Fetterman's thoughts
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The Pennsylvania senator spoke to NBC News about what went wrong for his party in 2024 and how it should approach the future Trump administration.
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I've liked John Fetterman since he was mayor of Braddock, PA, a gritty steel mill town that's seen hard times like many mill towns have and located in the same county I live in.
His interview oozes wisdom. I think he has a realistic view of what the next 2-4 years may hold and will do what is in his power to serve the people of Pennsylvania.
Big Al
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Allow me to share an experience that illustrates why Dems are losing.
I have a colleague, someone I supervise. This person uses a female name; has a short but feminine haircut; has feminine features; dresses in an ordinary way (meaning no dresses, wears pants and shorts and shoes that many women would wear but not many men ).
This person uses they/them pronouns. When I inevitably refer to this person as she or her, I get an immediate public correction, after which i mumble "them, sorry." So it is my responsibility to check my read of this person's clear gender expression AND ignore my lifetime of the importance of subject/verb agreement. All so this person doesn't have to hear she or her.
I fully understand the thinking that got us here. We want to be inclusive, got it. But this is very different from the civil rights struggle. Sure, the preferred name for black people morphed every few years. But no one had to grapple with it every day, and it didn't violate the rules of grammar.
Bottom line: Our inclusivity is killing us. It has us insisting that people get pregnant, not women. That Trans girls should compete with his girls. That Spanish would be better with out gender. It is signaling to the whole country that we care only about being the language police than in the real problems facing us all individually and collectively.
I think there is room for the Dems to become the party that protects the little guy. Regular people get mistreated all the time, on matters big and small. Let's fix that.
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Agreed, Cindy. I do not believe trans folks, or anyone, really, should be condemned or less of a citizen for their life choices. Neither do I believe they or anyone has the right to dictate how others must address them. I don’t believe they should expect society to ignore the obvious contradiction inherent in biological males playing in women’s sports, using women’s restrooms, etc. no one has to endorse these choices. It is nothing at all like the civil rights movement.
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Whoa. I don't see that Dems have made the use of pronouns into a campaign issue, do you? Harris was very clear that she was focused on economic issues and helping working people. Trans stuff was not part of the campaign, that I saw.
I don't see the identity politics as being so much a Dem thing as a generational thing. It's younger people who have put so much emphasis on this.
fear is the thief of dreams
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No, Dems haven't made it a campaign issue. Republicans have, by exploiting the fact that these are things Progressives champion. The Trans issues are one example of this. Dems love to get outraged about benign policies or actions that happen to disadvantage a group viewed as downtrodden.
I think we should champion the downtrodden. The downtrodden is everyone who has to sign away their right to sue a corporation that harmed them because they signed terms and conditions on a web site.
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@pique said in Fetterman's thoughts:
Whoa. I don't see that Dems have made the use of pronouns into a campaign issue, do you? Harris was very clear that she was focused on economic issues and helping working people. Trans stuff was not part of the campaign, that I saw.
They must have been running different campaign ads in Montana than they did in Pennsylvania. One that DT ran repeatedly here emphasized CH's support for transgender surgery for inmates and men in women's sports.
Big Al
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@Cindysphinx said in Fetterman's thoughts:
No, Dems haven't made it a campaign issue. Republicans have, by exploiting the fact that these are things Progressives champion. The Trans issues are one example of this. Dems love to get outraged about benign policies or actions that happen to disadvantage a group viewed as downtrodden.
I think we should champion the downtrodden. The downtrodden is everyone who has to sign away their right to sue a corporation that harmed them because they signed terms and conditions on a web site.
Yes, it's a GOP tactic that has worked. They have associated progressivism with all of the niche concerns about language and they have elevated in the public mind the horrors of allowing a trans into a particular bathroom. This has energized their base while diminishing the consequences of their inaction on gun control and on their abortion policies that leave women dying of sepsis while physicians watch from the sidelines. They have masterfully taken control of the agenda.
Once you have convinced lower income people that tax cuts that go to the top .1% of the income distribution somehow are good for all of us it's only a short step to convincing people that allowing a trans girl on a high school volleyball team is so important that we must double down on this tax (and now tariff) policy in a way that will screw 95% of Americans.
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I think the point about not freaking out over every step that the Republicans take is a good one..
Instead, if those with a voice can respond with something like "Yes, with today's action, the Rebublican party is showing that they are the party of Big Brother/corporate profits/supporting criminals (fill in the blank, keep it short!) When are they going to do something about affordable housing/grocery prices/quality healthcare/manufacturing jobs?" Use every opportunity to bring a message to swing and non voters that the Republican party doesn't do anything for them.. Instead of "taking the bait", use the bait as an opportunity.
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I decided to dig deeper into this issue of gender affirming care in prisons and detention centers. When Trump said this in the debate, I figured he was lying. He wasn’t.
When Harris ran her doomed 2019 campaign, her campaign filled out policy questionnaires from various groups. One question asked about support for trans care, and the response was that she supported it for prisoners and detainees, including undocumented people. She also said she was proud to have worked for these measures (paraphrasing). Apparently, at least two prisoners got surgery, but no one knows if any undocumented people did.
How can this be? Well, the law is well established that the state must provide medical care for prisoners and detainees. If the state imprisons a person who is on blood pressure meds, the state is keeping them from getting the meds on the outside, so the state has to provide them. Makes sense. It seems that a couple of judges used that reasoning for trans care, so Harris figured she would support it as required by law. But . . . Just because something is the law in the eyes of some judges does not mean a candidate cannot disagree.
Anyway, we need to figure out a way for candidates to be able to win primaries without adopting ridiculous positions. In my state, only party members can vote in the primary. That means independents (including moderate former Dems) can’t weigh in in favor of moderate candidates, so the fringe has more power than it should. Maybe the primary should be open to Dems and independents?
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In my state you don’t have to register with a party in advance of the primary. You just ask for the ballot you want when you go to vote.
I think part of the problem is also that turnout for primaries is pretty low. Motivated voters show up in force, and they are often at the fringes.
I found this little bit of history about how primaries have evolved over time. It’s a Vox piece that was written in 2016 before DJT got the GOP nomination.
https://www.vox.com/a/presidential-primaries-2016-republican-democrat
@Cindysphinx is right. We need some changes.
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I agree with Cindy's post. It is the Democrats and only the Democrats who have let identity politics displace concern for the fact every one is being unjustly pressured by issues of economic fairness and justice. Of course the Republicans take advantage of this nonsense.
