As compared to when?
I’m not sure I can pick a decade when accepting of homosexuality and America is a coherent idea.
I didn’t follow it closely to make a good judgment on strategy and messaging and such.
But I expect that NYC Democratic primary voters aren’t so terribly different from national Democratic primary voters, and thus I expect many 2028 Democratic presidential contenders to adopt some of Mamdani’s messaging.
There is truth in this. You have to stand for something; you have to have a message that isn’t just list of currently popular policies. That’s the biggest problem with Matt Yglesias’s proposed platform.
However, your message still has to appeal to voters. Mamdani ran a good campaign and had a good message - for New York. It’s unlikely to be so popular in America as a whole. And you have to be able to deliver once elected. Trump had a message that appealed to enough US voters, but his approval rating isn’t looking so hot these days:
If Mamdani wins the general, it will be interesting to see how New Yorkers like socialism in practice.
As for what the message should be, @Velocity is right about what voters care about:
The major problem is that no one, on the left or the right, has a good solution to these problems. You can promise what you like, but voters won’t be so forgiving when you can’t give it to them.
No. Progressives, the people who would agree with you on all these issues, are common (and loud) on this board, but they are just 8% of the population in the US. Democratic voters as a whole just aren’t that far left, and they are the target of this messaging. Before IIRC 2016, a majority of non-college voters still preferred the Dems. That’s a distant dream now. They’ve made up for it by attracted more college educated voters, but it’s perfectly possible to alienate other groups you thought were yours if you’re not careful.
She talked about this in the interview too (long, but I’m going to quote it in full):
But it is a political messaging thread about how to move forward progressive issues, and as you just mentioned, turning “what is right” into actual policy is a bear of a task, on a whole lot of different fronts, whether guns or gender or other rights.
For some people out there, such an issue being discussed, is a fundamental matter and it will be insulting for anyone to bring up compromising or slowing down or taking half-steps. For others, as I wrote earlier it will be frustrating to feel they are tested on an all-or-nothing dichotomy where not being 100% totally, unconditionally, no-questions-asked on one side of the argument is seen as even worse than being clearly on the opposite side, and no matter what you say it’s wrong.
One thing that we have to bear in mind is that there’s always maximalist demands and there is nothing wrong with that. You get to partial gains by not giving up on fighting for the wholeness of justice. You take those partial Ws in good spirit, you don’t act like getting that was worse than nothing, you take it and go on to figure how to get what’s next. If you are satisfied with where progress has taken you, fine, don’t get in the way of those who want to get more.
It is IMO something of a shame that it has to be this particular issue where we anchor a discussion vis-a-vis “maximalist” approaches to progressivism. That because here in SDMB that is an issue on which there is painful history and a general understanding that we must tread carefully.
This, ISTM, is where Sarah McBride disagrees with many people here.
She believes Republicans attack her because it wins them votes through “reality TV” tactics, while many here have stated that they believe Republicans attack her because they and their supporters detest trans people with every fiber of their being and want them all to die painfully.
And yeah, if that was true, then her strategy is probably the wrong one.
The question comes down to a factual one. Whose view lines up with reality better? Sarah McBride, or DerTrihs (as one notable example)?
I’d adjust that to: voters are not so forgiving when you can’t give it to them fast, cheap and easy and w/o causing them disturbance (they won’t care that much if you cause someone else a disturbance, from what we’ve been able to see and hear). But if you then come up with another problem to point their attention to, and promise to fix THAT, you may be able to distract them again.
I think it’s fairly clear that the Democrats can’t just assume there’s a big pile of votes out there for them if they could just get more people to vote. At least not in every election, as the new Pew study shows about 2024. And more proof that it isn’t as simple as demographics is destiny.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-election-non-voters-coalition
"Pew asked non-voters how they would have voted and found they would have broken for Trump, 44%-40%. That’s a big change from 2020 and 2016 when they said they would have chosen Democrats. In 2020, they said they preferred Joe Biden 46%-35%. In 2016, it was Hillary Clinton, 37%-30%.
That upends a longstanding belief in politics that higher turnout generally helps Democrats. Younger and non-white voters, who tend to vote Democratic, are also among the least likely to vote.
But in 2024, Trump’s coalition grew – it got more ethnically diverse and younger.
In 2016, almost 9-in-10 Trump voters were white (88%). In 2024, it was 78%.
Meanwhile, Harris’ coalition got whiter – 64% of Harris’ voters were white compared to 60% in 2016 for Clinton.
Trump was also able to hold more of his coalition from 2020 than Harris did of Biden’s. Trump won 85% of his 2020 voters; Harris won 79% of Biden’s.
About 15% of Biden’s voters did not vote, 5% switched to Trump and 1% voted for someone else"
You keep come back to this all-or-nothing view. No one is suggesting stopping the fight. The suggestion is to work on changing public opinion, rather than demanding politicians taken unpopular positions and implement policies that the majority oppose. Supreme Court justices can afford to do that, but representatives have to worry about re-election.
You can’t control how other people see you. But most will support equal rights regardless. What is most important?
I don’t think those are necessarily incompatible. Look, for example, at the lunch counter sit-ins from the Civil Rights movement. Those folks put up with a lot of abuse - people fucking with their hair and clothing, getting in their face, pouring condiments on them. The assholes doing that were doing it because they wanted a reaction, and the protestors were specifically trained to not give it to them, because they knew the optics of a Black man taking a swing at a White man would play badly in the press, and put the whole movement back.
But I don’t think there’s any real question whether the assholes fucking with them really, really, really hated Black people.
That’s one example of the Civil Rights movement being tactical. Do you think McBride is correct that it would be similarly counterproductive for her to react to the provocation? I honestly don’t know.
I’m pretty sure our “centrists” would have been tsk tsking MLK Jr if this was the 60s as well. They are comfortable with allowing (but not explicitly supporting) oppression and long as it’s not against them.
Look how they explode in rage when there’s the slight push back or criticism against their favored demographics.
A bit of this is what I call min-maxing, minimize the pain of others while maximizing any pain for your group.
One of the issues of the world is that often it’s the response to the initial provocation that gets caught and dealt with. Many who have dealt with bullying have probably lived through that (even more with “zero tolerance” policies.) It’s the second swing in a fight in a football game that gets the first flag thrown. The optics are always better if one side is obviously a bunch of assholes. But my gut feeling is to agree, to the degree that any person can take that sort of provocation or abuse.
Are you suggesting that McBride’s position is based on her not being affected by anti-trans hate?
No. I’m not claiming she’s a centrist.
…the truth is you won’t know what will appeal to voters until after the votes are tallied. Focus groups and polling only go so far. If anyone pre-2016 argued that Donald Trump had a political platform that would get him elected President of the United States of America twice, they would have laughed you off-stage. And yet here we are.
Trump didn’t deliver the first time and he isn’t delivering now. Yet if he were allowed to run again (and there is a good chance they will rewrite the rulebook so he can) there is a good chance (in a free and open election) voters would return him to office.
Because the reality is they don’t have to deliver.
Harris actually did focus on this. And the message was (and you can go back and read some of it here on these boards) was that “everything was great” even when for many it wasn’t. It’s that sort of disingenuous messaging that doesnt resonate.
Yes, actually.
Do you think MAGA just spontaneously happened?
It was an audience that was targeted and cultivated. It started with the tea-party. And then when Trump got elected they realised they could say anything, unfiltered, and people will still vote for you. Republican politicians say stuff like this from Rep. Andy Ogles:
(I won’t link to the tweet but googling the text will find it)
That’s where we are at now.
It’s a post-truth world.
The Tea Party evolved into MAGA. And the messaging was targeted at the extremes, and it bought everyone else in the party along with them. Because thats how it works, right? The alt-right have built up an ecosystem of podcasts, media, propaganda, feedback loops and messaging that sucks everyone in.
And those that wanted no part of it, or those who were down the middle and alternated between the Republicans and the Dems, stuck with the Dems.
And it’s this group that the Democratic establishment are targeting because its largely who they are.
And they’ve set up an ecosystem of podcasts, media, propaganda, feedback loops and messaging that targets that group.
And just like how MAGA have dragged everyone in the party leaving the never-Trumpers politically homeless, the Democrats are doing the same.
And this is where you and many others have got things backwards. You know why they call influencers influencers, right?
Because they influence.
These massive ecosystems that have been set up to suck people in are reflected in the polling.
And if these massive ecosystems redirected their messaging: the polling would eventually follow.
For example, instead of the polling asking “what bathroom should a trans woman use” imagine if the question became “should trans people be treated with dignity and respect?”
And the answer to that would probably be yes.
Instead: what we had at the last election from MAGA was a multi-million-dollar hate campaign targeting trans people and what we got from the Democrats was a campaign determined to not even use the word trans lest they get accused of being called “woke”. (Notice how we don’t hear the word much any more? It served its purpose)
This video from Vox (when they used to be good) outline the strategy:
The “if you can’t watch it” version: Fox News sets the agenda and everyone else follows.
And this is why “follow the polling” strategy is a dangerous one to follow. Because the polling is determined by the messaging.
And its MAGA that is leading the messaging and the agenda. So if the Democrats largely stay silent on an issue, or they largely agree with the Republicans on things like immigration or the police or foreign policy, then that will get reflected in the polling as well.
My argument is that in a post-truth environment, you simply cannot play defence. It doesn’t work. Eventually you get surrounded on all sides and the lines get overrun. You can’t let the polling set your agenda. You do what MAGA does and you set your own agenda.
So you either stand for what you believe in or you don’t. And here’s the thing: I KNOW that many Democrats stay silent on trans issue not because they don’t think its the right time to fight for civil rights: It’s because they don’t believe in trans rights.
And if that’s what they believe: then just pull that band-aid off right now. Having conviction isn’t something confined to only progressives. The establishment Dems can do it as well. If they don’t stand with trans people, then just say that. And if enough people think that’s a winning policy then so be it.
True. I don’t think it will work indefinitely, though.
Makes sense. And Trumpublicans really are spectacular assholes. It’s just a shame she’s being attacked by her own ‘side’ too, for not responding to the provocation.
She does seem to be genuinely liberal though, based on her interview. Valuing liberalism in itself is pretty rare on both sides, these days.
True, alas. It has become a reactive environment. The Trump age just powered it up (The “mainstream” outlets back in 2016 apparently thought that highlighting his every brainfart would eventually lead to the one thing that would be the campaign-ending deal-breaker. All it did was make him be who defined the day’s conversation.)
So you either stand for what you believe in or you don’t.
…
Having conviction isn’t something confined to only progressives. The establishment Dems can do it as well (…) And if enough people think that’s a winning policy then so be it.
Yeah, that’s something isn’t it? The (American) mainstream Liberals seem paralyzed by a fear of being on the receiving side of some moral judgement, while the Progs and the Movement Conservatives are motivated by it. Again: “playing to Not Lose”.
…
On that last bit about enough oeople thinking it’s a winning policy - let’s recall again how in 2008 Obama was supporting the Civil Union “halfway measure” in the marriage equality debate. That was “good enough” then because not only was the country not there yet BUT the Right at the time was actively trying to suppress even that which a lot on the center felt was unjust.
On many such subjects (abortion and LGBTQ especially, but substantive due process and equal protection more generally) postwar American liberals fell back on that the Supreme Court would make a ruling as to how far they could go, so they could avoid having to justify things to the voters on merit. “Be ahead, but within arm’s reach”… and wait for SCOTUS to say what is the Right Thing to grab that arm and pull in that direction. That has come back to bite their collective asses now they’ve been left w/o that cover.
Back to my OP… Bernie Sanders did one of the things I recommended - he went on Joe Rogan’s show a few days ago. I didn’t listen, but I read the transcript (below), and I think he generally did well. Not perfect, but no one can be perfect. But he cogently and skillfully argued for a variety of progressive policies, and I bet most of Rogan’s audience hadn’t heard those arguments before. I hope more progressives go on Rogan and do this. Make it a habit. Just hearing actual progressive policies, from progressive voices, rather than filtered through liars and assholes, really could make a difference. There are millions of Americans whose only understanding of progressive and Democratic favored policies are what they hear on Fox or similar. The only way to make sure those Americans hear real progressive arguments is to go on those venues.