Thread by @DoctorVive

I've been thinking about the look on Trump's face when a few days ago he declared his love for the people who chant "send them back" at his rallies. It is furious. Passionate. Completely committed.

And it is precisely what the Democrats have no idea how to confront in 2020.

1/n

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1157028667698176000

In her amazing *On the Political*, Chantal Mouffe talks about what she calls "the affective dimension" in politics.

Her work offers an important corrective to both @JoeBiden's wan bipartisanship and @ewarren's (& @SenSanders') politics of economic critique.

2/n

@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders Mouffe writes: "Nationalist hatred emerges when [an Other] is perceived as threatening our enjoyment. It has its origin, therefore, in the way social groups deal with their lack of enjoyment by attributing it to the presence of an enemy which is 'stealing' it."

3/n

@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders [This book was published in 2005, by the way.]

4/n

@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders Mouffe continues: To see "how such a transformation of national identifications into friend/enemy relations can be averted, it is necessary to acknowledge the affective bonds with support them. Now, this is precisely what the rationalist approach [to politics] forecloses..."

5/n

@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders "Hence the impotence of liberal theory [ie the kind of policy-based, consensus-oriented politics espoused by the Democrats] in the face of the eruption of nationalist antagonisms."

6/n

@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders The problem with the politics that only tries to solve problems, that only responds to people's "kitchen table" concerns, never operating on the affective gut level of Trump's diabolical "I love them," is that "the need for collective identifications will never disappear."

7/n

@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders "In the field of politics those identifications play a central role and the affective role which they provide needs to be taken into account by democratic theorists."

8/n

@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders To believe you can take power without invoking those identifications "is to abandon that terrain to those who want to undermine democracy."

People who believe that "do not see that democratic politics needs to have a real purchase on people's desires and fantasies, and..."

9/n

@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders "Instead of opposing interests to sentiments and reason to passions, [people running for office] should offer forms of identification conductive to democratic principles." (All from pg 28).

10/n

@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders This is what @SpeakerPelosi fails to understand when she sneers that @AOC and the squad don't have a strong inside game (yet): she fails to see that they're producing exactly these kinds of identifications, generating the very affective bonds that could beat Trump.

11/n

@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders @SpeakerPelosi @AOC That she's putting these women "in their place" is profoundly short-sighted and stupid. Instead she should be figuring out how to circulate some of their mojo, some of the LOVE they clearly have for democracy and justice, to the 2020 candidates.

12/n

@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders @SpeakerPelosi @AOC Brilliant as they are, none of the 2020 candidates is creating a vision that enables voters to identify themselves with collective *meaning* when they pull the lever for a Democrat.

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@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders @SpeakerPelosi @AOC Democratic candidates are not yet offering voters, as Mouffe puts it, "a collective identity which provides an idea of themselves they can valorize" (25).

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@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders @SpeakerPelosi @AOC And it is absolutely crucial that a Democrat give people an ideal vision of themselves. Not just so she can take the Oval Office, but because our country is in grave danger.

Trump is practicing stochastic terrorism by affirming his bonds of love with armed white supremacists.

@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders @SpeakerPelosi @AOC The GOP, led by #MoscowMitch, are dismantling the governmental norms, from voting to SCOTUS, that enable us to resolve our conflicts peacefully, using the same rule book for everybody.

16/n

@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders @SpeakerPelosi @AOC You would think that this alone would be enough to have a Democrat win in a landslide. But Mouffe would argue the opposite. She would say that the very breakdown of norms, the rise in terror, requires people to be brave.

17/n

@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders @SpeakerPelosi @AOC But people are not going to be brave unless they have an ideal in their hearts, a vision that they love, that they feel they want to live up to.

18/n

@JoeBiden @ewarren @SenSanders @SpeakerPelosi @AOC "Political discourse has to offer not only policies but also identities which help people make sense of what they are experiencing as well was giving them hope for the future."

/fin