Democratic Party direction post-Harris

Unlike the "every media is far-right save MSNBC" which is such an objectively competent affirmation, lol.

I never said this, of course, but sure, whatever. I actually engage near-daily with most of the outlets listed on your chart, and I learned the skills required for media literacy in school, so I don't need a chart because I know what I'm talking about.
 
And maybe the GOP having a media presence outside the mainstream comes from the fact that the mainstream has been overwhelming Democrats, so they just found and took themselves a different niche to get their own winning battlefield. It's still a pretty different picture than the one painted in this thread, with the "we lost to Trump because we're such small David against this Goliath of media" when it's actually the side that lost which had a MASSIVE upper hand in the big media - maybe the actual picture in the mind of the average voter is the opposite one when it comes to who is the underdog here.
One thing I can say, is that the media coming out from the US, is massively more Democrat in its message than Republican. Hearing the complaint that everything is pro-Republican when I see the absolute opposite in everything that reach the most people in the world makes for a jarring dissonance.
The US media that projects internationally, and has for decades, is mostly more leftish than rightish. WSJ is an exception. There may be a few others. The GOP commands all the local markets though Fox and conservative syndicates like Sinclair which owns over a hundred local papers and TV stations. MAGA folks are not likely to read the WaPo or NYT or other big name global media. For 30 years the GOP has been working hard to get the attention of unsophisticated people with very aggressive "own the libs" messages. They have succeeded. The Dems lost in 2024 because they refuse to fight fire with fire. TBH, they are too nice.
 
Gorbles, that’s right.

And how are we evening “listening” to these voters’ feelings? Weird centralized filters that don’t even tap into the vortex of their unarticulated total feelings of a complex system and their lives in it? And when asked, they just say whatever recent meme or article resonated loudly enough to repeat, no matter if it’s 1000 times quieter than the captured chaos they submit to that’s really driving their final decision. A chaos they will never articulate.
Imperative political skill is discerning where the center of the unarticulated emotion actually is.

Probably why technocrats routinely get upset despite supposed expertise. Even polls are imperfect at reflecting that location, and it's the best you get, till the actual electionary. To the zeitgeist knower goes the spoils.
 
Three, and this is the biggest, I take it you are not aware of Jimmy Dore? It’s true he used to be left wing… years ago. He has been for some time now a pro Putin/RFK/Trump anti-vax conspiracy nut, and about as far from left wing as it gets. I question the entire validity of that chart if they get that so blatantly wrong. That’s not even a rookie mistake that’s a baby mistake.
I hope that this switch of politics happened long before 2018, or we would have another pretty telling baby mistake to speak about here.
I never said this, of course, but sure, whatever. I actually engage near-daily with most of the outlets listed on your chart, and I learned the skills required for media literacy in school, so I don't need a chart because I know what I'm talking about.
Oh sorry, you said "everything but MSNBC is far-right or right", my mistake, that definitely changes the whole meaning. And you'll forgive me if I put more weight into charts that seems to have had quite a bit of work put into them by professionals, than into your personal self-claimed knowledge and competency, especially after years of seeing just how easily everything becomes "fascist" to you.
You're citing opinion vs. opinion. You can disagree with it as much as you want, but I'll note you ignored my evidence that runs contrary to your claim about Hollywood "leaning Democrat".
You didn't post wide-ranging evidence, you posted an anecdote. And you're comparing the opinons of a few very politicized, very one-side-leaning posters, to the opinion of at least two published work by teams of professionnals, who didn't seem to get the mocking criticism from other professionnals, which is a rather ridiculous thing to do.
The US media that projects internationally, and has for decades, is mostly more leftish than rightish. WSJ is an exception. There may be a few others. The GOP commands all the local markets though Fox and conservative syndicates like Sinclair which owns over a hundred local papers and TV stations. MAGA folks are not likely to read the WaPo or NYT or other big name global media. For 30 years the GOP has been working hard to get the attention of unsophisticated people with very aggressive "own the libs" messages. They have succeeded. The Dems lost in 2024 because they refuse to fight fire with fire. TBH, they are too nice.
Well, that's close to what I was saying in the quote you answer to - Dem have the big media (and might see it starting to erode by now), the Rep made themselve their niche in the local/small media, and "little people" are probably closer to said small media. Still, again, not at all the picture paint of the Dem being swamped by this supposedly massive juggernaut of Rep media. Just a failure of reaching and getting in with the audience, despite having a much bigger umbrella.

Also, while I certainly agree that Rep have more vicious, more simplistic messaging (that resonates more easily with people in general, i.e. "they meme better" like Hygro said), I'm not sure that it's the viciousness itself that does the job. Again, I think Hygro has the gist of it (well, if I got what he meant, as it's not been the easier argument to parse), the unarticulated general chaotic feelings of lots of people, that they might not even understand fully themselves, but which on the whole resonates more with whatever axis the Rep are loudly claiming to be their own, than the Dem.
 
I never denied that Bernie did not receive a majority of the vote, I stated that this was not because the American people are wildly in love with capitalism or because he technically doesn't have a D next to his name on the ballot despite it not having any practical difference, but because a generally hostile media landscape towards anti-capitalism in the U.S. Believe it or not, most media outlets are owned by capitalists, who probably (Just a wild guess :p) don't like anti-capitalism, and therefore probably won't sign off on anti-capitalist coverage. But feel free to keep calling basic logic conspiracy theories.

It's also worth noting that support for progressive policy out paces the number of self-identified progressives by your estimation. Support for government or corporate health care is tied, and a support for a double-digit minimum wage is an overwhelming majority.
Yeah the fact that Sanders was giving almost no media time is important to remember (whereas both conservative & liberal media alike gave Trump all the time he wanted).

The media is about $$$ and Trump gets eyeballs/clicks, left/right doesn't really matter.

It's in corporate medias interests to make 'progressiveism' into something about some green haired liberals of tiktok kid rather than about workers & the average American.

Most of the nuts & bolts 'progressive' agenda polls well but goes against the status quo so it's never allowed to progress (and candidates who support it are giving less coverage).

Meanwhile 'progressive' is painted as being about having a token black female president & no one in charge really counters that besides no one in charge (besides Bernie and maybe a handful of others) actually wants any change.

So I would say I'm progressive in terms of policy but the mixed up culture of progressives (obsessed with oppression and losing basically and abstract boogiemen like 'patriarchy' & 'anti-capitalism' rather than anything tangible that can ever respected much less implemented in normie American society) is so much of a self-own I can only assume it's deliberately set up that way. Not set up in a massive conspiracy sense but just pushed by algorithms & encouraged to be seen as the face of progressiveism by the mainstream. These unwitting 'progressives' are boosted the way a boxer on his way up will select patsys to boost his KOs.
 
Last edited:
You didn't post wide-ranging evidence, you posted an anecdote.
So did you. One publication's opinion on the media landscape is effectively that. And it's dated to boot.

My "anecdote" involves one of the best known names in Hollywood, turning up in a big Marvel production this year, pointing out how people in his industry didn't go near him due to how he portrayed Trump. Just Trump. He didn't attack all conservatives, he didn't involve anything that you would consider "radically" left wing. He just starred in a film.

You keep going on about others denying reality. And yet here you are, discarding evidence that contradicts a theory you personally hold (which, coincidentally, is a popular right-wing accusation and conspiracy theory).
And you're comparing the opinons of a few very politicized, very one-side-leaning posters, to the opinion of at least two published work by teams of professionnals, who didn't seem to get the mocking criticism from other professionnals, which is a rather ridiculous thing to do.
I am? You're the one who said when you provided the original chart that you didn't know the publication who sourced it. You've since gone to great efforts with GoodEnoughForMe to try and defend the source despite him giving you contextual information about the media landscape in the US.

That's a lot of faith in a publication you know nothing about.

We're European, right? Our concepts of "right" and "left" at least used to be pretty different to the US, where both political parties used to be pretty uncontroversially regarded as both being on the right (to most Western European countries). Is that not still the case anymore?
 
Another chart, made by self-avowed slightly left-of-center people in 2018, shows roughly the same distribution. That's two different sources with a rather good correlation.
It is a difficult problem, and the difficulties start with agreeing on the definition of left/right, but that chart seems clearly wrong. I do not know that many, but it has the Daily Hate as only half a box right of the centre, and MSNBC and Al Jazzera, the mouthpiece of a literal dictatorship, two and a half boxes left. It makes no sort of sense to me that those are five times as bias to the left than The Hate is right, if AJ is really left at all. Is Hamas politically left wing? And now I have found the Washington Post as 1.5 left? How does that work?

And now I have found the UK papers. The Torygraph, the Grundiad and the Indescribably boring, in that order from most left wing and reliable to least? That is just wrong.
 
Last edited:
Everybody complains about the media when they lose. Dems all the sudden are perplexed by the manosphere. Whatever that is. If Republicans had lost they'd blame lib media. Commies blame capitalist media. Nazis blame...well, best left unsaid, but they did, too.

It's a good excuse, though. Nuffin wrong wif us or our movements, it's the media!
 
By collapsing invalid complaints on valid complaints, and putting them all in one bucket, I can see how that's the conclusion that could be drawn.
 
Everybody complains about the media when they lose. Dems all the sudden are perplexed by the manosphere. Whatever that is. If Republicans had lost they'd blame lib media. Commies blame capitalist media. Nazis blame...well, best left unsaid, but they did, too.

It's a good excuse, though. Nuffin wrong wif us or our movements, it's the media!
I would say the statement is true, but the conclusion is wrong. The media has always been on the side of the establishment, then ARE the establishment and they are a major contributor to the global political landscape. That does not mean the is nothing wrong with a movement that fails because of this, the movement has to work so if it fails because the media wants it to fail then there is something wrong with the movement.
 
Pretty hard for any movement to succeed when the media is against it because the media defines what the movement is.

By media I include Google/Wikipedia/'independent' youtubers.

It's not like people are assembling on street corners, they're 'assembling' online, with whom, who knows. I've 'been' 'here' 22 years, I don't really know who any of you are or what your true beliefs/agendas are. In a few more years I won't even be able to tell who's human.
 
Pretty hard for any movement to succeed when the media is against it because the media defines what the movement is.

By media I include Google/Wikipedia/'independent' youtubers.

It's not like people are assembling on street corners, they're 'assembling' online, with whom, who knows. I've 'been' 'here' 22 years, I don't really know who any of you are or what your true beliefs/agendas are. In a few more years I won't even be able to tell who's human.
When I said media I meant established media like newspapers and TV. You are right, the reach of the internet has changed things and somehow many people have given up control of their consumption and distribution of their media from established media to big tech. But that is something that could change. Who knows, the criminalising TickTok thing may be enough to get the kids to understand they should have control over their content and decentralise it.

From your sig:

My YouTube channel

Did you mean to include yourself in media under 'independent' youtubers?
 
I've 'been' 'here' 22 years, I don't really know who any of you are or what your true beliefs/agendas are.
Do you think folks are just . . . lying, or something? I get not giving away much on the Internet (practise it myself), but my arguments stem from sincere beliefs. It's not affected, it's not being a devil's advocate (left that habit behind a long time ago), it's not championing something I don't actually believe in. They're honest sentiments, as disagreeable (or agreeable) as anyone may find them.
 
I hope that this switch of politics happened long before 2018, or we would have another pretty telling baby mistake to speak about here.

No you just misread your own source :(
 

Attachments

  • IMG_4322.jpeg
    IMG_4322.jpeg
    40 KB · Views: 28
  • IMG_4323.jpeg
    IMG_4323.jpeg
    20.8 KB · Views: 40
When I said media I meant established media like newspapers and TV. You are right, the reach of the internet has changed things and somehow many people have given up control of their consumption and distribution of their media from established media to big tech. But that is something that could change. Who knows, the criminalising TickTok thing may be enough to get the kids to understand they should have control over their content and decentralise it.
What does it mean for kids to decentralize their content?

From your sig:

My YouTube channel

Did you mean to include yourself in media under 'independent' youtubers?
I rarely go into politics on my channel. I'm not claiming to be floating above the problem. No one is truly independent. I'm small time enough where I just post whatever I want & I make no money (IIRC you need 1,000 subscribers minimum to monetize these days) whereas once you get into the tens of thousands you have to cater to your audience (unless you just don't care).

Right now, besides my immediate family, I'm more socially isolated than I've ever been in my adult life so it's hard for me to stay offline. Once I have the means to tho (socially & economically) I'd love to limit my online time to 5-10 hours a month or less. I hate online 'culture'. People literally typing @ sterotypes of each other they have in their heads & becoming more & more avatary and less human each year.
 
What does it mean for kids to decentralize their content?
Posting on mastadon rather than twitterX is an obvious example. I do not actually know how it works with video, but Peertube is an attempt to decentralise youtube type content.
 
And you'll forgive me if I put more weight into charts that seems to have had quite a bit of work put into them by professionals, than into your personal self-claimed knowledge and competency, especially after years of seeing just how easily everything becomes "fascist" to you.

Like I said, you can Dunning-Kruger it up all you want, but I can't in good conscience let you present that chart as authoritative fact without challenge. Indeed, quite aside from problems with the chart itself, you invoked the chart in a context to which it didn't really apply, which was a point about the political slant of local news.

Also, just FYI, "professional media political bias classifier" is not a thing
 
What does it mean for kids to decentralize their content?


I rarely go into politics on my channel. I'm not claiming to be floating above the problem. No one is truly independent. I'm small time enough where I just post whatever I want & I make no money (IIRC you need 1,000 subscribers minimum to monetize these days) whereas once you get into the tens of thousands you have to cater to your audience (unless you just don't care).

Right now, besides my immediate family, I'm more socially isolated than I've ever been in my adult life so it's hard for me to stay offline. Once I have the means to tho (socially & economically) I'd love to limit my online time to 5-10 hours a month or less. I hate online 'culture'. People literally typing @ sterotypes of each other they have in their heads & becoming more & more avatary and less human each year.
The shorter the clip, the faster the soundbite, the more difficult it is to hold one's attention span long enough to formulate a new string, rather than the more comfortable first impression thought string.

Sorta like the cattle paths of the mind, but on algorithmic distracted driving.
 
Back
Top Bottom