Where I would disagree is that rather than these points making the arguments about tactical politics pointless, they mostly show that my view on the tactical points is correct. Election campaigns are a series of short-term battles in which you maximize vote share by taking popular stances, and you maximize progressive policymaking capacity by winning elections.
It is 100 percent true that this is not the path to durable long-term change, but that just goes to show that durable long-term change needs to be created on entirely separate tracks. Per the marriage equality example, there was a "change the culture to become more tolerant" track and there was a "Barack Obama just says and does whatever to win" track. It wasn't about pressuring Obama to "do the right thing" in the 2008 campaign.
Agree with a lot of what you're writing, but would suggest continuing to lean into union + workplace organizing. Part of the problem is that we expend a great deal of time, attention and money on elections every 2 years in which something like 10 to 20 percent of voters can cast potentially decisive ballots in contested federal elections.
By contrast, union organizing is constant and builds capacity and solidarity year-round, which also benefits pro-worker Democratic candidates for the few times a year people can vote.
I understand the appeal of organizing to build a stronger party, but the details of how and why this would work are always vague. The only evidence I've seen is highly qualitative and impressionistic.
In particular, I haven't seen anyone really reckon with the reasons community organizing and solidarity have declined, and how that means organizing might have to look very different in 2022 than it did in the '60s and '70s, or the '20s and'30s. To be sure, part of the decline is due to hostile right-wing governance, but a lot of it has to do with things like social media, urban sprawl, rising living standards (it's hard to argue that things haven't improved dramatically relative to the early-20th century that spawned the original union movement), anti-patronage/corruption intuitions in the mass public, etc. I'm highly skeptical that some 20-something activists doing minor charity work in local area are going to do much of anything to increase Democratic support in that area. To me, that seems like trying to bring back the old party machines of the past in very different context.
There is a lot of momentum to build a cohesive "movement" through coordinating organizations. However, we still have a problem that there's ton of activist organizations that are incentivized to take maximalist positions rather than broaden the appeal of their preferred societal change. I think we really need to restructure who these organizations are accountable to.
I actually agree with much of this.
Where I would disagree is that rather than these points making the arguments about tactical politics pointless, they mostly show that my view on the tactical points is correct. Election campaigns are a series of short-term battles in which you maximize vote share by taking popular stances, and you maximize progressive policymaking capacity by winning elections.
It is 100 percent true that this is not the path to durable long-term change, but that just goes to show that durable long-term change needs to be created on entirely separate tracks. Per the marriage equality example, there was a "change the culture to become more tolerant" track and there was a "Barack Obama just says and does whatever to win" track. It wasn't about pressuring Obama to "do the right thing" in the 2008 campaign.
Agree with a lot of what you're writing, but would suggest continuing to lean into union + workplace organizing. Part of the problem is that we expend a great deal of time, attention and money on elections every 2 years in which something like 10 to 20 percent of voters can cast potentially decisive ballots in contested federal elections.
By contrast, union organizing is constant and builds capacity and solidarity year-round, which also benefits pro-worker Democratic candidates for the few times a year people can vote.
Good discussion here. https://janemcalevey.com/media-coverage/from-amazon-to-starbucks-america-is-unionizing-will-politics-catch-up/
And Eitan Hershs's book on political hobbyism is also quite good: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/political-hobbyists-are-ruining-politics/605212/
I understand the appeal of organizing to build a stronger party, but the details of how and why this would work are always vague. The only evidence I've seen is highly qualitative and impressionistic.
In particular, I haven't seen anyone really reckon with the reasons community organizing and solidarity have declined, and how that means organizing might have to look very different in 2022 than it did in the '60s and '70s, or the '20s and'30s. To be sure, part of the decline is due to hostile right-wing governance, but a lot of it has to do with things like social media, urban sprawl, rising living standards (it's hard to argue that things haven't improved dramatically relative to the early-20th century that spawned the original union movement), anti-patronage/corruption intuitions in the mass public, etc. I'm highly skeptical that some 20-something activists doing minor charity work in local area are going to do much of anything to increase Democratic support in that area. To me, that seems like trying to bring back the old party machines of the past in very different context.
There is a lot of momentum to build a cohesive "movement" through coordinating organizations. However, we still have a problem that there's ton of activist organizations that are incentivized to take maximalist positions rather than broaden the appeal of their preferred societal change. I think we really need to restructure who these organizations are accountable to.