GENERALLY I LIKE Michael Sean Winters but his piece today, one of the myriads of would be autopsies of the Democrats losses in this election is about the last straw in that for me. He starts out with the bizarre idea asked about in my title.
The Democratic Party autopsies continue. Critically, the Democrats are now tagged as the party of the nation's cultural elite, so the changes need to extend beyond the party's leaders. The soul-searching must be more widespread. It won't be easy.
Today, and over the next few Mondays, I plan to look at some of the deeper habits of thought that have come to characterize Democratic Party leaders and that need to change.
The first deadly habit the left has to forswear is its tendency to heresy-hunt. If you are hunting for converts, you are engaged in party-building. If you are hunting for heretics, you end up alienating people whose votes you need.
This heresy-hunting tendency is found to the nth degree in discussions of sex and gender. It is pretty obvious that transgender-related issues are replacing abortion as the principal totem in our culture wars. While former President Donald Trump barely mentioned abortion during the campaign, the GOP spent millions of dollars on an ad that highlighted old video of Vice President Kamala Harris indicating her support for gender-reassignment surgeries for prison inmates, paid for by the government.
Mr. Winters, did you actually follow the campaigns of the two parties? I mean every one of those since Truman ran in 1948? What the fuck has the Republican Party done for the past eighty years BUT RUN ON "HERESY HUNTING?" Here's a list of those targeted by Republican-fascists in 2024
People of Color, Most of all Black People and Latinos but including many others.
Women except Republican Women and by that I mean those who supported Trump and Trumpism
Liberals
Environmentalists
Teachers
Labor organizers
Muslims and members of other religions
Literally the majority of the United States and the majority who voted didn't vote for Trump who won under fifty percent of the vote.
Imaginary Marxists and Communists - REALLY, THEY THINK THERE ARE STILL THOSE UNDER THE BED, or they pretend to for the rubes and those whose senile dementia is triggered by those buzz words. Which is hilarious because no American politician has ever been more in bed with commies than Donald Trump, I mean, the KGB man Putin, Xi, KIM OF NORTH KOREA! FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE!
When have Republican-fascists ever LOST AN ELECTION through "heresy hunting?" If you're saying that doesn't work as well for a democratic party of inclusion, the reason for that has to be far more complex than you make it to be, for example, the widely reported on phenomenon of Latinos WHO ARE OR ARE RELATED TO OR CARE ABOUT THE IMMIGRANTS TRUMP AND THE REPUBLICANS TARGETED who didn't believe "he meant People like us."
Your focus on trans-people as one of those groups the Republican-fascists have targeted the most, TAKING ADVANTAGE OF PREJUDICE, IGNORANCE AND HATRED, blaming Democrats for speaking up for a group targeted, injured and murdered in heavily disproportionate numbers is to say that the Republican tactic of targeting them works and that Democrats shouldn't oppose it. That might be easy for a straight, white male to say as it is, perhaps, for such straight white males to dismiss as important. Such a SWM as Seth Moulton, running as a Democrat from a safe Democratic district in Massachusetts is hardly someone for Democrats living in the real world to follow. His attempt to sandbag the most accomplished Speaker of the House in the history of that office, Nancy Pelosi, to replace her by someone more like him is about as much as you need to know about how that would work out for Democrats.
I could go on and I probably will if you keep up your post-mortem in this way. I am pretty much sick and tired of those in the media who do this without admitting the most salient fact in Democrats having trouble getting elected and winning majorities, THE FACT THAT THEIR OWN PROFESSION IS NEARLY UNIFORMLY IN THE POCKET OF REPUBLICANS AND THOSE WHO LIKE REPUBLICANS BECAUSE THEY MAKE THEM RICHER. If one of your planned post-mortems isn't a realistic and honest look at that, you should really stick to what your're good at, which is reporting on the internal workings of the Catholic Church. You do that well, I don't think the world needs another cookie-cutter slam at Democrats on the basis of equality and inclusion.
You might as well have suggested Democrats follow the tactic that has worked the most for Republicans, no one in our history more than Donald Trump, LYING AND BEARING FALSE WITNESS. Your profession has that as a standard operating feature, these days.
"Imaginary Marxists and Communists - REALLY, THEY THINK THERE ARE STILL THOSE UNDER THE BED"
ReplyDeleteSays the putz who has never stopped yelling that the McCarthy-era blacklists were justified because everybody in Hollywood actually was a Communist. 😎
Simps, you don't have to convince me that you and Trump have that in common, that you lie about everything. I never said the McCarthy-era blacklists were justified because a. a lot of People who had never had anything to do with the Communist or any of the other delusional Marxist parties were caught up in it, b. it was one of the tactics of Hollywood to suppress workers solidarityand for myriad other reasons. It's especially hilarious for you, in all of your Hollywood worshiping stupidity to accuse me of saying "everybody in Hollywood was actually a Communinst" BECAUSE I'VE NOTED THAT PRETTY MUCH THE LARGE MAJORITY OF HOLLYWOOD WERE RIGHT WINGERS IF NOT ACTUAL FASCISTS AND NAZI SYMPS. Hollywood as a haven for commies or in any way progressive is a ridiculous myth best refuted BY THE BLACK-LIST, ITS EXTENT, ITS EFFECTIVENESS AND ITS DURATION.
ReplyDeleteAs for the actual Stalinists, I've got no my sympathy for them than I do the Nazi fans. They were all supporters of mass murderers, though I know from recent history that mass murder doesn't bother you, so much. The pity is that they didn't blacklist the Nazis and fascists and white supremacists. Which, it being racist, capitalist, fascist loving Hollywood, that wouldn't happen.
I think Derbes and Gromit and a few other of the Eschatots who I once thought had some actual intelligence and connection to reality have been damaged by associating with the rest of you. It's just so, so stupid there.
"PRETTY MUCH THE LARGE MAJORITY OF HOLLYWOOD WERE RIGHT WINGERS IF NOT ACTUAL FASCISTS AND NAZI SYMPS."
ReplyDeleteYou do realize that everybody you're tarring with that fact free idiot brush were Jews, right? 😎
I don't "realize" that and neither do you, though unlike me you obviously buy into the antisemitic trope that "the Jews control Hollywood." I tend to think if they did Hollywood would put out a lot better stuff than the shit it does. As for Jews who are right wingers if not actual fascists and Nazi sympathizers, all I see are right-wingers and actual fascists and Nazi sympathizers,. unlike you I don't think like a Nazi thinks.
ReplyDeleteSo, Simps, I know you have the most oddly unhinged conception of mathematics but how can the Jews in Hollywood all be commies, as you seem to think and right wingers, if not actual fascists and Nazis? Both can't be true but in your puny, decayed mind you can hold both ideas as true at the same time.
You didn't know the Jews control Hollywood and always did? Shit, Sparky, the great Neal Gabler actually wrote the definitive book about it. It was in the title and everything. https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Their-Own-Invented-Hollywood/dp/0385265573
ReplyDeleteSo you agree with the antisemites that Jews control Hollywood. I wonder if Neal Gabler would agree with your claim about his book, I doubt he would because unlike you, he can think.
DeleteIn the years of interacting with you, Simps, I have seen over and over again that you don't think, you repeat tropes and stereotypes and you are remarkably prone to repeat racialist generalizations whereas I was brought up to reject those to realize that every individual is responsible for only what they do. It doesn't surprise me that in a generally racist society such as modernism is entirely compatible with that you would get along with so many college-credentialed People who have never learned that. As I've been writing about since the election, that thinking is demonstrably wrong even about people like you, straight, white affluent-class men. I wouldn't guess that all SWM think like you do. THAT'S WHO CONTROLS HOLLYWOOD, STUPID, STRAIGHT, WHITE, AFFLUENT MEN who only care about money.