As someone who grew up in a political family in the Midwest and who now drags my own kids to political events, I can echo this rant/plea to my party and an always clueless and condescending pundit class when they try to engage “my people.” But also, I think this take maybe misses a lot of the real, justifiable and existential fear that so many have felt trying to face down the current right wing menace. Women are literally dying because of what white men’s hatred of us has wrought. We’re correct to be scared. People of color are correct to be scared. Or at least really, really wary and careful. And do the white men on the progressive side of politics have our backs? Maybe? Sort of? Probably not? We do infantilize white men and give them a pass on WAY too much and that’s good for no one. But also, trust is earned. There’s a reason women and so many other groups in the larger progressive movement have learned to tiptoe around white men. Because the consequences of not getting that balancing act right can kill us. It has and it continues to. So we sort of treat men like children, but the kind that will suddenly lash out and make us bleed and hurt if we push too far. So not really children at all. And I don’t think it’s the job of Kamala Harris or even the institutional Democratic Party (unless you’re talking specifically to the white dudes who still expect to run everything while women and communities of color to do all the hard work) to fix that. Fix yourselves maybe? It’s the least you could do. And the rest of us would love the space to think and dream big without getting brutally slapped back every time we try.
I appreciate this critique and am not sure if we're actually on different of this one. We both are really frightened of the stakes of this and all elections for vulnerable populations. Thanks for pushing me to be even clearer than I was in the essay about the impacts of reactionary White men on our politics. I can not agree more that there are a million reasons why folks distrust the positive political potential of white men. My only concern is that, when the Democratic Party (as the Harris campaign has already done) adopts right wing rhetoric on any topic (in this case immigration, but in the past LGBTQ rights, abortion, etc.), it doesn't make anybody safer.
Yes I agree about not allowing ourselves to be penned in with right wing framing, but I guess my question is always, okay but whose responsibility is it to do the fixing that needs to occur in progressive circles? Especially when so many right wing voices seem to actively wish me and my family ill. It feels like vulnerable groups within the advocacy community always stick their necks out, push us all to be better, and sometimes achieve big things and other times get violently slapped back. For example, Dobbs happened at least in part because white men and their enablers spent 50 years being big mad that women asked for just a bit of equality. And men in the Democratic Party did precious little to push back on it. And not because there weren’t women loudly asking them to be better. You can see the same thing with the dismantling of affirmative action and voting rights or the rash of new laws putting LGBTQ Americans in danger. So many groups DID ask white men (or white people generally or any groups holding power) to be better, and the answer is “You know what? Nope. How about if we’re worse instead?” But also that pressure - and hoping for better if not expecting it - is why we have a woman of color as VP who is now running for POTUS. And unexpected progressive policy wins over the past few years - mixed with disappointments and setbacks - from the old white dude that black voters in SC did as much as anyone to get into the White House. It’s a constant push and pull for sure. And what I wish for my fellow Midwesterners is that we have the self-respect to be better and do better than what has lately been expected of or projected on to us as a group. But in the world of organizing, whose job is it to try to make that happen at scale? And how much more can we keep ask of vulnerable groups who have been fighting for their lives for a very long time? The Democratic Party is just a collection of people, and vulnerable groups working within the party already do so much of the labor to push things across the finish line. I’m tired of seeing/doing all that work only to have it picked apart as not going far enough, not being good enough as if white patriarchy doesn’t extend into progressive politics as well. I’m not sure I have a concise answer or solution. But it’s a raw nerve when dudes in the party tell me a woman (especially a woman of color) isn’t being bold enough or envelope pushing enough in her words and action. Because, well, gee my dudes, I wonder why that is? Is it because we’ve all seen what happens when women get ahead of themselves, and anyone talented and smart enough to make it into a leadership role has surely run into that brick wall repeatedly?
Thanks for another thoughtful reply! I think we definitely agree on whose responsibility it is to organize folks who are at the top of societal hierarchies (both White people generally and White men specifically). I hope that you see that through line in my writing and work. I definitely understand your frustration when it sounds like women of color (such as Harris) are being blamed for moderating their rhetoric in the face of the history of my cohort. Again, as somebody whose life work is organizing White guys to show up, I'll simply add-- that job is easier, not harder, when the thing I'm organizing for is more expansive and caring and not moderated down to appease us. Aboriton is a great example-- as the Democratic Party rhetoric post-Dobbs has become both less apologetic and more focused on the harms that the anti-choice movement does to women, it's actually been easier, not harder, for me to argue to other men about why we need to step up as part of the fight than it was during the Clintonian years of "safe, legal and rare" triangulation. But again, I feel like we're simultaneously aligned in key ways AND I appreciate you being so clear about where the responsibility for change lies and how infuriating/tiring its been when white guys like me don't step up to that responsibility. Again, thanks so much!
Thank you as well for your thoughtful replies! I should emphasize that I don’t assume anything about the nuance of your beliefs/thoughts other than what I can glean from your writing (which I enjoy) and much of my critique, such as it is, is more inspired by/directed at the white men in progressive circles that I have interacted with directly in party politics and the NGO advocacy community. I am curious - to the extent you are bolstered by increased permission or space to be more rhetorically forceful on an issue like abortion, from whom does that permission flow, and what form does it/should it take? I don’t feel like there was a shortage of women/activists speaking forcefully on reproductive rights before Dobbs. To the extent the institutional Dem party has more recently been radicalized, it was by the spectacle/gut punch of seeing women’s basic human rights turned into a smoking ash heap by a corrupt right wing court. Which again, many women saw coming and tried to warn of, to no avail. And it still took convincing party leaders that it was to their electoral advantage to take up the cause. So I’m wondering, what does it look like to give white men/white people/people in power “permission” or the needed level of encouragement to be better? And how can we be mindful of the often impossibly high price of creating that permission structure? I definitely am tired of endlessly watching my party decide that my rights/my daughter’s rights/the rights of so many vulnerable people in our communities are just not worth alienating power structures. That’s not a morally defensible position and no way to live your life. But I also feel like the thing blocking people in power from making shifts on so many issues is not wanting to cede power or alienate others in whatever “in group” confers that power. People in vulnerable groups can and do fight to create different incentives but often only by sacrificing themselves and their safety to do so. And I just wish we could find a different way to approach this. But unsure of what that should/could look like.
And also, I'd love to hear more (no pressure, but you're welcome). While I read your comment and got the feeling that we likely agree on far more here than we disagree, I'm happy to hear more if you feel like there's a key point I'm still missing here.
I really appreciate your acceptance of Jana's critique, and I'm also not convinced you really "get" it, when you answer by pointing out that you are frightened too. That's nice to know - that you are concerned enough to be frightened - but based on the details you have each provided about your identities, there is no way that your fear around these issues could possibly be equivalent to the fear of actually being the target of systemic oppressive norms. If you don't understand that, think of it this way: let's say someone is explaining to you what it feels like to suffer from migraines, and you answer by saying, "I understand, and we're on the same page, because I sometimes get a headache." You can't really understand what the day-to-day stress and fear of oppression is if you haven't experienced it as a daily reality, with no way out. Your concern and willingness to change are admirable, but if you don't understand that maybe you just don't have the life experience to weigh in on some issues, the impact of your concern may well just muddy the wayers. It would be a whole lot more helpful to the cause for you to amplify the voices of people who do have the experience than for you to insist on inserting your preferred solution into the mix.
You're absolutely correct that I have a number of identity markers that make it so that I have not and will not bear the brunt of oppression like so many people I love and care for. I also agree that thinking and writing about issues of solidarity and oppression from a place of privilege naturally brings up questions of when it's better to share your own voice vs. amplify other perspectives. It sounds like, in this case in particular, my attempt to do so hurt more than it helped and I appreciate you writing to let me know.
I really appreciate the back and forth here. Thank you to both of you for letting the rest of us read it. Garrett, in addition to everything Jana says here, I’d add that on my first read of the essay I interpreted your requests/wishes to be at least as much about emotional labor as they are about policy and messaging around that policy. In other words, “challenge people who share my demo to be better, but do it in a way that makes us feel welcome and supported instead of mentioning our current and historic culpability.” I’ve read and enjoyed this stack for while and I am 100% sure that patriarchy-centric message is not what you intended to convey. (And as a fellow midwestern-raised person, please accept my apologies for how harsh that sounded.)
Didn’t sound harsh at all and it would have been ok if it did! Love the good faith feedback on how it read the first time. No pressure at all (speaking of extra labor) but if you wanted to expand on what about your first read gave that vibe I’m all ears. Again, no pressure though. Appreciate you!
Thank you! I should be clear I completely agree that pandering infantilizes in the ways you describe so well. I’m an ethnographer, and it drives me nuts when ppl wittingly or unwittingly assume that other people don’t know how to think for themselves - or better, that progressives are somehow immune to pandering but that it hooks everyone else. To go back to your question, I think the “I would love/like” repetitions are what left me with that interpretation. I would love if politicians did all those things more too, but since the essay is about how white men are centered in electoral politics, I was perhaps more likely to think “none of us get what we would like/love from the state, why should you?”
Love a good four dimensional chess argument. This is a separate essay, but talking to Black organizers in low income neighborhoods in Milwaukee, while Harris helped rouse some energy that had died down in the last few cycles, there’s gonna be a long term process of rebuilding trust and building in hope for what Democrats actually deliver in working class communities of color. That’s not a counterpoint, but it’s a refrain I’ve heard a fair bit these past few years.
Re: brilliant political messaging, I absolutely laughed out loud at your last sentence there.
A few years back the buzz word (well acronym) in IT projects where I work was MVP (minimum viable product). It osensibly means to build the minimum you needed to get the thing out the door but with the understanding you'd continue to finish and polish it. As you can imagine, that finishing rarely happens, so most of the projects were launched as just incrementally better than nothing at all. I feel like political campaigns fall into that trap, they choose the least interesting, least imaginative version of the story so as not to offend what they believe are the "average" voters; because the MVP is getting elected - if we just get into office we can then enact an ambitious agenda. It is a cynical view of the citizenry that campaigns seem to default to regardless of party.
Wouldn’t it be illuminating to be a fly on the wall when whoever is steering the campaign strategized? As a Midwestern white woman, I have tended to assume the pandering - especially on immigration - is directed towards *my* cohort because I have tended to assume nobody seriously expects to move white men who aren’t already there into the D column in any significant number, whereas there seems like more chance with abortion and childcare as real possible legislated issues to move white women in an electorally significant way. Perhaps I overestimate the ability of strategists to consult stats?? But as you point out we have never gotten over our cultural and political impulse to make everything appeal to white men as the default standard from which art or policy may cautiously deviate *once the white men signal they will be cool with that by no longer violently opposing it*. So! I’m with you, in asking the DNC to invite you dudes in: but not even yet to be kind and community minded (although of course I personally expect it of every single one of you), but just: How can you white men assure us that it’s going to be ok with yall to have a Black woman in office, that the backlash won’t make 2016 look fun, that man-rage won’t rain down on our LGBTQ babies and our bodies like hell fire? Related, I have just realized my election cycle mission is to gently, metaphorically bitch slap with a tornado any man who tells me he’s “not political”.
Really good point (re: whether the pandering is actually more to White women, because my cohort is expected to be so far gone). I agree with all this. The only slight reframing I'd offer is that I'm not sure if my argument is as much "welcome us White dudes in" and more "don't make your stances more cruel and harmful in order to appease us."
That would be a great start. And then we can consider how the fabled center came to be a place of moderation in cruelty, slightly less torture, incarceration, deportation, genocide.
This was my thought exactly! And I’d love to reflect more on it. But as I was reading this piece, Garrett, I was thinking “but how do you KNOW the Walz pick is about you?”—as far as I know, it was in part actually about Harris’ and her team responding to a multiracial coalition of progressives/liberals who could t stomach the more conservative choices.
In terms of the overall strategy the point still stands. But I also feel a little bit of “hmmm, it’s not about you though” as I read this.
I’d love to write about/talk more about how this pick is landing for white women.
Ok a few initial thoughts because now I am engaged! 😅
1–white women have a terrified, loyal relationship with white men—we earn the patriarchal dividend (leftovers of white supremacy) with our obedience.
2–what if Tim Walz represents the hope of a white man who is actually safe for us as white women? Who advances our interests? Who will take us seriously when we advocate (as his wife & daughter did) for him to change his gun control stance? Who will codify abortion and trans rights at a time when that’s politically risky?
3–what if there’s some latent content in there about how white women are still looking for safety in white men? A weirdly conservative somatic/emotional response? I’m not judging it—we have to, and should, welcome reckoning with our white kin—but I’m thinking through the tone of my own reaction and many others?
There’s also a missing piece here around how he handled the 2020 uprisings in Minneapolis and tribal sovereignty issues related to Line 3. People are not talking about his record on race, and as a Minnesota transplant, I am hungry to learn more.
Circling back to my other comment, too—I think Walz is a pragmatic, maybe even cynical, choice to appeal to white voters overall, a choice I understand. I feel a lot of curiosity about where/how you see that choice being uniquely pandering to white men. Appreciate you and the discussion here as always!
Sorry it's taken me a day to reply (summer child care!) but I just need to say that it was so fun and such a gift to get to read you think through all this out loud.
As for your question, and whether or not the Walz choice is uniquely and solely catering to White men, or to Whiteness as a whole... I'm pretty compelled by your points, honestly. What is interesting, though, is regardless of who this pick is "for," that the discourse about it (from both sides of the aisle) has been about "how this will play" for White men in the heartland, which does speak to me as a product of the way that my cohort is (for understandable reasons) often focused on as a source of fascination, fetishization and fear.
Let’s chat a little about this. I think this is a criticism that is well meant but perhaps misdirected *this time*. Of the candidate field in 2020, Harris was not my first choice. I was pulling hard for either Warren (my first choice) or Bernie.
But Harris is truly a challenging and historic pick in a country that is still rife with racism and misogyny. She is both a woman and biracial. And even died in the wool
Democrats can and have been shown to racist and patriarchal.
And what matters here is winning. Simply winning to give us time to protect democracy. And in a year where we’re losing both the intellectually and morally corrupt Manchin and Sinema we have a chance to do really do something. And Walz’s philosophy of majorities are to be used not banked is something I hope will begin suffusing the whole party.
Thanks for writing with a critique, Shervyn. I ask this question not as a challenge, but out of curiosity. I'd love to hear what about my essay sounded like I too wasn't concerned with the Democratic ticket winning the election? Again, that's out of curiosity-- because while that's not the vibe I was attempting to give off, it sounds like that's the one you were left with.
I think it was this passage the really pushed me into that mindset:
“But even beyond the electoral calculus, what’s our goal here? Is it merely to bare knuckle it from one “Most Important Election Of Our Lifetime” to the next without ever actually challenging any hearts and minds along the way? To keep business as usual mostly humming along unchanged? To consign ourselves to the fear that guys who look like me who will never learn, never care, and never be motivated by anything other than self-interest and vindictiveness?”
The reality is that not only have the majority of people who look like you and me not cared, but that people like you and me are more and more likely to not care.To play the reverse racism card. To take the ball and run home crying if we’re not treated with kid gloves. (Look at the polls that look at 18-30 y.o. White males and how they are planning to vote). The margins in this election are just too slim. And the consequences too grave. So yeah, we need to hammer on reproductive rights and IVF to keep all those potential single issuer white women voters who wouldn’t know intersectionality if it came and bit them on the butt (e.g., the ones who put the bullet in the head of DEI initiatives on Wall Street because they have sons too) and just keep enough white men on this side of the line to give democracy some breathing room.
I would love to try and change hearts and minds. But the data shows that if we do it now, we’ll lose. And it ain’t going to be people who look like you and me who will suffer the most.
Hey Shervyn. Sorry that I've been so slow with a reply (summer childcare) but I appreciate you so much in expanding your thoughts and explaining why you're both feeling so much urgency about doing whatever it takes to win this election and also why you wished you felt more of that specific urgency in my piece.I think it's a tricky balance, for all those of us who crave a less cruel world urgently-- how to balance pushing what is possible politically while balancing short term threats in each election cycle. I think, in that debate, you and I are probably more aligned than we aren't (I'm not a "forget electoral politics because the Democrats are just fascists too kind of guy, though I respect and love a lot of folks who are), but I also want to respect all the great reasons you laid out for leaning even more heavily into the "whatever it takes" short term urgency than might be my base orientation.,
Sorry I took so long to respond (summer vaca with the family) but I agree. I do think that you and I are pretty aligned on things. I just am so bone scared. (Like bone tired but afraid). I think I’ve said this before. But I have see first hand what a theocratic dictatorship does to people. (As someone who is an Iranian American). I feel that constant oppressive fear that if we don’t focus everything on right now, nothing will matter.
The Iranian revolution and the Islamic state that came after shattered, scattered and destroyed my family. I don’t want that for my kids.
You have really captured the Zeitgeist of this summer of ridiculous and aggressively enjoyable movies. When Hugh Jackman is just gratuitously shirtless and oiled in Deadpool and Wolverine, all I could think was: THIS is what I need when the world is falling apart. Or maybe it's the energy I need to be as ridiculous as far-righters. Being cynical has not worked, so I'm just going to go ALL IN. I don't know how to be delusional as Trump voters, but I'm going to try. So Democrats can ask whatever they want of me. Ask more, anything to shake things up.
First, Hi Garrett! Long time listener (reader), first time caller (commenter). As someone who grew up in the South (and loves it dearly), but went to a small liberal arts college in the midwest (Minnesota owns my heart), I feel like newsletter was a huge win for my running theory of "the South and the Midwest are more alike than we are different, and we should be working together more to advance our various shared goals (strengthening our cool progressive urban areas, maintaining our great small towns and ag communities who don't want to be urban (but may well be progressive), continuing to be kind to strangers in a way that is every so slightly judgmental). I think the voters in South and the Midwest (and Appalachia, which should be its own geographic region) are all majorly pandered to but also infantilized when it comes to national politics, in large part because there is an inherent assumption that we none of us probably share any progressive viewpoints that one may find in the "coastal elite." And honestly that is in large part why I have given up on closely engaging with national politics (I obviously still vote, encourage others to do so), because I would rather continue to do my local-level work in my really quite progressive rural community in North Carolina than explain to another person the basics of the South and its political reality...
Oh my goodness, YES! I could not agree more. You absolutely hit the nail on the head as to why I feel so much immediate respect and comfort with Southern organizers (and why a disproportionate number of my role models have been Southern writers and organizers). The idea of believing in the power of a community that is deeply misunderstood and being able to hold both a clear-eyed view of all its violence/harm/faults and also a respect for all the people who have been and who keep seeding community there is so alive in both regions.
I hope you don’t mind this cross post (Dave says it better), I think the Tim Walz pick is challenging Midwest White guy stereotypes— https://open.substack.com/pub/davekarpf/p/tim-walz-hell-yeah The far right is already calling him ‘Tampon Tim’, a veteran and someone who knows how to find a carburetor and fix it.
Love a good cross post. And I thought this was a good essay. For what it’s worth, on a quick read I thought he and I were saying something pretty similar re: Walz (his appeal is that he presents as prototypically Upper Midwestern but subverts expectations bc societally we have very low expectations for anybody who presents that way to articulate progressive ideas effectively).
Yes, I did get that from your post. I also got the concern that Harris is appealing in a more stereotypical way (pandering) to the White Man voters.
Something I noticed about non-white non-male candidates (and this is true outside the US to some degree where they gain a chancellorship or prime minister or president office) is they all skew more conservative to get there, or are Conservative Party members. I’m giving Harris a pass on her political rhetoric to get elected. Biden policies proved more left of center than he campaigned. I’m not a purist or a pragmatist when it comes to politics and elections. I’m a white women who *knows the type* and therefore wants people like Trump Vance McConnell Thomas Thiel Musk Koch to face a reckoning. This is why the founders chose a democratic system when they had the chance, within, of course, their misogynistic racist slave-holding pseudo aristocratic self-interested patriarchy. They gave us a system that was radical at the time. So yes, democracy is radical—a radical American tradition. From my ex-pat perch in Germany where I’m exposed to all kinds of European ethnic-nationalist attitudes (and other), I see the current GOP/maga crowd is representing this kind of European birthright nationalism than it represents what America has always been: a place foreigners escaped for refuge (albeit with the genocidal colonial consequences). We all belong in a land of compromise named the US, or none of us do (I am definitely not speaking on behalf of indigenous people in the Americas).
One last note. I’ve come to think of progressive as a problematic term because it allows conservatives to claim tradition and history as a basis for being ‘real Americans’. I’m progressive in that I know that the US was not set up to mimic Europe. Were that the case, we wouldn’t be defending our democracy—our centuries old tradition, our not yet fully realized potential—from an Americanized version of warmed-over ethnonationalist regression.
:) Whew. I should preface all this with, in my passionate opinion. My stay in Germany definitely unleashed something very American in me.
Yes to this: “I’m a white women who *knows the type* and therefore wants people like Trump Vance McConnell Thomas Thiel Musk Koch to face a reckoning.” To add to this (not contradict), the reckoning will be more effective when we can present a clear straightforward explanation of how some white women prop them up. Whether we are more or less trapped into doing so is important, but not sufficient.
Out of curiosity, what explanation would be sufficient?
Edited to add this may not be as straightforward or clear as imagined, or as easy to discuss going forward (not to contradict your desires; I share them, I just can't see how to explain women supporting patriarchy and misogyny whatever the ethnicity or skin color) https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/jd-vances-wife-childless-cat-ladies-spin
Thanks for asking - I probably shouldn’t make sweeping pronouncements when I don’t have a good answer! With “important but not sufficient” I was thinking of an intent vs impact conversation, a way of saying “patriarchy hurts some of us less than others, but when we get together we can change things in a way that will be worth the costs” that doesn’t sound so terribly cheesy and would actually excite people. In practice I imagine it’s more effective to ask people for solidarity with others they already find sympathetic and go from there. I also can’t imagine a way to bring Usha Vance into that conversation; I have no idea what she is like but the pressure she’s under now must be extreme.
Oh, it's fine to make sweeping pronouncements without a good answer, it opens conversations :) I don't either, that is why I asked. I often feel like patriarchy hurts everyone, including the patriarchs (whether some of them agree with me or not). I get what you mean, the effects of patriarchy aren't equally distributed. I've been reading more about Usha Vance, and as a Yale schooled lawyer who clerked for Kavanaugh, extreme pressure is something she's probably mentally trained for https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/jd-vance-wife-usha-vance-politics-amy-chua.html
But who knows. Usha Vance isn't the "I don't care do u" sartorial signalling politician that Melania was/is, but they both seem to know what it means to be married to the men they chose. Unlike other women, these aren't women without some agency. I'm going to keep thinking about your intent versus impact and costs idea. Thank you!
I love your perspective. And as a middle aged white woman I agree with the whole spineless efforts of the democrats to be maga light. Montana democrats really are getting under my skin right now.
As a Coastal Elite, I want to know where all these "blue state" movies are. "Barbie," because it has a monologue about feminism? Didn't that make, like, a billion dollars?
I'm also someone who grew up in Michigan and spends way too much time on Bluesky (because X is the Bad Place now). I woke up at 6 AM like it was Christmas morning and checked the NYT, then looked at Bluesky where people were in a celebratory mood (the last couple days have been pretty fun there due to all the RFK/bear stuff). I think she picked Walz because (a) Shapiro could, rightly or wrongly, have hurt her chances in Michigan, (b) Walz has solid Congressional experience and apparently a lot of his former colleagues, including Nancy Pelosi, spoke highly of him, and (c) he has been highly effective in MN. Plus, he's just fun! There are so many great photos and memes, which I realize won't mean much to people who aren't Very Online, but I am enjoying the good vibes.
Hahahaha, to hear Hollywood tell it Sue, it’s been nothing but millions of Blue State Movies ad infinitum. And Blue State TV shows! Like, um, Yellowstone!
It seems like good vibes have been a powerful force this summer! People on both ends of the political spectrum have been feeling bad and afraid for a wide variety of reasons, and maybe the power of good vibes CAN bridge the political divide if we present policies for making new good things happen instead of just playing defense all the time? Easier said than done, but like, if we could give people something to vote for and not just against, that seems like a winning strategy, idk!
I almost don't want to jinx it by saying it out loud, but it's been delightful to have a few weeks where the vibes on the liberal-left side of things are... good? can that be? I think that's one of the things that's driving my energy right now. I want to do the work to bring more folks in, so I want the thing I'm welcoming them into to be as expansive and caring as possible.
I'm not usually much of a fan of claims of multi-dimensional chess, but maybe there's a play here. Suppose 'the Dems' don't think they're going to move the needle that much on white men, especially white men without college educations. Lose by 15 instead of 25 or whatever. If the game here is turnout in Milwaukee (and Detroit, and Atlanta, and Philly) and if the concern among voters in those cities is that America is too messed up to elect a Woman of Color, then maybe it's the show of pandering to you, Garrett, that's more important than the reality.
I think we win by acting and talking like winners. We can 'well actually' ourselves into defeat, and have done it before. Everyone expected Harris to choose a white man with executive experience, because it shows that she's serious about white men, and more importantly about the people who want to see that seriousness before they're ready to believe she's a winner.
It's probably copyrighted, but I think Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose is a better slogan than I Did Not Have Sex With That Couch.
The whole game plan of the White Dudes for Harris call was that if the Dems can move the needle just a little bit with white men, they'll have a much easier path to victory. (Gov. Walz was on that call, BTW, and was very inspiring!)
As someone who grew up in a political family in the Midwest and who now drags my own kids to political events, I can echo this rant/plea to my party and an always clueless and condescending pundit class when they try to engage “my people.” But also, I think this take maybe misses a lot of the real, justifiable and existential fear that so many have felt trying to face down the current right wing menace. Women are literally dying because of what white men’s hatred of us has wrought. We’re correct to be scared. People of color are correct to be scared. Or at least really, really wary and careful. And do the white men on the progressive side of politics have our backs? Maybe? Sort of? Probably not? We do infantilize white men and give them a pass on WAY too much and that’s good for no one. But also, trust is earned. There’s a reason women and so many other groups in the larger progressive movement have learned to tiptoe around white men. Because the consequences of not getting that balancing act right can kill us. It has and it continues to. So we sort of treat men like children, but the kind that will suddenly lash out and make us bleed and hurt if we push too far. So not really children at all. And I don’t think it’s the job of Kamala Harris or even the institutional Democratic Party (unless you’re talking specifically to the white dudes who still expect to run everything while women and communities of color to do all the hard work) to fix that. Fix yourselves maybe? It’s the least you could do. And the rest of us would love the space to think and dream big without getting brutally slapped back every time we try.
I appreciate this critique and am not sure if we're actually on different of this one. We both are really frightened of the stakes of this and all elections for vulnerable populations. Thanks for pushing me to be even clearer than I was in the essay about the impacts of reactionary White men on our politics. I can not agree more that there are a million reasons why folks distrust the positive political potential of white men. My only concern is that, when the Democratic Party (as the Harris campaign has already done) adopts right wing rhetoric on any topic (in this case immigration, but in the past LGBTQ rights, abortion, etc.), it doesn't make anybody safer.
Yes I agree about not allowing ourselves to be penned in with right wing framing, but I guess my question is always, okay but whose responsibility is it to do the fixing that needs to occur in progressive circles? Especially when so many right wing voices seem to actively wish me and my family ill. It feels like vulnerable groups within the advocacy community always stick their necks out, push us all to be better, and sometimes achieve big things and other times get violently slapped back. For example, Dobbs happened at least in part because white men and their enablers spent 50 years being big mad that women asked for just a bit of equality. And men in the Democratic Party did precious little to push back on it. And not because there weren’t women loudly asking them to be better. You can see the same thing with the dismantling of affirmative action and voting rights or the rash of new laws putting LGBTQ Americans in danger. So many groups DID ask white men (or white people generally or any groups holding power) to be better, and the answer is “You know what? Nope. How about if we’re worse instead?” But also that pressure - and hoping for better if not expecting it - is why we have a woman of color as VP who is now running for POTUS. And unexpected progressive policy wins over the past few years - mixed with disappointments and setbacks - from the old white dude that black voters in SC did as much as anyone to get into the White House. It’s a constant push and pull for sure. And what I wish for my fellow Midwesterners is that we have the self-respect to be better and do better than what has lately been expected of or projected on to us as a group. But in the world of organizing, whose job is it to try to make that happen at scale? And how much more can we keep ask of vulnerable groups who have been fighting for their lives for a very long time? The Democratic Party is just a collection of people, and vulnerable groups working within the party already do so much of the labor to push things across the finish line. I’m tired of seeing/doing all that work only to have it picked apart as not going far enough, not being good enough as if white patriarchy doesn’t extend into progressive politics as well. I’m not sure I have a concise answer or solution. But it’s a raw nerve when dudes in the party tell me a woman (especially a woman of color) isn’t being bold enough or envelope pushing enough in her words and action. Because, well, gee my dudes, I wonder why that is? Is it because we’ve all seen what happens when women get ahead of themselves, and anyone talented and smart enough to make it into a leadership role has surely run into that brick wall repeatedly?
Thanks for another thoughtful reply! I think we definitely agree on whose responsibility it is to organize folks who are at the top of societal hierarchies (both White people generally and White men specifically). I hope that you see that through line in my writing and work. I definitely understand your frustration when it sounds like women of color (such as Harris) are being blamed for moderating their rhetoric in the face of the history of my cohort. Again, as somebody whose life work is organizing White guys to show up, I'll simply add-- that job is easier, not harder, when the thing I'm organizing for is more expansive and caring and not moderated down to appease us. Aboriton is a great example-- as the Democratic Party rhetoric post-Dobbs has become both less apologetic and more focused on the harms that the anti-choice movement does to women, it's actually been easier, not harder, for me to argue to other men about why we need to step up as part of the fight than it was during the Clintonian years of "safe, legal and rare" triangulation. But again, I feel like we're simultaneously aligned in key ways AND I appreciate you being so clear about where the responsibility for change lies and how infuriating/tiring its been when white guys like me don't step up to that responsibility. Again, thanks so much!
Thank you as well for your thoughtful replies! I should emphasize that I don’t assume anything about the nuance of your beliefs/thoughts other than what I can glean from your writing (which I enjoy) and much of my critique, such as it is, is more inspired by/directed at the white men in progressive circles that I have interacted with directly in party politics and the NGO advocacy community. I am curious - to the extent you are bolstered by increased permission or space to be more rhetorically forceful on an issue like abortion, from whom does that permission flow, and what form does it/should it take? I don’t feel like there was a shortage of women/activists speaking forcefully on reproductive rights before Dobbs. To the extent the institutional Dem party has more recently been radicalized, it was by the spectacle/gut punch of seeing women’s basic human rights turned into a smoking ash heap by a corrupt right wing court. Which again, many women saw coming and tried to warn of, to no avail. And it still took convincing party leaders that it was to their electoral advantage to take up the cause. So I’m wondering, what does it look like to give white men/white people/people in power “permission” or the needed level of encouragement to be better? And how can we be mindful of the often impossibly high price of creating that permission structure? I definitely am tired of endlessly watching my party decide that my rights/my daughter’s rights/the rights of so many vulnerable people in our communities are just not worth alienating power structures. That’s not a morally defensible position and no way to live your life. But I also feel like the thing blocking people in power from making shifts on so many issues is not wanting to cede power or alienate others in whatever “in group” confers that power. People in vulnerable groups can and do fight to create different incentives but often only by sacrificing themselves and their safety to do so. And I just wish we could find a different way to approach this. But unsure of what that should/could look like.
And also, I'd love to hear more (no pressure, but you're welcome). While I read your comment and got the feeling that we likely agree on far more here than we disagree, I'm happy to hear more if you feel like there's a key point I'm still missing here.
I really appreciate your acceptance of Jana's critique, and I'm also not convinced you really "get" it, when you answer by pointing out that you are frightened too. That's nice to know - that you are concerned enough to be frightened - but based on the details you have each provided about your identities, there is no way that your fear around these issues could possibly be equivalent to the fear of actually being the target of systemic oppressive norms. If you don't understand that, think of it this way: let's say someone is explaining to you what it feels like to suffer from migraines, and you answer by saying, "I understand, and we're on the same page, because I sometimes get a headache." You can't really understand what the day-to-day stress and fear of oppression is if you haven't experienced it as a daily reality, with no way out. Your concern and willingness to change are admirable, but if you don't understand that maybe you just don't have the life experience to weigh in on some issues, the impact of your concern may well just muddy the wayers. It would be a whole lot more helpful to the cause for you to amplify the voices of people who do have the experience than for you to insist on inserting your preferred solution into the mix.
You're absolutely correct that I have a number of identity markers that make it so that I have not and will not bear the brunt of oppression like so many people I love and care for. I also agree that thinking and writing about issues of solidarity and oppression from a place of privilege naturally brings up questions of when it's better to share your own voice vs. amplify other perspectives. It sounds like, in this case in particular, my attempt to do so hurt more than it helped and I appreciate you writing to let me know.
I really appreciate the back and forth here. Thank you to both of you for letting the rest of us read it. Garrett, in addition to everything Jana says here, I’d add that on my first read of the essay I interpreted your requests/wishes to be at least as much about emotional labor as they are about policy and messaging around that policy. In other words, “challenge people who share my demo to be better, but do it in a way that makes us feel welcome and supported instead of mentioning our current and historic culpability.” I’ve read and enjoyed this stack for while and I am 100% sure that patriarchy-centric message is not what you intended to convey. (And as a fellow midwestern-raised person, please accept my apologies for how harsh that sounded.)
Didn’t sound harsh at all and it would have been ok if it did! Love the good faith feedback on how it read the first time. No pressure at all (speaking of extra labor) but if you wanted to expand on what about your first read gave that vibe I’m all ears. Again, no pressure though. Appreciate you!
Thank you! I should be clear I completely agree that pandering infantilizes in the ways you describe so well. I’m an ethnographer, and it drives me nuts when ppl wittingly or unwittingly assume that other people don’t know how to think for themselves - or better, that progressives are somehow immune to pandering but that it hooks everyone else. To go back to your question, I think the “I would love/like” repetitions are what left me with that interpretation. I would love if politicians did all those things more too, but since the essay is about how white men are centered in electoral politics, I was perhaps more likely to think “none of us get what we would like/love from the state, why should you?”
Really good point!
God this. So. Much. This.
Love a good four dimensional chess argument. This is a separate essay, but talking to Black organizers in low income neighborhoods in Milwaukee, while Harris helped rouse some energy that had died down in the last few cycles, there’s gonna be a long term process of rebuilding trust and building in hope for what Democrats actually deliver in working class communities of color. That’s not a counterpoint, but it’s a refrain I’ve heard a fair bit these past few years.
Re: brilliant political messaging, I absolutely laughed out loud at your last sentence there.
A few years back the buzz word (well acronym) in IT projects where I work was MVP (minimum viable product). It osensibly means to build the minimum you needed to get the thing out the door but with the understanding you'd continue to finish and polish it. As you can imagine, that finishing rarely happens, so most of the projects were launched as just incrementally better than nothing at all. I feel like political campaigns fall into that trap, they choose the least interesting, least imaginative version of the story so as not to offend what they believe are the "average" voters; because the MVP is getting elected - if we just get into office we can then enact an ambitious agenda. It is a cynical view of the citizenry that campaigns seem to default to regardless of party.
Totally agree
This framing is super helpful!
Wouldn’t it be illuminating to be a fly on the wall when whoever is steering the campaign strategized? As a Midwestern white woman, I have tended to assume the pandering - especially on immigration - is directed towards *my* cohort because I have tended to assume nobody seriously expects to move white men who aren’t already there into the D column in any significant number, whereas there seems like more chance with abortion and childcare as real possible legislated issues to move white women in an electorally significant way. Perhaps I overestimate the ability of strategists to consult stats?? But as you point out we have never gotten over our cultural and political impulse to make everything appeal to white men as the default standard from which art or policy may cautiously deviate *once the white men signal they will be cool with that by no longer violently opposing it*. So! I’m with you, in asking the DNC to invite you dudes in: but not even yet to be kind and community minded (although of course I personally expect it of every single one of you), but just: How can you white men assure us that it’s going to be ok with yall to have a Black woman in office, that the backlash won’t make 2016 look fun, that man-rage won’t rain down on our LGBTQ babies and our bodies like hell fire? Related, I have just realized my election cycle mission is to gently, metaphorically bitch slap with a tornado any man who tells me he’s “not political”.
Really good point (re: whether the pandering is actually more to White women, because my cohort is expected to be so far gone). I agree with all this. The only slight reframing I'd offer is that I'm not sure if my argument is as much "welcome us White dudes in" and more "don't make your stances more cruel and harmful in order to appease us."
That would be a great start. And then we can consider how the fabled center came to be a place of moderation in cruelty, slightly less torture, incarceration, deportation, genocide.
This was my thought exactly! And I’d love to reflect more on it. But as I was reading this piece, Garrett, I was thinking “but how do you KNOW the Walz pick is about you?”—as far as I know, it was in part actually about Harris’ and her team responding to a multiracial coalition of progressives/liberals who could t stomach the more conservative choices.
In terms of the overall strategy the point still stands. But I also feel a little bit of “hmmm, it’s not about you though” as I read this.
I’d love to write about/talk more about how this pick is landing for white women.
Ok a few initial thoughts because now I am engaged! 😅
1–white women have a terrified, loyal relationship with white men—we earn the patriarchal dividend (leftovers of white supremacy) with our obedience.
2–what if Tim Walz represents the hope of a white man who is actually safe for us as white women? Who advances our interests? Who will take us seriously when we advocate (as his wife & daughter did) for him to change his gun control stance? Who will codify abortion and trans rights at a time when that’s politically risky?
3–what if there’s some latent content in there about how white women are still looking for safety in white men? A weirdly conservative somatic/emotional response? I’m not judging it—we have to, and should, welcome reckoning with our white kin—but I’m thinking through the tone of my own reaction and many others?
There’s also a missing piece here around how he handled the 2020 uprisings in Minneapolis and tribal sovereignty issues related to Line 3. People are not talking about his record on race, and as a Minnesota transplant, I am hungry to learn more.
Circling back to my other comment, too—I think Walz is a pragmatic, maybe even cynical, choice to appeal to white voters overall, a choice I understand. I feel a lot of curiosity about where/how you see that choice being uniquely pandering to white men. Appreciate you and the discussion here as always!
Sorry it's taken me a day to reply (summer child care!) but I just need to say that it was so fun and such a gift to get to read you think through all this out loud.
As for your question, and whether or not the Walz choice is uniquely and solely catering to White men, or to Whiteness as a whole... I'm pretty compelled by your points, honestly. What is interesting, though, is regardless of who this pick is "for," that the discourse about it (from both sides of the aisle) has been about "how this will play" for White men in the heartland, which does speak to me as a product of the way that my cohort is (for understandable reasons) often focused on as a source of fascination, fetishization and fear.
Let’s chat a little about this. I think this is a criticism that is well meant but perhaps misdirected *this time*. Of the candidate field in 2020, Harris was not my first choice. I was pulling hard for either Warren (my first choice) or Bernie.
But Harris is truly a challenging and historic pick in a country that is still rife with racism and misogyny. She is both a woman and biracial. And even died in the wool
Democrats can and have been shown to racist and patriarchal.
And what matters here is winning. Simply winning to give us time to protect democracy. And in a year where we’re losing both the intellectually and morally corrupt Manchin and Sinema we have a chance to do really do something. And Walz’s philosophy of majorities are to be used not banked is something I hope will begin suffusing the whole party.
Thanks for writing with a critique, Shervyn. I ask this question not as a challenge, but out of curiosity. I'd love to hear what about my essay sounded like I too wasn't concerned with the Democratic ticket winning the election? Again, that's out of curiosity-- because while that's not the vibe I was attempting to give off, it sounds like that's the one you were left with.
I think it was this passage the really pushed me into that mindset:
“But even beyond the electoral calculus, what’s our goal here? Is it merely to bare knuckle it from one “Most Important Election Of Our Lifetime” to the next without ever actually challenging any hearts and minds along the way? To keep business as usual mostly humming along unchanged? To consign ourselves to the fear that guys who look like me who will never learn, never care, and never be motivated by anything other than self-interest and vindictiveness?”
The reality is that not only have the majority of people who look like you and me not cared, but that people like you and me are more and more likely to not care.To play the reverse racism card. To take the ball and run home crying if we’re not treated with kid gloves. (Look at the polls that look at 18-30 y.o. White males and how they are planning to vote). The margins in this election are just too slim. And the consequences too grave. So yeah, we need to hammer on reproductive rights and IVF to keep all those potential single issuer white women voters who wouldn’t know intersectionality if it came and bit them on the butt (e.g., the ones who put the bullet in the head of DEI initiatives on Wall Street because they have sons too) and just keep enough white men on this side of the line to give democracy some breathing room.
I would love to try and change hearts and minds. But the data shows that if we do it now, we’ll lose. And it ain’t going to be people who look like you and me who will suffer the most.
Hey Shervyn. Sorry that I've been so slow with a reply (summer childcare) but I appreciate you so much in expanding your thoughts and explaining why you're both feeling so much urgency about doing whatever it takes to win this election and also why you wished you felt more of that specific urgency in my piece.I think it's a tricky balance, for all those of us who crave a less cruel world urgently-- how to balance pushing what is possible politically while balancing short term threats in each election cycle. I think, in that debate, you and I are probably more aligned than we aren't (I'm not a "forget electoral politics because the Democrats are just fascists too kind of guy, though I respect and love a lot of folks who are), but I also want to respect all the great reasons you laid out for leaning even more heavily into the "whatever it takes" short term urgency than might be my base orientation.,
Sorry I took so long to respond (summer vaca with the family) but I agree. I do think that you and I are pretty aligned on things. I just am so bone scared. (Like bone tired but afraid). I think I’ve said this before. But I have see first hand what a theocratic dictatorship does to people. (As someone who is an Iranian American). I feel that constant oppressive fear that if we don’t focus everything on right now, nothing will matter.
The Iranian revolution and the Islamic state that came after shattered, scattered and destroyed my family. I don’t want that for my kids.
You have really captured the Zeitgeist of this summer of ridiculous and aggressively enjoyable movies. When Hugh Jackman is just gratuitously shirtless and oiled in Deadpool and Wolverine, all I could think was: THIS is what I need when the world is falling apart. Or maybe it's the energy I need to be as ridiculous as far-righters. Being cynical has not worked, so I'm just going to go ALL IN. I don't know how to be delusional as Trump voters, but I'm going to try. So Democrats can ask whatever they want of me. Ask more, anything to shake things up.
Oh my gosh, it’s totally been the summer of brain off/vibes on at the cineplex, hasn’t it?
First, Hi Garrett! Long time listener (reader), first time caller (commenter). As someone who grew up in the South (and loves it dearly), but went to a small liberal arts college in the midwest (Minnesota owns my heart), I feel like newsletter was a huge win for my running theory of "the South and the Midwest are more alike than we are different, and we should be working together more to advance our various shared goals (strengthening our cool progressive urban areas, maintaining our great small towns and ag communities who don't want to be urban (but may well be progressive), continuing to be kind to strangers in a way that is every so slightly judgmental). I think the voters in South and the Midwest (and Appalachia, which should be its own geographic region) are all majorly pandered to but also infantilized when it comes to national politics, in large part because there is an inherent assumption that we none of us probably share any progressive viewpoints that one may find in the "coastal elite." And honestly that is in large part why I have given up on closely engaging with national politics (I obviously still vote, encourage others to do so), because I would rather continue to do my local-level work in my really quite progressive rural community in North Carolina than explain to another person the basics of the South and its political reality...
Oh my goodness, YES! I could not agree more. You absolutely hit the nail on the head as to why I feel so much immediate respect and comfort with Southern organizers (and why a disproportionate number of my role models have been Southern writers and organizers). The idea of believing in the power of a community that is deeply misunderstood and being able to hold both a clear-eyed view of all its violence/harm/faults and also a respect for all the people who have been and who keep seeding community there is so alive in both regions.
I hope you don’t mind this cross post (Dave says it better), I think the Tim Walz pick is challenging Midwest White guy stereotypes— https://open.substack.com/pub/davekarpf/p/tim-walz-hell-yeah The far right is already calling him ‘Tampon Tim’, a veteran and someone who knows how to find a carburetor and fix it.
Love a good cross post. And I thought this was a good essay. For what it’s worth, on a quick read I thought he and I were saying something pretty similar re: Walz (his appeal is that he presents as prototypically Upper Midwestern but subverts expectations bc societally we have very low expectations for anybody who presents that way to articulate progressive ideas effectively).
Yes, I did get that from your post. I also got the concern that Harris is appealing in a more stereotypical way (pandering) to the White Man voters.
Something I noticed about non-white non-male candidates (and this is true outside the US to some degree where they gain a chancellorship or prime minister or president office) is they all skew more conservative to get there, or are Conservative Party members. I’m giving Harris a pass on her political rhetoric to get elected. Biden policies proved more left of center than he campaigned. I’m not a purist or a pragmatist when it comes to politics and elections. I’m a white women who *knows the type* and therefore wants people like Trump Vance McConnell Thomas Thiel Musk Koch to face a reckoning. This is why the founders chose a democratic system when they had the chance, within, of course, their misogynistic racist slave-holding pseudo aristocratic self-interested patriarchy. They gave us a system that was radical at the time. So yes, democracy is radical—a radical American tradition. From my ex-pat perch in Germany where I’m exposed to all kinds of European ethnic-nationalist attitudes (and other), I see the current GOP/maga crowd is representing this kind of European birthright nationalism than it represents what America has always been: a place foreigners escaped for refuge (albeit with the genocidal colonial consequences). We all belong in a land of compromise named the US, or none of us do (I am definitely not speaking on behalf of indigenous people in the Americas).
One last note. I’ve come to think of progressive as a problematic term because it allows conservatives to claim tradition and history as a basis for being ‘real Americans’. I’m progressive in that I know that the US was not set up to mimic Europe. Were that the case, we wouldn’t be defending our democracy—our centuries old tradition, our not yet fully realized potential—from an Americanized version of warmed-over ethnonationalist regression.
:) Whew. I should preface all this with, in my passionate opinion. My stay in Germany definitely unleashed something very American in me.
Yes to this: “I’m a white women who *knows the type* and therefore wants people like Trump Vance McConnell Thomas Thiel Musk Koch to face a reckoning.” To add to this (not contradict), the reckoning will be more effective when we can present a clear straightforward explanation of how some white women prop them up. Whether we are more or less trapped into doing so is important, but not sufficient.
Out of curiosity, what explanation would be sufficient?
Edited to add this may not be as straightforward or clear as imagined, or as easy to discuss going forward (not to contradict your desires; I share them, I just can't see how to explain women supporting patriarchy and misogyny whatever the ethnicity or skin color) https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/jd-vances-wife-childless-cat-ladies-spin
Thanks for asking - I probably shouldn’t make sweeping pronouncements when I don’t have a good answer! With “important but not sufficient” I was thinking of an intent vs impact conversation, a way of saying “patriarchy hurts some of us less than others, but when we get together we can change things in a way that will be worth the costs” that doesn’t sound so terribly cheesy and would actually excite people. In practice I imagine it’s more effective to ask people for solidarity with others they already find sympathetic and go from there. I also can’t imagine a way to bring Usha Vance into that conversation; I have no idea what she is like but the pressure she’s under now must be extreme.
Oh, it's fine to make sweeping pronouncements without a good answer, it opens conversations :) I don't either, that is why I asked. I often feel like patriarchy hurts everyone, including the patriarchs (whether some of them agree with me or not). I get what you mean, the effects of patriarchy aren't equally distributed. I've been reading more about Usha Vance, and as a Yale schooled lawyer who clerked for Kavanaugh, extreme pressure is something she's probably mentally trained for https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/jd-vance-wife-usha-vance-politics-amy-chua.html
But who knows. Usha Vance isn't the "I don't care do u" sartorial signalling politician that Melania was/is, but they both seem to know what it means to be married to the men they chose. Unlike other women, these aren't women without some agency. I'm going to keep thinking about your intent versus impact and costs idea. Thank you!
I love your perspective. And as a middle aged white woman I agree with the whole spineless efforts of the democrats to be maga light. Montana democrats really are getting under my skin right now.
I’ll admit. I haven’t been following all the rhetoric in the MT statewide races, but when I have perked up I haven’t always been inspired!
As a Coastal Elite, I want to know where all these "blue state" movies are. "Barbie," because it has a monologue about feminism? Didn't that make, like, a billion dollars?
I'm also someone who grew up in Michigan and spends way too much time on Bluesky (because X is the Bad Place now). I woke up at 6 AM like it was Christmas morning and checked the NYT, then looked at Bluesky where people were in a celebratory mood (the last couple days have been pretty fun there due to all the RFK/bear stuff). I think she picked Walz because (a) Shapiro could, rightly or wrongly, have hurt her chances in Michigan, (b) Walz has solid Congressional experience and apparently a lot of his former colleagues, including Nancy Pelosi, spoke highly of him, and (c) he has been highly effective in MN. Plus, he's just fun! There are so many great photos and memes, which I realize won't mean much to people who aren't Very Online, but I am enjoying the good vibes.
Hahahaha, to hear Hollywood tell it Sue, it’s been nothing but millions of Blue State Movies ad infinitum. And Blue State TV shows! Like, um, Yellowstone!
It seems like good vibes have been a powerful force this summer! People on both ends of the political spectrum have been feeling bad and afraid for a wide variety of reasons, and maybe the power of good vibes CAN bridge the political divide if we present policies for making new good things happen instead of just playing defense all the time? Easier said than done, but like, if we could give people something to vote for and not just against, that seems like a winning strategy, idk!
I almost don't want to jinx it by saying it out loud, but it's been delightful to have a few weeks where the vibes on the liberal-left side of things are... good? can that be? I think that's one of the things that's driving my energy right now. I want to do the work to bring more folks in, so I want the thing I'm welcoming them into to be as expansive and caring as possible.
I'm not usually much of a fan of claims of multi-dimensional chess, but maybe there's a play here. Suppose 'the Dems' don't think they're going to move the needle that much on white men, especially white men without college educations. Lose by 15 instead of 25 or whatever. If the game here is turnout in Milwaukee (and Detroit, and Atlanta, and Philly) and if the concern among voters in those cities is that America is too messed up to elect a Woman of Color, then maybe it's the show of pandering to you, Garrett, that's more important than the reality.
I think we win by acting and talking like winners. We can 'well actually' ourselves into defeat, and have done it before. Everyone expected Harris to choose a white man with executive experience, because it shows that she's serious about white men, and more importantly about the people who want to see that seriousness before they're ready to believe she's a winner.
It's probably copyrighted, but I think Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose is a better slogan than I Did Not Have Sex With That Couch.
The whole game plan of the White Dudes for Harris call was that if the Dems can move the needle just a little bit with white men, they'll have a much easier path to victory. (Gov. Walz was on that call, BTW, and was very inspiring!)