It's not a journalist job to be a journalist? Alright we're done here. Fox really ruined some of you people perception of what a journalist is supposed to be.
Democratic Party Rebuild
- Thread starter the next guy
- Start date
Outlaw
New Hope For the HaveNotz
Is Steve bannon a journalist? Who said BTC fell within your definition of journalism?
Democrats need more BTCs and less Ken Klippenstiens
You know the funny part of this is , acting like pod saved America is some serious discussion platform. They're essentially neoliberal shills who make nothing but excuses for the party. You need shills here and there so I appreciate that but no one should be taking them serious. Ones a whole fukking healthcare company lobbyists
Which one of them is a lobbyist?
jon favreau was a co-founder of united states of care which invented mayor Pete's public option nonsense to kill the universal great polling behind universal healthcare. The idea was to still allow capitalism to control the Healthcare industry
So your idea to fix the democrat party is to have paid grifters and entertainers. Got it
Outlaw
New Hope For the HaveNotz
BTC isn’t paid by the democrats party but he is a valuable asset in the online info war. More than any of the grifters you follow can claim
This guy is hammer posting daily angry at anyone who holds republicans or the people that vote for them accountable. His untreated mental illness got him missing out on a decent pay day from them.
BTC who considers himself a legitimate journalist with integrity, should not hold the democrats to any standard because Stevebannon has zero journalistic integrity. It says a lot about you. It answers why you and Mr wayne country going to save the day worry about supposed "grifters" i follow that have a spine.
Outlaw
New Hope For the HaveNotz
Show me where BTC claims to be an independent journalist.
Ken Klipperstien is a full blown grifter
Tony D'Amato
It's all about the inches
Jasmine Crockett may be Black Trump. Governor Hot Wheels 
AquaCityBoy
Veteran
Side note, I saw Bryan Tyler Cohen in some old Asylum movie called Independent's Day
This is damaging….democrats are fukked for a generation...
www.compactmag.com
The Emerging Democratic Minority
Summarize
John B. Judis
John B. JudisMarch 20, 2025
The Emerging Democratic Minority
Was the 2024 election a political freak of nature—the result of an aging president unwilling to acknowledge his disability until it was too late? Was it merely an instance of the anti-incumbency trend seen in many countries in the wake of post-pandemic inflation? Or did the dismal losses for the Democrats betoken future difficulties for the party?
There is no doubt that Harris was tarred by Biden’s unpopularity and by rising grocery prices, but the Democratic losses went below the presidential level and include Senate and House races they were supposed to win handily. The election revealed some new weaknesses for Democrats—for instance, among younger voters—but it rested on larger demographic and geographical trends that have haunted the Democrats for decades.
The 2024 results were consistent with Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016. The Democrats’ victory in 2020 was the result of exceptional circumstances—Donald Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic, the Democratic establishment’s boost of the least unelectable candidate, Joe Biden, and the pandemic shielding that candidate from the rigors of a normal campaign. Without a dramatic change in how voters perceive the Democrats, the trends that were evident in the 2016 and 2024 elections are likely to persist and could provide the Republicans an advantage over the next decade or so.
In what follows, I’ll explain what these trends are and how they have affected Democrats’ chances in presidential and senate elections. If I had to single out a difference between my views and those of other commentators, it would be on the importance of political geography. Finally, I’ll say something about what the Democrats need to improve their standing. Here, I think the main difference I would have with many Democrats is on the question of whether a renewed focus on economics will be enough to revive the party.
“Harris lost 16 percentage points among Latinos without a college degree.”
The Working Class Vote. Democrats began to lose support within the working class (defined roughly in polling terms as voters without a college degree) as far back as the 1960s, but they reached a new low in 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost this demographic by three points—and the white working class by 27 points. (In citing poll numbers, I give precedence to Catalist post-election compilations when comparing 2016 and 2020, AP/VoteCast on 2024 numbers, and the Edison Exit polls on any trends that go back before 2016. Where there is a wide disparity, I will try to explain the difference.) Biden gained back some of these votes in 2020, but Kamala Harris lost them by 13 points and the white working class by 31 points. Harris lost 16 percentage points among Latinos without a college degree and three points among blacks without a degree.
Rural and Small Town Voters. The Democratic share of the rural and small-town vote began falling in 1980, but the big decline, as political scientists Nicholas Jacobs and Daniel Shea demonstrate in The Rural Voter, began with the 2010 midterm election, when the Republicans flipped 31 House seats in rural districts and 20 in districts that mixed rural and urban. Democrats reached a new low of 34 percent among rural voters in 2016. Biden rebounded slightly, but Harris dropped back to Clinton’s level of support.
Harris received 34 and 35 percent support respectively in the Edison and AP/VoteCast polls, but the Edison poll estimates the rural vote as 19 percent, which roughly corresponds to the narrow Census estimate, while the AP/VoteCast figures, which ask voters whether they live in rural areas or small towns, estimates the rural/small-town vote as 35 percent. (As shown in the two graphs below, the two kinds of estimate follow the same trajectory.) The latter figure is more indicative of the difficulties that Democrats face.
1. Democratic Presidential Vote by Location, 1976-2024 using strict census categories (compiled by Nicholas Jacobs)
A graph of a number of years
AI-generated content may be incorrect.
2. Democratic Presidential Vote 1976-2024 using broader criteria of rural and small town (compiled by Nicholas Jacobs)
A graph of a number of years
AI-generated content may be incorrect.
The Male Vote. Beginning in 1980, Democratic presidential candidates began enjoying more success among female than male voters. That is what the term “gender gap” referred to. In the 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012, and 2020 presidential elections, Democratic victories were attributable to this gender gap. But when Republicans won elections, they enjoyed rising success among male voters that overcame the Democratic gender gap. In 2016, Clinton’s margin among women allowed her to win the popular vote, but she did worse among men than Barack Obama had. In 2024, male voters went over to Trump by 13 points, easily overcoming Harris’s six-point margin among women. Key male constituencies included black males, among whom Trump gained 12 points from 2020, Latinos, among whom he gained 19 points, and young (18–29-year-old) men, among whom he gained 14 points.
Because American presidential elections are decided by state totals in the Electoral College and senators are elected by states, the statewide configuration of votes is critical for control of the White House and the Senate. If you factor in the Democrats’ growing difficulties among rural and small-town voters and among voters without college degrees, you come out with an electoral map that gives an edge to Republicans despite Democratic success in large post-industrial metro centers and among the college-educated. Again, it is a matter of seeing 2024 as a continuation of 2016 rather than of 2020.
In 2016, Clinton lost six states that Obama had won twice: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, and Florida. The first three of these states were part of a “blue wall” that Democrats had won in every presidential election since 1992. Biden put these three states back in the Democratic column in 2020, but Harris lost them and the other three in 2024. And she lost Iowa, Ohio, and Florida in margins that suggested these states have now become part of a Republican “red wall.” Harris’s defeat in these states can’t simply be attributed to her being a weak candidate. Popular three-term incumbent Democratic Senators lost in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and two-term incumbent Tammy Baldwin barely squeaked by in Wisconsin.
If you look at the states that Democrats lost in 2016 and 2024, and if you include states like Missouri and Montana that were once swing states, you come up with two features that could show a trend to the Republicans. These states have a higher than the national average percentage of rural and small-town voters, and of voters without a college degree.
The Emerging Democratic Minority
Was the 2024 election a political freak of nature—the result of an aging president unwilling to acknowledge his disability until it was too late?
www.compactmag.com
The Emerging Democratic Minority
Summarize
John B. Judis
John B. JudisMarch 20, 2025
The Emerging Democratic Minority
Was the 2024 election a political freak of nature—the result of an aging president unwilling to acknowledge his disability until it was too late? Was it merely an instance of the anti-incumbency trend seen in many countries in the wake of post-pandemic inflation? Or did the dismal losses for the Democrats betoken future difficulties for the party?
There is no doubt that Harris was tarred by Biden’s unpopularity and by rising grocery prices, but the Democratic losses went below the presidential level and include Senate and House races they were supposed to win handily. The election revealed some new weaknesses for Democrats—for instance, among younger voters—but it rested on larger demographic and geographical trends that have haunted the Democrats for decades.
The 2024 results were consistent with Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016. The Democrats’ victory in 2020 was the result of exceptional circumstances—Donald Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic, the Democratic establishment’s boost of the least unelectable candidate, Joe Biden, and the pandemic shielding that candidate from the rigors of a normal campaign. Without a dramatic change in how voters perceive the Democrats, the trends that were evident in the 2016 and 2024 elections are likely to persist and could provide the Republicans an advantage over the next decade or so.
In what follows, I’ll explain what these trends are and how they have affected Democrats’ chances in presidential and senate elections. If I had to single out a difference between my views and those of other commentators, it would be on the importance of political geography. Finally, I’ll say something about what the Democrats need to improve their standing. Here, I think the main difference I would have with many Democrats is on the question of whether a renewed focus on economics will be enough to revive the party.
“Harris lost 16 percentage points among Latinos without a college degree.”
The Working Class Vote. Democrats began to lose support within the working class (defined roughly in polling terms as voters without a college degree) as far back as the 1960s, but they reached a new low in 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost this demographic by three points—and the white working class by 27 points. (In citing poll numbers, I give precedence to Catalist post-election compilations when comparing 2016 and 2020, AP/VoteCast on 2024 numbers, and the Edison Exit polls on any trends that go back before 2016. Where there is a wide disparity, I will try to explain the difference.) Biden gained back some of these votes in 2020, but Kamala Harris lost them by 13 points and the white working class by 31 points. Harris lost 16 percentage points among Latinos without a college degree and three points among blacks without a degree.
Rural and Small Town Voters. The Democratic share of the rural and small-town vote began falling in 1980, but the big decline, as political scientists Nicholas Jacobs and Daniel Shea demonstrate in The Rural Voter, began with the 2010 midterm election, when the Republicans flipped 31 House seats in rural districts and 20 in districts that mixed rural and urban. Democrats reached a new low of 34 percent among rural voters in 2016. Biden rebounded slightly, but Harris dropped back to Clinton’s level of support.
Harris received 34 and 35 percent support respectively in the Edison and AP/VoteCast polls, but the Edison poll estimates the rural vote as 19 percent, which roughly corresponds to the narrow Census estimate, while the AP/VoteCast figures, which ask voters whether they live in rural areas or small towns, estimates the rural/small-town vote as 35 percent. (As shown in the two graphs below, the two kinds of estimate follow the same trajectory.) The latter figure is more indicative of the difficulties that Democrats face.
1. Democratic Presidential Vote by Location, 1976-2024 using strict census categories (compiled by Nicholas Jacobs)
A graph of a number of years
AI-generated content may be incorrect.
2. Democratic Presidential Vote 1976-2024 using broader criteria of rural and small town (compiled by Nicholas Jacobs)
A graph of a number of years
AI-generated content may be incorrect.
The Male Vote. Beginning in 1980, Democratic presidential candidates began enjoying more success among female than male voters. That is what the term “gender gap” referred to. In the 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012, and 2020 presidential elections, Democratic victories were attributable to this gender gap. But when Republicans won elections, they enjoyed rising success among male voters that overcame the Democratic gender gap. In 2016, Clinton’s margin among women allowed her to win the popular vote, but she did worse among men than Barack Obama had. In 2024, male voters went over to Trump by 13 points, easily overcoming Harris’s six-point margin among women. Key male constituencies included black males, among whom Trump gained 12 points from 2020, Latinos, among whom he gained 19 points, and young (18–29-year-old) men, among whom he gained 14 points.
Because American presidential elections are decided by state totals in the Electoral College and senators are elected by states, the statewide configuration of votes is critical for control of the White House and the Senate. If you factor in the Democrats’ growing difficulties among rural and small-town voters and among voters without college degrees, you come out with an electoral map that gives an edge to Republicans despite Democratic success in large post-industrial metro centers and among the college-educated. Again, it is a matter of seeing 2024 as a continuation of 2016 rather than of 2020.
In 2016, Clinton lost six states that Obama had won twice: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, and Florida. The first three of these states were part of a “blue wall” that Democrats had won in every presidential election since 1992. Biden put these three states back in the Democratic column in 2020, but Harris lost them and the other three in 2024. And she lost Iowa, Ohio, and Florida in margins that suggested these states have now become part of a Republican “red wall.” Harris’s defeat in these states can’t simply be attributed to her being a weak candidate. Popular three-term incumbent Democratic Senators lost in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and two-term incumbent Tammy Baldwin barely squeaked by in Wisconsin.
If you look at the states that Democrats lost in 2016 and 2024, and if you include states like Missouri and Montana that were once swing states, you come up with two features that could show a trend to the Republicans. These states have a higher than the national average percentage of rural and small-town voters, and of voters without a college degree.
Part 2:
You would also find above-average percentages of rural and small-town voters and of voters without college degrees in solidly Republican states like Mississippi, Kentucky, West Virginia, Wyoming, and North Dakota. The exceptions are the upper New England states that were once dominated by liberal or moderate Republicans and became amenable to Democrats decades ago when the Republican party was captured by conservatives.
If you put the states that shifted to the Republicans in 2016 together with the more traditionally Republican states, you have the makings of a Republican advantage in presidential elections and a persistent Republican majority in the Senate. If you look at the electoral map for 2028, and measure those states that are safe or likely—the requirement for “likely” being that the party in question won them in 2024 by more than five percentage points—you come up with 218 safe or likely Republican electoral votes and 192 Democratic ones. The red wall is now larger than the blue wall.
“The red wall is now larger than the blue wall.”
“The GOP was able to exploit Democrats’ indifference or hostility toward young men.”
In our 2023 book Where Have All the Democrats Gone? Ruy Teixeira and I described some of the underlying causes that led working-class voters, who were once the heart of the Democratic majority, to abandon the party. The reasons why Democrats have lost rural and small-town voters is explained in Jacobs and Shea’s The Rural Voter. The decline in working-class Democrats largely coincides with the party’s decline in rural and small-town America. (In many large post-industrial metro centers, Democrats get a good share of the working class, non-college educated vote—a point made by analyst Michael Podhorzer.)
First came the backlash, particularly among white southerners and northern white ethnics, to the civil-rights revolution, the Great Society, and the expansion of welfare, and by evangelical Protestants to the New Left counter-culture. That backlash culminated in Ronald Reagan’s landslide win in 1980 and the Republican conquest of Congress in 1994. It was then coupled with, and to some extent superseded by, the reaction among working-class voters to the Democrats’ espousal of free trade and porous borders, racial justice, affirmative action, and an alphabet soup of gender identification, and by Democrats’ opposition to fossil-fuel production and pipelines. This occurred over decades and culminated in Trump’s victory in 2016.
Over five decades, the party’s leadership and its base have been transformed. That, in turn, has transformed what the party stands for and, more important, is seen to stand for. The Democrats were once the party of business interests in finance, urban real estate, oil and gas, and entertainment, on one hand, and of labor, the big-city machines, and the solid South, on the other. With the decline of labor and the urban machines and the loss of the solid South and rising progressive opposition to fossil fuels, the party came to rely on sympathetic business interests on Wall Street, in real estate, and in Hollywood and Silicon Valley on the one hand, and on foundations, think tanks, lobbies, and media, many of which dated from the 1960s and stood for women’s and minority rights, gay rights, consumer and environmental protection, human rights, and gun control. Labor remained influential, but as one interest group among many.
There were differences in the party leadership over economic issues, but during the Democratic presidencies, business often prevailed over labor on trade, finance, and even taxes. Where the different factions often came together was over social issues, including affirmative action, immigration (which is also an economic issue), racial justice, women’s and gay rights, and environmental (but not financial) regulation. The Democrats became the party of NAFTA, of the repeal of Glass-Steagall, of support for abortion, equal pay, and gay rights; of acquiescence to illegal immigration; the party of the Kyoto and Paris climate agreements, and of diversity, equity and inclusion. In the 2010s, the party increasingly became identified with radical stances on sex and gender, as well as with a lax attitude toward asylum that was exploited by networks of smugglers, a rejection of equality in favor of “equity,” and hostility to law enforcement.
Within the party’s activist circles, a key role was increasingly played by college-educated women who were the heirs of the feminist movement, and by college-educated blacks who were the heirs of the civil-rights revolution. Of the party’s last five presidential nominees, everyone except for Biden fit this bill: a black male lawyer from Chicago, a white female lawyer from Washington DC, and a mixed-race female lawyer from San Francisco. Until recently, the House speaker was a woman from San Francisco; the current minority leader is a black man from New York City.
As its leadership and direction changed, so did the party’s electorate. Once the party of the working class, it became the party of college-educated professionals and minorities who lived, for the most part, in the large post-industrial metro centers. That reinforced the changes within the leadership. These shifts in the party’s leadership and base reinforced the party’s focus on social and environmental issues that took a more radical form in the last decade.
Political analysts often frame the choice of candidate and party in terms of specific issues. And there have been certain issues that have proved so salient that they have shifted working-class and rural and small-town voters away from the Democrats. One of these, which is often mischaracterized in polling, is the Democratic opposition to fossil fuels. That has threatened Democrats in states like Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and Montana that depend on fossil fuels for jobs and state revenue. But it has also hurt Democrats in farm states that depend on oil-based fertilizer. Coal-producing West Virginia began moving away from the Democrats in 2000, when Al Gore, the chief proponent of Kyoto, was the Democratic nominee. It is now part of the red wall. Oil- and coal-rich North Dakota had two Democratic Senators from 1987 to 2011. Now the state is solidly Republican. Louisiana and Montana were once swing states, and Pennsylvania was part of the blue wall.
But in general, individual issues are important in contributing to a general impression of what the party stands for and which voters it really represents. In both the 2016 and 2024 elections, the party’s radical turn on socio-cultural issues reinforced an image of elite metropolitan insularity. In the 2024 election, Democrats’ opposition to strict border security and support for a transgender-rights agenda that went far beyond protection from discrimination, including the participation of biological males in women’s sports, proved to be part of the party’s undoing. Trump’s most effective ad in wooing swing voters cited Harris’s support for state funding of sex-change operations for detained illegal immigrants. The most important single issue in the election cycle was the Biden administration’s lax stand on illegal immigration.
You would also find above-average percentages of rural and small-town voters and of voters without college degrees in solidly Republican states like Mississippi, Kentucky, West Virginia, Wyoming, and North Dakota. The exceptions are the upper New England states that were once dominated by liberal or moderate Republicans and became amenable to Democrats decades ago when the Republican party was captured by conservatives.
If you put the states that shifted to the Republicans in 2016 together with the more traditionally Republican states, you have the makings of a Republican advantage in presidential elections and a persistent Republican majority in the Senate. If you look at the electoral map for 2028, and measure those states that are safe or likely—the requirement for “likely” being that the party in question won them in 2024 by more than five percentage points—you come up with 218 safe or likely Republican electoral votes and 192 Democratic ones. The red wall is now larger than the blue wall.
“The red wall is now larger than the blue wall.”
“The GOP was able to exploit Democrats’ indifference or hostility toward young men.”
In our 2023 book Where Have All the Democrats Gone? Ruy Teixeira and I described some of the underlying causes that led working-class voters, who were once the heart of the Democratic majority, to abandon the party. The reasons why Democrats have lost rural and small-town voters is explained in Jacobs and Shea’s The Rural Voter. The decline in working-class Democrats largely coincides with the party’s decline in rural and small-town America. (In many large post-industrial metro centers, Democrats get a good share of the working class, non-college educated vote—a point made by analyst Michael Podhorzer.)
First came the backlash, particularly among white southerners and northern white ethnics, to the civil-rights revolution, the Great Society, and the expansion of welfare, and by evangelical Protestants to the New Left counter-culture. That backlash culminated in Ronald Reagan’s landslide win in 1980 and the Republican conquest of Congress in 1994. It was then coupled with, and to some extent superseded by, the reaction among working-class voters to the Democrats’ espousal of free trade and porous borders, racial justice, affirmative action, and an alphabet soup of gender identification, and by Democrats’ opposition to fossil-fuel production and pipelines. This occurred over decades and culminated in Trump’s victory in 2016.
Over five decades, the party’s leadership and its base have been transformed. That, in turn, has transformed what the party stands for and, more important, is seen to stand for. The Democrats were once the party of business interests in finance, urban real estate, oil and gas, and entertainment, on one hand, and of labor, the big-city machines, and the solid South, on the other. With the decline of labor and the urban machines and the loss of the solid South and rising progressive opposition to fossil fuels, the party came to rely on sympathetic business interests on Wall Street, in real estate, and in Hollywood and Silicon Valley on the one hand, and on foundations, think tanks, lobbies, and media, many of which dated from the 1960s and stood for women’s and minority rights, gay rights, consumer and environmental protection, human rights, and gun control. Labor remained influential, but as one interest group among many.
There were differences in the party leadership over economic issues, but during the Democratic presidencies, business often prevailed over labor on trade, finance, and even taxes. Where the different factions often came together was over social issues, including affirmative action, immigration (which is also an economic issue), racial justice, women’s and gay rights, and environmental (but not financial) regulation. The Democrats became the party of NAFTA, of the repeal of Glass-Steagall, of support for abortion, equal pay, and gay rights; of acquiescence to illegal immigration; the party of the Kyoto and Paris climate agreements, and of diversity, equity and inclusion. In the 2010s, the party increasingly became identified with radical stances on sex and gender, as well as with a lax attitude toward asylum that was exploited by networks of smugglers, a rejection of equality in favor of “equity,” and hostility to law enforcement.
Within the party’s activist circles, a key role was increasingly played by college-educated women who were the heirs of the feminist movement, and by college-educated blacks who were the heirs of the civil-rights revolution. Of the party’s last five presidential nominees, everyone except for Biden fit this bill: a black male lawyer from Chicago, a white female lawyer from Washington DC, and a mixed-race female lawyer from San Francisco. Until recently, the House speaker was a woman from San Francisco; the current minority leader is a black man from New York City.
As its leadership and direction changed, so did the party’s electorate. Once the party of the working class, it became the party of college-educated professionals and minorities who lived, for the most part, in the large post-industrial metro centers. That reinforced the changes within the leadership. These shifts in the party’s leadership and base reinforced the party’s focus on social and environmental issues that took a more radical form in the last decade.
Political analysts often frame the choice of candidate and party in terms of specific issues. And there have been certain issues that have proved so salient that they have shifted working-class and rural and small-town voters away from the Democrats. One of these, which is often mischaracterized in polling, is the Democratic opposition to fossil fuels. That has threatened Democrats in states like Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and Montana that depend on fossil fuels for jobs and state revenue. But it has also hurt Democrats in farm states that depend on oil-based fertilizer. Coal-producing West Virginia began moving away from the Democrats in 2000, when Al Gore, the chief proponent of Kyoto, was the Democratic nominee. It is now part of the red wall. Oil- and coal-rich North Dakota had two Democratic Senators from 1987 to 2011. Now the state is solidly Republican. Louisiana and Montana were once swing states, and Pennsylvania was part of the blue wall.
But in general, individual issues are important in contributing to a general impression of what the party stands for and which voters it really represents. In both the 2016 and 2024 elections, the party’s radical turn on socio-cultural issues reinforced an image of elite metropolitan insularity. In the 2024 election, Democrats’ opposition to strict border security and support for a transgender-rights agenda that went far beyond protection from discrimination, including the participation of biological males in women’s sports, proved to be part of the party’s undoing. Trump’s most effective ad in wooing swing voters cited Harris’s support for state funding of sex-change operations for detained illegal immigrants. The most important single issue in the election cycle was the Biden administration’s lax stand on illegal immigration.