Writes Tressie McMillan Cottom, in "Socialists Are Winning Because They Listen to People" (NYT gift link).
So... money isn't the answer. You need something other than money, and the socialists do have something. How, then, can they be stopped? The linked column puts it like this: "I’d be looking for the candidates who are thinking and running as if they know that bases are made of people, not dollars."
If you really wanted to show that you are about people, you wouldn't say "bases are made of people." You'd say people matter and hide that the reason they matter to you is they're what is required to make a "base."
The socialists are to the Democratic Party what the Tea Party was to the GOP. All they need now is their Trump.
ADDED: Here is the top-rated comment over there:
This op-ed makes several important points. I am a reliable voter, a Black man, a public school teacher, a union member, and a veteran. In other words, I fit several demographics the DNC routinely “targets” with text messages.
But here is the problem: every election cycle, I am asked the same two questions, Can I donate, and will I vote for the Democratic ticket? I am rarely called or approached face-to-face and asked how I feel, what I want from government, or even how I am doing. Voters are not merely data points in an opinion poll; we are human beings.
In contrast, my local DSA chapter recently sent me a text—not asking for my vote or money, but inviting me to a local park to watch or join a pickup basketball game. See the difference? One organization contacted me as a target; the other approached me as a member of the community.
My message to the DNC is simple: get out of the focus groups and elite academic spaces and into the communities. Stop merely studying voters. Start building genuine relationships with them.
He wants the Party to befriend him.
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73 टिप्पणियां:
Wow, is this a sound theory? I don't think the Progressives will ever let go of their love of free money. And as I recall it, the Tea Party was formed by a bunch of taxpayers that were fed up with busted budgets and mounting national debt, and a Republican Party that was happy taking their votes and then telling them to shove it. So they formed a leaderless movement and started getting vocal, much to the consternation of the politicians who much preferred losing their arguments in peace.
But unlike Tea Party Patriots that demanded reform and balanced budgets, I haven't heard a bunch of citizen Democrats getting organized to demand Socialism Now ! At least not in any numbers, and not in the mainstream. I've heard a bunch of young rich kids yelling for it. No, I think this is different.
young people with debt and lousy useless college degrees - who think their dream job is USAID funded.
They are angry.
Tea Party types are still around.
If they gather - the Antifa thugs show up to harass and harm.
Had Haley Stevens had charisma - she would have won.
Democrats and Socialists (Antifa) want to HARM PEOPLE.
“All they need now is their Trump.” And to resist voter ID so they can continue to cheat. That and insist on mail-in ballots.
Interesting that they are admitting that dominating fund raising is not enough. El-Sayed could not answer any question on the trail without mentioning “they spent $67 million to defeat me.”
Yes, but the money was insufficient and or ineffective. Which kind of undercuts the whole “joooos control the world with AIPAC money” claim that he still relies upon as his stump speech.
So meeting up IRL and listening to actual humans can overcome the international zionist conspiracy? Amazing. RC and Jaq, hardest hit.
Listening to the people = going to local homeless camp, sign up everyone to vote absentee with ballots sent to one address.
money isn't the answer - BS !! They have a huge mailing system where they can turn out thousands of people to protest in MN against Ice or any other "talking point" of the day. That started with huge funding for the backbone of a years long group of ready made protestors. Most of these voters are simply going where told. Progressives are more about anti- trump - anti THIS administration than true members of a party.
OTOH it is great news that the DNC continues to poor money into these primaries that could have otherwise been applied to the historic upcoming midterms. LOL
…yes, all elections are tricky, technical puzzles to be solved and not a whiff of ‘maybe we lose because our policies are unpopular?’
The communists offer free stuff- that’s compelling for degreed people who can’t read or write…
Brad, take note that all the $$ and street agitation is a tiny highly active subset of the population and doesn’t translate to a majority in the polls. Without widespread mail in ballots they can’t effectively rig elections. They are fighting against voter ID but the choke point is the USPS, and that’s a battle that cheating democrats have already lost. Every ballot by mail will be tracked from point to point this time.
Trump has obliterated the taxpayer-funded NGO empire, and the Progressive money factory has been choked down to relative trickle: Progressive billionaires and the unions.
The best thing to do when you've been beaten badly at your most lucrative scam is to pretend it wasn't really all that important to you in the first place. Maybe Progressives, are desperate to save face while trying to get rid of these filthy squatters that showed up out of nowhere. Their very legitimacy is on the line.
I think that, at this point, neither party cares one whit about whether people are being hurt. It's a feature, not a bug, and a self-serving, self-righteous one at that.
We’ve been on a Socialist trajectory for quite some time, driven more or less quietly by globalists and financiers that thought they knew best how to organize the world. Trump rejected this, exposed the ridiculousness of it, and created MAGA to combat that trend. Now the Socialists want to combat Trump, but they have to do so more loudly, hoping that people will go along. The insurmountable thing is that these socialists want to tear up our founding framework to execute their goals. The vast majority of Americans won’t go for that (I hope!), especially during the year of our 250 birthday. Not clear a special leader can change this. Americans cherish their sovereignty.
“Poor money”! Yikes. They are of course pouring it.
The problem is leaders.
The tea party was done in by people wanting to be in charge of the tea party.
Trump didn't take over a movement.
So those twelve texts I get everyday are sent by individuals?
I believe a law should be passed that if you STOP those texts any ensuing texts from that entity should be labeled as harassment per an instance.
Republicans cling to conservativism: Pro-Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Democratics cleave to Naziism... Deziism: Pro-Choice, Diversity (i.e. bloc ideologies), and Redistributive Change etc.
The biggest change was the emergence of a politician whose entire work experience was as a "community organizer." When Palin asked "what the heck is a community organizer?" I thought, yeah, what kind of profession is that? Well, Obama, an acolyte of Weather Underground organizer/terrorists Ayers & Dorhn, showed us how "community organizer" can be a pathway to the White House. Next thing you know, we have BLM, Code Pink, Occupy, Antifa, "Me Too" Pussy Hats, ICE out, ACAB, and countless other slogan-and-chant groups and the "community organizers" behind them, pulling the strings and making sure the pallets of bricks arrive where and when they are needed to break windows. Thanks Obama!
…the communists are winning because they offer the button in the box to people conditioned to push it. Since they can’t read and it’s not on Netflix they don’t know how it ends…
We've already been undergoing redistribution for decades and decades now. Go do some research on whether the aver American has reaped the benefits of increases in productivity since the 1970s. I mean, come on now.
The Democratic drag show in transition.
"The socialists are to the Democratic Party what the Tea Party was to the GOP. All they need now is their Trump."
Trump represented a "return to our roots" sort of candidate, leader and now president. His message of limiting government and encouraging business, based in some measure on what the John Birch Society has long advocated, found resonance with the people. Not of course with those who see government as the Be-All which is the bread-n-butter of the Democrat Party.
Democrats and socialists will only rally around someone who promises to take more to make even bigger government. Mamdani is one of those; so is the Muslim in Michigan who thinks he'll soon be a federal senator.
That great sucking sound you've been hearing is the "whoosh" of money being funneled upward.
The only story more hackneyed than "politics is all about money" is the "money doesn't matter in politics".
"The socialists are to the Democratic Party what the Tea Party was to the GOP. All they need now is their Trump."
I think the above fundamentally misreads the situation. Democrats are and have been for most of my life all in on the Marxian interpretation the proles are affected by false consciousness. They therefore believe any mass movement is engineered by an individual or at most a small conspiracy, and equally believe they can replicate such a movement in the same way (notice they always tag their losses as failure of messaging, not the message). Trump didn't engineer the Tea Party or MAGA, he just stepped in front of the parade.
JD Vance gets it
I suppose the comparison is warranted as both movements are disruptive to the respective parties. I’d posit the tea party failed as the gop has kept the trillion plus in corruption flowing so the Democrats remain viable…those with some history education know how the commie ending turns out…
They want something other than money. They want other people's money to provide goods magically.
"He wants the Party to befriend him."
I suspect that the Party wants him to run for office. He sounds like a perfect candidate.
The toxic radical islamic-communists have no experience running anything. Sort of like the angry young people who vote for them. Our young people go to No Kings Rallies, and support ICE watch - soros funded HARM.
Plus the media lie constantly about Trump. Soviet playbook.
Murkowski is a price example of a comfort whore.
Trump did not create what the Left calls MAGA. The constituency already existed. He understood and shared their dislike of and disgust with uniparty Republicans, and they finally had someone around whom to rally.
The dogs liked his dog food.
Gad Saad
@GadSaad
"Democrats, via their lunatic positions, are destroying the United States. Republicans, via their apathy to stop these positions, are destroying the United States. If real American heroes do not step up and save the republic, it will be lost forever. Many people will not connect the dots until it is way too late."
I can't conceive of this (or any) generation of communists as populists. Yes, "the people" (or "masses") is baked into the rhetoric, but this is an extraordinarily authoritarian movement, and one that tolerates no dissent. It's not about "listening to the people," it's about telling people what to do. And it really only appeals to the most retarded, insane, and violent elements of society.
Democrazis. Democrazies. DemocRAATs. Fight!
Did not El Sayed avail any outside funding?
So I’m sure that he will not want the evil money from the Democratic Party now that he is their nominee.
He wants the party to love him, not just use him. The left is generally made of those that love the party, and that the party loves back. Republicans forgot what and who they were, and look what happened to their party. Romney? Remember the post-mortem after that? Is that what then happened next? (hint, it wasn't)
That Democrat Party has turned into something pretty unlovable (unlike when they loved Obama into office) and are flapping around looking for the next big thing. They may have found it, but they don't have an Obama warming up in the bullpen. There's a real opportunity there for the right kind of opportunist.
What could possibly go wrong?
Yes, Peachy. If Stevens had even a half of a Farley’s worth of charisma, she would have.
I do hope Democrats keep pouring money on Talarico, as they did Beto before him.
Roughly 1 in 3 eligible adults in the US now choose not to vote. Many explain this by saying that it would make no difference if they did -- the result is always the same for them. If a political faction emerged that was seen by these people as tangibly different and relevant, how many extra voters would it take to rewrite mainstream strategy?
"Peachy+2 said...
Had Haley Stevens had charisma - she would have won."
This is probably true. The description of her as seeming like a Saturday Night Live character was spot on. The true mystery is how she got elected to Congress four times with that voice and demeanor. There are worse candidates that her, apparently.
Karma-la la lot
So, the far, far left is better at retail politics than the simply far left? OK, I'll buy that premise.
What passes for mainstream Democrats these days are people who have been on the gravy train for so long that they can't push away from the table. In the sense that they are very risk averse they have become, in an odd Mirror Universe way, conservative.
Also, they fear the radicals to their left. The figurative and soon I suspect actual, bomb throwers. So even candidates who will soon try to frantically move to some ill perceived center are now running in D primaries all in on Trans rights, No AIPAC, No limits immigration.
The reality that these ideas are anathema to a solid majority of Americans is lost on most of them, a fair percentage of whom think Ana Thema is the latest Drag Queen Story Hour performer they need to applaud.
Is JD Vance aware of difference between STEM education and loan finance libtard degrees
From Christopher B:
"Democrats are and have been for most of my life all in on the Marxian interpretation the proles are affected by false consciousness. They therefore believe any mass movement is engineered by an individual or at most a small conspiracy, and equally believe they can replicate such a movement in the same way (notice they always tag their losses as failure of messaging, not the message). Trump didn't engineer the Tea Party or MAGA, he just stepped in front of the parade."
Exactly right. And Dog and Pony Show @8:30, too, when s/he (pretty sure you're a he, DaPS, but lest my memory fails me, I will hedge) says that it's not, it's *never* about "listening to the people" in Marxism (or the Marxism Lite that I'm very much afraid we're going to have to live through). But the *appearance* of "listening to the people" still has strong appeal among "the people" - for example the quoted voter who got invited to the pickup basketball game. He sounds plenty smart enough to know that they wanted his vote, and also that eventually there would be the Ask - but how the Ask comes about matters to him, even though functionally it's exactly the same Ask that he was getting from the mainline Democrats and implies ZERO additional attention to his needs and desires - it just showed up wearing kicks or whatever.
There's digital relational organizing (which has its uses) and then there's in-person relational organizing that is persistent over the 24 months of the 24 month election cycle and goes considerably beyond door-knocking in the last six weeks. Ben Wikler's book discusses this. The fact that Elon Musk is said to be planning to drop $100 million into eight states this year (now that we are in August of the election year) suggests that at least some big conservative money hasn't adjusted to 24-month in-person relational organizing.
Tacotus @10:19 - I'm stuck, again, on the question of whether the ascendant DSA are true believers or power-hungry cynics, and thanks to my now-greater-than-before familiarity with Islam, I have to add a third category: taqqiyists, a word I think I've just coined to denote "people who knowingly lie, but are lying for what they believe in."
Please note that I don't apply that term just (or universally) to Muslims. I'm also (or maybe primarily) talking about Marxists who are, for the present, happy to lie to the falsely conscious proletariat about the practicality and sustainability of socialist free-stuff tax-the-rich "economic" policies but know perfectly well that the endgame is not state-heavy socialism, but stateless communism.
The frustrating thing about the fact that two out of three of my categories involve knowing liars and the third involves economic illiterates is that young voters act so cynical about so many things, but are in fact such babes in the woods about practically everything from skin care to vitamins to jooooos to economics. They'll fall for it, either way. They feel in need of rescue - they've been told all their waking lives that they can't survive on their own, and simultaneously that They Are The Future on which everything rests.
Of course, in every election cycle someone predicts that young people will turn out in huge numbers, and then after-action analyses treat a couple of percentage points' increase as a historic turning point or something. So maybe - MAYBE - these horrifying primary wins do not signal our societal demise. But (and I'm saying this to the Republican strategists who I understand are urging candidates to throw money at their DSA opponents the way Democrats threw support at Trump in 2016 because he'd be easy for Clinton to beat) it's an all-in bet and it scares the hell out of me.
The world has changed since we boomers were young, but let’s pretend that it hasn’t, it gives us that frisson of superiority that we all look for.
What is horrifying is to sell out your country to a foreign nation, and giving them the weapons to commit genocide, that is genuinely “horrifying.”
There is no reason to expect a youngish NYT journalist to be familiar with the numerous blueprints for the takeover of the US by socialists, Gramscian Marxists, communists. DSA politicians are “listening to people” who have been brainwashed accordingly by the mass media, public schools and universities. Bill Clinton held the loonies at bay. Obama turned them loose. Democrats have always been somebody’s tools. Why not the commies and the Islamists?
This is ignorant happy talk by lefties trying to normalize the radicals. All of the DSA folks have been elected in low turnout elections where rich white people vote in droves. The general election population despise them.
"The socialists are to the Democratic Party what the Tea Party was to the GOP."
There is some small overlap in the two situations but the comparison just doesn't hold up.
Like the song imagined, “Everything free in America.” It’s the siren song for college grads with useless degrees, the homeless with votes for sale, illegal immigrants and others. The Muslims have a different song entitled, “Death or dhimmitude.”
“He wants the Party to befriend him.”
Yes, the Party wants to be your friend. They know it’s not far from the friend zone to the Big Brother zone. You won’t even notice the transition.
There is unfortunately less difference between STEM degrees and degrees in grievance studies these days. I note that many STEM based companies do their own testing bypassing the credentialing system. I do worry about how healthcare will cope.
"They feel in need of rescue - they've been told all their waking lives that they can't survive on their own, and simultaneously that They Are The Future on which everything rests."
These are the people who were so naive they took out loans to get degrees that don't help all that much in repaying them. And their votes count as much as yours.
In his last years, Bill Buckley had the passing thought that if he were starting out in life, he'd do it as a socialist and have all the joy of starting out with nothing, challenging the Establishment and overcoming all the obstacles along the way. Don't underestimate the power of "happy warrior," "band of brothers" movement building in politics.
The Tea Party, though, was focused on the deficit. Trump built on immigration, trade, and deindustrialization (and to some degree, foreign involvements, though that part has been forgotten). More deficit hawkery would have done him good. If the analogy holds, a Democrat will come along who makes that socialist energy flow into other channels, disappointing the socialist activists but winning over more of the electorate. They will end up electing a Bill Clinton "New Democrat" without realizing that he is a Bill Clinton.
Dems and their lackeys
they just runnin’ around in
the shoes of a clown 🤡
"They feel in need of rescue - they've been told all their waking lives that they can't survive on their own, and simultaneously that They Are The Future on which everything rests."
That was Charles Manson’s pitch. Worked surprisingly well.
“Trump did not create what the Left calls MAGA. The constituency already existed.”
In a nutshell. And that constituency was created by Donk corruption, elitism, and social absurdities. Trump’s political origin story is probably as simple as him looking around and thinking “well, if these shitheads can do it then, truly, anyone can”.
“ hombre said...
Like the song imagined, “Everything free in America.”
Yes
Everything free in America.
If you just pee on America.
Clyde: "The true mystery is how Hayley Stevens got elected to Congress four times with that voice and demeanor."
Easily solved. Her district is the Detroit northern suburbs. Populated by people who look and sound like her.
I would bet that her voice and demeanor are a shtick, or at least a deliberate decision to keep the ways of her people. She has two degrees from American University in DC, and she has spent her entire working life in Democrat politics. She could easily be a vocal-frying uptalker if she put in the tiniest effort. But she knows her constituents wouldn't trust someone like that.
The statewide Dem primary, unfortunately for her, is decided by vocal-frying uptalkers, who probably despised her you-betcha ways more than Republicans do. Heck, Republicans probably like her the way she is. Even Fox News had a difficult time making fun of her - producers probably had in the back of their minds that a big chunk of their viewership sounds and acts like Stevens. CC, JSM
The socialists are to the Democratic Party what the Tea Party was to the GOP. All they need now is their Trump.
LOL!
Only a "Constitutional Law Professor" would think there is any similarity here.
Ideologies have replaced neighborhood, ethnic, and religious organizations as what holds people, especially younger people, together. It's not surprising that some people would look to parties or ideological movements to give them a social life and sense of belonging and not surprising that parties and movements would provide that. The downside is that not all of life should be seen through partisan glasses. We need organizations that bring people of different points of view together. But for dedicated ideologists, like today's socialists, that's not a downside at all. For them, it's a plus when the movement is everything.
"Roughly 1 in 3 eligible adults in the US now choose not to vote."
That's ok, democrats vote for them.
*The socialists are to the Democratic Party what the Tea Party was to the GOP.*
Only if you're willing to admit the socialists are the Democratic Party's base. Because that's precisely what the TEA Party was/is.
"The socialists are to the Democratic Party what the Tea Party was to the GOP. All they need now is their Trump."
DJT is their Trump. John Podesta admitted to promoting him as a "pied piper" candidate in 2016 - a straw candidate, destined to lose the election - and it backfired.
The DSA is co-opting the Democratic Party's electoral manipulation tactic to elect radical candidates in the primaries. But success in the general election will depend on how effectively they can game the voting systems.
Generally, I laugh when I hear that the Washington Post/NBC?NYT is laying people off; that Hollywood is going under; that Stephen Colbert's contract isn't renewed; that the schools are laying off workers, that USAID is shrinking. I see bloated irresponsible institutions encountering reality.
But when I read that the younger generation supports socialism, I think of the Weimar Republic. There the youger generation had no future under the existing system and they turned to the Socialists, that is the Nazis. Then, of course, we older people know that they lost their future in the Nazi Army as the Nazis began to lose the war and hundreds of thousands were killed, wounded, taken prisoner, sent home to be hungry civilians in bombed out cities. And meanwhile they lost their humanity by ignoring Nazi atrocities or even participating in them. But today's young people don't know that. They seem only to hear the similarities between what the young people of Weimar were saying as institutions collapsed and what they themselves or their contemporaries are saying as Wapo/Hollywood/NYT/Stephen Colbert/et all fire large groups of young people. Because although famous names are losing their jobs, they are few in number compared to the hundreds of unknown young people who are losing jobs in each of these liberal institution job-sheddings. I don't sympathize with the whiners but I have young relatives, all OK so far, but scared. They want a social safety net for when another institution collapses and they call that safety net, socialism. So they talked in the days of Weimar. We need to aim a message at them. Yes, they are now antisemites. But they don't want to get the Jews, they want the world we had. They can't get it the way we did because our manufacturing was sold to China. Trump is working to restore it but meanwhile ....?
The difference is Trump has ideas that are proven to work. Socialism never works.
"They want a social safety net for when another institution collapses and they call that safety net, socialism."
Growing up, my mom used to always tell us kids "Life's not fair" and "The world doesn't owe you a living".
Cartoon: Two doors, sign over one reads "Capitalism- Work hard, keep half", sign over the other reads "Socialism- No work, free stuff". Big line in front of the "Socialism" door, nobody waiting in front of the "Capitalism" door.
How can anyone get all the way through college and not understand that *somebody* has to work in order for there to be "free stuff" for everybody else?
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