Giving the Game Away: Democratic Strategists and the Failure of the Party

The Democratic Party is an absolute mess. The strategist class deserves a significant portion of the blame.

This article is free for educational purposes and is meant to help diagnose and explain the problems of the Democratic Party and the nature of the crisis we’re living through. For information on what we must do to fight back and create something different and better and real, please check out the Audio From A Collapsing State podcast series that is currently detailing step-by-step instructions regarding how we should approach that. Unfortunately our media ecosystem and platforms don’t support critics of capitalism or people advocating for actual change, so I depend on your support. Consider subscribing today.

---

We should consider ourselves lucky that Pod Save America exists.

No, I’m serious. Stop laughing.

Since its debut in 2017, PSA has provided regular people the ability to listen to members of the strategist class speak openly about their decisions and insights, gifting us the ability, if we so choose, to understand exactly how fecklessly our politics and campaign structures work behind closed doors. The fact that Obama Campaign and Administration alum have found commercial success pulling that curtain back is a benefit, as long as we remember that what we’re getting is insight into the strategist and political class as opposed to, well, anything else. After all, a large portion of the political economy is now based on believing these people are a special class that cannot be questioned and should only be praised for deigning us worthy of sitting in the room while they opine.

Before we begin, it might help to understand what actually happened in the 2024 Election and what’s going on in our politics because, well, you’re about to be fed an impressive amount of bullshit. To inoculate yourself, here are dives into why the election played out the way it did and why we’re facing our present crisis.

Now, we’ll need to change our perspective and check out the November 26th interview between former Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer and Harris Campaign leadership, including Jen O’Malley Dillon (manager), Stephanie Cutter (strategist), Quentin Fulks (deputy communications), and David Plouffe (senior adviser), discussing openly what they believed went wrong with the 2024 Election. It is a meeting of capitalist opportunity (the Pod Save podcast getting attention) and self-preservation (the campaign staff getting a chance to influence perception regarding their efforts).

What transpired was so incredibly illuminating regarding that contest and the current state of the Democratic Party that I can only tell you it is well worth your time to watch or listen to the entire thing in full.

We’re going to get into some of the more important takeaways from this discussion and my analysis, but, first, a primer on the problem with Democratic strategists in the first place.

The Democratic Apparatchik

For those who don’t have prior knowledge, let’s go over some of the basics. Parties, as I’ve discussed, represent entrenched wealth and interests.

The Republicans favor a combination of small business owners (burghers), corporate billionaires (the donor base behind the Neoliberal push of the last half century), and now the tech oligarchy (best exemplified by Elon Musk). To win elections, the GOP has relied on wealth class manipulation of the working class through activating conspiracy theories and culture war controversies that play upon inherent prejudices.

Democrats, as presently constituted, reflect the interests of corporations, the liberal donor class, the professional managerial class, and, in order to win elections, make gestures toward a base consisting of people of color, labor unions, women, immigrants, LGBTQ+ Americans, but have, in recent years, started to rely more heavily on Republicans who they believe are turned off by Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again Movement, primarily because they were displaced from the party when Trump and his loyalists took over.

In service of these appeals, strategists and consultants are tasked with balancing the needs of the actual donor base (corporations and wealthy benefactors) with gestures to the bases. This creates a tension that can sometimes be handled through strategic communications, but as the authoritarian cycle has continued, and material conditions worsened, the old tactics are failing, especially within the Democratic Party. Hence, its current host of failures.

The Democratic strategist class is truly wild. The same personalities continually recycle (see: Carville, James), using the same moderating strategies that noticeably favor the corporate and wealth class interests while alienating the base, and, when they’re not running a campaign or advising politicians, they’re farming out their work to the corporations that make up the donor base.

In this interview, the Harris brain trust is swimming with corporate cronies. O’Malley Dillon has made her money advising the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, General Electric, and Lyft. Plouffe also partnered with Zuckerberg and sold his services to Uber. Plouffe was even fined $90,000 for illegally lobbying fellow Obama alum Rahm Emmanuel, as mayor of Chicago, on behalf of Uber. Cutter works on strategy in tandem with O’Malley Dillon at Precision Strategies, which works on political campaigns as well as corporate campaigns.

This back-and-forth relationship Democratic strategists enjoy in which they can move between party politics and corporate advisement creates a pretty huge conflict of interest. In a way, it solidifies the party’s relationship with its donors, including giants like General Electric, but it also hinders the party’s ability to, well, you know, actually speak against power or widening inequality. You can’t one day wage an aggressive, populist campaign with Kamala Harris against corporate greed and tech overreach and then head over to partner with Zuckerberg or collect checks from a place like Uber.

Meanwhile, the strategist class is also insulated from a lot of the consequences of authoritarianism and rising fascism. They, like a lot of DC insiders, have come to see politics as both a vocation and a pastime, and, win-or-lose, the checks are still going to clear. This might help explain why someone like Plouffe would think it appropriate to launch a podcast with Kellyanne Conway, one of Donald Trump’s most loyal servants, in the middle of an authoritarian push.

Considering this, let’s take a look at some of the narratives this group tells us regarding the failed 2024 Harris Campaign and revelations from behind the curtain…because they are telling.

The Illusion of “the Moderate”

A good deal of time in this interview is spent addressing the Trump Campaign’s “They/Them” advertisement and its effect on the campaign. That repugnant, disgusting ad can be seen below.

The reason this is a focus is the current Democratic push to “moderate” the party in the wake of the loss, often openly blaming gay and trans people for their failures and other times tiptoeing around the scapegoating with carefully chosen framing. The strategists in this interview are cagey, but at times you hear a lot of talk about “the moderate.” This has been a long standing trope during the Democrats’ Neoliberal Era, which allows them to moderate and move to the Right while chasing mythical “moderate voters” who aren’t keen on civil rights and progressivism. In one of Plouffe’s rants he talks about the need to “dominate the moderate vote,” saying that battleground states are largely conservative and moderate and saying, with erosion within communities of color, which has come, it should be mentioned, because of that divide between the party and its base and a long line of indignities and lack of support, “the math just doesn’t fucking work.”

It doesn’t hurt, of course, that the corporations and donors Plouffe and his colleagues serve, and likely the entities that pay them the most, value, above all else, a “moderate” Democratic Party that lionizes free market-based politics while eschewing “dangerous leftist ideas.”

But let’s go ahead and examine this. The party has, since the 1980’s, continually lurched to the Right based on “pragmatic politics” that continually point to polls and their own concept of reality. In this world, there is only the electorate as it exists and you must cater to that electorate. Never mind that the electorate, as it stands, is framed by conservative Democratic messaging and a corporate narrative of politics communicated by institutions like The New York Times that continually tells us a mythical “Left” is as dangerous as Trumpism. This is a framing that eliminates the possibility of growing the electorate or possibly changing its mind, which is the actual job of these people as opposed to whatever in the hell it is that they tell you they do. Because of this, the party is continually chasing the Republican Party and Republican voters rather than trying to motivate young voters or voters who have given up on the system entirely. This was especially daunting in this election considering the tragedies of Gaza (which we’ll get to in a little bit), inaction on climate change, and an increasingly precarious environment that has left young people feeling like politics are a waste of their time.

In regards to Trump’s disgusting ad, the campaign strategists tell us that they “tested” responses but found none of them to be particularly effective. This is another problem with the Democrats, who have an incestuous relationship with testing and polling bodies, many of which are staffed by coworkers and former colleagues. They all work together to consistently push the party toward the mythical center, which just moves things to the Right.

So, instead of just picking a moral or ethical direction and saying, “You know, you’re dehumanizing actual people,” and taking a stand for gay or trans people, the party just did nothing, the same way they chose not to stand up for Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. They could have also easily pointed out that “trans people in sports” or “trans people grooming children” are tactics of the wealth class to distract from their poisonous agendas, but that would also give the game up. You can’t, when in the service of other members of the wealth class, start talking about the tactics of the wealth class.

And, so, they just didn’t say anything. Didn’t stand up for themselves. Mention that this was a Trump policy, for crying out loud. Stand up for trans and gay people. And, despite the result, they still maintain this was the right strategy.

This also hindered the Harris Campaign and the Democratic Party as they ceded the debate stuff to Trump and the Right on the issue of immigration. Rather than pointing out that the “immigration debate” is actually all political theater hiding that the wealth class relies on immigrant exploitation, which is made impossible when you serve that wealth class, they tried to beat Trump on border security. Which is foolhardy at best and demonstrably disastrous.

And what happens? You fight with both arms tied behind your back and you also demonstrate to the base and communities needing your support that you’re not actually going to fight for them. Which obviously depresses turnout and support and allows these people to continue their constant push to the Right.

The Cheney Strategy

Just an aside, a truly, truly incredible revelation from this interview: the partnership with Liz Cheney was a strategy to mitigate the consequences of the trans commercial. Here we’re told that the GOP’s framing of the party as being “radical” was then met with an idea to show the support of the Cheneys, former Republicans, and retired generals, in order to communicate that Harris wasn’t a Leftist.

And what does that do? It moves the party to the Right, cedes more ground to Trumpism, and, you guessed it, depresses turnout and support among the groups the Democrats actually need to win elections.

This “strategy” should be enough for every person working on this campaign to never get hired again. But bet your bottom dollar they will continue popping up regardless.

The Victory in Defeat

If you’ve never listened to losing strategists discuss their failures, welcome to one of the most infuriating experiences in politics. This entire interview was just one giant deflection after another as this group reframes the lost election into a victory. Here, we’re told a pretty convenient story

• The truncated campaign time was to blame

• Harris was so underwater from the get-go because of Joe Biden’s numbers that she was likely to lose the entire time

• The fact that the election was so close was due to this braintrust’s efforts, and if you look at the numbers it’s pretty obvious they absolutely nailed their election strategy

Okay, sure. Nevermind that they lost the election, they lost all of the swingstates, there were demographic shifts across the board to the Right, and we’re all going to suffer through a second Trump term, an oligarchical powergrab, and god knows what else. It’s a pretty good story if you’re looking to farm your services out to the highest-paying corporation and whatever Democratic campaign is willing to foot the bill in the future.

Also, just a quick thing to remember: how many Democratic politicians and liberal grifters told you this thing was in the bag? Meanwhile, closely guarded polls and numbers told insiders that Trump was ahead and Harris faced a steep climb to even be competitive? It would do everyone good to remember this fact and realize how aggressively you were lied to.

Back to the election. In order to make up that ground, the campaign saw the need to court Republicans, but also to build Harris up as a known entity. This involved interviews and the like, but also we’re told that it was necessary to create a feeling that a movement was taking place. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, it was obvious that the Harris Campaign attempted to recreate the Hope/Change sensation that swept Obama into office, gifting millions of Americans a simulacrum of a political movement like a corporate product. This involved surrounding her with celebrities, slick production, and even paying artists to create murals and other symbols of faux-grassroots energy so that people could feel like this was a Obama 2008 redux.

Between this and all the talk about testing and polling, what never gets mentioned is creating a political campaign grounded in actual principles or some type of project that, win or lose, is presenting something ambitious and genuine. There were proposals, including addressing housing and in-home care, but never once is a populist, expansive agenda even debated. It becomes an ala carte campaign that picks and chooses its battles based on trying to fashion together something that could maybe, possibly, barely get to 270 Electoral votes versus represent a project concerned with changing things wholesale for the better. It’s playing not to lose as opposed to playing to win.

Authenticity matters, especially in this era of Neoliberal decline and ever present marketing. People can sense when something or someone is real versus a concentrated effort to get your money. People don’t feel like the Democratic Party is authentic and they don’t believe it’s going to fight for them. And, after all this, who could blame them for feeling that way?

The Democratic Party suffers not just because of its symbioses with corporate interests, but because you can practically feel the push and tug of the strategist class with every word spoken.

Gaza?

The words “Gaza” and “Palestinians” are never uttered once in this entire interview.

There is a section in which they talk about Harris’s reluctance to establish differences between herself and Joe Biden, but the enabling of atrocities in the Middle-East never factor into it. There’s no discussion about how many potential voters might have left the party or declined to cast a ballot because of it. Nothing.

The horrors of Gaza have been a huge factor in splintering the liberal coalition leading to 2024, and yet, in one postmortem after another, it’s never mentioned. What we see now, among Democratic faithful who either expressed “concern” over what was happening but didn’t want to hurt Biden or Harris’s chances or endorsed it wholeheartedly and those of us who found it a stain on the presidency, is a schism in the anti-Trump coalition that existed mostly in aesthetics versus actual politics. That situation has left us at the mercy of Trump and his oligarchical owners.

That Harris’s campaign leaders didn’t even deign this fact as important enough to bring it up once in this discussion should tell you everything you need to know.

And you know what else is missing in all of this? Any concern for people who are going to suffer under a second Trump Administration. Any regret for not offering up a campaign and a victory that might help them. They don’t really figure into any of this.

The Political Environment

They are right when they talk about this being a bad “incumbent” environment, but they fail to get into the fact that incumbents, particularly liberals, around the world are failing and giving way to Right Wing authoritarians because they, and their colleagues, have been advising those liberals into taking positions and pushing agendas that further erode their support and cultivate the material conditions that make Right Wing takeovers possible.

Rather than talking about programs of change, or a change of course, and this would be impossible to this class because, again, they rely on money from corporations and the wealth class that demand this moderate/pragmatic approach, they reveal what they think the problems are.

Part of it is, predictably, the need to chase “moderates” as the paradigm races to the Right. This is always the case with Democratic strategists at this level and will be until something fundamentally changes.

But it’s also the influence of people like Joe Rogan. There’s a lot of talk about Harris trying to go on Rogan’s show - never mind, of course, that this class roundly criticized Bernie Sanders when he talked with Rogan - and the need for Democrats to have something similar. This has become a pretty regular talking point of liberals post-2024, so it deserves a quick dissection.

Why are prominent liberals like the Pod Save America crew advocating for this?

C’mon. You already know.

It’s them! They’re jockeying for that position!

As traditional media declines, independent media, including podcasts and the like, is becoming more powerful, allowing people outside the traditional media pipeline to assert more influence. And there’s a ton of money to be made if the wealth class and billionaires like a Bill Gates or Mark Cuban were to invest in projects with moderate Democrats like Pod Save America or Democratic strategists - people who have already shown a willingness and eagerness to communicate corporate-friendly talking points for a check - and replace the tired media.

It doesn’t get discussed, ever, that Rogan’s popularity, in addition to being predicated on toxically masculine appeals, is based in questioning institutions and authorities. This is something the Right and its ecosystem of idiot pundits has profited off of and, meanwhile, Democrats have failed at as they’ve become conservative and protective of those very institutions. What moderate Democrats want is a slickly-produced, well-funded operation that would, other than aesthetics, serve up predictably moderate/Rightward moving political opinions.

Also, this topic wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t talk about the elitism at the heart of the Democratic Party. There is a belief, as the party has become more and more controlled by corporate-friendly technocrats, that the problem is that the people are stupid and they’re either too dumb to understand facts or kept from them. All it would take, ala The West Wing, would be a perfectly-timed, perfectly-worded speech or lesson and the magic spell would be broken.

It couldn’t, again, possibly be dissatisfaction with the way things are going and a deep, deep need for actual change. Or, that the Democratic Party has become so conservative and so insulated and so embedded with corporate interests that it has allowed the Right and its donor class to effectively capture support among the working class by pretending to give a shit about what they want even while looting their pockets.

What do the Democrats Need?

None of that could be true, obviously. That would mean a radical change within the party would be necessary, and these people would be out of their jobs.

According to the Harris Campaign, what’s needed is a liberal Rogan-type, moderation of the party, and a couple of surprising additions.

First, is the need for more Super PACs. That’s right. We’re told in this interview that one of the problems was that Trump enjoyed broad support by dark-money PACs and the Democrats are currently behind in that arena. Never mind that Citizens United opened the floodgates to corporate and oligarchical dark money and dealt a mortal blow to liberal democracy, you have to fight fire with fire! You could, if you were so inclined, make an argument that the Democratic Party might benefit from organizing around opposition to corporate dark money and PACs, that this could help represent a true, grassroots, populist concern about inequality, but instead, we’re told that the party needs to let these PACs loose and would benefit from more assistance. Important to point out that Super PACs were created to give corporations and the wealthy more influence in politics, and so it shouldn’t be that surprising that these corporate cronies want more of that.

And then, they’re in almost universal agreement that the Democrats could learn something from Trump and MAGA. There’s too much questioning of the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates! Trump enjoys total fealty and loyalty, which helps him campaign and win. Meanwhile, these strategists have to spend so much time hearing from the base about their concerns! Let the experts do their jobs! You’re hurting the party!

I hope after all this something becomes increasingly obvious. The answer to all the Democrats’ problems, according to the strategists who run these campaigns and direct the leaders and infrastructure, is to become more like the Republican Party and more like Donald Trump. Everything else is sure to lead to failure. The same people need more money and more power. The party just needs to accept “reality” and chase the Republican Party across the political spectrum. If that sounds familiar, it should.

And, you should notice, all the solutions for the Democratic Party going forward all happen to revolve around doing things the strategists are already doing, that benefit the corporations who pay them handsomely, and maintain the strategists’ grip over the Democratic Party as a fundraising apparatus and champion of that wealth class.

The Democratic Party, as presently constituted, will not provide an actual alternative because of these affiliations and because of the continued influence of strategists who are insulated from the threat and profiting off relationships with the wealth class. If nothing changes, you’re going to watch this same campaign play out over and over again. And how do I know? Because I’ve watched it happen over and over again. Sometimes it changes if you find a generational talent and personality like Barack Obama and if liberals are capitalizing off the disastrous failures of a Republican president. That cycle should be obvious by now. In 2008, Obama won in part due to the Financial Collapse shepherded by the GOP. In 2020, Biden won in no small part due to the corrupt and inept handling of COVID. These victories made careers for these strategists, but they were largely just doing what they always do just in different circumstances.

In other words, the party is not going to save you. It’s up to us to create something different that will either pressure the party to represent us or create something with actual principles versus “pragmatic” moderation on behalf of the wealth class. Let this election and this discussion illuminate things for you. And let’s hope they keep talking about all of this in public so people can continue to learn.