It’s been quite a while since I’ve linked to a New York Times editorial but I thought this one raised some interesting questions and was worth your time. The editors remark:
Let’s concede what is true in the case for candidates like Mr. Platner. Democrats do need fresh, charismatic, younger contenders, and they should stop treating the next name in line as an entitlement. A party is strongest when it is a genuinely big tent, willing to host real disagreement rather than enforce a single approved script. Voters can tell the difference between a coalition and a focus group, and they are drawn to the former.
But a big tent is worth pitching only if something is argued inside it, and that is precisely what this midterm cycle has lacked. Handed the chance to litigate what the party actually believes, Democrats have mostly declined. What is the party’s answer on immigration, moving beyond its proper outrage at President Trump’s methods to include an affirmative account of who should be allowed in and how? What would it do about the cost of housing, beyond lamenting it and suggesting inadequate fixes? What does it want from the public education system? What is its response to the disruption that artificial intelligence is about to send through the work force and society more broadly?
They conclude:
What the party owes voters this year is not another savior but a set of answers — plain, specific, sometimes divisive answers to the questions constituents are asking to improve their lives. That is how you convince someone that you are listening: not only by hunting for a better messenger but also by finally having something to say. Right now, too much of the Democratic Party’s identity is defined by what it stands against. The trouble in Maine goes beyond a single candidate. It is a party still hoping a contender will spare it the harder work of deciding what it stands for.
I think the party is also suffering from being too closely identified with public employees’ unions. That in turn has led to delegating the functioning of government to the civil bureaucracy. Now Supreme Court decisions, e.g. Trump v. Slaughter, threaten that strategy. Consider this chart from Gallup:
The Republicans have been bumping along at that low level of approval for some time but that’s a new low for the Democrats. That is a picture of brand erosion. Political brands are shaped less by campaign messaging than by the way a party governs. When brand erosion happens you must quickly adapt, lock in your core messaging, and focus on “customer experience”. I’m far from the first to point that out—the recent emphasis on “affordability” reflects precisely that concern. The challenge is choosing the right values and ensuring that ordinary voters experience government in a way that reinforces that.
Both parties have become narrowly focused ideological parties, which is sorta European and basically anti-American.
The last time they were Big Tent parties was the 1960’s. The Democrat tent was huge, covering right-wing Southern segregationists like George Wallace and socialists like Adlai Stephenson. The Republicans not only had a Taft wing, they had liberals like Richard Nixon, Jaco Javits, and Martin Luther King Sr. And Jr.
But activists in both parties wanted ideological purity, and we got the current parties, who represent no one, and who are fundamentally anti-democratic, and even ant-American.The fact that both parties support Israeli genocide of the Palestinians and the war of aggression against Iran is just about as anti-American as it gets.
We, Americans, need a complete purge of thr Epsteins from our elites and the political parties.