It’s not odd that these rallies are attracting crowds uncommon outside of Presidential campaigns because that's exactly what these rallies are—a Presidential campaign for an AOC/Bern ticket, unrealistic for many reasons, including the Bern’s age and the undeniable reality that America remains a center-right country.
The Bern’s railing against the “Establishment” is laughable because unfortunately the antiestablishment left of the ‘60s—the Bern’s generation—largely has become the establishment of the 21st Century throughout the West and the anglosphere, having taken bureaucracies, public sector, cultural, and even many corporate bureaucracies. This socialist, leftist establishment is out of touch with the center-left American consensus which accounts for two Trump presidencies.
I suspect you're right, and this may be the part where the Bern passes the torch to a new generation of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which is really what he and AOC are even though they cosplay as Democrats.
But Bern fans are die-hards and the Bern is a classic narcissist so it wouldn't surprise me if he was at the top of the ticket with her as VP followed by his resignation or death to get her into the Oval Office.
He was talking about the Democratic Establishment, not just “the establishment”. A subtle but real difference. It was that democratic establishment that hid Bidens cognitive decline and permitted inequality to persist. He was really going after fellow democrats and I think he is right about 90% of his points.
Maybe Slotkin can start policing language when she can fill stadiums. And perhaps she can stuff her elitist notion that Americans are too stupid to understand the word “oligarchy” up her ass. (We need to dumb it down, They know what a king is because Disney.
Certainly defining an "oligarchy" would need to be done ... and may require some sleight-of-hand as it seems "oligarch" = "a billionaire progressives don't like". (assuming it isn't the usual meaning of "Putin's dog walker who ended up owning a giant mine in the Arctic")
Would Soros, Gates, or Buffett be numbered among the "oligarchs", or is the term reserved for billionaires in the Trump camp?
A real basic tenet of good government is that you should do your best to uplift the civic discourse. I'm not a fan of Pete going on Shultz's pod, but that is essentially what he's trying to do - the funny thing is that centrists like Slotkin are basically embracing the narrative (some) on the left have made - that the average voter is too dumb to appreciate certain messaging and policy. Maybe in a country with many issues around adult literacy, this is wishful thinking, but we should want our civic society to be better; I grew up in a household where my dad and grandfather, both blue-collar workers, read two or three newspapers a day. We can and should expect more.
I see the use of "oligarchy" in the same way I see the use of "woke": a symbol that means something in the mind of the person regardless of its' actual definition. Maybe someone does not know the dictionary definiton of "oligarchy", but the point is more symbolic than definitional. Ask ten people what "woke" means and you maybe get seven different answers, but the end goal to use it as a symbol.
When it comes to Bernie, I think people just know he's a big-word guy at this point. Maybe the eyes glaze over at the text, but they know what he's getting at because his message has never changed. Maybe you can get a messsenger to bring the readability more in line with the norm (I don't think AOC is that messenger), but I think people know what they're getting with Bernie and approach it accordingly.
Thanks Zaid. There are two pieces of the data you're ignoring for whatever reason and it directly correlates to two diametrically opposed philosophies on teaching. The first is that we teach towards the right side of the bell curve, trying to get as many students smarter as possible, stretching them all. You know, teaching. The other is that we dumb things down as much as possible so that everyone can already understand us. Though this has mass communication, it doesn't increase the intelligence of anyone and over the course of generations, it literally dumbs down the whole class. Integrated studies for the gifted gets cut, etc. etc.
Look again at your search volume and you'll notice a stair step pattern. After both major events — Russia and the Jan 2025 speech — there's a plateau. The floor of search volume is higher.
That means, generally, more people are searching more often for "oligarchy" after these big events than before the big events.
Maybe — just maybe — the tour is about educating as he goes. And as people get smarter, as they wisen up to the problem, they'll stop voting against self interest, college or no.
This isn't analysis or news, this is grasping at straws to make completely arbitrary points. The conceit here, that "Progressives love being on the cutting-edge of political terminology. But their words often fail to translate to most Americans.", has nothing to do with this writing or its author's "research" (online readability scorers vary wildly).
What is the fundamental justification within the article which emphasizes that progressives love being on the cutting-edge of political terminology and that their words often fail to translate to most Americans? The only example of "cutting-edge political terminology", whatever that means, is the example you provide of CRT as an affirmative example on the right. The notion that Dems, or The Left, think that all Americans have a degree and use their language accordingly is both laughable and unsupported by every claim made here. It is a massive, disingenuous, stretch, and were you a reader, rather than the author of this piece, you would see that the tenuous, which is a charitable description, connections you make between the left and language while absolving the right of any culpability with regard to introducing complicated language only flattens and weakens the conviction of your points.
Idk dude, there's really nothing to see here. The oligarch example does not lend itself to your point in the slightest, given that all available evidence disputes the idea that Americans don't get what it means. Beyond that, your reference to the introduction of CRT into the political lexicon by the right cuts directly against your core argument, and you don't supplement it with any counter-examples. This reads like grievance searching for its own justification.
The problem with the Democrats is not just messaging. Their coalition is changing.
They lost their lock on big labor back in the Reagan era. As manufacturing declined they lost the blue color vote generally. It doesn’t help that government regulation helped kill it.
Now government workers, including teachers, are a major constituency. It’s one of the major reasons Democrats resist anything which threatens to downsize government, or even reduce its rate of growth. Regulation delays everything. “Shovel ready” projects aren’t, because almost anything can be delayed indefinitely. Even projects that Democrats supposedly want , like high speed rail, bog down. They don’t see a problem with that.
They managed to co-opt the civil rights movement. Now they are frantic to hold on to minority votes. Their activists try to do so by demonizing whites. Their demographic triumphalism about the USA becoming a majority-minority country doesn’t help. It feeds fears of “The Great Replacement”. You say that’s a paranoid conspiracy theory, but you should spend some time reading what Democrat activists have written on the subject.
The Democrats have completely lost the plot. They are so used to their privilege, so used to their entitlement, they just expect people to show up. 36 percent of the electorate did not show up. That means that 67 percent of the electorate does not support Trump. Both the Democrats and GOP can barely get 34 percent of the electorate to the polls anymore in any given year. The common truism is that when there is a good turnout, Dems win. That maybe true, but the Dems have no message, no response, to Trump. And meanwhile, people are waiting. Now, it’s true that the GOP has bound itself to MAGA, and likely, barring extreme election fuckery, MAGA will out by 2028 because they are as incompetent as they are fascist. However, the Democrats need to cancel the Faustian deal Clinton made with the neoliberal right, and not make the same errors. The idea that low-level consumer manufacturing is ever coming back to the US is deluded. But Americans need real opportunities and not just shit jobs in service industries. The Democrats have to get over their entitled bullshit.
You read the Tea Party newsletter so we don’t have to! Thanks for your service 😎 But for real this was a great post . I think it’s always worthwhile to think about language in politics. Look at how the right constantly uses “dog whistle “ messaging where coded words are used to convey ideas that might be expected in socially unacceptable ways, especially regarding race.
I agree. There's a lot to learn from comparing those two newsletters. The Tea Party one uses shorter paragraphs and lists, gets to the point quicker.
Like it or not, this draws people in better than long blocks of text and pile-ups of facts.
It's got nothing to do with being dumb or smart. And nothing to do with the left needing to change their message. It's about presenting the message realistically.
What word describes folks with money that use it to bully and game US capitalism? Fat cats and billionaires? Royalty? Kings and queens? Taking potshots at American reading skills is the kind of looking down on people that made MAGA what it is. As well as the kind of talk that the left hates. But there is a silver lining there - the majority of Americans find this kind of attitude repellent, as more politicians are discovering.
People who attracted to the candidacy of Bernie Sanders are also smitten to the use of big words in those speeches. They think they understand what is being said, but it's all encoded so they don't realize what's going on.
I’m more interested to hear in what Slotkin has to say than what Bernie or AOC have to offer. She actually had to win against a Republican in a swing state while the other two occupy very safe seats.
I do not see how Bernie implied Americans are not very smart. I see how Slotkin implied that. I think it's worthwhile to explain terms and re-word messages to 7th-8th grade reading level for the reasons you've given. Thank you for getting more of us to reconsider.
It’s not odd that these rallies are attracting crowds uncommon outside of Presidential campaigns because that's exactly what these rallies are—a Presidential campaign for an AOC/Bern ticket, unrealistic for many reasons, including the Bern’s age and the undeniable reality that America remains a center-right country.
The Bern’s railing against the “Establishment” is laughable because unfortunately the antiestablishment left of the ‘60s—the Bern’s generation—largely has become the establishment of the 21st Century throughout the West and the anglosphere, having taken bureaucracies, public sector, cultural, and even many corporate bureaucracies. This socialist, leftist establishment is out of touch with the center-left American consensus which accounts for two Trump presidencies.
I actually think Bernie is doing this as a power building exercise for his agenda rather than a presidential race, he isn't running again.
AOC might.
I suspect you're right, and this may be the part where the Bern passes the torch to a new generation of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which is really what he and AOC are even though they cosplay as Democrats.
But Bern fans are die-hards and the Bern is a classic narcissist so it wouldn't surprise me if he was at the top of the ticket with her as VP followed by his resignation or death to get her into the Oval Office.
He was talking about the Democratic Establishment, not just “the establishment”. A subtle but real difference. It was that democratic establishment that hid Bidens cognitive decline and permitted inequality to persist. He was really going after fellow democrats and I think he is right about 90% of his points.
Maybe Slotkin can start policing language when she can fill stadiums. And perhaps she can stuff her elitist notion that Americans are too stupid to understand the word “oligarchy” up her ass. (We need to dumb it down, They know what a king is because Disney.
Certainly defining an "oligarchy" would need to be done ... and may require some sleight-of-hand as it seems "oligarch" = "a billionaire progressives don't like". (assuming it isn't the usual meaning of "Putin's dog walker who ended up owning a giant mine in the Arctic")
Would Soros, Gates, or Buffett be numbered among the "oligarchs", or is the term reserved for billionaires in the Trump camp?
You make an awful amount of assumptions about the left. Why do centrist libs assume everyone one else is stupid?
Yes, Soros, Buffet and all the rest long beloved by liberals are Oligarchs, and should be taxed back into the middle class.
yes, they are too rich, let's take it away from them.
worked in france 1793
worked in russia 1918
worked in cuba 1959
working great right now in Venezuela
heck it has worked everywhere it's been tried
A real basic tenet of good government is that you should do your best to uplift the civic discourse. I'm not a fan of Pete going on Shultz's pod, but that is essentially what he's trying to do - the funny thing is that centrists like Slotkin are basically embracing the narrative (some) on the left have made - that the average voter is too dumb to appreciate certain messaging and policy. Maybe in a country with many issues around adult literacy, this is wishful thinking, but we should want our civic society to be better; I grew up in a household where my dad and grandfather, both blue-collar workers, read two or three newspapers a day. We can and should expect more.
I see the use of "oligarchy" in the same way I see the use of "woke": a symbol that means something in the mind of the person regardless of its' actual definition. Maybe someone does not know the dictionary definiton of "oligarchy", but the point is more symbolic than definitional. Ask ten people what "woke" means and you maybe get seven different answers, but the end goal to use it as a symbol.
When it comes to Bernie, I think people just know he's a big-word guy at this point. Maybe the eyes glaze over at the text, but they know what he's getting at because his message has never changed. Maybe you can get a messsenger to bring the readability more in line with the norm (I don't think AOC is that messenger), but I think people know what they're getting with Bernie and approach it accordingly.
Thanks Zaid. There are two pieces of the data you're ignoring for whatever reason and it directly correlates to two diametrically opposed philosophies on teaching. The first is that we teach towards the right side of the bell curve, trying to get as many students smarter as possible, stretching them all. You know, teaching. The other is that we dumb things down as much as possible so that everyone can already understand us. Though this has mass communication, it doesn't increase the intelligence of anyone and over the course of generations, it literally dumbs down the whole class. Integrated studies for the gifted gets cut, etc. etc.
Look again at your search volume and you'll notice a stair step pattern. After both major events — Russia and the Jan 2025 speech — there's a plateau. The floor of search volume is higher.
That means, generally, more people are searching more often for "oligarchy" after these big events than before the big events.
Maybe — just maybe — the tour is about educating as he goes. And as people get smarter, as they wisen up to the problem, they'll stop voting against self interest, college or no.
This isn't analysis or news, this is grasping at straws to make completely arbitrary points. The conceit here, that "Progressives love being on the cutting-edge of political terminology. But their words often fail to translate to most Americans.", has nothing to do with this writing or its author's "research" (online readability scorers vary wildly).
What is the fundamental justification within the article which emphasizes that progressives love being on the cutting-edge of political terminology and that their words often fail to translate to most Americans? The only example of "cutting-edge political terminology", whatever that means, is the example you provide of CRT as an affirmative example on the right. The notion that Dems, or The Left, think that all Americans have a degree and use their language accordingly is both laughable and unsupported by every claim made here. It is a massive, disingenuous, stretch, and were you a reader, rather than the author of this piece, you would see that the tenuous, which is a charitable description, connections you make between the left and language while absolving the right of any culpability with regard to introducing complicated language only flattens and weakens the conviction of your points.
Idk dude, there's really nothing to see here. The oligarch example does not lend itself to your point in the slightest, given that all available evidence disputes the idea that Americans don't get what it means. Beyond that, your reference to the introduction of CRT into the political lexicon by the right cuts directly against your core argument, and you don't supplement it with any counter-examples. This reads like grievance searching for its own justification.
The problem with the Democrats is not just messaging. Their coalition is changing.
They lost their lock on big labor back in the Reagan era. As manufacturing declined they lost the blue color vote generally. It doesn’t help that government regulation helped kill it.
Now government workers, including teachers, are a major constituency. It’s one of the major reasons Democrats resist anything which threatens to downsize government, or even reduce its rate of growth. Regulation delays everything. “Shovel ready” projects aren’t, because almost anything can be delayed indefinitely. Even projects that Democrats supposedly want , like high speed rail, bog down. They don’t see a problem with that.
They managed to co-opt the civil rights movement. Now they are frantic to hold on to minority votes. Their activists try to do so by demonizing whites. Their demographic triumphalism about the USA becoming a majority-minority country doesn’t help. It feeds fears of “The Great Replacement”. You say that’s a paranoid conspiracy theory, but you should spend some time reading what Democrat activists have written on the subject.
You compared knowing the definition of the word "oligarchy" to understanding Mandarin.
You focus on the fact that American adults average an 8th grade reading level.
You think Trump's plain and simple language makes him accessible.
This whole dumb essay made me feel dumber.
Congrats on your Tea Party Patriot affiliation.
You should sign up for their vocabulary seminars.
The Democrats have completely lost the plot. They are so used to their privilege, so used to their entitlement, they just expect people to show up. 36 percent of the electorate did not show up. That means that 67 percent of the electorate does not support Trump. Both the Democrats and GOP can barely get 34 percent of the electorate to the polls anymore in any given year. The common truism is that when there is a good turnout, Dems win. That maybe true, but the Dems have no message, no response, to Trump. And meanwhile, people are waiting. Now, it’s true that the GOP has bound itself to MAGA, and likely, barring extreme election fuckery, MAGA will out by 2028 because they are as incompetent as they are fascist. However, the Democrats need to cancel the Faustian deal Clinton made with the neoliberal right, and not make the same errors. The idea that low-level consumer manufacturing is ever coming back to the US is deluded. But Americans need real opportunities and not just shit jobs in service industries. The Democrats have to get over their entitled bullshit.
record turnout 2024
Record low turnout.
You read the Tea Party newsletter so we don’t have to! Thanks for your service 😎 But for real this was a great post . I think it’s always worthwhile to think about language in politics. Look at how the right constantly uses “dog whistle “ messaging where coded words are used to convey ideas that might be expected in socially unacceptable ways, especially regarding race.
I agree. There's a lot to learn from comparing those two newsletters. The Tea Party one uses shorter paragraphs and lists, gets to the point quicker.
Like it or not, this draws people in better than long blocks of text and pile-ups of facts.
It's got nothing to do with being dumb or smart. And nothing to do with the left needing to change their message. It's about presenting the message realistically.
What word describes folks with money that use it to bully and game US capitalism? Fat cats and billionaires? Royalty? Kings and queens? Taking potshots at American reading skills is the kind of looking down on people that made MAGA what it is. As well as the kind of talk that the left hates. But there is a silver lining there - the majority of Americans find this kind of attitude repellent, as more politicians are discovering.
People who attracted to the candidacy of Bernie Sanders are also smitten to the use of big words in those speeches. They think they understand what is being said, but it's all encoded so they don't realize what's going on.
I’m more interested to hear in what Slotkin has to say than what Bernie or AOC have to offer. She actually had to win against a Republican in a swing state while the other two occupy very safe seats.
he's talking about blaming the successful and productive for their success and productivity.
.
blaming Elon Musk for finding a way to put 10million electric vehicles on the road, damn him.
blaming him for Starlink that can be rapidly deployed after natural disasters
blaming him for saving astronauts the Biden admin stranded in space
.
and blaming the mom/pop that figured out how to build a slightly better mousetrap and just wants to pass the company on to their kids.
.
get the picture?
I do not see how Bernie implied Americans are not very smart. I see how Slotkin implied that. I think it's worthwhile to explain terms and re-word messages to 7th-8th grade reading level for the reasons you've given. Thank you for getting more of us to reconsider.