I've found, since about the end of the Obama admin, a huge gap between the outraged base and the realities of politics on the ground that's made me quite despondent. The base just wants to talk about how outraged they are to each other on every piece of media they can. It's like social signaling; you have to tell every other upper middle class news addicted millennial or GenX how much you hate the current administration constantly.
But there's no effort to convince swing voters to vote against Trump. The midterms will be here before anyone knows it and it's going to be the first big chance to push back on the current administration, but I see so little work that's being done to create a coherent opposition party. Ezra Klein's book on Abundance was a great starting point. In Dem spaces though, reaction to the book was pretty much absent. Most of Dem base temporarily got busy trying to come up with ways that Klein has failed some progressive purity test (centrists are fascists, environmental injustice, etc etc.) Then after that, most just ignored his vision and went back to crying about the current administration.
IMO the Dems cranky, upper middle class news addicted base is its worst feature. They continue to kneecap the Dems from being a real opposition party. Telling people how bad the administration is won't make a good opposition party. It worked just enough for 2020 but ran out of steam by 2024. Dems need to create a vision of the future under Dem rule.
I suspect it's because the coalition that kept the Democratic party together has failed and its current base is just too small to win votes in elections. They've lost their bonafides among the trade unions, they've lost their appeal to the technology class, their strongest supporters remain the social-progress bloc which may be overrepresented online but is just too small of a force to win in elections.
The problem is that everyone who sits down to think about swing voters realizes the same thing: tariffs are going to crash the economy, DOGE is going to cut Social Security, and Congress is going to cut Medicaid. But none of these have happened yet, while other bad things swing voters care less about have happened.
So there's a fundamental tension. You can focus on the current situation to the exclusion of swing voters and their interests, or focus on swing voter interests and sound like you're lamely ignoring what's happening right now. It's a hard balance to strike, and while people make noise about it online I think most elected Dems understand everyone's trying as best they can.
But there's no effort to convince swing voters to vote against Trump. The midterms will be here before anyone knows it and it's going to be the first big chance to push back on the current administration, but I see so little work that's being done to create a coherent opposition party. Ezra Klein's book on Abundance was a great starting point. In Dem spaces though, reaction to the book was pretty much absent. Most of Dem base temporarily got busy trying to come up with ways that Klein has failed some progressive purity test (centrists are fascists, environmental injustice, etc etc.) Then after that, most just ignored his vision and went back to crying about the current administration.
IMO the Dems cranky, upper middle class news addicted base is its worst feature. They continue to kneecap the Dems from being a real opposition party. Telling people how bad the administration is won't make a good opposition party. It worked just enough for 2020 but ran out of steam by 2024. Dems need to create a vision of the future under Dem rule.
I suspect it's because the coalition that kept the Democratic party together has failed and its current base is just too small to win votes in elections. They've lost their bonafides among the trade unions, they've lost their appeal to the technology class, their strongest supporters remain the social-progress bloc which may be overrepresented online but is just too small of a force to win in elections.