I....feel so much of this I don't even know what to say with intelligence. Usually, I can dissect things point by point but I feel so much anger over that exact turn of events like you. Let me tell you how I saw it as a woman on the other side. I have always been with Bernie since 2015. I saw then that the progressive (and professional class) women around me would dismiss Bernie because of his supporters AND because of his style as a curmudgeonly white man, completely erasing his Jewishness. Any critique of Hillary I made got me the ire of mean girls who worked in NGOs, government, democratic politics, you name it. I was deep in that social world for a long time, and it was a cult. Progressive women form cults. Then with Warren, I saw how they couldn't handle the correct observation that Warren's supporters are mostly white, highly educated and wealthy. They saw that as an unfair critique, when it was merely a fact. IIRC Bernie's campaign had to apologize for observing reality. And then there was the accusation that Bernie said a woman couldn't be president which is in direct contravention of what he's said in the past, and I don't believe it. I feel like they made up a story to discredit him that was unfalsifiable, and that again is a standard female manner of fighting. Both female candidates' campaigns fought dirty and in the background exactly like women have evolved to do, and all in the name of feminism. God I'm all angry again....but I'm with you. I also want to write a follow up to your take.
Please send a follow-up if you do write one! Or we could back-and-forth on it, either way. It was such an infuriating double standard to see Bernie attacked for the supposed (though illusory) homogeneity of his supporters, while Warren supporters were virtually all, shall we say…of a type. What really got me worked up about the “a woman can’t win” accusation was that if anything like that ever escaped his lips, it seemed obvious to me that it was an expression of a very common sentiment among managerial class feminists: that they face an uphill climb. But Warrenites twisted it into some misogynistic thing about Bernie thinking women just weren’t up to the job. That primary season was a real breaking point for me. And watching the same people who’d nuked Bernie go on to nuke the entire liberal project just reinforced how hard we need to stop listening to these people.
From one Disaffected Democrat to another, cheers. I voted for Obama twice, Bernie twice… And Trump three times. I’ll assume you didn’t vote for the orange monster, but my anti-system leanings were enough to pull me over to the right once they were where the anti-system energy was at. I was enraged by how the party treated Bernie in 2016. In 2020 I was expecting it, plus I’d already crossed the aisle once to vote for Trump, so it didn’t hit me quite as hard. Also, I felt that Bernie in 2020 had sold out to the social justice people; I still voted for him, but he’d stopped talking quite as much about healthcare and workers and sprinkled in quite a bit more SJW cant (which by then I already found alienating), probably because those are the issues that Hillary had hammered him over the head with in 2016 and he understood which way the Democratic winds were blowing.
How did I get there? Well, Obama was the greatest political disappointment of my life, and I say this as someone who was so fervent about him that I spent six months working for his 2008 primary campaign in three different states. He talked up hope and change and delivered… The ACA, and a whole lot of business as usual. I think that this fact is actually hugely under-discussed when it comes to trying to parse the rise of Trump, probably because no one wants to speak badly of Obama. IMO, he’s our very own Angela Merkel, a man who was politically popular but represented the policy equivalent of a soporific and whose main legacy will probably be kicking the can down the road regarding several festering problems that shortly came to a head after he left office. His election and his initial popularity should have been an obvious sign that the electorate was ready for a real change from business as usual, given the outsider message he ran on. That he then governed as the ultimate insider is nothing less than a political tragedy, to say nothing of how in his second term he basically kickstarted the social justice insanity that peaked in 2020. And his unfortunate decision to bless Hillary’s coronation in 2016… Let’s just say that I think he’s more responsible than most for the rise of Trump and the political and regime crisis this precipitated.
Yeah, Obama criticism remains a can of worms I’ve been largely unwilling to open, but you’re spot on about his presidency. I liked, and still mostly like, his style. But he believed far too much in his own magnetism and in his skill as a conciliator. Republicans ate him for lunch and his eight years offered us no substantive policy legacy.
In a sense, somebody like Trump was inevitable. The system was always breakable, it just needed somebody willing to break it. I wish that had been Obama, but he passed on it. Now, we get the orange guy.
That's what I liked about Obama. He was, at heart, a socialist but, unlike most politicians, was sufficiently self aware that he recognized the limits of his influence, something that Trump and Sanders notably lack.
Obamacare allowed me to get decent insurance for my family without dropping a week's pay every month on a plan which had a deductible so high that it never paid out.
He deported more illegals than Biden or Trump ever did.
He untrucked our economy and set us up for the Trump bump.
About the only stupid thing he did was the whole Libya thing. When will we Americans realize that Islam generally, and Arab society in particular, is incompatible with democracy?
If he were to run again, I'd vote for him over Hillary, Sanders, Trump, AOC, Vance,....
Trump is an absolute monster and a danger to us all, so I really wish you’d voted Stein/Ware or something, but I’m sure you have your reasons and they probably don’t fit neatly into a comment on Orange Twitter.
I definitely share your frustration with Obama, though. It’s shocking and frightening that Trump is taking political prisoners and sending them to Guantánamo Bay, but why is that place even still operating? Oh, right, because after Obama promised to shut it down and we voted for him, he simply did nothing.
I’d bet my life savings that if either Obama or Biden had sent the National Guard to Flint to genuinely fix up the water supply, instead of getting numerous government agencies involved in a cover-up and pretending everything’s fine, they’d have had Michigan locked in blue for a good long time. To be fair, I’m not sure my savings have any value since climate change and mass disease are worsening by the day after 30+ consecutive years of administrations that refuse to take anything seriously.
Maybe I’m misreading this, but just so it’s clear, I did not vote for Trump! I held my nose for Clinton then Biden in ‘16 and ‘20. I didn’t vote at all in ‘24, but that had a lot to do with a flood forcing me out of my home at exactly the time I needed to be mailing in my overseas absentee ballot.
The Gitmo point is an important one though. Democrats can’t really scream too loudly about extrajudicial rendering of prisoners because after Obama, we own that one too.
Trump appears on a self destructive course. To take full advantage of this opportunity during the next midterm election cycle the Democrats must rethink and retune where they stand on a number of issues.
FDR and JFK would be aghast at what passes for policy in their beloved Democratic Party. Although both were upper class they understood that victory for their party depended on working class voters. Current party leaders distain the “deplorable” and “racist” members of the working class.
A laundry list of things for Democrats to keep and to dump if they ever want to win again nationwide.
Keep a woman’s right to choose for the first trimester. Dump abortion until birth unless the mother’s health is at risk or the fetus is not viable.
Keep a concern for climate change and grow nuclear power. Dump intermittent, unreliable renewable energy that requires backup continuous generating capacity which is then used intermittently. A ridiculously expensive approach.
Keep and develop new effective vaccines. Dump vaccine mandates.
Keep equality of opportunity for all. Dump equity of results based on discriminating against men, whites and Asians in a futile attempt to compensate for past discrimination against women and blacks. Recognize that D.E.I. Is unconstitutional.
Keep the protection of gay and lesbian rights. Dump men in women’s sports, private spaces and prisons. Oh, and mutilating children who might grow up to be gay.
Keep an opportunity for selective high value immigration. Dump sanctuary cities and open borders.
Keep helping the homeless find jobs and a place to live. Dump camping in cities, shitting in the streets and allowing open drug use.
Keep a concern for due process in criminal justice. Dump letting shoplifters and other petty thieves off the hook and releasing predators back on the streets without bail to kill and maim again.
Do all of the above and they might find their way back to power.
Addendum I:
“From “Dems’ own polling shows massive brand problem ahead of 2026” in Politico:
Nearly two months into the second Donald Trump administration, a majority of voters in battleground House districts still believe Democrats in Congress are “more focused on helping other people than people like me,” according to an internal poll (of 1,500 voters polled Feb. 21 to Feb. 25) conducted by the Democratic group Navigator Research. Among independents, just 27 percent believe Democrats are focused on helping them. … Just 44 percent of those polled said they think Democrats respect work, while even fewer — 39 percent — said the party values work. Only 42 percent said Democrats share their values. A majority, meanwhile — 56 percent — said Democrats are not looking out for working people. Only 39 percent believe Democrats have the right priorities. …
The poll found a whopping 69 percent of voters said Democrats were “too focused on being politically correct.” … Just 38 percent of voters believe that Democrats’ policies prioritize the middle and working class.”
Yep, this is it. I do fear the brand is too damaged at this point. Well, I guess that's not really a "fear", because it is time for new parties, and I expect the GOP brand to be equally as damaged by 2028.
When I think of the Democratic Party on a grand scale and try to predict its cultural behavior, I often picture the worst kind of single Millennial woman. You know her type—the one who says, 'Men are trash,' and then, minutes later, will opine, 'I wish I had a boyfriend.' She'll also be a Mean Girl simultaneously.
Obviously that's not most Democrats (#NotAll). *But* this device helps me predict a *lot* more Democratic behavior than one might care to admit.
P.S. Bernie did do something, remember? He said a woman could be never be president (allegedly). Of course Warren has always had a tricky relationship with the truth so...
Yeah, I always understood that Bernie comment (if it was even true) to be a warning that he thought she’d face reflexive discontent over her identity. Of course, her supporters presented it as an obviously sexist comment intended to malign women and their capabilities, which I remember pissing me off so, so much at the time. God, I had actually forgotten about that episode. Really mad about it again now. Might need to go for a walk and cool down.
I almost entirely agree with this, but as a Warren supporter who immediately switched to Bernie when I knew she was cooked, I think it's wrong in one way: most Warren supporters were never going to switch to Bernie. It wasn't a choice for them.
The reason is one you point out yourself: they were there for the vibes. I have known who Warren was for 20 years, and she would be President if I were the only voter ... but I switched to Bernie the moment I knew she was cooked. (Which was the sexism accusation, btw. It was obvious to me that would backfire.) As you say, it was an obvious choice if you cared about policy. Most Warren supporters were different.
I think the more important framing here is who was still inside the Democratic establishment corral maintained by the media. People who still lived within the liberal media bubble and had faith in the Democratic establishment but liked Bernie-style policy positions - the vibes, if you will - settled on Warren. Once she was gone, though, they were never going to venture outside wagon circle. They voted for the "moderate" because the constant drumbeat of Op-Ed pieces in the NYT told them that was the only way to beat Trump. People like me trying to show them polling that said otherwise couldn't compete with establishment media when it came to the Warren voters you are talking about.
I think you are directionally correct about the knifing of the Bernie bros and its consequences, but I don't think it was the real problem. The real villains here are news outlets like the Times, WaPo, etc., who became house organs for the Dem establishment in the era of "resistance" journalism. They are the reason that you had to have an anti-establishment streak in addition to supporting Bernie on policy to vote for him, and that's why Bernie lost. (And the anti-establishment voters then moved right, rather than toward the establishment.) As long as those outlets are determined to support the establishment it will be shielded from accountability for its growing political incompetence.
This is it right here, 100%. The hysteria in the NYT after the first few primaries when they realized that it was somewhat possible Bernie might became the candidate was really something to behold. These were very rich people we are talking about here, and no way were they going to tolerate actual Bernie.
Once again, this hits it out of the park. The funny thing is, I’m a conservative (since the 90’s) and I despise Warren, Sanders, the left generally, and, a surprise to myself, liberalism, which I used to think was ok, but not conservative enough. You label yourself a lefty, but you read like a conservative - which is to say, you write carefully, believe what you are saying, and don’t care if you piss off a woman. Keep up the good work and I might start paying for a subscription.
Haha, thanks! I’ll be working for that paid sub! I mean, in a sense, I am farther to the right than I used to be, but I got that way without really changing any of my core beliefs. It used to be that classical liberalism had its most comfortable home on the left. Now, if you believe it’s more important to say what you think is true, and care less about whether it’s popular, you’re probably on the right.
One area I really have changed my mind is on crime policy and immigration. I used to be VERY squishy on both issues. The left had its turn (on crime anyway, less on immigration) trotting out the squishy approach, and I do not think it has worked at all well. So as a liberal, I consider it my responsibility to update my thinking, and contend with the world as it is, rather than as I wish it were.
Stay tuned, because I’ll be writing a lot more about this!
Are you really further to the right, or has the left move further to the left while you stayed in one place?
I've always considered myself a lefty, liberal type. Social security, public education, unions, I was all for it.
Then, somehow, to be a liberal I also had to loudly espouse transgenderism, mass immigration, drag queen story hours and a bunch of other shit that I strongly object to.
I believe the same things I have for over 40 years, but now I'm a radical conservative bogeyman. It actually makes me sad.
Really, I think in the world of drag queen story hours the whole left vs right concept is broken. These days I see it as more a dispute between crazy vs sensible people.
It's our system. As state electoral boards have systematized the drawing of electoral maps there are ever fewer congressional districts that are competitive in the general election. So the primary, which attracts the true believers of either party, becomes the only contest that matters. Once in office, incumbents live in constant fear of a primary challenge from the fringes of their own party, and work hard to keep the freaks, be they trans allies, antivaxers, or believers in Jewish space lasers onside.
The makeup of the House could be tamed by electoral reform, perhaps ranked choice voting, but the Senate is another matter. Senators, elected statewide, used to be far more moderate because they couldn't win the general election without attracting swing voters. But that has changed.
People now pick their state based on their politics. Conservatives have been leaving California for Texas, Idaho, Tennessee and Utah. New Yorkers, fed up with the taxes and regulations there, have been moving to Tennessee, Florida and the Carolinas. Liberals have been moving from flyover country to the coasts as soon as they get their college degrees. And increasingly, people's politics are a critical factor in their marriages. (This is complicated further by the increasing divergence of male and female voting preferences)
So, absent major electoral reform, possibly requiring constitutional change, we are stuck in a Bob Dylan nightmare. Clowns to the left of us, Jokers to the right...
Sadly, Bernie is older now, and the mainstream media has labeled him a socialist. In the eyes of many, the entire progressive project has collapsed under its own ideological, philosophical, and political contradictions. We’ve stepped into a new era defined by strong men, leverage, intimidation and transactional deals.
Meanwhile, Democrats, progressives, and other voices on the left might do well to rediscover their core foundational principles. It’s important to honor enduring human qualities rather than trying to redefine them, and to resist demonizing those with opposing views. At the same time, they can reclaim a balanced sense of American patriotism and stand firmly with families, the poor, and the middle class. It’s also vital to look beyond simple labels of race, gender, and orientation and to remember how to respectfully disagree.
In short, it’s about championing core liberal values once again. If they fail to do so, they risk remaining politically irrelevant.
True, you can’t go back to the past, but you can return to core principles. That’s not political time travel; it’s just common sense. If survival is the goal, that’s the path. Otherwise, by all means keep calling everything Hitler and see how that works out.
Coming from the right… yeah good luck man, I don’t even mean that in a rude way. the conservatives tried that for like 60+ years and here we are, up shits creak.
Maybe it’ll be different when you do it but I won’t be holding my breath.
I have checked out, I am not on either of these insane teams so IDC, but I do have a lot of friends that are quite frankly lost. I have fired flares into the sky for months trying to guide them back to the shores of sanity, but they insist on drowning, so what else can one do?
I remember the presumption of Hilary. It was like “Ok, the Bush’s have had their turns, now it’s the Clinton’s turn”.
It was so mind numbingly stupid. Watching the inevitable car crash in slow motion has been one of the worst tv dinners ever to come out of a microwave.
And I was watching from Australia whilst looking through my dread covered fingers.
This. OMG this a thousand times. I’ve read so many essays attempting to explain the political shift that we’ve been living through and this, this is it. This is the political equivalent to the Theory of Everything. It explains all. and my gut tells me your conclusions are 100% on point. Thank you for this.
There is precisely ONE demographic to blame for the massive, unnecessary losses that the Democrats have experienced in the last 10 years: AWFLs (Affluent, Liberal White Women).
Be they college-age or be they shambling hippies still adorned in their ratty shawls, the vindictive, tribalist, screeching women who currently control the Democratic Party and comprise their most loyal voters and activists are utter anathema to the party's outreach efforts.
These hysterical harridans fully convinces me (a gay, mixed-race man living near SF) to go from a lifelong Democratic voter to a Trump voter. It was no one else.
I’m observing a real shift from *white man* as the most cringe identity group (last 10-15 years) to *liberal white woman* now. I’m not sure whether this will turn out to be a good thing or not, but it’s not like they don’t deserve it after the shade they all just spent a decade throwing around.
David your substack posts are consistent softballs tee’d up for the Nazi AI/kremlinbots to have a field day spreading their toxic rhetoric. Look at all the anti-liberal AI bot comments you invite into your post comments with every post.
I hope the idea of Elon Musk "on our team" was some kind of joke. Musk was never "on our team". He's a reckless, ignorant, reactionary, anti-union, anti-govt, anti-democracy megalomaniac. And on a personal level, an obvious arsehole. That guy should never be within a million miles of "our team". Not that he ever would have been. Peter Thiel's PayPal mafia are the enemies of the Left, first and foremost.
Reactionary? Really? The tech utopianist accelerationist is reactionary?
I also disagree with ignorant, as he was smart enough to back the winning horse. He is ignorant of what the right actually wants per last years H1B spat.
Man’s a new age robber baron, not some reactionary fascist. He looked at the available options and picked which one benefits him the most and supports his beliefs the most. But its only an alliance of connivence, and unstable same as when he was allied with the left.
I think there might be one added layer of depth to his love affair with MAGA, which is that he was profoundly burned by the lefty reaction to his Twitter acquisition. Whether it's Musk, Rowling, whoever, we tend to think that sufficiently famous people aren't impacted by campaigns of mass hate because they can survive them. This is wildly wrong.
Again I think you’ve identified a real thing that happened, but I don’t think I agree that “the Democrats” did this in some conscious strategic way, or even that “Warren supporters” collectively “decided” to refuse to allow male Bernie supporters in the tent…and thus “the Democrats” or “Warren supporters” (and not Trump voters—it’s NEVER Trump voters, they aren’t responsible for their political behavior), are the ones responsible for Trump.
(I like Warren very much, but she was my first choice for a short time in 2020, as was Bernie for a short run, but I really never had a clear favorite.)
I take a more sanguine view of politics. I think politics is really messy and nasty, and it’s good to just allow for that. One gets in trouble, and gets left with a lot of bitterness, when one expects politics to be clean or aesthetically pleasing. An example: Bernie supporters felt “knifed” when the DNC put its thumbs on the scale for Hillary Clinton in 2016. (I supported HRC, but liked Bernie, and it was close for me.) Many saw this as illegitimate. But I saw it as ordinary politics. HRC had spent decades building close relationships in the party for this moment. Sanders…wasn’t even a Democrat. The fact that, when HRC needed help from the party machinery she had spent decades helping construct, it helped her as intended, is just, well, skillfully practiced politics. It would be neat if politics didn’t involve such relationship-building and favor-calling, and was instead a pure battle of ideas. It would also be not-human, and impossible.
I think overall politics just…happens, and it’s usually misplaced to assign blame to some group—“the Democrats”; “Warren supporters”; “Bernie Bros”—for failing to see that political course X was obviously the right course, and this this group is at fault for outcome Y. It’s fair to hold an individual accountable for a wrong-headed vote, or for a failure to be informed. But politics is messy and no single group is directing political (not policy) outcomes from behind a curtain.
I will offer this much defense of how the Democratic Party treated Bernie Sanders -- he's not a member of the Democratic Party. They were under no obligation to let him run in their primary at all. (Now, letting him run then kneecapping him when it looked like he could win managed to be a lose-lose combination.)
When Trump decided to use a party to get to the White House, he at least had the decency to *join* the party he was hijacking. Bernie wanted to use the platform being the Democratic nominee would provide while insisting on his ideological purity as an independent.
Several paragraphs ripping into Elizabeth Warren supporters for their childishness. without mercy, and then, “I’m not letting Warren supporters off the hook, by the way…”
I’m broadly with your analysis as a former burned Bernie Bro (and Obama Boy! Remember those?). But sadly, this idea that “they” did this is a pattern that should be broken.
Bernie did this. He fired video guru Bernie Bro Matt Orfaela from the campaign in 2015/2016 over stupid stuff. He agreed with the Hillary Clinton people who said his campaign was “too white, too male” and instituted race/gender quotas for his (far weaker) 2020 campaign. Bernie went from visiting Liberty University earnestly seeking to recruit white dudes with conservative leanings to calling everyone a sexist, racist, etc.
The “they did this to us” mentality is a victim one—bros don’t do that. Bernie could’ve kept the bros if he wanted to, but he just doesn’t have the spine. I can’t name one time he stood up for us. “Hey! These are MY bros and they want us to get healthcare,” just once would’ve been gold. Goddamn, we couldn’t even post snake emojis to Warren’s Twitter account without Bernie and all of civilization chastising us, ha!
Besides, the Democrat Party DOES NOT believe in an egalitarian society where everyone is treated equally under the law that aspires to world peace. Core to the party is a devotion to rigged primaries (haven’t had a clean one since 2008) and bureaucratic processes (no increased minimum wage due to parliamentarian, lol). Also privileges for their chosen weaponized demographics and a global economy/monoculture enforced by extreme violence—often with killer robots (Obama’s drone program might’ve had a 90% civilian death rate).
So I’m gonna be a BRO, a la, a peaceful, good hearted dude. A brother. Maybe I don’t get to have much of a political life, but I’d rather be a brother than whatever unholy hell it is the democrats want me to be. A human being, not a goddamn political identity. Peace outtttttt!
I generally try not to lean too hard into the BERNIE WAS ROBBED narrative. Horse trading is pretty normal in primary season, even if this instance of it was particularly greasy. The problem I was trying to identify here was the way they went about it: denigrating a bloc of already shaky voters in ways that turned off broad swaths of men.
Also, was the 2008 primary clean? In a lot of ways, I think we should have seen some warning signs. While HRC and Obama were duking it out for votes in public, they were furiously trying to work the superdelegates behind the scenes, and either would have been fine with a victory that wasn't achieved democratically.
I....feel so much of this I don't even know what to say with intelligence. Usually, I can dissect things point by point but I feel so much anger over that exact turn of events like you. Let me tell you how I saw it as a woman on the other side. I have always been with Bernie since 2015. I saw then that the progressive (and professional class) women around me would dismiss Bernie because of his supporters AND because of his style as a curmudgeonly white man, completely erasing his Jewishness. Any critique of Hillary I made got me the ire of mean girls who worked in NGOs, government, democratic politics, you name it. I was deep in that social world for a long time, and it was a cult. Progressive women form cults. Then with Warren, I saw how they couldn't handle the correct observation that Warren's supporters are mostly white, highly educated and wealthy. They saw that as an unfair critique, when it was merely a fact. IIRC Bernie's campaign had to apologize for observing reality. And then there was the accusation that Bernie said a woman couldn't be president which is in direct contravention of what he's said in the past, and I don't believe it. I feel like they made up a story to discredit him that was unfalsifiable, and that again is a standard female manner of fighting. Both female candidates' campaigns fought dirty and in the background exactly like women have evolved to do, and all in the name of feminism. God I'm all angry again....but I'm with you. I also want to write a follow up to your take.
Please send a follow-up if you do write one! Or we could back-and-forth on it, either way. It was such an infuriating double standard to see Bernie attacked for the supposed (though illusory) homogeneity of his supporters, while Warren supporters were virtually all, shall we say…of a type. What really got me worked up about the “a woman can’t win” accusation was that if anything like that ever escaped his lips, it seemed obvious to me that it was an expression of a very common sentiment among managerial class feminists: that they face an uphill climb. But Warrenites twisted it into some misogynistic thing about Bernie thinking women just weren’t up to the job. That primary season was a real breaking point for me. And watching the same people who’d nuked Bernie go on to nuke the entire liberal project just reinforced how hard we need to stop listening to these people.
From one Disaffected Democrat to another, cheers. I voted for Obama twice, Bernie twice… And Trump three times. I’ll assume you didn’t vote for the orange monster, but my anti-system leanings were enough to pull me over to the right once they were where the anti-system energy was at. I was enraged by how the party treated Bernie in 2016. In 2020 I was expecting it, plus I’d already crossed the aisle once to vote for Trump, so it didn’t hit me quite as hard. Also, I felt that Bernie in 2020 had sold out to the social justice people; I still voted for him, but he’d stopped talking quite as much about healthcare and workers and sprinkled in quite a bit more SJW cant (which by then I already found alienating), probably because those are the issues that Hillary had hammered him over the head with in 2016 and he understood which way the Democratic winds were blowing.
How did I get there? Well, Obama was the greatest political disappointment of my life, and I say this as someone who was so fervent about him that I spent six months working for his 2008 primary campaign in three different states. He talked up hope and change and delivered… The ACA, and a whole lot of business as usual. I think that this fact is actually hugely under-discussed when it comes to trying to parse the rise of Trump, probably because no one wants to speak badly of Obama. IMO, he’s our very own Angela Merkel, a man who was politically popular but represented the policy equivalent of a soporific and whose main legacy will probably be kicking the can down the road regarding several festering problems that shortly came to a head after he left office. His election and his initial popularity should have been an obvious sign that the electorate was ready for a real change from business as usual, given the outsider message he ran on. That he then governed as the ultimate insider is nothing less than a political tragedy, to say nothing of how in his second term he basically kickstarted the social justice insanity that peaked in 2020. And his unfortunate decision to bless Hillary’s coronation in 2016… Let’s just say that I think he’s more responsible than most for the rise of Trump and the political and regime crisis this precipitated.
Yeah, Obama criticism remains a can of worms I’ve been largely unwilling to open, but you’re spot on about his presidency. I liked, and still mostly like, his style. But he believed far too much in his own magnetism and in his skill as a conciliator. Republicans ate him for lunch and his eight years offered us no substantive policy legacy.
In a sense, somebody like Trump was inevitable. The system was always breakable, it just needed somebody willing to break it. I wish that had been Obama, but he passed on it. Now, we get the orange guy.
That's what I liked about Obama. He was, at heart, a socialist but, unlike most politicians, was sufficiently self aware that he recognized the limits of his influence, something that Trump and Sanders notably lack.
Obamacare allowed me to get decent insurance for my family without dropping a week's pay every month on a plan which had a deductible so high that it never paid out.
He deported more illegals than Biden or Trump ever did.
He untrucked our economy and set us up for the Trump bump.
About the only stupid thing he did was the whole Libya thing. When will we Americans realize that Islam generally, and Arab society in particular, is incompatible with democracy?
If he were to run again, I'd vote for him over Hillary, Sanders, Trump, AOC, Vance,....
Nonsense.
Obama’s legacy is the ACA. Millions have had healthcare because of that legacy.
Public benefits, including Social Security, healthcare and education, are the battleground.
The Confederacy broke the union long ago in defense of an immoral institution. Trump and MAGA are the new Confederacy.
We need to build up not tear down. Our institutions are the only thing fighting Trump and MAGA.
Trump is an absolute monster and a danger to us all, so I really wish you’d voted Stein/Ware or something, but I’m sure you have your reasons and they probably don’t fit neatly into a comment on Orange Twitter.
I definitely share your frustration with Obama, though. It’s shocking and frightening that Trump is taking political prisoners and sending them to Guantánamo Bay, but why is that place even still operating? Oh, right, because after Obama promised to shut it down and we voted for him, he simply did nothing.
I’d bet my life savings that if either Obama or Biden had sent the National Guard to Flint to genuinely fix up the water supply, instead of getting numerous government agencies involved in a cover-up and pretending everything’s fine, they’d have had Michigan locked in blue for a good long time. To be fair, I’m not sure my savings have any value since climate change and mass disease are worsening by the day after 30+ consecutive years of administrations that refuse to take anything seriously.
Maybe I’m misreading this, but just so it’s clear, I did not vote for Trump! I held my nose for Clinton then Biden in ‘16 and ‘20. I didn’t vote at all in ‘24, but that had a lot to do with a flood forcing me out of my home at exactly the time I needed to be mailing in my overseas absentee ballot.
The Gitmo point is an important one though. Democrats can’t really scream too loudly about extrajudicial rendering of prisoners because after Obama, we own that one too.
Trump appears on a self destructive course. To take full advantage of this opportunity during the next midterm election cycle the Democrats must rethink and retune where they stand on a number of issues.
FDR and JFK would be aghast at what passes for policy in their beloved Democratic Party. Although both were upper class they understood that victory for their party depended on working class voters. Current party leaders distain the “deplorable” and “racist” members of the working class.
A laundry list of things for Democrats to keep and to dump if they ever want to win again nationwide.
Keep a woman’s right to choose for the first trimester. Dump abortion until birth unless the mother’s health is at risk or the fetus is not viable.
Keep a concern for climate change and grow nuclear power. Dump intermittent, unreliable renewable energy that requires backup continuous generating capacity which is then used intermittently. A ridiculously expensive approach.
Keep and develop new effective vaccines. Dump vaccine mandates.
Keep equality of opportunity for all. Dump equity of results based on discriminating against men, whites and Asians in a futile attempt to compensate for past discrimination against women and blacks. Recognize that D.E.I. Is unconstitutional.
Keep the protection of gay and lesbian rights. Dump men in women’s sports, private spaces and prisons. Oh, and mutilating children who might grow up to be gay.
Keep an opportunity for selective high value immigration. Dump sanctuary cities and open borders.
Keep helping the homeless find jobs and a place to live. Dump camping in cities, shitting in the streets and allowing open drug use.
Keep a concern for due process in criminal justice. Dump letting shoplifters and other petty thieves off the hook and releasing predators back on the streets without bail to kill and maim again.
Do all of the above and they might find their way back to power.
Addendum I:
“From “Dems’ own polling shows massive brand problem ahead of 2026” in Politico:
Nearly two months into the second Donald Trump administration, a majority of voters in battleground House districts still believe Democrats in Congress are “more focused on helping other people than people like me,” according to an internal poll (of 1,500 voters polled Feb. 21 to Feb. 25) conducted by the Democratic group Navigator Research. Among independents, just 27 percent believe Democrats are focused on helping them. … Just 44 percent of those polled said they think Democrats respect work, while even fewer — 39 percent — said the party values work. Only 42 percent said Democrats share their values. A majority, meanwhile — 56 percent — said Democrats are not looking out for working people. Only 39 percent believe Democrats have the right priorities. …
The poll found a whopping 69 percent of voters said Democrats were “too focused on being politically correct.” … Just 38 percent of voters believe that Democrats’ policies prioritize the middle and working class.”
Addendum II:
Ruy Teixeira tells the truth to Democrats:
https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/how-deep-is-the-hole-democrats-are?r=7ftfa&utm_medium=ios
If the Dems were to adopt your list of issues they'd be the Republicans.
Well, the Republicans of today bear no resemblance to the Republicans of a generation ago.
Because Republicans support a woman’s right to choose and want to fight climate change. Oh, and they strongly support vaccines. Gotcha bunky.
Yep, this is it. I do fear the brand is too damaged at this point. Well, I guess that's not really a "fear", because it is time for new parties, and I expect the GOP brand to be equally as damaged by 2028.
When I think of the Democratic Party on a grand scale and try to predict its cultural behavior, I often picture the worst kind of single Millennial woman. You know her type—the one who says, 'Men are trash,' and then, minutes later, will opine, 'I wish I had a boyfriend.' She'll also be a Mean Girl simultaneously.
Obviously that's not most Democrats (#NotAll). *But* this device helps me predict a *lot* more Democratic behavior than one might care to admit.
P.S. Bernie did do something, remember? He said a woman could be never be president (allegedly). Of course Warren has always had a tricky relationship with the truth so...
Yeah, I always understood that Bernie comment (if it was even true) to be a warning that he thought she’d face reflexive discontent over her identity. Of course, her supporters presented it as an obviously sexist comment intended to malign women and their capabilities, which I remember pissing me off so, so much at the time. God, I had actually forgotten about that episode. Really mad about it again now. Might need to go for a walk and cool down.
I almost entirely agree with this, but as a Warren supporter who immediately switched to Bernie when I knew she was cooked, I think it's wrong in one way: most Warren supporters were never going to switch to Bernie. It wasn't a choice for them.
The reason is one you point out yourself: they were there for the vibes. I have known who Warren was for 20 years, and she would be President if I were the only voter ... but I switched to Bernie the moment I knew she was cooked. (Which was the sexism accusation, btw. It was obvious to me that would backfire.) As you say, it was an obvious choice if you cared about policy. Most Warren supporters were different.
I think the more important framing here is who was still inside the Democratic establishment corral maintained by the media. People who still lived within the liberal media bubble and had faith in the Democratic establishment but liked Bernie-style policy positions - the vibes, if you will - settled on Warren. Once she was gone, though, they were never going to venture outside wagon circle. They voted for the "moderate" because the constant drumbeat of Op-Ed pieces in the NYT told them that was the only way to beat Trump. People like me trying to show them polling that said otherwise couldn't compete with establishment media when it came to the Warren voters you are talking about.
I think you are directionally correct about the knifing of the Bernie bros and its consequences, but I don't think it was the real problem. The real villains here are news outlets like the Times, WaPo, etc., who became house organs for the Dem establishment in the era of "resistance" journalism. They are the reason that you had to have an anti-establishment streak in addition to supporting Bernie on policy to vote for him, and that's why Bernie lost. (And the anti-establishment voters then moved right, rather than toward the establishment.) As long as those outlets are determined to support the establishment it will be shielded from accountability for its growing political incompetence.
This is it right here, 100%. The hysteria in the NYT after the first few primaries when they realized that it was somewhat possible Bernie might became the candidate was really something to behold. These were very rich people we are talking about here, and no way were they going to tolerate actual Bernie.
Too disruptive. And not in a fun way like Trump is.
I imagine you hear that famous Beatles lyric, ‘I got blisters on my fingers,’ every time you finish a piece, David.
Thanks, man :)
Once again, this hits it out of the park. The funny thing is, I’m a conservative (since the 90’s) and I despise Warren, Sanders, the left generally, and, a surprise to myself, liberalism, which I used to think was ok, but not conservative enough. You label yourself a lefty, but you read like a conservative - which is to say, you write carefully, believe what you are saying, and don’t care if you piss off a woman. Keep up the good work and I might start paying for a subscription.
Haha, thanks! I’ll be working for that paid sub! I mean, in a sense, I am farther to the right than I used to be, but I got that way without really changing any of my core beliefs. It used to be that classical liberalism had its most comfortable home on the left. Now, if you believe it’s more important to say what you think is true, and care less about whether it’s popular, you’re probably on the right.
One area I really have changed my mind is on crime policy and immigration. I used to be VERY squishy on both issues. The left had its turn (on crime anyway, less on immigration) trotting out the squishy approach, and I do not think it has worked at all well. So as a liberal, I consider it my responsibility to update my thinking, and contend with the world as it is, rather than as I wish it were.
Stay tuned, because I’ll be writing a lot more about this!
Are you really further to the right, or has the left move further to the left while you stayed in one place?
I've always considered myself a lefty, liberal type. Social security, public education, unions, I was all for it.
Then, somehow, to be a liberal I also had to loudly espouse transgenderism, mass immigration, drag queen story hours and a bunch of other shit that I strongly object to.
I believe the same things I have for over 40 years, but now I'm a radical conservative bogeyman. It actually makes me sad.
Really, I think in the world of drag queen story hours the whole left vs right concept is broken. These days I see it as more a dispute between crazy vs sensible people.
It's our system. As state electoral boards have systematized the drawing of electoral maps there are ever fewer congressional districts that are competitive in the general election. So the primary, which attracts the true believers of either party, becomes the only contest that matters. Once in office, incumbents live in constant fear of a primary challenge from the fringes of their own party, and work hard to keep the freaks, be they trans allies, antivaxers, or believers in Jewish space lasers onside.
The makeup of the House could be tamed by electoral reform, perhaps ranked choice voting, but the Senate is another matter. Senators, elected statewide, used to be far more moderate because they couldn't win the general election without attracting swing voters. But that has changed.
People now pick their state based on their politics. Conservatives have been leaving California for Texas, Idaho, Tennessee and Utah. New Yorkers, fed up with the taxes and regulations there, have been moving to Tennessee, Florida and the Carolinas. Liberals have been moving from flyover country to the coasts as soon as they get their college degrees. And increasingly, people's politics are a critical factor in their marriages. (This is complicated further by the increasing divergence of male and female voting preferences)
So, absent major electoral reform, possibly requiring constitutional change, we are stuck in a Bob Dylan nightmare. Clowns to the left of us, Jokers to the right...
Sadly, Bernie is older now, and the mainstream media has labeled him a socialist. In the eyes of many, the entire progressive project has collapsed under its own ideological, philosophical, and political contradictions. We’ve stepped into a new era defined by strong men, leverage, intimidation and transactional deals.
Meanwhile, Democrats, progressives, and other voices on the left might do well to rediscover their core foundational principles. It’s important to honor enduring human qualities rather than trying to redefine them, and to resist demonizing those with opposing views. At the same time, they can reclaim a balanced sense of American patriotism and stand firmly with families, the poor, and the middle class. It’s also vital to look beyond simple labels of race, gender, and orientation and to remember how to respectfully disagree.
In short, it’s about championing core liberal values once again. If they fail to do so, they risk remaining politically irrelevant.
You can’t go back, the past is dead
True, you can’t go back to the past, but you can return to core principles. That’s not political time travel; it’s just common sense. If survival is the goal, that’s the path. Otherwise, by all means keep calling everything Hitler and see how that works out.
Coming from the right… yeah good luck man, I don’t even mean that in a rude way. the conservatives tried that for like 60+ years and here we are, up shits creak.
Maybe it’ll be different when you do it but I won’t be holding my breath.
I have checked out, I am not on either of these insane teams so IDC, but I do have a lot of friends that are quite frankly lost. I have fired flares into the sky for months trying to guide them back to the shores of sanity, but they insist on drowning, so what else can one do?
Mass formation psychosis is a horrible thing and the people responsible for doing it to our nations populations deserve to rot in jail.
The media is no help
https://substack.com/@kennetheharrell/note/c-118131321?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=mwvnq
I remember the presumption of Hilary. It was like “Ok, the Bush’s have had their turns, now it’s the Clinton’s turn”.
It was so mind numbingly stupid. Watching the inevitable car crash in slow motion has been one of the worst tv dinners ever to come out of a microwave.
And I was watching from Australia whilst looking through my dread covered fingers.
This. OMG this a thousand times. I’ve read so many essays attempting to explain the political shift that we’ve been living through and this, this is it. This is the political equivalent to the Theory of Everything. It explains all. and my gut tells me your conclusions are 100% on point. Thank you for this.
Glad you liked it!
Absolutely. 100%. Entirely correct.
There is precisely ONE demographic to blame for the massive, unnecessary losses that the Democrats have experienced in the last 10 years: AWFLs (Affluent, Liberal White Women).
Be they college-age or be they shambling hippies still adorned in their ratty shawls, the vindictive, tribalist, screeching women who currently control the Democratic Party and comprise their most loyal voters and activists are utter anathema to the party's outreach efforts.
These hysterical harridans fully convinces me (a gay, mixed-race man living near SF) to go from a lifelong Democratic voter to a Trump voter. It was no one else.
I’m observing a real shift from *white man* as the most cringe identity group (last 10-15 years) to *liberal white woman* now. I’m not sure whether this will turn out to be a good thing or not, but it’s not like they don’t deserve it after the shade they all just spent a decade throwing around.
David your substack posts are consistent softballs tee’d up for the Nazi AI/kremlinbots to have a field day spreading their toxic rhetoric. Look at all the anti-liberal AI bot comments you invite into your post comments with every post.
Unfortunately for you I'm neither a Nazi nor a "Kremlinbot".
Just an American with functional eyes and ears who hasn't outsourced his reason and judgment to delusional Progressive propaganda.
lol zero proof ur real
I call them puritians as they tend to descend from that stock. They got kicked out of England for good reason.
I hope the idea of Elon Musk "on our team" was some kind of joke. Musk was never "on our team". He's a reckless, ignorant, reactionary, anti-union, anti-govt, anti-democracy megalomaniac. And on a personal level, an obvious arsehole. That guy should never be within a million miles of "our team". Not that he ever would have been. Peter Thiel's PayPal mafia are the enemies of the Left, first and foremost.
Yeah, this is fair. I really only meant that he was nominally a Democrat not that he was spiritually one of us
Reactionary? Really? The tech utopianist accelerationist is reactionary?
I also disagree with ignorant, as he was smart enough to back the winning horse. He is ignorant of what the right actually wants per last years H1B spat.
Man’s a new age robber baron, not some reactionary fascist. He looked at the available options and picked which one benefits him the most and supports his beliefs the most. But its only an alliance of connivence, and unstable same as when he was allied with the left.
I think there might be one added layer of depth to his love affair with MAGA, which is that he was profoundly burned by the lefty reaction to his Twitter acquisition. Whether it's Musk, Rowling, whoever, we tend to think that sufficiently famous people aren't impacted by campaigns of mass hate because they can survive them. This is wildly wrong.
Again I think you’ve identified a real thing that happened, but I don’t think I agree that “the Democrats” did this in some conscious strategic way, or even that “Warren supporters” collectively “decided” to refuse to allow male Bernie supporters in the tent…and thus “the Democrats” or “Warren supporters” (and not Trump voters—it’s NEVER Trump voters, they aren’t responsible for their political behavior), are the ones responsible for Trump.
(I like Warren very much, but she was my first choice for a short time in 2020, as was Bernie for a short run, but I really never had a clear favorite.)
I take a more sanguine view of politics. I think politics is really messy and nasty, and it’s good to just allow for that. One gets in trouble, and gets left with a lot of bitterness, when one expects politics to be clean or aesthetically pleasing. An example: Bernie supporters felt “knifed” when the DNC put its thumbs on the scale for Hillary Clinton in 2016. (I supported HRC, but liked Bernie, and it was close for me.) Many saw this as illegitimate. But I saw it as ordinary politics. HRC had spent decades building close relationships in the party for this moment. Sanders…wasn’t even a Democrat. The fact that, when HRC needed help from the party machinery she had spent decades helping construct, it helped her as intended, is just, well, skillfully practiced politics. It would be neat if politics didn’t involve such relationship-building and favor-calling, and was instead a pure battle of ideas. It would also be not-human, and impossible.
I think overall politics just…happens, and it’s usually misplaced to assign blame to some group—“the Democrats”; “Warren supporters”; “Bernie Bros”—for failing to see that political course X was obviously the right course, and this this group is at fault for outcome Y. It’s fair to hold an individual accountable for a wrong-headed vote, or for a failure to be informed. But politics is messy and no single group is directing political (not policy) outcomes from behind a curtain.
I will offer this much defense of how the Democratic Party treated Bernie Sanders -- he's not a member of the Democratic Party. They were under no obligation to let him run in their primary at all. (Now, letting him run then kneecapping him when it looked like he could win managed to be a lose-lose combination.)
When Trump decided to use a party to get to the White House, he at least had the decency to *join* the party he was hijacking. Bernie wanted to use the platform being the Democratic nominee would provide while insisting on his ideological purity as an independent.
Several paragraphs ripping into Elizabeth Warren supporters for their childishness. without mercy, and then, “I’m not letting Warren supporters off the hook, by the way…”
You don’t say.
I’m broadly with your analysis as a former burned Bernie Bro (and Obama Boy! Remember those?). But sadly, this idea that “they” did this is a pattern that should be broken.
Bernie did this. He fired video guru Bernie Bro Matt Orfaela from the campaign in 2015/2016 over stupid stuff. He agreed with the Hillary Clinton people who said his campaign was “too white, too male” and instituted race/gender quotas for his (far weaker) 2020 campaign. Bernie went from visiting Liberty University earnestly seeking to recruit white dudes with conservative leanings to calling everyone a sexist, racist, etc.
The “they did this to us” mentality is a victim one—bros don’t do that. Bernie could’ve kept the bros if he wanted to, but he just doesn’t have the spine. I can’t name one time he stood up for us. “Hey! These are MY bros and they want us to get healthcare,” just once would’ve been gold. Goddamn, we couldn’t even post snake emojis to Warren’s Twitter account without Bernie and all of civilization chastising us, ha!
Besides, the Democrat Party DOES NOT believe in an egalitarian society where everyone is treated equally under the law that aspires to world peace. Core to the party is a devotion to rigged primaries (haven’t had a clean one since 2008) and bureaucratic processes (no increased minimum wage due to parliamentarian, lol). Also privileges for their chosen weaponized demographics and a global economy/monoculture enforced by extreme violence—often with killer robots (Obama’s drone program might’ve had a 90% civilian death rate).
So I’m gonna be a BRO, a la, a peaceful, good hearted dude. A brother. Maybe I don’t get to have much of a political life, but I’d rather be a brother than whatever unholy hell it is the democrats want me to be. A human being, not a goddamn political identity. Peace outtttttt!
I generally try not to lean too hard into the BERNIE WAS ROBBED narrative. Horse trading is pretty normal in primary season, even if this instance of it was particularly greasy. The problem I was trying to identify here was the way they went about it: denigrating a bloc of already shaky voters in ways that turned off broad swaths of men.
Also, was the 2008 primary clean? In a lot of ways, I think we should have seen some warning signs. While HRC and Obama were duking it out for votes in public, they were furiously trying to work the superdelegates behind the scenes, and either would have been fine with a victory that wasn't achieved democratically.