In June, the George Soros-aligned Texas Majority PAC announced that it would work with the Texas Democratic Party to spend millions to elect Democrats in that state.
You are so right, Willis. I am just a nobody who has been pointing to this lack of a media machine for years. Now, however, new media has emerged and continues to evolve. This is what deep pockets need to invest in and yesterday. Please tell me this is being done.
ACT BLUE sends me fundraising texts with headlines like “Benjamin, I’m gay” and “Benjamin, I’m trans”. The identity politics and issues have not been working. Democrats need to focus on issues which affect a plurality of Americans, and stop pushing fringe causes. 90% of people don’t want people with penises in women’s sports or bathrooms. The GOP recognizes this and weaponizes it. I’ll wait for the snarky replies.
Not a sparky reply, but a genuinely heartfelt question: Why do you think we should throw marginalized people under the bus so we can focus exclusively on "plurality" issues? Are we really supposed to just roll over on human rights issues when the opposition tries erasing trans people out of existence?
Anyway, the only people who seem to focus on the "fringe" issues are Republicans. The Harris/Walz campaign barely mentioned LGBTQ+ rights, but the Trump campaign kept pumping out that dumb "Kamala is for they/them" ad incessantly.
Being a purist isn't working out for the Democratic party. Look at who won the election and the results thereof. The "they/them" messaging was direct and effective. But now the democratic party is stuck with the "out there radical" labeling, which is a loser among the national electorate. Sadly, neither party represents the everyday working people, but the one which never has their interests at heart is winning the elections.
No one is trying to erase trans people or throw them under the bus. If we are to maintain sex-segregation in sports and in spaces where women's privacy rights, safety, or opportunities are otherwise at risk, there needs to be a consistent and biologically sound way of differentiating one sex from the other. Pretending that males are females if they so claim is pretending we have sex-segregation. If it is your intention that we drop biologically-based segregation altogether, then admit it. Labeling people as bigots is just a distraction from addressing this core question.
😂😂 RICH people will not fund media that wants to essentially do away with rich people. Almost the entire RW MEDIA is funded by billionaires like Rupert murdoch and the Koch bros. AIR AMERICA should be discussed. It was doomed to fail in its format because RW 📻 HAD long beaten AA to terrestrial 📻 (RUSH LIMBAUGH & His CLONES) telling people BUSH 43 was terrible (he was) w/0 mostly fell on deaf ears while RUSH & his 1000s of wannabes Were in unison telling their audiences how liberals hate America. Lizard brain stuff will beat discussion every time
‘What is most remarkable about the present situation is that Trump is carrying out the step-by-step erection of a fascist dictatorship in plain view, in real time, without any resistance from the institutions and organizations that supposedly uphold the principles of constitutional democracy.’
‘The Democratic Party has done nothing to oppose Trump’s dictatorship. Congressional Democrats issued only the most perfunctory statements against Trump’s takeover of the US capital—where Trump won only 6.5 percent of the vote in November 2024.’
Even the outlets that tended towards the center or moderately liberal are now moving right. We have seen this with outlets like The Atlantic attacking settler colonial studies and the New York Times' abysmal coverage of trans issues.
My own work on Palestine gets a hard sideline from the mainstream. Take this one for example, rejected by most of the major California papers.
The fact is that the liberal section of the media is more interested in fighting the left and appearing "unbiased" than standing up to fascism or authoritarianism.
What is needed is a well-funded, rowdy, oppositional left-wing media. One that actually offers other voices and narratives.
(Sorry to plug y'all, but please help a struggling writer out and subscribe or recommend.)
I am a pro-Palestine, anti-Zionist activist, an atheist, and a socialist, but I am also a gender critical feminist who is sick and tired of being labeled a bigot for expressing my concerns about extreme trans activist demands. That embrace by the Democrats of self-ID and TWAW helped to sink our party in the last election, and if we don't rethink what those extreme positions mean to women, we will continue to lose.
"Gender critical" is a reactionary form of bigotry masquerading as feminism. I recommend you read Enemy Feminisms by Sophie Lewis. The Left, properly understood, is a movement advocating for the rights and equality of all. You want to exclude Trans people and are therefore a reactionary. How can you claim to be a socialist and want to create a hierarchy of power with Trans people at the bottom? That's literally advocacy of a cis bourgeoisie.
What cost the Democrats the election was multifaceted, but their support for genocide was primary. You have it backwards, the failure to fight back against rising anti-Trans bigotry, which you exemplify, hurt them.
Polling consistently shows that Americans do not support the extreme trans agenda of TWAW, or of "self-ID", or of allowing males who identify as women to compete against women in sports or enter women's sex-segregated spaces. In fact, those policies are losing support as time goes on. In the face of that fact, it is preposterous to say that Dems lost votes because they failed to support these policies.
The critical question that those supporting these policies fail to answer is whether they support sex-segregated space at all, and if they do, on what basis will these spaces will remain sex-segregated if males are allowed to self-ID as females, especially given that trans activists insist there be "no-gatekeeping" in the way of any transitioning surgical or drug interventions.
No one is calling for the marginalization of those folks who wish to live their lives presenting as the opposite sex. We are calling for the protection of women's safety, privacy rights, and opportunities that are provided by biological sex segregation. If the Dems continue to tie their political fortunes to policies that are opposed by most voters, we will continue to lose.
You are so right, Willis. I am just a nobody who has been pointing to this lack of a media machine for years. Now, however, new media has emerged and continues to evolve. This is what deep pockets need to invest in and yesterday. Please tell me this is being done.
ACT BLUE sends me fundraising texts with headlines like “Benjamin, I’m gay” and “Benjamin, I’m trans”. The identity politics and issues have not been working. Democrats need to focus on issues which affect a plurality of Americans, and stop pushing fringe causes. 90% of people don’t want people with penises in women’s sports or bathrooms. The GOP recognizes this and weaponizes it. I’ll wait for the snarky replies.
Not a sparky reply, but a genuinely heartfelt question: Why do you think we should throw marginalized people under the bus so we can focus exclusively on "plurality" issues? Are we really supposed to just roll over on human rights issues when the opposition tries erasing trans people out of existence?
Anyway, the only people who seem to focus on the "fringe" issues are Republicans. The Harris/Walz campaign barely mentioned LGBTQ+ rights, but the Trump campaign kept pumping out that dumb "Kamala is for they/them" ad incessantly.
Being a purist isn't working out for the Democratic party. Look at who won the election and the results thereof. The "they/them" messaging was direct and effective. But now the democratic party is stuck with the "out there radical" labeling, which is a loser among the national electorate. Sadly, neither party represents the everyday working people, but the one which never has their interests at heart is winning the elections.
No one is trying to erase trans people or throw them under the bus. If we are to maintain sex-segregation in sports and in spaces where women's privacy rights, safety, or opportunities are otherwise at risk, there needs to be a consistent and biologically sound way of differentiating one sex from the other. Pretending that males are females if they so claim is pretending we have sex-segregation. If it is your intention that we drop biologically-based segregation altogether, then admit it. Labeling people as bigots is just a distraction from addressing this core question.
😂😂 RICH people will not fund media that wants to essentially do away with rich people. Almost the entire RW MEDIA is funded by billionaires like Rupert murdoch and the Koch bros. AIR AMERICA should be discussed. It was doomed to fail in its format because RW 📻 HAD long beaten AA to terrestrial 📻 (RUSH LIMBAUGH & His CLONES) telling people BUSH 43 was terrible (he was) w/0 mostly fell on deaf ears while RUSH & his 1000s of wannabes Were in unison telling their audiences how liberals hate America. Lizard brain stuff will beat discussion every time
‘What is most remarkable about the present situation is that Trump is carrying out the step-by-step erection of a fascist dictatorship in plain view, in real time, without any resistance from the institutions and organizations that supposedly uphold the principles of constitutional democracy.’
‘The Democratic Party has done nothing to oppose Trump’s dictatorship. Congressional Democrats issued only the most perfunctory statements against Trump’s takeover of the US capital—where Trump won only 6.5 percent of the vote in November 2024.’
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/08/12/guxf-a12.html
The right has been pumping the myth of "the liberal media" so loudly for so long, that even the left seems to believe the myth.
So, there's a large conservative media, a large (overlapping) corporate media and a small, weak liberal media. Willis is onto it.
Spot on article.
Even the outlets that tended towards the center or moderately liberal are now moving right. We have seen this with outlets like The Atlantic attacking settler colonial studies and the New York Times' abysmal coverage of trans issues.
My own work on Palestine gets a hard sideline from the mainstream. Take this one for example, rejected by most of the major California papers.
https://bettergracesandliberations.substack.com/p/the-university-of-californias-unconscionable
The fact is that the liberal section of the media is more interested in fighting the left and appearing "unbiased" than standing up to fascism or authoritarianism.
What is needed is a well-funded, rowdy, oppositional left-wing media. One that actually offers other voices and narratives.
(Sorry to plug y'all, but please help a struggling writer out and subscribe or recommend.)
I am a pro-Palestine, anti-Zionist activist, an atheist, and a socialist, but I am also a gender critical feminist who is sick and tired of being labeled a bigot for expressing my concerns about extreme trans activist demands. That embrace by the Democrats of self-ID and TWAW helped to sink our party in the last election, and if we don't rethink what those extreme positions mean to women, we will continue to lose.
"Gender critical" is a reactionary form of bigotry masquerading as feminism. I recommend you read Enemy Feminisms by Sophie Lewis. The Left, properly understood, is a movement advocating for the rights and equality of all. You want to exclude Trans people and are therefore a reactionary. How can you claim to be a socialist and want to create a hierarchy of power with Trans people at the bottom? That's literally advocacy of a cis bourgeoisie.
What cost the Democrats the election was multifaceted, but their support for genocide was primary. You have it backwards, the failure to fight back against rising anti-Trans bigotry, which you exemplify, hurt them.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/biden-voters-passed-kamala-harris-because-gaza-new-poll-shows
Trans rights are human rights, and I and my newsletter support them.
Polling consistently shows that Americans do not support the extreme trans agenda of TWAW, or of "self-ID", or of allowing males who identify as women to compete against women in sports or enter women's sex-segregated spaces. In fact, those policies are losing support as time goes on. In the face of that fact, it is preposterous to say that Dems lost votes because they failed to support these policies.
The critical question that those supporting these policies fail to answer is whether they support sex-segregated space at all, and if they do, on what basis will these spaces will remain sex-segregated if males are allowed to self-ID as females, especially given that trans activists insist there be "no-gatekeeping" in the way of any transitioning surgical or drug interventions.
No one is calling for the marginalization of those folks who wish to live their lives presenting as the opposite sex. We are calling for the protection of women's safety, privacy rights, and opportunities that are provided by biological sex segregation. If the Dems continue to tie their political fortunes to policies that are opposed by most voters, we will continue to lose.