Post inspired by a couple of news articles:
-A politico interview with Stephanie Murphy (A response to this interview is the main picture), which starts by talking about passing something during the 2017/18 term and quickly goes into blaming the usual activists/lefties/etc. for various problems. Included in this is calling activist groups “extensions of the administration” (This would be the Trump and Biden administrations), and, like a lot of people, effectively lies about the history of the BBB/BIB by treating them as always separate, instead of originally a single bill.
(I haven’t linked to these politico articles because I don’t want to feed them views, hopefully other links show it is there)
-Another politico thing (referenced in this post): A Pac associated with Conor Lamb found him 30% behind in the PA senate primary, doing worse against one of the Republican candidates, and suggests attacking him to “make people see him as the liberal he is” by “supports far left policies like *names some progressive stuff* and other things along those lines. Lamb campaign spokesperson denies this, but does say some similar attacks on Fetterman.
Politico does like to stir shit up from what I’ve seen, however, similar comments elsewhere in internet politics have been going all year. And I’d assume an interview with a politician means they did in fact say what they’ said (Murphy was a pain in the ass during BBB negotiations according to other news.)
So how is this like Putin? It’s not just Putin, really, the same pattern can happen in businesses, abusive families, small organizations, or all sorts of other situations where people get power and uses it/maintains it abusively. But Putin and Ukraine are in the news right now (with good coverage on this site), so it’s a great example to use.
Step 1: Assume you own some other group, get angry when said group tries to improve its situation by changing said ownership
Why did Putin start the war? Rebuilding the Soviet Union/big Russia, control the countries around him, goals along these lines are clearly the main reason, viewing Ukraine as a natural part of Russia. Ukrainians went against this by voting in politicians more favorable to the European Union.
In US politics, there’ a pattern I’ve called the Stereotypical Housewife model in a previous post about the BBB/BIB. This is a mental model where:
-The more Leftish things you support, or associated with basic competence/data/scientific work/etc., the more you are expected to support others, put others first, by friendly, by a team player, work in the background to keep everything running, be self sacrificing...you get the idea.
-The more right wing things you support, the more you deserve power
-More leftish groups should not be allowed to outright win anything.
In the country right now, there are lots of people who want to slow down global warming as much as possible, clean up pollution, provide better health insurance, reduce inequality, reduce police violence, and a number of similar changes. These are your progressives. Recently, a lot of such people have been elected and gained power, and put these goals into action. This includes pushing to achieve goals in congress, and challenging other politicians in primaries.
A lot of other people hate this, these people are the moderates. To these people, its a problem that:
-People ask for student debt to be relived. People who want leftish things are supposed to selflessly show up to poll without asking for things, apparently. Unlike any other political group.
-”Trying to take over the party”. Apparently, running in elections and seeking political power in a system that is supposed to be open is a bad thing.
-Using the power to get desired bills. See the Murphy interview above. Leads to lots of complaints about leftish people not compromising enough, or “not listening to other people”, or being rigid.
-Proposing/pushing for policies or other goals. Notice how Medicare for all, for example, originally a slogan used to associate a popular programs with passing a single payer health insurance system, quickly became, in pundit speak, unpopular, impractical, lots of nitpicks about actual Medicare (without following up by asking for better Medicare, I notice), a crazy idea, you know the drill.
-Standard arguments for moderates are more about social power/personal identity than about being a better program, or better politicians. People just “aren’t liberal’ or “are moderates”, moderates as the Real Base™ of the Party (black voters is most common for this, but sometimes older people, suburban people, or generic “working class” get used.) electing more leftish types will scare the Republicans, moderates represent their districts (the idea that leftish people also represent their districts gets ignored.)...We’ve all read them. There is some “practical” and “actually pass bills” and “better at elections” arguments mixed in, however...
Step 2: On the (metaphorical) battlefield, prove to be incompetent. Corruption is a major cause.
Putin was seen by a lot of people as a strong, scary leader, controlling a powerful military (for good or bad depends on your personal politics). Than he invaded Ukraine. One of the world’s three superpowers is now heroically fighting in a conventional war* stalemate against a country with a third the population and tenth the economy. A big reasons is many of their supplies fell off the back of trucks: these trucks are now stressed by carrying things for real. To some people, this wasn’t a surprise if you knew where to look, previous wars provided some example. (lazerpig loop, if you want something from a random youtube guy.)
When it comes to moderates vs. progs, the progs have the better proposals if you want to live in a healthier, better run, more successful country. Replacing some police jobs with other responders, building lots of renewable energy, actually raising taxes to help pay for things, a number of health care systems with more government involvement (tight regulation, single payer, etc.), these things generally work well and do a cheaper and/or better job than other options. But the usual argument is that this is all a pipe dream, and practical moderates are the ones to win elections and pass bills.
And than we have BBB/BIB. Starting as a big reconstruction bill including everything, because the filibuster is special and needs protecting. Than moderates want a split into two bills, to get some bipartisanship. Progs demand all bills go together to ensure they both get voted on. Some, like Murphy, get angry at this, and in various forms want the BIB only passed first. and, we all know the story here, BIB passed and Manchin decided to just shut the whole thing down. And than voting rights just gets voted down, and child tax credit cancelled, and COVID funding and school meals get dropped, and maybe some more I’ve forgotten.
Which probably helped lose the big elections we all know about, Virginia plus a bunch of downballot ones. Pick as bog standard a democrat as you can, have him run a standard campaign and lose in what was going towards a strongly blue state.
(Conor Lamb might be another of these. It turns out he does about the same, or worse, in his district than other people running. These tweets show worse over and over, but let’s be generous and say cherry picked or other factors, still not an amazing election machine.)
More generally, moderates don’t seem to realize that they are in a country with lots of different groups of people, all of whom have some votes, and thus deserve attention. Biden’s campaign missed a lot of latino stuff, which people noticed in public while it was happening. Rural areas, ironically, seem to lack resources from what I’ve read here. Younger people are an obvious problem with the resistance to stuff like debt relief.
Both times, you can follow the money: Manchin and the filibusters get a lot from coals and other lobbying stuff, “consultants” who grab a lot of TV and do little of it get plenty of blame
Lots of people fall flat on their face here, so its time for:
Step 3: Blame Everyone else, Destroy the thing you supposedly want to control
Putin’s invasion failed to grab Ukraine in a few days, is stuck in stalemate, and the entire world is reacting to Russian weakness. There’s only one clear plan to respond. First, threaten/fire/purge some officials who work for you. Second, start destroying Ukrainian cities and causing a lot of death and destruction. An intact country would be better, but, well, what can you do. Third, scrounge around as hard as possible and put your citizens through sanctions and a draft, and lean hard on loyalty.
Moderates got the bipartisanship, the candidates, the strategy for passing the big bill. And fell flat. So time for that go to strategy, complain about progressives. The progs wanting both bill together to make sure they passed shows a lack of trust, of course Manchin will pass it. (few months later) Nope, never said that, they should have just passed one bill, other wasn’t happening. And the squad voted against giving money to their communities for some reason. Meanwhile, activists must be losing races with Latinx, or being too open on immigration, according to pundits, this is obviously why McAuliffe lost.
But in cases where progressives (or weird mixed like Fetterman) are doing well and moderates are doing poorly, time to bring out the big guns: Republican style talking points. Lamb’s PAC, above, tried out “Fetterman is liberal”, “calls himself socialist”, “takeover of government health care”. In other places, progs are “gentrifiers”, candidates like McGrath here run as supporting Republicans. Other occasional comments ask if the Northeast really represents democrats, or how certain things “only work in big ciities”.
Now, I’ve been aware of politics for some time now, and I’ve noticed a few things. Republicans used “liberal” as a bad word in 2004, in 2008 “socialist” meant “what Fox calls anything any democrat wants to do.” Cities and New England are strongly blue regions (Cities + Nonwhite + similar to New England cover almost all dem voting areas), more educated people also lean more Dem. Republicans like a story of “liberal elitists vs. Real America”. Or how many candidates tried running against Obamacare, which made very little difference anyway.
If you want Dems to win, repeating these talking points of a bad, bad, idiotic, horrible idea: you want to tell stories about how New England/Educated/Cities/etc. are the best people in the country, and you should vote like them. Or how the leftier/more liberal side is powerful and deserves more control. And you sure as heck don’t attack other democrats or things democrats have done, because it repeats the idea that dems overall are bad and makes elections harder.
Using Republican attacks combines
What’s the point of all this?
The point of all this is obviously “support more progressives”. Primary season is on right now, consult elections news for available options. And defend blue leaning demographics, while avoiding Republican talking points.
Anti-leftish groups of all sorts have just been angry over the past year, all the way from Putin doing his Russia thing to Republicans going nuts on anti gay and anti-trans and critical theory race (yes, that’s deliberate) to the latinx panic among pundits. There’s something in the air, some sort of anger at losing power or cultural changes or some mashed up soup along these lines, and moderate democrats are a part of it.
Anti-leftish groups are supported because they supposedly as Strong and Tough™ and Winners who make Tough Decisions™. In a self fulfilling setup, lots of people support anti-leftish groups against others, which does in fact make them more powerful, which they use to attack opponents to look power, and the cycle continues. Any chance to break that cycle, to make the weaker group look weak, is something to take advantage of.
And also: