Democrats today are in the unenviable position of watching their party slowly engineer a dismantling of American society, the 250 year experiment with no equal in history in terms of elevating human wellbeing. They have no idea what they hope to create in its wake, riffing on meaningless terms like change, coexistence, equity and justice.
As has always been the case in history, behind these well meaning and useful idiots are a small number of very focused groups that seek the complete destruction of this country for their own reasons. Increasingly, we are seeing prominent Democrats warn of this danger. Is it too late for their party and perhaps for our country? We shall see. One clue will be who the party chooses to run as their candidates for the presidency and V.P.
I don't find much to agree with on Barney Frank's view of the contemporary political situation in terms of the value or success of moderate Democrats, but the thing that really strikes me about these arguments is, however well reasoned they are, I believe they will continue to be meaningless in terms of effecting change because they're bringing a lumber saw to fix a flat tire. It's the wrong tool for the job.
Noting that the elite left power center is defined by its religious certainty and moral self-aggrandizement is an absolutely fantastic observation, and labeling them the Brahman Left is a fitting name. But I think the problem I'm seeing with these efforts to correct them, is that the modern American left is not defined by their religious character, but rather by the thickness and opaqueness of the bubble they live in.
The regular Democratic voter is not actually a member of the Brahman caste, they don't make the money peddling social justice or grifting socialism, nor are they winning political office or rising in social power thanks to the movement. They're every day Americans who just form the poor bloody infantry of the Democrat's movement for power and prestige. And these arguments I keep seeing might be relevant to the shepherd (who's not going to give up their grift no matter how many times you explain to them why it would be a good thing), but have no relevancy to the sheep who actually wield the ultimate political power through their numbers in voting and donating.
Look at how these regular leftwing voters are actually engaging in politics. Just today I got recommended a Peter Zeihan video about what happens politically after Trump, and you can take it for granted it was just copium served up by a Youtuber grifter, bashing Trump, bashing Vance, mocking the idea that the GOP has any future, what was of value were the comments to the video. So many cringey comments about how they can't wait for Trump to die, and they're tired of the traitor, fascist, KKK-GOP, and on and on and on. Same trite, embarrassing rhetoric they've been spewing for ten years now. One of them actually said, well the GOP's a zombie party at this point, we're just waiting for them to realize they're dead and collapse. You know, that zombie party who controls the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and a majority of the states, THAT zombie party. It's all about blowing off angry hot air with mindless sloganeering and really transparent projection.
And I was thinking to myself, well here's the people Democrat reformers really are talking to, and should be trying to talk to, and yet, they're aren't really talking to them. The Democratic voters aren't really about policy positions, I think it's been whipped out of them to have opinions about such high matters, they're more simple creatures of emotion and outrage. If the leadership of the left are the Brahman Left, then these are the dirty worshippers prostrate before them, screaming slogans of hate for the nonbelievers, heretics, and despised 'other.'
They're a fed a constant diet of ontological misinformation from NPR, the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, ten thousand Youtube podcasts, academics and intelligentsia, and all this talk about establishing a workable majority of the electorate to gain political success is just lost on them, they don't even hear it, and if they do, it's unintelligible to them. All they think about is Trump, wacky conspiracy theories about Trump, ways they can call MAGA names, and then revel in the incredibly brief emotional reward of posting the outcomes of this thinking. There's no intelligent political engagement here. These sort of high minded political arguments are falling on deaf ears at best.
The arguments can be made to the Brahman Left leaders, who will ignore them because perverse incentives mean they're winning even while Democrats are losing elections, and they can be made to intellectually open, heterodox individuals, who because of being intellectually open don't believe in the fantasy hysteria around Trump, conservatism, or populism, meaning they have no reason to buy in, but they are meaningless to the rank-and-file who could actually enact change through their collective will. Because the issue isn't a lack of wisdom, it's a lack of lucidity. These people aren't that aware of the world around them to be able to make sense of higher level arguments about political strategy. If you want to reach them, your focus should be their collective stupefaction, and constantly playing into the Trump derangement only works against you there.
In the Silicon Valley, for a long time, the phrase "they're dead and they don't know it" has long been used to describe Flyover Country and Southern economies.
From where their food and fuel is derived, completely escapes many.
Agreed, and there’s an interesting wrinkle that seems obvious to me but that many people still don’t see. Scott Adams (RIP) spotted it years ago. Trump intentionally trolls the left to get them upset. It’s a Sun Tzu technique. His outrageousness serves multiple purposes (e.g. getting attention), but inflaming his enemies is one of his core goals. It upsets them, distracts them, prevents them from thinking clearly, and *makes them behave in ways that drive away moderates*.
So, yes, Trump is “divisive,” and it’s intentional: he keeps making dividing lines that put him on the side of the majority (e.g. two sexes, deport illegals, crime is bad), and which causes Democrats and leftists to reflexively oppose him and thus the majority. It’s a genius political move I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before.
PZ is a consistent disappointment since Trump 47. He started out pretty clear-eyed a decade ago about Trump's place in the replacement of the Global Order. He's totally lost his original plot that recognized the US public is simply is not going to pay to sustain it with no apparent economic or defense benefit just because it threatens his iron rice bowl.
“repositioning candidates who have become identified with an unpopular set of issues so they will be electable”
Some of us call that lying. Don’t spend years expressing positions, say like Mr. Talarico, and then stage events and produce advertisements meant to convince us that the guy wasn’t serious about those positions over the past two decades. Only Paul in transit to Tarsus can effectively claim that kind of “awakening” and make it stick.
I don't disagree with Mr. Teixeira's and Mr. Baharaeen's central argument that deviating too much from the average voter is dangerous for a political party, but I do question their current analysis.
I remember Barney Frank from as far back as the 1980s. I remember his patience as gay rights were normalized. It was a long time ago, 40 years and more now.
That's a huge issue with Barney Frank's advice: it comes from someone long out of politics, and whose views were very much 20th century takes. We're wrapping up the third decade of the 21st century now and the advice of dying elders has never been more out of touch and useless than today, with an AI revolution expanding, China taking key leads in technology and manufacturing, Europe in crisis, and our own nation unpopular abroad.
None of those concerns were part of the previous century. None of Barney Frank's achievements address any of these issues either. He is, like his generation, old and in the way.
Moving to the mythical middle will not solve the current Democrats problems. Instead the party needs to change certain fundamentals, abandoning gun control, which is massively unpopular among rural voters like myself, forsaking the 20th century racial alignments for more modern economic class struggles, which connect working class voters of all races and background, rather than dividing them, and making sure gender inequality does not tip into favoring women, excuse me, "child-bearing people" over masculine needs, but rather benefits both men and women. Talking like normal people wouldn't hurt either.
The Democrats badly need to retool their platform and to make certain new, younger voices are heard. There is no reform possible with the likes of corporate lawyers like Jeffries and Schumer in charge of the party. At least Nancy Pelosi had the wisdom and grace to retire (finally, a bit late).
There's a long list of what needs to be done, but listening to our doddering elders ain't on it.
I don't see Frank pointing toward a mythical middle. I agree that younger voices need to be heard, but even more importantly, the party needs to seriously listen to the members of our coalition outside the PMC/Brahmin left that dominates the party. That dominant faction continues to insist on promoting a radical gender ideology, racial/ethnic essentialism, climate change policies that increase energy costs, and is unable to articulate any desired constraints on immigration. And FWIW, I'm generally with you on gun control.
Pelosi, Schumer, and Jeffries are all torchbearers for that PMC/Brahmin left faction. They just spent enough time in leadership positions to be the progressive establishment. They are being challenged now by progressive insurgents, like Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the current crop of DSA-aligned politicians, all of whom are extremely aligned with the PMC/Brahmin left. That Brahmin left dominance has become so extreme and the siloing that Frank describes is now so complete that many prominent Democrats have become convinced that the choice is between the old Brahmin left (which most Americans view as too far to the left) and the new, much-further-left Brahmin class. Realistically anyone who rises to prominence in the Democratic Party will be Brahmin left, but the question is whether they can come up with a candidate (like Clinton/Obama) who can combine Brahmin ideas/goals with policies/values that are acceptable to the more moderate voters we need to gain power.
America is unpopular because Trump won and he's an idiot. There will no doubt be important decisions to be made on AI and other policies in the coming years, but right now, not enough voters trust Democrats to make those decisions because of the reasons above and so we can't regain power. Do you honestly think ANY Democratic politician has a position on AI/etc. that's so popular it will carry them to victory even in the absence of changes on those unpopular culture war stances?
I'm an independent. Have been for 40 years. I had been leaning democrat after voting for Ross Perot in 1994. HOWEVER, when they killed Charlie Kirk and the democrats mocked him and said it should have happened years ago and mocked his wife I was done with the party. NEVER again.
Come on the "bible thumper" the "Jesus freak" kill him then mock him?! wow sad sad sad
I'm 72 and we had plenty of bible thumpers Jesus freaks when i was growing up especially in the late 60's early 70's. Very chaotic times then. No one trashed these people. We let them have their say and most of even said hey yes if we did the things, you guys preach, we would have a better world, BUT hey we don't we are all sinners and we sin all the time. But we respected them and their message.
Kill the Jesus freak! wow unbelievable. And mock him and ridicule him?
Never will I vote Democratic again the true colors came out there.
Jeff, I appreciate you being a TLV subscriber/reader. I wonder if you'd mind elaborating on this: "when they killed Charlie Kirk and the Democrats mocked him and said it should have happened years ago and mocked his wife..." Who comes to mind when you say that? I'm genuinely curious whether members of the Democratic Party itself did these things versus whether it was people on social media who were generally on "the left." It's possible I missed some of these comments from Democratic Party figures, but I don't recall any off the top of my head.
Yes, Michael go back to the online sites of Meta, Facebook, X, WhatsApp, TikTok, Twitch, Reddit and if not scrubbed yet you will see their mockery of Kirk. Kimmell was a big one.
Politicians to name just a few - AOC, Omar, Pritzker, Hoffman, and Schoenkopf.
Most scrubbed their stuff right after, but it was all over the sites when he was assassinated. Start googling you'll see it. I know in the 60's we had a lot of people dying from drugs and shootings but neither party or left or right did what they did with this Kirk thing. Mostly was from the left. Yes, mostly not all but mostly far left.
Yes, I remember Kimmel's comments. I would point out that he's not an elected Democrat, though. I think his comments about the shooter being a member of MAGA were extremely distasteful, but I wouldn't say that that's tantamount to "mocking" Kirk. I've seen some Democrats say they don't want to honor Kirk's legacy, but again, to me that doesn't rise to the level of "mockery." Other than that, I'm struggling to find examples of elected Democrats making these kinds of comments.
I have plenty of issues with today's Democratic Party, as you probably know if you've read our stuff. But I am wary of ascribing certain bad actions to the entire party if the people taking them aren't even formally part of it. Some people may say outrageous things to get attention, but that doesn't mean that the whole party endorses those views. My two cents anyway.
Part of the problem is the failure to deal with the rafts of clic seekers who choose the liberal left market on the net as the most lucrative. Their efforts to harvest clics are supported by much of the net and by the idiots who think that a clic is a vote or somehow like one of Lincolns addresses. On the web, at least, your niche appears to be populated largely by folk who think that their twitter post is some internet call to freedom instead of a revenue stream. You need to do some trimming. Yards overgrown.
Dorothy Rabinowitz, then of The Wall Street Journal, one wrote, "The difference between Liberals and Conservatives is that Liberals believe that people, if left alone, will generally do the right thing. Conservatives are under no such illusion". This may be a paraphrase. I am not a scholar, but once tried to look up that quote. I found others by Rabinowitz, but not that one. Go figure.
A Liberal is a liberal because he can be. When the conditions of being well clothed well fed and pretty much free to conduct oneself however then one can be a liberal. If these conditions don't exist or go away. Then the liberal will cease to exist too. History has proven this time and time again. What Europe is starting to discover now.
Coming to Barney Frank’s excerpt immediately after the introduction was like riding a long stretch of smooth surf and then abruptly running the board into sand. The introduction is not remarkable prose, but it carries the reader forward with very little resistance. Its sentences generally have a clear subject, an active verb and an easily grasped destination. People do things, events follow one another, and the argument advances before the reader has time to notice the machinery.
Then Frank takes over, and the glide disappears. Nearly every sentence seems to draw more water than it needs. Simple propositions are weighted down with abstract nouns, qualifications, subordinate clauses and ceremonious phrases. Instead of saying that some partisans believe what they want to believe, he writes of “whatever combination of reasons produces this capacity to believe what is most comfortable.” Instead of saying that political misjudgment causes immediate and lasting harm, he gives us “first- and second-order negative impacts.” Failure becomes “a tautological lack of success.” The meaning is usually recoverable, but the reader must stop, disassemble the sentence and extract it.
That is what made the juxtaposition so revealing. Read by itself, Frank’s prose might gradually establish its own ponderous rhythm, and the reader might adjust to it. But the introduction had already established a brisk, modern pace. The sudden resistance therefore felt almost physical: the board no longer skimmed over the surface but began scraping along the bottom.
The irony is that Frank’s argument is neither obscure nor unusually complicated. It is often sharp and persuasive: political zealots exaggerate their popular support, treat compromise as betrayal, lose achievable gains and then attribute defeat to insufficient ideological purity. But he repeatedly encases that clear argument in language that is verbose, heavily qualified, abstract and self-consciously formal. The prose has the manner of an elderly lawyer dictating a policy memorandum—careful, intelligent and determined to close every possible loophole, but unwilling to say plainly in twenty words what can be surrounded by fifty.
The introduction did Frank no favors stylistically. By carrying the reader so smoothly to the edge of the excerpt, it made the moment of grounding impossible to miss.
Not necessarily a Frank policy fan, but the man was a rare authentic, likable politician, hard to find on either side of the aisle. Ruy, you are right as always, but moderation is probably not arriving anytime soon.
Most people have better things to do with their time than follow European politics, but the similar scenarios are more than a bit interesting. Germany is the EU's US. Europe's largest and wealthiest economy, a generally stabilizing force for Europe and the world. Except now, when they appear to be coming apart at the seams.
In a fit of frustration last week, the German Chancellor said the quiet part out loud, to voters demanding change in German energy and mass migration policy, and who had just handed his Party their worst defeat in 80 years. "Remigration amounts to ethnic cleansing". Willing to bet pretty big, that is the next Democratic stop, on the issue.
Climate Change is likely similar. Just as Trump's win in Venezuela undoubtedly motivated him to engage Iran, a Dem Nov win in the House and Senate will embolden Dems to return to Climate Change with a vengeance. Forget the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal 2.0 is probably already on the drawing board, with more sticks than carrots. Toss in Medicare for All, and the Dem holy trinity is complete, and unlikely to moderate anytime soon.
Whenever a "centrist" Democrat starts spreading his bullshit around, I just wanna ask "What did FDR do that couldn't serve as a template for the party now?" Either party - any party - in the country could win every election if it just focused on the working class - the only socioeconomic group in the country with a natural majority - as much as 97% of voters. Yet both the modern Dems and the GOP want to represent only a minority of the voting population, pretty much the same group of rich or would-be rich people. If this country were a democracy in any sense of the word, the working class would have a party. Instead, the largest voting block is constantly being diced and spliced by divide-and-conquer strategies hatched by both parties, who seem equally committed to thwarting the will of the majority.
We had legislators in the past that were underappreciated for their basic decency and craft. Barney Frank was one of them. He was often pigeon holed by being gay. Figures in both parties suffer from that partisan extremity then and today. Their works in the Middle are underappreciated, drowned out by the raucous hyperbole and distortions of both the Left and the Right. Good to step back and appreciate and perhaps try to emulate some of their best qualities and not focus on their stumbles. Better to look deeper and shut out the noise of both extremes, and reject the ridiculous even when it comes from individuals strongly supported by their party contemporaries. On that, there is no reason to elaborate, the nuttiness is all around us and amplified by a silly electronic press.
If we have Democrats back in office in 2028 and then onward, we will be screwed. Going back to the neo con system run by Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama will put us back into the tailspin we have been in. Democrats are globalist neo cons who made a lot of money off that system that needs to go away and should have gone away back in the 1990's after Russia fell.
You may remember a little something called the financial collapse of 2008. It's not like you couldn't see where the subprime mortgages were leading us. Well, Barny couldn't see where the subprime mortgages were leading us. Billions (trillions?) of dollars were pumped into a housing market that couldn't hope to return the investment. It was a bubble that had to collapse. Even the slow learners began to catch on. But there was Barny, going, "Problem? What problem? That's just the false claims of racists who don't want to make loans to poor people."
And then the bottom fell out. And Barny quietly faded from view. But don't worry, there's plenty more to take his place. There's Mamdani, AOC, Newsome, Warren and Omar, to name a few.
I’ll be honest, I’m confused by Frank’s language here. He writes, “the commitment to forging an all-encompassing coalition to demand far-reaching social and economic restructuring will continue to be a doomed distraction from the hard work of assembling a sustainable anti-populist majority.” But wasn’t he, in his own way, a populist? Doesn’t Elizabeth Warren, his choice to head CFPB, identify as a populist? It feels like he’s using “populist” as a synonym for “right-wing insurgent.”
Democrats today are in the unenviable position of watching their party slowly engineer a dismantling of American society, the 250 year experiment with no equal in history in terms of elevating human wellbeing. They have no idea what they hope to create in its wake, riffing on meaningless terms like change, coexistence, equity and justice.
As has always been the case in history, behind these well meaning and useful idiots are a small number of very focused groups that seek the complete destruction of this country for their own reasons. Increasingly, we are seeing prominent Democrats warn of this danger. Is it too late for their party and perhaps for our country? We shall see. One clue will be who the party chooses to run as their candidates for the presidency and V.P.
I don't find much to agree with on Barney Frank's view of the contemporary political situation in terms of the value or success of moderate Democrats, but the thing that really strikes me about these arguments is, however well reasoned they are, I believe they will continue to be meaningless in terms of effecting change because they're bringing a lumber saw to fix a flat tire. It's the wrong tool for the job.
Noting that the elite left power center is defined by its religious certainty and moral self-aggrandizement is an absolutely fantastic observation, and labeling them the Brahman Left is a fitting name. But I think the problem I'm seeing with these efforts to correct them, is that the modern American left is not defined by their religious character, but rather by the thickness and opaqueness of the bubble they live in.
The regular Democratic voter is not actually a member of the Brahman caste, they don't make the money peddling social justice or grifting socialism, nor are they winning political office or rising in social power thanks to the movement. They're every day Americans who just form the poor bloody infantry of the Democrat's movement for power and prestige. And these arguments I keep seeing might be relevant to the shepherd (who's not going to give up their grift no matter how many times you explain to them why it would be a good thing), but have no relevancy to the sheep who actually wield the ultimate political power through their numbers in voting and donating.
Look at how these regular leftwing voters are actually engaging in politics. Just today I got recommended a Peter Zeihan video about what happens politically after Trump, and you can take it for granted it was just copium served up by a Youtuber grifter, bashing Trump, bashing Vance, mocking the idea that the GOP has any future, what was of value were the comments to the video. So many cringey comments about how they can't wait for Trump to die, and they're tired of the traitor, fascist, KKK-GOP, and on and on and on. Same trite, embarrassing rhetoric they've been spewing for ten years now. One of them actually said, well the GOP's a zombie party at this point, we're just waiting for them to realize they're dead and collapse. You know, that zombie party who controls the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and a majority of the states, THAT zombie party. It's all about blowing off angry hot air with mindless sloganeering and really transparent projection.
And I was thinking to myself, well here's the people Democrat reformers really are talking to, and should be trying to talk to, and yet, they're aren't really talking to them. The Democratic voters aren't really about policy positions, I think it's been whipped out of them to have opinions about such high matters, they're more simple creatures of emotion and outrage. If the leadership of the left are the Brahman Left, then these are the dirty worshippers prostrate before them, screaming slogans of hate for the nonbelievers, heretics, and despised 'other.'
They're a fed a constant diet of ontological misinformation from NPR, the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, ten thousand Youtube podcasts, academics and intelligentsia, and all this talk about establishing a workable majority of the electorate to gain political success is just lost on them, they don't even hear it, and if they do, it's unintelligible to them. All they think about is Trump, wacky conspiracy theories about Trump, ways they can call MAGA names, and then revel in the incredibly brief emotional reward of posting the outcomes of this thinking. There's no intelligent political engagement here. These sort of high minded political arguments are falling on deaf ears at best.
The arguments can be made to the Brahman Left leaders, who will ignore them because perverse incentives mean they're winning even while Democrats are losing elections, and they can be made to intellectually open, heterodox individuals, who because of being intellectually open don't believe in the fantasy hysteria around Trump, conservatism, or populism, meaning they have no reason to buy in, but they are meaningless to the rank-and-file who could actually enact change through their collective will. Because the issue isn't a lack of wisdom, it's a lack of lucidity. These people aren't that aware of the world around them to be able to make sense of higher level arguments about political strategy. If you want to reach them, your focus should be their collective stupefaction, and constantly playing into the Trump derangement only works against you there.
In the Silicon Valley, for a long time, the phrase "they're dead and they don't know it" has long been used to describe Flyover Country and Southern economies.
From where their food and fuel is derived, completely escapes many.
Agreed, and there’s an interesting wrinkle that seems obvious to me but that many people still don’t see. Scott Adams (RIP) spotted it years ago. Trump intentionally trolls the left to get them upset. It’s a Sun Tzu technique. His outrageousness serves multiple purposes (e.g. getting attention), but inflaming his enemies is one of his core goals. It upsets them, distracts them, prevents them from thinking clearly, and *makes them behave in ways that drive away moderates*.
So, yes, Trump is “divisive,” and it’s intentional: he keeps making dividing lines that put him on the side of the majority (e.g. two sexes, deport illegals, crime is bad), and which causes Democrats and leftists to reflexively oppose him and thus the majority. It’s a genius political move I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before.
Frak, concur well said thank you.
PZ is a consistent disappointment since Trump 47. He started out pretty clear-eyed a decade ago about Trump's place in the replacement of the Global Order. He's totally lost his original plot that recognized the US public is simply is not going to pay to sustain it with no apparent economic or defense benefit just because it threatens his iron rice bowl.
An excerpt from your excerpt:
“repositioning candidates who have become identified with an unpopular set of issues so they will be electable”
Some of us call that lying. Don’t spend years expressing positions, say like Mr. Talarico, and then stage events and produce advertisements meant to convince us that the guy wasn’t serious about those positions over the past two decades. Only Paul in transit to Tarsus can effectively claim that kind of “awakening” and make it stick.
I don't disagree with Mr. Teixeira's and Mr. Baharaeen's central argument that deviating too much from the average voter is dangerous for a political party, but I do question their current analysis.
I remember Barney Frank from as far back as the 1980s. I remember his patience as gay rights were normalized. It was a long time ago, 40 years and more now.
That's a huge issue with Barney Frank's advice: it comes from someone long out of politics, and whose views were very much 20th century takes. We're wrapping up the third decade of the 21st century now and the advice of dying elders has never been more out of touch and useless than today, with an AI revolution expanding, China taking key leads in technology and manufacturing, Europe in crisis, and our own nation unpopular abroad.
None of those concerns were part of the previous century. None of Barney Frank's achievements address any of these issues either. He is, like his generation, old and in the way.
Moving to the mythical middle will not solve the current Democrats problems. Instead the party needs to change certain fundamentals, abandoning gun control, which is massively unpopular among rural voters like myself, forsaking the 20th century racial alignments for more modern economic class struggles, which connect working class voters of all races and background, rather than dividing them, and making sure gender inequality does not tip into favoring women, excuse me, "child-bearing people" over masculine needs, but rather benefits both men and women. Talking like normal people wouldn't hurt either.
The Democrats badly need to retool their platform and to make certain new, younger voices are heard. There is no reform possible with the likes of corporate lawyers like Jeffries and Schumer in charge of the party. At least Nancy Pelosi had the wisdom and grace to retire (finally, a bit late).
There's a long list of what needs to be done, but listening to our doddering elders ain't on it.
I don't see Frank pointing toward a mythical middle. I agree that younger voices need to be heard, but even more importantly, the party needs to seriously listen to the members of our coalition outside the PMC/Brahmin left that dominates the party. That dominant faction continues to insist on promoting a radical gender ideology, racial/ethnic essentialism, climate change policies that increase energy costs, and is unable to articulate any desired constraints on immigration. And FWIW, I'm generally with you on gun control.
Pelosi, Schumer, and Jeffries are all torchbearers for that PMC/Brahmin left faction. They just spent enough time in leadership positions to be the progressive establishment. They are being challenged now by progressive insurgents, like Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the current crop of DSA-aligned politicians, all of whom are extremely aligned with the PMC/Brahmin left. That Brahmin left dominance has become so extreme and the siloing that Frank describes is now so complete that many prominent Democrats have become convinced that the choice is between the old Brahmin left (which most Americans view as too far to the left) and the new, much-further-left Brahmin class. Realistically anyone who rises to prominence in the Democratic Party will be Brahmin left, but the question is whether they can come up with a candidate (like Clinton/Obama) who can combine Brahmin ideas/goals with policies/values that are acceptable to the more moderate voters we need to gain power.
America is unpopular because Trump won and he's an idiot. There will no doubt be important decisions to be made on AI and other policies in the coming years, but right now, not enough voters trust Democrats to make those decisions because of the reasons above and so we can't regain power. Do you honestly think ANY Democratic politician has a position on AI/etc. that's so popular it will carry them to victory even in the absence of changes on those unpopular culture war stances?
I'm an independent. Have been for 40 years. I had been leaning democrat after voting for Ross Perot in 1994. HOWEVER, when they killed Charlie Kirk and the democrats mocked him and said it should have happened years ago and mocked his wife I was done with the party. NEVER again.
Come on the "bible thumper" the "Jesus freak" kill him then mock him?! wow sad sad sad
I'm 72 and we had plenty of bible thumpers Jesus freaks when i was growing up especially in the late 60's early 70's. Very chaotic times then. No one trashed these people. We let them have their say and most of even said hey yes if we did the things, you guys preach, we would have a better world, BUT hey we don't we are all sinners and we sin all the time. But we respected them and their message.
Kill the Jesus freak! wow unbelievable. And mock him and ridicule him?
Never will I vote Democratic again the true colors came out there.
Jeff, I appreciate you being a TLV subscriber/reader. I wonder if you'd mind elaborating on this: "when they killed Charlie Kirk and the Democrats mocked him and said it should have happened years ago and mocked his wife..." Who comes to mind when you say that? I'm genuinely curious whether members of the Democratic Party itself did these things versus whether it was people on social media who were generally on "the left." It's possible I missed some of these comments from Democratic Party figures, but I don't recall any off the top of my head.
Yes, Michael go back to the online sites of Meta, Facebook, X, WhatsApp, TikTok, Twitch, Reddit and if not scrubbed yet you will see their mockery of Kirk. Kimmell was a big one.
Politicians to name just a few - AOC, Omar, Pritzker, Hoffman, and Schoenkopf.
Most scrubbed their stuff right after, but it was all over the sites when he was assassinated. Start googling you'll see it. I know in the 60's we had a lot of people dying from drugs and shootings but neither party or left or right did what they did with this Kirk thing. Mostly was from the left. Yes, mostly not all but mostly far left.
Yes, I remember Kimmel's comments. I would point out that he's not an elected Democrat, though. I think his comments about the shooter being a member of MAGA were extremely distasteful, but I wouldn't say that that's tantamount to "mocking" Kirk. I've seen some Democrats say they don't want to honor Kirk's legacy, but again, to me that doesn't rise to the level of "mockery." Other than that, I'm struggling to find examples of elected Democrats making these kinds of comments.
I have plenty of issues with today's Democratic Party, as you probably know if you've read our stuff. But I am wary of ascribing certain bad actions to the entire party if the people taking them aren't even formally part of it. Some people may say outrageous things to get attention, but that doesn't mean that the whole party endorses those views. My two cents anyway.
Part of the problem is the failure to deal with the rafts of clic seekers who choose the liberal left market on the net as the most lucrative. Their efforts to harvest clics are supported by much of the net and by the idiots who think that a clic is a vote or somehow like one of Lincolns addresses. On the web, at least, your niche appears to be populated largely by folk who think that their twitter post is some internet call to freedom instead of a revenue stream. You need to do some trimming. Yards overgrown.
Dorothy Rabinowitz, then of The Wall Street Journal, one wrote, "The difference between Liberals and Conservatives is that Liberals believe that people, if left alone, will generally do the right thing. Conservatives are under no such illusion". This may be a paraphrase. I am not a scholar, but once tried to look up that quote. I found others by Rabinowitz, but not that one. Go figure.
A Liberal is a liberal because he can be. When the conditions of being well clothed well fed and pretty much free to conduct oneself however then one can be a liberal. If these conditions don't exist or go away. Then the liberal will cease to exist too. History has proven this time and time again. What Europe is starting to discover now.
Coming to Barney Frank’s excerpt immediately after the introduction was like riding a long stretch of smooth surf and then abruptly running the board into sand. The introduction is not remarkable prose, but it carries the reader forward with very little resistance. Its sentences generally have a clear subject, an active verb and an easily grasped destination. People do things, events follow one another, and the argument advances before the reader has time to notice the machinery.
Then Frank takes over, and the glide disappears. Nearly every sentence seems to draw more water than it needs. Simple propositions are weighted down with abstract nouns, qualifications, subordinate clauses and ceremonious phrases. Instead of saying that some partisans believe what they want to believe, he writes of “whatever combination of reasons produces this capacity to believe what is most comfortable.” Instead of saying that political misjudgment causes immediate and lasting harm, he gives us “first- and second-order negative impacts.” Failure becomes “a tautological lack of success.” The meaning is usually recoverable, but the reader must stop, disassemble the sentence and extract it.
That is what made the juxtaposition so revealing. Read by itself, Frank’s prose might gradually establish its own ponderous rhythm, and the reader might adjust to it. But the introduction had already established a brisk, modern pace. The sudden resistance therefore felt almost physical: the board no longer skimmed over the surface but began scraping along the bottom.
The irony is that Frank’s argument is neither obscure nor unusually complicated. It is often sharp and persuasive: political zealots exaggerate their popular support, treat compromise as betrayal, lose achievable gains and then attribute defeat to insufficient ideological purity. But he repeatedly encases that clear argument in language that is verbose, heavily qualified, abstract and self-consciously formal. The prose has the manner of an elderly lawyer dictating a policy memorandum—careful, intelligent and determined to close every possible loophole, but unwilling to say plainly in twenty words what can be surrounded by fifty.
The introduction did Frank no favors stylistically. By carrying the reader so smoothly to the edge of the excerpt, it made the moment of grounding impossible to miss.
"Elephantine" would ironically be the best word for his prose.
Not necessarily a Frank policy fan, but the man was a rare authentic, likable politician, hard to find on either side of the aisle. Ruy, you are right as always, but moderation is probably not arriving anytime soon.
Most people have better things to do with their time than follow European politics, but the similar scenarios are more than a bit interesting. Germany is the EU's US. Europe's largest and wealthiest economy, a generally stabilizing force for Europe and the world. Except now, when they appear to be coming apart at the seams.
In a fit of frustration last week, the German Chancellor said the quiet part out loud, to voters demanding change in German energy and mass migration policy, and who had just handed his Party their worst defeat in 80 years. "Remigration amounts to ethnic cleansing". Willing to bet pretty big, that is the next Democratic stop, on the issue.
Climate Change is likely similar. Just as Trump's win in Venezuela undoubtedly motivated him to engage Iran, a Dem Nov win in the House and Senate will embolden Dems to return to Climate Change with a vengeance. Forget the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal 2.0 is probably already on the drawing board, with more sticks than carrots. Toss in Medicare for All, and the Dem holy trinity is complete, and unlikely to moderate anytime soon.
Whenever a "centrist" Democrat starts spreading his bullshit around, I just wanna ask "What did FDR do that couldn't serve as a template for the party now?" Either party - any party - in the country could win every election if it just focused on the working class - the only socioeconomic group in the country with a natural majority - as much as 97% of voters. Yet both the modern Dems and the GOP want to represent only a minority of the voting population, pretty much the same group of rich or would-be rich people. If this country were a democracy in any sense of the word, the working class would have a party. Instead, the largest voting block is constantly being diced and spliced by divide-and-conquer strategies hatched by both parties, who seem equally committed to thwarting the will of the majority.
We had legislators in the past that were underappreciated for their basic decency and craft. Barney Frank was one of them. He was often pigeon holed by being gay. Figures in both parties suffer from that partisan extremity then and today. Their works in the Middle are underappreciated, drowned out by the raucous hyperbole and distortions of both the Left and the Right. Good to step back and appreciate and perhaps try to emulate some of their best qualities and not focus on their stumbles. Better to look deeper and shut out the noise of both extremes, and reject the ridiculous even when it comes from individuals strongly supported by their party contemporaries. On that, there is no reason to elaborate, the nuttiness is all around us and amplified by a silly electronic press.
If we have Democrats back in office in 2028 and then onward, we will be screwed. Going back to the neo con system run by Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama will put us back into the tailspin we have been in. Democrats are globalist neo cons who made a lot of money off that system that needs to go away and should have gone away back in the 1990's after Russia fell.
But what if Frank was an incompetent ideologue?
Because he was.
You may remember a little something called the financial collapse of 2008. It's not like you couldn't see where the subprime mortgages were leading us. Well, Barny couldn't see where the subprime mortgages were leading us. Billions (trillions?) of dollars were pumped into a housing market that couldn't hope to return the investment. It was a bubble that had to collapse. Even the slow learners began to catch on. But there was Barny, going, "Problem? What problem? That's just the false claims of racists who don't want to make loans to poor people."
And then the bottom fell out. And Barny quietly faded from view. But don't worry, there's plenty more to take his place. There's Mamdani, AOC, Newsome, Warren and Omar, to name a few.
I’ll be honest, I’m confused by Frank’s language here. He writes, “the commitment to forging an all-encompassing coalition to demand far-reaching social and economic restructuring will continue to be a doomed distraction from the hard work of assembling a sustainable anti-populist majority.” But wasn’t he, in his own way, a populist? Doesn’t Elizabeth Warren, his choice to head CFPB, identify as a populist? It feels like he’s using “populist” as a synonym for “right-wing insurgent.”
Almost no one who wants to use the word populist is willing to define it, which is the price I would require for its use.