I’m not sure why everyone hates all the articles about what Democrats should do next, I think they’re interesting and potentially important. I liked this article by Ezekiel Kweku (Shrill Cosby @theshrillest on twitter) a lot:
The lesson we should draw from Clinton’s loss is not that white supremacy is unbeatable at the polls, but that it’s not going to beat itself. White people are not going to instinctively recoil from racist appeals, and neither are people of color going to flock to the polls to defeat them. If the Democratic Party would like to keep more Donald Trumps from winning in the future, they are going to have to take the extraordinary step of doing politics.
[….]What message will energize the Democratic base and reach persuadable voters is an open question, but the simplest place to find it is probably in economics. The answer could be, as many former Bernie Sanders supporters believe, that the Democratic Party must cut ties with neoliberalism and adopt a more progressive, populist economic platform. In the primaries, at least, this message was successful in some of the same areas where Trump won in the general election. Another idea is for Dems to pay more attention to the importance of places, creating policies that would help struggling communities, both urban and rural, rather than policies that simply help individuals. In any case, white nationalism is not a new normal, it’s the old normal, and if it’s going to be defeated at the polls, the Democratic Party is going to have to use an old tactic, too.
I’m quite skeptical that Trump benefitted from his anti-immigrant and at times blatantly racist and xenophobic stances. I live on the edge of the so-called rust belt (though my county went heavily for Obama) and I can tell you that people are obsessed with trade here. But that’s not inherently racist or xenophobic. Trump tapped into something that has a strong, repulsively racist side to it. But there’s more to the story than that. Liberals can compete for working class votes in rural areas without compromising our commitment to social justice. And we will.
Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand (but not very often)Post + Comments (280)