There is another dimension to Democrats losing: They insult people who are conservative.
In article after article for the past few years left-leaning publications have slammed men (the latest is "mankeeping"), white people (we are all racists), and baby boomers (who stole all of the younger peoples' wealth). And have characterized conservative voters as stupid, e.g., "low information voters," "voting against their own interests," "deplorables." Calling police and law enforcement Nazis, boot-strapping, Fascists.
These characterizations are what Trump/Kirk/Republicans went after....successfully. Reasonably so.
Progressives will refuse to see Trump voters in any other way. There has been zero effort to reform these awful views.
These are attitudinal aspects of peoples' experiences. Different from political areas where opinions can be measured as in the survey Rui provides.
Thanks Rui. You and the rest of the Liberal Patriots are almost lone voices in the wilderness.
There's really no reason to attach any of those positions to the Democrats. They are all advocated by bloggers who have no political power. However, so many people do believe what you believe that I am afraid Ruy is right that Democrats have to specifically distance themselves from those positions in order to stop the kind of reactions and beliefs expressed in this post.
Rockwell, do you suffer from amnesia? The woman who said "“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it" was no anonymous blogger, she was the Democrats' 2016 Presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton.
John---you can see why I chose to not respond to Teed. There is a large group of people whose main argument is that "well, those conservatives should just not listen to progressives' slamming of conservatives because......or because......or because. (often because Trump does it himself....as if he is our role model)
The slamming of conservatives is VERY salient to conservatives because it is all over the place. One can look at articles in left-leaning publications, or, especially, in comments sections in left-leaning publications. You can talk with progressives. We used to have a relative who said she would never even visit Arizona because it was so conservative (we have a Democratic governor and two Democratic Senators). But that shows how much more superior she thought Democrats are than conservatives are.
That ugliness toward people who used to be firm members of the Democratic Party needs to end. They are our friends, some family, neighbors, and for crying out HUMAN BEINGS WITH FEELINGS, fears, goals, desires for a good life for their children, etc.
Did you see the recent poll showing that 4 TIMES!! (not a typo) as many Democrats believe it is right to separate from family members who are conservatives than conservatives say it is right to separate from family members.
Progressives have a problem with loving their neighbors, working to understand, knowing that you capture more bees with honey, being Christian, etc.
And if we want to win, Progressives have to change their attitudes toward people who are not like them and who have different beliefs.
so Vicki and/or Dan, you are basically admitting that you are blaming the Democrats for statements made by people you believe are supporting them. How about evaluating each candidate on what they actually said? Support the candidates who say things you agree with, and don’t support the candidates who say things you disagree with. Isn’t that a lot more sensible than blaming the entire party for people who aren’t even part of the party structure?
So, why don't you give a lecture to all Republicans that they should reason how YOU think they should reason, ignoring all we know about psychology? Tell them to ignore what progressives say and just pay attention to the latest iteration of what a Democratic candidate says?
Is it your experience that you can tell people how to be? How has that gone when you have tried it? It's the kind of thing that I was talking about: it's treating conservatives as children who must do things the way you know best that they do. And reason in the way you tell them to reason. And then you wonder why you lost.
There is ample reason to attach those positions, or even worse ones, to the Democrats. Do you know the source of this quote: "It was there on August of 2017 that we saw Klansmen and white supremacists and neo-Nazis come out in the open. Their crazed faces, illuminated by torches, veins bulging and baring the fangs of racism. Chanting the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the 1930's. And that's when we heard the words of the President of the United States that stunned the world and shocked the conscience of this nation. He said that there were, quote, 'Some very fine people on both sides.' With those words, the President of the United States assigned a moral equivalence to those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. And in that moment I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had seen in my lifetime. We are living through a battle for the soul of this nation. If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation. Our very democracy is at stake."
Do you recognize the source of that quote? It is from Joe Biden's 2020 Presidential announcement video. Naturally, Biden omitted what Trump really said about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, "they should be condemned totally."
The problem with that mealy mouthed qualifier was those "very fine people" allegedly attending that rally did not exist. There was no one there objecting to what Biden rightly called anti-semitic bile". Attacks on people who marched while chanting "Jews will not replace us" are not attacks on ordinary Republicans. Trump's refusal to stand up to rhetoric like that is not undone by a single (false) sentence.
The "very fine people" referred to the Daughters of the Confederacy who objected to Civil War statutes being removed from public places, as a whitewashing history. These are a Blue haired old women, who are a philanthropic organization that do charity work, while attempting to preserve the history of the South.
Watch the video. Trump often steps in things, but in this instance, he , literally, in the next breath, explained he was not talking about neo Nazi skinheads, who should be "totally condemned".
It is more than a bit ironic Biden's campaign began with one of the worst lies in US campaign history. As luck would have it, it worked, and then by 4 years later, Biden's Presidency had been such a historical disaster, it reelected Trump. Karma is a bear.
Regarding their opposing all meaningful enforcement of immigration laws, the Democrats' short-term goal is to have them counted in every census to maximize the number of U.S. House seats that vote Democratic. Their long-term goal is to grant citizenship to all of them, 90+% of whom will benefit from public assistance programs and therefore vote overwhelmingly for the party that promises them the most free stuff.
You guys who are paranoid about the Democrats "long term strategy" on electoral votes or anything else are really giving Democrats a lot more credit than they deserve. There is no long term strategy on anything.
I'm a lifelong democrat once very active at the precinct level. I voted HRC in 2016. The resistance democrats have been so vocal and listen to no one. I gave up on working w/in the party when my DEC insisted that Michael Avenatti would be the next president and chose him as keynote for our Kennedy-King dinner in 2018. I could gain no traction in having this addressed as an unwise decision. Resistance democrats did not want liberal democrats even at the precinct level. All my years of putting up signs at polls in rural voting districts at 6am and taking them down after the polls closed; attending every rally up and down ticket; attending monthly DEC meetings, etc. wasn't proof enough of my good will. Eventually one realizes that the Resistance Democrats don't want to know our history nor do they have any respect for it. I have not seen any indication that this has changed since the 2016 election.
One problem, as I see it, is that progressives get their primary rewards from the warm inner glow of feeling morally 'right." Democrats used to get their glow from winning, and then doing good for others!
Many years ago I read "The Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams" written by Joseph Ellis. It's an excellent book of facts and analysis and portrays Adams in a deservedly commendable light. One section of that book made a vivid impression on me, something I have never forgotten. Its the part about JA's observation about every human's search for status, what Adams referred to as the "the passion for distinction."
For some people, their self-perceived status comes from displaying more material evidence of wealth: huge houses, private yachts, gaudy jewelry, expensive cars etc. For others it's their higher ed credentials. For others it's their job. And for others it's a feeling of being morally superior to those with different opinions; that feeling is most common among college-credentialed people on the Left, although there is a counterpart for ultra-conservative traditionally religious people. From the essay linked to below:
"...But there can be no doubt regarding Adams’ central message. It is that human beings are driven by what he calls “the passion for distinction”; that distinction is a fact of life with many different sources, including beauty, brains, upbringing and wealth; that the love of distinction is not objectionable in itself but dangerous if it gets out of hand; and that a principal function of government is to ameliorate the competition for honor and recognition in a way that preserves its good effects while suppressing its bad ones...."
You would probably have disagreed with the Biden administration's suppression of social media (as did I) and that would make you MAGA to the Dems unless a celebrity like Jimmy Kimmel was in peril..then they would be for free speech.
Bravo This is the only explanation of Dem immigration policy I have ever read that includes the phrase "interior enforcement".
Dems have been lucky in that Reps are horrendous at explaining current actual Dem immigration policy. The de facto Dem policy is any non violent world resident who lands on US soil, should be allowed to stay forever, regardless of illegality of entry, a lack of a valid asylum claim or the inability to be economically self sufficient. Dems leaders want open borders, that cannot be shown on Fox News.
The US issues between 10 and 11 million tourist visas a year. The current overstay rate runs 3%-4% a year. Annually 300K-400K "tourists" or more, simply never go home. Until Trump, "overstays" faced little threat of deportation . When a Dem returns to the WH, there is absolutely nothing stopping Dems from issuing 30 million tourist visas a year, and tolerating a 33% overstay rate. There will be no film of migrants walking across the Southern Border, but 10 million new arrivals a year, could make the US their permanent home.
Of course the issue will be moot, should the Supreme Court rule US immigration numbers are so large, those dwelling illegally cannot be counted for apportionment sake, without diluting the voting power of actual Americans. Should SCOTUS decide illegal migrants are no longer counted for House seat distribution, Newsom, Pritzker and Hochul would quickly aid deportations with far more zeal than Trump.
Recently arrived migrants are extremely expensive to state budgets. The WSJ documented a IL program that assumed providing healthcare for IL illegal immigrants, only the decade before age 65, would cost IL roughly $100 million dollars a year. The actual cost exceeded $800 million dollars, annually. Food banks in areas with large migrant populations are stretched to the brink. Education of migrant children is expensive. Blue States will never continue to endure such massive outlays, if the cost does not produce more Blue Congressional seats.
“There is something a little strange about saying, ‘Let’s bring in 500,000 more people,’ when we can’t take care of the one million out of work.”
Jerry Brown made this comment when he was Governor of California in 1975 about bringing in Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees. Whether he was being sincere in his concern for the one million out of work or whether someone on his staff figured out that people who flee from communist countries and dictatorships tend to lean to the right is up for debate...
Subterfuge is the answer? Wow, see the new boss, same as the old boss. And the Dems think independents are gullible enough, like them, to not see what is going on. SMH
The problem is, it will work, if Reps cannot explain the situation in an easy to understand method. This is in the weeds immigration law. Most people have far better things to do with their time.
Daily Dems decry deportations without due process. Reps never stop to explain millions in the US are basically legally deportable with only a finger print. They had their day in Immigration Court and lost, or their behavior legally qualifies for expedited removal. Proof of identity is the only thing needed to legally deport.
The people Newsom keeps saying are being "disappeared" without Due Process are those with Final Orders of Deportation, unauthorized reentry after previous deportation, those who entered outside a Valid Port of Entry, and never presented themselves to Immigration in a certain time frame . . . The list goes on and on , but Rep are lousy teachers. We need an immigration School House Rock.
I've documented the multiple Democrat civil wars, so I won't do so again. But there are massive structural problems that, sadly, no Democrat has addressed yet, most notably, the Democrat voter base was massively padded with illegals and ineligible/fraudulent voters.
The combination of deportations (I estimate perhaps 1/3 of the illegals were voting), the court-required voter roll purges which are heavily favoring Republicans (this would be the ineligible/fraud), firing/culling government employees (esp. in VA) is going to make many locations far more GOP friendly, and the actual party shifts in registration mean that the Democrat-so-called majority either nationally or even in many states was an illusion the whole time.
Since Charlie Kirk's assassination the GOP registration #s compared to Democrats are mind-boggling. But I've been over a lot of those, too.
The latest big lie the Dems need to overcome is the, we want the bad immigrants gone too and will help get rid of them. Name one time.
Newsome, Pritzker the mayors of major cities, as Portland becomes the resurrected example of extremism on how not to run a city. The best answer I can see is wall off those cities and let them destroy themselves. The “Escape from Dem Hell” series could begin with different areas controlled by the Dems as a new episode every week. Jimmy Kimmel could narrate it with a different Dem resister as a cohost each week.
Yes my husband and I had discussed this… what’s in it for the Dems to want so many illegal immigrants. At first i thought altruism … I think for some it is. But for the politicians, it’s not that … and how in the world were they ever counted in the census and used for apportionment? I understand counting them for other reasons, but not that. It is grossly unfair and disenfranchises the citizen voter.
You know where the Republicans are vulnerable on immigration: e-verify. A full throated push by Democrats to make it mandatory would provide some credibility. It would also create tension among Republicans by putting a wedge between the base and Wall Street. A handful of states, all Republican, make it mandatory. No states controlled by Democrats do so. Therefore, Democrats have some leverage to act. But quickly, lest the Republicans get there first.
Just the train of thought of couching every reaction to the Republicans is a loser attitude. If the issue is there, Dem action proposed policies would be the proper action to take. If the best standard you have to put out there is Trump or the Republicans, it’s a standard far too low for any independents to even consider Dems as leaders. Leaders lead and don’t just react to the other side. You don’t have any such leaders.
I could be wrong , but as I understand it, E-Verify can be defeated with a stolen identity. More than 1 million Americans have their identities stolen each year, most do not realize the theft occurred. Moreover, the identities of deaths in areas of the US that have not digitized all death records are also used.
E verify can be used as intended if the person doing the checking cross checks with other forms of ID and also simply looks at the person. Background checking companies use it all the time for jobs that require a true legal resident.
Labor wholesalers and employers purposefully only submit the documents, they don't look at the person. Requiring it of all employers would curtail a fair amount of illegal hires as there aren't enough bogus docs to go around. Also the penalties for submitting untrue docs is a lot more severe than simply border evasion.
I agree with your medicine. But how to get a scattered, leaderless, mass of Ds to shift is the problem.
1. there is no transformative, charismatic, democratic leader, capable of defying various entities within the coalition in order to make a break. Anyone who tries will be slapped down.
2. The ratio of true believers to practical politicians is way off. To be electorally successful, you need a critical mass of decision makers, able to calculate the odds and sell the best deal they can. But in the Democratic Party, as it now stands, these people are drummed out. The true believers (trans rights, immigration, Resistance, identity etc.) are still ascendant, even as the party base is shrinking. And to get them to switch, you almost have to reprogram them.
I think some insight can be gotten by analyzing the way some people approach the lessons learned from Weimar Germany (WG). Some think that if only WG stood up to the Nazis and kept Hitler from coming to power, that all would have been good with the world. This is a fallacy.
Fascism was well established in Europe at the time and gained popularity because liberal governments didn't or couldn't address the problems that ordinary people were experiencing. Fascism promised to make Germans proud of their country again and to improve peoples' lives by removing "undesirable" elements. Removing Hitler from the scene would have only delayed fascism's rise. The only way for liberal government to survive would have been to actually address the ordinary person's concerns.
This applies to the Democratic party today. Instead of addressing people's legitimate concerns about crime, immigration, and moral dilemmas, they call people fascists, racists, or just plain stupid, double-down on leftist rhetoric and "Resistance". No engagement (because Trump), no alternatives, no empathy; just, "fascist," "racist," "xyzphobe". That will get Dems nowhere.
A deeper problem is that pessimism, defeatism, and the glorification of noble failure have become part of Democrats’ identity.
Instead of seeking common ground with voters beyond their base, they prefer empty gestures like “No Kings” demonstrations or a third impeachment of Trump.
The liberal intellectual wannabes who ruined the party would rather affirm their moral superiority than put points on the board for the American people.
The part that works for the Democrats, because I note it in so many of my once rational but no longer, friends, is the media gaslighting of hate and anger and fear and disgust and resentment.... basically any and all overheated negative emotions that can be started and fanned by the Democrat media propaganda and hyperbole.
But when I say works, I mean that those educated careerist campus indoctrinated 3rd wave postmodernist radical females and their low-T lapdog males that have infiltrated our institutions and promulgate this stuff, have managed to sufficiently establish a base of these upset followers, more and more of them adopting the Democrat assassination culture unfortunately.
But here is the problem. That group is not only not growing, it is leaking. There are people within the group slowly being red-pilled... slowing seeing that they have been media gaslighted and those radical chicks in charge are freakin' insane... and their collection of BlueSky blue haired followers... well they are insane too.
And as they keep doubling down on this same negative emotional diet political strategy, the leaking keeps happening. It is really good stuff for MAGA because of the drastic change needed and would otherwise be so easy to generate public opinion against. But the voters are really stuck between accepting scary change that at least offers some hope to fix our nation's big problems, or accepting that the country gets handed over the insane asylum.
Sure. Normally, states routinely (every few years, some every year) purge their voter rolls by removing dead people, people who have moved, or people who have been incarcerated. In CA, this was forced by a Judicial Watch lawsuit. So far---and to my knowledge, Orange Co., LA County, and perhaps some I'm not aware of have refused to purge, but they will be forced to.---CA has seen over 2.1 million removed from the rolls. Any objective study will show that the majority of those (perhaps over 1 million) are registered Ds, while Is and Rs divide the rest. When you multiply that across the nation, you're looking at several million (mostly Ds) will come off rolls.
As we know, Obama and Biden deported many people and never supported the "defund" idea. Still, Democrats got branded with "open borders" and "defund." Democrats agreed to a bipartisan bill in 2024 that got shot down. It is very unclear how Democrats can do much more on law and order or immigration without loosing as many votes on those issues as they gain. Further, it appears that any sign of being more restrained, competent or compassionate will be interpreted by many as being weak on immigration and crime. So it's not so easy to see what to do other than to let Trump go crazy on immigration and law and order until people are sick of those issues and the economy is so deep in the hole that there is net negative immigration. If that takes a few elections, it's too bad, but may be the best we can do.
Biden's immigration policies were a broad and obvious success.
Think back to that time Biden took office. Covid border restrictions had reduced asylum claims and illegal crossings to a trickle. Wages were headed up and people were changing jobs looking for higher wages and benefits. People working out of their homes were looking to spend lots of money on home improvements. Bogus government loans/grants to small businesses required the money to be spent and people were getting additions and swimming pools. By March of 22 inflation was at 9%, Wall Street was flipping out, midterms were coming up.
We flung open the gates and even granted huge numbers of visas back in people's home countries and paid for flying them up here. Anyone could go to the border and say the magic word "asylum". We couldn't give out bus tickets, cell phones, and a little cash fast enough. We desperately needed to bring inflation down as well as wages. FAST!! People quickly forget inflation, wages are sticky. You can't tell people you are going to start paying them less, they'll quit.
Large numbers of workers bring wages down across the entire economy. Illegal workers aren't just landscapers and house cleaners. Many workers arriving here are highly intelligent and resourceful. The cost of labor is not lost on the Chamber of Commerce. I can hire a good carpenter for fifty or sixty bucks an hour. I can get the same thing speaking Spanish for thirty five or forty five. For trades that take less skilled work the differential is even greater. Dry wall, flat work, roofing, form setters, lawns, landscape, etc. You add 5 million workers to an economy and you're going to see it in wages and profits.
Democrats and Republicans are bipartisan about profits. Or the folks making donations to super pacs and dark money are anyway. Bipartisan support for massive labor importation either in the form of illegal immigration or millions of work permits is always part of any immigration bill, except during Bush the younger things began falling apart. Bills that were a done deal with senators working things out behind closed doors fell through. They failed. A rogue wing of the Republican party couldn't be bribed into passing the bills. That's when the Rs started stealing the working class voters.
Democrats suddenly are left with people making solid six digits and feeling very guilty when some ladies from Guatemala come once a week to vacuum and clean the bathrooms.
There is another dimension to Democrats losing: They insult people who are conservative.
In article after article for the past few years left-leaning publications have slammed men (the latest is "mankeeping"), white people (we are all racists), and baby boomers (who stole all of the younger peoples' wealth). And have characterized conservative voters as stupid, e.g., "low information voters," "voting against their own interests," "deplorables." Calling police and law enforcement Nazis, boot-strapping, Fascists.
These characterizations are what Trump/Kirk/Republicans went after....successfully. Reasonably so.
Progressives will refuse to see Trump voters in any other way. There has been zero effort to reform these awful views.
These are attitudinal aspects of peoples' experiences. Different from political areas where opinions can be measured as in the survey Rui provides.
Thanks Rui. You and the rest of the Liberal Patriots are almost lone voices in the wilderness.
There's really no reason to attach any of those positions to the Democrats. They are all advocated by bloggers who have no political power. However, so many people do believe what you believe that I am afraid Ruy is right that Democrats have to specifically distance themselves from those positions in order to stop the kind of reactions and beliefs expressed in this post.
Rockwell, do you suffer from amnesia? The woman who said "“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it" was no anonymous blogger, she was the Democrats' 2016 Presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton.
John---you can see why I chose to not respond to Teed. There is a large group of people whose main argument is that "well, those conservatives should just not listen to progressives' slamming of conservatives because......or because......or because. (often because Trump does it himself....as if he is our role model)
The slamming of conservatives is VERY salient to conservatives because it is all over the place. One can look at articles in left-leaning publications, or, especially, in comments sections in left-leaning publications. You can talk with progressives. We used to have a relative who said she would never even visit Arizona because it was so conservative (we have a Democratic governor and two Democratic Senators). But that shows how much more superior she thought Democrats are than conservatives are.
That ugliness toward people who used to be firm members of the Democratic Party needs to end. They are our friends, some family, neighbors, and for crying out HUMAN BEINGS WITH FEELINGS, fears, goals, desires for a good life for their children, etc.
Did you see the recent poll showing that 4 TIMES!! (not a typo) as many Democrats believe it is right to separate from family members who are conservatives than conservatives say it is right to separate from family members.
Progressives have a problem with loving their neighbors, working to understand, knowing that you capture more bees with honey, being Christian, etc.
And if we want to win, Progressives have to change their attitudes toward people who are not like them and who have different beliefs.
so Vicki and/or Dan, you are basically admitting that you are blaming the Democrats for statements made by people you believe are supporting them. How about evaluating each candidate on what they actually said? Support the candidates who say things you agree with, and don’t support the candidates who say things you disagree with. Isn’t that a lot more sensible than blaming the entire party for people who aren’t even part of the party structure?
So, why don't you give a lecture to all Republicans that they should reason how YOU think they should reason, ignoring all we know about psychology? Tell them to ignore what progressives say and just pay attention to the latest iteration of what a Democratic candidate says?
Is it your experience that you can tell people how to be? How has that gone when you have tried it? It's the kind of thing that I was talking about: it's treating conservatives as children who must do things the way you know best that they do. And reason in the way you tell them to reason. And then you wonder why you lost.
She's not running for any office now
There is ample reason to attach those positions, or even worse ones, to the Democrats. Do you know the source of this quote: "It was there on August of 2017 that we saw Klansmen and white supremacists and neo-Nazis come out in the open. Their crazed faces, illuminated by torches, veins bulging and baring the fangs of racism. Chanting the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the 1930's. And that's when we heard the words of the President of the United States that stunned the world and shocked the conscience of this nation. He said that there were, quote, 'Some very fine people on both sides.' With those words, the President of the United States assigned a moral equivalence to those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. And in that moment I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had seen in my lifetime. We are living through a battle for the soul of this nation. If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation. Our very democracy is at stake."
Do you recognize the source of that quote? It is from Joe Biden's 2020 Presidential announcement video. Naturally, Biden omitted what Trump really said about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, "they should be condemned totally."
The problem with that mealy mouthed qualifier was those "very fine people" allegedly attending that rally did not exist. There was no one there objecting to what Biden rightly called anti-semitic bile". Attacks on people who marched while chanting "Jews will not replace us" are not attacks on ordinary Republicans. Trump's refusal to stand up to rhetoric like that is not undone by a single (false) sentence.
The "very fine people" referred to the Daughters of the Confederacy who objected to Civil War statutes being removed from public places, as a whitewashing history. These are a Blue haired old women, who are a philanthropic organization that do charity work, while attempting to preserve the history of the South.
Watch the video. Trump often steps in things, but in this instance, he , literally, in the next breath, explained he was not talking about neo Nazi skinheads, who should be "totally condemned".
It is more than a bit ironic Biden's campaign began with one of the worst lies in US campaign history. As luck would have it, it worked, and then by 4 years later, Biden's Presidency had been such a historical disaster, it reelected Trump. Karma is a bear.
I will let other readers evaluate whether your views or our views match up with their experiences, and will choose, perhaps, to respond to them.
The perception is that Democrats are not interested in slowing illegal immigration because they believe it helps them politically.
Immigration is necessary to make up for the people leaving California and NY. Otherwise, these states lose electoral power.
So while Democrats can change their messaging on the issue, their heart really isn't in it and it shows.
Regarding their opposing all meaningful enforcement of immigration laws, the Democrats' short-term goal is to have them counted in every census to maximize the number of U.S. House seats that vote Democratic. Their long-term goal is to grant citizenship to all of them, 90+% of whom will benefit from public assistance programs and therefore vote overwhelmingly for the party that promises them the most free stuff.
It is also a gambit to turn Texas purple. If they can manage that, they will never lose another Presidential election.
You guys who are paranoid about the Democrats "long term strategy" on electoral votes or anything else are really giving Democrats a lot more credit than they deserve. There is no long term strategy on anything.
You might want to check out Ruy's book the Emerging Democrat Majority.
I'm a lifelong democrat once very active at the precinct level. I voted HRC in 2016. The resistance democrats have been so vocal and listen to no one. I gave up on working w/in the party when my DEC insisted that Michael Avenatti would be the next president and chose him as keynote for our Kennedy-King dinner in 2018. I could gain no traction in having this addressed as an unwise decision. Resistance democrats did not want liberal democrats even at the precinct level. All my years of putting up signs at polls in rural voting districts at 6am and taking them down after the polls closed; attending every rally up and down ticket; attending monthly DEC meetings, etc. wasn't proof enough of my good will. Eventually one realizes that the Resistance Democrats don't want to know our history nor do they have any respect for it. I have not seen any indication that this has changed since the 2016 election.
THANK YOU!!! for all you have done for us.
One problem, as I see it, is that progressives get their primary rewards from the warm inner glow of feeling morally 'right." Democrats used to get their glow from winning, and then doing good for others!
Many years ago I read "The Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams" written by Joseph Ellis. It's an excellent book of facts and analysis and portrays Adams in a deservedly commendable light. One section of that book made a vivid impression on me, something I have never forgotten. Its the part about JA's observation about every human's search for status, what Adams referred to as the "the passion for distinction."
For some people, their self-perceived status comes from displaying more material evidence of wealth: huge houses, private yachts, gaudy jewelry, expensive cars etc. For others it's their higher ed credentials. For others it's their job. And for others it's a feeling of being morally superior to those with different opinions; that feeling is most common among college-credentialed people on the Left, although there is a counterpart for ultra-conservative traditionally religious people. From the essay linked to below:
"...But there can be no doubt regarding Adams’ central message. It is that human beings are driven by what he calls “the passion for distinction”; that distinction is a fact of life with many different sources, including beauty, brains, upbringing and wealth; that the love of distinction is not objectionable in itself but dangerous if it gets out of hand; and that a principal function of government is to ameliorate the competition for honor and recognition in a way that preserves its good effects while suppressing its bad ones...."
https://quillette.com/2019/08/29/john-adams-and-the-search-for-a-natural-and-needed-american-aristocracy/
Here is my take on this issue, from our personal (non-monetized, no ads) blog from about a year ago.
https://livinginthebedofapickup.blogspot.com/2023/08/we-are-published-in-atlantic-again.html
Totally I’m an elected Dem PCO. I’m liberal, not leftist. The party hates me. I consider myself a MAGA Democrat at this point.
Totally get it. We see ourselves as conscientious objectors in the culture wars. And we don't really know where we belong anymore.
You would probably have disagreed with the Biden administration's suppression of social media (as did I) and that would make you MAGA to the Dems unless a celebrity like Jimmy Kimmel was in peril..then they would be for free speech.
Bravo This is the only explanation of Dem immigration policy I have ever read that includes the phrase "interior enforcement".
Dems have been lucky in that Reps are horrendous at explaining current actual Dem immigration policy. The de facto Dem policy is any non violent world resident who lands on US soil, should be allowed to stay forever, regardless of illegality of entry, a lack of a valid asylum claim or the inability to be economically self sufficient. Dems leaders want open borders, that cannot be shown on Fox News.
The US issues between 10 and 11 million tourist visas a year. The current overstay rate runs 3%-4% a year. Annually 300K-400K "tourists" or more, simply never go home. Until Trump, "overstays" faced little threat of deportation . When a Dem returns to the WH, there is absolutely nothing stopping Dems from issuing 30 million tourist visas a year, and tolerating a 33% overstay rate. There will be no film of migrants walking across the Southern Border, but 10 million new arrivals a year, could make the US their permanent home.
Of course the issue will be moot, should the Supreme Court rule US immigration numbers are so large, those dwelling illegally cannot be counted for apportionment sake, without diluting the voting power of actual Americans. Should SCOTUS decide illegal migrants are no longer counted for House seat distribution, Newsom, Pritzker and Hochul would quickly aid deportations with far more zeal than Trump.
Recently arrived migrants are extremely expensive to state budgets. The WSJ documented a IL program that assumed providing healthcare for IL illegal immigrants, only the decade before age 65, would cost IL roughly $100 million dollars a year. The actual cost exceeded $800 million dollars, annually. Food banks in areas with large migrant populations are stretched to the brink. Education of migrant children is expensive. Blue States will never continue to endure such massive outlays, if the cost does not produce more Blue Congressional seats.
“There is something a little strange about saying, ‘Let’s bring in 500,000 more people,’ when we can’t take care of the one million out of work.”
Jerry Brown made this comment when he was Governor of California in 1975 about bringing in Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees. Whether he was being sincere in his concern for the one million out of work or whether someone on his staff figured out that people who flee from communist countries and dictatorships tend to lean to the right is up for debate...
Subterfuge is the answer? Wow, see the new boss, same as the old boss. And the Dems think independents are gullible enough, like them, to not see what is going on. SMH
The problem is, it will work, if Reps cannot explain the situation in an easy to understand method. This is in the weeds immigration law. Most people have far better things to do with their time.
Daily Dems decry deportations without due process. Reps never stop to explain millions in the US are basically legally deportable with only a finger print. They had their day in Immigration Court and lost, or their behavior legally qualifies for expedited removal. Proof of identity is the only thing needed to legally deport.
The people Newsom keeps saying are being "disappeared" without Due Process are those with Final Orders of Deportation, unauthorized reentry after previous deportation, those who entered outside a Valid Port of Entry, and never presented themselves to Immigration in a certain time frame . . . The list goes on and on , but Rep are lousy teachers. We need an immigration School House Rock.
I've documented the multiple Democrat civil wars, so I won't do so again. But there are massive structural problems that, sadly, no Democrat has addressed yet, most notably, the Democrat voter base was massively padded with illegals and ineligible/fraudulent voters.
The combination of deportations (I estimate perhaps 1/3 of the illegals were voting), the court-required voter roll purges which are heavily favoring Republicans (this would be the ineligible/fraud), firing/culling government employees (esp. in VA) is going to make many locations far more GOP friendly, and the actual party shifts in registration mean that the Democrat-so-called majority either nationally or even in many states was an illusion the whole time.
Since Charlie Kirk's assassination the GOP registration #s compared to Democrats are mind-boggling. But I've been over a lot of those, too.
Can you explain voter roll purges, in detail, please. What requires it, how are people removed and does it block reregistering?
Thanks
The latest big lie the Dems need to overcome is the, we want the bad immigrants gone too and will help get rid of them. Name one time.
Newsome, Pritzker the mayors of major cities, as Portland becomes the resurrected example of extremism on how not to run a city. The best answer I can see is wall off those cities and let them destroy themselves. The “Escape from Dem Hell” series could begin with different areas controlled by the Dems as a new episode every week. Jimmy Kimmel could narrate it with a different Dem resister as a cohost each week.
Yes my husband and I had discussed this… what’s in it for the Dems to want so many illegal immigrants. At first i thought altruism … I think for some it is. But for the politicians, it’s not that … and how in the world were they ever counted in the census and used for apportionment? I understand counting them for other reasons, but not that. It is grossly unfair and disenfranchises the citizen voter.
You know where the Republicans are vulnerable on immigration: e-verify. A full throated push by Democrats to make it mandatory would provide some credibility. It would also create tension among Republicans by putting a wedge between the base and Wall Street. A handful of states, all Republican, make it mandatory. No states controlled by Democrats do so. Therefore, Democrats have some leverage to act. But quickly, lest the Republicans get there first.
Just the train of thought of couching every reaction to the Republicans is a loser attitude. If the issue is there, Dem action proposed policies would be the proper action to take. If the best standard you have to put out there is Trump or the Republicans, it’s a standard far too low for any independents to even consider Dems as leaders. Leaders lead and don’t just react to the other side. You don’t have any such leaders.
I could be wrong , but as I understand it, E-Verify can be defeated with a stolen identity. More than 1 million Americans have their identities stolen each year, most do not realize the theft occurred. Moreover, the identities of deaths in areas of the US that have not digitized all death records are also used.
Democrats could propose a major crackdown on identity theft too.
E verify can be used as intended if the person doing the checking cross checks with other forms of ID and also simply looks at the person. Background checking companies use it all the time for jobs that require a true legal resident.
Labor wholesalers and employers purposefully only submit the documents, they don't look at the person. Requiring it of all employers would curtail a fair amount of illegal hires as there aren't enough bogus docs to go around. Also the penalties for submitting untrue docs is a lot more severe than simply border evasion.
I agree with your medicine. But how to get a scattered, leaderless, mass of Ds to shift is the problem.
1. there is no transformative, charismatic, democratic leader, capable of defying various entities within the coalition in order to make a break. Anyone who tries will be slapped down.
2. The ratio of true believers to practical politicians is way off. To be electorally successful, you need a critical mass of decision makers, able to calculate the odds and sell the best deal they can. But in the Democratic Party, as it now stands, these people are drummed out. The true believers (trans rights, immigration, Resistance, identity etc.) are still ascendant, even as the party base is shrinking. And to get them to switch, you almost have to reprogram them.
This is why I think things may get worse.
I think some insight can be gotten by analyzing the way some people approach the lessons learned from Weimar Germany (WG). Some think that if only WG stood up to the Nazis and kept Hitler from coming to power, that all would have been good with the world. This is a fallacy.
Fascism was well established in Europe at the time and gained popularity because liberal governments didn't or couldn't address the problems that ordinary people were experiencing. Fascism promised to make Germans proud of their country again and to improve peoples' lives by removing "undesirable" elements. Removing Hitler from the scene would have only delayed fascism's rise. The only way for liberal government to survive would have been to actually address the ordinary person's concerns.
This applies to the Democratic party today. Instead of addressing people's legitimate concerns about crime, immigration, and moral dilemmas, they call people fascists, racists, or just plain stupid, double-down on leftist rhetoric and "Resistance". No engagement (because Trump), no alternatives, no empathy; just, "fascist," "racist," "xyzphobe". That will get Dems nowhere.
A deeper problem is that pessimism, defeatism, and the glorification of noble failure have become part of Democrats’ identity.
Instead of seeking common ground with voters beyond their base, they prefer empty gestures like “No Kings” demonstrations or a third impeachment of Trump.
The liberal intellectual wannabes who ruined the party would rather affirm their moral superiority than put points on the board for the American people.
www.savedemocracyinamerica.org
The part that works for the Democrats, because I note it in so many of my once rational but no longer, friends, is the media gaslighting of hate and anger and fear and disgust and resentment.... basically any and all overheated negative emotions that can be started and fanned by the Democrat media propaganda and hyperbole.
But when I say works, I mean that those educated careerist campus indoctrinated 3rd wave postmodernist radical females and their low-T lapdog males that have infiltrated our institutions and promulgate this stuff, have managed to sufficiently establish a base of these upset followers, more and more of them adopting the Democrat assassination culture unfortunately.
But here is the problem. That group is not only not growing, it is leaking. There are people within the group slowly being red-pilled... slowing seeing that they have been media gaslighted and those radical chicks in charge are freakin' insane... and their collection of BlueSky blue haired followers... well they are insane too.
And as they keep doubling down on this same negative emotional diet political strategy, the leaking keeps happening. It is really good stuff for MAGA because of the drastic change needed and would otherwise be so easy to generate public opinion against. But the voters are really stuck between accepting scary change that at least offers some hope to fix our nation's big problems, or accepting that the country gets handed over the insane asylum.
Sure. Normally, states routinely (every few years, some every year) purge their voter rolls by removing dead people, people who have moved, or people who have been incarcerated. In CA, this was forced by a Judicial Watch lawsuit. So far---and to my knowledge, Orange Co., LA County, and perhaps some I'm not aware of have refused to purge, but they will be forced to.---CA has seen over 2.1 million removed from the rolls. Any objective study will show that the majority of those (perhaps over 1 million) are registered Ds, while Is and Rs divide the rest. When you multiply that across the nation, you're looking at several million (mostly Ds) will come off rolls.
As we know, Obama and Biden deported many people and never supported the "defund" idea. Still, Democrats got branded with "open borders" and "defund." Democrats agreed to a bipartisan bill in 2024 that got shot down. It is very unclear how Democrats can do much more on law and order or immigration without loosing as many votes on those issues as they gain. Further, it appears that any sign of being more restrained, competent or compassionate will be interpreted by many as being weak on immigration and crime. So it's not so easy to see what to do other than to let Trump go crazy on immigration and law and order until people are sick of those issues and the economy is so deep in the hole that there is net negative immigration. If that takes a few elections, it's too bad, but may be the best we can do.
Biden's immigration policies were a broad and obvious success.
Think back to that time Biden took office. Covid border restrictions had reduced asylum claims and illegal crossings to a trickle. Wages were headed up and people were changing jobs looking for higher wages and benefits. People working out of their homes were looking to spend lots of money on home improvements. Bogus government loans/grants to small businesses required the money to be spent and people were getting additions and swimming pools. By March of 22 inflation was at 9%, Wall Street was flipping out, midterms were coming up.
We flung open the gates and even granted huge numbers of visas back in people's home countries and paid for flying them up here. Anyone could go to the border and say the magic word "asylum". We couldn't give out bus tickets, cell phones, and a little cash fast enough. We desperately needed to bring inflation down as well as wages. FAST!! People quickly forget inflation, wages are sticky. You can't tell people you are going to start paying them less, they'll quit.
Large numbers of workers bring wages down across the entire economy. Illegal workers aren't just landscapers and house cleaners. Many workers arriving here are highly intelligent and resourceful. The cost of labor is not lost on the Chamber of Commerce. I can hire a good carpenter for fifty or sixty bucks an hour. I can get the same thing speaking Spanish for thirty five or forty five. For trades that take less skilled work the differential is even greater. Dry wall, flat work, roofing, form setters, lawns, landscape, etc. You add 5 million workers to an economy and you're going to see it in wages and profits.
Democrats and Republicans are bipartisan about profits. Or the folks making donations to super pacs and dark money are anyway. Bipartisan support for massive labor importation either in the form of illegal immigration or millions of work permits is always part of any immigration bill, except during Bush the younger things began falling apart. Bills that were a done deal with senators working things out behind closed doors fell through. They failed. A rogue wing of the Republican party couldn't be bribed into passing the bills. That's when the Rs started stealing the working class voters.
Democrats suddenly are left with people making solid six digits and feeling very guilty when some ladies from Guatemala come once a week to vacuum and clean the bathrooms.
I totally agree with you on that. And it also seems like AI can help identify people without authorization to work here.