Good News: Progressive Advocacy Groups Have Been Found Not Guilty By A Progressive Advocacy Group
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Motivated reasoning
12 min read
The article's central thesis is that Way to Win produced a self-serving report that confirms their priors rather than objectively analyzing why Democrats lost. Understanding motivated reasoning - the cognitive bias where people process information in ways that support their existing beliefs - directly illuminates why advocacy groups might produce research that flatters their donors and methods.
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The Sopranos
13 min read
The article opens with a quote from Silvio Dante to Tony Soprano about taking responsibility while denying wrongdoing - a perfect metaphor for the report's stance. Understanding this iconic HBO series and its themes of denial, self-deception, and organized corruption provides rich context for the author's framing.
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I know it when I see it
13 min read
The article directly references the Supreme Court's 'you know it when you see it' approach when discussing the report's vague definition of 'strength.' This phrase comes from Justice Potter Stewart's 1964 concurrence on obscenity - understanding its origin and legal context illuminates why the author finds the report's definitional vagueness problematic.
“Paulie said he wants it known: It’s on him, he takes full responsibility, but that he didn’t do nothin.’ ” —Silvio Dante telling Tony Soprano about a major blunder
Do you want Democrats to win and Republicans to lose? If so, you might be curious about a new report from a group called Way to Win, which bills itself as “a donor collaborative that invests in data-driven strategies to fund new media and grassroots efforts to win long-term political change.” “Towards Strength: Way to Win Post-2024 Research Summary” contains some supposedly important news for Democrats and those who want them to win elections in the future: According to The New Republic (which got exclusive access to an early copy), the report reveals “the Real Reason Democrats Lost in 2024.”
Let me go ahead and spoil that part immediately. Most of the report’s arguments about why Harris lost consist of what is now the conventional wisdom: Kamala Harris didn’t have a clear message, she didn’t present herself as a “change” candidate during a “change” election, and so on. (As the authors note, she couldn’t name a single thing she’d have done differently from Joe Biden, the flailing and unpopular incumbent to whom she was tethered.) All true, but all well-trod terrain. Even the document’s working definition of “strength,” a word that appears in its very title, doesn’t really say much that’s new: “What exactly is strength? As the Supreme Court’s famous approach would suggest: ‘you know it when you see it.’ But as a working definition: political strength is making decisions based on core values and principles, explaining choices with clear and persuasive arguments, drawing a contrast with one’s opponents, and making it clear why your approach is the better one.”
What are those core values and principles? What are those arguments? This is where things go off the rails. This document is useful less as a strategy blueprint and more as an example of a delusional — and condescending — mindset that has unfortunately taken hold among a subset of professional progressives.
Let’s Get Inclusive and Populist
According to Way to Win, there’s no need for Democrats to moderate on any hot-button issue, and in fact doing so could only help Trump. There’s a better way: “inclusive populism,” a messaging strategy that focuses on the true causes of voters’ ills — parasitic rich people and
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