\n<\/p>\n
The<\/span> Democrats finally have their groove back\u2014or at least a semblance<\/em> of a groove.<\/p>\n For the first time since Donald Trump was elected a year ago, the Democratic Party\u2019s general vibe is one of tentative celebration. And why shouldn\u2019t it be? On Tuesday, candidates from very<\/em> different ideological wings of the party sailed to comfortable victories in three states. And residual excitement from that election was in the air yesterday at Crooked Con\u2014an event brought to you by Crooked Media, which was brought to you by the Pod Save America<\/em> guys, who were brought to you by the Obama White House\u2014where party strategists and activists shared a stage and mingled over room-temperature soft pretzels.<\/p>\n The convention was held, somewhat awkwardly, at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., and was intended to be the first annual send-up of the Democrats\u2019 big-tent coalition. Gone are the days of choosing between a former intelligence officer and a democratic socialist; the party is now asking: Why not both? And at every panel, speakers repeated the week\u2019s key takeaway like a mantra: \u201cDemocrats don\u2019t have to agree on everything.\u201d<\/p>\n But on which issues will Democrats accept disagreement\u2014and on which will they stand firm? No speaker at Friday\u2019s convention offered any real specifics. Meanwhile, the no-shows were notable. \u201cJohn Bel Edwards is not here. Mary Peltola is not here. Jared Golden is not here,\u201d the panelist and Substack author Matt Yglesias told me about the past Louisiana governor, former representative from Alaska, and current Maine congressman, all of whom have won in red areas. Those lawmakers don\u2019t have a secret sauce\u2014they simply \u201chave more conservative voting records,\u201d Yglesias said. \u201cAnd people just don\u2019t like that answer.\u201d<\/p>\n The attendees of Crooked Con are exactly the kind of people whom you might expect to buy a ticket to an all-day event in the basement of a D.C. federal building about the future of Democratic politics: progressive activists, Hill staffers, local pro-democracy lawyers, and a river\u2014a flood!\u2014of political reporters. In the main atrium, Crooked Media staff and Human Rights Campaign workers handed out decorative buttons\u2014DEI Hire<\/span>, Leave Trans Kids Alone<\/span>, Bodily Autonomy<\/span>\u2014and asked attendees to use Post-it Notes to offer messages of queer allyship. (For a party newly focused on economic populism, Democrats had remarkably few products related to corruption, billionaires, or taxing the rich.)<\/p>\n The day\u2019s proceedings kicked off with a \u201cbig, beautiful breath\u201d guided-breathing exercise, and involved appearances from an array of leaders and consultants, including former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, Searchlight Institute\u2019s Adam Jentleson, Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, and The Bulwark<\/em>\u2019s Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell. Most of the panels were interesting or useful in some way, but only one\u2014\u201cAre We Having Fun Yet?\u201d\u2014was a perfect encapsulation of the Democratic Party\u2019s current reality. In it, the host Jon Lovett attempted to moderate a conversation that quickly went off the rails among Miller, the Fox News resident Democrat Jessica Tarlov, the far-left streamer Hasan Piker, and MSNBC\u2019s Symone Sanders-Townsend.<\/p>\n The panel started off well: Sanders-Townsend danced onto the stage like Ellen DeGeneres. Piker and Miller joked around, and Lovett made a well-received crack about former President Bill Clinton. They all agreed, to an extent, that a message of \u201caffordability\u201d had worked for Tuesday\u2019s candidates.<\/p>\n Quickly, though, the panelists\u2019 differences intruded: Zohran Mamdani, Piker said, is an example of a Democrat who had successfully centered a campaign on economic populism without compromising on any of the party\u2019s other important causes. Tarlov countered that a big tent means allowing for moderation on social issues: Democrats shouldn\u2019t dismiss concerns from people about trans women playing women\u2019s sports, for example. \u201cI\u2019m not talking about being bigoted,\u201d Tarlov said, but \u201cthe country operates differently in different places, and we give lip service to that but don\u2019t always behave that way.\u201d<\/p>\n The audience offered a few tepid claps. Then everything went downhill. Sanders-Townsend explained that such sentiments can make it seem like the party \u201cwants folks to compromise on issues that, for me, are uncompromisable.\u201d Then she, Piker, and Miller argued about whether Trump had appealed to moderates with his MAGA agenda\u2014or whether he\u2019d simply energized his base to win\u2014in 2024. (Maybe both?<\/em> Lovett offered.) Piker, whose day job is as a long-form Twitch streamer, was soon rattling off his personal political priorities\u2014social housing, a federal jobs guarantee, free college. Miller, a former Republican, rolled his eyes. For a change of pace, Piker asserted that America\u2019s police \u201cdon\u2019t do their fucking jobs ever\u201d and fought with Miller about Israel\u2019s right to exist.<\/p>\n Eventually, Tarlov, who\u2019d been conspicuously quiet for many minutes, chimed in, unsmiling: \u201cI just want to say,\u201d she said, \u201cthat the last 10 minutes were the opposite of fun.\u201d The candidates who won on Tuesday \u201cwere affordability candidates,\u201d she said, and that is how the party should unite.<\/p>\n A big tent is messy and, apparently, loud. In some ways, it\u2019s a nice change of pace\u2014at least for engagement purposes. I can\u2019t remember the last time that I was so entertained by a political panel. \u201cThat was a spicy one,\u201d Miller told me afterward. \u201cIt\u2019s important to be able to talk about how you can agree and row the boat in the same direction\u2014while having differences.\u201d But did airing those differences help Democrats advance their goal of winning in red America? Miller was doubtful: \u201cI don’t know that a ton of progress was made.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s frustrating for some Democrats, who worry that the party isn\u2019t serious about doing what it takes to actually win. Notably absent from yesterday\u2019s convention, for example, were leaders from centrist organizations and representatives from the Democrats\u2019 Blue Dog Coalition. \u201cJesse Jackson used to say the Democratic Party needs two wings to fly,\u201d one prominent, moderate Democratic strategist who did not attend the event texted me later. Crooked Con \u201cwas a flightless bird.\u201d It was more, Yglesias agreed, \u201clike a medium-sized tent.\u201d<\/p>\n The Democrats are still in a tough position: To win back the Senate next year, their party must win a handful of seats in red territory, a feat that might involve backing candidates who are more conservative than some in the party might like. Democrats have decided to embrace a big-tent mindset. Now comes the hard part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Democrats finally have their groove back\u2014or at least a semblance of a groove. For the first time since Donald Trump was elected a year ago, the Democratic Party\u2019s general vibe is one of tentative celebration. And why shouldn\u2019t it be? On Tuesday, candidates from very different ideological wings of the party sailed to comfortable<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[1285,581,665,5446],"class_list":{"0":"post-32697","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-big","9":"tag-democrats","10":"tag-limits","11":"tag-tent"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}