… is the title of an essay by Rux Teixeira in The LiberalPatriot. I am not familiar with either the site or the author, but his thesis and argument strike meas worth thinking about. It is a fact that Democrats have lost ground with working class voters,and that reclaiming that territory is vital to the long-term success of the party. Teixeira advocates that Democrats reset their “brand” by embracing the following values:
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America is not perfect but it is good to be patriotic and proud of the country.
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Discrimination and racism are bad but they are not the cause of all disparities in American society.
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No one is completely without bias but calling all white people racists who benefit from white privilege and American society a white supremacist society is not right or fair.
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America benefits from the presence of immigrants and no immigrant, even if illegal, should be mistreated. But border security is still important, as is an enforceable system that fairly decides who can enter the country.
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Police misconduct and brutality against people of any race is wrong and we need to reform police conduct and recruitment. But crime is a real problem so more and better policing is needed for public safety. That cannot be provided by “defunding the police”.
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There are underlying differences between men and women but discrimination on the basis of gender is wrong.
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There are basically two genders but people who want to live as a gender different from their biological sex should have that right and not be discriminated against. However, there are issues around child consent to transitioning and participation in women’s sports that are complicated and not settled.
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Racial achievement gaps are bad and we should seek to close them. However, they are not due just to racism and standards of high achievement should be maintained for people of all races.
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Language policing has gone too far; by and large, people should be able to express their views without fear of sanction by employer, school, institution or government. Good faith should be assumed, not bad faith.
Teixeira seems to be arguing that Democrats in safely blue districts (1) come across as “woke” (i.e., far left) liberals out of touch with the realities of everyday workers’ concerns, and (2) that these are the ones setting the agenda and speak for the party as a whole. There is a lot of room for argument and differences of opinion on the issues Teixeira raises,and certainly a great deal more nuanced than he could have conceivably addressed in an article of this sort. And yet, even though I identify as someone about as liberal as they come, each of Teixeira’s bullet points strike a chord within me.
More to the point, it seems to me that the Democratic party could use these points of view to frame 90% of their policies and positions.