Also, Barney Frank is old and sick and his opinion doesn’t matter. I’m giving him a pass. He did a huge amount to help gay rights, and his being out of touch in his declining years doesn’t negate that.
“First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist”, etc. It’s never about just their immediate target, it’s about wedge issues as you say. And about salami-slicing their way through the people they don’t like until those people are all gone.
And yes, the Right is already using their war on trans women to persecute cis women as well in the name of “protecting women” and finding out if they are “real” women.
The issue is that if someone like Donald Trump ran in Germany, he would probably only get 30% of the vote. Not the 48% that he gets here.
A religious extremist who runs for a democratic election in Saudi Arabia would get far more votes than a religious extremist who ran for election in the Netherlands. Which again, is due to the voters.
You can’t absolve the voters of their role in this. The American people want to live in a white nationalist dictatorship run by an inept criminal. Its sadly what a lot of people here want, either actively or passively. This is a reflection off american culture. America has intentionally built anti-black racism into our culture. It started with Bacons rebellion when the aristocrats were scared of a multi-racial alliance to overthrow them, so they created the Virginia slave codes of 1705 to dehumanize blacks. America has been dehumanizing and ‘othering’ black people ever since to keep the working class divided, to justify the horrors of slavery, and to keep black people oppressed out of fear they will rise up and take revenge. Candidates like Donald Trump tap into this intense fear of the other, which has intentionally been built into our culture. In other cultures, they may not have intentionally built this intense othering into the culture to keep the working class divided.
Various groups get labeled as the out-group and othered (catholics, Irish, Germans, latinos, asians, LGBT, etc) but eventually they integrate far better than black people because American culture hasn’t been built on othering them. Those in-group/out-group dynamics arose organically, they weren’t intentionally built to keep the working class divided, or to justify slavery the way anti-black racism was.
Also you talk about entitlement, but you seem to feel the solution is to pander to ~10 million leftists, as if that will somehow get the democrats the 80 million votes they need.
Bernie Sanders ran for president in 2016 and 2020.
In 2016, he got 13 million votes (Clinton got 17 million)
In 2020, he got 10 million votes
People can talk about the primaries being rigged all they want. But the reason Sanders lost both times is he didn’t get enough votes. I voted for Sanders in both elections in the primaries, and I accepted the fact that not enough people shared my beliefs, and as a result my candidate lost the primary election.
That is democracy, accepting the fact that the agenda of ~10 million leftists may not resonate with the other 150 million people who show up to vote in presidential elections.
Also you can blame the voters. Despite all the voter suppression, about 160 million people showed up to vote in 2024. About 90 million people stayed home. US voter turnout peaks at around 60%. Even in states like Oregon or California, where they make it extremely easy to vote by automatically registering everyone, mailing ballots to people’s homes with paid envelopes to send them back, etc, voter turnout peaks at around 65-70%.
I feel like you feel the solution is the democrats need to do more to appeal to the left, who are upset about plutocracy, regulatory capture, white supremacy (and Israel which they feel is an expression of white imperialist colonialism). Well and good, but my point is that People who have these beliefs couldn’t even muster the ~15-20 million votes to give Sanders the primary victories in 2016 or 2020. So how are they going to get the 80 million votes democrats need to win the presidency in 2028?
That is the problem. I don’t think the democrats can build a coalition to reliably get 80 million votes each presidential election, or the 60+ million votes they need in midterm elections to win. I don’t know what the solution is.
This is not true- read the Dem platform, with two pages on LGBTQI+ rights-
For generations, LGBTQI+ Americans have summoned the courage to live authentically and proudly, even when it meant putting their lives and livelihoods at risk. LGBTQI+ Americans continue to inspire and bring hope to all people seeking a life true to who they are, and to enrich every aspect of American life. But the fight for equality is far from over, as the LGBTQI+ community continues to face attacks and bigotry in states across the country. Democrats are committed to defending LGBTQI+ rights.
However, the big issues were the economy, crime and the border.
trump won due to his lies about inflation. Exit polls etc have confirmed this.
Yes. This is a proven winning issue for them----they can say ‘Democrats are never fair, they don’t care about you being treated fairly, they care only about [marginalized group X]’----and make it stick. Because of things Democrats have actually said and done.
Democrats have a history of saying ‘this may NOT be fair but we must do it to make up for centuries of past bad treatment of [marginalized group X].’ (Such arguments appear in this very thread.)
But abandoning fairness, even in the name of ‘making up for past ills,’ is always marketed by the right as ABANDONING FAIRNESS.
For example, Republicans are still using “Democrats let black and brown kids shoplift with no consequences” to hammer Dems. Because that actually did happen, and the rationale was ‘we can’t hold these kids to the same standards of conduct as others because of centuries of oppression’ etc. This is an argument that makes huge sense to the far left, but that repels moderates.
It’s absolutely TRUE that black and brown people have suffered from centuries of differential treatment in the USA.
But moderates will never agree that this logically leads to the conclusion that they should not be prosecuted for crimes. They just won’t.
Similarly with the way Republicans are manipulating voters over the trans-in-sports issue:
Of course it would be tough to tease out the reasons, but don’t forget that for decades—long before there was well-known advocacy for trans pride and such—there was concern about participation in sports of people who shouldn’t be participating:
These were decades in which there wasn’t public advocacy for ‘being true to one’s identity’ or such. Instead, it was seen as plain old cheating–as unfair competitive advantage.
So the outcry in the 1930s to 1960s, at least, wasn’t about bigotry against trans people just wanting to live their authentic selves, and the like. It was about fairness.
Democrats can’t win IF they let Republicans define them as the party that rejects fairness.
I think it’s possible that the solution is STILL a coalition of moderates and the left. But the far-left formula of “we must abandon fairness in the name of making up for past bad treatment” is a sure-fire loser.
To be clear: I believe trans people have the right to full civil participation (employment issues, public-facility issues, etc.) and I believe Democrats should state this. But when it comes to, say, a fifteen-year-old who’s gone through male puberty, wanting to compete against females who haven’t—in that case, Democrats should say ‘the rules of the sport in question should decide who gets to participate’—NOT ‘this person should get to do whatever she wants due to the bad treatment many trans people face.’
As with the ‘don’t prosecute the shoplifters’ examples, trying to make up for other stuff by granting special treatment will not be perceived as Fairness.
Some reading on the shoplifting issue:
On the decades-old issues of sports participation:
Your cite for the fact that Democrats deliberately don’t charge black kids for shoplifting because of historic oppression says literally nothing about that, or anything about race for that matter, and notes that the shoplifting rate is actually down and prosecutors chose to emphasize violent crime during covid. Do you have a cite that’s actually, you know, in any way related to what you said? Maybe you could read it first this time to make sure?
Aside from your rather bizarre fury, it’s worth noting that this is not a current pattern among Democrats—it occurred a few years ago, and in just one part of the country—but that does NOT stop Republicans from claiming, basically, that ALL Democrats would decline to prosecute minority property crimes if they’re given the chance.
It was after the events mentioned in that 2021 article that the Democrat in question, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, was recalled by the voters with 55% of the vote (knocking over two years off his remaining term).
Obviously I said nothing akin to “Democrats deliberately don’t charge black kids” in my discussion of this case. The entire point was that it was a choice made by a Democrat, that Republicans dishonestly decided to claim was the choice that would be made by ALL Democrats. Perhaps you could read a post before replying, to make sure?
As for whether the recalled DA Boudin explicitly named the groups he did not intend to prosecute, that seems unlikely. Obviously to prove it one way or the other one would have to access every public remark or press release he’s ever authored. If you care to undertake that task, I hope you’ll let us know what you find (and why you believe it matters).
One public statement attributed to Boudin is likely, I would guess, to be typical:
It annoys me when people waste my time by posting things that are entirely unrelated to their claim. As for the rest:
Perhaps you can argue it out with yourself?
The point is that it doesn’t really matter what Democrats do - Republicans will lie about them. If a single Democrat in office does a single thing that can be misinterpreted into communism or stupidity or bias or whatever, they will tar the whole party.
So why not just advocate for good and decent policy?
I take your point, but you’ve mischaracterized the argument (as the Right inevitably does). It’s not because of centuries of past injustice per se, it’s because of the real and very contemporary consequences of that differential treatment. Black people and white people are still reaping the consequences of slavery, in terms of access to wealth and opportunity. It’s just that this challenges the American cultural narrative of individualism, that whatever I had I did for myself with no contributions from my ancestors or society, so we’d rather not see it.
In other words, if my great-great-grandfather stole several thousand dollars’ worth of labour from your enslaved great-great-grandfather, nothing after 1865 made him give it back. We kept that wealth, and invested it, while preventing you from doing the same. Multiply that by several million and add institutional racism, and you get to the present, where there’s no way for the average Black person to compete on a level playing field with the average white person.
Yes, that’s true, but it’s also possible to make their lies ridiculous by making sure there’s no hint of truth behind them. If no Democrat stated ‘we must mete out unequal treatment to make up for past treatment’ (or the like—our more literal-minded posters may wrongly assume I’m positing those exact words(!)), then Republicans would be more easily shown up as fictioneers.
It genuinely matters that we agree on what ‘good and decent’ policy is (and there’s the rub). If you believe it’s good and decent to treat people differently now because of past injustice, then you open yourself to charges of embracing unfairness. At the very least, you have some explaining to get across–a task that will be very challenging.
If you’re going to advocate for that, you have to be sure you can convince the moderates that unfairness is justified. (And that will always be difficult—those at the extremes often gravitate to unfairness as acceptable and Good and Right. But those in the middle are much more resistant to such a worldview.)
Of course it is. But getting past the middle’s lack of interest in pursuing knowledge of both history, and current events, works against you in making this argument.
And Democrats cannot win by simply abandoning the middle and hoping that far-left votes will be numerous enough to save them. They won’t.
You could try your great-great-grandfather argument----with which I do not disagree----on any and all ‘less-informed voters’ of your acquaintance, and see how it lands.
It’s impossible to control what every single Democrat in every office in the country does.
So what’s the point of the “moderation” you’re advocating, if Republicans will find the tiniest example to distort and misinterpret into bullshit? Best to just advocate good policy and find the best communicator to bear the standard as the nominee.
It did? Cite?
From your cite-
In an interview with The Examiner, Boudin said the decline in prosecution rates for shoplifting cases is a reflection of the “difficult choices” his office had to make during the pandemic, when the Hall of Justice closed most of its courtrooms and city officials decided to largely empty the jails, in part to prevent an outbreak.
“We made an intentional decision to prioritize crimes involving violence, injury to human beings and use of weapons,” Boudin said.
And “black and brown kids” is not mentioned in your cite, just the fact that the SF DA made a decision to prosecute less (not none) petty crimes and instead concentrate on violent crimes- something which I can only agree with.
Yep.
Sure, MAGAs lie all the time about what Dems do or say, but you claimed that
But it did not “actually happen”.
That’s exactly what the Democrats were doing, until the Republicans made “hating trans people” their hobby horse. Trans women were participating in sports not because of a mandate from Joe Biden, but because independent sporting authorities were determine their own standards for allowing trans women to compete. It was the Republicans who decided this should be a subject determined by political policy, not Democrats.
…you’ve literally just made these examples up. And made-up examples are meaningless.
And Trump got about 31% of eligible votes, not 48%.
I’m pushing back on the idea that things are as simple as “the voters are to blame”. It took decades and millions of dollars to get to this point. The voters played a part: but you don’t lose the house, the senate, the executive and the supremes for a generation without a massive failure in tactics, strategy, and being able to read the room.
And when you listen to what dem strategists had to say in their various postmortems, they sound very much like this thread. A refusal to take any responsibility. All the blame on the voters. A refusal to consider doing things differently.
I’m talking about a much smaller number of people than 10 million. It’s more like 2.8 million. And I don’t want to “pander” to them. I think we should protect them.
Do you not see the difference?
I think that political parties should stand for something. And I think the Dems should be standing up for basic human rights. Because if they don’t do it, who will?
I don’t care.
I’m not personally a fan of Bernie Sanders. And the idea that we shouldn’t protect trans people because Bernie Sanders didn’t win a primary ten years ago doesn’t make any sense to me.
I’m not advocating for a “Bernie Sanders” style of left-wing populism. Mamdani is a very different style of progressive, one much more centred on social justice than Bernie’s, which was more centred on the working class. The “left” isn’t a monolith.
Do you know what agenda didn’t resonate?
The one that lost the house, the senate, the executive and the supremes for a generation.
People keep acting like you’ve got a winning strategy. But it’s a loser strategy. It’s a defensive strategy. The central premise is “we are not Trump”. That simply wasn’t enough.
I feel the solution is to get rid of the consultants, the focus groups, and the think tanks; to stop listening to the pundits; and to fundamentally clean house.
The system has been corrupted. And people are opting out of the system because they know its corrupt and they don’t think their vote will count.
What is needed is the inverse of Trumpism. Honesty. Plain speak. It just so happens that in much of the world the honesty and the plain speaking are coming from progressive politicians. But this isn’t about “the left”.
Since you opened the door:
In December 2025, according to a poll taken by Quinnipiac, 77% of Democrats believed that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. 75% of Democrats and 60% of voters “oppose sending more military aid to Israel for their efforts in the war with Hamas”.
In a more recent poll:
“In collaboration with the Institute for Middle East Understanding, Data for Progress conducted surveys of likely voters in four states — California, Colorado, Arizona, and Michigan — and finds that most voters in each of these states support blocking transfers of weapons and bulldozers to Israel. Furthermore, majorities of voters in each of the states polled believe Israel benefits more from war with Iran than the United States does.”
These are not insignificant numbers. And it isn’t about what “they feel is an expression of white imperialist colonialism” but what those voters consider to be a genocide.
There is evidence from an internal review (that has been withheld) that the dems stance on Gaza had an impact on the last election.
Because Sanders isn’t the benchmark here.
Since you opened the door on Israel, I think that it’s illustrative of both the continued failings of the Democrats and shows the pathway forward.
At the last election the dem campaign completely ignored the big elephant in the room. When asked about the plight of the Palestinians, Harris pivoted to the economy. Uncommitted were not allowed to speak at the conventions. They were silent as student protestors were beaten up by the cops AND counter-protestors; doxxed; evicted; and kicked out of school.
So what does that tell you about the establishment Dems? It’s that they treat their voters with contempt. They take them for granted. You can see that just in the way they are spoken about in this thread.
It’s important to add this context in this particular discussion. Because my position isn’t that I want “leftist policies”. I think establishment dems are perceived as inauthentic and as fake. I think people were frustrated that they aren’t being heard. I think that frustration led many people to vote for Trump. I think that frustration led to many people staying home.
I think the Democrats should be focusing on two things. Firstly, defending and protecting the marginalised. Secondly, listening to their base and giving them something to vote for.
These aren’t “leftist” positions. It requires the establishment to stop listening to the pundits and lobbyists and consultants and start instead listening to the voters.
Because I don’t think you are looking for a solution. You’ve spent basically a couple of responses looking for someone to blame. But let’s say I concede the argument. Let’s say the voters are to blame.
What do we do with that information? Not a lot, really.
Good point.
It “actually happened” to a degree that let Republicans capitalize on it. Look at my posts: they are all about what Republicans do. I am not making claims to be documenting the history of…anything. Not even Northern Californian policy changes over the years. I’m not posting to establish the chronology for the history books. Factually, there was a DA that thought he should ‘de-emphasize’ prosecutions of people caught shoplifting. But the details of exactly who escaped prosecution (and their particular skin colors or family trees or other details) were not the point.
The point was that Democrats have said things and done things that Republicans have seized on, and the Republican messaging, deceptive and misleading as it is and was, was more effective when there was a grain of truth involved. (As with the lower rate of prosecutions in turn-of-the 2020s SF–which “actually happened.”)
My point is that Democrats should deny Republicans those sorts of tactics. Force them to just openly make stuff up (which independent voters tend to dislike).
And they should go on doing it (saying ‘the rules of the sport in question should decide who gets to participate’). What about this indicates that they should stop?
Democrats should say something along the lines of:
I would like to see Democrats stand up for the civil rights of all, and also stand up for the rights of particular sports organizations to make their own rules for participation. The long history of “doping” and other artificial means of gaining competitive advantage, and the struggle by various sports to thwart this, should be allowed to continue unimpeded.
There is no role for legislation in this. Democrats should oppose any proposed laws that would treat some Americans differently to other Americans. And they should be loud about that.
From:
“Democrats actually did this thing!”
To:
“Nowhere did I suggest Democrats actually did this thing!”
And then back to:
“But they totally did some of it.”
Nothing in that post says anything about “stopping” or “not stopping.” I’m correcting your misapprehension about what the Democratic messaging actually is on trans rights, and how disconnected Republican attacks are from what Democrats are actually doing.
Consider how Zohran Mamdami handled this issue. He made one three-minute video in which he clearly expressed his unequivocal support for trans rights and solidarity with trans people, and then whenever the subject came up he referred the questioner to that video and kept talking about affordability.
That was great! He was clear, he was supportive, he was inclusive. And he didn’t get mired in stupid fringe issues.