New Democrat Playbook and Post-2024 Election Reflection
It’s not really about policy.
It’s not about being “too far left” in reality rather it’s about being “too far left” in perception and “left” in the mind of the voters is not really economic or socdem policies such as universal healthcare. These traditionally “progressive”/ “leftist” polices are actually quite popular. It’s about the cultural associations with the Democrat party; it is guilt by association. Even though VP Harris made an effort to distance herself from talking about being the first woman black president, she should have empathized agreement with some of the cultural values that the right holds (notably meritocracy). She should have talked about how she is against the “woke era” of toxic empathy/sensitivity and that she views race like MLK. This could have gone a long way.
The cultural associations that we must distance ourselves from are what is considered “woke” in the mind of Americans. It’s not about abandoning our commitment to equal opportunity and equal rights to all minority groups rather it’s a messaging change and better narratives. We must abandon toxic empathy culture, discussions of systematic racism (while still pursuing policy that will directly address this area through universal polices – no more means testing and no more DEI related initiatives), shaming people based on word usage, shaming people for different cultural values, mandatory pronouns, land acknowledgements, etc. We must adopt meritocracy, American excellence in aesthetic, MLK style color-blindness., etc. If we combine these cultural values that the majority of Americans associate with Trumpism with the FDR/Biden economic values of building the economy from the middle class out, we will win.
The media ecosystem in the modern era is being dominated by the right wing.
Most Americans are not watching MSNBC at 8 PM. They are watching Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, The Daily Wire, twitch streamers, gamers, etc. It is a new era where news needs to be entertaining and grounded in cultural values that Americans have. Some of these guys are not even traditionally right wing. Rogan and Fridman just find the “culture” of the right wing more appealing to them right now and got brain broken by Democrat lockdowns/liberal/woke messaging during COVID. We have abandoned them, and we look down on them even though Rogan could probably easily get on board with what is considered “far left” in some respects such as universal healthcare or increasing the minimum wage. We need to culturally convert what is considered to be “right wing coded” to “American coded” that we all agree with.
There is also a serious misinformation problem on social platforms that benefit the right wing. The best way to defeat this is more online voices that are exposing the lies being spread. Legislation or regulatory oversight is not in the cards right now as this is seen as an afront to free speech. Pursuing this will alienate needed voters even more. It’s about uniting with your fellow online leftist/Democrat even if they don’t share the same cultural sensibilities as you (Steven Bonnell, Kyle Kulinski, Ezra Klein, etc.).
The 2024 election was an anti-incumbency election.
There is not much we could have done to mitigate this, especially since the public perceived that we hid President Biden’s cognitive decline. There was defiantly a backlash to this no matter who the Democrat candidate was. They felt lied to and they probably had a right to feel that way.
Even though inflation was a global phenomenon caused by shocks to the supply chain in the aftermath of COVID, we had the lowest inflation out of all G7 nations, and one of-if not the best-economic recovery in the world, we failed to communicate this to voters.
We are losing the charisma war in the Trump era.
VP Harris was 10x better than Hillary Clinton was in this department, however, it wasn’t enough, and she still came off too much like a out of touch liberal untrustworthy politician from California.
Charisma and intelligence should be one of the highest requirements for a candidate. We need a “Democrat Trump” (obviously without all the baggage and character flaws). Again, it’s not really about policies. And I know, Trump is not intelligent, but some how he overrides this with charisma.
