It's sort of a collateral point, but I'm not so sure we suck at doing electoral politics. Ah, you say, the proof is in the pudding. Not so fast. We did better in the House and Senate than we should have. We've outperformed in every race since election day. I think we're better at this than they are.
So why are we losing? Simple. People don't agree with us. That's not an electoral politics problem. Trump has majority approval for his current program of abject surrender to dictators and destroying federal governing capacity. That's not an electoral issue. In fact, he did worse than he should have since he lacked a majority vote.
We're in a country that disagrees with us. Former libertarians like us have experience with that. We should teach our new allies from our success and many more failures. Ds atr poised to do what the lp did at is best, which was still a failure. We need to stop them.
I don't have the information to argue with you about the Democratic Party. But I trust your analysis. I don't know mostly because I find electoral politics kinda boring, compared to what people think and believe. So I have focused on that because it's more interesting to me. And so I'm very ready to believe it's where the juice is.
Ultimately, I think we can both agree that for liberalism to happen, both have to work. The "infrastructure," as MattY calls it, has to plant the seeds. It has to convince voters to want the right things. To care about the right things. To support the right policies and rights kinds of candidates.
The party can only reap what the infrastructure has sown. The Democratic Party can't effectively do its job and make people more liberal.
As for how libertarians can help the Democratic Party, I'm not sure. At best, I think we should help recreate the far more effective conservative infrastructure for the left.
I agree both need to work. I think that's why Ds are struggling. We don't have the ideological side. (And there's reasons for that, mostly that it was consensus for so long we stopped defending it.) All we have is electoral tricks, which work when all you need is turnout.
It's sort of a collateral point, but I'm not so sure we suck at doing electoral politics. Ah, you say, the proof is in the pudding. Not so fast. We did better in the House and Senate than we should have. We've outperformed in every race since election day. I think we're better at this than they are.
So why are we losing? Simple. People don't agree with us. That's not an electoral politics problem. Trump has majority approval for his current program of abject surrender to dictators and destroying federal governing capacity. That's not an electoral issue. In fact, he did worse than he should have since he lacked a majority vote.
We're in a country that disagrees with us. Former libertarians like us have experience with that. We should teach our new allies from our success and many more failures. Ds atr poised to do what the lp did at is best, which was still a failure. We need to stop them.
I don't have the information to argue with you about the Democratic Party. But I trust your analysis. I don't know mostly because I find electoral politics kinda boring, compared to what people think and believe. So I have focused on that because it's more interesting to me. And so I'm very ready to believe it's where the juice is.
Ultimately, I think we can both agree that for liberalism to happen, both have to work. The "infrastructure," as MattY calls it, has to plant the seeds. It has to convince voters to want the right things. To care about the right things. To support the right policies and rights kinds of candidates.
The party can only reap what the infrastructure has sown. The Democratic Party can't effectively do its job and make people more liberal.
As for how libertarians can help the Democratic Party, I'm not sure. At best, I think we should help recreate the far more effective conservative infrastructure for the left.
I agree both need to work. I think that's why Ds are struggling. We don't have the ideological side. (And there's reasons for that, mostly that it was consensus for so long we stopped defending it.) All we have is electoral tricks, which work when all you need is turnout.