onfocus

Democrats are missing something that is arguably a prerequisite for ideological messaging to have any effect whatsoever: a media apparatus that can get these messages in front of swing voters. The content of the message doesn’t matter if voters never hear it. An obvious place to start would be to build up straightforward reporting operations in news deserts in critical states, and to stop making traditional election broadcast ads the core focus of campaign spending.

True, but bleak. No easy fixes.

“Without a thriving, inclusive higher education system that serves the public good, the majority of Americans will be excluded from meaningful participation in our democracy and this country will move backward,” Wolfson predicted. “We will do everything in our power to protect our institutions, faculty, staff and students and stand up against those seeking to violate academic freedom and the core principle of higher education.”

The correct message. Amazingly, I’ve only seen higher ed unions discussing the new US administration. Unions might be the only resistance.

Meanwhile, the BM’s political reporters decided that inflation was Biden’s fault because of all the government spending on COVID relief, infrastructure and bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. This was a lie.

This post-election analysis resonates with me. It does feel like many of my own habits, patterns, and assumptions need to change.

Who in the White House is bothering, while the bully pulpit remains theirs, to educate the public about how the Constitution is supposed to operate?

Excellent questions here. Democrats have power for a brief window, they should be maximizing it while they can.

At the very least, put him to the task. Make him execute on what he’s trying to do. It won’t be easy and there are a lot of ways to make it even less easy. That’s the first role of a political opposition.

Yeah, that's enough doomerism. Time to start thinking like an opposition party.

That’s why the people who love him love him so passionately. He is them. And he tells them that being what they are is OK. He never for a second requires America to be better than it is. He never expects more of America than it is able to give. Trump tells America to be garbage. Garbage is easy.

It's like the collective better angels of our nature have been locked away.

Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Garland, et al. utterly failed to grasp the threat posed by Donald Trump’s Republican Party, including its Supreme Court branch. They sentimentally overestimated the attachment of American whites to the liberal order. They failed to take seriously that vast numbers of Americans inhabit far-right information communities. They undervalued the importance of showing cultural solidarity with working-class voters. And so on and so forth.

This is what I have been most disappointed about. Watching our institutions erode under a democratic President has been hard to take. Most disheartening was the supreme court commission that felt like an excuse to keep the failing status quo. Our leaders let us down.

This is why it is so horribly wrong to hear the likes of Chris Matthews smugly declare on Morning Joe that identity politics is dead because identity politics are to blame for Harris’ loss. Can he not hear himself? The election of Trump is the product of identity politics: white identity politics, dismissing, disdaining, and threatening people of every other identity.

LOL, the idea that this election wasn't won on identity politics is the definition of white supremacy.

Nobody likes to lose. So when your side loses an election, there’s huge social and psychological pressure to change your stance, to moderate what you believe so you don’t feel like a loser. Don’t do it. Things are worth believing and fighting for.

Good, necessary rant for today.

It's frustrating because the truth is much simpler and also doesn't put these two genders at loggerheads: Harris is better for both men and women, and Trump is much, much worse for people of any gender.

Revenge and chaos isn’t good for any human. Please vote for stability.

If 2020 is our guide, it's likely that the 2024 presidential election won't be decided on Election Day.

A good reminder that it could be a while before we know who won the election That’s always expected.

Kate and Josh discuss both campaigns’ closing arguments and the mess at the Washington Post.

This podcast episode is the best discussion I've heard of the Washington Post/Bezos endorsement debacle.