Invest your own money, let compound effect be your leverage, and avoid debt like the plague.
- Manlobbi
Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy
No. of Recommendations: 7
I just read this Brett Stephens’ interview with MA congressman Jake Auchincloss. I’m really impressed with his ideas. Very thoughtful, very intelligent. Someone to fill the current thoughtful and intelligent vacuum in our current politics. And I love his answer to the interviews last question.
First, a brief background paragraph from the gift link of the entire interview below.
Jake Auchincloss — it’s pronounced AW-kin-kloss — is one of the most thoughtful voices in this conversation. The 38-year-old Harvard and M.I.T. graduate and Afghan war veteran, where he served as a Marine officer, is now in his third term as the representative from Massachusetts’s Fourth Congressional District, which stretches from the wealthy Boston suburb of Newton to the working-class city of Fall River.https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/opinion/jake-au...
No. of Recommendations: 2
What Auchincloss and other Majority Democrats have in common is a determination to meet voters where they are. That includes acknowledging mistakes like the Covid-era school closures and the Biden administration’s lax border enforcement.
Wow! I'm in.
Are they also acknowledging mistakes like pretending Biden was fit to be president for another four years?
No. of Recommendations: 9
To win in November, Democrats will have to stop focusing on elitist issues like the price of gas and healthcare
and start talking more about things that really matter to regular Americans,
like building "the worlds greatest ballroom" and disappearing the Epstein Files.
No. of Recommendations: 3
Are they also acknowledging mistakes like pretending Biden was fit to be president for another four years?
That's already been done. Something happened in the 8-10 months prior to the debate, because he was fine prior to that.
No. of Recommendations: 2
If Brett Stephens is pushing it, I’m out.
We don’t need to move to the right to win elections. We’ve been doing that since Clinton and look where that has taken both parties.
No. of Recommendations: 11
We don’t need to move to the right to win elections. We’ve been doing that since Clinton and look where that has taken both parties.
Being intransigent is not effective.
You have to meet the voters where they are. That’s reality.
Center-Left has worked well in recent times.
I’d rather get 60% of my agenda accomplished than 0%.
No. of Recommendations: 0
“ You have to meet the voters where they are. That’s reality.”
Rarely do the democrats meet voters “where they are” because they can’t effing find them. I think the Democratic Party lost connection to voters forty years ago when the working class and unions were abandoned to the whims of globalization and the free rein of finance capitalism. The part elite move in entirely different milieu than the voters they need to win.
Frankly, the Democratic Party is no longer a working class party and its governing elite is too fearful of looking for that base. This is why the timid electocrats keep searching for that moderate avatar that can attract enough disaffected middle class republican voters to win on the right.
What are you winning for working class voters when an inoffensive, milk toast third way candidate wins? Not Trump is not enough.
No. of Recommendations: 9
Not Trump is not enough.
Totally agree.
In fact, as I’ve mentioned previously on these boards, if the Dems are fortunate enough to take control of the House, they should NOT impeach Trump even though he’s violated the Constitution on a daily basis. Unless the Republicans support it, it’s a bloody waste of time.
They should be laser focused on reducing costs (gas, food, healthcare, transportation, housing, etc) and training tradespeople on projects that will help Americans (installing and repairing solar panels, building homes, etc, etc, etc). IOW, build from the middle out. Oh, and humane border control wouldn’t hurt, either. No border, no country.
And if I could, I’d get rid of Schumer.
JMNSHO.
No. of Recommendations: 7
I think the Democratic Party lost connection to voters forty years ago when the working class and unions were abandoned to the whims of globalization and the free rein of finance capitalism.
I agree Democrats certainly have lost the working class. The question is why.
A big faction of the party - what I'll call the "economic left" - wants to believe that the party lost the working class because of things like globalization and finance capitalism. Because that's the easy answer, for them. They want to change the party's approach to globalism and finance capitalism. So if those are the reasons the working class doesn't like Democrats much anymore, it's not medicine for them to swallow. It's sweet and delicious.
But if the Democrats lost the working class for other reasons, it's much harder. If the working class moved to the Republicans because of the Democrats' positions on climate change, or immigration, or crime, or a host of other cultural signifiers, then you can't get them back by just switching to a pro-tariff anti-finance posture. You have to make some hard changes that will impose pain on the coalition.
So where you land on what the Democrats should do going forward depends a lot on what you think is the reason the Democrats have lost working-class voters. Obviously, the Jacobin wing of the party strongly believes in class consciousness - that the working class voters think of themselves as having a working class identity, and therefore will act politically based on that identity. If that's what caused them to leave the Democrats, then changing positions on a class basis can bring them back. But if that's not what caused them to leave - if the working class left the Democratic party because they generally have more conservative cultural viewpoints on issues like religion, immigration, guns, crime, gender, environmental issues, and the like - then that's a recipe for failure.
No. of Recommendations: 2
And if I could, I’d get rid of Schumer.
And his corporatist handmaidens.
No. of Recommendations: 1
“And if I could, I’d get rid of Schumer.”
Agree to agree.
No. of Recommendations: 1
“But if the Democrats lost the working class for other reasons, it's much harder. If the working class moved to the Republicans because of the Democrats' positions on climate change, or immigration, or crime, or a host of other cultural signifiers, then you can't get them back by just switching to a pro-tariff anti-finance posture. You have to make some hard changes that will impose pain on the coalition.”
Distractions used by both parties to take voters attention off what matters. Voters haven’t had a chance to choose an “economic left” party in generations. Not since Clinton adopted the Republican Party platform and implemented it.
The Democratic Party lost its way when it abandoned unions and the working class under Clinton’s third way politics. You pretend there has been a working class option within the party but it was only when Bernie ran his insurgent campaign that a real “economic left” option became available, and third way dems have been fighting desperately to kill that baby ever since. To their great dismay the left keeps winning when they can’t cradle kill a candidate.
I’m not exactly sure what you’re saying culture dems need to do to defeat republicans on “culture signifiers”? Agree to ban trans kids from sports? Execute pedos? Build more coal fired power plants? More $$$ for ICE? What are dems missing here? Or is the problem that dems are biting on these distractions instead of hammering republicans as the party of billionaires and techno-Nazis?
Mamdani won and it looks like his billionaire tax on second homes is going to be state policy. Platner will beat Collin’s now that the geriatric third way is out. Whenever voters are given a chance to elect genuine class warriors, they get excited. And you should be afraid, because the folks who frequent these boards won’t be untouched by a political movement that seriously addresses the economic injustice that is at the heart of what is wrong with our society today.
I don’t see the Democratic Party, or America, surviving if the “economic left” doesn’t soon lead the Democratic Party. Your version of the Democratic Party has nothing to offer the future, Al, except intensifying economic inequality and social decay.
No. of Recommendations: 8
Agree to ban trans kids from sports? Execute pedos? Build more coal fired power plants? More $$$ for ICE? What are dems missing here? Or is the problem that dems are biting on these distractions instead of hammering republicans as the party of billionaires and techno-Nazis?
I think a lot of it is the latter. I think Democrats' positions on things like climate change, immigration, criminal justice, gun ownership, and the like are very alienating to working class voters. If you tell working class voters they aren't welcome to share actual power within the Democratic coalition unless they adopt the bourgeoise values that are held by the managerial/college-educated classes, they're not going to want to join your coalition.
Whenever voters are given a chance to elect genuine class warriors, they get excited.
Except, of course, when they don't. Remember, Bernie lost his two elections. Other candidates, like Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, lost their races. Plenty of socialists lose elections, just like plenty of centrists lose elections also. There are absolutely certain voters that get very excited when given a chance to elect genuine class warriors. But there are also lots of voters who don't want to elect genuine class warriors. It's certainly true that moderates tend not to evoke fervid activism the way that policy zealots do, but they can have a broader appeal even without "exciting" the voters that same way.
The Democrats have certainly lost huge chunks of working class voters. Did they lose them because they weren't running class warriors, or did they lose them because they were running candidates who support positions on climate change, immigration, gun, and a host of other matters that those working class voters don't support? If it's the former, then running class warriors would be the cure for what ails the Democrats. If it's the latter, though, then those class warriors will have a rough time.
Your version of the Democratic Party has nothing to offer the future, Al, except intensifying economic inequality and social decay.
Well, it does offer the future the possibility of winning elections. If working class voters don't actually want genuine class warriors, but rather prefer to have more moderate policies, then running genuine class warriors isn't going to win you many races. It can win some, of course - but you also end up losing some races where the working class isn't looking for genuine class warriors, but folks who offer more modest fixes without going quite so far to the left on cultural and social issues.
No. of Recommendations: 4
“Other candidates, like Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, lost their races.”
Interesting choice. Actually makes my point. It took tens of millions from the Mossad operation, AIPAC, to defeat these two progressives. I’m not sure Mossad could have the same success with its AIPAC operations in the wake of the genocidal lunacy it has become associated with in Gaza and Lebanon.
No. of Recommendations: 6
Interesting choice. Actually makes my point.
And Bernie Sanders. Twice. And Elizabeth Warren. And plenty of other progressives/socialists that have lost ordinary, run-of-the-mill contested primaries and general elections. Nor would you expect that a genuine class warrior wouldn't have massive spending against them, either.
When you say, "[w]henever voters are given a chance to elect genuine class warriors, they get excited," that's true - but only for some voters. Likely the voters whose positions agree with your own, and probably the voters most visible to you. But not all voters. There are plenty of votes who don't get excited about genuine class warriors - and other voters who are 'excited' with a desire to defeat those candidates.
Running "genuine class warriors" only increases your chances of recapturing the working class voters that have left the Democratic Party if those voters are actually looking for genuine class warriors. If what they're looking for is candidates that will be conservative on social and cultural issues, though, picking those folks is not going to do much to bring those working class voters back, and indeed might make things worse.
