This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Pod Save America host Jon Favreau interviewed DNC Chair Ken Martin yesterday after months of criticizing Martin's leadership on the podcast. Martin apparently requested an appearance to defend himself, but the attempt backfired severely. Favreau's discontent stems from the DNC's unwillingness to release their "autopsy" on Kamala Harris' loss in the 2024 presidential election - a viewpoint Ken Martin once claimed to agree with during his Chair campaign.
Obviously Martin is in a difficult position (indeed, I wouldn't envy any white man attempting to lead the Democratic Party) because 1) everyone knows the autopsy will be humiliating for Harris, 2) Harris may be a future presidential candidate, and 3) donor funds rely on the DNC or their candidates not being revealed to have acted incompetently.
But really, Martin going back on his campaign promise is not of note here - keeping the autopsy to themselves is likely the right move to retain any dignity. More interesting is the bellwether progressive media mouthpiece openly targeting their ideological and sociopolitical wellspring. Favreau seems to conflate the burial of the autopsy with peril in future elections, as if 1) the Democrats have a history of being honest and confessional and 2) the mistakes of the DNC in 2024 are not apparent. I often question whether PSA are true believers or the modern equivalent of César Chavez's "don't want to hurt the cause" club, but here Favreau radiates (or pretends to radiate) true-believer-dom to a naive and childish extent. Of course he wants to see his party be honest - they're the good guys.
In the end, Ken Martin looks like Jerry from Fargo and Favreau looks like a kid struggling to accept that Santa Claus isn't real. But I don't expect either to leave their post - Martin is too valuable as a scapegoat and Favreau has a comfortable incentive to just keep swimming.
What on Earth is wrong with these people? Why did Martin do this interview if he was just going to give obviously false and disingenuous answers to the questions that he knew were coming? Do they not know how bad this looks?
More options
Context Copy link
Not that any leftist/progressive was expecting good takes from Pod Save America, but listening to that makes it clear the DNC fully intends to repeat their mistakes of 2024. The only realistic path they have to a 2028 presidential election victory is some surprise candidate winning the primary over the wishes of the DNC like Obama did. Obama and Mamdani (NYC mayor being very different from a presidential election, of course) are recent examples of that happening, so it's not impossible, but the Democrats badly needed that in 2016, 2020 (sure Biden won, but it was embarrassing that beating Trump was a challenge at all), and 2024 as well. And this interview confirms the old guard is just as entrenched as ever.
The leftist/progressive position (at least the more practical leftist) is not that the Democrats are good, but that getting elected outside of the two-party system is infeasible and they aren't welcome in the Republican party, so the only remaining option is to try to co-opt the Democratic party. Which outside of a few exceptions (Mamdani, "The Squad") has not seen a lot of success.
What do you think the mistakes of 2024 were? Personally I'd go with:
More options
Context Copy link
Ok but progressive politics are deeply deeply unpopular in America overall. When progressives get nominations in swing districts, they lose even in blue years. Democrats tend to do best with blue doggers or white candidates preferred by the ultra-moderate black wing.
More options
Context Copy link
Well, if the Trump admin can’t pull its shit together it’s possible that any successor will be tainted and the Dems can stumble into a narrow win with a bland-but-inoffensive candidate, similarly to the 2020 Biden campaign. But, yeah, that’s not exactly a “strategy” worthy of the name.
There was a brief moment after the 2024 election stretching into early 2025 where it looked like the DNC might actually learn something. Alas, it seems the one thing they’re good at is avoiding information that may upset their existing power structure. Their current top prospects are Gavin Newsom and, uh, Harris again. It’s still a long way to go to 2028 but both of those choices (practically anyone from California, honestly) are electoral suicide.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That was easily the most frustrating non conversation I’ve deigned to listen to conclusion. Is it impossible for a human to be selected into such a position?
More options
Context Copy link
Democrats face a few short-to-medium-term political problems if they can't correct course:
Winning the midterms is not enough to solve these problems. Control of the House would give Democrats the power to open investigations into Trump officials and start waging more of an active war against the administration. But it doesn't solve any of these deeper problems. (And who knows, the Trump admin could win any war over public opinion: Democrats are still unpopular.)
So they need to win the Presidency.
One way for Democrats to win is to half-repudiate peak woke. Admit some things went too far, stop talking about censorship and trans rights, pivot to healthcare and industrial policy, loudly promise not to let in thirty million illegal immigrants, quietly promise to be lefter than Trump. Voters might not trust this pitch, but they could be convinced if Democrats really did learn their lesson. Voters could be sold "let's be nicer to illegal immigrants" if it really isn't a workaround for open borders.
Another way for Democrats to win is to do the same thing over again and expect a different result. Everything is fine, identity politics, DEI, trans kids, amnesty, Democratic policies have always been correct about everything and there are no trade-offs for anything.
Enter Harris.
Kamala Harris represents, more than anything else, the fantasy that Democrats didn't do anything wrong. If Kamala wins the Presidency, one can imagine the world without Trump. Kamala was fated to win all along, Trump's win was just a moment in time, Trump has finally aged out of office, everything Republicans did in the interim was a temporary fate, Trump can finally be defeated. Kamala is the good timeline. If anyone else wins, it implicitly acknowledges that Trump did win after all, the Democratic party has had to change and accommodate itself (even if as opposition). And Harris was supposed to win. It's nice to imagine that Democrats were right all along. The only problems with 2024 were some technical quibbles about where to best spend the ad money and that whole thing with only having three months to run her campaign.
The problem is that Kamala remains a bad candidate. She was always a bad candidate. Everybody, left and right, acknowledged that she was a bad candidate right up until the moment Biden conceded and Democrats suddenly all discovered at the same time that Kamalalala was a great candidate all along -- and a black woman no less!
Outside of the Democratic bubble though, Kamala remains a bad candidate. She's a weak speaker. She endorsed unpopular hard left positions and never walked them back, except to explain that she's a moderate now. She's not especially smart and has no special grasp of the issues. She doesn't have a special vision for the country or a special relationship with the voters. She's a weak campaigner and a weak politician. She has all of Hillary Clinton's vices and none of her virtues. And she's a black woman, which means that under the social rules of DEI she cannot be criticized on any of these terms.
Well, Democrats could run her again and they could win. Maybe they get lucky, maybe 2024 was just unlucky. But it doesn't speak well of their chances if they can't have hard and honest conversations like "Kamala Harris is a bad candidate and the only reason we have her is DEI decorum that made Biden pick her as a VP". Because voters really don't like this stuff. And then the victory plan has to be that voters just dislike whatever Republicans are offering more.
So Jon Favreau has to fight for open access to things like the 2024 autopsy. Because that's how you start talking about whether Kamala Harris is really the best candidate for Democrats to win in 2028.
Ultimately, I'm skeptical it will be anybody but Harris. The fantasy she exercises that Trump can be banished to marginalia of history is powerful for Democrats. Elite Democrats still run the party on more or less the same terms they did in 2016 and 2020 and 2024 and can be negotiated with to put their thumbs on the scale. And neither high nor low is convinced they ever did anything wrong. (Try asking any of them if it was wrong to support Biden in 2024 -- they'll refuse to concede the point and will immediately attack Trump over his age instead. I've never gotten a different answer.)
This is exactly the consultant-brained nonsense that the DNC is likely to continue doubling down on and losing with. "We're almost as Republican as the Republicans!" is not a winning message for anyone other than the DNC donors who want Republican policies and there to not be an effective opposition to them. Voters presented with "Republican-lite" or "Republican" on the ballot are going to continue to vote Republican or stay home.
Woke social policies are not popular. The Democrats under Biden let in tens of millions of illegal immigrants after allowing a crisis at the border, and refuse to own up to it. The Democratic party brand is tarnished with the idea of trans kids, health care for illegal immigrants, lax policing and crime, homeless junkies in public parks, Israel-Palestine divisions, DEI racial and sexual discrimination against whites and young men, and above all their refusal to debate any of these preferences openly. The Party lives in such a bubble that they could not do anything about Joe Biden until his debate performance was so obviously senile that he had to be replaced, which could not even be admitted in public. Which was followed by Kamala Harris, a mediocre candidate everybody disliked who was promoted to VP solely because of her sex and race, which could also not be openly discussed by Democrats anywhere.
Realistically, at the same time, Democrats could have lots of popular successes on other issues. Trans kids are not popular but a mild trans toleration is more in line with American tastes than a trans crackdown. Same with immigration, and guns. Democrats who could convincingly project moderate positions on these social issues -- that are not assumed to be covers for more extreme positions -- would be popular. This would give Democrats lots of room to push their economic agenda, which is broadly popular. Democrats could have healthcare, tariffs, and infrastructure. This is basically what someone like Josh Shapiro did. A national platform along these lines would probably be very successful. In fact, I think if Democrats had adopted something like this all along they would never have lost to Trump in the first place.
Well, it's your choice. But I have correctly identified that you have two options: on woke you can back down or double down. That's what the public dislikes about Democrats the most. That's the most salient issue Democrats could change. It's not the other policies that need working, voters don't like woke. At best you can offer them other policies that make the poison pill go down sweeter. Which requires that whatever Republicans do is worse to voters than woke. Well, maybe it will happen that way. But it's not much of a choice. Double down and hope that Republicans screw up. Good luck!
This is basically the Tony Blair approach to government, and indeed it worked gangbusters for 15 years.
More options
Context Copy link
They can't, though; the well is truly poisoned. That's why the strategy nowadays is more to energize the base than than to woo the normies, with the second prong of the strategy to try to scare the normies away from the other side.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm old enough to remember when "almost as Republican as the Republicans" meant forgetting about economic leftism, and pretending the wokeness is what made the Democrats "left". It's also peak cope to act like anti-wokeness is consultant brained - all over the world it's unpopular with voters, but popular with the elites.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I would bet on either a blue-state governor like Shapiro or Newsom, or a young chud like Piker or Mamdani being the 2028 DNC nominee over Harris, but I think the broad strokes of your analysis are sound.
More options
Context Copy link
Kamala is not going to be the nominee regardless.
Why not? It's too soon to really predict confidently but: she polls extremely well among the base, has a national profile few other Dems can match, is already integrated the party elite and can fundraise / network / cut deals etc., she's demographically correct in a party still hesitant to challenge DEI orthodoxies, and she has made indications she's interested in running. She's probably the front-runner.
Gavin Newsom is probably the closest real competitor he has issues that can't be papered over with his bad impression of Trump on twitter. An outcome just as likely is somebody we aren't really thinking about yet going on a barn burner. That's how we got Bill Clinton and Obama.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is the perspective that I see commonly but disagree with vehemently. As a Kamala voter who wants the Democratic Party to have success in the future, the most dignified thing to do here would be not only to release the autopsy but to point highlights at the dirtiest of the laundry that gets aired out in the process. When one fails, there's no dignity in hiding or obfuscating the failure. Dignity is in owning the failure in a way that makes it clear that the most important thing to you about the failure is your wrongdoing or errors that caused the failure, to the extent that you welcome any and all humiliation that public ownership of that failure brings you.
If Harris's 2028 POTUS run's viability is dependent on the dirty laundry of her 2024 campaign not being public, then may her 2028 POTUS run not be viable, for the sake of the success of the Democratic party.
The issue I see with the autopsy is its unlikely to be helpful. There are a few ways it could go. It could be like the RNC Mitt Romney autopsy, which was nonsense corporate donor catering. Embrace immigration, lower taxes, reform entitlements, etc. The Trump campaign rejected basically every recommendation and won.
So what ways did the DNC actually take the autopsy? I only think there are a few ways they'd actually take it:
I don't think either direction would actually be a good evaluation of what happened, and would not help Democrats improve their chances.
More options
Context Copy link
Except in a realpolitik way it doesn't make sense to release it. If I'm in the DNC and want the party to have success in the future, the best situation is to move on entirely from anything that had to do with Biden. There are plenty of younger politicians out there without any of the political baggage that comes with being tied to an unpopular president and losing bid. If they release it now it's news for a week, only political junkies pay attention to it, and a year from now when people start announcing their candidacies the whole thing is yesterday's news.
If you really think that Harris candidacy is a threat to the party, then you tell her not to run with the implicit threat that if she does then it may get leaked at an inopportune time. If she doesn't announce then it never sees the light of day. If she does, then she isn't a team player and they won't mind throwing her under the bus. If it's leaked and she wins the nomination anyway, then she's a stronger candidate than anyone thought and she deserves to have it.
More options
Context Copy link
If there were a noticible portion of the population who were even capable of this, the world would probably have a lot fewer topics for this thread, and fewer problems at all. It requires a focus on something other than the Self that is rarely seen, and not particularly valued in our society. I've felt this way about things that really matter to me. Letting down the people I love. And then only sometimes; I quickly return to Me.
Assuming there are at least some people who accept personal responisibility with this depth regularly, they'd never be allowed anywhere near the reigns of power.
More options
Context Copy link
Do you have any idea how rare this sort of psychological self-awareness is? You are nothing like representative of pretty much any major movement that's ever existed. That's true of more or less each of us here.
The masses of humanity don't have anything like that kind of mental horsepower or internal philosophical integrity. We throw the word 'tribe' around for a reason. Politics is generally irrational and votes come through stoking subconscious emotional responses. Under that rubric, admitting one's side was wrong is generally devastating. People want to be on the side of success, not failure.
Try instead "the process [electoral college] is flawed"; that has some legs. Or, you know what would be even better? "They stole the election from us."
Now we're cooking with democracy.
I don't think this requires psychological self-awareness. It only requires self-interest. It doesn't take someone particularly self-aware to notice that, when someone fails spectacularly and then tries to hide it or ignore it or otherwise try to minimize it, this lowers their esteem in the eyes of people who aren't already predisposed to liking them. Or the opposite, that someone who takes full ownership of their failures, in a way that credibly signals that they're not doing so for the purpose of image, tends to have their esteem raised in the eyes of people who don't particularly like them but are open to the possibility of liking them.
I do get that the
marketvoter-base can stayirrationaltribal longer thanyou can stay solventthe next election cycle, but also, if my side decides that embracing tribalism over responsibility is fine, then that substantially lowers my ability to believe that my side is actually better than the other side. The entire and only reason my side is better than the other side is because we actually did and do the hard work of finding our errors and correcting them, and the only way to credibly do that is to, again, be so much more concerned with correcting one's faults than concerned with one's image to others that one welcomes any humiliation that follows from highlighting one's faults.I work in a very regulated industry that places a massive emphasis on responsibility and owning and learning from mistakes. It has been a horrendous struggle to get people to not run screaming any time there's a problem and a fact finding analysis.
I can only imagine it's a hundred times worse for something like politics rather than engineering.
Of course. You're asking them to not be defensive, to show their belly. And instinctively they know that's asking to get stabbed. And no matter how much talk there is about responsibility and owning and learning from mistakes (or "blameless postmortems" or whatever the buzzword is for this)... sometimes someone's going to get stabbed in the belly.
There may have been a very significant disconnect between senior management and the ICs over "proportion of these investigations that do in fact result in someone being stabbed in the belly, or indeed whether the purpose actually is fact-finding and improvement or just an excuse to stab someone in the belly..."
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I hope she runs and gets curbstomped in a 3-to-1 blowout.
If that's going to happen, it will happen in the primary. And I wouldn't find it that surprising in the primary.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's interesting, since Pod Save America did have Harris campaign people on in the wake of the failed campaign, and they all pretty much cried over the mean ol' GOP having all these rich donors! and a prepared campaign! while they only had mere days and whatever they could find down the back of the sofa cushions as funding. They had all done everything perfectly right and nothing was their fault, it was a mystery why it all failed except of course racism sexism MAGA (you know the drill).
So it would seem even the fan clubs are waking up to "hey, what's going on and is it possible we could indeed mess up the midterms?"
More options
Context Copy link
I was surprised to learn that this man is only 52.
More options
Context Copy link
They are seemingly not willing to release the 'autopsy' because it's too divisive, and because Harris is making a second run, so they can't throw her under the bus.
Whilst Ken Martin claims there was no smoking gun in the 'autopsy', there were already signs that there were fundamental problems between the base and the DNC on the topic of Gaza.
Whilst that source is obviously biased, I don't think it's an envious position to be a small z zionist in the Democratic party at the moment. Which is what most of the leadership ostensibly is. Being quiet on the topic of Gaza isn't enough anymore. But they still have donors and personal loyalty towards Israel. Feels like they're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
On the topic of anti-zionism within the Democrat base, the louder grassroots elements all seem very intent on their opposition to Israel. It's hard to find a single left of center voice that isn't explicitly anti-zionist or anti-Israel. And when they aren't, they get attacked for it by the base. It's a barometer of sorts, at least where I live. If you are not demonstrating the correct position on the topic of mass bombing of Palestinians by Israel, you are the outgroup. Trump hysteria has seemingly given way to Gaza. Especially with women.
To that extent there's a small scale civil war happening where otherwise diligent lefties are feeling the weight of the Zionist lobby. The marginalization of BDS has been a thing for a while, so I'm sure the DNC can shrug some of this off in time for elections and animate the base with something else. But for that to be feasible one really feels like the Israel-led humanitarian disaster in Gaza needs to end sooner rather than later.
I keep waiting for the glory days of the Democrats to come back. Hillary and Harris were a humiliating spectacle of self indulgence and greed. Biden felt like the last representative of Democrat competency, just on life support with a crack addict son. And insofar as they were the choices on display, I thought the Democrats just had a candidate issue. But maybe that issue is just downstream of one too many contradictions like Gaza that gum the machine up to a point where they just... can't even vet a candidate.
To give Ken Martin some leeway, there's probably an analog for every issue like Gaza within the Democrat base. The 'autopsy' probably just showed that every identity wants their piece of the pie to be bigger, to some extent. But it feels like Gaza has given certain demographics within the party, especially white men and women, a special cause to put their energy behind that's especially divisive for the establishment. It might just be one ball too many for the DNC to juggle.
Gaza will fade soon enough. Go back in the flag Rolodex. In five years, you'll see a social media account with Ukraine and Palestinian flags and remember.....
Given social norms in the parts of Ukraine that stand to gain in the next few years(the Nazi-sympathizing tradcath part is the part that isn't a bombed out ruin), I suspect that Ukraine will become much less popular with the left after winning the war(which they're currently doing).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not entirely sure she is, she does seem to be dropping hints but is anyone picking them up? Though I'd love to see her and Gavin fighting over who gets the nomination, then Harris trying to get someone with a pulse agree to be her VP in the wake of Tim Walz and her memoir 🤣
More options
Context Copy link
I refuse to believe Gaza was a serious issue. There were not enough Dearborns to impact the election. Not that the Israel issue isn't seriously divisive (perhaps within both parties, soon) but "it's the economy stupid" is usually a good explanation for things.
Internal divisions hurt political parties. If the party is divided about an issue normie voters do care about, it makes it look like they don't know what they will do if elected. If the party is divided about an issue normie voters don't care about (like Israel-Palestine), it makes then look like out-of-touch political obsessives. If the party is divided about personalities with no obvious political valence, it makes them look incompetent.
Normie voters in some Democratic strongholds DO care about Israel-Palestine. They could lose my area of New Jersey if they lean too hard to the pro-Palestine side.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As a registered independent I can't say much that the DNC would listen to, but that sounds like a fantastic reason to release the autopsy, throw her under the bus, and run it back and forth a couple times. There's not many plausible candidates that could do worse- maybe Warren? But I'd think she'll sit out for age.
It's an odd thing. Throughout the many lefty podcasts and interviews one can watch on the net, Harris feels like a ghost. She just isn't talked about. I genuinely don't remember anyone paying her a compliment or talking about her qualities as a leader or whatever.
On the flipside, when someone has something negative to say, she's usually only there acting as a springboard to launch the more radical lefty commentators into rants against the establishment or the futility of the Democratic party and 'electoral politics' and whatever else.
Being thrown under the bus would practically be the only role she is suited for. A not so memorable character that no one could really get behind. But hey, she got 75 million votes last time so...
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link