Plus ça change, plus c’est la … double-down?
One might have thought that the Democratic National Committee would have learned a lesson from the 2024 election about the unpopularity of “woke.” Joe Biden spent four years promoting DEI policies, and Kamala Harris ran on that as well as her own even more radical notions of ‘diversity.’ One such brag, a 2019 interview in which Harris took credit for supplying felons with free transsexual therapies while in prison, turned into the most effective message in the election.
For Donald Trump.
After losing the White House to the man the DNC desperately painted as the next Adolf Hitler, one might think that Democrat leadership would rethink their approach. As Dave Weigel reports in a dryly humorous Twitter/X thread, one would be entirely incorrect. Not only did the DNC embrace the DEI message in its annual meeting, but activists protesting a lack of enthusiasm for it had to be removed.
Heavy rhetorical focus on diversity at today’s DNC meetings — real record scratch as Trump admin unwinds DEI programs, w Rs confident that this stuff is an electoral loser. pic.twitter.com/1JUaancxc8
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) January 31, 2025
And they are laser-focused on the issues that grip the electorate, such as … er …
“Unlike the other party, that is demonizing diversity, we understand that diversity is our greatest strength,” says outgoing DNC chair Jaime Harrison before bringing the candidates out.
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) January 31, 2025
If diversity is their greatest strength, then why did that argument lose to a presidential candidate whom the electorate had never ever viewed with a net-favorable rating before the election? They ran explicitly on that message, and practically no other positive argument for Harris. The Democrats’ main message was that Trump was a Nazifasciststinkybottom and his supporters were “garbage,” and that as a black woman, Harris was owed support from the voters.
Maybe they should have run a Native American instead? Is that the argument here?
No one is “demonizing diversity” either, which is the same kind of strawman argument that also failed in the election. No one opposes diversity, but they are opposed to making diversity the top priority and only criterion. Americans have grown tired of being called racists and bigots for prioritizing merit and accomplishment, and of being told that they can only atone by electing Democrats — and even then, atonement is impossible. Americans elected Barack Obama twice, and yet the same raaaaaacisssst argument persists when Democrats lose.
Lest readers consider that an exaggeration, here’s how ‘journalist’ Jonathan Capehart framed it at the DNC meeting:
Jonathan Capehart asks for a show of hands: “How many of you believe that racism and misogyny played a role in VP Harris’s defeat?”
Every hand goes up, and DNC members in crowd also raise their hands.
“You all passed,” says Capehart.
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) January 31, 2025
So the DNC plans to double down on the “you’re a racist/misogynist/transphobe unless you vote for us” marketing campaign. No other reason for Harris’ defeat comes to mind among DNC members and meeting attendees — not her lack of visibility in the media, her refusal to discuss policy, or her incoherent word salads that clearly demonstrated just how far out of her depth Harris was as VP and nominee.
And that’s the easy lesson. Democrats can jettison Harris easily, and likely will, as a terrible candidate, because she so clearly is. That would allow for a rationalization that their policies were not the problem. They can’t claim that both the candidate and the policies were good, though, because then how did Trump get elected and win all of the swing states with a net-negative favorability?
It most assuredly wasn’t “misinformation”:
O’Malley sort of contradicting the anti-disinfo war room idea: “We do waste too much time responding to false attacks… if we’re not filling up the pipeline with truth, they’re going to fill it up with lies.”
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) January 31, 2025
As the Biden administration amply demonstrated during their censorship reign, “misinformation” is defined as “information we find inconvenient,” or “opinions that contradict ours.” By the way, the argument that they were “filling up the pipeline with truth” when the Democrat Party argued for at least a year that Joe Biden was up to a second term and was “sharp as a tack” and “running rings around his aides” is about as misinformationy as it gets.
For the piece de resistance (and heavy on resistance), look no further than having David Hogg on stage to lecture Democrats about how to win:
Republicans are in great shape if crazed lunatics like David Hogg will be leading the DNC.
— Cryptid Politics (pro-DeSantis) 🇺🇸🐊 (@CryptidPolitics) January 31, 2025
As Bonchie points out at RedState, what has Hogg actually won?
The Second Amendment has been expanded across the country since the Parkland shooting (which would not have been prevented by any gun control proposals), with multiple states passing constitutional carry while there have been no significant crackdowns passed at the national level.
You have to understand, though, that winning for someone like Hogg is getting likes on social media and backslaps on MSNBC. It’s not actually winning elections and enacting policies. That’s why he’s so uniquely unqualified to hold a leadership position for a political party, but the current state of the DNC makes him a viable option.
Even on these terms, Democrats won’t win for long. MSNBC partnered with the DNC on these meetings, but MSNBC is about to blink out of existence. Its ratings have collapsed, although it has bounced back a little since the election to edge CNN out of second place in January. They still have lost a third of their audience year-on-year with this same messaging, another lesson that the DNC apparently refuses to learn.
Dave Weigel shared a message from a “campaign vet” at the meetings:
Text from a Dem campaign vet watching this pic.twitter.com/eQVOBpAAI6
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) January 31, 2025
If so, it’s by self-immolation.
