General Discussion

When it comes to holding their caucuses together, I agree with you that they’ve done an excellent job. But my issue is that there is an important public-facing, performative aspect to their job, and it’s hard to deny that there comes a point when perception becomes reality. We just saw this with Joe Biden and the 2024 election. Once the public perceived that he was too old for the job, it was impossible to shake. Not only that but everything he did, people began to filter through the lens of that perception. That’s why it didn’t matter that Trump was saying absoutely batshit things about sharks and electricity, but it mattered that Biden stumbled over a word in the middle of a complex foreign policy speech. This goes all the way back through Dukakis in a tank to Nixon sweating in the 1960 debate.

The reason I say they’re bad at politics is because my perception is that they’re bad at politics, and part of that is because I get my news filtered through the vast array of sources posted here. Don’t get me wrong: I’ll put a positive story about Schumer or Jeffries on the DU home page whenever I come across one. But when I hear about a story involving Schumer and Jeffries, it often seems to be, “Schumer and Jeffries screw up,” and not, “Schumer and Jeffries blew everyone out of the water.” Sometimes it seems they really did screw up; other times (like with this masks story) I think the criticism is overblown. But that’s not the vibe I tend to get from other serious Democrats like Jamie Raskin, Chris Murphy, etc., who seem to be in tune with both the public and with the party base. (Although of course, they don’t have the burden of leadership.)

You can say that this is intellectually lazy of me, and you would be right. But most people aren’t going to be looking much beyond the headlines — you see it all the time even on DU, let alone among the general public — and I think we sometimes need to consider not just the words they’re saying, but how they’re getting their ideas across, because we live in an era when politicians need to be able to perform.

As noted, once people have the perception that a politician is bad at politics, it can become hard to shake, even by simply getting better at politics. Once people start making up their minds, you have to work twice as hard at it, and even then you might not be able to counter it. Again, it didn’t matter how many bike rides Joe Biden went on while Trump sat on a couch and stuffed his face with Big Macs — once the public decided that Biden was past it, Trump was somehow perceived as the healthier candidate.

I’m not saying this is right — you know that in 2024 I stuck to DU’s principles of supporting the nominee right up to the end. I’m just saying it’s the way things are. If Trump has taught us anything, it’s that people need to feel emotionally invested in politics. It’s why you and I both know that this is not going anywhere:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220998984

…but I don’t think it was pointless, because sometimes you just need to do something to fire people up. So props to Schumer for that.

I guess my last thought on this is that I don’t think it’s unreasonable for people to be discussing the overall performance of Democratic leadership on DU at this time. My preference of course is that people do what they can to stay within the rules if they want to have that discussion.

As for attracting Republican votes, my feeling is that Republicans need to get the stick at this point, not the carrot. Democrats are riding a huge wave of public support and Republicans know it. Rather than trying to reason with them, I think it would be more effective to start squeezing those Republicans who once thought they were in safe seats but are now looking at some very scary indicators of massive voter backlash. Maybe start running ads in their districts asking if they stand with Trump or with the Constitution.