The Democrats Show Why They Lost
I was conflicted about sharing this article. I truly don't want the democrats to change. I would support them running Kamala Harris again for president in 2028 and once again forgoing a primary. Just give her a billion dollars to spend and let her start campaigning. Don't worry about finding the best candidate. democrats need to continue to choose a leader based on their gender, skin color, sex life, these are what really matter. (I hope my sarcasm isn't too obvious.)
The Democrats Show Why They Lost
Speaking to the Democratic National Committee, which met to select its new leadership this weekend, the outgoing chair, Jaime Harrison, attempted to explain a point about its rules concerning gender balance for its vice-chair race. “The rules specify that when we have a gender-nonbinary candidate or officer, the nonbinary individual is counted as neither male nor female, and the remaining six officers must be gender balanced,” Harrison announced.
As the explanation became increasingly intricate, Harrison’s elucidation grew more labored. “To ensure our process accounts for male, female, and nonbinary candidates, we conferred with our [Rules and Bylaws Committee] co-chair, our LGBT Caucus co-chair, and others to ensure that the process is inclusive and meets the gender-balance requirements in our rules,” he added. “To do this, our process will be slightly different than the one outlined to you earlier this week, but I hope you will see that in practice, it is simple and transparent.”
The Democratic Party, at least in theory, is an organization dedicated to winning political power through elected office, though this might seem hard to believe on the evidence provided by its official proceedings. The DNC’s meetings included a land acknowledgement, multiple shrieking interruptions by angry protesters, and a general affirmation that its strategy had been sound, except perhaps insufficiently committed to legalistic race and gender essentialism.
The good news about the DNC, for those who prefer that the country have a politically viable alternative to the authoritarian personality cult currently running it, is that the official Democratic Party has little power. The DNC does not set the party’s message, nor will it determine its next presidential candidate.
The bad news is that the official party’s influence is so meager, in part because the party has largely ceded it to a collection of progressive activist groups. These groups, funded by liberal donors, seldom have a broad base of support among the voting public but have managed to amass enormous influence over the party. They’ve done so by monopolizing the brand value of various causes. Climate groups, for instance, define what good climate policy means, and then they judge candidates based on how well they affirm those positions. The same holds true for abortion, racial justice, and other issues that many Democrats deem important. The groups are particularly effective at spreading their ideas through the media, especially (but not exclusively) through the work of progressive-leaning journalists, who lean on both the expertise that groups provide and their ability to drive news (by, say, scolding Democratic candidates who fall short of their standards of ideological purity).
The 2020 Democratic primary represented the apogee, to that point, of the groups’ influence. The gigantic field of candidates slogged through a series of debates and interviews in which journalists asked if they would affirm various positions demanded by the groups. That is how large chunks of the field wound up endorsing decriminalization of the border, reparations, and other causes that are hardly consensus positions within the Democratic Party, let alone the broader electorate. It is also how Kamala Harris came out for providing free gender-reassignment surgery to prisoners and migrant detainees, which became the basis of the Trump campaign’s most effective ad against her.
The ongoing influence of the groups can be seen in a new New York Times poll. Asked to list their top priorities, respondents cited, in order, the economy, health care, immigration, taxes, and crime. Asked what they believed Democrats’ priorities were, they cited abortion, LGBTQ policy, climate change, the state of democracy, and health care. That perception of the party’s priorities may not be an accurate description of the views of its elected officials. But it is absolutely an accurate description of the priorities of progressive activist groups.
The poll is a testament to how well the groups have done their job. They have set out to raise public awareness of a series of issues their donors care about, and to commit the party to prioritizing them, and they have done so. Democrats in public office may be mostly engaged in fighting about the economy, health care, and other issues, but they lack the communications apparatus controlled by the groups, which have blotted out their poll-tested messages in favor of donor-approved ones.
Over the past year or so, and especially since Harris’s defeat, some centrist commentators have begun to question the groups’ influence. But the DNC meetings offered no evidence that their thinking has gone out of style.
If Democrats learned from Harris’s campaign that they should try to stop holding events that are easily repurposed as viral Republican attack ads, they showed no sign of it over the weekend. When activists repeatedly interrupted speakers, they were met supportively. “Rather than rebuff the interruptions,” observed the Wall Street Journal reporter Molly Ball, “those onstage largely celebrated them, straining to assure the activists they were actually on the same side and eagerly giving them the platform they broke the rules to demand.”
Neither Harrison nor his successor, Ken Martin, has questioned Joe Biden’s decision to run for a second term, nor any of the messaging or policy that contributed to his dismal approval ratings. When MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart asked one panel of candidates if they believed racism and misogyny contributed to Harris’s defeat, every panelist agreed. “That’s good, you all pass,” he said. (Note that this diagnosis of the election result has no actionable takeaway other than that perhaps the party should refrain from nominating a woman or person of color.)Who's cheering the stock market tanking today? Who is cheering punishing our allies and driving them closer to our enemies? Who's cheering eggs that cost $15 a carton? Rising gas prices? The war in Ukraine continuing? Inflation continuing? At this point, the election is over and no one really gives a sh*t why Harris lost....trump and musk are methodically destroying our country.
You're right.
According to the democrats what would make everything better is if we had more diversity. We need to ignore a person's qualifications and hire them based on their skin color and sex life. If they suffer from gender dysphoria even better. They should be able to get the job done.
If ONLY the American people would just listen to the democrats...oh wait, they did and it seems the democrat ideas were soundly rejected.
I think what American people do like is having thousands of fewer hardened criminals here illegally from other countries committing crimes against American citizens.
I think the American people enjoy having a leader who doesn't speak in word salads or wonder off during press events. They may even like having a president who did what he said he was going to do during his campaign so nobody is surprised by what he's done.
But...I commend the democrats on their choice for DNC chairman. A person who is for DEI, Defund the Police and the other very popular programs of the democrat party.
I couldn't vote for him as I am a Republican, but I do support him the the path he is taking the democrat party down.
Mike --- my view
It's refreshing to see someone speak out on the realities facing the Democratic Party, especially when it comes to the prioritization of identity politics over substance. Your take is both insightful and necessary. It's clear that, rather than focusing on the values and policies that can unite and strengthen the country, the Democrats are too often focused on gender, race, and sexual orientation, sometimes at the expense of effective governance. The idea that a candidate like Kamala Harris could run again in 2028, without a primary process, underlines the lack of genuine dialogue and competition within the party.
The truth is, the Democratic Party has become more focused on appeasing its activist base than addressing the concerns of the broader electorate. Their focus on issues like climate change, abortion, and LGBTQ+ policy has drowned out the concerns of everyday Americans—like the economy, healthcare, and crime—that many polls show are top priorities. By continuing to cater to progressive activist groups funded by donors with narrow agendas, the party risks alienating a vast portion of the voting public, whose priorities aren't always in line with the ideological purity these groups demand.
In this environment, it's hard to see how the party can recover, especially when no one in the leadership is willing to challenge or question the status quo. The fact that the DNC meetings, while full of internal disruptions, didn’t signal any meaningful shift in strategy or vision for 2024 is disappointing but not surprising. Without a more balanced approach that takes into account the real concerns of Americans, the Democratic Party risks further alienation and division. Your sarcasm about Harris's potential 2028 run is spot-on—until they stop running on identity politics and start running on policies that resonate with the average voter, the party is doomed to repeat the same mistakes.Shar,
It's to the point where President Donald Trump is shinning the light of truth over the democrats and their many dark lies.
It appears there was staffing shortages at the FAA for air traffic controllers. Why weren't more hired? They didn't meet the DEI requirements. Qualified candidates could have been hired to alleviate the staffing shortages at air traffic control towers but because they weren't the right skin color, have the right sex life and more, they were turned away.
The FAA did away with skill based hiring under Obama.
DEI is not only wrong it is proving to be deadly.
'FAA turned away 1,000 job applicants because of its DEI rules despite staff shortages, lawsuit claims
The Federal Aviation Administration turned away 1,000 air traffic controller applicants due to its DEI policies despite a staff shortage, according to a lawsuit.
Complaints over the FAA's hiring policies have resurfaced after American Airlines flight 5342 collided in midair with a helicopter over Washington DC, killing 67.
In a suit filed in 2015, lead plaintiff Andrew Brigida, 35, claims the agency's obsession with DEI hiring was a catalyst in ensuring an accident was likely to happen - and reiterated this in an interview with The Telegraph on Thursday.
The FAA dropped a skills-based system for hiring air traffic controllers and instead based it on a 'biographical assessment' under the Obama administration.
Brigida, who is white, alleged that he was discriminated against based purely on his race and was the reason his application was knocked back.
The Arizona state graduate was turned down for a job with the agency even though he had passed his training exam with full marks, the suit claims.
The FAA has struggled in recent years with staffing issues following pandemic-era layoffs and has yet to fully recover.
The lawsuit only compounds mounting criticism on the agency, especially after President Trump blamed DEI hiring policies on the cause of Wednesday's crash.
Brigida, who now works for the agency as a program manager, told The Telegraph that years of diversity hiring meant it was just a matter of time before a major accident happened.
Read More
Trump berates performance of Black Hawk helicopter crew after blaming DEI on crash
He said: 'You want to hire the best and the brightest for this kind of job because it is a very stressful job and it can take a toll on you, age you prematurely. You want to make sure that the people that are doing it are the best.'
Brigida added: '[Trump] obviously sees the issue at hand and if he didn’t, I’m sure people that work in the Department of Transportation and the FAA informed him that there is an issue with staffing and air traffic control and I’m hoping they can work on it immediately.'
In Trump's first term, lawyers for the Federal Transportation Department argued to throw out Brigida's case.
They said that deciding to open up applications for more diverse candidates isn't solid enough grounds to file a discrimination suit.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act stops employers from discriminating on 'race, color, religion, sex and national origin'.
In a 2020 motion filed by the government, they said: 'An employer's decision to broaden the pool of potential applicants between rounds of hiring is not a personnel action cognizable under Title VII.'
They added that Brigida can't claim discrimination just because the new system no longer benefitted him.
They wrote: 'Accordingly, even if Plaintiffs would have had an advantage if they applied under the old hiring process, Title VII does not give them a claim to seek to preserve that advantage.
'Instead, Plaintiffs must show that the hiring process in which they actually participated discriminated against them on the basis of some protected characteristic.'
His lawsuit against the FAA is still ongoing, with the agency and Department of Transport due back in court next year to fight it.
Following the horrifying scenes on Wednesday night, it has since emerged that there was staffing issues inside the control tower of Ronald Reagan National Airport.
The FAA have found in their preliminary report that it was 'not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic'.
On Wednesday, an air traffic controller was left to handle both helicopter traffic and manage planes - which should have been a divided duty - according to The New York Times.
Those tasks are usually handled between two people from 10am until 9:30pm, according to the report.
Chronic understaffing at air traffic control towers is nothing new, with well-known causes including high turnover and budget cuts.
In order to fill the gaps, controllers are frequently asked to work 10-hour days, six days a week.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl … wsuit.htmlAm I missing where he was passed over for someone with lower qualifications? Or is he just a really mediocre guy?
From the source....
"lawyers for the Federal Transportation Department argued to throw out Brigida's case.
They said that deciding to open up applications for more diverse candidates isn't solid enough grounds to file a discrimination suit. "
Not sure I see the merit in the case. Are company's is going to be dragged through the courts every time a lackluster male doesn't get hired and he thinks it's because and even more lackluster minority was hired instead? GeezInteresting how you only focused on what the defendants in the case said about it rather than the response.
"The FAA dropped a skills-based system for hiring air traffic controllers and instead based it on a 'biographical assessment' under the Obama administration.
The Arizona state graduate was turned down for a job with the agency even though he had passed his training exam with full marks"
I would say the majority of Americans understand hiring based on merit for such an important position is more important than basing the hiring on "biographical assessment."There’s no excuse for allowing ideology to override competence when lives are at stake.
"The Arizona state graduate was turned down for a job with the agency even though he had passed his training exam with full marks"
And how many others did also ? Maybe hundreds of others did. How many passed with higher marks than him? Funny that's not mentioned... The man has a lot to prove.
Whatever Obama allowed to be changed in FAA criteria was a-okay with Trump...he kept it all in place during his first term.... Interesting that we have not had such a catastrophe in 25 years... Couldn't have anything to do with trump firing aviation officials?'And how many others did also ? Maybe hundreds of others did. How many past with higher marks than him?'
How many weren't hired because they were not the right skin color, sex life or didn't have gender dysphoria?
Why was there such a shortage if there were so many qualified applicants?
The government has a lot to prove.The man is claiming he was passed over for a job because of his race or gender... The burden is on him to prove his claim, not the other way around.
Under the laws enforced by EEOC, it is illegal to discriminate against someone (applicant or employee) because of that person's race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.
The court will decide if laws were brokenI would love to see all of the documents being exchanged during the discovery phase of this lawsuit. I'm sure it is quite interesting.
The FAA’s hiring policies under Obama did away with a skills-based system in favor of a biographical assessment, and the consequences of that decision are becoming painfully clear. The staffing shortages in air traffic control are a direct result of prioritizing diversity quotas over actual qualifications, and now we’re seeing tragic accidents that could have been prevented. The fact that 1,000 applicants were turned away due to DEI policies, despite an obvious shortage, is not just wrong—it’s dangerous. Air traffic control is an incredibly high-stakes job that requires the best and brightest, not people selected based on race or personal background. It’s infuriating that this was ever allowed to happen, and even more frustrating that when concerns were raised years ago, they were dismissed. Now, with accidents like the recent midair collision, we’re seeing the deadly consequences of these policies play out in real time. This is exactly why Trump has been vocal about the dangers of DEI in critical fields, and he’s right to call it out. There’s no excuse for allowing ideology to override competence when lives are at stake.
"The FAA’s hiring policies under Obama did away with a skills-based system in favor of a biographical assessment, and the consequences of that decision are becoming painfully clear'
So why did Trump keep those policies through his first administration?
And where is the evidence that anything remotely related to DEI was related to the recent collision?
"...the best and brightest, not people selected based on race or personal background. It’s infuriating that this was ever allowed to happen, "
What exactly was allowed to happen? Do you know anything about the background of the people who were flying these aircraft? Looks like it was two white guys... So if one of them screwed up does that put the skill of white guys in question? Was a mediocre white guy hired when there was a more qualified minority?
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