Let's Honor MLK's Birthday By Being Impotent and Embarrassing
So reads the memo I assume went out to progressive activists
What do people find annoying about Democrats? There’s not enough time to run through all the stuff — and I don’t mean “not enough time right now”, I mean “not enough time in the universe” — so let me list what I think are the top three things:
We’re overly-influenced by an activist class that practices a weird, fundamentalist religion that’s obsessed with race;
We’re out of touch;
We soak our pants over absolutely everything.
Activists just managed to reinforce all three perceptions in a tidy little episode about voting rights that produced a hot pile of nothing. So, happy birthday, Martin Luther King: We got you jack shit!
To be clear: I wanted voting rights legislation to pass. I also don’t think that better strategy would have changed the outcome; we will solve dark energy before we figure out how to influence Kyrstyn Synyma.1 And, for what it’s worth, I’ve wanted to get rid of the filibuster since Mitch McConnell was a much younger old man. I want the same thing that the activists I criticize in this article want; my complaint is with their rhetoric and strategy.
Last year, I wrote a three-part series about how what matters most in politics is a party’s brand, and that the Democratic brand is increasingly associated with a type of lefty activist that most Americans hate. This association drags Democrats down, which harms progressive goals. I think that recent events surrounding voting rights have put that dynamic on display again, which provides another opportunity to ask: Democrats…what the fuck are we doing here?