Recovery
I've been talking a lot over the past few weeks with people about where the Dems should go from here (KRS-One, UpperMidLeft, WDB and others have featured prominently in these convos). I think we have come to a consensus: There is nothing wrong with the Democratic party platform, merely a problem in how it articulates and communicates that platform. The party need move no further to the center/right than it already has in response to the election loss (PS, blogosphere: it was a *loss*, not a *crushing defeat* like the Bushies are saying -- don't let their echo chamber get away with painting this as decisive -- it wasn't).
The new swing states (good ol' FL and OH, VA and AZ increasingly so) are winnable for the Dems, but not if they try to jettison the party and speak the language of the fundamentalists. It's more important for us to understand more about how people vote against their economic self-interests (Thomas Frank's _The Trouble with Kansas_, amongst others, tackle this). WDB put forth a really interesting idea: that Americans lack a fully formed sense of class identity, and as such attempts to speak to them rationally backfire. Similarly, Chris Hayes has an article in the current _New Republic_ where he talks about how lots of undecided voters have strong opinions on things like healthcare but they don't think that these are *political* issues.
Again, though, these two different perspectives don't tell us to change platforms but to change how we get it across. Thoughts?
The new swing states (good ol' FL and OH, VA and AZ increasingly so) are winnable for the Dems, but not if they try to jettison the party and speak the language of the fundamentalists. It's more important for us to understand more about how people vote against their economic self-interests (Thomas Frank's _The Trouble with Kansas_, amongst others, tackle this). WDB put forth a really interesting idea: that Americans lack a fully formed sense of class identity, and as such attempts to speak to them rationally backfire. Similarly, Chris Hayes has an article in the current _New Republic_ where he talks about how lots of undecided voters have strong opinions on things like healthcare but they don't think that these are *political* issues.
Again, though, these two different perspectives don't tell us to change platforms but to change how we get it across. Thoughts?
posted by Kevin Bogart at 1:07 PM
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