Shocking how little discussion this gets. So much anti-moderate factional discourse that yada yadda's how you run eight points ahead of the national ticket. Um.
May 14, 2025 01:31Two things I hold simultaneously: on the one hand, Democrats absolutely need to be honest about what compromises it’d take to win competitive Senate elections in Red states.
OTOH, Senate apportionment is increasingly incompatible with sustaining the republic and most be addressed directly.
I think it's a very good question that inevitably is going to get sidetracked by how often this conversation begins with "we have to sell out trans people," which I think we can be extremely confident is not how you run eight points ahead of the national ticket.
I don't know much about Iowa or Texas, but you win Ohio by being LeBron James. 😈
I spend half my life in a Texas county that went 73% for Trump.
Rightwing media is the problem.
This is rarely discussed. 😠
I can speak about Ohio’s 2022 senate campaign and I will say this: if you think a Dem candidate saying “I agree with Trump on X” is a winning centrist strategy against a GOP opponent endorsed by Trump himself you were a fool then and you’re a fool now. It doesn’t work. Period.
His main point is: "distinguish yourself from your electorate's perception of a generic Democrat".
How about: Don't let yourself be perceived as "generic"! Distinguish yourself as a genuine human being with values and beliefs.
I don't mean to nitpick but it seems odd to assert that Tammy Baldwin can only win in Wisconsin and not in Iowa
If I were to answer the topic more directly, my intuition is that Dems need to have these races not have a national profile
But that might be substituting one set of problems for a different set of problems
But why is anyone paying attention to Chris Hayes in this? He knows fuck-all about what it takes to get elected
What confuses me in this premise is that moderating for the sake of the conservative bias of the Senate would be a novelty. But the current Dem leadership is centre-right! They're not popular.
The answer is not to ape GOP but to reframe the political scene around material issues, not "messaging"
issue we saw in 2024, the best thing Dems can do in a trans hostile election is not to engage with it, try to talk about what they want to talk about
but the internet is so geared to see the great Dem betrayal of trans any attempt to not get sucked into talking about it gets turned into the betrayal
I would just say, all politics is local and don't try to appease the Internet. the internet flattens people.
Obama didn't win by a landslide bc of his policies or even bc Sara Palin was obnoxious. He had *It*.
Obama was way more conservative than Dems want to admit, but he had rockstar appeal. I knew he was going to win as soon as he ran.
Trump had a big TV show. He got elected with nothing else to offer.
