In the wake of the 2024 election, a poll from Blueprint found that a lot of swing voters believed that “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.”
Predictably, many centrist Democrats started arguing that Democrats had to talk less about “cultural” issues. The centrist Democratic group Third Way, for instance, released a list of 47 words for Democrats to stop using – words like “cisgender,” “birthing person” and “chest feeder.” Elissa Slotkin said “There are a lot of issues out there. But you’ve got to start with what keeps people awake, and that is kitchen-table issues, economics.”
(Tim Onion mocked the Third Way argument on Bluesky: “Dems need to stop policing language… and we should start by banning these 47 words.”)
I remember hearing the same arguments after Hilary Clinton lost. I suspect they were also made after Al Gore lost.
The problem with this analysis is that Democrats already talk more about kitchen table issues than virtually anything else – certainly more than they ever talk about trans rights. As Charlie Markbreiter pointed out, “Kamala Harris has been virtually silent on trans rights.”
In November of 2024, responding to Matthew Yglesias saying, essentially, that Democrats had to stop using wokespeak, Political Science professor Mark Copelovitch wrote:
Quite literally, three months ago, the Democrats nominated TIM WALZ, the most Minnesota Regular Guy ever, to join Harris on the ticket, and they spent weeks going around the country talking about all the things Pundits say they want them to talk about. It’s like this never happened. It’s maddening.
Wallad Shahid wrote that people who say that Democrats just need to moderate their message are dodging a harder truth:
The 2024 record is straightforward: frontline Democrats campaigned largely as moderates. Border and police funding, fentanyl crackdowns, oil drilling permits, law-enforcement endorsements, bipartisan validators. The ads show badges and sheriffs. And yet the coalitions barely moved. It feels like talking into a headwind.
We reach for easy fixes because the alternative is a kind of vertigo. It is simpler to believe that swapping positions here and there unlocks the electorate than to sit with the possibility that the crisis is larger than message—that the map is unkind, that political identities have devoured localism, that the emotional weather is set somewhere offstage and rarely shifts on command.
Remember Third Way’s 47 words? As many people pointed out, a bunch of those words are virtually never used by elected Democrats. Almost the only officials using those words are Republicans making fun of how they imagine Democrats talk.
The reason many swing voters thought “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class” has nothing to do with what Harris said. It has to do with what Republicans say Harris said. And no amount of nagging progressives to care less about trans issues is going to change that.
Another cycle cartoon! I just find these cartoons fun to draw.
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has three panels, arranged in a circle, with arrows pointing clockwise leading from one panel to the next. In the center of the circle is a large caption, saying “The Kitchen Table Cycle.”
UPPER LEFT PANEL
This panel shows a smartphone. On the smartphone screen, an angry man wearing a suit and tie is talking.
MAN: The only thing the Democratic candidate ever talks about is trans issues! Trans trans trans!
An arrow leads from this to the
LOWER RIGHT PANEL
Three Democrats sit in a treehouse; a sign on the treehouse says “Democrat Strategy Meeting (No progressives allowed). One of them is speaking.
SPEAKER: The pundits say we lost by talking too much about “identity politics.” Next time, our candidate has to be a centrist who only talks about kitchen table issues!
An arrow leads from this to the
LOWER LEFT PANEL
A politician stands behind a podium giving a speech.
CANDIDATE: As your Democratic candidate, let me just say: Kitchen table! Kitchen Table! Kitchen Table!
An arrow leads from this back to the upper left panel with the cellphone.
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
“Chicken fat” is old-fashioned cartoonist speak for little extras in the cartoon.
UPPER LEFT PANEL: The Fox News logo says “Cur Fews. Go to bed.” The chyron says “Democrats hate all puppies” and the second chyron says “New science proves: everything is still Biden’s fault.” Below the Fox News screen, there are six thumbnails leading to suggested videos. The thumbnail captions read: Owned! Crushed! Cooked! Demolished! Murderized! And then, in smaller letters, “I attempted to refute their position with persuasive arguments.”
LOWER RIGHT PANEL: The treehouse is modeled after the treehouse in my favorite comic strip of all time, “Calvin and Hobbes.” There’s a hole in the tree trunk; in the hole is a giant rat wearing a top hat and bow tie.
LOWER LEFT PANEL: The seal on the front of the podium has a picture of Sam the Eagle from the Muppets (it’s a little hard to make out because of the foreshortening, alas). The paper lying on the podium says “Tiny print no one reads.”
Fun cartoon. Challenging message. The challenge: What exactly is the message?
True, Democrats often seek to run as moderates. True, Republicans strive to paint Democrats as extreme. True, Republicans sometimes win. Ergo … what?
True, Harris and Walz didn’t emphasize trans rights, and they lost. And if they HAD emphasized trans rights, then … what?
True, Mamdani ran as a socialist and was able to win NYC, where Republicans represent only 26% of the voting population. Therefore Democrats running in other jurisdictions should do … what?
A possible answer:
Thomas Massie (R-KY) presents himself as a libertarian, and has opposed Trump from time to time. By the standards of today’s Republican Party, that makes him a moderate. And he lost his primary race to keep his seat. He had previously remarked —
So perhaps the moral is that to appeal to swing voters—especially low education/low information voters—it helps to present yourself as performatively crazy and opposed to “the establishment,” including being opposed to your own party. Perhaps actual positions on actual issues matter only to the extent that they bolster the claim to being crazy and anti-establishment.
Tangentially related:
The League of Women Voters strives to get ever more (legally qualified) people to vote. But people with a knowledge of/interest in government are likely already voters. So the LWV promotes voting among people with a tenuous interest in/knowledge of government and the governing process. At some point, does this become counterproductive?
LWV also promotes Restore the Vote, a policy to let ex-felons vote again. This strikes me as a sound democratic principle. That said, I suspect ex-felons tend to be disaffected young* men without a college education. Who do you think that demographic voted for in the last presidential election?
(* A.I. tells me that, thanks to longer prison sentences, the average age of a federal prisoner is higher than the average age of the US population in general. But prisoners who get released tend to be younger than the US population in general.)
One of my friends from high school had Republican parents, and she said her parents’ “kitchen table” discussion was all about how to beat the Marxist Socialist Muslim Atheist LGBT Democrat Party.
Trans people are only a “distraction” when we advocate for our own rights.
I fully agree that we should focus upon the Kitchen Table issues.
Here are some issues which happen at the Kitchen Table:
– Women and girls threatened and abused if they don’t comply with husband/father domestic diktats
– Children threatened and abused if they fail to uphold the family’s belief system or fraternize with somebody of a race or religion the parents don’t like
– LGBT children harangued, denounced, threatened, abused, and disowned, and forbidden from the kitchen table (and entire home) thereafter
Some people think of voting as an act of investment: You consider options and make a choice that you think will produce the best outcome for the future. And perhaps some people actually vote that way.
In The Myth of the Rational Voter (2007), Bryan Caplan argues that many voters (especially swing voters) treat voting as an act of consumption: They do what makes them feel good in the moment (“Stick it to the Man!” “Own the Libs!”), without a lot of focus on practical consequences.
What do Republicans want? Tax cuts for the rich. What do Republicans campaign on? ANYTHING ELSE. They have mastered the art of picking campaign issues that let them persuade swing voters, not the issues they care the most about. They invest in WINNING, and engage in consumption after they’ve won.
Megalodon does a fine job identifying issues he and I care about. But Amp’s cartoon addresses the challenge of identifying issues that would let a candidate win. It would be nice to imagine that the issues we care about and the issues that help a candidate win are the same issues. But are they? Or would delivering that message merely help us feel good in the moment while actually harming our chances of winning? In short, would venting our righteous frustration in a campaign be an act of investment, or of consumption?
“It would be nice to imagine that the issues we care about and the issues that help a candidate win are the same issues. But are they? Or would delivering that message merely help us feel good in the moment while actually harming our chances of winning? In short, would venting our righteous frustration in a campaign be an act of investment, or of consumption?”
It is morally wrong and hateful to require or even imply that LGBTQ+ people need to compromise between on the one hand their full-fledged energetic rightful advocacy for their own humanity, and on the other hand “electability”.
Thanks for illustrating the point.
You’re welcome!
Maybe not the best analogy anymore. Increasing evidence indicates that a lot of investment and financial decisions are a based on impulsive “feels” rather than rigorous, objective, dispassionate deliberation and study of evidence.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12576316/
https://www.financialresearch.gov/the-ofr-blog/2023/12/28/economic-narratives-shape-how-investors-perceive-risks/
https://home.barclays/news/press-releases/2021/12/half-of-investors-admit-to-making-impulsive-investment-decisions/
Sorry, but what is your point?
Sorry to be obscure. I advocate identifying what you want, and designing a plan to get it.
For example, Republicans want tax cuts for the rich. Who knows, perhaps they even think they deserve them. But regardless, they don’t TALK about that; they talk about whatever they think will sway swing voters in order to win elections, in order to pass tax cuts. And they often succeed.
We want good LGBTQ policies. And … well, we REALLY want them. We DESERVE them! And to do anything other than emphasize the virtue of our cause would be “morally wrong and hateful”! So, who needs planning? We have RIGHTEOUSNESS!
Some will recall that when he first ran for president, Barack Obama opposed gay marriage. He had the idea that campaigning on that issue wouldn’t be helpful to getting elected. Yet, notwithstanding this immoral and hateful posture, he got elected. This is outrageous. But the good news is that we no longer have to tolerate Obama’s morally wrong and hateful administration. And if we keep following the advice I read in these comments, I expect we will never have to worry about enduring another Obama-like administration ever again. Republicans will continue to win elections, and we’ll continue to enjoy the pleasure of feeling righteous. Win/win.
“Increasing evidence indicates that a lot of investment and financial decisions are a based on impulsive “feels” rather than rigorous, objective, dispassionate deliberation and study of evidence.”
I mean I am sure this research is all solid but this was one of Benjamin Graham’s thesis when he wrote The Intelligent Investor back in the 50s – that investment is as much an emotional process as an analytic one, and managing the investor’s own emotions is as important to it as gathering any financial data. He even likened it to voting.
Ha! Next time I see Bryan Caplan, I’ll be sure to mention that.
“Republicans are always smart and canny and just say what’s required to win elections” vs “Democrats are dummies who just say what they feel and so always lose elections” (a paraphrase of your argument, Nobody, but I think a fair one) is just too simplistic a caricature to say anything useful about elections. Nothing is that simple.
Kamala Harris largely followed your advice – she steered clear of campaigning on social justice issues (except abortion), tried hard to never mention trans people, etc.. My impression is that what she said during the campaign, vs which issues she avoided talking about except when absolutely cornered, was largely determined by what she thought swing voters wanted to hear. (There were other factors, too – I think they wanted to keep Biden’s people on side, for instance, which limited how much she could distance herself from Biden).
Why did she do this? Because she – like many people in the Democratic party – pretty much did what you said Democrats should do.
And yet, she lost.
In fact, I think if you compared her and Trump in 2024, Trump was the one more likely to say things that might not poll well with voters. Praising Jan 6 defendants as “hostages” and “patriots,” saying he’d be a “dictator on day one,” saying it would be a “bloodbath” if he lost… These weren’t carefully calculated statements designed to capture centrist swing votes.
If the model you’re suggesting was correct, then Harris would be president today. But it’s not that simple. There are simply tons of factors that go into who wins a presidential election.
Nor do I see my cartoon as supporting what you’re saying. My cartoon is saying (in part) that to a significant extent it doesn’t matter what a candidate says, because what low-information voters will hear isn’t what they actually say, but what the media says they said.
[Excerpt from Thomas B. Edsall’s essay, “The Democrats’ ‘Upstairs-Downstairs’ Coalition is at a Breaking Point,” NYT 6/16/2026]
Will Marshall, the president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute, has been a leader in the struggle to strengthen Democratic centrism for four decades. His take on the evolution of politics over those years:
Over the last two decades, Marshall continued…, “Democrats essentially have been trading working-class voters for white college grads,” noting “that between the 2012 and 2024 elections, the party’s performance among nonwhite working-class voters fell by 37 points, while improving among white college grads by 17 points.”
Now, Marshall added,
The problem for Marshall and others who would like to shift power within the Democratic Party from liberal white elites to more moderate constituencies is that the white elites hold power and won’t give it up without a fight.
They vote, donate and participate heavily in party organizations more than any other major bloc. They dominate or exert disproportionate influence among party activists, primary voters, campaign staffs, advocacy organizations, the media, nonprofit leadership and donor networks.
It may well be that the internal power lies with those who are happy campers just where they are, and that the party as currently constructed cannot and will not dig itself out of the hole it’s in.
Another thing wrong with “this is what the Dems always do, and that’s why they always lose” takes – neither party always loses. Is Biden so long ago that you’ve forgotten him? (You did mention Obama, but the take that he only won because he opposed gay marriage seems dubious to me).
One final point – if you listen to Republicans, it’s pretty common to hear them say that the problem is that Republicans run on their hearts and say what they feel, while the Democrats are Machiavellian and cunning in how they approach politics, and that’s why Republicans lose so often. It’s a grass is greener sentiment, to a great extent.
And it remains obscure.
I guess you are recommending that Democrats’ only hope for electoral survival is to carefully calculate, moderate, and dilute their message to make it as broad, anodyne, and inoffensive as possible?
But then you yourself cite evidence about how the concept of a “rational voter” is a myth and how so-called “undecided” and “swing” voters treat often voting as an act of immediate gratifying “consumption” rather than some sober dispassionate deliberation. Such non-partisan voters might not be impressed and persuaded by endlessly cautious, curated, triangulated, filtered, bleached campaign lines.
But then of course, you suggest that Democrats becoming more unabashed, fervent, strident, and ideological is probably electoral suicide that could not possibly succeed outside of some scattered rarefied deep blue enclaves.
You don’t seem to have much confidence in either side of this Democrat strategic dichotomy you present, but readily come up with reasons why both could fail. So I really can’t tell what point you are making, apart from some smarmy defeatism.
The fact that Obama ran against marriage equality is a crime that will never be erased.
Watcher, you are truly the gift that keeps giving.
When a political cartoonist says that something is “is just too simplistic a caricature to say anything useful”—ouch.
The point I’m trying to make here is that disciplining your message, even though it’s not as fun as simply saying whatever you feel like saying, may help your ability to win an election—political cartoons notwithstanding. In a world of trade-offs, winning typically requires sacrifice, and successful politicians are rarely pure. As Sen. Barney Frank remarked, “I only voted once for someone who believes in 100 percent of what I believe. And that’s when I voted for myself – the first time.” If that message is too simplistic to say anything useful about elections, so be it.
Sure enough, I phrased my argument in caricature. Specifically, I used “Republican” as a stand-in for “strategic opponent,” relying on people’s propensity to see out-groups as more unified than they really are. And I present people who are not willing to think strategically as always losing to those who are. That also is simplified.
In reality, of course, the idea that Republicans really are unified around a single objective (tax cuts) is obviously inaccurate. And the idea that current Republicans are strategic is laughable. Donald Trump is a “buyer’s remorse” machine: As a candidate, he’s great at stoking dissatisfaction with the incumbent president—and then promptly doing things that make him less popular than the person he replaced. And Trump has a delightful record of endorsing the weakest, most extreme candidate in almost any Republican field. Thus Trump helped ensure that Democrats would win both PA senate seats, and may help the Democrats finally win the TX governorship. (Note that this suicidal tradition pre-dated Trump. In 2012 MO Senator Claire McCaskill ran ads during the primaries attacking the weakest Republican candidate as “too conservative for Missouri.” Republican primary voters couldn’t resist that bait; that candidate surged in the Republican polls and won the primary—only to be trounced by McCaskill in the general election, even though MO was a red state.)
The point of all these caricatures is to gloss over the myrid details and get to the crux: Yes, purity is nice in the abstract, when there is nothing at stake–but how much electoral defeat would you be willing to endure before you’d compromise that purity in pursuit of electoral victory?
Exactly—just like Amp has declared that if Harris had simply rejected the advice of moderates, she’d be president today. I regard these statements as equally justified.
Which is to say, I find neither to be justified.
That said, in my very first comment I challenged Amp on precisely this matter. (“True, Harris and Walz didn’t emphasize trans rights, and they lost. And if they HAD emphasized trans rights, then … what?”) The point of this question is to lead the reader to conclude that it’s facile to ridicule the campaign strategies of losing candidates; the argument only has force if you can make a persuasive argument that a different strategy would have produced a better result. Amp’s cartoon is big on ridiculing a strategy, but short on persuasive alternatives. (And, yeah, it’s a political cartoon, not a dissertation….)
Intentionally or not, this cartoon panders to people who sincerely care about trans issues and sincerely don’t care about politics. I expect people will read this cartoon and say “See? Those who urge politicians to compromise and tailor their messaging to win elections are just silly—or worse. Being strategic and disciplined never works. Unleash your ego and embrace maximalism!” People love that moral. How many political movies culminate with the hero giving the Big Maximalist Speech from the Heart that magically wins the day? And when people later learn that the thrilling story about purity and maximalism is mostly a myth, and that politics is mostly about compromise and coalition, they feel that they’ve been lied to. They become cynical—and worse.
That said, Amp offers a narrower—and arguably more cynical—interpretation:
In my first comment, I offered a partial remedy:
To expand on this, perhaps the moral is to nominate celebrities or wildly charismatic characters—that is, people who will promptly make, or who have already made, such an impression on the public that the rival campaign’s attack machine won’t be able to overcome it.
Would it help if I put it in boldface?
I advocate identifying what you want, and designing a plan to get it.
Imagine you want to promote trans rights. Some plans for doing that would involve winning an election.
Imagine you want to win an election. Some plans for doing that would involve identifying what the voters in your district value (especially swing voters) and addressing your campaign to those voters.
If you conclude that the best way to win the election would be to carefully calculate, moderate, and dilute your message to make it as broad, anodyne, and inoffensive as possible, then yes, that would be a plan to achieve what you want, and I would advocate doing that.
If you conclude that voters might not be impressed and persuaded by endlessly cautious, curated, triangulated, filtered, bleached campaign lines, and that the best way to win the election would be to speak boldly from your sense of conviction about justice and injustice, then yes, that would be a plan to achieve what you want, and I would advocate doing that.
If you conclude that the best way to win the election would be to stand on your head, then yes, that would be a plan to achieve what you want, and I would advocate doing that.
Plans don’t always work. But I suspect they work more often than acting at random or whim. It’s a modest claim, but I think an accurate one.
Let’s put aside the accuracy of this summary of my remarks. The fact that buyers may act irrationally does not mean that sellers must. Is it rational to buy a pickup? For most people, no. But truck advertisers have perfected the art of exploiting men’s fear of appearing insufficiently masculine; exploiting that irrationality is perfectly rational behavior on the part of the advertisers. Likewise, I expect campaign managers well understand that voters often act in predictably irrational ways; managers try to exploit that understanding for the benefit of their respective campaigns. A large part of political campaigns is spent not on developing rational positions and arguments, but on doing all kinds of symbolic things that have vanishingly small relevance to public policy.
To be more precise, I posed questions designed to get people to consider this possibility. See, I advocate identifying what you want, and designing a plan to get it. When selecting the best plan for getting elected, you may want to consider whether appearing unabashed, fervent, strident, and ideological would be a good fit for you, and for your constituents. If so, great: make that part of your plan. If not, then maybe you should consider a different plan. But the fact that you may LIKE to act unabashed, fervent, strident, and ideological should not be confused with a conclusion that acting in this manner would help you win the election.
Megalodon, did you perhaps intend to address this remark to Amp?
Nobody, your use of language is very telling. Trans people advocating for their own humanity are not practicing “purity” or “maximalism” let alone “unleashing their egos”. They are human beings advocating for their rights as humans, which have been denied in the West for centuries and are still denied today.
The fact you can’t see that is truly tragic.
Did you ever see the film Lincoln (2012)? Based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals (2006) (although other historians claim the film must have incorporated their own research, too), the film depicts the effort to pass the 13th Amendment banning slavery. With the Civil War approaching a successful conclusion, Lincoln knows that his Emancipation Proclomation–passed as a wartime measure–will soon expire, so a constitutional amendment is urgently required.
Tommy Lee Jones plays Thaddeus Stevens, who has long argued that all humans are equal regardless of race. It is unclear that the amendment has enough votes to gain passage in the House of Representatives, and opponents begin race-baiting the swing voters: Yes, some argue that black people should have the same LEGAL rights as white people–but supporters of this amendment go further and think that black people really are equal to white people!
At this point, Stevens stands and announces that he has had a change of heart. He renounces his belief in the ACTUAL equality of the races and acknowledges that the amendment is merely about establishing the LEGAL equality–a necessary step to protect the (soon-to-be former) slaves. And with that concession, the Thirteenth Amendment passes the House by two votes.
The film then depicts Stevens wandering home to his black lover, Lydia Hamilton Smith.
From my perspective, enslaved black Americans were human beings advocating for their rights as humans, which had been denied in the West for centuries. The fact that Thaddeus Stevens couldn’t see that is truly tragic.
Where, exactly, did I say this?
If I said this – and I doubt I did, frankly – then I, presumably like Barney Frank after his first election, disagree with myself. I think “one weird trick” explanations of how candidates could have won (especially in close elections) are not plausible, because in most cases, who wins or loses elections have way too many variables going into them for one thing to explain the outcome.
So the real question is, how does Amp justify the claim that I’ve propounded some model that could only lead to the conclusion that Harris would have been president?
Okay. So you express absolutely no opinion about which plans or methods are more likely to work in the electoral realm? Or about what evidence or basis for whatever plan or method is credible?
The extent and sum of the point you make is… identify what you want, and design a plan to get it…
Groundbreaking.
Since every Democratic campaign for this election cycle must be based entirely on whim or based upon plans intentionally designed to fail, your suggestion will be like sorcery to them.
Nope. Meant for you.
To you and me, this message seems self-evident.
But we might both know people who deeply care about, say, promoting the interests of trans people and also express deep disinterest in issues of electability. These people may be well-intentioned and earnest, but they seem to lack a plan to achieve their professed values–and may even adopt behaviors that seem antithetical to achieving those values. To these people my message is, apparently, still not evident.
Who are these people? Can you name some of them?
I suppose I could–but they might find it presumptuous on my part, since they already have names.
“Did you ever see the film Lincoln (2012)?”
Yes, I saw it. Did you know that that film – especially the depiction of Thaddeus Stevens – is quite ahistorical?
Yeah. For artistic reasons, the film uses the character of Stevens as a composite of a variety of abolitionists.
That said, Stevens was a real person. He really was among the most radical of the Radical Republicans. He railed against discrimination on the basis of wealth, race, sex, and language. He was also a big proponent of public education. And he really had a black attendant who was widely thought to be his lover.
Notwithstanding this resume, he also recognized the need for political strategy and COMPROMISE. Acknowldging that the 13th Amendment was passed in part because Lincoln’s administration had bought off some congressmen with political favors, Stevens remarked, “The greatest measure of the nineteenth century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.”
Stevens was also the key author of the 14th Amendment, granting due process to all citizens (among other things). His draft language got watered down as the legislative process rolled along. Ultimately he concluded as follows:
So what is now your judgment of Thaddeus Stevens (and, for that matter, Frederick Douglass), idealists who made political compromises? For example, they both pledged loyalty to the cause of equality for women–and yet both supported constitutional amendments that failed to grant the vote to women. Shall we sit on our high horses and condemn them, saying “Those women were human beings advocating for their rights as humans, which had been denied in the West for centuries. The fact that Thaddeus Stevens and Fredrick Douglass couldn’t see that is truly tragic”?
Would it have been better if these men had maintained their purity of cause and opposed the passage of less-than-perflect amendments? In that case, when the Civil War ended, enslaved people would again be subject to capture and return to their masters, and no additional people would have obtained voting rights–but at least Stevens and Douglass could pat themselves on the back with clean hands. Would that have been the better outcome?
@nobody.really You do understand that there is quite a large difference between leaving out a group in rights granting legislation as a compromise (like women and the right to vote in your example) and passing new legislation that takes away existing rights (like what trans folks are facing right now)?
There are people running in elections in the past few cycles who PROMISE to take away rights (mostly for immigrants and LGBTQ people, but also women). This is not at all the same thing as not granting rights to some but not all (with the hope of not yet). I think it is morally wrong to compromise to strip rights from people in order to get elected. This is not a matter of ideological purity (which would be more along the lines of opposing civil partnerships for same sex couples instead of full marriage, which did in fact happen as a compromise that some people opposed as not far enough).
” Shall we sit on our high horses and condemn them, saying “Those women were human beings advocating for their rights as humans, which had been denied in the West for centuries. ”
Just to be clear, which part of the above statement do you disagree with? The part about them being humans, the part about them advocating for their rights, or the part about those rights being denied in the West?
Nobody:
Watcher:
Thanks for asking. I don’t disagree with any of that.
I DO disagree with the suggestion that Thaddeus Stevens and Fredrick Douglass couldn’t see these facts. I would argue that they knew the facts full well, and made decisions based on those facts–as well as facts such as political realities.
I have answered your question; can you answer mine? Specifically, do you think it would have been better if these men had maintained their purity of cause and opposed the passage of less-than-perflect amendments? In that case, when the Civil War ended, enslaved people would again be subject to capture and return to their masters, and no additional people would have obtained voting rights–but at least Stevens and Douglass could pat themselves on the back with clean hands. Would that have been the better outcome?
You are trying to trap me in a “yes no” question based on preconceptions I don’t accept. And no, I don’t particularly care to break that down. Feel free to declare to yourself or anybody else you can interest in the conversation that you have “won” or “beaten” me. Perhaps you and Corso can get together and commiserate as to why these mean liberals won’t answer your “just asking questions” questions.
Well, yes, I am asking you to address a question. You reject the premise. Fine–but why? Please feel free to research Frederick Douglass and Thaddeus Stevens. Observe their life-long and tireless efforts to promote civil rights for marginalized groups. And read their explanations for why they ultimately compromised. Do you regard yourself as somehow more virtuous and dedicated to the cause than they? Do you think you understand the circumstances they confronted better than they did?
Martin Luther King, Jr., said “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” The idea that there’s something natural about justice is lovely. And pernicious.
As I look to nature, I don’t see a lot of justice. I see big apes beating smaller apes into submission until the big ape becomes too old to defend himself, and in then beaten into submission in turn. And the apes are the lucky ones; old lions get killed. And the females don’t seem to get a lot of say either way.
As far as I can tell, there’s nothing natural about justice. If you’ve ever experienced an ounce of justice in your life, don’t thank nature. Thank some human beings who have worked GODDAMN HARD over MILLENIA to create an ENTIRELY ARTIFICAL world in which justice has a brief chance to prevail. I will never stop praising such heroes–these FLAWED, ALL-TOO-HUMAN HEROES–for what they have done for humankind.
And when I encounter those who are all too willing to condemn these good soldiers for not being better–who somehow imagine that justice is the default state of the world, and regard every imperfection as a personal slight–yeah, ingratitude doesn’t sit well with me.
Nice chatting.
I could name one for sure.
I do not see why the premise “Sometimes politicians need to make moral compromises in order to win, and in doing so can advance human rights further than their opponent would” is controversial. We can debate when this is necessary and why it might or might not work in a given situation, but every adult knows that it’s a thing that happens sometimes, and I don’t see politicians who do it as inherently unforgivable moral criminals. (A particularly galling example is Kamala Harris, whose campaign stance on Palestine was horrible, and yet if she had won Palestine would undoubtedly be in a better position today, as would almost every other nation including our own.)