GordonGekko
Footballguy
Direct Headline: David Shor: College liberals have hijacked the Democratic party
David Shor is not afraid to say the unsayable. As a Democratic party strategist, this trait has at times got him into trouble; last year, he was fired from his job at a progressive think tank for tweeting out a study that showed that nonviolent demonstrations were more effective than riots at pushing voter (behavior) in a Leftward direction in 1968.....But this has not stopped him from trying to deliver home truths to Democrats. For the past two years, he has made the case that the Party has lost touch with its working class base, and its relentless focus on identity issues has alienated moderate support. This is a near-heretical position to take in today’s Democratic circles, particularly from a self-described Leftist.....
...Shor goes further, arguing that the Democrat Party has become hijacked by white liberal college-educated activists whose interests and beliefs represent a tiny fraction of the country as a whole:
"College educated people have taken over the branding and issue (prioritization) of the Democratic Party, at the expense of working class white people who were in the party and working class non-white people who are in the party, and that’s driving people away. That’s really dangerous. Because in the Democratic Party, if you don’t have non-white conservatives, and you’re just a party of educated, white liberals, that gets you to 25%-30% of the vote....White people with a college degree who are under the age of 34 are less than 5% of the electorate, but they are literally a majority of people who work in politics…so I think it’s very easy for us to develop an inflated sense of how progressive the electorate is or how much people share our values....."
"....Because at the end of the day, the median voter is a 50-year-old without a college degree. And that means that every time you open your mouth, you should say, ‘is this something that a 50-year-old without a college degree will find compelling? Is it something that they’ll understand?’ And if not, you shouldn’t say it.…But the reality of the numbers is if you go and you ask a series of issue-questions on things like abortion, or taxes or whatever, only about 15% of the population agrees down the line with Democrats on every issue. The vast majority of people who vote for Democrats hold at least one major conservative policy position, whether it’s on taxes, whether it’s on social issues…It’s essential that we reverse education, (polarization), and win back a lot of these.....voters who have turned against the party....."
"......What’s funny about (Defund The Police) is that almost every black elected official in the country did not support defunding the police because younger African Americans and especially Hispanics do not support defunding the police..... But it still went up to the highest levels of journalism and advocacy discourse, because it was something that young, very affluent, white Leftists liked. And I think that’s cultural imperialism. We can’t let 1% of the population dictate what one of the major parties in the US thinks.....If you’re in a situation where 5% of the electorate has a college degree, trying to split on educational lines is a bad idea. Democrats tried it in 1972, and we got annihilated…What’s changed today is that as the country and as the world has become more educated, we’re now at a point where you can win a Democratic Primary,..... But we’re not yet at the point where something like that (educational voting divide) can win a national election...."
....Why it’s difficult for liberals to attract moderate support: "Our values are actually strange and foreign to swing voters. If they shared our values, they wouldn’t be swing voters — they would be liberals. So the only reason people ever supported us is because we talked about (non-polarizing) issues that appealed to normal people who didn’t share the commitments to solidarity and egalitarianism that activists had. We’ve lost that thread and…that’s turning a lot of people off...."
by Freddie Sayers/UnHerd Friday, 13 August 2021
https://unherd.com/thepost/david-shor-college-liberals-have-hijacked-the-democratic-party/
Direct Headline: New polling confirms Democrats’ left-leaning policies are out of touch
The Democratic Party is perceived by voters as being both ineffective and out of touch and, as a result, stands to suffer substantive seat losses in the midterm elections, new polling by Schoen Cooperman Research indicates....In order to have a fighting chance in the midterms — as well as a shot at holding on to the presidency in 2024 — Democrats need to embark on a broader course correction back to the center. The party needs to show voters that they are focused on solving problems and addressing quality-of-life issues and that they reject the progressive left’s embrace of big government spending and identity politics....
Indeed, a majority of voters (54 percent) — including 56 percent of independents — explicitly say that they want Biden and Democrats to move closer to the center and embrace more moderate policies versus embracing more liberal policies (18 percent) or staying where they are politically (13 percent). ....Most voters (61 percent) also agree that Biden and Democrats are “out of touch with hardworking Americans” and “have been so focused on catering to the far-left wing of the party that they’re ignoring Americans’ day to day concerns” such as “rising prices” and “(combating) violent crime.”....
....In addition to harboring negative views about the economy generally, two-thirds of voters (68 percent) blame the Biden administration’s policies for inflation either fully or partially.... Indeed, inflation — which is at its highest level in 40 years — is the top issue (51 percent) for voters, followed by the economy and creating jobs (32 percent).....As violent crime surges across the country — a trend that voters are nearly universally concerned about (85 percent) — by a 2-to-1 margin, voters blame Democrats over Republicans for rising crime rates (52 percent to 25 percent)....
....Collectively, our data paints a picture of a Democratic Party that is unable to connect with voters on basic “kitchen table” issues, namely the economy and crime.....Ultimately, if Democrats do not embrace a strategic shift to the political center, they risk historic defeats — worse than 1994 or 2010 — in this year’s midterm elections.....
by Douglas Schoen and Carly Cooperman - 03/13/22 9:01 AM ET
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/597987-new-polling-confirms-democrats-left-leaning-policies-are-out-of-touch/
Direct Headline: Why Dems Ought to Take a Cue from the GOP and Get Angry
To avoid a midterm wipeout, the party should focus less on dry policy issues and more on eliciting an emotional reaction....
For the fourth time in four years, Democrats are wondering how to grapple with the policy issue they believe will decide the next election....Politicians and political thinkers, particularly in liberal circles, often talk about elections and politics as if they are centered around a handful of core topics: the economy, health care, immigration, taxes. Voters don’t care about the day-to-day drama of Washington, D.C., this theory says. Instead, their attention is focused on an unchanging set of issues — mostly things that affect their personal lives. The way to win these voters over, the reasoning continues, is to propose policies that will address these core concerns.....
That means no self-respecting Democrat would be caught dead without a detailed policy platform. Media appearances and campaign ads are treated as opportunities to zero in on topics that “everyday Americans care about,” not to fulminate against opponents or pick culture-war battles. This produces campaigns built around sober, economically oriented and slightly dull themes: prescription drug pricing, or how many jobs a new law will produce..... Because policy is pragmatic and outcome-driven, urgent appeals to voters’ personal values are kept to a minimum. Democrats seem to assume their coalition is united more by their economic self-interest than by their moral commitments. But recent events should put that assumption in doubt......
Across the aisle, obviously, a different ethos has prevailed. Republicans have adopted an aggressive, freewheeling politics that tends to center anything sufficiently lurid, enraging, frightening or energizing: Socialism, “the caravan,” Ebola, Doctor Seuss, critical race theory. The list goes on and on. Outside of an effort to launch assaults along fault lines of race, gender, sexuality or age, there’s no consistent set of real-world issues or policies being addressed.....Where Democratic politics is characterized by a rigid left-brain approach that evaluates a list of issues and tries to prioritize each one in accordance to its presumed salience, the GOP in recent years has been pure right-brain: Emotion leads, everything else follows. One side’s tactics are highly structured. The other’s are postmodern, assuming that any narrative can be forced into political relevance, mostly by dint of being shouted about.....
If it were true that politics was about a small set of core policy issues, the Democratic approach would be clearly and unambiguously superior. After all, in many respects, it is the only party even attempting to tackle such concerns. In 2020, the Democratic Party platform ran for 92 pages and touched on every traditional policy issue in the country. Infamously, the GOP did not even produce a platform, instead releasing a one-page resolution professing (uncompromising) loyalty to Donald Trump and his aims, whatever those may have been.....More than anything else, the 2018 and 2020 results — and the freakish stability of Trump’s approval rating throughout his presidency — suggested that the main subject in U.S. politics since 2016 was not any policy issue, but Trump himself. A large number of Americans strongly supported the man; a somewhat larger number loathed him. Everything else in their voting behavior seemed to flow outward from that.....
Trump’s centrality to voters broke all the assumed rules. Here was an all-consuming political force, one that largely washed out the electoral effects of tumultuous real-world events....Yet, Trump shaped political reality. Few felt, or feel, indifferent....
Democrats face a dire midterm in 2022. If the party’s business-as-usual strategy keeps falling flat, it might be time to reflect on the success of the GOP’s political postmodernism. Democrats should consider that politics, rather than being about a short list of predetermined issues, can really be about anything at all. Political narratives don’t have to stick to tried-and-true positioning around health care, immigration or taxes. They just have to tell a good story......
None of this is to say that there’s a single right way for Democrats to stave off disaster in 2022. There is no formula here. Issue polls can give hints about the sort of political stories that might catch on, but they ultimately cannot predict the future. Audiences often don’t know what they’ll respond to until they see it. What’s more — as is obviously true in other mediums, but can be strangely overlooked in political campaigns — presentation is often as important as content..... Embedded in genuinely emotive language or evocative imagery, even standard talking points can suddenly become inspiring or thrillingly combative..... Democrats should remember this — and going forward, pursue a little more artistry and a little less math....
by Will Stancil, policy researcher at the University of Minnesota 05/18/2022 11:26 AM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/18/democrats-less-boring-emotional-reaction-00033382
Direct Headline: Can Democrats win back working-class voters? Watch Ohio.
Few issues have vexed Democrats more than the long-running defection of White, working-class voters to the Republican Party.....In his victory speech Tuesday night, (JD)Vance said: “The people who are caught between the corrupt political class of the left and the right, they need a voice. They need a representative. And that’s going to be me.”...From the viewpoint of his campaign team, the core appeal will be to voters who they believe have lost trust and faith, who feel not just economically stressed but, more important, left behind and disrespected by the ruling political powers in Washington and the cultural and economic elite — what one Vance adviser called government, media, big business, universities and nonprofits.....“The middle class and working middle class feel like everyone has turned their back on them,.....It’s not just stupid decisions [by government and others]. It’s just, ‘You really don’t care about us.'"......
...(Tim) Ryan already has signaled in his ads how he hopes to do this. He will try to separate himself from those aspects of the Democratic Party that have alienated working-class voters. Beyond the issue of crime and funding the police, he will highlight problems on the border and the issue of immigration. He will run hard against China and free-trade pacts generally....Ryan also hopes to skirt the issue that has been a major reason Democrats have lost support among working-class voters. “You want culture wars? I’m not your guy,” .... But that doesn’t mean cultural issues won’t be part of the campaign and potentially to the detriment of the Democrat.....
Analysis by Dan Balz May 7, 2022 at 12:12 p.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/07/ohio-senate-race-sundaytake/
******
Is analyst David Shor correct? Is there a clear pathway and reality that just about 1 percent of American population dictates the entire Party apparatus platform and drive all it's public policies for the Democratic Party?
Consider the points that Shor makes that essentially casts him out as a babbling "radical" by the establishment Democrats, and ironically, the clearly woked out cancel culture induced identity politics driven radical left.
1) If the Democratic Party loses working class white voters and working class minority voters, you don't have the numbers to win a general election. You might take some primaries and lower seats down the ticket, but you don't have the raw numbers you need. This goes beyond partisan divide and is a simple math problem. Team Blue seems intent on pissing off the kind of voters it needs the most with it's hard push for culture wars and identity politics above all else.
2) College (over) educated liberal whites under the age of 34 represent the heavy lifting of all people who actually work in professional politics. Thus you have the conflict that Elon Musk talks about when you have a group running policy that is both too old at the top ( out of touch with working class reality) and too young at the bottom ( activists without life experience but only from a very very very small subset of the entire range of interests and viewpoints of all Americans.) And those viewpoints tend to ignore the core needs of every day working class Americans. This has lent to the rise of the "New Right" by upstarts like JD Vance, who have gained populist appeal by many who have come to terms that the current political establishment has completely abandoned them.
3) To win national elections, the reality is the average voter is not college educated. And you have to actually appeal to everyday people, especially moderates and those in the center whom are not in your ideological camp. You need to talk plain and talk simple and talk practical needs for every day people and you need to deliver on your promises to them. Because all polling ( look a the SCR polling data I presented above) indicates that the average everyday working class non college educated American citizen does not believe the Democratic Party cares about and delivers wins for the things they find critical - like civil order, safety in the streets, good paying jobs, affordable housing, and what they see at the grocery store and gas pumps. And who can blame them?
Think about how far to the left that Team Blue overall has gone to cast out some basic political and practical realities by David Shor as some kind of "right wing only talking point/propaganda".
This is something Ben Shapiro points out is a consistent zealot induced toxic self destructive behavior by Team Blue - the insistence that everything the GOP brings up must be dogmatically opposed, up to even using open violence, even if it's something that would help the every day American and even if it's something the every day working class Americans want and need.
I bring up the article hosted by Politico that the only way Team Blue can win the Mid Terms is to "tell a better story" and "don't focus on core policy but drive artistic emotional reactions" mostly because the Democratic Party's platforms are "too smart" for the average American. Disgusting and elitist takes. Will Stancil, who penned the article, is EXACTLY the kind of young over educated white liberal in a privilege bubble that Shor is talking about and denouncing. Stancil believes the American people will be swayed by "moral principles" over economic ones. And that might be the case in his little sealed off insular community of fellow activist college liberals from affluent families but not in line with the brutal reality on the ground for working class Americans who are a paycheck and a half away from being homeless. When has the last time someone like Stancil, or his peer group, waited in line at a food bank because he was desperately hungry? Or had to pick a choice between filling up a gas tank but not being able to afford needed medications? Or consider that after a lifetime of working hard, and "playing by the rules" and paying into the "system", that he might not be able to ever retire? You know what someone like Stancil refuses to discuss? How about just plain delivering wins for the American people and make their lives better and then they'll want to vote for you? How about something as damn simple at that?
When do a small group of smug tone deaf activists become so detached from day to day working class reality that they look like social and cultural terrorists to the masses who are just trying to feed their kids and keep a roof over their heads at night?
Consider this quote by a working class every day American about their views on the drive for identity politics over public safety and basic economic stability -
"The (Democratic Party) is viciously insane. Republicans aren’t great either, but they don’t scare me as much as (Team Blue) does. I voted for Trump during the last election because I’d rather vote for a man half of America hates than for a Party that hates me."
Do you believe college liberals have hijacked the Democratic Party as David Shor has discussed? Why or why not?
I'll leave this here for others to discuss.
*EDIT: Changed thread title from "David Shor: College Liberals Have Hijacked The Democratic Party (5/19/22 7:43 PST)" to "Do You Believe College Liberals Have Hijacked The Democratic Party? (5/19/22 7:43 PST)"
David Shor is not afraid to say the unsayable. As a Democratic party strategist, this trait has at times got him into trouble; last year, he was fired from his job at a progressive think tank for tweeting out a study that showed that nonviolent demonstrations were more effective than riots at pushing voter (behavior) in a Leftward direction in 1968.....But this has not stopped him from trying to deliver home truths to Democrats. For the past two years, he has made the case that the Party has lost touch with its working class base, and its relentless focus on identity issues has alienated moderate support. This is a near-heretical position to take in today’s Democratic circles, particularly from a self-described Leftist.....
...Shor goes further, arguing that the Democrat Party has become hijacked by white liberal college-educated activists whose interests and beliefs represent a tiny fraction of the country as a whole:
"College educated people have taken over the branding and issue (prioritization) of the Democratic Party, at the expense of working class white people who were in the party and working class non-white people who are in the party, and that’s driving people away. That’s really dangerous. Because in the Democratic Party, if you don’t have non-white conservatives, and you’re just a party of educated, white liberals, that gets you to 25%-30% of the vote....White people with a college degree who are under the age of 34 are less than 5% of the electorate, but they are literally a majority of people who work in politics…so I think it’s very easy for us to develop an inflated sense of how progressive the electorate is or how much people share our values....."
"....Because at the end of the day, the median voter is a 50-year-old without a college degree. And that means that every time you open your mouth, you should say, ‘is this something that a 50-year-old without a college degree will find compelling? Is it something that they’ll understand?’ And if not, you shouldn’t say it.…But the reality of the numbers is if you go and you ask a series of issue-questions on things like abortion, or taxes or whatever, only about 15% of the population agrees down the line with Democrats on every issue. The vast majority of people who vote for Democrats hold at least one major conservative policy position, whether it’s on taxes, whether it’s on social issues…It’s essential that we reverse education, (polarization), and win back a lot of these.....voters who have turned against the party....."
"......What’s funny about (Defund The Police) is that almost every black elected official in the country did not support defunding the police because younger African Americans and especially Hispanics do not support defunding the police..... But it still went up to the highest levels of journalism and advocacy discourse, because it was something that young, very affluent, white Leftists liked. And I think that’s cultural imperialism. We can’t let 1% of the population dictate what one of the major parties in the US thinks.....If you’re in a situation where 5% of the electorate has a college degree, trying to split on educational lines is a bad idea. Democrats tried it in 1972, and we got annihilated…What’s changed today is that as the country and as the world has become more educated, we’re now at a point where you can win a Democratic Primary,..... But we’re not yet at the point where something like that (educational voting divide) can win a national election...."
....Why it’s difficult for liberals to attract moderate support: "Our values are actually strange and foreign to swing voters. If they shared our values, they wouldn’t be swing voters — they would be liberals. So the only reason people ever supported us is because we talked about (non-polarizing) issues that appealed to normal people who didn’t share the commitments to solidarity and egalitarianism that activists had. We’ve lost that thread and…that’s turning a lot of people off...."
by Freddie Sayers/UnHerd Friday, 13 August 2021
https://unherd.com/thepost/david-shor-college-liberals-have-hijacked-the-democratic-party/
Direct Headline: New polling confirms Democrats’ left-leaning policies are out of touch
The Democratic Party is perceived by voters as being both ineffective and out of touch and, as a result, stands to suffer substantive seat losses in the midterm elections, new polling by Schoen Cooperman Research indicates....In order to have a fighting chance in the midterms — as well as a shot at holding on to the presidency in 2024 — Democrats need to embark on a broader course correction back to the center. The party needs to show voters that they are focused on solving problems and addressing quality-of-life issues and that they reject the progressive left’s embrace of big government spending and identity politics....
Indeed, a majority of voters (54 percent) — including 56 percent of independents — explicitly say that they want Biden and Democrats to move closer to the center and embrace more moderate policies versus embracing more liberal policies (18 percent) or staying where they are politically (13 percent). ....Most voters (61 percent) also agree that Biden and Democrats are “out of touch with hardworking Americans” and “have been so focused on catering to the far-left wing of the party that they’re ignoring Americans’ day to day concerns” such as “rising prices” and “(combating) violent crime.”....
....In addition to harboring negative views about the economy generally, two-thirds of voters (68 percent) blame the Biden administration’s policies for inflation either fully or partially.... Indeed, inflation — which is at its highest level in 40 years — is the top issue (51 percent) for voters, followed by the economy and creating jobs (32 percent).....As violent crime surges across the country — a trend that voters are nearly universally concerned about (85 percent) — by a 2-to-1 margin, voters blame Democrats over Republicans for rising crime rates (52 percent to 25 percent)....
....Collectively, our data paints a picture of a Democratic Party that is unable to connect with voters on basic “kitchen table” issues, namely the economy and crime.....Ultimately, if Democrats do not embrace a strategic shift to the political center, they risk historic defeats — worse than 1994 or 2010 — in this year’s midterm elections.....
by Douglas Schoen and Carly Cooperman - 03/13/22 9:01 AM ET
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/597987-new-polling-confirms-democrats-left-leaning-policies-are-out-of-touch/
Direct Headline: Why Dems Ought to Take a Cue from the GOP and Get Angry
To avoid a midterm wipeout, the party should focus less on dry policy issues and more on eliciting an emotional reaction....
For the fourth time in four years, Democrats are wondering how to grapple with the policy issue they believe will decide the next election....Politicians and political thinkers, particularly in liberal circles, often talk about elections and politics as if they are centered around a handful of core topics: the economy, health care, immigration, taxes. Voters don’t care about the day-to-day drama of Washington, D.C., this theory says. Instead, their attention is focused on an unchanging set of issues — mostly things that affect their personal lives. The way to win these voters over, the reasoning continues, is to propose policies that will address these core concerns.....
That means no self-respecting Democrat would be caught dead without a detailed policy platform. Media appearances and campaign ads are treated as opportunities to zero in on topics that “everyday Americans care about,” not to fulminate against opponents or pick culture-war battles. This produces campaigns built around sober, economically oriented and slightly dull themes: prescription drug pricing, or how many jobs a new law will produce..... Because policy is pragmatic and outcome-driven, urgent appeals to voters’ personal values are kept to a minimum. Democrats seem to assume their coalition is united more by their economic self-interest than by their moral commitments. But recent events should put that assumption in doubt......
Across the aisle, obviously, a different ethos has prevailed. Republicans have adopted an aggressive, freewheeling politics that tends to center anything sufficiently lurid, enraging, frightening or energizing: Socialism, “the caravan,” Ebola, Doctor Seuss, critical race theory. The list goes on and on. Outside of an effort to launch assaults along fault lines of race, gender, sexuality or age, there’s no consistent set of real-world issues or policies being addressed.....Where Democratic politics is characterized by a rigid left-brain approach that evaluates a list of issues and tries to prioritize each one in accordance to its presumed salience, the GOP in recent years has been pure right-brain: Emotion leads, everything else follows. One side’s tactics are highly structured. The other’s are postmodern, assuming that any narrative can be forced into political relevance, mostly by dint of being shouted about.....
If it were true that politics was about a small set of core policy issues, the Democratic approach would be clearly and unambiguously superior. After all, in many respects, it is the only party even attempting to tackle such concerns. In 2020, the Democratic Party platform ran for 92 pages and touched on every traditional policy issue in the country. Infamously, the GOP did not even produce a platform, instead releasing a one-page resolution professing (uncompromising) loyalty to Donald Trump and his aims, whatever those may have been.....More than anything else, the 2018 and 2020 results — and the freakish stability of Trump’s approval rating throughout his presidency — suggested that the main subject in U.S. politics since 2016 was not any policy issue, but Trump himself. A large number of Americans strongly supported the man; a somewhat larger number loathed him. Everything else in their voting behavior seemed to flow outward from that.....
Trump’s centrality to voters broke all the assumed rules. Here was an all-consuming political force, one that largely washed out the electoral effects of tumultuous real-world events....Yet, Trump shaped political reality. Few felt, or feel, indifferent....
Democrats face a dire midterm in 2022. If the party’s business-as-usual strategy keeps falling flat, it might be time to reflect on the success of the GOP’s political postmodernism. Democrats should consider that politics, rather than being about a short list of predetermined issues, can really be about anything at all. Political narratives don’t have to stick to tried-and-true positioning around health care, immigration or taxes. They just have to tell a good story......
None of this is to say that there’s a single right way for Democrats to stave off disaster in 2022. There is no formula here. Issue polls can give hints about the sort of political stories that might catch on, but they ultimately cannot predict the future. Audiences often don’t know what they’ll respond to until they see it. What’s more — as is obviously true in other mediums, but can be strangely overlooked in political campaigns — presentation is often as important as content..... Embedded in genuinely emotive language or evocative imagery, even standard talking points can suddenly become inspiring or thrillingly combative..... Democrats should remember this — and going forward, pursue a little more artistry and a little less math....
by Will Stancil, policy researcher at the University of Minnesota 05/18/2022 11:26 AM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/18/democrats-less-boring-emotional-reaction-00033382
Direct Headline: Can Democrats win back working-class voters? Watch Ohio.
Few issues have vexed Democrats more than the long-running defection of White, working-class voters to the Republican Party.....In his victory speech Tuesday night, (JD)Vance said: “The people who are caught between the corrupt political class of the left and the right, they need a voice. They need a representative. And that’s going to be me.”...From the viewpoint of his campaign team, the core appeal will be to voters who they believe have lost trust and faith, who feel not just economically stressed but, more important, left behind and disrespected by the ruling political powers in Washington and the cultural and economic elite — what one Vance adviser called government, media, big business, universities and nonprofits.....“The middle class and working middle class feel like everyone has turned their back on them,.....It’s not just stupid decisions [by government and others]. It’s just, ‘You really don’t care about us.'"......
...(Tim) Ryan already has signaled in his ads how he hopes to do this. He will try to separate himself from those aspects of the Democratic Party that have alienated working-class voters. Beyond the issue of crime and funding the police, he will highlight problems on the border and the issue of immigration. He will run hard against China and free-trade pacts generally....Ryan also hopes to skirt the issue that has been a major reason Democrats have lost support among working-class voters. “You want culture wars? I’m not your guy,” .... But that doesn’t mean cultural issues won’t be part of the campaign and potentially to the detriment of the Democrat.....
Analysis by Dan Balz May 7, 2022 at 12:12 p.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/07/ohio-senate-race-sundaytake/
******
Is analyst David Shor correct? Is there a clear pathway and reality that just about 1 percent of American population dictates the entire Party apparatus platform and drive all it's public policies for the Democratic Party?
Consider the points that Shor makes that essentially casts him out as a babbling "radical" by the establishment Democrats, and ironically, the clearly woked out cancel culture induced identity politics driven radical left.
1) If the Democratic Party loses working class white voters and working class minority voters, you don't have the numbers to win a general election. You might take some primaries and lower seats down the ticket, but you don't have the raw numbers you need. This goes beyond partisan divide and is a simple math problem. Team Blue seems intent on pissing off the kind of voters it needs the most with it's hard push for culture wars and identity politics above all else.
2) College (over) educated liberal whites under the age of 34 represent the heavy lifting of all people who actually work in professional politics. Thus you have the conflict that Elon Musk talks about when you have a group running policy that is both too old at the top ( out of touch with working class reality) and too young at the bottom ( activists without life experience but only from a very very very small subset of the entire range of interests and viewpoints of all Americans.) And those viewpoints tend to ignore the core needs of every day working class Americans. This has lent to the rise of the "New Right" by upstarts like JD Vance, who have gained populist appeal by many who have come to terms that the current political establishment has completely abandoned them.
3) To win national elections, the reality is the average voter is not college educated. And you have to actually appeal to everyday people, especially moderates and those in the center whom are not in your ideological camp. You need to talk plain and talk simple and talk practical needs for every day people and you need to deliver on your promises to them. Because all polling ( look a the SCR polling data I presented above) indicates that the average everyday working class non college educated American citizen does not believe the Democratic Party cares about and delivers wins for the things they find critical - like civil order, safety in the streets, good paying jobs, affordable housing, and what they see at the grocery store and gas pumps. And who can blame them?
Think about how far to the left that Team Blue overall has gone to cast out some basic political and practical realities by David Shor as some kind of "right wing only talking point/propaganda".
This is something Ben Shapiro points out is a consistent zealot induced toxic self destructive behavior by Team Blue - the insistence that everything the GOP brings up must be dogmatically opposed, up to even using open violence, even if it's something that would help the every day American and even if it's something the every day working class Americans want and need.
I bring up the article hosted by Politico that the only way Team Blue can win the Mid Terms is to "tell a better story" and "don't focus on core policy but drive artistic emotional reactions" mostly because the Democratic Party's platforms are "too smart" for the average American. Disgusting and elitist takes. Will Stancil, who penned the article, is EXACTLY the kind of young over educated white liberal in a privilege bubble that Shor is talking about and denouncing. Stancil believes the American people will be swayed by "moral principles" over economic ones. And that might be the case in his little sealed off insular community of fellow activist college liberals from affluent families but not in line with the brutal reality on the ground for working class Americans who are a paycheck and a half away from being homeless. When has the last time someone like Stancil, or his peer group, waited in line at a food bank because he was desperately hungry? Or had to pick a choice between filling up a gas tank but not being able to afford needed medications? Or consider that after a lifetime of working hard, and "playing by the rules" and paying into the "system", that he might not be able to ever retire? You know what someone like Stancil refuses to discuss? How about just plain delivering wins for the American people and make their lives better and then they'll want to vote for you? How about something as damn simple at that?
When do a small group of smug tone deaf activists become so detached from day to day working class reality that they look like social and cultural terrorists to the masses who are just trying to feed their kids and keep a roof over their heads at night?
Consider this quote by a working class every day American about their views on the drive for identity politics over public safety and basic economic stability -
"The (Democratic Party) is viciously insane. Republicans aren’t great either, but they don’t scare me as much as (Team Blue) does. I voted for Trump during the last election because I’d rather vote for a man half of America hates than for a Party that hates me."
Do you believe college liberals have hijacked the Democratic Party as David Shor has discussed? Why or why not?
I'll leave this here for others to discuss.
*EDIT: Changed thread title from "David Shor: College Liberals Have Hijacked The Democratic Party (5/19/22 7:43 PST)" to "Do You Believe College Liberals Have Hijacked The Democratic Party? (5/19/22 7:43 PST)"
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