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Broken Brand
Kay W.
March 31, 2025
Chris Murphy has a good interview in The New Yorker about Democratic Party reform:
I think we’re a pretty broken brand right now, and some of the people on the left don’t want to go through that hard rewrite of what the Democratic Party stands for.
The public was not convinced by our argument, in 2024, because we were shilling for the existing version of democracy—which is deeply corrupt, which does not work. When I got into politics twenty-five years ago, something like campaign-finance reform, government reform, democracy reform, was a top-three issue for Democrats. It was something we talked about every single day. Somewhere along the line that stopped; somewhere along the line we stopped talking about reforming democracy. So it became easy for voters to just believe that we were all corrupt, and that neither Republicans nor Democrats were actually sincere in fixing what was wrong with democracy.
Trump is giving us this opportunity—because this is the most corrupt White House in the history of the country—to run on an anti-corruption message. But we will only win if we actually run an anti-corruption platform. And so, for me, the two things that matter most are populist economics and government reform. If Democrats run on cleaning up Washington with real, actual plans—to, for instance, get private money completely out of politics; to pass the STOCK Act, to make sure that not a single person inside government can use insider information to trade to benefit them financially—and we run on populist economics, I think that’s a winner, and it’s a way for people to stand up and support democracy, but only a reformed version of democracy.
Anyway, read the whole thing. It’s one approach to reform- I like some of it and don’t like other parts and feel free to take it apart or disagree.
As I’ve been getting out of the bubble I was in and recognizing that we have a real problem with voters, I’ve been thinking a lot about why I became uncomfortable within the “Democrats with college degrees” bubble we have created. I’m uncomfortable with the current iteration of the Democratic Party because we’re smug and superior and self-satisfied and hold ourselves out as ethically pure and that’s just bullshit. It doesn’t ring true to me. I think people reject it because they know it’s bullshit too. Are we better than MAGA? Yeah, of course. Are we in a position to lord that over people and lecture them? Well, I guess so but not if we want to win. We can be very smug and superior losers.
If I could change one thing before the midterms I would change that tone- I would stop talking to people like we’re their betters and everything we believe is self-evident and doesn’t need to be argued or proven. It’s obnoxious and arrogant and it so saturates liberal communications I don’t even think we see it. I don’t think Bluesky is helping. I think we built a comfy echo chamber on Bluesky where we can pat one another on the back and tell each other how great we are and how dumb everyone else is while everything we’ve built burns down around us- that’s not organizing or politics - that’s a support group.
We’ve lost ground with non college voters across the board - Black, Latino, white. My own working class county went from 42 to 45% D to 25% D over the last ten years and I’m on the Democratic Party leadership at the county level so this on me, too. We have to change and if we don’t, well, look at Florida, where we’ve lost ground in every single demographic and whole urban areas are now purple or red. Florida is our future if we don’t change.
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