#Swing Voter Alienation

[lasseling]

The Dems are doing deliberate voter importation to swing states & fast-tracking them to citizenship.

The only question is when (not if) enough migrants can vote to flip all swing states, shifting the whole country to permanent one-party rule, just like what happened to California after the 1986 amnesty.

Diabolically smart tbh.

That’s why I keep saying that, unless Trump wins and reverses this scam, 2024 is the last election in America.

The Dem machine’s voter importation scam is the true threat to democracy, not Trump!

[netscapenavigator-official]

From what I've garnered online, the debate was rather lukewarm.

Trump was derranged, as expected. "I got involved with the taliban," "transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison," and "[immigrants are] eating the dogs…they’re eating the cats," are three very real things that he uttered tonight.

Harris was said to be rather moderate compared to her previous appearances, as (apparently) she's trying to appeal to potential Republican swing voters since she has the left pretty well secured.

However!

None of that matters (apparently), because immediately after the debate, Taylor Swift announced she will be voting for Harris, and signed off her endorsement by referring to herself as a "Childless Cat Lady," adding yet another inch to the grave JD Vance dug himself with that comment.

I wish I was kidding, but when I went to the Reddit homepage to see if Democrats dive-bombed their months of good PR, I could barely find anything relating to the debate because every single posts was a 40K upvote post about Taylor Swift endorsing Harris.

[tomorrowusa]

Q: What sort of idiot alienates a large number of key voters in swing states nine days before an election? A: Donald Trump.

Trump and his cronies may try to blame his disastrous MSG rally on everybody but Trump. But we all know that Trump micro-manages his rallies. He even curates the music playlist. Any attempt to assign blame to anybody but Trump is pure Trump bullshit.

Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally Sunday evening was supposed to provide his closing argument against Kamala Harris. Instead, Trump and his supporters are being forced to answer for hateful and racist rhetoric delivered from the podium Sunday night with just eight days left in the campaign. [ ... ] And Trump’s opponents are using the rally as proof of the former president’s divisiveness, going as far as likening the rhetoric from Sunday’s rally to the sinister 1939 Nazi rally that took place in the same venue. “My reaction is that was a combination of 1933 Germany, 1939 Madison Square Garden last night,” former Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday morning. “What you saw last night is a divisive America. That’s race baiting. It’s all the things that we were doing in the ‘30s and ‘40s.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.), called Sunday night’s event a “hate rally.” “This was not just a presidential rally, this was not just a campaign rally. I think it’s important for people to understand these are mini January 6 rallies, these are mini Stop the Steal rallies,” she said on “Morning Joe.” [ ... ] New Jersey congressional candidate Nellie Pou, who is Puerto Rican, said the rally was reminiscent of Trump’s widely criticized handling of Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island in 2017. “These words are a warning of how he would treat Puerto Ricans if he were to set foot again in the White House,” she wrote on X.

I'm presuming this list of states showing numbers of Puerto Rican residents (via Wikipedia) is up to date. These are just the top twelve states.

If I counted accurately, there are three swing states on this list: Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. Not only that, but Puerto Ricans make up 3.6% of Pennsylvania's population. The figure for North Carolina is 1.1% and 1.0% for Georgia.

As luck would have it, VP Kamala Harris was in Pennsylvania on Sunday – before and during Trump's racist shit show in NYC. The Harris campaign released this video BEFORE the start of Trump's Nazi-revival rally. It just happens to deal with Puerto Rico. 🇵🇷

Harris unveils new Puerto Rico policy plans in Philly campaign swing

It was a classic case of being in the right place at the right time with the right message.

Puerto Ricans have the opportunity in this election to tell Trump what they think of his campaign calling them "garbage".

[nyxnoxxx]

people blaming non voters and third party voters for the outcome of the election need to understand that it's the PARTY'S responsibility to win over voters, it's the PARTY'S responsibility to listen to their base and adjust their policies based on what they call for, it's the PARTY'S responsibility to not alienate their constituents

the dems refused to listen to people calling for an end to the support of israel and for an end to funding genocide. the dems chose to swing right and appeal to conservatives and treat leftists and palestine supporters with outright contempt. they ran the worst presidential campaign they could have, and WE will be suffering the consequences

[stupidjewishwhiteboy]

Assuming it’s actually true that only 56% of Jews voted for Kamala this time, it feels like a real oversight that non-Jewish media sources never seemed to ask whether a seeming indifference to antisemitism within the Democratic Party and/or suggestions about stopping aid to Israel might alienate Jewish voters in swing states, in the way that a similar question was asked about Muslim/Arab voters constantly. To be clear, any Jews who voted for Trump should be ashamed of themselves and I feel they’ve almost certainly shot Jewish rights in the foot for the next 2-4 years, but I feel like rumblings of this happening have been talked about in Jewish spaces for a while and apparently the Gentiles didn’t notice

[captain-stretch-nuts]

Well this sucks. Sucks a lot.

I can't say the result surprises me though. Ultimately this loss is the result of severe Democratic party resource mismanagement as well as Republican infiltration of Democratic party ranks. I can't blame anyone except the upper ranks of the Democratic party because voter engagement isn't a problem anyone can solve alone. If an entire organization dedicated to getting millions of people to vote for them fails to do so, that is their fault.

The biggest mistake the DNC made was having Kamala puff her chest about supporting Netanyahu instead of going all-in on a ceasefire for the sake of preservation of life, respect for human dignity -- values that dem voters young and old traditionally hold high. Supposedly they continue to entertain that nonsense because of the value of Israeli intelligence in the region of the Middle East but how useful is that data when Netanyahu is the one handing it to you? Is it worth alienating your most energetic voterbase? It definitely isn't.

That is the act of mismanaging the most useful resource as a political party: willingness to vote for you. Energy. Dems got it when they replaced Joe as the candidate for Kamala, and they completely hamstrung themselves because someone way up high in the DNC, perhaps multiple people, are bad faith actors who are convinced that swing voters are everything. They aren't. Politics has become too complicated of a topic for the average voter so even if the older swing voters recognize voting as a civic duty, they will vote for their personal best interests instead of moral issues, geopolitics, or even basic policy decisions. More importantly there are comparatively fewer of them than there are left-leaning youth, who grow in number every day. Even the Republicans are appealing and pandering to their young white male voterbase which is hilarious because that is a shrinking percentage of the youth.

It comes down to the DNC being too scared to appeal to a new voterbase who would love to vote for Dems if they would only stop trying to appeal to the worst members of their party, within and without.

[corporationsarepeople]

Mainstream news organizations suddenly became more blunt about Trump’s decline – and derangement. “Trump’s age finally catches up with him,” the Washington Post wrote Saturday. “Trump kicks off Pennsylvania rally by talking about Arnold Palmer’s genitalia,” AP headlined its coverage of the Latrobe debacle. “Donald Trump’s vulgar rally ramble fuels questions about his state of mind,” the Financial Times wrote.

As always, the New York Times immediately “sane-washed” the story. On its breaking news politics page, a short report said Trump told “golf stories” about Palmer without mentioning his lewd remark. But shockingly, after wide social media outcry, reporter Michael Gold told a critic to direct his questions to senioreditor@nytimes.com, because “I filed something that included the thing you mention as omitted, but I’m not given the power to publish what I say.”

Maybe the pressure worked. Later in the day, the Times ran a longer piece by Gold, headlined “At a Pennsylvania Rally, Trump Descends to New Levels of Vulgarity,” which included the Palmer story verbatim, and warned that Trump’s crude talk could alienate “swing voters.”

- - -

If Trump does win, I’d expect him to step down fairly quickly. He will refuse if he has enough mental faculties left to know the difference, of course, but his cabinet could remove him and his major donors will insist on Vance replacing him as soon as possible. Vance is their guy.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

You are, I’m sure, familiar with Occam’s razor. It’s the old philosophical theorem that holds that the simplest explanation for an event, the one requiring the fewest assumptions, is probably the best explanation. If you wake up in the morning and there’s snow on the lawn, there are any number of possible explanations. Maybe some friends played a practical joke on you and dumped snow in your yard. Maybe space aliens visited during your slumber and dusted your lawn with the white stuff. Or—maybe it snowed last night.

Republicans keep asking, completely dishonestly, why so much criminal suspicion surrounds Donald Trump. They say it’s all being orchestrated by Joe Biden and Merrick Garland. They insist it’s an effort to interfere with his election campaign. They say a lot of things, but if ever there was a case where Occam’s razor applied, it’s this one. Trump is surrounded by criminal suspicion because he’s a criminal.

He’s been doing criminal things for decades. He just finally got cornered and caught on something. I’ve been writing recently that Democrats have to make sure every voter in the country remembers by Election Day, having heard it said thousands of times, that Donald Trump is a convicted felon. That’s true, and so far, Democrats and affiliated groups aren’t doing a terrible job of this. It’s a little sad that the best expression I’ve seen of this so far comes from a Republican—fiercely anti-Trump Republican Sarah Longwell’s group, Republican Voters Against Trump, has put up some blunt billboards around the country featuring photos of voters, with their names, under the statement: “I won’t vote for a convicted felon.”

But Democrats need to do more. Trump’s criminality, both past and future, should be central to the campaign. There’s a story to tell here, and it’s all true. No matter what the pollsters and the messaging gurus say, it’s impossible that all of this, taken together, doesn’t matter to swing voters.

To tell the story, you go through Trump’s record:

• convicted on 34 felony counts • determined by a court to have raped a woman and ordered to pay her $83 million • found by a court to have overvalued his assets and ordered to pay $364 million • ordered to pay a $2 million settlement after admitting that he misused his charity, which the state of New York shut down • found by the Justice Department to have refused to rent apartments to Black applicants; settled out of court • sued by the Justice Department for violating proper procedures in the purchase of stock; paid $750,000 in civil fines • charged by the New York State Lobbying Commission with violating state lobbying laws while purchasing a casino; paid $250,000 to settle fines • found by the courts to have grossly defrauded students at the so-called Trump University and ordered to pay them $25 million in restitution

This list isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. It’s the tip of the tip. Trump has spent four decades being sued for something or other, typically not paying his bills, like those famous cases where he stiffed the poor vendors for his casinos, filing his own ridiculous countersuits and libel suits, and paying fines to make things go away. If indeed he actually paid the fines. I wonder if anyone has ever really gotten to the bottom of that. And I haven’t even mentioned the current charges around January 6 and the stolen classified documents because, so far, they’re just charges. But whatever the courts end up saying on those two matters, we’ve all seen with our own eyes the insurrection that he obviously incited (as of this January, 718 rioters had pleaded guilty to various federal charges, and 139 had been found guilty in court) and the photos of the boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago that he refused for months to turn over to the FBI.

Another important point: The criminality around Trump isn’t limited to Trump. Eight Trump associates were sentenced to prison time: Steve Bannon, Michael Cohen (joined the good side but still served time), Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, Peter Navarro, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone, and Allen Weisselberg. Others copped pleas: Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Cheseboro, and Scott Hall, another Georgia defendant.

This is not a coincidence. As GOP strategist Rick Wilson said, “Everything Trump touches dies”; he corrupts everything and everyone around him. And does anyone seriously think that if he gets back to the Oval Office, the same thing isn’t going to happen again? It’s going to be worse.

It’s going to be far worse. First, he’s going to start, on that dictatorial day one, by pardoning himself. Joe Biden and the Democrats need to try to get voters focused on this. If it happens, people will be completely outraged. Yes, the 38% or so who are MAGA world will be fine with it, but majorities will be flabbergasted at such an act. Is it possible to get voters pre-outraged about something that hasn’t happened? The polls will say no. But as I’ve written over and over lately, polls can either be accepted—or they can be changed.

Right now, what’s most terrifying to me about the polls is that they tell us emphatically that people forget. They forget all the horrible things Trump did. That includes presidential actions, like his lies to the American people about the pandemic, but it also includes his history of criminality and the way that history guarantees he’ll keep behaving that way.

In sum: Trump’s criminal record hardly begins and ends with Stormy Daniels. Somebody needs to make sure that, by November 5, voters know the entire, sordid history.

[krakhatoa]

the mfers too stupid to use their goddamn brains and are instead blaming third party voters when Harris would NOT have won even if every single third party voter in the swing states went to her just shows how stupid you bitches be and refuse to ACKNOWLEDGE THAT A PARTY DELIBERATELY ALLOWING A FOREIGN COUNTRY TO CONTROL THEM IS THE FUCKING ISSUE THAT LEAD TO THIS LOSS

do some goddamn math with the data IN FRONT OF YOU TO SEE ITS NOT THE THIRD PARTY VOTERS BUT THE LIBS AND DEMS ALIENATION OF PPL CARING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS THAT LEAD TO THIS LOSS

[coochiequeens]

How the democrats alienated another voting block

Supporters of former President Donald Trump watch as he holds a rally in the historical Democratic district of the South Bronx on May 23, 2024 in New York City. The Bronx, home to a large Latino community, has been a Democratic base for generations of voters and the rally occurred as Trump looks to attract more non-white voters. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Donald Trump made significant inroads among several traditional Democratic Party constituencies, cutting into Democratic margins among Black and Hispanic voters. A new paper looking at his gains among Hispanic voters puts forward a provocative argument to explain some of that movement.

It contends that Hispanic voters who hold socially conservative, anti-LGBTQ views but might otherwise have voted Democratic have become turned off by Democratic politicians’ use of the gender-neutral term “Latinx,” which is being used “to explicitly include gender minorities and broader LGBTQ+ community segments.”

Based on their analysis of a set of population surveys conducted in recent years, Marcel Roman, an assistant professor of government at Harvard, and Amanda Sahar d’Urso, an assistant professor of government at Georgetown University, say Latinos are less likely to support a politician who uses the term “Latinx” in their appeal to voters.

They say the move away from Democratic candidates using the term appears to be driven by the subset of Latino voters who hold negative attitudes toward the LGBTQ community and is not based on a broader reaction against the new term, which first began to appear about 20 years ago.

“We find that backlash is not driven by concerns related to respect for the Spanish language or anti-intellectual beliefs – that Latinx is a bourgeois, coastal, white imposition on working-class Latinos,” Roman said in an interview. “The reason why it generates backlash against some aspects of the Democratic Party is it’s a signal of inclusivity toward LBGTQ+ and gender non-conforming” members of the Latino community.

Their paper also digs into Hispanic voter patterns in areas where they say the use of Latinx has had particularly high “salience,” measured by the level of internet search activity, which Roman and d’Urso say serves as a reasonable proxy for its presence in the political discourse of local candidates. Among Hispanic voters with negative views toward LGBTQ people, they found that there was greater movement toward Trump from the 2016 election to the 2020 election if they lived in areas with higher Latinx “salience.”

Nationally, there was about an 8 percentage point swing toward Trump among Hispanic voters from 2016 to 2020. Biden still captured a majority of Hispanic votes four years ago – 61%, according to one estimate – but if the movement by Hispanic voters toward Trump continues in the current election, it could be ominous for Democratic chances.

The paper says use of the term among Democratic politicians surged in recent years. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren both used it in the 2020 presidential campaign, and Joe Biden used it in a 2021 speech on Covid vaccine compliance. Among Democratic members of Congress, the study says, just 10% used Latinx in social media posts during the 2015-2016 session, but by the 2019-2020 session fully half had done so. By contrast, they say, not a single Republican member of Congress has invoked the term on social media.

Amid his harsh rhetoric toward immigrants, Trump has nonetheless won support among Hispanic voters who don’t see themselves in those attacks.

“The us-versus-them framing has long characterized political alliances, across the ideological spectrum,” the New York Times said in a story Tuesday on Trump’s appeals to Black and Latino voters. “But Mr. Trump has been far more direct than any recent presidential candidate in inviting Black and Latino voters to be part of the ‘us,’ so long as they acknowledge that there is a ‘them.”

Underscoring the findings by Roman and d’Urso on the power of anti-LGBT views among a swath of Hispanic voters is Trump’s explicit attempt to win support on the issue.

“In one of the Trump campaign’s most widely broadcast Spanish-language television ads, attacking Ms. Harris for her support of transgender medical care for immigrants, it closes with ‘Kamala Harris is with them. President Trump is with us.’”

Roman said Democrats appear to have recognized the electoral costs that may come with use of the term Latinx. “The Democratic Party has kind of course corrected,” he said, with Harris and Biden not using the term since early 2021. “The Democratic Party at the national level recognized it may do more harm than good,” he said. But Roman said some “damage may be done” already in terms of the association of the term with Democrats.

Based on his findings, Roman said abandoning the term Latinx is a strategically smart move by Democrats. For his part, however, Roman sees the term as a welcome evolution in language precisely because of what it signals. “I think, in general, inclusive language is good,” he said. “It’s not the phrase that’s the problem. It’s that people hold queer-phobic attitudes – that’s the problem.” Shifting that reality, he said, is “a much larger undertaking.”

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

[gothicprep]

jd vance, in case anybody missed this, was on tucker carlson in 2021 and made a comment about how america is being run by childless cat ladies who are miserable and hate their lives and want everyone else to be as miserable as they are. he's walked this back and said he didn't mean it Like That. but as it turns out, a lot of republican women are childless cat ladies for reasons having nothing to do with being socially liberal. turns out, they're not thrilled with it.

there are two pieces to this. there are the specific politicians he mentions as representative of the cat lady phenomenon and it's interesting who he picks – harris, aoc, and buttigieg. put a pin in that. there's also the comment itself, which strikes me as worse. this isn't something that was or could be misinterpreted. it's very clear what he meant. this seems like a way of offending a lot of people among his potential base. it's not commentary on abortion or even a pro-natalist, positive towards children stance. it's just insulting and the type of thing you'd expect to see right wing internet trolls say about taylor swift. in that context, you can say, "okay, this is a provocateur or a troll or a bot or whatever". it's much more alienating coming from a politician. it's very on par with hillary clinton's "basket of deplorables" or obama's "bitter clingers".

why a basket? i've always wondered about that.

anyway, you're expressing this sort of snide contempt for your perceived political enemies in a way that ends up alienating people who might have actually been gettable voters for you. he had a certain archetype in mind. he's not thinking about the swing voter who desperately wanted kids, couldn't for whatever reason, and now has pets instead. she still overheard. and the thing is, in social situations, you don't know which person is which.

i'll let you in on a little secret: when someone who's in their 30s or older says "i chose not to have kids" it's a coin toss whether that person is being sincere or telling you a polite social fiction. people don't say to an acquaintance that they desperately tried to have children, but had fertility struggles or couldn't find a stable relationship. these things are incredibly personal.

the other thing is, like a month after this interview, buttigieg and his husband adopted a kid, so get wrecked james

[lacefuneral]

"FUCK YOU if you voted third party YOU CAUSED THIS!!"

me when i don't understand:

what the electoral collage is. even if harris received the most votes by civilians, that doesn't matter. in 2016, clinton won the popular vote, but still lost the election. she had less electors, resulting in a trump victory. we, as united state citizens, do not directly choose who runs the country.

that trump received millions of votes more than all third party votes combined so even if the united states was a direct democracy (which it is not) everyone who voted third party voted for harris, it wouldn't have even made a dent against trump

that gerrymandering exists. each state is broken up into voting districts, and the total from each district determines the result of the election. the shape, size, and amount of districts can drastically affect the results of an election. in my state of pennsylvania, essentially only the districts that directly encapsulate a major city resulted in democrat-majority vote. the rest of the state, broken up into tiny pieces in the rural areas, all came back with republican-majority.

that if leftists are truely to blame, wouldn't these blue areas in swing states like mine actually be red? because in left-leaning areas, especially regions like philadelphia and pittsburgh, there is a lot of palestine activism? a lot of socialists in these areas, due to history of labor unions and present issues like poverty and police brutality? my district remains blue. i, or any pennsylvanian leftist, is not responsible for the swathes of red districts that exist away from urban areas. these are regions harris failed to court, and trump managed to charm. recall where trump's assassination attempt occurred and where he later returned: butler county. that region is red on the map. harris wasted her time campaigning only in our cities, which leans blue every election. it's the outer regions that are "purple." those are the ones you need to court. full of a mixture of conservatives and wish-washy moderates that "don't follow politics."

that the united states as a whole is leaning farther and father right due to radicalization. anti trans legislation, the repeating of roe v wade. have you been watching the news the last couple of years? not to mention that polls show that the US is greatly dissatisfied with the biden administration due to various factors, including skyrocketing cost of living. disgruntled moderates want change, so they flip conservative.

that harris was not elected as the nominee. she was not who democrats voted for. she was an emergency replacement candidate. and the platform she ran on was "i'm indistinguishable from biden", which alienated moderate voters who wanted something different.

that harris is a woman of color. racism, misogyny, and misogynoir exist in this country. especially at this period in time. moderate voters are less likely to vote for a candidate who isn't an old white man unless that candidate brings something to the table that appeals to them. harris failed to do so.

[learnwithmearticles]

Harris and Climate Change

Storms in recent decades have escalated in frequency and severity, causing billions of dollars in damage and leaving people homeless and vulnerable. We can expect this trend to continue if we do not globally mitigate climate change.

This is an examination of Kamala Harris’ environmental policies.

Continuation, Doubling Down

We can expect many policies introduced during Biden’s presidency to continue during Harris’. For example, Biden re-committed the U.S.A. to the Paris Agreement, a treaty that binds nations together in efforts to keep the global temperature increase under 2°C. This entails vast decreases in greenhouse gas emissions, and thus turning to more energy efficient products as well as clean energy alternatives.

In 2022, Biden’s administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act. This climate bill, among the biggest in history, provided billions of dollars to pull us away from the fossil fuel-dependant economy.

In addition to perpetuating these policies, Kamala Harris will be able to push further towards clean energy. 

During her campaign, Harris has brought up the environmental justice unit she created to hold polluters accountable, implying that she would continue to enforce ramifications for pollution-heavy companies.

In 2023, Harris announced the work she had been doing with EPA administrator Michael Regan. In this speech, she acknowledged the need to invest in communities to help those who don’t have the means themselves to move towards clean energy. She also acknowledged that we need to make up for lost time in these initiatives, sticking to the intent to meet the nation’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

Intersectionality

Harris has specifically acknowledged the fact that climate change disproportionately affects certain communities, such as lower-income and communities of color. She stated her intention to make sure pollution effects are addressed with attention to equity and equality. Her work with the EPA administrator was an example of putting these ideas into action, by funding communities who need help.

Before and throughout Biden’s presidency, Kamala Harris has spoken about and followed through with efforts to address current environmental crises. She has pushed to hold companies accountable for their pollution and advocated for policies that reduce the U.S.A.’s emissions and increase renewable energy.

Despite these previous statements, climate change has not been a popular focus of Harris’ 2024 campaign. The Washington Post believes that this is an effort to alienate as few voters as possible while focusing on other major issues. Specifically, Pennsylvania as a swing state depends strongly on a natural gas economy, and domestic oil production has decreased gas prices. Discussing any certain intentions of affecting those areas might discourage undecided voters.

We can see in these tactics and in Harris’ pull back from a full-on fracking ban that she does listen to the public. She pays attention to these concerns and is able to adapt in order to do what seems best for the nation. While many, including myself, do not completely agree with all of her policies, she is a candidate who will make a difference in the environmental sector.

Additional Resources

1. The Paris Agreement

2. Inflation Reduction Act

3. Harris not discussing Climate Change

4. 2023 Speech

5. Intersectionality

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ron Filipkowski at Medias+:

Imagine every week, somewhere in America, there is an event featuring nationally prominent Democratic elected officials, TV personalities, celebrities, artists, state and local officials, candidates, podcasters, journalists, and social media influencers. A one-day or weekend event, sponsored and hosted by different organizations, each with their own group of speakers, in different states, all year round. That is what the Republican Party has had in place for a decade to recruit, build, inspire, organize and motivate their base.  The Democrats have MSNBC. Since I have attended, watched and covered these events on the Right for years now, I am often asked why the Right has embraced these so enthusiastically while the Left has virtually nothing equivalent. My theory always was that Republicans enjoy doing things in groups and Democrats are more individualistic. But every time I would mention that while speaking to a group of activists, their response was always the same - 'I would go to something like that!

Democrats do some of this in the final few months of major election campaigns, but it is nothing like the network that the Right has created. Sure, we have all made fun of these events. Many of the speakers at right-wing conferences are nutty conspiracy theorists, christian nationalists, charlatans and grifters, and people who attend them can be fairly culty, but they are effective. While Democrats laugh at them or criticize them for what is taking place, they are doing nothing of their own to counter it. Let's say, in a few months after the mourning period is over for 2024, a major conference was announced in a major city of a swing state that featured Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore, Andy Beshear, Eric Swalwell, Jared Moskowitz, Jasmine Crockett, AOC, along with a few celebrities of the entertainment industry, TV news commentators, journalists, podcasters and social media influencers. Would you go if that was in your state?

Although the formats vary, most of these conferences on the Right play out a similar way using the CPAC / Turning Point USA model pioneered by Matt Schlapp and Charlie Kirk. Early on they feature panels of 3-4 speakers discussing a specific topic for 30-60 minutes, taking questions from the audience. Then speakers begin with local officials, then podcasters/influencers, then TV hosts, then celebrities, then the headliner politicians being featured. They talk about what is on their mind, what they think people need to do, propose new ideas and vision. Panel topics for one of these conferences on the Left could be: Why Are We Losing Men under 40? Why are Latino Voters Disillusioned With Democrats? How Can We Talk About Abortion in a Way That Doesn't Alienate Christians? Democrats Need to Articulate a Border Policy, What Should It Look Like? Trans Athletes and Competitive Sports. I'm sure we each could think of many more. And the panelists could be chosen who are experts in these areas, but also have diversity of thought on them.

[...] These conferences need to be a safe space where orthodoxies and conventional wisdom can be challenged and debated. People can disagree, argue their points passionately, hash things out, and still part as friends. Those kinds of debates happen on the Right, not so much on the Left where people have great ideas, new approaches, different perspectives, but are afraid to share them for fear of being shouted down, scorned, ostracized, or tagged with a odious label.

The Right invests in these conferences and events. Spends millions of dollars on them on advertising, venues and speaker's fees. But over time they have been so well attended, with attendees buying tickets and advertisers and sponsors lining up, that they now turn a healthy profit for the people who run them. While you don't have to pay for an elected official or candidate who just wants face time with activists, speakers lower down the food chain need their travel paid for and modest fees for their time.  People don't even have to attend in person anymore. These events are all livestreamed on X, Instagram, Facebook Live, Rumble, YouTube, and get lots of coverage from Fox, Newsmax, Real America's Voice, Right Side Broadcasting and other right-wing channels. Hundreds of thousands of people on the Right watch these conferences from home and on their phones, week after week after week

In addition to providing a forum to hash out ideas and policy, these conferences also provide amazing organizing and networking opportunities. Podcasters and social media influencers gain new viewers, listeners and followers so they can continue to maintain the messaging every week long after the conference is over on their own platforms. They can meet each other, help each other, and start to coordinate their efforts. Politicians and celebrities can meet these influencers and grass roots activists in attendance, get to know them, exchange emails or phone numbers. These conferences, rallies and events are how the Right has built a powerful network of activists all over the country. They meet each other, get to know each other, coordinate, and help each other. New email and donor lists are compiled. New voters are registered or brought into the party. People are convinced to switch parties, get off the fence, or become more active. 

[...] With that said, the main point of this article is that we can't look for cable news channels to be our thought leaders or the vehicle for grass roots organizing. They don't exist for that purpose. That is not their mission. Their mission is to entertain, while hopefully also informing, while achieving ratings to bring in ad dollars. But the problem is, too many Democrats are camped out in front of MSNBC as their central organizing instrument.  We need to wake up, and we need to do it now. I am certain that we have better ideas, are more sane and rational, less narcissistic, less conspiratorial, less grifty, and care about other people more. Don't get me wrong, we have plenty of issues, characters, grifters and BlueAnon conspiracy theorists - but not nearly as many and it is more of a bug than a feature, unlike MAGA.

Ron Filipkowski wrote a solid piece in Meidas+ that the left needs to get their game together and have their versions of CPAC and TPUSA’s summits, though Netroots Nation is the closest equivalent.

See Also:

MeidasTouch News: The Right Supports a Network of Conferences, Podcasters & Rallies; the Left has MSNBC

[kineticpenguin]

Honestly just in awe of how incredibly bad Biden is as a president. We spent 2 and a half years watching him go back on his word, fail to deliver, fake deliver, or even in the areas he did deliver, his administration made you have to dig to find out about it on your own. Just a hapless old corpse barely keeping the chair warm. Two and a half years thinking "yeah this is about as stupid as I expected it to be, what with them shoehorning the conservative ticket-balancer to Obama in as president."

Then all of a sudden Biden wakes up and decides he's gonna be a shooter after all, finally, on just one issue. He's gonna pull out all the stops and swing his presidential stick around and get shit done. And that issue is that the "nice old man with some decency" is an absolutely psychotic fanboy for the state of Israel, an enthusiastic supporter of any genocide they might wish to wage and then some. No political cost is too great to bear, not even alienating his own voters.

And if you bring this up to liberals, at best you get the Empathetic :| Face of It Is What It Is, a sigh and a shrug. Or when you mention that this makes people not want to vote for Biden again, they start ranting and raving about how those idealistic children are gonna let Trump win again.

It's just so bizarre.

[collapsedsquid]

Senator McConnell never allowed anyone to get to his right on substance, although he maintained more tactical flexibility in negotiating deals than many other congressional Republicans.  Assertions that the next Senate Republican Leader will be more conservative are therefore absurd.  The next Senate Republican Leader likely will be much weaker than Senator McConnell, far less able to make commitments on behalf of their party and hence far less able to secure concessions from Democrats.  The MAGA element of the Conference seldom meets a deal it likes or a fight it dislikes, no matter how bad the long-term consequences might be.       Thus, the new leader will fight more and, lacking Senator McConnell’s political and procedural skills, lose more.  When they commit their conference to positions out of step with the electorate, their subsequent collapses will give Democrats more room to dictate terms on key legislation.       The new leader also will have more difficulty getting rid of disastrous nominees for winnable seats and will be less adept at protecting Republicans in swing states from political embarrassment.  This could cost Republicans control of the Senate some years.         On substance, therefore, Democrats will likely gain from Senator McConnell’s departure from the leadership.  The increasing contentious, combative tone that will result, on the other hand, will alienate more voters from politics.  Reduced voter turn-out likely helps Republicans, particularly MAGA Republicans.  And the further degradation of our public life will contribute to the normalization of ruthless, anti-republican behavior like that of former President Trump.  That is not good for our future at all.