When Platner observed, “we live in a political system that is not built for normal people”, the implication was that he is a normal person, which the shenanigans of recent months have comprehensively disproved.

Even if you don’t think Platner is a normal person, you can’t deny that he appealed to a lot of normal people. But then, maybe “normal” just isn’t a useful adjective. I don’t know. Of course, Platner doesn’t necessarily have to be a normal person himself for the statement to be true. Platner can be abnormal and we can live in a political system that is not built for normal people. It can also be true that liberal elites have a general disdain for “normal” people. Or at least they have disdain for the voters who find uncouth, crass, ill-mannered populists appealing. Whether or not those voters are “normal” is a matter of debate, I suppose. But if they’re not normal, who is? And even if the populists aren’t “normal,” they still exist. In the millions. Ignorant, unrefined and problematic they may be, they exist. In this society, with you. What will the liberal elites do about them? They’ve tried snark and condescension, but for some reason it just hasn’t worked.

Why does this matter? Certainly every party or large societal group has various factions and pressure groups. It matters because lots of groups have the sense that the Democratic Party is fundamentally theirs or that they should have some pride of place in its direction. But in a purely descriptive sense this is simply not true. And that leads to what we might call chronic discourses of betrayal running through all its factional struggles. We’re seeing one of those now, unfolding in multiple directions.

Every other democracy on the planet figured this out a century or more ago, with party pluralism through proportional representation. Instead we have a defacto two party system, due to our winner-take-all, first past the post elections. In any other democracy, social democrats (“progressives” in the US) would have their own party, the liberals ("centrists, moderates or establishment Democrats in the US) would have their own party, and socialists/Democratic socialists would have a party. There would likely be a labor party, and a green party. Here, just the Democrats. That’s it. All of those ideological groups competing for control of one party.

This country is such bullshit. My whole fucking life I’ve been fed this crap about the unparalleled virtues of our glorious, enlightened, liberal representative democracy. But it’s a crock. Millions of us have no representation. Sure, there is a member of the House and Two senators in Congress who are supposed to represent me and every other American in my congressional district and state, respectively, but I didn’t vote for any of them. The candidates I did vote for all lost. The candidates who won don’t represent me. They don’t represent my values, my beliefs, my morals, my ideals. No one does. Representative democracy my ass.

I said we were evil. Is that not strong enough language?

I’m assuming you’re a normal person.

No, I’m not normal. I’m problematic. I wouldn’t pass liberal purity tests. So it can’t be me, it’s gotta be one of y’all. People like me and Platner can’t do it, we’re far too flawed. Evil, even. It’s going to have to be one of the morally normal liberals. So which one of you are gonna step up and make the sacrifice?

Well hopefully the people who wanted to vote for him will be eliminated, too. With any luck all of society will be as pure and righteous as you, someday.

What?

Does he think his history counts as “normal people”?

I think he does think that. Apparently many disagree. My question is: why don’t the really normal people run for office themselves? If even one tenth of one percent of people who are celebrating Planter dropping out were to run themselves, there’d be so many candidates you’d think at least one of them would be acceptable.

Well the Nazi is out of the race so you don’t need to worry about him anymore.

It’s AIPAC’s country, we’re just livin’ in it.

For all its many, many faults, MAGA/Trump, or, let’s say MAGAT, for short, was an organic movement. Trump was the right person at the right time for a populist movement to coalesce around. You cannot impose a new leader on that movement now. It doesn’t work that way. I don’t see JD Vance having anywhere near the same populist support among the MAGATs as Trump. Populist support would have to coalesce around a new leader, organically. In the absence of a new consensus leader, the MAGAT movement will fracture.

The truly remarkable thing about this country is its ingenious ability—through elections, immigration, freedom of speech, and economic mobility—to constantly remake itself.

I’ve heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. I don’t know where that comes from necessarily, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

I’m sorry, I should have been more clear. I’m not using liberal as in people who identify as politically “liberal” in the US. I’m talking about adherents of the philosophy of Liberalism.

Liberalism is the philosophical ideology that underlies capitalism.

Even with “No Kings” protests—the whole name of the protest is the idea that our Founding Fathers said no to monarchy, to tyrants, and threw that off. What is more accurate is that they didn’t want to be colonial subjects themselves but still wanted to be an empire. They just wanted to be the center of power of that empire.

There it is. The rot at the core of liberalism. They didn’t want to be subjects of a king, because they wanted to be kings themselves, of their own private kingdoms with their own subjects. They owned large amounts of land, possessed incredible wealth and they owned slaves who labored for them. You know, like a king.

This mentality is still very much alive today in liberalism. Many corporations are like the private kingdoms of men with the ambition of creating a personal empire, with all the power, control, and domination that goes along with it. And liberals don’t just tolerate this, they celebrate it. Because these wanna-be god emperors are “innovators” and “job creators,” in the minds of liberals.

So, of course, defenders of the status quo politics that voters are so aggressively rejecting have turned to the oldest of all arguments: the claim that while socialists—along with progressive populists who are open to a bolder politics—may be appealing to a small segment of the public, they aren’t “electable” outside of, say, New York City. And, well, Denver, and Washington, and Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, and Tempe, Arizona, and the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, and all the other places where they have won during the current primary season.

The demsocs are offering a vision for a better America. Whether or not they will actually be able to create that better America I don’t know, but they’re giving the people something. Some kind of hope, some kind of solutions. Centrist Democrats are offering nothing, except more of the same, more of what we know isn’t working for large numbers of people.

Centrist Democrats only ever tell us what won’t work, but never what will. They’re adamant that democratic socialism will fail, but when asked what will work their only answer is more neoliberal capitalism. More of the same, more of what millions of Americans know doesn’t work because of their lived experiences. If centrist Democrats can’t figure out why that’s a losing strategy, then they’re dumber than Trump.

Portnoy has previously said he’s disliked the mayor, claiming last year that he had thought about taking Barstool’s office out of NYC if Mamdani won the election (which he ultimately did.)

“We have all those people who that (messes) up their life just because I hate the guy,” he said at the time. “It’s a catch-22. I may close the New York office … because I can’t stand the thought of Mamdani running … New York City.”

I watched the video and it really opened up my eyes to the psychology that underlies politics. Identity is so important to people, and people get really, really upset when someone they don’t share an identity with gets put into a position of power and authority over them. Portnoy feels about Mamdani the way I feel about Trump. I hate Trump, and I can’t stand the thought of him running the Federal government.

So what do we do? Centralize authority at the Federal level and force all the people to accept science and liberal or social democratic values, and the more they resist the more we tighten our grip? Or should we split up? Let them have their evangelical Christian utopia while all the educated people come together and form a rational society? Or do we just patiently wait and continue to plead the case for liberalism or social democracy or third way, or whatever, and have faith that in the free market place of ideas the best and truest ideology will eventually out compete all others until it’s all that remains, end of history style?