Swanson -- 'Profound' Insights from the DNC’s Autopsy
“It’s Possible to Win Women and Compete with Men” and Other Profound Insights from the DNC’s Autopsy
The Democrats’ autopsy doesn’t simply not mention Gaza. It doesn’t mention anything at all. Kamala Harris’s platform doesn’t come up. What the candidate said she’d do if elected isn’t apparently relevant to why she lost. Therefore, what policy proposals she might have offered that she didn’t must be irrelevant too.
This is typical political campaignthink. Plenty of Congressional campaign websites have no policy positions whatsoever. Most have no foreign policy positions whatsoever — though quite a few that otherwise wouldn’t have had any now include a sentence or three on Gaza. So, yes, it’s striking that Harris preferred genocide-support to a chance at winning. And, since we all said that at the time, there wasn’t an actual need for an autopsy to point it out afterwards.
But this autopsy leaves the reader dumber than before reading it. Here are a few, word-for-word, key excerpts from this insightful document:
“Understanding that ‘little d’ democracy is the will of the people and ‘Big D’ Democracy represents the systems and structures in place to advance or inhibit the will of the people . . . ‘We the People’ is not a new idea, but an enduring philosophy meant to include each generation and every available innovation . . . The only way this can be done is if we build to win and build to last. . . . Democrats must accept it is more important than to deliver on what they promise . . . We must align our values with our investments . . . These hair-splitting margins of defeat may lead some to argue Democrat leadership and candidates may need less changing of their message and approach and more massaging . . . the Democratic Party has vacillated between stagnation and retrogression . . . Democrats have experienced substantial and meaningful losses across these 16 years, and need to recommit to effective messages and methods . . . We either adapt to the changing conditions of the arena, or history will leave us behind. Hoping for national tides to change or historic trends to shift and help Democrats win is not a strategy. . . . Democrats must organize everywhere to win anywhere through Majority Party Strategy focused on everywhere, cohesively, strategically, and decisively. A new Majority Party Strategy is a prerequisite for success in winning back voters, boosting the party, and aligning the vision of everyone involved . . . Going Negative Works (Especially if Voters Know You). . . . Show up, listen, and then do it again. . . . Irregular Voters Weren’t Feeling it. . . . Demographics are tendencies, not destiny, and voter support is impacted – good and bad – through campaign choices. . . . The credibility gap between organizational leadership and everyday voters has widened. . . rethink the way time, money, and other resources are allocated to ensure Americans are effectively engaged to win . . . .”
There are pages and pages and pages of this slop that couldn’t get a student through eighth-grade English. It was intentionally created by the party purporting to be the political opposition to the MAGA morons. Then it was intentionally sat on, never corrected or replaced, for months and months, until everyone was so angry about keeping it secret that the pile of platitudinous horseshit was only going to increase that anger once made public.
And so we are left to ponder, in the words of George W. Bush, the eternal mystery: Is our children learning?
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https://davidswanson.org/its-possible-to-win-women-and-compete-with-men-and-other-profound-insights-from-the-dncs-autopsy/
‘The Democrats are an inauthentic opposition.’
–Sheldon Wolin