Ben, we're not asking you to write what we want. That would be dumb and unenjoyable to read. But every person who keeps insisting "affiliating with woke" cost Dems can never point to an individual, agency, or comprehensive policy that Democrats ran on with connections to that belief. It's a blanket term designed to lump every liberal and progressive under one blanket and make them seem just as bad as an entire GOP gone full authoritarian (see why Bill Maher brings it up ad nauseam while never citing WHO is running the woke agenda from the shadows). And yes ideologies are complicated af, but it's telling that Republicans run on identity politics full-time and people give it a pass because said identity is very white. As Trump's selection of South African immigrants just showed.
Because let's face it, no matter what Dems do, they will always be labeled woke by Republicans. It's just the next evolution of people being anti-PC from the 90s, which led to DOGE firing everyone for manufactured DEI reasons. And I have no interest in Sister Soljaing voting blocks just to win back MAGA people with regrets.
Ben - the issue isn't what Democrats do. The issue is what constituents believe they do. And of course, what they don't do. You're 100% correct that the Democratic platform isn't all that "woke" (in the common derogatory use of that term) but I know many former Democrats that voted for Trump because they felt that the Democrats didn't push back their Left flank (as only they could do) and instead let them run the roost. In particular, they're outraged about all sorts of perceived overreach in academia and at the corporate level. If the Dems want to win they need to actively reject these ideas not just wave their hands and say, "what makes you think we think this?". The ship on expecting the public to act rationally, was never in the port to begin with. We need to think strategically. If we're going to beat Trumpism, we have to acknowledge that people aren't crazy to think that the Left has captured our party, and we have to vocally proclaim that we don't believe in [whatever it is we don't believe in].
My concern is that when we go and try to itemize what we don't believe in we'll be surprised to learn just how many of us actually DO believe in it but that's a topic for another conversation.
They DO THIS, constantly. The problem is twofold: 1. right-wing media always harps on fringe left-wing points for its grifting/fear-mongering machine and we still have no good counterbalance for it yet. And more importantly, progressives like Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders are still gathering more attention/success at rallying crowds than party leaders, which could theoretically get more people to elect progressive/left-leaning candidates instead of moderates. You can say people aren't crazy, but they are increasibly being duped by reality - the left WISHES it had so much control over Dems but they feel like the party kneecaps them at every turn. Said academia outrach also ignore the fact that it pales in comparison to arresting students for free speech expression, which MAGA-hats have done. In other words, only one party is captured by their extremist faction, and it's not Dems. But until the moderates and liberals make a better case that they should hold the reigns still, people might just flock toward progressives as a new option.
It's not a strategic move. It's sacrificing being yourself to win over voters misinformed by propaganda. Again, tell me a Democrat who actually runs on woke and then you can start disavowing it. Running against ghosts gets us nowhere.
If everyone is stampeding Right because of "ghosts" on the Left then our only option is to figure out how to fight those ghosts - or lose.
Luckily the vast majority of people want mostly the same things. It's not as though you have to appease religious fanatics and eco-terrorists in order to get a coalition. Most people want rational governance and common-sense policies.
Identity politics (which I'm sure you're aware is currently mostly a Leftist phenomenon) is massively unpopular and yet the Dems can't seem to muster the strength to just tap into core civil rights principles (which are hugely popular) and say - we don't need to improve on these ideas - we just need to honor them.
I recommend reading Yasha Mounk's Identity Trap - it puts a lot of this in perspective. And again - I'm not even articulating what my own policy preferences are - I'm just giving you what I think is a common sense prescription for how to approach the public.
You don't need to convince me that the GOP are nuts (and frequently fascist) - I get it. I'm just defending Ben C's original assertion and helping (or trying to) frame it in a way that Dems grasp it rather than bristle at it.
I'm not going to fight ghosts if the ghost don't exist. Identity politics isn't a leftist phenomenon at all - everything from race to class to religion is an identity. Appealing to those identities is simply... well politics, but only certain ones are treated as legitimate. And surprise surprise, as long as the top identity is white and male, it's considered good. And Dems DID run on rational government and common sense policies - voters picked chaos and authoritarianism despite all the warnings because they wanted to blow the system up. That's the opposite of voting on you values. That's believing that, ironically, the world has gotten so liberal that they must destroy it to make right-wingers control everything.
So we're going to win, and we're not sacrificing other groups to get there. You can work with us or not, but throwing people out is not an option.
I read your essays to be educated. I agree with most of your opinions / conclusions and those I don’t agree with make me think. And sometimes I change my mind. I don’t want to be fossilized in my liberal silo. Thanks for what you do.
In terms of bang for the buck, I get the most mileage out of my Banter and Salty Politics subscriptions. But I'm also hanging in there with The Contrarian because it's important to have these channels as the mainstream media increasingly bends the knee to Trump--even if only in misleadingly Trump-appeasing headlines. I'm with you on helping to push our base away from identity politics and knee-jerk over-reactions. I'm trans and disagree with how the Left is manhandling, sorry, person-handling, trans sports, pronoun, and bathroom narratives. As long discussed here, Israel/Gaza has devolved into "Privileged Whites Suppressing People of Color", a narrative that has few ties to reality and no room for nuance that perhaps both sides have done a f-ton of wrong and the only true way to "free Palestine" is to shatter the hold of Muslim extremists (aka damaged men) on Palestinian women, children, and LGBTQ people. As for Kamala -- I think being a woman and a person of color DID play a role in her loss among the non voters and swing voters (lest we forget the 74 million who DID vote for her), but so did a good 50 to 500,000 other factors. Keep telling the truth -- snowflake readers be damned.
Audience capture is a real problem. Hopefully you can become captured by an audience that is comfortable with and expects critical thinking and a commitment to getting ever so much closer to that elusive goal of truth.
On identity politics, I’ll never understand why the left can’t just allow class to be the primary driver for social justice causes. That seems to solve for most of what it wants, and would disproportionately support marginalized and racial minority communities, while also not ignoring the actual hardship of opioid addicted white purple in Appalachia. Framing matters.
Hi Ben: O tempora, o mores. The problem you are facing is one that was already mentioned in a book back in 2005 : The Internet Is not the Answer, by a fellow named Andrew Keene, who, oh the irony, now plies his trade on Substack "publishing" so much that I had to unsubscribe to prevent my inbox from being gorged with interviews he seemd to conduct with any TD&H.
In essence, the problem is simple: We are all commodities in a system that is geared to making a few rich... You are not a writer in this system, sir, you are a "CONTENT PROVIDER..." for the hoi polloi and for those who might enjoy reading thoughtful or provocative yet well-reasoned material.
BUT: you are, like us all, a commodity in a strange reward-pecking order run by a handful of superrich guys who are technically more savvy and want to lead a life of financial monetary ease. So they are doing their damnedest to eliminate costs. You don't make money writing stuff, you make money when people write for you... And imagine if you can get them to WRITE FOR FREE!
The downside is that you have to constantly feed the beast, because of our scattered attention and because the beast is awake and hungry 24/7/365.... If you manage to create a "base" as it were, and you can feed them something like literary big macs by convincing them that it is good for them, you will earn and be celebrated as an influencer, and you will continue feeding them pabulum that tastes to them like a Michelin*** meal. Have you ever noticed that Donald J. Trump is doing just that? He has the trick down to an art form, and it lets him earn billions in bribes and other shady schemes AND play golf 3 days a week (golf, how embarrassing, but I don't see him playing chess or go).
SO, you'll have to stick to your ethical guns and lose some followers. Don't think that the monks on Michael Skellig thought much about their condition while they were saving culture in the Dark Ages. Just imagine.... I publish a book a year, and have all of 27 followers...;-)
Keep writing the stories that make people question and think. I don’t follow to confirm my biases, or engage in groupthink. My subscription is in support of your efforts to report the truth, painful or otherwise. No regrets.
Greenwald and Taibbi are 2 of the few journalists left with any consistency. You attack them because they show the true corruption, not because they changed.
Or maybe Ben you missed the OBVIOUS fucking point Kamela shared with Hilary, on top of being a minority. You accuse her of being too woke, the Bulwark accuses her of paying too much attention to focus groups, Occam's Razor suggests it's because of her sex. You lost people not because it was controversial but because it was wrong.
Don't loose sleep over the Truth !! Keep up the good work, you'll sleep 💤 like a baby. Thank you, for speaking Truth to Power , and will reStack ASAP 🙏💯👍
Something that bothered me about Kamala’s campaign had to do with her ‘give-away’ promises to help first-time home buyers and child tax credits. How many voters needed that when Trump was promising to lower the price of everything? Of course, the more I think about it just to write this, he could have promised me a 500 million dollar 747 and I still wouldn’t have voted for that lying criminal.
A small point in the context of the other comments, but the banter is a terrible name for the Substack. “Banter” can be more or less good natured, often less, but it is very rarely high minded. “it was just a bit of bants” has become a defence of crappy behaviour, at least in the UK.
Ben, we're not asking you to write what we want. That would be dumb and unenjoyable to read. But every person who keeps insisting "affiliating with woke" cost Dems can never point to an individual, agency, or comprehensive policy that Democrats ran on with connections to that belief. It's a blanket term designed to lump every liberal and progressive under one blanket and make them seem just as bad as an entire GOP gone full authoritarian (see why Bill Maher brings it up ad nauseam while never citing WHO is running the woke agenda from the shadows). And yes ideologies are complicated af, but it's telling that Republicans run on identity politics full-time and people give it a pass because said identity is very white. As Trump's selection of South African immigrants just showed.
Because let's face it, no matter what Dems do, they will always be labeled woke by Republicans. It's just the next evolution of people being anti-PC from the 90s, which led to DOGE firing everyone for manufactured DEI reasons. And I have no interest in Sister Soljaing voting blocks just to win back MAGA people with regrets.
Ben - the issue isn't what Democrats do. The issue is what constituents believe they do. And of course, what they don't do. You're 100% correct that the Democratic platform isn't all that "woke" (in the common derogatory use of that term) but I know many former Democrats that voted for Trump because they felt that the Democrats didn't push back their Left flank (as only they could do) and instead let them run the roost. In particular, they're outraged about all sorts of perceived overreach in academia and at the corporate level. If the Dems want to win they need to actively reject these ideas not just wave their hands and say, "what makes you think we think this?". The ship on expecting the public to act rationally, was never in the port to begin with. We need to think strategically. If we're going to beat Trumpism, we have to acknowledge that people aren't crazy to think that the Left has captured our party, and we have to vocally proclaim that we don't believe in [whatever it is we don't believe in].
My concern is that when we go and try to itemize what we don't believe in we'll be surprised to learn just how many of us actually DO believe in it but that's a topic for another conversation.
They DO THIS, constantly. The problem is twofold: 1. right-wing media always harps on fringe left-wing points for its grifting/fear-mongering machine and we still have no good counterbalance for it yet. And more importantly, progressives like Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders are still gathering more attention/success at rallying crowds than party leaders, which could theoretically get more people to elect progressive/left-leaning candidates instead of moderates. You can say people aren't crazy, but they are increasibly being duped by reality - the left WISHES it had so much control over Dems but they feel like the party kneecaps them at every turn. Said academia outrach also ignore the fact that it pales in comparison to arresting students for free speech expression, which MAGA-hats have done. In other words, only one party is captured by their extremist faction, and it's not Dems. But until the moderates and liberals make a better case that they should hold the reigns still, people might just flock toward progressives as a new option.
It's not a strategic move. It's sacrificing being yourself to win over voters misinformed by propaganda. Again, tell me a Democrat who actually runs on woke and then you can start disavowing it. Running against ghosts gets us nowhere.
If everyone is stampeding Right because of "ghosts" on the Left then our only option is to figure out how to fight those ghosts - or lose.
Luckily the vast majority of people want mostly the same things. It's not as though you have to appease religious fanatics and eco-terrorists in order to get a coalition. Most people want rational governance and common-sense policies.
Identity politics (which I'm sure you're aware is currently mostly a Leftist phenomenon) is massively unpopular and yet the Dems can't seem to muster the strength to just tap into core civil rights principles (which are hugely popular) and say - we don't need to improve on these ideas - we just need to honor them.
I recommend reading Yasha Mounk's Identity Trap - it puts a lot of this in perspective. And again - I'm not even articulating what my own policy preferences are - I'm just giving you what I think is a common sense prescription for how to approach the public.
You don't need to convince me that the GOP are nuts (and frequently fascist) - I get it. I'm just defending Ben C's original assertion and helping (or trying to) frame it in a way that Dems grasp it rather than bristle at it.
I'm not going to fight ghosts if the ghost don't exist. Identity politics isn't a leftist phenomenon at all - everything from race to class to religion is an identity. Appealing to those identities is simply... well politics, but only certain ones are treated as legitimate. And surprise surprise, as long as the top identity is white and male, it's considered good. And Dems DID run on rational government and common sense policies - voters picked chaos and authoritarianism despite all the warnings because they wanted to blow the system up. That's the opposite of voting on you values. That's believing that, ironically, the world has gotten so liberal that they must destroy it to make right-wingers control everything.
So we're going to win, and we're not sacrificing other groups to get there. You can work with us or not, but throwing people out is not an option.
Completly agree. Freedom is for EVERYONE. If the party I support is going to turn their back on trans people, count me out.
I read your essays to be educated. I agree with most of your opinions / conclusions and those I don’t agree with make me think. And sometimes I change my mind. I don’t want to be fossilized in my liberal silo. Thanks for what you do.
In terms of bang for the buck, I get the most mileage out of my Banter and Salty Politics subscriptions. But I'm also hanging in there with The Contrarian because it's important to have these channels as the mainstream media increasingly bends the knee to Trump--even if only in misleadingly Trump-appeasing headlines. I'm with you on helping to push our base away from identity politics and knee-jerk over-reactions. I'm trans and disagree with how the Left is manhandling, sorry, person-handling, trans sports, pronoun, and bathroom narratives. As long discussed here, Israel/Gaza has devolved into "Privileged Whites Suppressing People of Color", a narrative that has few ties to reality and no room for nuance that perhaps both sides have done a f-ton of wrong and the only true way to "free Palestine" is to shatter the hold of Muslim extremists (aka damaged men) on Palestinian women, children, and LGBTQ people. As for Kamala -- I think being a woman and a person of color DID play a role in her loss among the non voters and swing voters (lest we forget the 74 million who DID vote for her), but so did a good 50 to 500,000 other factors. Keep telling the truth -- snowflake readers be damned.
I fail to see the difference between racists and people comfortable voting for racists.
Audience capture is a real problem. Hopefully you can become captured by an audience that is comfortable with and expects critical thinking and a commitment to getting ever so much closer to that elusive goal of truth.
On identity politics, I’ll never understand why the left can’t just allow class to be the primary driver for social justice causes. That seems to solve for most of what it wants, and would disproportionately support marginalized and racial minority communities, while also not ignoring the actual hardship of opioid addicted white purple in Appalachia. Framing matters.
Hi Ben: O tempora, o mores. The problem you are facing is one that was already mentioned in a book back in 2005 : The Internet Is not the Answer, by a fellow named Andrew Keene, who, oh the irony, now plies his trade on Substack "publishing" so much that I had to unsubscribe to prevent my inbox from being gorged with interviews he seemd to conduct with any TD&H.
In essence, the problem is simple: We are all commodities in a system that is geared to making a few rich... You are not a writer in this system, sir, you are a "CONTENT PROVIDER..." for the hoi polloi and for those who might enjoy reading thoughtful or provocative yet well-reasoned material.
BUT: you are, like us all, a commodity in a strange reward-pecking order run by a handful of superrich guys who are technically more savvy and want to lead a life of financial monetary ease. So they are doing their damnedest to eliminate costs. You don't make money writing stuff, you make money when people write for you... And imagine if you can get them to WRITE FOR FREE!
The downside is that you have to constantly feed the beast, because of our scattered attention and because the beast is awake and hungry 24/7/365.... If you manage to create a "base" as it were, and you can feed them something like literary big macs by convincing them that it is good for them, you will earn and be celebrated as an influencer, and you will continue feeding them pabulum that tastes to them like a Michelin*** meal. Have you ever noticed that Donald J. Trump is doing just that? He has the trick down to an art form, and it lets him earn billions in bribes and other shady schemes AND play golf 3 days a week (golf, how embarrassing, but I don't see him playing chess or go).
SO, you'll have to stick to your ethical guns and lose some followers. Don't think that the monks on Michael Skellig thought much about their condition while they were saving culture in the Dark Ages. Just imagine.... I publish a book a year, and have all of 27 followers...;-)
Keep writing the stories that make people question and think. I don’t follow to confirm my biases, or engage in groupthink. My subscription is in support of your efforts to report the truth, painful or otherwise. No regrets.
And that, Ben, is why I subscribe to you in a nutshell.
Unfortunately, the activists are here to stay!
Greenwald and Taibbi are 2 of the few journalists left with any consistency. You attack them because they show the true corruption, not because they changed.
Or maybe Ben you missed the OBVIOUS fucking point Kamela shared with Hilary, on top of being a minority. You accuse her of being too woke, the Bulwark accuses her of paying too much attention to focus groups, Occam's Razor suggests it's because of her sex. You lost people not because it was controversial but because it was wrong.
Don't loose sleep over the Truth !! Keep up the good work, you'll sleep 💤 like a baby. Thank you, for speaking Truth to Power , and will reStack ASAP 🙏💯👍
Something that bothered me about Kamala’s campaign had to do with her ‘give-away’ promises to help first-time home buyers and child tax credits. How many voters needed that when Trump was promising to lower the price of everything? Of course, the more I think about it just to write this, he could have promised me a 500 million dollar 747 and I still wouldn’t have voted for that lying criminal.
A small point in the context of the other comments, but the banter is a terrible name for the Substack. “Banter” can be more or less good natured, often less, but it is very rarely high minded. “it was just a bit of bants” has become a defence of crappy behaviour, at least in the UK.
Thanks for your voice and just keep writing your truth.