More intimidation under the color of law exposed today. Link is gifted
I agree with everything you said, but I fear you may be an optimist. I go to business gatherings with the local chamber of commerce, and informal gatherings of some of the owners in the immediate area, and they don’t agree with anything that you said. I go to them for a variety of reasons, but I hate it, as 75% of the discussion is bashing progressive policies, along with short sighted, selfish and poorly thought out reasoning supporting that animosity. (And the other 25% is mainly how to avoid paying taxes.)
I have a skewed sample, as I live in a very red area, and business owners do tend to skew conservative. As you said, your reasoning should appeal to any sane conservative, I just don’t know if there’s any of those left.
These are just aspects of the same position: they don’t want any policy in place that will cost or inconvenience them. Be it out of pocket in increased pay or benefits, or in regulatory compliance (including in some harder core cases hiring or serving not only people they like), or in taxes to benefit others.
Unfortunately, that’s the majority of the voters.
For those of us that spend time getting into the weeds on policy, there is clear difference between the parties and their positions. For people who only really see a couple minutes worth of politics a week on their local news, it’s not as clear.
Which is why the Democrats can’t go around screaming that the sky is falling. Without the detailed study that shows the cracking of the firmament that we see, such rhetoric sounds like pure alarmism and fearmongering. All your average voter is going to know is that the Democrats are yelling about an existential crises, while that voter is much more worried about the traffic on the way to work, their boss’s unreasonable deadlines, whether their kid is going to make the sportsball team, the fight they had with their spouse and all the other mundanities of day to day life that are far more important to them than the politics of a bunch of assholes in Washington D.C.
If anything is failing the American public, it’s the media.
From a historical perspective, the forces of Democracy have always seemed weak when faced with an internal threat to their Democracy. USA today just seems to be a continuation of this.
Why this is, not sure. A theory I have no evidence for/pulled out of my butt is that, historically, the pro-democracy party is either helpless with nearly unassailable problems that no one could deal with…and/or tend to be pro-power/rich as well and so the general public is not motivated to march/fight for them when they call out those threats.
I don’t hold much hope. I was pleasantly surprised that the USA survived 2020 and was pleasantly surprised the court system held up (shocked really). I am thankful for the 4 year delay…but that likely won’t happen in 2024. The Republican party was also likely shocked and have spent much energy making sure this doesn’t happen again.
The American Experiment 1776-2024.
I will make a depressing prediction. There will not be another democratic president again in any readers lifetime…or perhaps ever. The democratic party will still exist as republicans need an enemy…a boogieman…but it will be a show only.
Yes, but it’s not the media’s fault (or better to say not only the media’s fault). The internet, which makes publishing easy, has disrupted the industry. It’s easy to widely disseminate your own views and to find others with similar views. The people who grew up with a handful of tv, radio, and newspaper choices are not prepared to handle the infinite choices available now. (Present company potentially excepted.)
Yes, it’s bleak now, but the American experiment has always been marginal and repressive. Try to avoid recency bias–whitewashing history is one of the ways fascists maintain control.
I’ll agree it’s not only the media’s fault, and I’ll agree that it’s not entirely the media’s fault that it’s the media’s fault. But the media is failing the American public.
Obviously we have right wing mouthpieces like Fox or ONAN or Infowars. They just disseminate pure propaganda and lies, and people eat it right up. Then we have the likes of CNN, who are desperate to stay relevant and reclaim the place they had in the 80’s, so everything is breathless anxiety and breaking news. Then we have MSNBC, who covers the dissolution of America and her society like they were covering a 125 car pileup.
Many Americans get their news from local news. They don’t watch the 24 hour networks, but they tune into the 11 o’clock news before they go to bed. Unfortunately, a bunch of those are now owned by Sinclair, which forces anchors to spout a bunch of nonsense on their broadcasts or be fired.
Most people don’t really read newspapers anymore, and many places have lost their local papers anyway.
As you said, it’s largely a changing landscape that is in play here. Viewership is going down because there are more options, so the networks try to draw eyeballs with sensationalism.
And then there’s the internet, which as Neil deGrasse Tyson says, " Internet search engines have a way of affirming your hypothesis, no matter what you have hypothesized." People can believe what they choose to believe, and find others of like minds, to create their own bubbles of reality.
It’s not new, I think we faced similar challenges with the advent of the printing press, but it is different and faster. For instance, the moon hoax stuff started in the 1970’s but was mostly a fringe thing until the internet gave it wider audience and traction.
I don’t know what the solution here is. As long as I am free to make a webpage or blog, or to post my thoughts on messageboards, so is an anti-vax believer in the the big lie.
As far as media goes, that’s a hard one as well, but I’d start with not allowing commercial sponsorship of anything declared a news program. This has both the effect of decreasing a news organization’s bias towards sponsors and the views they want espoused, as well as reducing an organizations need to ratings. Higher ratings means more expensive add buys, which means that a news program will tend to sensationalize things in order to attract those eyeballs.
And the problem with this is…?
Yes, we could. And trump would love that. Since until the evidence is solid, trump would get a hung jury and be able to crow about being “exonerated”, not to mention, he’d use it as a bully pulpit.
Exactly what good would an indictment without conviction do for America?
Exactly. We need at least 2-3 more seats in the Senate so as to not need Manchin and Sinema.
Trump =76, McConnell = 80 ,McCarthy is a veritable youngster at 57, Abbott = 64, and so forth.
Sure, let’s get 3 more Dem senators. We can also protect abortion rights and voters rights.
Exactly.
The four top bullet points the OP makes are just playing into the GOPs hands.
We need to get a solid majority in Congress before we can do much. And whining about how stupid or corrupt the Dems are is hurting, not helping.
"Why aren’t the Democrats acting" is a simpler question, and the answer is- they can’t.
The biggest problem I see is that creating legislation used to be a negotiation, but now it is more like this clip, with the Republicans in the Bernie Mac part.
This probably deserves it’s own thread, but how about this as an example of an existential threat to American democracy?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-republican-led-states-are-targeting-wall-street-with-anti-woke-laws-2022-07-06/
Hopefully this stays contained and pushes companies to move to other states instead of other countries.
Sure. But exactly how are the Dems supposed to stop this? Now yes, if we can get a few more Dem majorities in some states, that would help, but other than that? An executive order? A bill in Congress (which won’t pass)= what?
See that is the problem- “The Democrats are not doing anything about xxx!!” without saying exactly what they are supposed to do about it. Manchin even refused voter rights bills.
That part, I don’t know. In the article, it was mentioned that some state officials are using executive orders to ‘punish wall street’. Maybe Wall St can fight back by saying that these executive orders aren’t constitutional (like the Rs did with mask mandates).
Also, wouldn’t this be a violation of Freedom of Speech, like an actual real example of it? Unlike people pissing and moaning about getting banned on twitter or fact checked on facebook, in this case, the government is restricting their ability to express opinions. This is exactly what Freedom Of Speech is meant to prevent.
Maybe people and business can start taking these government bodies to court to get them overturned. I assume the ACLU will be all over this.
Blue states could be doing exactly the same thing, but they won’t since they know that’s just going to make things worse.
Maybe we could sell Texas to Mexico.
Democrats need to move the Overton Window back to the left.
Many people deem themselves centrists or moderates but that position has drifted to the right because conservatives have been controlling the narrative.
Further, conservatives have been uniquely unified against liberals. Conservatives have their own internal divisions and disagreements about policy but they are united in one thing: Own the Libs!
Liberals are all over the place and in no way march to one drummer.
Then add in conservatives working diligently through various agencies like the Federalist Society and Fox News and The Heritage Foundation and churches nationwide. The left has no real answer to it.
How do Dems stop this? For starters our politicians need to push back aggressively. No more tepid responses from president Biden who makes a point of trying to “work across the aisle” (and he’s not the only one). No more holding back because we are told we should not start a class war.
Our democracy is in dire peril and Biden isn’t even stepping into the ring much less throwing a punch.
It cannot be fixed over night or even in a decade. But to start the left needs to change the narrative and be explicit about what is happening and call out the crooks for who they are in no uncertain terms.
The problem is that we are engaged in an asymmetric war. We can’t just adopt Republican strategies to even the playing field, their strategies won’t work for us, for several reasons.
First there is the structural differences of the Senate, EC and Gerrymandering. It is a fact of life that rural areas are Republican, and urban areas are Democratic. As a result Democratic votes are concentrated and so worth less.
Second, Republican policies are better suited for simple knee jerk emotion. Build a wall and lock illegals in cages is easier idea to get across than a nuanced policy on immigration. People will vote more motivated to vote on the basis of hate and fear of the other (e.g. gays, transgendered, Muslims etc.) than on tolerance. Asking people to make sacrifices to prevent a global environmental catastrophe in a few decades is harder than telling them its all a hoax and they can do as they please.
Republican voters are more faith based in their reasoning and don’t mind being lied to so long as the lie fits in with what they want to believe. This is the reason that attempts to make a liberal Fox News don’t work that well. Liberals don’t like to be lied to and will question factual inconsistencies and contradictions.
Democratic voters are much more fickle than Republican voters. Republicans will always show up to vote for the R and against the D. It doesn’t matter which R or which D, or whether that R has actually done something to help them they will still vote for him. I clear example of the is abortion rights. Pro life voters have been voting R for decades despite next to no actual progress on the issue up until recently. Democratic voters on the other hand need to be persuaded to vote, and see lack of progress (such as that pointed to in the OP) as a reason to stay home or vote third party to send a message.
So long story short, the tactics that Republicans used so successfully in the last number of years, are not going to work for Democrats and may turn off their base rather than motivating them.
I think the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) have shown the way for liberals.
Just had to throw a few 
at this entire post.
I believe you are too optimistic here.
Even if such a creature is still out there (and there probably is) I think it is clear they have been completely run out of the republican party. Republicans primary anyone who remotely looks like the person you describe. Conservatives decided long ago that there simply is no such thing as compromise or rationality. There is adhering to conservative orthodoxy and nothing else.
(Otherwise a great post. Well done.)
Why are they still referred to as Conservatives when they are anything but? Mad dogs, that’s what they are. No fiscal responsibilities left in the Republican party. Just cut taxes and give the rich welfare is what they are now.
I agree. Although how to do that is a tougher question to answer. IMHO Democrats haven’t had anyone who can rise to that challenge since LBJ. Even Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, as much as people have called them good politicians, didn’t have the skills necessary to lead as opposed to merely winning an election here and there. Where can we find the next LBJ? I don’t know. I hope it turns out that Stacey Abrams answers the call, because I don’t see anyone else on the horizon who is even close.