Former Biden White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki used her opening monologue on Sunday to dish out some much-needed advice to Democratic voters – and if you think she is wrong, you can read The New York Times’s columnist Maureen Dowd’s latest column and get the same message. If you don’t want to hear how Democrats might have gone wrong and prefer to stay where you are for now, it remains totally understandable. It is hard, answers are not easy. Some things do seem awfully straightforward, so much so that it really doesn’t take much time or emotional investment to consider. All one has to do is stop labeling everyone, stop talking down to people, and listen to whoever happens to be in front of you.
Dowd’s column entitled ‘Democrats and the Case of Mistaken Identity Politics” argues that Americans are sick of your woke sh*t. “Woke is broke.” Yes, it is 2016 all over again but you know the old rule about failing to fix something the first time? Dowd writes:
Democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism — Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and second-term Barack Obama. The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like “Latinx,” and “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).
Now, you may like being called “elite” or even “elitist” – I kinda do, but you’ll be liking it as a loser, every. single. time. But being an elite loser only means you are great at letting others win. The real message is not that we need to stop caring about marginalized groups, no – it is that any group we can define still gets back to “people” and so stop worrying about groups and start listening to “people” – it will end up helping everyone. At least, that’s the ideal.
To the extent that you don’t want to hear it, listen to Jen Psaki – who has all her liberal bona fides in order, thanks much – and she says nearly the exact same thing. Psaki came at it from a different angle in that the “anti-fascist” message didn’t work because people were more concerned with every day issues like the economy and immigration:
Too many people either didn’t buy it and didn’t show up or were willing to price in the rest because other issues were more important to them. And the answer to that failure isn’t to say fascism doesn’t matter. It does. Or to say everyone who didn’t vote for Harris is to blame for not hearing or understanding the threat. It’s for candidates to rethink how they prioritize what they talk about moving forward. It’s to rethink how they engage moving forward. Do that Joe Rogan podcast, by the way. Part of the answer is to stop diagnosing and to start listening.
Do Joe Rogan? Someone around here wrote the exact same thing two weeks ago (And got hammered for it) but the failure to do Rogan is not what lost the election, it is the attitude that the 50 million people who watched his Trump interview aren’t the Democrats’ type. Dowd says don’t worry about “types.” Turn Rogan viewers into the Democratic-types!
Besides, you cannot create categories when focused on listening to the person in front of you – so listen. Hear what that person has to say and what he or she worries about. Democrats used to be the party of the working-class union man. It has become the party of the associate English professor – and that’s great, so long as it doesn’t come at the cost of the average working class American. Let me rephrase, practice – It doesn’t come at the cost of the average American.
Someway, somehow, the Dems have to keep all the good bottled up in awakening to the plight of the marginalized, the LGTBQ community, newly-arrived immigrants, black and brown voters, all of it – assume no category, while retaining the appeal to “all” – whoever that might be. And that’s sort of the point, stop pinning voters into this group or that group to highlight certain messaging and start listening to what people believe is good or bad in their lives.
Stop talking down to Americans. Stop telling them they’re wrong. Start telling them what is right. Talk about what makes them great – all of them, all of us. Instead of having culture police, just talk about the police. Build a culture around what one hears, not what one messages or categorizes. If you are recoiling a bit – as I am – it starts from a position of elitism, believing to know better. And that position got a thorough ass-kicking in 2016 and 2024. Elite losers.
Some are so angry that they might not even want to win at this point. That is a moral failure – one of which I’m all too susceptible. Democracy means accepting an uncomfortable middle. Utterly reject authoritarianism as far outside the middle. Always. Hear me – we must work within democracy. But accept that a working coalition of people can embrace some basic democratic principles and then move forward, one can retain American ideals and fend off China’s communism and militancy. We can remain American, all of us, under one label.
Psaki and Dowd have hit on something profound and they’re far from the only ones, the same message is coming from James Carville and Rahm Emmanuel – getting off the woke stuff doesn’t mean go back to sleep. It means shut up for a bit. Americans are speaking. Start considering good policies and worry about who benefits later. Get back to basics, a livable wage, safe communities, a healthy planet, a great education system… something, anything but elite defeat.
If you don’t want to listen across the aisle, listen to those of us – above, like Psaki – whom we’ve so long trusted. It is a start, one that was never finished after 2016 when we vowed to never make that mistake again. It took one cycle. Now we have plenty of time on our hands…
God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and @JasonMiciak
These people are right on target, I’m thinking.
I’m thinking they couldn’t be more wrong. And just for good measure – I’m not convinced he did win. How do we explain the orange turd smirking publicly a month ago or so that that he “really didn’t need you votes”… he already had all he needed. Then dragging his sorry ass around the country (and looking at least like a man in his mid 80’s) and spewing an incomprehensible word salad of lies, phony brags and just nonsense (policy? who needs policies”). And on election night, a race that was predicted by most everyone to be neck and neck right down to the wire, probably take at least a day or two to really sort it out and finally produce a winner, was instead called for the dipship by midnight??? How does any of that make any logical sense?
It doesn’t make sense to me, no matter how anyone spins it. Tyrant always gives himself away and he said he had more than enough votes, don’t bother to vote, and also muskrat, on Joe Rogan I believe, saying he had an app that said they won, hours before polls closed. What app??? But if we think this, we’re conspiracy theorists.
Then there is the question of how much Elon Musk enters into the equation with a Left-wing conspiracy theorists allege that Starlink, a satellite constellation developed by Musk’s SpaceX designed to provide high-speed broadband internet across the globe, was connected to the voting machine supply chain.
As the right was fond of saying during the 2020 election aftermath. Where there is smoke there is fire!
In every election held across the globe since Covid’s economic slump, incumbent governments have either lost outright or taken a shit-kicking. Our election’s the same. In hard economic times, even if they’re better than they think, people vote against the party running the show. Chase reasons for the downfall all you want but neglect this fact at your peril.
Let’s be honest. There are a lot of reasons we lost, some more central and some less central. I think this one is pretty central, exactly how much so it would take a lot of careful investigation to know. But here’s the thing. If even one of these factors had not been there, we probably would have won. So it’s worth talking about. Especially the ones we may be less aware of.
And that said, I want to raise another issue that’s REALLY not being talked about, certainly not here, but really not in a lot of places. And it could just be the most important of all. You might say it’s the elephant in the room.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/us-trump-election-gaza-effect-voting-boycott-harris
So yes, what this means, if true, is that Trump really didn’t win, as much as Harris lost. And it was the combination of Netanyahu and AIPAC that put her (and Biden before her) over a barrel. But they may not have realized just how bad it was because they are so used to AIPAC calling the shots on Israel. They just didn’t understand that this time they had to do something different. But they saw it as too risky for their election chances, not realizing that this time the bigger risk was looming on the other side.
To get how this looked to many Democratic voters, many of whom were in the swing states, I recommend an article from the Nation published all the way back in February, “Biden is Mad at Netanyahu? Spare Me.” The point to me is, yes, Biden was genuinely mad at Netanyahu. He had every reason to be, But that’s not enough, especially when you hear that he then sent a humongous shipment of more arms to help the IDF destroy what’s left of Gaza. Netanyahu is a slimy character, very hard to control, so hard that there’s probably only one country that could do it — the United States. But we didn’t. For some people that was the last straw. It’s not that they like Trump, it was just sheer anger at Biden and Harris. I didn’t look at it that way, but I can’t say they were wrong. The situation in the Middle East has only continued downhill since then.
Never forget that Netanyahu desperately needed Trump to win — this is one of the many reasons he has continued blowing Gaza to smithereens for over a year now — and about 80% of the American Jewish electorate voted for Harris.
Meanwhile, the right wing just continues LYING to voters, making them willing to vote against their own interests by giving them convenient scapegoats on whom to blame all their woes.
Sorry. But, EFF THAT. If the people who voted for Trump and the GOP in general can’t be bothered to wake up to the lies and fall for the “hey, you white straight guys deserve to be in charge and put the queers and n*ggers and sp*cs and the c*nts in their place as nothing” (of course, they won’t ever say that to “mixed” audiences–they’ll just “code” everything), then I’m going to savor all the tears they produce when the REAL ELITES (ie, the Musks and Thiels and Murdochs) get what they want while the stupid voters find themselves unable to afford a roll of toilet paper or a head of lettuce. I’m not looking forward to suffering because of those jackasses but let’s remember how a sizable portion of the “Progressive movement” felt in 2010 when Obama didn’t give them all the unicorns he’d promised in 2008. Lots of talk about letting the right-wing take over Congress and push all their anti-American, anti-worker bills through and, by 2020, the country would be so pissed off that there wouldn’t be a GOPer anywhere in Congress. Well, this is that on steroids. And IF we get to continue having elections in 2026 and 2028, maybe the scales will finally fall from the eyes of the non-MAGAts who got suckered by Trump and the Trump-enabling media.
But I’m certainly not about to let a couple of “elites” like Dowd and Psaki tell me that the Democrats need to start attracting the braindead just to win an election. The Democrats are a TRUE big-tent party where we try to ensure that EVERYONE in the tent gets a fair shake; the GOP have only one real group that gets anything (cis hetero white people, mostly men) and everyone else has to suck up to that group and accept the crumbs that group deigns to toss them.
I agree. My maga mother disowned me today because I tried to explain that tariffs and mass immigration are going to hurt us all financially and raise prices, rather than lower them as tyrant lied to them about. She said I was listening to idiots and jackasses. So if anyone thinks I am going to reach across the aisle and sing kumbaya, they won’t be seeing that from me. Sorry. Those people are nuts. They’ve spent years saying f@ck Joe Biden, go Branden, marching with swastikas and the confederate flag, and shitting in the capital, and so much more. And I will not reach across the aisle to people who have already threatened to shoot me. Forgive me. But no! Not even no thank you!!! I will mend my relationship with my mother but that is as far as it will go. And boy, she said some very hateful things.
OK, fine. But that was not the point of this piece. Did you really read it?
Actually that seemed to be pretty much the point of the piece.
I explain below what I think the point of the piece was. The comment begins “There a lot of truth to what you say … “
I most certainly did read it, plus all the comments. Thank you
seriously?
Democrats are the ONLY party that champions workers’ rights, stands with unions, takes care of the sick and elderly, and basically anything else that “common people” care about. The economy always does better under Democrats.
BUT NOBODY SEES THAT BECAUSE NOBODY BROADCASTS IT. The problem is disinformation.
There’s a lot of truth ito what you say. But they do broadcast statements of Democrats that unnecessarily rub potential voters the wrong way, which is just doing the Republicans’ work
The message I’m getting from the OP is a little different from the one we’re used to hearing from the “centrist” Dems. But that difference is crucial. Dowd and Psaki are not, like he centrists, saying “be less liberal.” They are saying be just as liberal, or even more so. — but find different way of talking about it. Don’t think in terms of identity politics. Don’t make up new categories and frankenstein words like BIPOC and LATINX. Talk to the whole American public where it is, and convince them. The diehard trumpies are still beyond that — but Trump couldn’t have won this with just the diehard trumpies.
priscianus jr’s comment here sounds a lot like the comments I’ve posted on several PZ articles written since the results were posted. The articles and the comments have not been warmly received, but I guess that’s due to the raw emotions we’re dealing with.
I wrote “find different way of talking about it” using different words – “don’t talk down to them”. Not all Trump voters last Tuesday were hardcore MAGA, many were just sick of being looked down on and talked down to. New York City can hardly be considered friendly to Trump, yet an article I cited in an earlier comment noted that the Harris vote total was only about 55% of the total Democratic registration, and Trump won over 250,000 more votes than there are registered Republicans in the city. Now, consider that over 1,350,000 registered Democrats in a city that absolutely hates, loathes, detests and abhors Donal Trump either held their noses while voting for him or didn’t bother voting at all, and ask yourself why. Then ask yourself why Harris’ winning margins among reliably Democratic voting blocs across the country were lower than Biden’s in 2020.
To this point, several PZ regulars continue blanket denouncement of the swing voters; hopefully, this vitriol will dissipate. After all, we aren’t going to win elections without them.
Thanks for this. I’ll just offer a little comment about New York City, because that’s where I vote (I’m a native New Yawkeh) and I vote the straight Democratic ticket (via the Working Families Party where possible). But the theme of voting this year or you’re we’re not going to have a democracy any more? True, but there hasn’t been any Democracy in New York City for years. It’s run by the Democratic Party, but it makes no difference, because it’s really run by Goldman Sachs and REBNY (the Real Estate Board of New York — which is not any part of the government), and the NYCDEC, which is tecnically a nonprofit corporation whose members are appointed by the mayor, which is not accountable to the citizens, but is very accountable to the big banks and big real estate. So it doesn’t surprise me to learn that a lot of people didn’t bother to vote. For people not wealthy it has become very difficult to live in NYC.
” The problem is disinformation.”
100% correct. Ask voters what policies they actually WANT and you get a list of Democrat policies. Hell, in states that voted Trump they still passed labor law and abortion policies that Dems champion. But they were lied too about who was at fault by a huge well funded mainstream and social media juggernaut.
Oh, and please, a response to the Covid epidemic? We already did that, the voters booted out the guy in charge when Covid struck, and who f#*ed everything up, his name was Trump. Biden was the guy that fixed things.
We just didn’t get the message across to the voters because their wealthy media machine overwhelmed us.
It’s the messaging we have to get right, not the message, we’ve already got that right.
you are 100% correct. the media did NOT do their job and that includes Mr Carville and Ms Psaki. They obsessed over every gaffe and stumble by Biden but never once questioned the sanity of yam tits. you know, yam tits, the cos playing French fyer, garbage man and whale psychiatrist. and don’t even get me started on how they ignored the Butler fiasco. NO FOLLOWUP with usual questions….just accepted what was spoon fed to them. Nope, nit gonna buy the crap the Dems need to look inward and speak to “everyone” as “everyone” is o longer listening to Dems. media has normalized that orange putz and his treason and seditious behavior for way too long ND because the Media REFUSED to call him the senile idiot he is, we are now stuck with a bunch of idiotic people who will do their damndest to ruin everything this country once stood for.
so save the pontificating by Psaki, Carville and the rest for somebody else. they’re part of the problem by being pushovers and not speaking TRUTH.
the problem are the voters – not the dems policy – the voters got gaslighted, misinformed, and lied to. They believe it and live in a maga fantasy world where crime is sky high, Biden did the inflation, economy is bad, and the prices are the worst.
Why did they vote for the Orange Mussolini ? Because of Gaza or because she is a woman, or black or a marxist fascist or she wants to take away all guns and money, and they do transgender operation on your kids in school and all the other crap and lies that were on podcasts and maga social media or because they think Don will eliminate inflation on day one, and end the war in Ukraine and Gaza on day one too, with a phone call – Or they believe mass deportation would solve any problem and would not cause a mayor economy crash and inflation. They are lied to, and gaslighted – and do not realize it
American voter have been like a person who had the choice between a healthy diet or going on meth – they choose meth – because the dealer said meth is cheap and totally safe and the healthy diet will cost a fortune. so now enjoy 4 years on meth.
I explain below what I think is the point of the piece. The comment begins “There a lot of truth to what you say … “