thoughts

The background to how the brand got the way it did is complicated. Old Democrats didn't really like the way Bill Clinton was so successful being a New Democrat. but then Gore f**ked up really bad, he misread the room, thinking that Bill's sex scandal was actually damaging.

Anyhow Gore lost, then Daschle lost and there was nobody leading the party. In 2005 Pelosi emerged. A person with zero charisma and horrendous public speaking skills. She immediately announced that impeachment is off the table, essentially establishing that the Dem brand is "We Don't Fight"

Obama on the other hand was overflowing with charisma, but he established his brand in a way that had no coattails. His smooth elegant shtick could win. It was so charming, but it was only him. I bear him no ill-will, but he built the Obama brand, not the Dem brand which continued to flounder.

(a corollary to this is that Obama's staffers went on to create a media company and do a bunch of podcasts, and they are totally lost. Their message is mostly incoherent. Their branding is trash. They are not leading a movement. They're struggling podcasters with one old trophy on the shelf.)

Eight years of Obama and his famous "No Drama" was enough to get him reelected (tho' his last years were accomplishment-free... but "No Drama" also meant no headlines. It showed the public a leader who wasn't fiercely and furiously throwing punches. That reinforced the "We Don't Fight" image.)

2017-18 Pelosi in the minority, even her biggest fans admitted she was "not good on television", her long-winded extremely boring statements just didn't get covered. She wasn't going to do anything anyway. It was a new, much worse version of "No Drama". It was perilously close to non-existence.

Then in 2019 was the key moment. She had the majority. She had the leverage. and she did nothing. She made no waves. She made no angry dramatic statements. Everything always very low key. Insane criminal POTUS breaking every law every day, and she said calmly "I hope his family intervenes"

How can you not get a reputation as a gang of Do-Nothing losers when you are in fact a gang of Do-Nothing losers?

but nobody forced them to raise the bar. Their only competitor was a gang of openly corrupt, incompetent, very unintelligent clowns and criminals.

so with the help of COVID-19 they won in 2020 too.

2020 was another key year in the gradual degradation of the brand. COVID was raging. Donold was inept. Trump cronies were stealing taxpayer $$$ left and right, and a cop murdered George Floyd.

Pelosi's virtual non-existence subtly but consistently reinforced the "We don't fight" and "Do-Nothing" mystique. Schumer, Durbin, Clyburn, Hoyer sometimes gave a speech or had a barbecue. A party bereft of ideas and excitement.

Some activists once unfurled a banner that said "Defund The Police" and that was basically the only news-worthy thing any Democrat had done in decades.

Fox Demagoguery ran with it. They established that as the Dem Brand.

Russian paid propagandists like Tim Pool supported the message. In the huge vacuum created by the ostensible "leaders" Nancy and Chuck doing zero effective PR, there was nothing to stop right wing media from twisting and spinning the image of the Democratic Party any way they wanted.

I am a leftist at heart and "Defund The Police" seemed awesome to me, but I am also smart enough to know that some slogans I like, can be toxic for millions of other voters. So I took seriously the concerns of smart Democrats like Abigail Spanberger, who vehemently opposed the notion.

Clearly this was a time for leadership to forge a compromise, or find a third way, triangulate (<= which is a much maligned but incredibly useful concept and should be embraced.) I even invented the formula for resolving the impasse and I screamed about it.

but Pelosi didn't give a shit. She did nothing, and a huge rift in the party formed. The brand kinda became "Dems in Disarray" at that point.

Biden built no movement. There is no Bidenism to believe in. He was years old. He was visibly not the future. AOC looks like the future, but Pelosi and Jeffries hate her and everything she stands for. So, more disarray.

Is this our new image? A rich corporate lawyer pretending to be a rapper?

or is our brand a 75-year-old Jewish New Yorker feebly chanting "We Will Win" while shaking his fist as if he were leading a revolution, only to be mocked mercilessly because it was so f**king pathetic.

https://youtu.be/8lxrgp0j_lc?t=4

Maybe our brand should be Brat. Jasmine Crockett is Brat. They say Kat Abu is E-Thot, but I'm too old to know what that means :-D Young activists like David Hogg know that we need to clear out the dead wood in order to establish a new image.

Carville was right when he said our brand is in the toilet. He just didn't have a recipe for fixing the problem.

How about Active Brat? Kat Abu proposed "A Party That Doesn't Suck"

Activists, or "The Groups" as they're called, are not the problem here. Just like insane fascist media like Fox are not the problem. Our failure is that we allowed useless s**theads like Schumer, Pelosi, and Jeffries to fail day after day for decades.

The only reason anyone even knows those activists exist is because of the gargantuan void created by empty suits unable or unwilling to lead. Of course Fox Demagoguery wins the battle for public opinion every week. They're the only ones on the field.

if the House of Representatives had pursued oversight and accountability from 2017 to 2020 as vigorously as they did from 1994 to 1998, and they held that orange freak to the same standards as they held Bill Clinton, there would have been 500 impeachments by the end of his term.

I was naive. I really believed. it was January 2017 and I was sure that the lies, the chaos, the incompetence, and the brazen corruption of the regime would be so embarrassing to Ryan and McConnell that they would cut a deal and force the orange freak out, and make Pence president. after a few months I realized holy fuck. they don’t give a shit. they have no principles. they’re giving him a free pass on a massive crime spree. I was naive.

two years later Dems win the House, so I think “now we’ll see some action”… Donald shut down the gov’t before Nancy even got the gavel. the first few weeks were hectic. then I heard that she said he wasn’t worth impeaching because opportunity cost, and I thought “that’s really dumb. she’s gonna have to walk that back” but I still gave her the benefit of the doubt. I defended her. I told people she’s waiting for the Mueller Report. a few months later the Mueller Report comes out and… crickets. nothing. not a peep from Pelosi. I was apoplectic. I suddenly realized that I’d been conned. she never intended to lift a finger against Trump. she was on his side. she was going to steadfastly ignore all the malfeasance. she had no principles. she was going to enable the orange criminal just like Paul Ryan had.

I once read a poli-sci book of case studies in how good and bad presidential decisions were made. Two of the chapters were “Placing People” and “Placing Institutions”. The gist of it was: know who you’re dealing with. Where did Brezhnev spend his formative years? Who influenced him? What was his mindset as he rose to his current position?

Let’s do that with Joe Scarborough. Joe was a far-right Gingrich Republican. He wanted to focus on eviscerating the public school system. For some reason he left politics to become a media personality. He spent a few decades putting right-wing spin on the daily news every morning on cable TV. Pretty much like Rush Limbaugh, but a little more subtle and not on the radio. After years of Hillary-bashing (everybody was doing it, led by the New York Times, of course. it was all the rage) in 2015 Joe was EAGER to become a Trump Republican. Somehow they had a falling out, but Scarborough went on normalizing the orange fascist criminal regime just like the vast majority of elected Democrats and 99% of the media.

I never wasted much time on Scarborough. The few times I watched, however, he was putting right wing spin on the events of the day. Simply Limbaugh-light.

Politicians and TV personalities are pretty narcissistic. Their egos are inextricably entwined with their images and careers. Promoting their egos/careers is priority one. Scarborough is emblematic of this phenomenon. He seems to have no consistent principles at all. Every step he takes appears designed to promote his image and career. So any time there are hints that sincere belief in noble ideals are driving his rhetoric I become extremely skeptical. Just a brief look at his history means there’s no way to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don’t believe for a minute that he’d tell us the unvarnished truth simply because it’s true. He probably accidentally says some true stuff sometimes, when it happens to be good for his career, but I wouldn’t trust that guy to watch my dog for 5 minutes while I go to the restroom.