What did Democrats do wrong?

[johnny karate]

I know that you aren't really into reading the sources that you critique (as evidenced by confusing Klein with Huber in this particular case) but for anyone else reading along, here is a gift link.

The “confusion” referred to here is very clearly someone mocking Klein as being supportive of Huber’s essay and not a claim that Klein actually wrote the essay.

Very clear to those of us who can read the source, that is.

 

[cxkwz3374]

Democrats have twisted democracy into some kind of Europan woke thing!

The Voters Who Believe That Trump Defends Their Values

Why calls to “save democracy” don’t work

www.theatlantic.com

Yes, they're all for democracy, provided that it enforces their religion and moral values. It s ironic that they see a man with no religion or morals as they defender of their values.

 

[johnny karate]

Yes, they're all for democracy, provided that it enforces their religion and moral values. It s ironic that they see a man with no religion or morals as they defender of their values.

It could just be that they actually have no moral values.

 

[Random]

It could just be that they actually have no moral values.

Sure they do. They want a world where they can tell other people what to do, and other people cannot tell them what to do. All that Constitution/Bible/State's Rights/Rule of Law stuff is just a grab-bag of rhetorical arguments designed to get them closer to that goal.

 

[d4m10n]

They want a world where they can tell other people what to do, and other people cannot tell them what to do.

If only we had a few dozen other threads to complain about "them" and signal our moral superiority, without feeling burdened by the nagging sensation that we've completely ignored the point of the thread.

The “confusion” referred to here is very clearly someone mocking Klein as being supportive of Huber’s essay and not a claim that Klein actually wrote the essay.

Where exactly did Klein comment on Huber's essay?

ETA: Has anyone here actually commented on Huber's essay? That at least would arguably be about the OP topic.

 

[Random]

Eh, once Machin tanked the Green New Deal after Biden got elected, it sort of lost a lot of forward momentum, not just because it wasn't getting done or helping us to win elections, but because it became more and more clear that there was a large enough section of the populus who were okay with long-term environmental collapse to stop us from saving ourselves. We were supposed to spend the 2020's getting off carbon completely, instead we are bringing back coal...

 

[d4m10n]

Machin tanked the Green New Deal after Biden got elected

I'm having trouble finding a source for this claim.

I did find an article in which Senator Manchin played a role rejecting the GND but it was from years before Biden's election.

The 3 Democrats Who Voted Against the Green New Deal

They contributed to its decisive defeat in the Senate on Tuesday, 57–0.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[johnny karate]

Where exactly did Klein comment on Huber's essay?

ETA: Has anyone here actually commented on Huber's essay? That at least would arguably be about the OP topic.

Klein didn't comment on it. He was being mocked as if he did. But at no point did anyone claim that Klein wrote the essay.

 

[dann]

What did Democrats do wrong? An abundance!

New Documents Detail Nine-Figure, Silicon Valley–Funded Abundance Movement (The American Prospect, June 12, 2026)
The Prospect has obtained a fundraising pitch and historical manifesto from inside the movement.
(...)
In response to questions about the nature of Klein’s relationship with the Abundance Network, a spokesperson for The New York Times, where he works as an opinion journalist, stressed that he has “no official or paid relationship with the Abundance Network or any similar group.” Klein has spoken at Abundance Network events without compensation, the spokesperson said. They declined to respond to questions about the Times’ policy for opinion journalists engaging in political work and whether they or Klein were aware of his name being used in materials distributed along with a fundraising pitch.
Klein’s involvement as an abundance-flavored power broker in Democratic politics has previously “raised internal concerns at the Times,” according to reporting from Axios.

What the “Abundance Agenda” Leaves Out (Jacobin, Mar 24, 2025)
The main policy argument of Abundance is that the administrative burdens placed on construction are too high. This argument is familiar to anyone who has followed debates about housing policy over the last decade. It’s the exact same thing but applied to transportation and energy infrastructure too. The secondary policy argument of Abundance is that the innovation system in the United States is broken in a number of ways, including too much risk aversion in science financing, high administrative burdens on scientific research, and too little support for converting scientific discoveries into efficient mass production.

What those radical-left lunatics at Jacobin don't get is that, with all those rules and regulations, you'll never get anything done. Case in point: If Donald Trump had adhered to rules and regulations, he would never have been able to tear down the East Wing of the White House, put his name on the Kennedy Center or paint the Reflecting Pool in that shimmering shiny shimmering shiny blue that (much like the Emperor's New Clothes) is visible to anybody other than the woke recalcitrants! (The contrast to the green shirt of the pool boy and the purple suit of the Fox reporter is obvious, isn't it?)



Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp!!!

 

[d4m10n]

Klein didn't comment on it. He was being mocked as if he did.

The commenter mocking Klein took the trouble to screencap the top of the Huber essay while cropping off the author credit:

https://twitter.com/x/status/2053161801919918180

This is not merely misleading, it is arguably deceptive.

Have a go at Klein if you like, but at least interact with what he actually wrote.

Have a go at Huber if you like, but at least interact with what he actually wrote.

Having seen Huber's progressive approach to dealing with climate change by unionizing workers and socializing the grid, I'd be surprised to learn that Klein supports any of Huber's major policy initiatives. If Klein ever interviews Huber, I expect their interactions will involve a fair bit of pushback. The idea of "mocking Klein" for "being supportive of Huber’s essay" doesn't make much sense since they have opposing positions on how best to decarbonize.

 

[theprestige]

I read it the other way around. They're mocking Huber for adopting a Klein-like position. It's probably aimed at people who already agree that Klein goes off the reservation a lot. The reference is immediately discerned, and the comparison has teeth for that audience.

 

[johnny karate]

The commenter mocking Klein took the trouble to screencap the top of the Huber essay while cropping off the author credit:

https://twitter.com/x/status/2053161801919918180

This is not merely misleading, it is arguably deceptive.

Have a go at Klein if you like, but at least interact with what he actually wrote.

Have a go at Huber if you like, but at least interact with what he actually wrote.

Having seen Huber's progressive approach to dealing with climate change by unionizing workers and socializing the grid, I'd be surprised to learn that Klein supports any of Huber's major policy initiatives. If Klein ever interviews Huber, I expect their interactions will involve a fair bit of pushback. The idea of "mocking Klein" for "being supportive of Huber’s essay" doesn't make much sense since they have opposing positions on how best to decarbonize.

Yeah, I guess it would be deceptive for people who struggle with reading comprehension and therefore imagine some kind of deception took place.

But for normal people, the commentator credited the essay to the New York Times, which is accurate. The commentator then mocked Klein as being in agreement with the New York Times essay. That's all that happened and there was no deception involved with any of it.

 

[d4m10n]

The commentator then mocked Klein as being in agreement with the New York Times essay.

No one here has provided any reason to believe Klein supports Huber's argument, or vice-versa.

Perhaps what Democrats did wrong was leaping to conclusions without evidence.

 

[johnny karate]

No one here has provided any reason to believe Klein supports Huber's argument, or vice-versa.

Perhaps what Democrats did wrong was leaping to conclusions without evidence.

I can’t help to understand how jokes work anymore than I can help you understand what words mean.

Good luck to you in your ongoing effort to completely miss all the points.

 

[dann]

A fight to reject the broken status quo

'A new direction’: Why Zohran Mamdani backs candidates challenging Democratic incumbents (MS NOW on YouTube, June 23, 2026 – 12:13 min.)
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani has thrown his weight behind two progressive candidates challenging two incumbents in the New York Democratic primaries. He joins Ali Velshi to discuss what this means for the future of the Democratic party.

2:34--> Goldman did not endorse Zoran Mamdani's mayoral campaign last year, neither for the primary, neither for the primary, nor for the general election. He said he was concerned about Mamdani's rhetoric about Israel and the Jewish community.
That division over Israel has carried over to Goldman's race against Lander, and it's emblematic of a larger struggling happening across the Democratic Party. Both Lander and Goldman are Jewish and running in a district with a large Jewish population, but they've got very different views on U .S. support for the Israeli government.
Lander has called Israel's actions in Gaza a genocide. He supports restrictions to U .S. military aid to Israel, and he vows not to take money from AIPAC.
On the other hand, Goldman has been endorsed by AIPAC and has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from groups and individuals affiliated with it.
For Mamdani's part, he says the three candidates he supports will be partners that he needs in Congress to make New York a more affordable place for working people to live.

 

[dann]

It's The Centrism, Stupid (BurnsNotice, June 22, 2026)
Centrist American political commentators are mystified that Keir Starmer's time as UK Prime Minister has crashed and burned. He did everything they wanted and everyone hated him anyway.
(...)
This is the recurring story for Starmer's tenure and centrism overall. Centrists spend millions, write constant articles, and advisors are paid handsomely to tell center left parties that right wing voters can be won by tactically adopting right wing positions for hot, divided issues like trans rights and immigration.
This is a grand fiction. And Starmer proves it.

I don't think centrists are unaware of this, but they don't give a damn. They'd rather lose to MAGA.

 

[dann]

More Starmer (and Lula):

Good Politics (Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow, June 22, 2026)
Contrast Lula's muscular, deliverism-based politics that seeks to improve the lives of working people in tangible, immediate ways with the catastrophic series of blunders that Keir Starmer's Labour has delivered.
(...)
Now, the right is incapable of making working people's lives better, because broad improvements to the vast majority necessarily come at the expense of the tiny minority of morbidly wealthy hoarders whom the right serves.
(...)
The sadistic torture of your base's enemies will never please them so well nor so durably as making immediate, significant improvements in their lives will.
That's why the corporate Dems who say that the party should campaign against renewables and in favor of fossil fuel companies aren't merely climate criminals, they're also bad at politics.

If it weren't for the wealthy donors paying them handsomely, this wouldn't be so difficult for centrist Democrats to grasp.

 

[dann]

A fight to reject the broken status quo

And the results are now in!

BREAKING: Mamdani-Backed Socialists SWEEP New York Primaries in Political EARTHQUAKE (The Humanist Report on YouTube, June 24, 2026 – 16:26 min.)
It's happening! Democratic socialists are finally ascending in the Democratic Party! In this video Mike reacts to the encouraging news.

0:35--> The results that we are seeing out of New York's Democratic Party primaries are astonishing. Like, I genuinely can't believe my eyes. And it genuinely feels like this is a watershed moment. Like, we just witnessed a political earthquake because mom Donnie Mamdani progressives, they were backing three very progressive candidates in New York across the state in three particular races.
Now, these individuals were endorsed by Mam Donnie Mamdani. They were endorsed by DSA. At least two of the three of them were. And they were closely watched races by the left.
There was a lot of smears against these progressives. There were attacks against them and, you know, allegations that they weren't loyal to the Democratic party or that they were anti-Semitic. The same **** we've seen again and again and again.
And every single one of them won. I'm going to repeat that. Every single candidate that Manny Mamdani chose to back won. Two of them won in landslides.
And they are defeating incumbent Democrats now.

All 3 Mamdani-backed candidates win NY primaries (CBS New York, June 24, 2026 – 16:13 min.)
All three candidates backed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani were projected to win their Democratic primaries Tuesday night.

 

[dann]

And it's not just in New York:

This AOC-backed smokejumper could flip a red state (YouTube short, June 1, 2026 – 2:45 min.)

1:46--> Montana's primary is on Tuesday, June 2nd, and Forstag is running in a tight race against a number of other well-funded candidates. But he feels confident that he is focussed on the issues voters care about.
Voter1: Obviously, affordability is huge.
Voter2: Affordability.
Voter3: The housing crisis.
Voter4: For too long, we've been owned by an economic class that has been ruling and dictating our lives.
Forstag: Right now, the average Congress person is worth 12 to 15 times what the average American is worth. That is a fundamental failure of representation.

Sam Forstag wins Democratic primary in Montana's 1st Congressional District, CBS News projects (CBS News, June 3, 2026)
"The way you win an election in this state, and I actually think the way you actually have some path to victory for the national party, is A: you win back working people, right?" Forstag told CBS News in an interview earlier this year.
"We've got to win back union members like me, who have felt like both parties have abandoned them. And we need to win back young people who feel like in a place like Western Montana, you've got a generation, or two generations of people that can't even conceive of ever owning a home in this state."

 

[Beelzebuddy]

I don't have Andy's tolerance for social media, but this thread's worth a read. Former DNC chairman is VERY upset that mere voters are being disrespectful of "the people who make it possible." Turns out voting blue no matter who only swings in one direction after all, who'da thunk it?

Bluesky embedding is weird, link instead