I don't know, I'm kind of tired of being told we (democrats) have to tailor our messaging so as not to give Trumpists something to lie about. They are going to lie about it anyway.
Cheap shot- when is Bulwark going to get a non-white contributor? Once again, your words speak to only the electorate you’re interested in, and this is my biggest problem with Bulwark. You all want to talk about how Biden should frame race issues, but he had ALL kinds of political groups and organizations hankering for change, some more woke than others. Bulwark can’t find one, non- white moderate to give their perspective? My best friend is young, black and gay and told me he’s bringing his Latinx friend to a Zoom thing I was doing. He has no issue whatsoever about using the term Latinx and neither did his friend. What do I tell those people? Hey! Don’t use “Latinx” because old people find it uncomfortable and it might lose elections? Yeah, I’m not doing that anytime soon. I still support Bulwark, but I will always continue to have a hard time listening to y’all commentary on race when, frankly, neither you or I can truly understand what it’s like to be of another race in this country. You also ignore the fact that all those working class voters had children who all became educated and moved to urban centers where they now have high paying jobs and will only support candidates that are “woke.” Maybe the election of Eric Adams and other moderates might help, but I doubt it. These young people are not going backwards, and I think the only way forward are new talking points that can resonate with everyone and get out of the culture war. If I were a candidate, I’d call out culture war bullshit and say let the culture warriors fight themselves, here’s a plan to ensure housing can’t be used a money laundering. Here’s a plan to create new international building programs & partnerships to counter China’s influence. Crime is economic, let’s create revenue and stop fighting each other. Any talking point a Dem has apologizing for it’s left wing isn’t going to stop a GOP attack. We need to stop retreating and fight this war with new tactics and new talking points, not apologizing for the people in cities who are funding many Democratic candidates in other states.
I am a non-White swing district voter. In my opinion, today's Morning Shots highlights a few good suggestions that the WH comm people can use to make moderate voters comfortable with voting Democrat. We know how average voters do not think beyond their daily grinds and routines (and they still make up most of the electorate), so frequently communicating on how their needs can be met is imperative. I am glad my representative (a hard-fought flip from Red to Blue seat and one of GOP's targets) says that schools should be the last to close and first to re-open on an almost daily basis.
Good morning Charlie and the rest of my Bulwark+ family!
I have been patiently reading and listening The Bulwark pieces this week and I am a little shocked that after all the pleading for Joe Biden and the Democrats to start fixing their messaging that there has been very little, if any, commentary been given to the voting rights speeches the President has delivered this week.
Instead there has been a bit of a doubling down on finding stuff about the Democrats to complain about. I mean even in today's Morning Shots when you talk about voting you completely ignored the speeches Biden has already given.
Joe Manchin still gets praised even though he, and Sinema, are two of the principal reasons there are so many "Democrats in Disarray" stories in the press.
Build Back Better problems? Joe Manchin won't even support the bill he basically wrote. How can you negotiate with a guy who even disagrees with himself? Progressives and the Administration have bent over backwards to give Manchin what he says he wants. But when they give it to him he moves the goalposts and still refuses to support the bill. Manchin refuses to take "Yes" for an answer.
Voting rights and fixing the Electoral Count Act? Joe Manchin refuses to even consider adjusting Senate rules to allow a vote. Not to mention every GD Republican refusing to support any of the measures. Sure, there's a bit of light when it comes to maybe getting Republican support for amending the ECA but enough to overcome the eventual filibuster?
You guys go on and on about giving us the hard truths. How about giving us at least some acknowledgment when the Democrats start taking some of your advice instead of blithely moving on to find the next thing to complain about?
I get this is a center Right publication and that's the viewpoint that is mainly communicated. I am a very liberal Democrat (some may say a bit Socialistic) so maybe I need to reconfigure my own expectations.
The Latinx stuff is a Woke solution in search of a problem that white saviors have foisted upon Latinos who really were never aggrieved in the first place, and that "intersects" (another term the Woke Illuminati love throwing around) with the faculty lounge fixation on gender, since it's attempting to eliminate grammatical gender from Latino.
The highly educated far left, with all of its postmodern circular gibberish, is incomprehensible to 90% of the country, and Democrats would be wise to keep it in the faculty lounge, or even better, as Charlie suggests, call it out and condemn it. The stuff with land recognition, too, or Mandela Barnes telling voters in Wisconsin that America was built by slaves, is not helpful. Wisconsin was built by slaves? The appeal of that message to blue collar Wisconsin voters is right around zero. Also, it's obviously not true, though there are about 5 Democratic voters in Wisconsin, all white, who will agree with it whole-heartedly.
The far Right is completely out of touch with reality, but the far Left has its own issues. I'd like to see Republicans call out their whackos, because they're dangerous, but Democrats need to call out their own, too, because they're stupid, and because they help Republicans win elections.
Charlie, you've been around long enough to know that the Sister Souljah moment wasn't actually about policy. It was about showing suburbanites whose side he was on. It was also entirely about narrative. So with that in mind, I ask; what's the point of doing four of them? Is this just a framing device for a set of policy prescriptions? Because if so, I think the frame detracts more than it adds. If it's not a frame, I'm flabbergasted; "Joe Biden should fix all his problems by lighting up every single fault line his party has." This is not just pundit brain; this is pundit galaxy brain. If democracy depends on the coalition holding, maybe destroying the coalition is a bad idea?
Also, apropos of nothing, I want to note that the original Sister Souljah moment was actually pretty gross. You had a national environment where lynching jokes and powerful people singing about how "old times the are not forgotten" were still given a pass but similar jokes and hyperbole from obscure musicians became the subject of two minutes hate. And woe betide anyone who asked a Republican why they tolerated that garbage, because "how dare you imply I'm racist?" Maybe if you folks had been a bit better about actually noting racism in your own side, you wouldn't have gotten run out when your electorate got so soft to criticism that even civil disagreement felt like an attack on their personhood. Just saying, you can't solve a problem until you know where it came from, and I'm increasingly not convinced you do.
Talk about solutions above. Everyday. All day. Every social media post. Flood the zone with twitter messages. Every time Trump does an interview. Biden, you talk about that interview. The same day. The second after. The race started months ago.
Off topic, but one of my favorite parts of the comments on Charlie's and JVL's posts is seeing the other substacks that the commenters are subscribed to. It generally gives me a window of context into their comments... Cheers!
There appears to be a fundamental cognitive disconnect between Charlie's column today and his column yesterday. Yesterday, it was all about Biden/the Democrats not "meeting the moment" to address the most important question of our times in safeguarding democracy because of their insistence on addressing voting rights/ballot access in addition to issues of how votes are counted and certified. Implicit in Charlie's argument then was that concerns over Voter ID were, if not outright invalid or irrelevant, the petty interest of a group but not immediately necessary. As I noted then, it is easy to be dismissive of issues or concerns that do not impact you nor are ever likely to do such as ballot access as a upper middle-class, usually white and male voter. Yet today, Charlie is here to tell us that Biden needs to be forceful in addressing the narrow and petty, albeit legitimate to one degree or another, concerns that are held by that very group that is generally dismissive of threats to voting access rights, because THESE concerns do impact them, or are at least believed to do so. But none of education, crime, border security, language, gender roles/choice/expression, nor any of the other items listed by Charlie or Texiera address the alleged single greatest threat to American democracy; instead, it is a grab bag of interests and concerns of a slice of the electorate. It is only championed as "necessary" and a "must do" because the author(s) find themselves in that particular slice.
This is simply the Pundit's Fallacy where Charlie is projecting what he WANTS in almost all its particulars as what a politician SHOULD and MUST do as the only viable path to political success. Further, I think Charlie compounds this by essentially adopting a position that is "everyone who is NOT ME will have to sacrifice some/most of their preferred outcomes because the existential threat is too great, but ALL of mine must be met", with the implicit threat that if not all of his/those like-minded would be justified in letting the whole thing burn if they are not met. In short, virtue and self-denial for thee but not for me.
Since I seem to be in the minority in thinking the NY law is an entirely reasonable one, here's an only slightly crazy idea:
Democrats should respond to this by proposing a Constitutional amendment that will explicitly bar non-citizens from voting at the state or federal level. Talk up how not imposing this at the local level is in keeping with conservative principles and federalism. Remind them that it's only the law in NY because the people of NY voted for it, and they're allowed to run their city just like the people in St. Trumpsville, Magazona are allowed to run theirs. Dare Republicans to oppose it.
This would cut off any talk of slippery slopes, and it would have the added bonus of exercising our entirely atrophied amendment process (which we could really stand to have running again).
I tend to think we're just screwed given the inability of democrats to speak with even close to one voice. Everywhere I turn it's just Chaotic. The only hope I have right now is that Trump will not run for whatever reasons.
I see the Jan 6th committee as being too little, too late and it will be ineffective in gaining attention in the 202323 election and then will be disbanded. I can only hope Trump is found guilty in New York. If Garland is acting, he has a funny was of sending that message and whatever he does will be blunted by the 2022 group. Harris is not an effective candidate for the presidency even though her skills in the senate were impressive, The supreme Ct? ICK. COVID, double ICK. Infrastructure? No. The Climate? No.
However, Art. IV, §4 states that "the United States shall guarantee to every State... a Republican Form of Government...." That has typically been read to mean a government chosen by electoral majorities. It arguably requires at least some branch of the federal government to insure against electoral coups in individual states. BTW, the SCOTUS has generally refused to involve itself in disputes under the clause.
I don't agree with your 4 points to re-set, because for the past 2 years and probably at least the next year the only thing that really matters has been and will be COVID. Fix that issue and everything starts to seem just a little better.
However, I do want to thank you for the podcast yesterday about Civil War. This was a very interesting and disturbing discussion. One of the best ones you have had yet. Thanks again, I'll be thinking this over a lot in the coming days.
I don't know, I'm kind of tired of being told we (democrats) have to tailor our messaging so as not to give Trumpists something to lie about. They are going to lie about it anyway.
Cheap shot- when is Bulwark going to get a non-white contributor? Once again, your words speak to only the electorate you’re interested in, and this is my biggest problem with Bulwark. You all want to talk about how Biden should frame race issues, but he had ALL kinds of political groups and organizations hankering for change, some more woke than others. Bulwark can’t find one, non- white moderate to give their perspective? My best friend is young, black and gay and told me he’s bringing his Latinx friend to a Zoom thing I was doing. He has no issue whatsoever about using the term Latinx and neither did his friend. What do I tell those people? Hey! Don’t use “Latinx” because old people find it uncomfortable and it might lose elections? Yeah, I’m not doing that anytime soon. I still support Bulwark, but I will always continue to have a hard time listening to y’all commentary on race when, frankly, neither you or I can truly understand what it’s like to be of another race in this country. You also ignore the fact that all those working class voters had children who all became educated and moved to urban centers where they now have high paying jobs and will only support candidates that are “woke.” Maybe the election of Eric Adams and other moderates might help, but I doubt it. These young people are not going backwards, and I think the only way forward are new talking points that can resonate with everyone and get out of the culture war. If I were a candidate, I’d call out culture war bullshit and say let the culture warriors fight themselves, here’s a plan to ensure housing can’t be used a money laundering. Here’s a plan to create new international building programs & partnerships to counter China’s influence. Crime is economic, let’s create revenue and stop fighting each other. Any talking point a Dem has apologizing for it’s left wing isn’t going to stop a GOP attack. We need to stop retreating and fight this war with new tactics and new talking points, not apologizing for the people in cities who are funding many Democratic candidates in other states.
I am a non-White swing district voter. In my opinion, today's Morning Shots highlights a few good suggestions that the WH comm people can use to make moderate voters comfortable with voting Democrat. We know how average voters do not think beyond their daily grinds and routines (and they still make up most of the electorate), so frequently communicating on how their needs can be met is imperative. I am glad my representative (a hard-fought flip from Red to Blue seat and one of GOP's targets) says that schools should be the last to close and first to re-open on an almost daily basis.
Good morning Charlie and the rest of my Bulwark+ family!
I have been patiently reading and listening The Bulwark pieces this week and I am a little shocked that after all the pleading for Joe Biden and the Democrats to start fixing their messaging that there has been very little, if any, commentary been given to the voting rights speeches the President has delivered this week.
Instead there has been a bit of a doubling down on finding stuff about the Democrats to complain about. I mean even in today's Morning Shots when you talk about voting you completely ignored the speeches Biden has already given.
Joe Manchin still gets praised even though he, and Sinema, are two of the principal reasons there are so many "Democrats in Disarray" stories in the press.
Build Back Better problems? Joe Manchin won't even support the bill he basically wrote. How can you negotiate with a guy who even disagrees with himself? Progressives and the Administration have bent over backwards to give Manchin what he says he wants. But when they give it to him he moves the goalposts and still refuses to support the bill. Manchin refuses to take "Yes" for an answer.
Voting rights and fixing the Electoral Count Act? Joe Manchin refuses to even consider adjusting Senate rules to allow a vote. Not to mention every GD Republican refusing to support any of the measures. Sure, there's a bit of light when it comes to maybe getting Republican support for amending the ECA but enough to overcome the eventual filibuster?
You guys go on and on about giving us the hard truths. How about giving us at least some acknowledgment when the Democrats start taking some of your advice instead of blithely moving on to find the next thing to complain about?
I get this is a center Right publication and that's the viewpoint that is mainly communicated. I am a very liberal Democrat (some may say a bit Socialistic) so maybe I need to reconfigure my own expectations.
The Latinx stuff is a Woke solution in search of a problem that white saviors have foisted upon Latinos who really were never aggrieved in the first place, and that "intersects" (another term the Woke Illuminati love throwing around) with the faculty lounge fixation on gender, since it's attempting to eliminate grammatical gender from Latino.
The highly educated far left, with all of its postmodern circular gibberish, is incomprehensible to 90% of the country, and Democrats would be wise to keep it in the faculty lounge, or even better, as Charlie suggests, call it out and condemn it. The stuff with land recognition, too, or Mandela Barnes telling voters in Wisconsin that America was built by slaves, is not helpful. Wisconsin was built by slaves? The appeal of that message to blue collar Wisconsin voters is right around zero. Also, it's obviously not true, though there are about 5 Democratic voters in Wisconsin, all white, who will agree with it whole-heartedly.
The far Right is completely out of touch with reality, but the far Left has its own issues. I'd like to see Republicans call out their whackos, because they're dangerous, but Democrats need to call out their own, too, because they're stupid, and because they help Republicans win elections.
Charlie, you've been around long enough to know that the Sister Souljah moment wasn't actually about policy. It was about showing suburbanites whose side he was on. It was also entirely about narrative. So with that in mind, I ask; what's the point of doing four of them? Is this just a framing device for a set of policy prescriptions? Because if so, I think the frame detracts more than it adds. If it's not a frame, I'm flabbergasted; "Joe Biden should fix all his problems by lighting up every single fault line his party has." This is not just pundit brain; this is pundit galaxy brain. If democracy depends on the coalition holding, maybe destroying the coalition is a bad idea?
Also, apropos of nothing, I want to note that the original Sister Souljah moment was actually pretty gross. You had a national environment where lynching jokes and powerful people singing about how "old times the are not forgotten" were still given a pass but similar jokes and hyperbole from obscure musicians became the subject of two minutes hate. And woe betide anyone who asked a Republican why they tolerated that garbage, because "how dare you imply I'm racist?" Maybe if you folks had been a bit better about actually noting racism in your own side, you wouldn't have gotten run out when your electorate got so soft to criticism that even civil disagreement felt like an attack on their personhood. Just saying, you can't solve a problem until you know where it came from, and I'm increasingly not convinced you do.
Talk about solutions above. Everyday. All day. Every social media post. Flood the zone with twitter messages. Every time Trump does an interview. Biden, you talk about that interview. The same day. The second after. The race started months ago.
Off topic, but one of my favorite parts of the comments on Charlie's and JVL's posts is seeing the other substacks that the commenters are subscribed to. It generally gives me a window of context into their comments... Cheers!
There appears to be a fundamental cognitive disconnect between Charlie's column today and his column yesterday. Yesterday, it was all about Biden/the Democrats not "meeting the moment" to address the most important question of our times in safeguarding democracy because of their insistence on addressing voting rights/ballot access in addition to issues of how votes are counted and certified. Implicit in Charlie's argument then was that concerns over Voter ID were, if not outright invalid or irrelevant, the petty interest of a group but not immediately necessary. As I noted then, it is easy to be dismissive of issues or concerns that do not impact you nor are ever likely to do such as ballot access as a upper middle-class, usually white and male voter. Yet today, Charlie is here to tell us that Biden needs to be forceful in addressing the narrow and petty, albeit legitimate to one degree or another, concerns that are held by that very group that is generally dismissive of threats to voting access rights, because THESE concerns do impact them, or are at least believed to do so. But none of education, crime, border security, language, gender roles/choice/expression, nor any of the other items listed by Charlie or Texiera address the alleged single greatest threat to American democracy; instead, it is a grab bag of interests and concerns of a slice of the electorate. It is only championed as "necessary" and a "must do" because the author(s) find themselves in that particular slice.
This is simply the Pundit's Fallacy where Charlie is projecting what he WANTS in almost all its particulars as what a politician SHOULD and MUST do as the only viable path to political success. Further, I think Charlie compounds this by essentially adopting a position that is "everyone who is NOT ME will have to sacrifice some/most of their preferred outcomes because the existential threat is too great, but ALL of mine must be met", with the implicit threat that if not all of his/those like-minded would be justified in letting the whole thing burn if they are not met. In short, virtue and self-denial for thee but not for me.
I could hear those talking points in Biden's voice as I read them - well written.
Thanks so much for the Fauci video. Paul is a dispicable man. Fauci nailed it with the "donate" pic.
Since I seem to be in the minority in thinking the NY law is an entirely reasonable one, here's an only slightly crazy idea:
Democrats should respond to this by proposing a Constitutional amendment that will explicitly bar non-citizens from voting at the state or federal level. Talk up how not imposing this at the local level is in keeping with conservative principles and federalism. Remind them that it's only the law in NY because the people of NY voted for it, and they're allowed to run their city just like the people in St. Trumpsville, Magazona are allowed to run theirs. Dare Republicans to oppose it.
This would cut off any talk of slippery slopes, and it would have the added bonus of exercising our entirely atrophied amendment process (which we could really stand to have running again).
I tend to think we're just screwed given the inability of democrats to speak with even close to one voice. Everywhere I turn it's just Chaotic. The only hope I have right now is that Trump will not run for whatever reasons.
I see the Jan 6th committee as being too little, too late and it will be ineffective in gaining attention in the 202323 election and then will be disbanded. I can only hope Trump is found guilty in New York. If Garland is acting, he has a funny was of sending that message and whatever he does will be blunted by the 2022 group. Harris is not an effective candidate for the presidency even though her skills in the senate were impressive, The supreme Ct? ICK. COVID, double ICK. Infrastructure? No. The Climate? No.
Just everywhere I look is a disaster.
Re the ECA: it's probably worth anticipating some challenges to the Act's constitutionality in the first place. US Constitution Article II defines Congress's role in presidential elections very narrowly (§1¶3) and would appear not to authorize it actually to contest slates of electors.https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:e2e3d3b4-add5-3574-8dd9-0aea5a5185aa
However, Art. IV, §4 states that "the United States shall guarantee to every State... a Republican Form of Government...." That has typically been read to mean a government chosen by electoral majorities. It arguably requires at least some branch of the federal government to insure against electoral coups in individual states. BTW, the SCOTUS has generally refused to involve itself in disputes under the clause.
Charlie,
I don't agree with your 4 points to re-set, because for the past 2 years and probably at least the next year the only thing that really matters has been and will be COVID. Fix that issue and everything starts to seem just a little better.
However, I do want to thank you for the podcast yesterday about Civil War. This was a very interesting and disturbing discussion. One of the best ones you have had yet. Thanks again, I'll be thinking this over a lot in the coming days.
The idea that slavery did not build the national economy and thus build up places like Wisconsin is risible and ahistorical.