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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Teixeira: The Latest Messaging Brainstorm from Progressive Democrats

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

The Latest Messaging Brainstorm from Progressive Democrats.

Probably not gonna work either. I explain at The Liberal Patriot:

“There is a new entrant in the Democratic messaging sweepstakes: “inclusive populism”. The idea here is that Democrats may indeed be bleeding working class voters—points for at least recognizing the problem!—but the solution does not lie in any way with moving to the center on culturally-inflected issues like crime, immigration, race, gender and schooling. That would apparently not be “inclusive”.

Instead, as recounted in Blake Hounshell’s Times article on their initial gathering, the inclusive populists argue for turning it up to 11 on economic populism since “[Democrats] don’t fight hard enough for working-class people, and…aren’t tough enough on big, greedy corporations.” As Hounshell notes:

“The unmistakable tone of the event was a rebuke of the Democrats who have failed to squeeze more progressive policy wins out of their congressional majority over the last 18 months — and essentially, in the left’s telling, let their most conservative member, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, dictate the terms of their governing agenda.”

There are two big problems with this approach.”

Read the whole thing at The Liberal Patriot!

3 comments on “Teixeira: The Latest Messaging Brainstorm from Progressive Democrats

  1. Martin Lawford on

    “Inclusive populism” is the liberal equivalent of “compassionate conservatism.” It does not signify new policies, just a new slogan for the old policies. The voters will greet it with a yawn.

    Reply
  2. Watcher on

    Ah, so plutocratic, wishy-washy, games-playing, insincere Joe Manchin is Texeira’s idea of a candidate we should be endorsing. Thank you for the admission and the indication of how seriously you should be taken. Hopefully Manchin is being sincere in his recent support of WH proposals (the ones that Ruy told us we need to shut up and support in January 2021) and some things can be accomplished but there was a lot of unnecessary delays leading up to this point.

    In case memory fails, Democratic loses in 1994 and 2010 were enhanced by similar games-playing moderates. Both Independents and base voters wondered what the party could actually get down, and switched to the GOP or stayed home (respectively).

    I am willing to compromise to win but there are certain lines I won’t cross.

    Reply

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