In a piece at The Nation via MSN Rebecca Traister argues that James Carville, Rahm Emanuel, Seth Moulton, Maureen Dowd and other Democratic critics of the direction the party has taken are wrong and that the real explanation for the Democrats’ loss of the White House, House of Representatives, and Senate is that they were not “woke” and excessive enough:
The right perceives things about the centuries-long march toward a more just and inclusive nation that the left fails to grasp: that all of this is intertwined. As the left tears itself apart trying to distinguish between fights for civil equality, workers’ liberation, and democracy, its opponents are the ones who understand that we cannot have economic justice without social movements, that we cannot have a functional democracy while workers are exploited and people cannot easily vote or control their own bodies. Democrats have lost recently not because of an excess of wokeness but because of a failure to get excessive enough — to fight like these efforts, like the fate of all Americans, are linked.
That’s her conclusion. I recommend you read the whole thing.
Its analogous to conservatives saying Republicans lose because they weren’t conservative enough, it has the benefit of being unfalsifiable.
If one’s chosen party loses; then its because their parties positions / governance wasn’t ideological enough. If one’s party won, its because of ideology.
Maybe the question ought to be, how would one objectively measure that a party was being too excessively ideological (or not ideological enough) to the detriment of its electoral success?
I don’t think it helps her argument that Trump’s job approval rating is as high as it is.
Once again, woke is not defined. If by woke you mean the extremes where all politics is focused on the far out stuff most people dont care about, trans in sports, cultural appropriation, etc, then she is clearly wrong. The purity police went way too far. However, if she is talking about the belief by many on the right that science is woke, that medicine is woke, that any mention of discrimination against black people is woke, etc, then she is half correct. Democrats should not give up supporting basic research and medical research just because the current POTUS and his Health Secretary as well as many voters on the right think they are bogus. They should continue to support those efforts. However, they should also spread their efforts to issues beyond where they have focused into areas that concern the opposition like immigration.
They also need vastly improved messaging. The Trump Gish gallop of constant lies has stymied them. Its notable that Trump’s supporters excuse the poor performance during Trump’s last year (and exaggerate the mediocre performance before) because of covid, but they put full blame on Biden when he had to deal with the effects of covid. The economy performed pretty well except for inflation, which they did not message well. Or maybe they just need to remember that massive unemployment is tolerated much better than inflation.
Steve
Ask the author of the linked piece. She uses the term to mean “identity politics”.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
The Biden Administration’s problem was not messaging. That is a lie. The Biden Administration’s problem was bad policy. Lawrence Summer warned them what the path on which they were embarked would do and he was right, as any Keynesian would have told them. When deficit-financed spending exceeds surplus aggregate supply, it will produce inflation. This is not the 1930s. The surplus in aggregate supply has already been wrung out of the system. Furthermore, China’s surplus in aggregate supply means that deficit-financed spending does not even incentivize additional investment to produce more supply.
Without much more narrowly tailored policies fiscal stimulus is moribund. That pertains to tax cuts as well.
??? I acknowledged that inflation was a problem. I suggested that perhaps people dislike inflation so much that they would rather suffer large scale unemployment, like under Trump, than inflation. So their policy choice in choosing maintaining GDP and employment over inflation was clearly wrong. However, note that Trump was not harmed by his bad economic numbers. He had better messaging. Covid was blamed. Covid’s effects are ignored with Biden.
Steve
She’s essentially making the old (and incorrect) argument that the main problem with Democrats is that they just don’t fight hard enough.
Inflation was a problem, but Democrats also had the problem of taking the unpopular side on issues with the American public, such as immigration, and yes, DEI and related identity cultural issues.
Wasn’t Ms. Traister the biographer and primary advocate of Monty Python’s black night.?
Woke, its a trigger word, keeps the masses angry and confused. There are many, none actually mean much, but using them keeps the believers wound up. It will be interesting and telling when the latest employment figures come out, lets see how that shakes things up!
So, you believe that Rebecca Traister wants to keep the masses angry and confused?