The Pile of Ideas

There's been a lot of discussion this last week about what's wrong with the Democrats, why did they lose 10 million voters in 2024 from their totals in 2020?

There's a lot of finger-pointing going on. "They've alienated the working class voter!" "They should have been more pro-Palestinian!" "They needed to turn on Biden!"

All these bellowings are an attempt by bitter fools to make themselves look smart; "If they'd only done WHAT I SAID THEY SHOULD DO...!"  The truth about what happened is a misunderstanding of what has been the failing of the Democratic Party for 16 years.  The Democrats are not really a 'party' anymore, more of a wide-ranging, non-cohesive pile of ideas. 

The first thing I want to approach is the reality of the 2024 election.  Did any group of people leave the Democrats and end up supporting Trump?  Maybe a few but not really.  The same 74 million people who voted for Trump in 2020, voted for Trump in 2024. His numbers are pretty consistent.  Maybe there were a few Democrats who defected, and surely a few Republicans defected to the Democrats, but nothing substantial would allow someone to point to that group and say "They're the reason the Democrats lost."  

The reality is Democrats just didn't show up with everything on the line, like in 2016, in 2010, in 2004, in 2000, and so on and so on.  So why did 10 million fewer Democrats vote in 2024 than in 2020?

There were two things that happened Sunday that answered this question for me.  The first was a series of stories from conservative America where reality is settling in.  There are a lot of Republicans who are now, AFTER the election, publically asking, "I love Trump and all, but he's not really getting rid of that government program, IS HE?  My family needs that program?" There are many Republicans who are starting to freak out as they come to grips with the consequences of their actions. Their blind obedience to Republicans never made them once question if they should vote for a person who has vowed to hurt them with the repealing of a government program their family needs. 

The other thing that happened was an attempt to shame Democrats from the social media account Democratic Wins, which posted a video from Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, one of the handful of Democrats who won in a red district.  Their argument is her common sense approach to a specific issue related to the voters.  The issue? Daycares can't peel and serve fresh fruit to kids because the act of peeling falls under the category of food prep and requires a kitchen setup, something most daycares do not have.  I agree with the idea that a bag of chips and cookies is a far worse snack option than a banana, but this is not the issue that the Democrats should champion nationwide, nor does their argument look at her election specifically, where the Republican candidate was pretty bad.  Her issue worked for her, but a lot of Democrats had common sense issues like that, and they didn't win. 

Republicans vote for their party über alles.  They could care less about Trump's behavior or the radical and painful policy decisions they are endorsing.  For 30+ years, the Right has effectively brainwashed their followers to never care about the candidate or the issues, only the 'R.' This is why I've said most Republicans would vote for a turnip if there was an 'R' next to it on the ballot. For the record, I am NOT endorsing this, as the end result of such loyalty can look more akin to a cult than a political party (sound familiar?).  But this is why the Hilter-loving, Epstein BFF won; no one cared until AFTER the election.

The Democrats have a FAR bigger problem.  They are no longer a functioning party, but rather a pile of ideas. Tell me three things every Democrat in the Party agrees on.  Tell me what the Democratic Party's established policy on Gaza was?  The wild attempt to blame this loss on....something is a great example of how the much larger problem is being ignored.

Democrats and Republicans like the two-party system.  Between the two parties, they have pretty much all of the political power in the country. But there has been a problem.  The Republicans have continued to shrink ideals from a wide-ranging party, which included moderates and fiscal conservatives, to only a group that signs off on the MAGA power threshold.  As they have basically told the Republican party members it's our way or the highway, many moderate and fiscally conservative Republicans have left.

Enter the Democrats who started to adopt the 'wide umbrella' position.  Their mentality is if they were not Republican, then the Democrats would make room in their party for them.  The Democrats rolled out the welcome mat to the disenfranchised Republicans and told them as long as they didn't bad mouth the party, they didn't really need to endorse and support the party platform.  They could bring their ideas into the Democratic fold and present them as policy.  

At the same time, Democrats, concerned about losing their base to further left-leaning parties, started to welcome those voters and politicians under the same wide umbrella.  The idea was that we were one big happy family, but what really happened was the unraveling of the Democratic platform.

It's politically impossible to have a single political party that appeals to both a 'far further left than most Democrats are comfortable with' Bernie Sanders and an outright Republican in Joe Manchin.  Your umbrella is TOO WIDE, and because so, you have forsaken a cohesive Democratic Party platform, replacing it with 3000 people screaming ideas that may or may not appeal to even 50% of the Democratic Party. With no consistent message about what exactly the Democrats stand for, voters tune them out when their million-ideas platform fails to connect.

Why did so many people turn out in 2020?  Because that year, the pile ideas at least had some consistency.  Trump was screwing up the COVID response horrifically.  The fear of illness and death allowed the Democrats to capture the majority of voters, even ones who generally did not turn up at election time. The pandemic presented a clear choice, and 2020 became hard for the Democrats to screw up. 

Let's look further at 2024.  I'm for the fair treatment of the Palestinians, but the lack of a cohesive Democratic plan muddied the message overall.  I have no doubt the Democrats had an official stance, but their "everyone's ideas are valid" approach welcomed extremists on the left who insisted Isreal withdraw from Gaza, apologizing to every Palestinian as they left, Israeli reparations to all Palestinians, immediate Palestinian statehood and the USA ending diplomatic relations with Israel. I'm pro-Palestine, but I am nowhere near close to that policy.  From the other side OF THE SAME PARTY, the approach was Israel could do no wrong and should never be questioned. In the end, a few far-left "Democrats" might not have voted out of idealism, but the FAR BIGGER problem was the Democratic Party policy on this issue looked confused, disjointed, and contradictory.  You are not giving people a reason to vote for you when you're a hot mess. 

This is another reason the pile of ideas approach fails.  Because there is no consistent standard, extremes from both sides can enter into the party and push an agenda that is way out of line with mainstream Democratic policy.  It's hard to start a third party.  It takes a lot of work and decades to succeed, but fringe issues don't need to do that work as long as the Democrats put out the welcome mat.  

The Republican-lite side of the party can bite Democrats in another way. In Minnesota, we did better than most of the country, but the party lost footing in the Minnesota State House. Why?  I think a lot of it had to do with the main race the Minnesota Democrats (the DFL) were focused on, the MN02 Congressional seat, where Angie Craig easily won.  The state party poured a ton of money into her race, as her message basically boiled down to [paraphrasing], "I proudly disagree with Biden and am proud to work against the Democratic Party."  What political party thought this approach in a bellwether race wouldn't hurt other Democrats' campaigns?  The pile of the idea says that as long as someone has a "D" next to their name, they can do anything, regardless of ripple effects.  An anti-Democrat Democratic campaign caused more damage for lower ballot statewide races.  You sacrificed 100 races for one.  That's stupid.

So how do we fix this?  The solution is actually simple, but intimidating enough that most Democratic leaders will refuse.

1. If you want to be a Democrat, you have to be a proud Democrat.  No more campaigning against your own party.  
2.  The Democrat Pary needs to (re) establish a list of 10 to 15 MUST COMMIT TO policy standards, stuff like women's rights, healthcare for all, raising the minimum wage, and TAXING BILLIONAIRES AT A HIGHER RATE THAN THE MIDDLE CLASS(!!!). This list should be easy to compile, and by demanding anyone who wants to run as a Democrat commit to those issues, you'll likely trim the extremes away.
3.  Appreciate some ideas, but if the ideas are extreme or contradict the core principles of the Party, then the Party should be the loudest and most vocal corrections/condemnations. The days of a free-for-all are over.  Your own party should not undermine your own message.
4.  Do a much better job at presenting the party platform to the media.  The Democrats are HORRIFIC at messaging. 

The pile of ideas is the problem, but my guess is the Democratic party will not solve it.  They are a political party whose approach is "Why say something in three words that we can instead say with a 900-page thesis, with a full bibliography, that's been run through 29 different focus groups?"  

We shouldn't have to get to the point of a global pandemic for your political party platform and messaging to make sense for the average voter.