Jay's just a contrarian. If this was the Right Wing Times instead of the Ordinary Times former Islamic now converted to social conservative Catholic Daul Segraw would be snarling to South that Jay is obviously a "libtard socialist troll" based on everything Jaybird was writing and that Jay would be waxing endlessly and convolutedly on about all the manifest errors Trump has made and how, long term, he's undermining everything the right wing once professed to hold dear. But his co-conversationalists here are liberal to very liberal so he goes the other way.

I mean everyone on your side is happy when you're feasting on your moral seed corn. The regrets and downsides come in the future and the future isn't now. I'd submit the right is scraping the floor of the granary when comes to that so far it's quite logical that it's a party on the right, I mean we're on day, what four of the "restoration" now?

Yup, it's a quandary but one that is somewhat self fixing. The more the Dems lose when they're sympathetic or supportive of DEI stuff the less sympathetic and supportive they're going to get until, eventually, what is both worthy and popular gets winnowed out and separated from the worthy unpopular and the unworth unpopular stuff.

Certainly not me. It'll be interesting to see if the liberals on the court suddenly discover a newfound respect for and the conservatives on the court suddenly discover a complete reversal on textual reading or originalism.

I'm going to be contrary and say that I suspect that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is going to end up being similar to the phrase" A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" in the second amendment but for the right instead of the left. Though we'll have to see what the Supreme Court says on the matter. Certainly Trumps executive order is about as wise or lawful as Bidens' silly gestures towards the ERA- though with far more potential impact,

It's okay, you don't need to prove my point for me further. White guys with grad school are almost a traced over circle on a Venn diagram with the identarian left.

Sure, but your original point was:
“Guys, guys, guys… we’re here to talk about fighting Trump. We’re not going to open with a Land Acknowledgment and we’re not going to talk about Gaza.”

Think you can get away with that?

Because I lean “no” for the moment."

And I pointed out that Kamala did actually do what you're describing and "got away with it" in terms that the identarian left didn't rise up against her. Now I think this is because both A) the identarian left chose not to rise up against her considering the stakes and B) the identarian left doesn't command the voter support for them to rise up against her in a way that wouldn't have resulted in them simply being thrown out of the party apparatus.

You can absolutely say "Kamala should have explicitly campaigned against identity issues" and I'd be sympathetic. But you can't accurately say that the utilitarian actions you describe for the Dems can't/haven't been done in the party when she literally did them in the 2024 campaign. Heck, let's be clear eyed here, with as close Kamala came to winning; if she -hadn't- been carrying the baggage from 2016 that she did, she might very well have pulled off a win with the "say nothing" strategy towards the DEI stuff.

Now, I think DEI is 80/20 featherbedding and posturing pap/useful prognosis' that started out marginally bad in political terms and has become unambiguously political poison and the fifth of it that is useful/meritted is also pretty uncontroversial so I'd be quite fine with a future Democratic candidate being overtly anti-DEI indulgence. I just would like us to accurately describe the lay of the political land instead of regurgitating something that sounds like a mid spicy level Fox news talking point.

Sure, but since I don't hold the position that Kamala couldn't have won the election (considering how close it was that position strikes me as irrational) is all non-sequitur.

I lay this mostly at Bidens door personally and can't muster a lot of venom towards Harris herself. Going on Rogan, for instance, probably wouldn't have mattered in the least. A different overarching strategy might have worked. While Trump won widely his margin was very narrow, beaten only by the narrowness of his margin in 2016. So it is pretty plausible that a different strategy would have plausibly netted the 2% difference she needed to reverse Trumps win into a similar win of her own.

My point, though, is that when you talk about the Dems embracing utilitarianism more and not suffering punishment from DEI forces that really is what happened with this election. I submit it's more that DEI forces are -incapable- of punishing the way you imagine because they literally don't command an adequate voting constituency to "punish" that way. Even Michigan, specifically the Palestinian heritage voters there, which is your strongest example is quite weak. Those voters don't consider themselves in DEI terms in the least. They're "bring an end to the Jewish entity" not "argle bargle spray of DEI catchphrases". Yes some of the DEI set gloms onto that, absolutely, but it's not central to the actual voters thought processes or principles.

Yes, but staff and elite level thinking is a comparatively easy problem to fix. If the electorate is broadly out of step with your principles you have to choose to either change your principles or accept losing for the near to long term and that is a hard decision to make. If your elites and staffers are out of stop with the electorates principles its a lot easier to change that and is a much easier decision to make. Losses do it for the elites and firing or not hiring does it for the staff which also is downstream of losing.

I still think that she "got away with it" in terms of that she did not kowtow or campaign to woke terms and, at times, even pointed away from woke terms and woke figures didn't cause heck for her in retaliation for those decisions.

She still lost, of course, but not because she wasn't woke enough. Had she been more woke I think she would have lost by wider margins and suffered more downstream effects on her party.

An amusing theory but one I don't subscribe to. It remains to be demonstrated that "woke" commands a material, dedicated voting constituency among the electorate. Like libertarianism woke has a very influential set of advocates and fashionable taste makers on the elite level; also like libertarianism its extremely present on the internet and like libertarianism it gets very large degrees of signal boosting from both traditional and right wing media apparatuses. It so far, however, seems to command no masses of actual voters. The people it purports to advocate for think it's kooky and annoying. Heck, woke doesn't even have its own 2-5% party like the Libertarians do.

I generally agree with the caveat that it did manage to colonize out of the ivory towers into the greater NGO world (with generally detrimental effects), media and to a more limited degree the c-suite.

And if something that both the further left and all of the rights media apparatus are shouting at the top of their lungs turns left-curious people away from politics while energizing right-curious people. Well enough said. It may be merely grifty, wasteful and dubiously just as a practical matter but it's political cyanide. We should, probably, also acknowledge that this isn't exactly woke's fault- it wasn't originally conceived as a way of prying scarce tenure jobs and academic resources from the death grip of elderly white men and giving them to hungry minorities and women in academia. It probably wasn't originally meant to actually be some nation sweeping ideology.

Of course not, nor would I ever say otherwise.

Did she loose because she wasn't woke enough? I doubt it myself.

All correct but was that because she didn't do the identarianism enough or because (at least partially) she couldn't distance herself from it and was too risk averse to try actively turning against it? I'd say the latter. And she did downplay and turn away from identarianism and did not suffer some vast revolt from the identarian leftists (not that they seem to command that many votes anyhow).

If this election had left because Kamala's left wing stayed home- well that'd be an enormously different conversation than we've 'enjoyed' since the election.

She lost by a hair and suffered no particular revolt, defection or uprising from the intersectional left. So by your own terms, yes, she got away with it.

Likewise her convention was one giant celebration of doing exactly what you described and it's generally viewed as one of the high points of her campaign so she definitely got away with it.

I mean, you're flagrantly wrong about that. Harris had multiple instances of doing this exact thing you're describing during her campaign and she "got away with it" just fine from the Dems and even the identarian lefties. She lost, partially, because she hoped she didn't have to go from mostly not talking about it to actively talking against it, sure, and couldn't because of her mistakes in 2020 but she did do exactly what you're referring to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1n7QBi53Zs

You and I don't disagree much Saul. DEI is assuredly, along with a terrifyingly large number of NGO's and nonprofits, the left wing equivalent of the rights' megapastor Christian circuit. And, much like the megapastor Christians before it, the whole thing has made the left look bad and steered the left in unproductive cul de sacs.

I would never, ever, say that Trump is worth getting rid of DEI. We seemed to be steadily rolling it back on our own. But I have no qualms about saying that Trump tossing it out is probably more good than bad. Those highly educated folks will simply have to find other jobs instead.

Well, to be clear, the centrists said "this seems not very helpful as a practical matter and pure poison as a political matter", the idealists answered "even trying to assign a name to this, let alone critiquing it, is racist" and then the voters said "yup, woke is worse". And here we are. Though, let us be clear, the question of wokeism is only one of many elements many of which make the centrists look bad too.

Yup.

I came to it far too late to appreciate it. First saw it in the aughts and was wondering if someone had spiked my coke with PCP.

Not Dune???

Like I said, it's not simple.

If side B is Muslims then probably not with the PA moribund and all other Muslim participants in the direct question of Israel being deranged.

If I were to guess, probably things may go with campaigning following normal nostrums but Likud discovering that increasing numbers of Democrats respond to Likud calls with "new phone, who's this?"

Yeah some new candidates should be about what is needed. They'll either go full on group left and bomb or figure something else out. If it's the former then it'll fix itself the cycle after that. I just wish we had an alternative party to run things while the Dems do their stint in the wilderness instead of the flaming dumpster fire/clown show we have.