Okay, we’ve heard a lot about how Harris lost because the Republicans had all sorts of ways to get their message out–Fox, OANN, Sinclair, Musk, and so on and so on–and Democrats didn’t.
Which is true. But Democrats also don’t use the tools they have.
For example: I donated a decent amount this cycle; the punishment for that was no end of texts and emails.
Texts and emails that all seemed to have one message, and one message only: Send more money.
There was very little about why to send money, or why to vote for that matter.
This isn’t just my impression. I went back through all 75 (!) political texts I got from September 16th to election day (36 from PACs, 39 from candidates) to see if they mentioned any reason to support them. (Texts made a more objective dataset than emails because I had deleted a lot of political emails, and others were caught by my spam filter.) I set a very low bar: any mention of a real, specific reason—the candidate supports policy X, the opponent is an insurrectionist, the Republicans are the party of hate, whatever—counted. Horserace stuff like “the polls are close” or “we’re being OUTSPENT” didn’t count.
45 of the 75 texts (60%) failed that easy test. Worse, of the 30 that did give some kind of reason, only 3 went into any detail. That was true even though many of the texts were quite long; they went on and on about the URGENCY of donating, without giving much, or any, reason why it was important.
Here’s a graph:
This was, I’m sorry, a massive failure of the Democratic messaging machine. Yes, I’m a safe Democratic voter. But safe voters talk to others and try to convince them; why not give us more and better talking points?
And, of course, it turned out that many safe Democratic voters, well, weren’t. Maybe the Democrats could have retained more votes if they’d spent less time hysterically demanding money and more reminding us why we became Democratic voters in the first place.
For instance: all of the texts linked to a donation page (except two that linked to a “poll”—“But despite asking multiple times this month, we at the DGA are still not sure who you’re supporting for president!”—that then linked to a donation page). And yeah, duh, you should have a donation link in your email. But how many texts linked to anything else? There was plenty of room for more than one link—again, the texts often went on and on.
Here’s a graph:
Why not, at least occasionally, link to something we can share around, put on social media, and so on? Like this video, which laid out what Project 2025 has in store for us? (The video was made by Samuel Spitale, who’s just some guy working on his own initiative. I’d say that an official video would be even better, except that Democratic consultants are famously bad at crafting such things. But still, whatever they made would have been better than nothing. Probably.)
Also, what about the how of it? How to check your polling place, how to vote by mail in your state, where to volunteer? Any information people could use?
Well, here’s a graph:
Point being, the Democrats had a whole channel of communication they could have been using to spread their message and keep voters engaged. Instead, they endlessly, drearily hit us up for money with text that seemed like they were written by the same couple of consultants, probably because they were.
Presumably a lot of the money they did raise went to ads. I don’t get TV or radio ads, but the digital ad I kept being fed started with Harris talking about, yes, donating. I never let it run longer than the first few seconds, and I doubt many others did either.
Also: in 2020, the Democrats had blacklisted firms that worked with primary challengers (not ones that work with Republicans, or work for oil companies, or anything like that); these were the firms that were best at digital outreach. I don’t know if that explains how bad digital outreach was in 2024.
I expect it doesn’t, though, because unfortunately this is all part of a bigger problem: The Democratic Party is a machine designed, not so much to win elections, as to take donor money, give consultants a big chunk for keeps, and set the rest of the money on fire.
That’ll be a whole different post, though.
I guess my point is, while progressives have been trying, and failing, to turn the Democratic Party into something other than an election-losing machine for more than two decades, the misuse of texts and emails seems like something that could be fixed short of sending James Carville and his ilk to the glue factory, however much that also needs to be done.
Anyway.
Speaking of the misuse of texts, I noticed big differences between texts from PACs and from candidates:
In the use of ALL CAPS:
In the use of exclamation points:
In the offers to DOUBLE, TRIPLE, or QUADRUPLE MATCH the donation (if someone’s ready to give you 4X my donation, why don’t they just, you know, give it? Why do you even need me?):
And in how they respected my requests to stop:
So PACs were responsible for a disproportionate share of the really annoying texts, the shitty formulaic ones that beg for parody:
PACs were also, with a couple of exceptions, opaque about how the money would be spent.
So, reining in the sleazy PACs would be a good idea.
Although candidates can be sleazeballs too—I’d like to end this with a shout-out to my congressman, Dan Goldman of New York, for being a particular piece of shit: He sent an (actually inspiring) text that talked a great game about contributing to downballot Dems in tight races. Which seemed quite good of him. But it was a bait-and-switch—the link went to his *own* donation page.
Yow it’s been a while since I’ve posted here, but I just finished a new piece about Project 2025! It wound up being about Project 2025, our wider political climate, our actual climate, dam failures in China in the 1960s. . . .
It’s below. Page references to Mandate to Leadership (https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf) are given in the text itself; sources for other statements are given after the comic.
Thanks for reading!
If you liked this, check out my book! Bookshop.org is a good resource if you want to avoid Amazon. You should absolutely stay away from pirated copies, like this one, right here, just at this link, one free click away: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/economix/15460336
Again, when page number for the Project 2025 quote is given in the piece, I won’t bother giving it again, but here are the sources for everything else.
Page 5 panel 1: Clean fossil fuels are impossible because even if we got rid of every cancerous particulate, using fossil fuels turns carbon into CO2—that’s just how burning coal, gas, or oil works—and CO2 is what’s killing the planet right now.
Page 7 panel 4: Bacon: The federal law in question reads:
(ii) Packages for sliced bacon that have a transparent opening shall be designed to expose, for viewing, the cut surface of a representative slice. Packages for sliced bacon which meet the following specifications will be accepted as meeting the requirements of this subparagraph provided the enclosed bacon is positioned so that the cut surface of the representative slice can be visually examined:(a) For shingle-packed sliced bacon, the transparent window shall be designed to reveal at least 70 percent of the length (longest dimension) of the representative slice, and this window shall be at least 11/2 inches wide. The transparent window shall be located not more than five-eighths inch from the top or bottom edge of a 1-pound or smaller package and not more than three-fourths inch from either the top or bottom edge of a package larger than 1 pound.(b) For stack-packed sliced bacon, the transparent window shall be designed to reveal at least 70 percent of the length (longest dimension) of the representative slice and be at least 11/2 inches wide. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2017-title9-vol2/xml/CFR-2017-title9-vol2-sec317-8.xml.
Page 8 panel 2: The track of Hurricane Dorian can be found here: https://wcti12.com/news/local/national-hurricane-center-releases-report-on-hurricane-dorian
Page 8 panel 4: Roberts’s quote can be found here: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01082023/far-right-battle-plan-to-undo-climate-progress-trump-win-2024/
Page 9 panels 2 and 3: https://damfailures.org/case-study/banqiao-dam-china-1975/
Page 11 panel 3: Both quotes are from William Shirer’s Mid-Century Journey (page 118 and 183 of my edition).
Page 11 panel 4: This Askhistorians answer goes into some of the funding: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1dohbxh/did_hitler_enrich_himselfadd_to_his_own_coffers/laa6d8h/. It’s worth pointing out that the funders originally thought they could use the Nazis as a tool against the left, but the Nazis wound up taking over, and the funders turned out to be okay with that.
Page 12 panel 1: The quote is from Mandate for Leadership, page xxiii.
The other names you can look up if you’re interested.
Page 12 panel 4:
“Right-wing colleges” doesn’t even get the full scope of their influence—at this point your education at any college is going to be affected by right-wing money. For instance, Florida State University isn’t a right-wing college, but if you take an economics course there your professor might be funded by a grant from the Kochs. That sounds okay, but in that case the Kochs had veto power over who was selected (see James Kwak, Economism, Vintage Books, 2018, page 45.)
ALEC and the Federalist Society: The Wikipedia articles are good here.
Page 13 panel 4: That’s the gist of Trump vs United States, 2024, which vacates a mere 235 years’ worth of constitutional law.
Page 14 panel 2:
Legal Democratic voters: This was a scandal, little reported at the time. Here’s an overview: https://www.gregpalast.com/the-great-florida-ex-con-gamernhow-the-felon-voter-purge-was-itself-felonious/
Obviously bad: They didn’t use that term (duh), but part of the decision in Bush v. Gore, 2000 actually did say that it couldn’t be used as precedent; the only possible reason for that is if the majority knew it was obviously bad.
Democrat got more votes: It depends on how you count them, but every complete count had Gore ahead. An okay summary is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_recount_in_Florida#cite_note-Pecquet-109
Republican mob: Look up the “Brooks Brothers Riot”
Media normalized it: The film Outfoxed goes into some of the ways.
Page 14 panel 4: Your local paper: The right-wing New York Post lost money for 45 straight years after Rupert Murdoch bought it (so it’s not like the Post is right wing because it’s good for business); https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/new-york-post-profit/
Brandeis quote: This is often quoted but hard to track down; Here’s a discussion that concludes that he never perhaps put it in exactly this way, but it’s still an accurate summary of his thoughts on the subject: http://www.greenbag.org/v16n3/v16n3_articles_campbell.pdf
TR quote: Page 472 of his autobiography.
FDR quote: From a message to congress in 1938: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-congress-curbing-monopolies
Page 17 panel 3:
Chart: Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, page X.
Reagan factoid: Mandate for Leadership page 2.
Stronger antitrust: Lina Khan is driving monopolists crazy actually.
Stronger unions: Biden is the first president ever to walk a picket line (as president at least), and unions have been recovering some juice during his presidency
Page 18 panel 5: See, e.g., Gilens M, Page BI. Testing theories of American politics: elites, interest groups, and average citizens. Perspectives on Politics; 12(3):572-573.
Page 19, panel 1:
Stronger antitrust: Lina Khan is driving monopolists crazy actually.
Stronger unions: Biden is the first president ever to walk a picket line (as president at least), and unions have been recovering some juice during his presidency
Better enforcement: There’s finally funding to go after rich people’s tax crimes, although that hasn’t necessarily changed the culture at the IRS for now. https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2024/06/how-the-irs-went-soft-on-billionaires-and-corporate-tax-cheats/
Page 21 panel 2: We’re not quite at the point of book burnings yet, but books are already going into dumpsters: https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2024/08/23/new-college-florida-books-dumpser-gender-desantis-rufo/
Writing comics about the economy is not the road to immoderate wealth that one might suppose, which is why I have a day job writing about medicine. So when I started reading about how vitamin D can help with COVID-19, I wound up making this:
(This was made in early 2021; now it’s late 2021, and it holds up pretty well. This meta-analysis [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8557713/pdf/12937_2021_Article_744.pdf] says that there’s no statistical effect, but it includes four sub-analyses, each of which are right on the statistical line–clearly there is an effect, and they just happened to cut the data in a way that juuuuust failed to show it four times. Also, that study confuses odds ratio and relative risk, so I’m not sold on their statistical chops.)
I just updated the piece on the stock market–the new pages start at page 14. You can find them at economixcomix.com/home/stockmarket. Per a reader’s suggestion, I’m also putting them below:
So, this isn’t quite the most urgent thing going on right now, but you may be wondering why the stock market seems so divorced from the real economy these days. I wrote a piece (in progress) here: https://economixcomix.com/home/stockmarket/
So I’m writing a piece on global warming, and how bad mainstream economics is at evaluating it. It’s taking a while (everything I write does), but Part 1 is here: https://economixcomix.com/home/warming/
Okay, so I let this website languish for a while. I was busy with various things, one of which was a brand-spanking-new epilogue for a new German edition. It’s below!
It’s copyright by me. The illustrations are by Dan E. Burr, and the lettering is by Debra Freiberg.
In keeping with what has apparently become my life plan of “make comics about the fine points of healthcare policy because I can dammit,” here’s another comic about the fine points of healthcare policy. Today, our subject is the best Republican plan to replace Obamacare.
Clinton lost because not enough liberals voted for her. They voted for Stein or stayed home. Now they’re horrified, and (in his phrase), “they can go have sex with themselves, and I mean that in a much cruder sense.”
Liberals didn’t vote for Clinton because they bought into two “provably false” myths:
1) The myth of the all-powerful DNC—“The idea that the DNC was some kind of monolithic organization that orchestrated the nomination ‘against the will of the people’”
2) The myth that Sanders would have won.
Just to get any bias out of the way, let me say that I was a Sanders supporter—I maxed out my contributions to him—but I voted for Clinton and donated to downballot Democrats in the general. I know lots of Sanders supporters, and a few Trump supporters, but I don’t know any who didn’t vote, or who voted for Stein. (And if I did, I wouldn’t blame them for helping elect Trump unless they also live in a swing state, something that Eichenwald doesn’t mention). EDIT: Turns out I do know a couple of people who voted for Stein, but not in swing states.
In any case, let’s look at those “myths.”
Myth 2 is a minor point at best—Sanders could have won, as Eichenwald acknowledges, and nobody who voted for Stein cares much about a candidate’s real-world chances.
It’s the first “myth”—the all-powerful DNC—that’s the meat of Eichenwald’s piece, and it’s where Eichenwald goes very, very wrong
His points are:
1. The DNC itself is “an impotent organization with very little power.”
This is kinda true. But it’s also missing the point. Sanders supporters’ problems were with the Democratic establishment; for most of us, “the DNC” was shorthand for that. After all, there’s a lot of overlap between the DNC and the rest of the Democratic establishment (for instance, all DNC members are superdelegates at the convention.)
2. The idea that the DNC didn’t sponsor enough debates, or that they were held at the wrong times, is ridiculous.
Eichenwald is correct here. There were plenty of debates.
3. The idea that the DNC changed the rules to favor Clinton is also ridiculous.
Well, except for Obama’s reform that banned donations from lobbyists and PACs to the DNC. That was changed, and people—not just Sanders supporters—were upset at the time. And it clearly benefited Clinton, who had the big-money donors locked up from the start. At the very least, this was inept—it reinforced Clinton’s “smug, corrupt, out-of-touch insider” image.
And the big one:
4. The leaked DNC emails—the ones that showed the DNC collaborating with the Clinton campaign–weren’t a big deal. This is the core of Eichenwald’s argument, so let me quote him in full:
Almost every email that set off the “rigged” accusations was from May 2016. (One was in late April; I’ll address that below.) Even in the most ridiculous of dream worlds, Sanders could not have possibly won the nomination after May 3—at that point, he needed 984 more pledged delegates, but there were only 933 available in the remaining contests. And political pros could tell by the delegate math that the race was over on April 19, since a victory would require him to win almost every single delegate after that, something no rational person could believe.
Sanders voters proclaimed that superdelegates, elected officials and party regulars who controlled thousands of votes, could flip their support and instead vote for the candidate with the fewest votes. In other words, they wanted the party to overthrow the will of the majority of voters. That Sanders fans were wishing for an establishment overthrow of the electorate more common in banana republics or dictatorships is obscene. (One side note: Sanders supporters also made a big deal out of the fact that many of the superdelegates had expressed support for Clinton early in the campaign. They did the same thing in 2008, then switched to Obama when he won the most pledged delegates. Same thing would have happened with Sanders if he had persuaded more people to vote for him.)
This is important because it shows Sanders supporters were tricked into believing a false narrative. Once only one candidate can win the nomination, of course the DNC gets to work on that person’s behalf. Of course emails from that time would reflect support for the person who would clearly be the nominee. And given that their jobs are to elect Democrats, of course DNC officials were annoyed that Sanders would not tell his followers he could not possibly be the nominee. Battling for the sake of battling gave his supporters a false belief that they could still win—something that added to their increasingly embittered feelings.
This is very very wrong. And I can prove it. Let’s start with this:
Even in the most ridiculous of dream worlds, Sanders could not have possibly won the nomination after May 3—at that point, he needed 984 more pledged delegates, but there were only 933 available in the remaining contests.
Certainly, Sanders had an uphill battle from the beginning. But he “could not possibly have won the nomination after May 3”? That didn’t square with my recollection. So I went and checked. After his victory in the May 3 primary, Sanders had 1400 delegates or so (sources conflict); he needed 2,383 to get the nomination, which meant he needed more than were still available in the remaining primaries.
So Eichenwald sounds correct. But here’s the problem: Eichenwald’s math assumes that Sanders wasn’t going to get a single additional superdelegate—that all of Clinton’s superdelegates would stay with her no matter what.
And remember, in the very next paragraph, Eichenwald says this:
Sanders supporters also made a big deal out of the fact that many of the superdelegates had expressed support for Clinton early in the campaign. They did the same thing in 2008, then switched to Obama when he won the most pledged delegates. Same thing would have happened with Sanders if he had persuaded more people to vote for him.
But only one of the following can be true:
Either Sanders only needed to win the most pledged delegates, and then the superdelegates would have rubber-stamped the decision of the people,
Or Sanders needed to also win a whole lot more pledged delegates in order to overcome a bloc of superdelegates who were going to vote for Clinton no matter what.
If the first is true, Sanders’s path to victory after May 3, while very difficult, was not impossible; it didn’t become truly impossible until June. In that case, the DNC had no business jumping into bed with the Clinton campaign in May.
If the second is true, then Eichenwald is right that the emails are innocent, but the Democratic establishment was ready and waiting to enact a scenario that Eichenwald calls, in the very next paragraph, “an establishment overthrow of the electorate more common in banana republics or dictatorships.”
Either way, Sanders supporters have a legit grievance here.
And somehow Eichenwald forgets that it wasn’t just Sanders supporters who were upset at the DNC’s conduct. Here’s Ed Rendell on the subject of those emails: “Myself and other Democrats who were Clinton supporters, we have been saying this was serious. It truly violates what the DNC’s proper role should be. . . . The DNC did something incredibly inappropriate here.”
“Serious.” “Incredibly inappropriate.” Rendell is former Governor of Pennsylvania and former chair of the DNC. He’s not some dreamy hippie—he’s as much of a party insider as one can be.
There was a reason Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned, after all. And remember: Clinton immediately welcomed her onto her campaign, in a smug, inept fuck-you to everyone except the Democratic elite. Eichenwald chooses not to mention this colossal own goal.
Point being, if liberals had a problem with Clinton and the Democratic establishment, there’s no reason to look for “provably false conspiracy theories.” There were plenty of legitimate reasons. Like the fact that Clinton was clearly a dangerously flawed candidate, and it wasn’t just us who thought so. Here’s a thoroughly mainstream reporter:
Why do partisans waste time on nothing-burger Clinton “scandals”—emails, Benghazi—when there are actual issues about her that are so deserving of criticism, such as the disastrous Libya policy she championed as secretary of state?
And let’s not forget the behavior of the Democratic establishment. Sanders supporters didn’t have legitimate worries about running a candidate who already had a 20-year-old industry devoted to hating her, who was such a bad campaigner that she nearly flubbed a locked-up primary against a goofy socialist, who was one of the most unpopular presidential candidates in history. Rather, we were being childish, refusing to be grow up and go with the “electable” candidate. We were sexists (never mind that almost all of us would have switched to Elizabeth Warren if she’d run). We weren’t worried that Clinton could very possibly lose in the general, we were just whining because our needs weren’t being catered to. We didn’t have legitimate reason to believe that our political insiders were not offering real solutions to urgent problems (as I write this, the arctic is 36 freaking degrees warmer than normal), we were trying to impose our own left-wing dictatorship.
I’m not exaggerating. Here’s a pro-Clinton journalist during the primary:
Violence. Death threats. Vile, misogynistic names screamed at women. Rage. Hatred. Menacing, anonymous phone calls to homes and offices. Public officials whisked offstage by security agents frightened of the growing mob. None of this has any place in a political campaign. And the candidate who has been tolerating this obscene behavior among his supporters is showing himself to be unfit for office.
So, Senator Sanders, either get control of what is becoming your increasingly unhinged cult or get out of the race. Whatever respect sane liberals had for you is rapidly dwindling, and the damage being inflicted on your reputation may be unfixable. If you can’t even manage the vicious thugs who act in your name, you can’t be trusted to run a convenience store, much less the country.
Sanders has increasingly signaled that he is in this race for Sanders, and day after day shows himself to be a whining crybaby with little interest in a broader movement. His vicious—and often ridiculous—attacks on the party whenever he doesn’t win a contest have inspired a level of ignorant fanaticism among a large swath of his supporters . . . Signs are emerging that the Sanders campaign is transmogrifying into the type of movement through which tyrants are born.
“The type of movement through which tyrants are born.” That’s, um, a tad hyperbolic. Is it strange if Sanders supporters (sorry, “Berniebros”) were turned off?
And that reporter? Yup, Eichenwald himself, in a piece telling Sanders to get out of the race. (Never mind that Clinton stayed in the 2008 race long after she had no path to victory, and when asked why, came up with this gem: “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.” So she was sticking around in case someone shot Obama. Imagine Eichenwald’s outrage if Sanders had said anything so divisive.)
Oh, and the end of that piece (which, remember, was written during the primary) is instructive:
Probably none of [Sanders’ supporters] have much of a memory of the Vietnam War and the 1972 campaign. Then, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party won with the nomination of George McGovern and a large segment of the usual party supporters proclaimed they would vote for Richard Nixon instead. And look how well that turned out.
That reads as a not-very-veiled threat—run Sanders and many Democrats won’t vote for him and it’ll be Sanders’s fault, not theirs.
Even if it wasn’t intended as a threat, the message is clear: When the democrats ran a liberal and “a large segment of the usual party supporters” stayed home or voted for the opponent, the candidate was to blame. But when a (much smaller) segment of the usual party supporters stayed home for Clinton, they’re to blame. Because she was the serious, grown-up choice, you see.
Bullshit. We are facing the horror of President Trump—which really could lead to a tyranny—for many reasons, but a big one is that the Democratic elite shat the bed. They lined up behind a flawed, uninspiring, insider candidate in a year when the voters—not just some precious lefties, but everyone—clearly demanded something else.
And now Kurt Eichenwald is telling us that we should go home, stay out of the way, and vote for whatever “electable” candidate (which means, as far as I can tell, “electable except for all the assholes who won’t vote for him or her”) the elite wants to lose with next time.
He can go have sex with himself, and I mean that in much cruder terms.
