The ONLY way Democrats can and should move forward
The shepherd cozied up too much to the wolf. It needs to find the flock again.
Make sure you read to the bottom for weekly music rec and dog pics
I want to start with an acknowledgement.1 A small plea of nuance.
Yeah, yeah, I know nuance is cringe23 to some people, but I LIKE IT AND It's IMPORTANT.
I say “the democrats” a lot. I’m mostly talking about the national Democratic Party as a whole. There are many democrats at the state/local level who are pouring their blood, sweat, tears, and god knows what else into their work every single day to protect your rights, put progressive candidates on the ballot, and make your life better. A couple notable exceptions include two former guests of the show, Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman and North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton4
A boy can dream
I wish we, like many semi-functioning democratic societies across the globe, had viable third parties that could hold power in this country and weren’t dominated by shirtless men running across the stage at their party’s convention.5
We don’t. Sadly. I would love to see a movement for a labor-focused one that is built by workers to advocate for economic justice. Until then, I have typically felt that the Democratic Party is the best vehicle we have to bring about the right policy change.
When I say vehicle, I’ll be real — that car is currently a lemon and needs a lot of top-down work, but abandoning the ship doesn’t leave us with much.
That’s why I’ve received a lot of criticism from others on the left — they believe the Democratic Party isn’t salvage-able. I sympathize with that because in truth, they might be correct6. But we don’t have much choice other than to try.
Trump and the MAGA movement clearly co-opted the GOP and molded it into something that doesn’t really resemble the party it used to be. Yeah, it was bad before, but this is wildly different and worse. I’m not saying that would be easy (or even necessarily possible) to replicate for democrats, but we can’t just abandon the only apparatus capable of wielding political power to effectuate left policy.
The big thing missing for democrats
I have this self-hating, mentally harmful habit of diversifying my political media consumption in hopes of understanding what other sides are talking about7
If you look at what centrist, never-trump GOP, and center-left podcasts and media covered in the run-up to the election and the year or two before. There is a MASSIVE coverage gap on what I believe to be the biggest issue. It unites most people in this country. Democrats have fallen short on it.
Class struggle.8 The ruling class vs. the working class. The haves vs. the have-nots.
I’ve been saying this for years on the podcast. And I am proud that we’ve been covering the movement to unionize in diverse industries for multiple years now.
The groundswell of people unionizing in industries from baristas to video game coders should be a big fucking wake-up call to anyone hoping to win the vote of our modern day working class.
Now sure, if you look back you can find plenty of references to “the working class” on any of these aforementioned shows or from most democratic politicians, but it’s usually hollow words without a real understanding of what it actually means.9 Well, let me tell you.
It’s anecdote time, baby!
I don’t consider myself to be working class. Our collective household income is firmly above the average for the U.S. But it is still difficult for us — even making good money — to feel like we’re truly getting by in this country. I’m not saying this to extract sympathy from you — I’m saying this because it is absurd to even say this in the richest country in the world.
We aren’t financially incompetent or frivolous at all. We’ve tried to do everything right — everything that our elders TOLD US TO DO in order to be successful, to live the “American Dream”, and yet I turn 35 in two weeks and still worry every day whether I’ll actually ever achieve the financial comfort I’ve always wanted and hoped for. I worry that buying a house in this economy might not even be a good idea because of the insane prices and criminally high interest rates. I could go on but you see my point
Again, I am NOT saying this to bait you for sympathy at all and don’t want to sound ungrateful. We are very lucky. I am fortunate enough to still be able to live relatively comfortably and make decent money, yet my top concerns are still housing, the cost of living, and economic mobility. If I, someone who is statistically ahead of the average, experiencing these feelings, can you imagine what the majority of people in this country are feeling???
Top Democrats in national party leadership like to ignore Bernie Sanders’ run in 2016 and 2020, and have worked diligently to swipe it under the rug, but the truth of the matter is that he connected with so many people that felt no politician or political party ever had.
I remember when I first heard him speak in 2015 and thought, “holy shit, he actually wants to do everything I’ve ever dreamed a candidate would do” — that was not a unique reaction!
The disconnect is that the people leading the party are very financially comfortable. They’re wealthy, well-connected, well-vested in the stock market, and haven’t had to worry about things like the interest accrued on their credit cards in a very long time.
To be disconnected from the issues that the majority of Americans think about every single day, multiple times a day, is a travesty.
One additional thing is clear: the current Democratic Party cannot even begin to represent the interests of the average person who works for a living without rooting out the core evil within it — big corporate interests. Unless the entire party disavows billionaires and corporate PAC money, it cannot have any credibility as the party of the working class ever again.
My point is this: a movement to truly support working people has to center them and make that the core function of the party. Everything else can come from that.
You can say you support the working class all you want, but you have to back that up not just with policy and actions, but with credible people to lead that movement.
This week, I’m listening to Corduroy Brown — a feel good rocker from Huntington, West Virginia.
If you’ve ever listened to one of our episodes where we interview someone, there’s a good chance you’ve already heard a Corduroy Brown song. We had Appalachian musicians send us their songs to be featured in our show a few years ago, and he sent us one that we liked so much we kept using it ever since for our intro/outro music (“Leave it to Me”).
Corduroy Brown’s music is vibrant, fun, and jubilant — it’s what I love listening to in the morning when I’m getting ready for the day to put me in a good mood and the right headspace.
Check out his interview with WOUB, where he talks about how his experience with nearly dying influenced his most recent album
And now, here is Big Dog celebrating Salty Girl Sunday
No, not a land acknowledgement. Settle down, you right wing trolls.
No.
And another thing, fuck that. I don’t set out to be cringe, but if wanting to add complexity in an instant-gratification society dominated by short attention spans is such a bad thing, perhaps you should take a look at the code of federal regulations for the disposal of toxic waste and ask yourself if specificity and complexity of that is “cringe”
In fact, Anderson has recently been leading the effort to make sure that North Carolinians votes are actually counted. https://campaignlegal.org/update/losing-candidate-north-carolina-wants-silence-65000-voters
Y’all I had to. The Libertarians are so deeply unserious that it is absolutely hysterical sometimes.
I’m working in a separate post entirely about this
Not to actually learn much, we’re mostly beyond that, folks.
Absolutely shitty term for it, but I’m no messaging maven — somebody else can figure that out.
It is obvious that there are notable exceptions, including the likes of AOC and Bernie Sanders, and many state and local politicians etc. etc.
 | A guest post by
|