Skip Navigation
Politics @beehaw.org
memfree @beehaw.org

Berkeley scholar warns U.S. liberals: Either get tough, or get ready to lose - Berkeley News

news.berkeley.edu

Berkeley scholar warns U.S. liberals: Either get tough, or get ready to lose - Berkeley News

Too long to summarize. Quotes:

We tell this story about how the working person is desperate. Listen to the rhetoric: “You poor, struggling working families. We’re here to get you a break so you can squeeze by.”

That doesn’t work for the folks where I grew up, and it doesn’t work very well anywhere else, either. Working class people, like everyone else, want to be regarded as prosperous, as forward-looking, as self-reliant and living lives that are full of possibility. The Democrats’ message often ignores the human need for respect.

  • “Own” the libs? Nobody ever owned FDR, JFK or MLK. And can you imagine Lyndon Johnson having accomplished what he did, this historic legacy of progressive reform, without his high-dominance style? We need to recover that tradition.

  • Democrats need to overmatch Trump’s dominance, not emulate his style.

  • There is absolutely no contradiction between collaboration, cooperation and empathy on the one hand and dominance politics on the other.

9 comments

  • I'm not sure why there's the need to rebrand confidence to the term dominance, but I generally agree with the author. With that being said, I'm not sure I fully understand what dominance means or where the data comes from. It feels like there might be some cherry-picking here, because upon reflection I think even many centrist dems do draw hard lines in the sand on certain issues. In general I agree with the praise for MLK and for being more uncompromising on the issues that matter, and I also agree strongly with how important a positive uplifting message (It's how AOC and many of the true progressives got elected) is and how very few democrats actually execute on this.

  • So we need to lean into hierarchy politics just like the authoritarian Right? No thanks.

    Dominance is not the same as being uncompromising, which is what Democrats need to be with Republicans. Dominance is about cowing others into submission and controlling them, and we don't need more toxic masculine fantasies and rhetoric in our politics.

    I half expected this guy to call for "Alpha Democrats".

    "Owning the libs" is right-wing masturbatory fantasy made by shitty YouTubers like Ben Shapiro, and almost exclusively uses random unprepared non-politicians as targets so they can feel superior to someone, even if it's just some college freshman. No one "owns" AOC, Buttigieg, Sanders, or Newsom (or even Biden).

    That the author is bringing this up at all makes me seriously question their or their claimed political views' legitimacy or sincerity.

    There is absolutely no contradiction between collaboration, cooperation and empathy on the one hand and dominance politics on the other.

    Well, yes, there really is. Not that we should be collaborating or cooperating with Republicans, but by definition if you're dominating (controlling) someone, you're not collaborating with them.

    MLK did not "dominate" anyone, and I don't think invoking him, a socialist, in an appeal to expand authoritarian rhetoric of controlling people, is at all appropriate or good faith.

    • MLK did not “dominate” anyone

      MLK dominated the conversation. He spoke in strong terms that didn't allow for compromise with his ideals. Of course he compromised and cooperated on actual policy, taking what he could get when he could while always demanding more.

      No one “owns” AOC

      Agreed!

      -- but to the point: if nothing changes, swings state voters will make Trump our next President. Fish suggests a dominant message like this:

      The United States was founded for the purpose of self-government, and our history has largely been an effort to expand the blessings of liberty to larger and larger groups of Americans. Finally, in 1965, we became a full democracy when African Americans in the South got the right to vote. That’s who we are as Democrats.

      This country has its faults. We have a horrific history of racial oppression. But look at the incredible progress we’ve made, from the heinousness of slavery, to the idiocy of Jim Crow, to the mighty mind of Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court.

      That’s what we Democrats are about.

      The closing sums up the position:

      Spreading the blessings of liberty to all Americans is what America is all about. Liberals have to proclaim how it was done in the past and how we’re going to keep doing it in the future. Talk about how you’re going to beat everybody who wants to go backward. Offer a stirring vision. Forget about prescription drug prices and quit treating voters like despairing stiffs in dire need of a government break.

      To be clear, this is all about speech and elections, so when they say, "how you’re going to beat everybody", it is NOT about physical attacking. It is about winning campaigns and swaying opinions.

      Allll that said, I'm going to break with the above message. I don't know if Fish is correct. He has a lot invested in the idea of looking at if and when politics can be won with "prestige" or requires a display of verbal "dominance" to appeal to the primal side of our nature. He has spent years arguing that to beat Trump, a candidate must hit that note. Maybe he is going down the wrong path. I don't know.

      What I DO know is that we will get Trump for 4 more years if swing voters in a handful of states aren't convinced to vote (D).

9 comments