A Political Interlude. Or Why Dems Should Do What I Say. Or Roberts Ruined the Country
Yeah, politics. I know, I know: not on brand. But I am a person not a brand, and even if you don’t care for politics, politics cares for you. Besides, at this point anyone who doesn’t know my politics from reading these newsletters is not reading closely enough.
Don’t worry: we will have a new book review for Thursday and then back to our regularly scheduled tech bullshit and whining about the Blackhawks (Yes, yes they already won three Cups in six years. Don’t care — want more.)
The aftermath of this election has been filled with recriminations on the Dem side. Too work, too uncaring about Gaza, too uncaring about men, ignored the working class, ran a bad campaign, too female, too Black, too not doing exactly what I, the person talking, think they should have done. Some of the complaints address real issues, some are mostly nonsense, and none of them really get at the problem: the death of the media and social life in the United States.
The Democrats have a significant media problem. The right wing has a massive, well run media environment while the Dems largely rely on the mainstream media to get their message out. The problem, of course, is that the mainstream media is not friendly to leftist perspectives. CNN and NBC refused to fact check debates. The Washington Post and LA Times refused to endorse Trump. Online spaces are all owned by right wing billionaires that either suppress politics, reward engagement based on hate, or actively pump right-wing propaganda to their members. Or all three. Twitch and podcasting, for example, are dominated by right wing voices. The media is simply aligned towards fascism. Voters that believed misinformation were much, much more likely to vote for trump than voters who had a better grasp of the facts. Where Harris campaigned, the rightward shift was about 3 points. Where she did not, it was about 6 points. Media, engagement, obviously matters.
In addition, the country has lost a lot of its social connections. It is the bowling alone problem: people don’t have spaces outside their homes and workplaces in which to enjoy the company of other people. Young men in this country, for example, are chronically lonely, with one quarter saying they have no close friends. All Americans are spending less time each week with friends and social groups. There are a lot of reasons for this, of course, but part of the issue is that there is very little outside opportunity to just, you know, hang and meet new people. We no longer of the equivalent of the Elks or Rotary clubs. The built in habits of socialization of atrophied, at least somewhat. Dems could help fix that.
Nothing I am going to say below is particularly original to me. I have seen bits and pieces of these arguments in other places and, obviously, academics have been thinking about the breakdown of social interaction in this country for quite some time. But repetition helps ideas break through, so it is always worth repeating good ideas.
If the Democrats are serious about winning in the long term, then the particulars of this campaign don’t really matter. Long term, unless the systematic issues discussed here are addressed, the Dems will always be playing from behind. They desperately need to do the following.
First: build up a progressive, fact-based media. I do not mean that we need a return to Air America. But we do need things like supporting Youtubers that are progressive. it means finding progressive voices in the game, sports, and entertainment online spaces and funding them (those items are often gateways to fascist propaganda because they spend most of their time talking about other issues and then let the propaganda seep in once in a while) It means ending the local news desserts with non-profit, factual and left friendly newspapers. It means encouraging and supporting unions and other organizations to build their own media properties, even when those properties don’t always align perfectly with the DC Democratic consensus. It means things I am probably not even thinking of but will allow leftists voices to grow and thrive without having to be perfectly aligned with the campaign of the day.
Nothing is more important than countering right-wing propaganda, because nothing makes running as a leftist harder than the fac that right wing voices are the only voices heard in significant portions of the country. The environment a campaign runs in matter. Ask McCain staffers about trying to run into the teeth of the Great Recession after their party held the White house when the banking collapse happened. And the environment now is toxic to leftists and democrats not because people do not like leftist ideas — the success of abortion, wage, and labor initiatives across the country proves that — but because the media environment is a constant drumbeat of “left bad, fascism good. Democrats evil, Trump divine.” Any organization that comes to you asking for money to anything other than build up a counter to that needs to be told to fsck off. We spent a billion dollars to lose. Ten percent of that could build a robust media environment or end a significant portion of the media desserts in this country if we only cared to do so. Imagine what all of it could do.
Second, they need to turn the Democratic Party into an actual party. They need to fund the party organizations with an eye toward civic and social engagement. They need to open their halls for hang outs. They need to have open bar nights, and karaoke. They need to run potlucks and intramural sports and picnics. They need to provide a space for teens to hang out after school and the summer. They need to make all of this open to anyone. By rebuilding a social space outside of the internet and right-wing churches, they create opportunities to speak to people in a way that the party simple does not today. They can be seen as their neighbors rather than their enemies.
Finally, the Democrats need to lean into mutual aid. The Democratic clubs we have been discussing should be where you can go to get annoying problems solved. They should be centers or free daycare (and yes it must be free. We must model the world we want to see). You should be able to get help renewing or getting a passport. Or get help dealing with an insurance company. Or with your boss. Or renewing car registrations. It should be a place known for helping. People should be happy when the Democrats come to town, because they are coming to help.
Taken together, these steps can help renew civic and social life in the country, improve the media environment so that right-wing discourse and misinformation does not drive all the conversation, and do so in way that reminds people of the good that the Democrats and by extension democratic participation in life can do. it would help shape the election environments in a way that gives a clear space for real progressive change.
And I don’t think the Democrats will do any of it.
The steps here are really outside the current box. And while they are not conceptually difficult, the require time, money, and expertise. The current group of consultants that run the Democratic Party — the ones that refused to define Trump early in the election and the ones that told Walz to stop calling MAGA “weird” — have none of that expertise. They also likely do not want to cede their power in the party nor the money that flows to them with every campaign. It is better, form their point of view, to argue about “woke” and white working class and trans than focus on the system that they are a part of and largely control on the Democratic side.
These steps are also unlikely to be popular with the mega donors that support the Democratic Party. They largely don’t want progressive policies, not as most progressives think of them. They generally don’t want to pay taxes or empower workers. They largely believe in the foundational tenet of neoliberalism— that the private sector always and in all cases can deliver faster, better, and more efficiently than the public sector. That may of these people profit form privatization probably does little to discourage that belief. They aren’t going ot be interested in creating a progressive media and civic environment because that would be a harder environment for their preferred policies to triumph.
Which brings us to how John Roberts destroyed the country.
Citizens United, the Roberts lead Supreme Court decision that effectively removed all limits on campaign contributions almost requires Democrats to have the support of mega donors. The GOP certainly will and if the Dems don’t want to be swamped in campaigns they need that support. And since they need that support, they are constrained to support the policies and actions that their mega donors support. Money, after all, is not speech. That is why we have a different name for it. Unlimited campaign contributions are effectively bribes. They do not say “I like the cut of your gib, young politician.” When theya re in the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, they really say “Nice campaign you have here, Ms. politician. Be a shame if something happened to it.” No one is so crass as to phrase it like that, but since a threshold of money is needed to be competitive, the threat is there. In the same way a fish does not have a word for water, the Dem consulting class does not have a word for bribery.
What to do, then? I don’t believe all is lost. First, not all of the Dem aligned consultants and pundits are opposed to these kinds of actions. With respect to the media, in particular, there seems ot be a growing awareness that the left side of the aisle has given up the fight unilaterally. Second, there are still more voters than meg donors. If we give our money to organizations that intend to implement some or all of these steps. People can run to control their local Democratic party and start holding potlucks and mutual aid session every week or take some of the money they have and produce a free newspaper that goes to every house in their districts. Howard Dean’s failed presidential run led to him running the DNC and implementing a 50-state campaign that helped return Congress to the Dems in 2006. Grassroots pressure can help do something similar this time around.
We are living in interesting times, unfortunately. Turning them around is not going to be fast or easy, but we do know that there are steps we can take. If we focus on the systematic issues, we can turn the country from its authoritarian swing. None of this is east but all of it is doable. We just have to do it, and drag our “leaders” along for the ride.