Political Memes

A good bit of literature has studied the problem and arrived to recommendations that overlap in parts & depart in others with this playbook.

A former parliamentarian of the Hungarian government studied its slide into illiberalism, and suggested remedies for the current, similar trend in the US. Resist in the courts & media, and build a powerful social base at the state & city level throughout the country. The latter means

the Democratic Party must reconnect with the working class to preserve liberal institutions

Doing that means

1. "creating new and strengthening existing local organizational structures, especially labor unions". Do not focus "on issues important to the active base only" such as "media freedom or democracy": this leads to "failures of mass mobilizations". "[E]ngage with [ordinary people] outside elections, focusing on issues that matter to them".
2. "[T]o push through popular reforms that elites oppose", free "the party from elite capture" by shifting financing "from the corporate elite to small and micro-donations".
3. "[C]ommit to left-populist economic policies".
4. "[L]earn symbolic class politics", "embrace the mundane and be down to earth".

you don’t protect democracy by talking about democracy — you protect democracy by protecting people

I'm seeing the playbook overlap a bit with points 1 & 4, diverge from point 2, and not treat point 3.

Another article reviews research observing a decades-long trend of class dealignment: workers abandoning the left-wing party & joining the right. As unions have weakened and Democrats abandoned them, the party has increasingly relied on & shifted appeal to urban middle class professionals & minorities. The review names 4 paths researched or discussed to reverse dealignment.

• inclusive populism: "appeal to working-class voters’ sense of resentment at economic elites and stress how elites use racial resentment to divide segments of the working class that share a common interest in economic justice"
• anti-woke social democ­racy: make "a clean break with factions of the party that embrace unpopular social and cultural messaging that alienates working-class voters"
• deliverism: "pass and implement large-scale economic reforms that benefit working Americans"
• institutionalism: reinvigorate a "labor movement capable of advancing working-class interest in politics and [re-embed] Democratic and progressive politics into the lived experiences of working-class communities"

It looks like the playbook is going with anti-woke social democ­racy & institutionalism, rejecting inclusive populism, not mentioning deliverism.

They seem to think the way to win the working class is to go more MAGA-like (anti-woke social democ­racy) instead of trying a competing strategy like inclusive populism. It also looks like they're choosing not to break free of elite capture, which seems like a huge mistake.