their political consultants blunted every edge the candidates had. To hear Harris campaign, you’d hardly know that Donald Trump is a criminal, a man who attempted to overturn a free and fair national election, a felon, and a traitor, let alone a rapist and a con man. How do you have an election where the actual, documented criminality of the opposing candidate isn’t even an issue in the campaign? Instead, the party focused on losing issues and ideas, like making sure that the Cheneys were properly included in their messaging, and that nobody ever forgot that the Democrats support the Israeli war on Gaza. They scarcely talked about the economic growth, low unemployment, and gains by organized labor that the Biden administration brought about, because they weren’t willing to fight for that idea either.
One of the things that made them reluctant was that the media had already shown itself to be gearing itself up for its current posture of passive compliance with fascism. The media is in general afraid to do anything that would make Donald Trump angry. They got down on their knees easily 12 months before the election.
Just to pick one example, the abundant evidence that Trump showed on the campaign trail of being senile and disengaged was covered for a day or so when it came up and then never again. Every stutter that came out of Biden’s mouth was the occasion for serious-minded op-ed pieces about his age and the demanding nature of the Presidency, but when Donald Trump lapsed into catatonia on stage and spent twenty minutes bobbing his head to music instead of speaking to his audience the media’s silence on the issue of Trump’s competency was astounding. How do you not question the fitness of a candidate who can’t stop talking about sharks?
The media also dutifully reported every lie that came out of the Trump campaign as just another flavor of the greater truth that we’d all have to interpret for ourselves. The “What’s Project 2025? I’ve never heard of it” thing, for instance. His entire campaign was full of Project 2025 people, and they swung into action to implement it the moment he broke eye contact with John Roberts. The media has treated the centrality of this massively unpopular program to Trump’s plans as though it were a complete surprise.
Now they’re pretending that executive orders are basically the same thing as laws, and talking about Trump’s fancies about annexing Canada and Greenland as though actually doing so were something other than a war crime. They’re taking great pains to characterize masked thugs kidnapping people off the street and shipping them to foreign prisons as a form of immigration enforcement, and pretending that we’re not actually operating for-profit gulags in the United States.
One of the things that keeps emerging as time passes and the impact of the Trump administration’s arson attack on public service starts to have its effect is how surprised people who voted for him are. Many of them had absolutely no idea he intended to do anything like this. Many of them heard people talking about these plans and dismissed them as alarmists. (I should make a ledger of the Quora sock-puppets who spent the nine months prior to the election talking about how stupid and paranoid Democrats were for believing that Donald Trump would ever even consider doing the things that he started doing as soon as his fat ass was behind the Resolute Desk.)
Both of those things need to be fixed.
There’s obviously a popular reaction occurring across the country. It’s driven mostly by disgust with Elon Musk, who has decided from the very beginning against pretending that anything other than what is happening is happening, to the alarm of the Project 2025 guys who really wanted things to seem normal for the first year they were putting it into place. Getting Musk to force the President to do a Tesla ad on the White House lawn and then go on national television and blubber about the unfairness of it all because the stock that’s the basis of his claim to wealth and power is tanking is a strong sign that there’s a popular political movement in the United States that the establishment Democrats have no control or influence over. Can that be leveraged into a re-engineered Democratic party? That’s one open question.
The media, on the other hand, is - quite literally - in the pocket of billionaires, and they are dutifully taking the knee every chance they can get. It’s not just that journalists are terrified of Trump, though they are. They know that if Trump comes after them, they’re on your own. There’s no Katherine Graham and Ben Bradlee deciding to put the Washington Post’s reputation on the line and cover the Watergate story, there’s just Jeff Bezos demanding that, for once in the history of this country, the newspaper talk about what’s so great about free enterprise.
This makes the obeisant media that normalized the Reagan administration look like muckraking crusaders. As with the mainstream Democratic Party, the media is choosing to confront the Trump years by demonstrating its complete uselessness, in the hopes that the Eye of Sauron will light on somebody else. (Also, Trump and his toadies are Saruman to the billionaires’ Sauron, but we’re not ready to have that conversation yet. Musk does make an excellent Grima Wormtongue, though.)
Democrats, and the left in general, need to create an alternative media environment where people who are wondering what the fuck is happening to their country can go to find out. Because they’re not finding out from the media.
Anything I can get involved in up here in Alaska?
I'd like to contribute (peacefully, of course) to getting the flailing republic of America train back on the rails.
YES! ACLU! Now. They are doing great hands-on work.
Joan, are they on the ground in Alaska? Thanks.
They are, Michael. Check their website to learn more. If you want a contact, message me your email please.
mikeeyebee@gmail.com
Thank you for these rallying cries and actions. It’s a bugle call to wake up and get moving!
Excellent take. Maybe this Robert Rossney post will fit here:
Robert Rossney
Engineer at Google
How did Democrats get voted out in 2024?
I think there were really two significant issues.
The first was that the Democratic party leadership didn’t want to risk their position in the political ecology. Losing the general election is far from the worst thing that can happen if you’re a national Democratic leader. Genuinely focusing the party on the needs of the working class commits you to a course of action you may be held accountable for, and for a lot of the gerontocracy, being held accountable means losing their prestige, their social position, and above all the sinecure that provides them with essentially unlimited health and elder care for the rest of their days. A realignment in the DNC would have a similar impact on the people running it: they’d have to go back to some kind of real job.
And so party and their political consultants blunted every edge the candidates had. To hear Harris campaign, you’d hardly know that Donald Trump is a criminal, a man who attempted to overturn a free and fair national election, a felon, and a traitor, let alone a rapist and a con man. How do you have an election where the actual, documented criminality of the opposing candidate isn’t even an issue in the campaign? Instead, the party focused on losing issues and ideas, like making sure that the Cheneys were properly included in their messaging, and that nobody ever forgot that the Democrats support the Israeli war on Gaza. They scarcely talked about the economic growth, low unemployment, and gains by organized labor that the Biden administration brought about, because they weren’t willing to fight for that idea either.
One of the things that made them reluctant was that the media had already shown itself to be gearing itself up for its current posture of passive compliance with fascism. The media is in general afraid to do anything that would make Donald Trump angry. They got down on their knees easily 12 months before the election.
Just to pick one example, the abundant evidence that Trump showed on the campaign trail of being senile and disengaged was covered for a day or so when it came up and then never again. Every stutter that came out of Biden’s mouth was the occasion for serious-minded op-ed pieces about his age and the demanding nature of the Presidency, but when Donald Trump lapsed into catatonia on stage and spent twenty minutes bobbing his head to music instead of speaking to his audience the media’s silence on the issue of Trump’s competency was astounding. How do you not question the fitness of a candidate who can’t stop talking about sharks?
The media also dutifully reported every lie that came out of the Trump campaign as just another flavor of the greater truth that we’d all have to interpret for ourselves. The “What’s Project 2025? I’ve never heard of it” thing, for instance. His entire campaign was full of Project 2025 people, and they swung into action to implement it the moment he broke eye contact with John Roberts. The media has treated the centrality of this massively unpopular program to Trump’s plans as though it were a complete surprise.
Now they’re pretending that executive orders are basically the same thing as laws, and talking about Trump’s fancies about annexing Canada and Greenland as though actually doing so were something other than a war crime. They’re taking great pains to characterize masked thugs kidnapping people off the street and shipping them to foreign prisons as a form of immigration enforcement, and pretending that we’re not actually operating for-profit gulags in the United States.
One of the things that keeps emerging as time passes and the impact of the Trump administration’s arson attack on public service starts to have its effect is how surprised people who voted for him are. Many of them had absolutely no idea he intended to do anything like this. Many of them heard people talking about these plans and dismissed them as alarmists. (I should make a ledger of the Quora sock-puppets who spent the nine months prior to the election talking about how stupid and paranoid Democrats were for believing that Donald Trump would ever even consider doing the things that he started doing as soon as his fat ass was behind the Resolute Desk.)
Both of those things need to be fixed.
There’s obviously a popular reaction occurring across the country. It’s driven mostly by disgust with Elon Musk, who has decided from the very beginning against pretending that anything other than what is happening is happening, to the alarm of the Project 2025 guys who really wanted things to seem normal for the first year they were putting it into place. Getting Musk to force the President to do a Tesla ad on the White House lawn and then go on national television and blubber about the unfairness of it all because the stock that’s the basis of his claim to wealth and power is tanking is a strong sign that there’s a popular political movement in the United States that the establishment Democrats have no control or influence over. Can that be leveraged into a re-engineered Democratic party? That’s one open question.
The media, on the other hand, is - quite literally - in the pocket of billionaires, and they are dutifully taking the knee every chance they can get. It’s not just that journalists are terrified of Trump, though they are. They know that if Trump comes after them, they’re on your own. There’s no Katherine Graham and Ben Bradlee deciding to put the Washington Post’s reputation on the line and cover the Watergate story, there’s just Jeff Bezos demanding that, for once in the history of this country, the newspaper talk about what’s so great about free enterprise.
This makes the obeisant media that normalized the Reagan administration look like muckraking crusaders. As with the mainstream Democratic Party, the media is choosing to confront the Trump years by demonstrating its complete uselessness, in the hopes that the Eye of Sauron will light on somebody else. (Also, Trump and his toadies are Saruman to the billionaires’ Sauron, but we’re not ready to have that conversation yet. Musk does make an excellent Grima Wormtongue, though.)
Democrats, and the left in general, need to create an alternative media environment where people who are wondering what the fuck is happening to their country can go to find out. Because they’re not finding out from the media.
Resistance isn't hard. Start here.
https://5calls.org/
You can make an impact simply and quickly. Get ready to hurt some feelings.