Last week's Democratic National Committee meeting illustrated a party trying to stay focused on economic issues while grappling with strong, changing opinions on Israel.
It absolutely was. The skyrocketing unemployment - nearly 15% at its peak - left millions of people with nothing to do but protest. Unemployment waves and protest movements are practically joined at the hip.
Yeah but the point is the movement those people funneled into ended up being BLM (or BLM adjacent), because BLM was at its peak in terms of growth and organizing. Had it been 2009, maybe those same people funnel into Occupy Wallstreet. Call it happenstance of history, and I’m not saying that BLM was borne of a whistle and milk from a thistle at twilight the year of 2019. But it was present when people had the time to take to the streets. And my point that the BLM agenda didn’t find its way into electoralism until ~2018-2020 is the primary point. It took 10 years, but in 2020, it became a central primary issue among Democrats. The points of grievance found their way into the presidential platform in the 2020 election.
I might argue that the anti-Vax movement saved Republicans more than BLM won it for Democrats.
I think to be charitable we’d have to call it a wash. It was practically the same forces funneling people into both movements, and like you said, in-spite of both sides getting more turnout, the resulting victories were marginal. So I come back to the first point, that Trumps government and management of COVID becomes the theme. And if they had just… not been such moron, if they had even been nominally competent, I think Trump wins the 2020 election handily.
Yeah but the point is the movement those people funneled into ended up being BLM (or BLM adjacent), because BLM was at its peak in terms of growth and organizing. Had it been 2009, maybe those same people funnel into Occupy Wallstreet. Call it happenstance of history, and I’m not saying that BLM was borne of a whistle and milk from a thistle at twilight the year of 2019. But it was present when people had the time to take to the streets. And my point that the BLM agenda didn’t find its way into electoralism until ~2018-2020 is the primary point. It took 10 years, but in 2020, it became a central primary issue among Democrats. The points of grievance found their way into the presidential platform in the 2020 election.
I think to be charitable we’d have to call it a wash. It was practically the same forces funneling people into both movements, and like you said, in-spite of both sides getting more turnout, the resulting victories were marginal. So I come back to the first point, that Trumps government and management of COVID becomes the theme. And if they had just… not been such moron, if they had even been nominally competent, I think Trump wins the 2020 election handily.