General Discussion

It's everyone else who significantly shifted over.

I've been thinking of this issue since our last exchange, how to articulate how to see it. I think I've landed on the problem.

The Democratic Party is reliant on coalitional politics. We're always trying to tailor policies, messages, and strategies to this or that group in an attempt to curry favor and nudge turn out in each separate community by a few percentage points. When they do this, they turn to activists, party influencers, and a network of "minority community whisperers" who may or may not actually understand the communities they're ostensibly speaking for. (If your consultant grew up in an affluent suburb and went to the Ivy League where they networked their way into the party, are they really giving good advice on how the bulk of their community sees the world?)

Each election is dinner time. And every time, we have to keep 20 different plates spinning in the air. Which takes a lot of resources and is getting harder and harder to do in a culture that is increasingly homogenized by social media.

My thought is "Stop spinning plates. Just set the damn table." Have a core set of policies that appeal to all of these groups, then hammer them into the ground.

That is not to say to ignore issues like discrimination. Far from. But it cannot be our entire identity, because each spinning plate can now see what you're telling the other plates. We're having major economic problems in this country, and our image as a party is that we are forever fixated on identity issues. It cannot be what we're known for, because how communities interact and how they see themselves has evolved. Latinos, just to use one group, increasingly identify themselves through the economic situation rather than a racial identity. But all our politics are geared to see them mainly through a racial lens. AAPI is starting to go through a similar evolution.

It's gotta be something else. Grow or die. Get your core policies together, and then go out into each community and explain how those core policies are good for them. The end. Stop pitting everyone against each other and compartmentalizing them into discrete and disparate groups.

We need a new coalition based on common interests. The old one is breaking down, if it is not already broken down.