One of the principles of stoic philosophy is to only worry about things within your control. What’s the point of worrying if you can do nothing about it?
I believe most would, upon reflection at least, agree with this. (In fact, I’d go further and say that there should be a sign reading “This way lies madness” or “This way lies sadness” for those who tread the path of worrying about things they can’t control.)
There should, however, be a corollary: If you choose to take action over something you can control be certain that action, if successful, offers the outcome you wish. I’m convinced that most don’t get this far. The world is rife with unintended consequences.
If the likelihood of success is dim, consider what failure might mean. I have no qualms with glorious defeat, having suffered many myself. Particularly in the political realm, this happens as often as not. At the end of the day, strive to be as proud of your losses as your wins.
Pride in noble defeat is not the same thing as winning, and losing elections is painful. It is unpleasant to find that most voters in your city, county, state, or country disagree with you. But that’s democracy, and if we’re wise, we can learn as much or more from our failures as from our victories.
I say all this as a precursor to political advice that some on social media may find upsetting: You’ve got to stop. Your hot takes and inflammatory, tribalist rhetoric are having the opposite effect of what you intend.
The Democrat Party approval rating has sunk to 27% in the latest MSNBC poll. That’s the lowest in history. For context, Nixon’s approval rating, post-Watergate, was 24%. Republicans now outnumber Democrats 45% to 41%. A recent study conducted by a David Shor, a Democratic pollster, concluded that if all registered voters had turned out on election day, Trump would have won by about 5 points rather than the actual 1.7 point margin of victory. (https://archive.ph/0aiPi)
Demographically, there was a negative swing for Democrats from 2020 to 2024 in every major racial category (White, Black, Hispanic, Asian) across every political ideology (Liberal, Moderate, Conservative) except for Black Liberals with whom the change was 0%. Democrats lost every other category including moderate Asians and Hispanics by double digits.
These results should not be considered by Democrats an inducement by the body politic to continue or double-down on previous policy positions. Again, if you’re advocating those positions: Please stop. You are not helping.
As I’ve argued previously, the Democrats first must be seen as a sane alternative to the Trumpian GOP, and second need desperately to return to their roots as the party of the blue collar working class. They are currently failing both tests.
What does today’s Democratic Party stand for? Before you answer, look at your own posts of the past three month. What would a blue collar, working class American conclude based on those posts? The February Navigator Research Poll found that voters do think that Democrats fight for what they believe in, but they also thought that “Democrats don’t respect work, don’t share my values, don’t look out for working people, don’t value work, don’t care about people like me, don’t have the right priorities and, by a massive 47 points, don’t get things done.” (If Oregon is any indication, I’d agree.)
What’s more, people are fleeing the big blue states. California, New York, and Illinois have all lost population in the 2020-2024 time frame while Florida and Texas have gained significantly. This is a governance problem, and it better get corrected soon. The 2030 apportionment forecast projects red states to add 10 electoral votes and blue state losing 9 electoral votes ahead of the 2032 election. This would mean that the Democrats carrying Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina in the 2032 presidential would be insufficient to win the White House.
The House of Representatives is the other problem. Huge gains in Texas and Florida would diminish significantly any Democratic prospects of taking or holding the House. There is still time to avoid this outcome, but it means that Democrats have to make blue states attractive places to live—especially for working class voters. This means lower tax burdens, more affordable housing, a tougher approach on crime and criminals, a better handling of the homeless, and so forth.
How does one know what issues to advocate for? The greatest politician of my lifetime, and I do not mean the term as a pejorative, was probably Bill Clinton. (A case could be made for Barak Obama.) Clinton’s popularity was multi-faceted, but one thing he did was to obsessively follow the polling data and do those things which were most popular. Giving people what they want might seem an obvious course, but the Democratic Party today is not following it.
In this respect elections are a feedback mechanism. It is important to listen and act on that feedback. The Democratic Party, with a few exceptions, is failing at this task. The top three issues of the election were, in order: the economy, illegal immigration, and social issues.
Of these, the Democrats could only plausible claim to be on the side of the majority on the social issue of abortion. America, with the notable exception of South Dakota, appears to be pro-choice. (There can be arguments to what extent, but generally abortion rights have won by large margins in red, purple, and blue states.) For better or worse, the issue was taken out of play by state ballot measures which codified it as a right. This gave voters no reason to vote Democratic on social issues which was, again, the third of the three top issues anyway.
If you want to help today:
- Start by reading the polling. Get on the side of the majority. If you’re in the minority, this is a bad issue to post about. (That doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It just means that it’s not the right issue to highlight.)
- Do not post or link to inflammatory rhetoric. It doesn’t help to rile up yourself or your tribe. Those folks don’t need to be convinced about the correctness of your position. They already agree with you. Your target audience is the undecided, persuadable voter. You might be surprised how many people are in this category on various issues, because unlike you or me, most people—particularly working class voters—don’t obsessively follow political affairs.
- If you want to convince someone of the correctness of your position, find the top three arguments for the other side and make the case for the opposition at least a strongly as you’d make the arguments for your side. Then go and defeat those arguments. That’s how to persuade.
- Advocate for actionable things. It’s useless to post another “Trump sucks” story because there’s nothing actionable in it (and nobody is convinced by name-calling or ad hominem attacks anyway). Elections support, financing candidates, and get-out-the-vote efforts are all examples of actionable steps.
- Stay positive. If you simply can’t bring yourself to admit that Trump occasionally does something right or good, give the credit to America. Elections will never be won on an “America sucks” platform. Far too many people of all political stripes think America is awesome (particularly minorities and working class Americans, by the way) for a negative campaign to succeed. For me, the single worst moment of Trump’s recent speech to Congress was the failure of Democrats to applaud a kid with cancer. Yes, it’s a performance feel-good piece. So what? Presidents do that. All America saw was a bunch of Democrats looking heartless and further out of touch than they thought possible.
- Realize that I am wrong, and you are too. Not about everything but certainly some things. The problem is we don’t know which. Bearing this in mind, it’s best not to take a shotgun approach in commenting on every passing news item or controversy. It’s far better to be publicly right when you post than it is to be frequently loudly mistaken. (Admitting one’s mistakes offers a path back and is an excellent character trait, but better still is not to suffer the damage to your reputation in the first place.)
- If you don’t know or aren’t sure, ask questions. Neither you nor I can possibly know everything, but we both have friends who are experts in their various fields. Their perspective can frequently be enlightening even if you disagree with it. If you do disagree with it, you can politely say so, but couple that disagreement with gratitude for the answer or next time they won’t answer at all.