For Arendt, facts and opinions, “though they must be kept apart, are not antagonistic to each other; they belong to the same realm.” A fact (her example is Germany’s invasion of Belgium in August 1914) “acquires political implications only by being put in an interpretative context.” Whoever reports what happened, she wrote, “always tells a story, and in this story the particular facts lose their contingency and acquire some humanly comprehensible meaning.”
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That is what Arendt meant when she argued that organizing people together to change the world—that is to say, doing politics—requires an approach that rejects outright lying while also avoiding a complacent expectation that “the truth” will reveal itself for voters to follow. The narrative wars have begun. If Democrats are smart, they’ll opt for storytelling instead.
nope: Americans are not complicated: ITS ABOUT GAS PRICE at least for the ‘undecided’ voters.
Iran knows this and closing the straight dealt Trump his biggest existential blow yet.
Per SRSS voter poll from the election:
Yes, the economy is the biggest thing they had but also coming in second is the state of democracy and corruption was high on the list too.
And as the author stated:
There’s one story that does this better than any other: anti-corruption. To many voters, it is the explanation for why gas costs so much; why inflation endures; why education, housing, and health care have become so expensive; and especially why they feel like they can’t get ahead.
Democratic leadership, if they were smart and effective, would be talking about the war in Iran, ending it, investigating it, hold Republicans responsible for the the war and the prices at the pump, effectively taking care of both issues of the economy and democracy in one go. That would have made those Independents and Demorcrats and Progressives happy.
But no, we didn’t get that at all from leadership.
If Democrats can stick to the story they told, are telling and are repeating … they’ll keep winning
I’m not saying this as some right wing nut job … I’m a socially supporting Canadian that fully supports the NDP, the left leaning party here in Canada. Always have and always will.
The problem I always see with our left leaning parties is that they keep promising things before the election and then ramp up the hope when they get elected and then spend the next few years hovering at the level of hope and either get little done or none at all. And it’s always the powers that be, the status quo and monied interests that get in the way. It pervades all of politics with every party (no matter if they are left, center or right) because at the end of the day, its easy to control a political party and a politician simply by threatening their chances of getting re-elected again in the next election.
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is all but certain to soon become the first Black speaker of the House in U.S. history, called the results “a stunning rebuke for MAGA extremism.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is likely to once again be master of the Senate, this time at the head of a much larger caucus than during the Biden years, declared that “the days of Trump’s supplicant Senate are over.”
This election is wasted if we let those two oligarch fluffers into leadership positions…
We got a shit ton of options that actually have charisma, political aptitude, and aligning policy with Dem voters…
We gain nothing by letting either one take the reigns, and their bullshit will almost certainly depress 2028 turnout
I get what she’s saying but Jesus what a terrible way to say it.
