Ben Rhodes says the authoritarian playbook engineers political outcomes, wins elections & shows power. Power wins

[ancianita]

hearts and minds. Maybe. For a while.

Power also promotes hearts & minds control;
and a false sense of security;
and denial of freedom of information
-- and free will.

Sooner or later Power loses to Freedom, which disperses power more equitably.

Freedom is what the Democratic Party has been committed to through constitutional rule of law.
For the sake of that commitment, let's consider our future party as if this is not our last free and fair election. Here goes...

As a party that lost, it seems fair to say that there is more to understand about the American electorate than we thought we knew.

One thing we knew existed, and that Vice President Harris tried hard to address, is the deeply held racist/misogynist views that prevent a woman from ever becoming president no matter how seriously accomplished and qualified she is. Harris established her working class and middle class credibility almost everywhere she spoke. So what happened to our party credibility?


The following nine questions offer more food for thought about how/why we hadn't noticed, or listened to, and thereby, didn't really know our audience -- along with the less-than-subtle implications that we let our campaign donors define our perspective and actions.
We believed they knew best because their money gave them the right to insist they did.

If we decided not let our donors decide the perspective and message, we partisans could, in the future, see, speak, act, campaign and most of all, govern better.

From The Lever:

What is the Democratic Party’s theory of winning elections?
Why do Democrats seem unwilling to focus on persuading working-class voters?
Why have working-class voters been fleeing the Democratic Party for years?
How does all this relate to the Democratic Party’s internal fights over the last few years?
But aren’t Democrats being smart by trying to be a big-tent party?
What were Republicans’ most effective tactics to court working-class voters?
Why weren’t Democrats able to sell working-class voters on their economic record?
Why did Americans decide to vote against “saving democracy?”
What could Democrats have done to win the election?

https://www.levernews.com/handbook-for-the-politically-deceased/#jump1