The New York Times Unveils Moronic New Democrat Strategy.
Instead Of Bringing An Anti-War And Economic Populist Message, The Democrats Are Pushing To Double Down On Identity Politics.
The New York Times has recently published an Onion-esque article titled “What Is ‘Dark Woke’?”, which attempts to lay out a strategy for Democrats to win back voters by being “provocative, edgy, and perilously toeing the line of not being too offensive”.
Instead of advocating for the Democrats to adopt a more anti-war and pro-worker platform, the paper instead argues that Democrats should double down on ridiculous identity politics, but this time in a more aggressive and mean-spirited way, while not changing any of the party’s actual policies.
In this article, I will go over some of the most absurd parts of the Times piece and reveal how they show that Democratic strategists are still out of touch, even after the massive defeat they suffered in 2024.
Missing The Point Of Why The Democrats Lost.
The New York Times's unintentional comedy piece began by arguing that the Democrats lost because they were no longer seen as “cool”.
The paper writes:
There was a time last summer when the Democratic Party was cool.
Kamala Harris had just stepped in as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in the waning days of Brat summer. She went on the popular podcast “Call Her Daddy.” Tim Walz’s outdoorsy drip led to a Chappell Roan-inspired camo trucker hat. The memes were flowing, and the party’s mood was high.
That moment has long passed. With Donald J. Trump back in the White House, the culture of dude-heavy pop-podcast programming, provocative insults and so-called masculine energy that helped him get there seems like the dominant one
This is representative of a larger trend in journalism, where reporters who spend all day scrolling social media believe the discussions happening on X, YouTube, or in Podcasts are representative of the concerns of everyday voters.
In reality, the social media campaign of “brat summer” was an astroturfed campaign to try to sell Kamala Harris.
Investigative journalist Lee Fang uncovered that many of the most popular online influencers pushing the “brat summer” memes were paid to do so and the Kamala Harris campaign- through a DNC-connected think tank, “Way to Win”- paid influencers billions of dollars to “disseminate pro-Kamala content throughout the cycle”.
Even the “call her daddy” podcast was paid $100,000 by the Harris campaign to host the above-mentioned interview listed in the Times piece.
As Fang noted “the tidal wave of enthusiasm (around Kamala) was not entirely genuine.”
Fang went on to write :
The look behind the curtain reveals that at least some of the image-making around the Harris candidacy was carefully orchestrated by the same types of covert social media marketing often used by corporate brands and special interest groups. Such campaigns provide the illusion of organic support through the authentic appeal of trusted social media voices.
In reality, the reason Kamala Harris and the Democrats lost was because they were supportive of funding the proxy war in Ukraine and genocide in Gaza while ignoring regular voters’ concerns over issues like jobs, immigration, healthcare, the cost of housing, the militarized police, and the broken for-profit prison system, education or really anything that regular voters cared about.
This was best represented by an MSNBC segment where the reporter Alex Wagner asked Union voters in Michigan about the top issues of the Democratic elite, like January 6th and the legal cases against Trump.
The reporter was shocked to learn that the voters did not give a shit about any of that and instead said they were voting on issues that actually affected them like the cost of housing, jobs and immigration.
The Democrats ran an even more out-of-touch campaign in the Muslim majority city of Dearborn in Michigan.
Instead of telling them that Harris would stop funding and arming Israel’s mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza, the Democrats dragged out Bill Clinton and sent him to Dearborn to repeat a bunch of Zionist talking points to justify Israel's genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
The Kamala Harris campaign believed that their support for the Proxy war in Ukraine would win over Polish voters in Pennsylvania, but as Politico reporter Emilio Casalicchio found, many Polish voters opposed the proxy war and cared more about domestic issues.
One Polish Pennsylvania resident told the reporter, “We’re giving billions of dollars to Ukraine,” what about our people first?”
One voter even said that many Polish voters were “strong Trump supporters because we want this war to end”.
Many other Polish voters the reporter spoke to simply did not care about the Ukraine war and prioritized domestic issues. One said, “I don’t live there anymore. I care about it here. People can’t afford groceries,” while another said, “I was born here, I’d rather see what’s here improved rather than giving away all our money”.
Furthermore, as an overall point, Harris and the Democrats ignored what regular Americans were going through. 14 million Americans have medical debt, 78 percent of the country lives paycheck to paycheck, 140 million Americans live in poverty, and 18 million American Households cannot afford groceries on a regular basis.
Instead of addressing these real issues, the Harris campaign released ridiculously pandering identity politics-themed ads, such as one that implied black men will not be able to get a date if they do not vote for Harris.
It is clear that a winning message would be to oppose funding endless wars abroad and to instead spend that money on populist policies like Medicare For All, A living Wage, or an infrastructure New Deal, but as the Times piece shows, they instead want to double down on the identity politics nonsense.
The New York Times Misses The Problem With The “Resistance”
The Times article wrote that “And to some, the response from the left during the previous Trump era — defined by an earnest ‘resistance’ to the president’s agenda — appears outdated and cringe.”
The real problem with the “Resistance” is that it ignores all of Trump’s actual flaws and instead focuses on an entirely fabricated warmongering McCarthyite hoax.
The “resistance” did not at all focus on Trump’s real issues, such as his tax break for the one percent, his support for the genocidal war in Yemen, his continuation of drone strikes, or his imprisonment of Julian Assange for exposing war crimes.
It instead focused on a completely fabricated conspiracy theory, which claims the Russian government swung the 2016 election in collusion with the Trump administration and that Trump was an asset/blackmailed by the Kremlin.
The 2019 impeachment against Trump was entirely over the fact that he temporarily paused arms sales to Ukraine.
Despite Trump’s many issues, the “resistance” talking points were entirely made up and ultimately only served pro-war neocons in their desire to have a new Cold War with Russia.
Doubling Down.
The Times piece, unveiling the new democratic strategy, instead says the Democrats need to embrace what it terms “dark woke,” described as “embracing a new form of combative rhetoric aimed at winning back voters who have responded to President Trump’s no-holds-barred version of politics”.
The paper describes this strategy as being “crass but discerning, rude but only to a point” and writes that it is encouraged and embraced by “party insiders”.
The example the paper gives for a “dark woke” candidate is Jasmine Crockett, a Democratic Texas representative who said Marjorie Taylor Greene has a “bleach blonde bad built butch body” and called the wheelchair bound Republican governor Greg Abbott “Governor Hot Wheels”.
This strategy, endorsed in the paper by the director of digital strategy for Representative Ro Khanna and the former digital director for the Wisconsin Democratic Party, is perhaps the worst route the party could go down.
A look at Jasmine Crockett’s actual policy record shows she is in no way a deviation from the Democratic establishment.
She has consistently voted in favor of arms packages sent to Israel, used to bomb and murder Palestinians in Gaza.
She has also consistently voted for and vocally supported the proxy war in Ukraine.
A look at her page on the campaign finance watchdog site “Open Secrets” shows she has received $13,500 from the for profit health insurance firm Health Care Service Corp and $15,225 from the major American bank Truist Financial.
So the Democrats' brilliant strategy to win voters over is to prop up another warmongering, zionist corporate tool, but this time one that thinks people in wheelchairs are a laughing riot.
An Unreformable Party
It has been clear for years, but now it is more obvious than ever that there is no reforming the Democratic Party.
This comical “dark woke” strategy they are choosing to embrace proves they will continue to be pro-war and anti-worker and go even harder in favor of cultural nonsense that will only alienate even more voters.
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At this rate, dems are done.
What I really hate about Identity Politics is that it's a cheap way of trying to appeal to marginalized groups without actually helping said groups. Here's an example: you mentioned multiple times that a major concern many Americans have is housing. Well, the LGBTQ+ Community is the most at risk of being unhoused. So, pushing for free or affordable housing would benefit a lot of people, but would specifically benefit the LGBTQ+ Community. But instead of something that would materially benefit them, the Democrats want to brag about having gay people in the party, because doing the affordable or free housing wouldn't help the donors.