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+--- Thread: Carville urges DNC to make Party success a priority again instead of "feeling good" (/thread-18679.html)
Carville urges DNC to make Party success a priority again instead of "feeling good" - C C - Aug 31, 2025
RELATED (scivillage): Can Dems talk like "normal people" again?
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Below we have Snakehead (James Carville) echoing, in a different territory, what the gist of the "language reform" above is ultimately partaking in. IOW, that the Democratic Party needs to get back to making Party success a priority over making people feel good and engaging in revolutionary theatrics.
While the left-center Party establishment is in tune with that mission (given their fretting over Mamdani and gelding representatives like Ritchie Torres of any far-left venom they may have formerly exhibited, etc)... Snakehead seems to feel that other sectors of the Party are not on board with this exo-ideological, practical concern of "Just win, baby!"
The problem with a political party getting wrapped up in the de-Westernization movement, as it moves further and further left, is that standards eventually erode to the point that the party doesn't even care about earnestly competing anymore.
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James Carville criticizes DNC land acknowledgments: "The DNC exists to win elections, not make people feel good."
https://youtu.be/_IqZBdE2HZY
PODCAST EXCERPT: So let's continue talking about the DNC. They met in Minneapolis [...] The Democratic National Committee, DNC, received criticism and ridicule Monday after it began with an indigenous land acknowledgement.
DNC Chairman Ken Martin began the meeting by inviting Lindy Sowmick [...] a self-described indigenous queer woman, unquote, to acknowledge the land had been taken from the Dakota people.
[...] This is an election, and the DNC is not the place to discuss this, understand this. The DNC does not exist to right wrongs.
It doesn't exist to acknowledge the more unpleasant parts of history. It doesn't exist to make people feel good. It exists -- get this through your head -- to win elections.
Now, do you think that is going to help us win elections, say, like we did in Iowa, which is, I think, close to Minnesota, my geography is there, by talking about land theft from the Dakotas. We're not. Please stop this, in the name of a just, merciful God.
Don't you see what's happening? Don't you see where this has brought us to? For God's sakes, why is Ken Martin doing that?
You don't have but one job, Ken. It's to win. Honestly, I mean, she's probably a friend of yours from Minnesota.
I'm sure she's a perfectly elegant, nice person. That has nothing to do with this. You're supposed to try to win f_cking elections.
RE: Carville urges DNC to make Party success a priority again instead of "feeling good" - Yazata - Aug 31, 2025
The problem with "land acknowledgements" is that they send a message to the voters that they don't really belong here in the United States and that the country isn't really theirs. By its nature that isn't going to be a popular message. It's certainly not the way to appeal to American nationalists or to those of us who voted for Trump in the last election. It's not even the way to hold on to the majority of democratic voters.
RE: Carville urges DNC to make Party success a priority again instead of "feeling good" - Syne - Aug 31, 2025
I don't know how you expect to build voter participation in a nation you portray as illegitimate. Seems land acknowledgements would erode the basic sense of rights.
RE: Carville urges DNC to make Party success a priority again instead of "feeling good" - Yazata - Aug 31, 2025
I think that Carville is (sorta) right, just this once. The obvious problem with his prescription is that it suggests that the democrats don't stand for anything, don't believe in anything, except winning power.
Their current problem is that the democrats seem unable to agree on a program that's appealing to voters and any agenda (except hatred of Trump). If they go moderate, they lose their radical activist base. If they go radical (which seems to be their current direction) they lose normal voters of both parties and make themselves a permanent minority party of the most radical 20 percent.
So I perversely think that it's great that the DNC starts their meetings with an "indigenous queer woman" and "land acknowledgements". How better to alienate normal American voters?
By all means make Zohran Mamdani the face of the democratic party. That will just focus the country's attention on the sordid urban decline in large blue cities, and it isn't exactly going to further the dem's 2020 pose as the grownups in the room, the "safe" party of establishment "expertise".
Along with open borders and their love of illegal aliens, identity politics and racial divisiveness, their obvious fondness for crime and criminals, their contempt and disdain for Middle America, and all the increasingly strange "gender" weirdness, it will only cement their image in the public mind as the crazy party.