I’ll take the party that’s not actively trying to make the country (and world) worse.
I hear Democrats talking about those things all the time.
Then where is the legislation to combat these issues? Talk is cheap. The Democratic party refuses to act.
One does not often hear about all of the proposed legislation that doesn’t even make it to the floor of the House or Senate, much less becomes law. The Democrats have a minority in each chamber, which also means that they have a minority in committees.
I agree elections have long been “personality, personality, personally”, but I think it’s changed in recent years where policies are part of the candidates brand. Voters want to project the candidate’s and party’s brand onto themselves as part of their identity. The policies are also the hook to get coverage to show off the candidate’s personality.
This is going to be a tough race. There’s no incumbent and we’ll have (hopefully) 2 years of Dem Congress. The Pub candidate can distance themselves from Trump as much as they need meanwhile giving a wink to the faithful. I don’t think anti Trump or anti MA The MAGA will be enough.
Of course “anti MAGA” isn’t enough. That doesn’t change that modern politics is about personality and presentation, not issues. And it has been for decades. Trump didn’t win on issues, neither did Obama, and neither did Biden (unless opposing Trump was an issue).
I don’t think issues are totally meaningless - they matter, and the nominee will have to have positions broadly acceptable to the party. But people, by and large, will vote for who they connect with emotionally, and who they think will fight hard for what they value.
A boring, wooden candidate won’t win. An energetic and authentic skilled communicator can win.
Issues like jobs and health care? The last time Democrats had control of the government, we got the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the biggest infrastructure bill in something like half a century (or more). The previous time Democrats had control of the government, we got the Affordable Care Act.
Wanna know where the legislation is? Elect Democrats and find out.
I keep watching Talarico and Mamdani. Both of them are fascinating in how they define the in-group: the in-group is all of us, they keep saying, and we’re defined by the great things we can do together. Mamdani especially is a goddamned genius at this, relentlessly smiling and unfailingly calling detractors into the coalition.
Contrast that against the Republican playbook, which defines the in-group by its enemies. You’re in the in-group if you’re not trans or gay or Black or an immigrant or a Democrat or any of the countless other enemies that want to destroy our society. This is a really effective way to build group loyalty, but it’s toxic as fuck for a country.
I want the Democratic candidate to study Mamdani and Talarico, and to invite everyone into the group and build a vision of what we can do together. Obama won on this approach, and it’s what we need.
Issues like jobs and health care? The last time Democrats had control of the government, we got the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the biggest infrastructure bill in something like half a century (or more). The previous time Democrats had control of the government, we got the Affordable Care Act.
Wanna know where the legislation is? Elect Democrats and find out.
A Dem candidate won’t secure the vote by simply being Democrat and hoping that people remember previous Democratic administrations. 30% of the country believe that anything wrong with the country right now is because of Biden. (Probably less than 30%, but I’m illustrating a point.)
A Democratic candidate needs to be loud and clear about what is plaguing this country, then provide their solutions. If the candidate is currently holding office then they need to consider proposing legislation NOW that garners attention to their name, even knowing that their proposal will fail; similar to how Andrew Yang created a national discussion around universal basic income.
Sitting back and simply hoping that Americans somehow regain their memory isn’t going to work.
Oh, absolutely. But that’s a different question. There are plenty of Democratic proposals out there for making things better. The issue isn’t, as you suggest, that Dems don’t have ideas: it’s that Dems struggle to get publicity for their ideas.
You said:
but now you’re saying, “Why aren’t they talking?” I think you’ve not picked a lane.
Very much so. Problems communicating with the public is, IMHO the number one reason that Democrats have lost to Trump / MAGA. As for AI, at least at the local level the issue gets really complicated.
In my experience, at least locally, the MAGAs are against AI data centers and the mainstream Democrats are for them. But that’s a topic for a different thread, where politics makes for strange bedfellows (I’ll be voting all MAGA for my local city council this fall on this issue, mainly because of how it affects our water supply).
This isn’t really a complaint specific to the Democratic Party in the 2020s, though, it’s just how American politics works. I think in parliamentary countries there is more of an expectation that candidates and parties will have detailed policy proposals on every issue prepared before the campaign starts, and that they will actually follow through on those proposals if elected. But American voters don’t punish candidates for not doing that, so the ideal strategy is to please the largest number of voters by keeping things as vague as possible.
Vague on controversial things, specific on popular things, IMO, is the best mix.
Both of which pieces of legislation were written by Congress and well over a thousand pages. Biden and Obama had both promised to get things done on those issues while campaigning, and were deeply involved in the negotiations around passing the bills. But they would have been dishonest if they had presented a 1000 page law they wrote themselves on the campaign trail and promised that Congress would pass it as written. We don’t do that level of detail during campaigns.
I’ll buy that 94 percent is hard to believe concerning any polling question.
This article cites what may be a medium quality poll from 2013 that has 89 percent being pro-cursive-teaching:
Learning cursive writing: Is it worthwhile or a waste of time?
Here’s a better quality poll from eight years ago:
As for whether it should be left to local school boards, Pennsylvanians move a lot (and, I believe, much more often in-state than out-of-state, although I could not find a link for this). To make moves educationally less disruptive, there should be a broad outline of the basic academic subjects taught in each grade. I think broad grade-by-grade curricular uniformity is more important than whether or not cursive is in the curriculum.
Here’s how Shapiro justifies his position:
Shapiro’s post is a little corny, as he is. But I think his corn will appeal to swing voters in a state that is trending GOP. He’s running for re-election this year, so we’ll have an early test.
As for why cursive instruction might be worthwhile for any reason other than the political purpose of showing up MAGA, that really is outside the purview of this thread.
That might not sell well in certain regions of the country. Look at how much pushback there was against job training programs to replace coal mining jobs: Even though coal mining is about the worst job out there, it was what people knew, and so anything that looked like “move away from coal mining” was interpreted as “take away all the jobs”.
You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But when we as a nation did this, through a broad bipartisan nationwide bottom-up effort, suddenly half the nation hated it.
Well, this illustrates how the AI issue doesn’t break down neatly upon party lines. My feeling, for instance, is that the Democrats could make hay out of the issue by demanding to slam the brakes on the development of this technology; on environmental grounds, on privacy grounds, on the grounds of protecting human employment, and on the grounds that it is producing massive wealth for some of the most fucked up people on the planet. But then fellow Democrat CaveMike thinks we should be embracing it:
I’m sure you could easily find either perspective among Republicans as well.
I’m not going to say, “never Shapiro!” because of his stance on cursive. I find it very hard to get upset about cursive, or not cursive.
And in practice, i plan to vote for the Democrat who i think has the best chance of winning the general election, unless i absolutely despise him. That means the one who gives inspirational speeches, and looks good on TV, not the one whose policies i like the most.
But I’m still going to mock, in the privacy of this little liberal bubble, any politician who lobbies for cursive. (And like @Chronos , i think those polls are fake. That is, they are tiny Internet polls and the only people who clicked on them are old people who care about cursive going away. As for the ipsos one… There’s a pretty big difference between learning “handwriting” and learning “cursive”.)
Yup. I’m really not following the details of issues this time around.
I want someone like Mamdani, except i do want someone with at least a tiny track record of successfully running something.
If you’re looking for something more substantial, it appears Shapiro may have helped to cover up a murder:
That’s pretty damning, actually. Shapiro was Pennsylvania AG at the time his office concluded that this woman who was stabbed multiple times in the back committed suicide, based on apparently false claims that her internet search history showed she was suicidal. He had relationships with family members of the boyfriend who seems pretty obviously to have killed her, but he continued to be in charge of the case for four years before the internet noticed these connections and the case was kicked to a local DA’s office, which promptly closed it. I imagine he’ll be getting a lot of questions about this case if he runs.
Yeah, but Shapiro likely had little to do with it, the DA doesnt investigate cases personally. Note that the Police said suicide, the medical examiners office- after some disagreement- also said suicide, the Chester County District Attorney office, which took over the case from Shapiros office went along with suicide. And upon reinvestigation-
On October 10, 2025, in a 32-page report,[29] Chief Medical Examiner Lindsay Simon, Philadelphia’s top pathologist, reaffirmed the original ruling that Greenberg died by suicide.
So, this isnt on Shapiro. Many investigators and experts all said suicide. Sure, to us lay persons it sounds doubtful, but expert after expert ruled suicide.
So, not 'damning" at all.