After November: What Democrats And Liberals Need To Do To Stop Sucking

Time For A Fundamental Transformation

I wasn’t a very good student in school. When I had an upcoming test or report due, I would inevitably wait until the very last moment – often forgetting about it despite considerable advance notice – and scramble to get the necessary work done at the very last minute.

Needless to say, I barely made it through high school despite having the raw mental power to get the job done. I only crawled across the finish line due to the dogged prodding from my late mother, who I handed my high school diploma to the minute after I received it, because without her I would have been sunk.

As bad as this kind of behavior was for a student, it is even worse to watch a major political party operate in a similar fashion, but that is the decades-long story of the Democratic Party in America.

Democrats can win political elections but the track record makes it clear that more often than not, it is outside events that make this possible versus the party advancing its agenda. Bill Clinton was elected in the wake of the Reagan-Bush recession. Barack Obama won after eight years of George W. Bush war and recession. And Joe Biden took office in the wake of Donald Trump fumbling a pandemic and being openly racist as a civil rights movement began to reassert itself.

What is missing here is the Democratic Party, and the wider liberal movement that it represents, failing to significantly advance its cause. The net result is the ongoing political success of an increasingly fascist right-wing Republican Party populated by xenophobes and frankly stupid people who continue to have disastrous successes.

Regardless of whether President Biden and the party are ultimately victorious in the November 2024 election, there is a dire need for things to change. And it doesn’t require more money or time than the party has at its disposal (which, honestly, it has overwhelming quantities of both), but a change in mindset.

The old way isn’t working and that is bad for America and the world.

Don’t Go To Sleep

Democrats still think of things in on and off years for politics. This hasn’t been true for a very long time, and it certainly isn’t true now. While the public at large doesn’t pay much attention to politics until the very last minute, in the waning hours of election years, they are exposed to political information (often misinformation) year round.

What this means, in a practical sense, is that Democrats can no longer do this nonsensical thing after elections of pivoting to pure policy action. We have seen good legislation from the three most recent Democratic presidents – the Clinton budget, stimulus and health care from Obama, and stimulus, infrastructure, and other legislation from Biden. But that isn’t enough.

It isn’t enough to just do good things. It should be, but it isn’t. And lamenting that won’t change the fundamental dynamics at play here.

Democrats have to be in forever campaign mode. They have to operate at a near fever-pitch as they legislate, instantaneously communicating to the public about the merits of the legislation at hand while also characterizing the Republican opposition and the media’s inadequate or inaccurate reporting on the topics.

If Biden is proposing infrastructure (for instance), the entire party needs to be actively discussing how great that will be for individuals and American business, how terrible it is that Republicans want families to die on crumbling bridges, and why its messed up that CNN (or the New York Times, or AP or whoever) isn’t getting vital information to the public.

Be Proactive, Not Reactive

It has become something of a sick joke to discuss Democrats “keeping their powder dry.” At this point the powder is so unbelievably dry that it is as solid as concrete.

The party and political movement has to give up on this notion that issues only become issues when the press decides. Republicans have understood this dynamic for ages and have created a firehose of bullshit that they shower on the public day in and day out. Doing so controls the narrative and creates an information environment where the media carries the right’s water and puts Democrats in the position of always responding. And if you’re responding, you’re losing.

I understand all the structural problems involved in Democrats breaking through (see below), but that doesn’t excuse the systemic inaction on their part. This dynamic is even worse because the public is ideologically far more with the party than the other side. They need to take advantage of it.

At every opportunity the public and the press should be reminded that liberalism has the solution to what ails America on so much, and there are successes both domestically and internationally proving this. Conservatism doesn’t work and the most recent Republican presidents, along with conservative majorities in Congress and the Supreme Court are the best examples.

But people don’t know or they don’t remember. So it is on party leaders, activists, and pundits to do this work. The press isn’t going to do it. They’re too busy styling their hair and prepping for book deals. It sucks that the media won’t do their jobs, and that Republicans lie. But that is the world as it is and hoping it away won’t fix the problem.

There is no reason why Republicans -- the party of invading the wrong countries, cutting Social Security, and creating multiple recessions over the last several decades -- shouldn’t have its record of failure on permanent blast.

Invest In Media

The media in America is fundamentally broken and it is never going to get better. The New York Times isn’t going to collectively wake up in a cold sweat of the middle of the night and feel pangs of remorse for lying to the nation about weapons of mass destruction or promoting Republican narratives about Hillary Clinton’s emails. IT IS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN, SO GIVE UP ON THAT.

So what liberals need to do is finally, at long last, invest in making media. I’m tired of hearing that because the poorly thought out and executed Air America tanked nearly two decades ago that this can’t be done. Sick of it.

I’m also beyond fed up with watching as liberal donors, at the grassroots level, continually pour hundreds of millions of dollars into clearly doomed congressional campaigns against boogeyman Republican candidates, then in the same breath hear the excuse that there’s no money for liberal press.

Baloney.

The money is there, the talent is there, and it is worth the investment. The reason the right invested in Fox News and right wing radio and conservative blogs and news sites is because they believed that the mainstream media wasn’t serving their interests.

While liberals don’t need the mainstream press to lie for them like Republicans do, the need is clearly there as well to get beyond the mainstream wall of nonsense.

There needs to be a massive investment in media outlets by liberals. It should not be some sort of top-down deal, or all eggs in a single basket. There is a dire need for more left-of-center voices on every possible platform (including ones that don’t yet exist), and it needs to happen yesterday.

People need to give up on the mainstream press having a “come to Jesus” moment, or for a liberal Rupert Murdoch to suddenly appear. Liberals need to embrace an entrepreneurial spirit and get this vital series of projects off the ground.

The goal for a true liberal media cannot be short term and tied to the electoral cycle. It needs to be a sustained, multi-decade series of operations. Doing this lays the groundwork for eventual liberal/progressive success in elections and legislatively. States that are beginning to trend “blue” or have the potential to do so in certain areas need to have someone hitting the drums to make this happen instead of solely relying on the sclerotic national Democratic Party to capitalize on opportunities.

Speak Like Normal People

All of the communication in the world will be useless if Democrats and liberals don’t connect with ordinary people. So much of liberalism is tied up verbally in endless knots of wonkery. Regular people are extremely busy, and they just don’t have the time to read the policy briefing or watch a leader or pundit drone on endlessly as if they’re delivering a college lecture.

What this means in a practical sense is speaking in bumper sticker. What’s at stake? Why does it matter? Who is getting in the way? And say it fast.

We need to stop telling ourselves that either our ideas are so brilliant and complex they can’t be simplified, or that the public is just “too dumb” to get it. If a political movement is telling itself these things, they are lying to avoid doing hard work – bottom line.

Everything under the sun, no matter how complex the underlying workings of policy are, can be simplified and summarized to communicate to the public. If you can’t do it, step aside and make room for the talented people who can get the work done, because this is a vital necessity.

I personally spend a lot of time in my personal and professional work trying to convert Democratic Party gobbledygook into normal language and it is exasperating. How in the world can people who aren’t political obsessives know what is going on if you don’t speak to them?

Liberals need to stop congratulating each other on communicating in a manner that impresses imaginary debate judges or referees and instead focus on making ordinary people extremely aware of the stakes at hand.

It’s Not About 2024 (Really)

The issues I’ve addressed are true problems if the Democratic presidential nominee is up 20 points or down 50 points in opinion polling. It is vitally important that liberals cease thinking of politics as events with a start and end date, but rather recognize that elections are at best large battles in a much wider war.

Just because you win one of these fights doesn’t mean you’ve won the war, and losing one of these encounters also doesn’t mean the entire war is lost. The fundamental shift that needs to occur is recognizing that the war is taking place. Only then can you commit to a strategy leading to a victory, and then execute on it.

The stakes are too high to do otherwise.

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— Oliver

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