Pelosi and Dem leaders spent several years defending the idea that the key to replicating 2018, and winning swing districts, was a laser focus on health care issues, and to avoid conflict with Trump.

And they won the argument! Their strategy was universally implemented.
Then, the 2020 downballot races were a disaster, and Dems leaders' role in deciding messaging strategy was instantly forgotten by almost everyone. To hear it today, Dems spent months talking about socialism and police abolition.
DC Dems are suffering a bizarre collective amnesia, seemingly unable to recognize that they got to run the exact race that leadership urged them to run... and it failed.
It's the most transparent act of scapegoating. How could it possibly be that some 22-year old black activist in NYC is fully to blame for Dem losses, while the powerful party leadership, whose preferences were treated as unimpeachable wisdom, shares no blame at all?
Take a step back and it couldn't be more obvious:

Pelosi and Schumer preferred a low-conflict health-care focused campaign. They forced their caucuses to run that campaign, and the caucuses did.

Then, it failed, pretty miserably, with dire consequences.

Hold them accountable.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Will Stancil

Will Stancil Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @whstancil

12 Nov
For people asking why Dems are so gloomy, here's the baseline scenario for the next eight years of American government. It's a nightmare:
2021:
-Recession
-COVID
-Gridlock in Congress
-GOP-run statehouses gerrymanders new congressional districts with Trump's disrupted Census
-SCOTUS strikes down Biden executive orders, begins rolling back reproductive rights, civil rights, etc.
2022:
-Dems lose House in midterms, assisted by gerrymandering
-GOP holds Senate in midterms
-GOP state control increases as gerrymandering is intensified nationwide
Read 16 tweets
12 Nov
This is the part of the Trump narrative that liberals are most blind to. Dem leadership, especially in the House, has been a catastrophe. Petty, parochial, short-sighted, inert, unable to rise to any challenge, and obsessed with maintaining its own power.
Even now, with zero accomplishments to their name, Trump unchecked at any point except (perhaps) by the election result, all previous promises of oversight expired with the clock run out, and an electoral flop, many liberals think they’re watching genius in action.
All the literally hundreds of message bills Pelosi bragged about, what did they do? Absolutely nothing - none of them will ever become law.

All of the promises of “arrows in the quiver” - were any ever fired?

The assurances that “healthcare” would increase majorities? Imploded.
Read 4 tweets
11 Nov
"It couldn't possibly be our dismal leadership, our do-nothing House, or our uninspiring, one-note message. It was that some activists, in a totally different state, used a slogan in June, that we didn't embrace."
Still waiting for someone to explain to me why the polls IMPROVED after "defund the police" became a thing. Were the polls right before, but wrong after? Does that make any sense at all?
There was clearly some kind of structural error in the polling. But if that's the case, the Senate Dems were WEAKER THAN THEY LOOKED ALL ALONG. The whole "blame the left" thing presupposes they were winning in March and then secretly losing in July.
Read 4 tweets
10 Nov
Right now Republicans are going on TV every night and calling the election a fraud.

Meanwhile, the Democrat who just won by millions of votes, and his entire party, are still in their perpetual defensive huddle, afraid to use any tool of government to protect themselves.
I’m not “imagining” any tools. You can subpoena the GSA heads. You can subpoena the resigned DOJ attorney and other members of DOJ. You can impeach Barr. You do not have to simply sit and wait for all crises to resolve themselves.
Read 5 tweets
10 Nov
People are worried about coups, but the thing causing me real despair is the prospect of living for decades in an ever-tightening vice of right-wing gerrymandering and court packing, in which there is no election victory large enough to permit anyone left of center to govern
Self-styled moderates in the political class see this as salutary, because they think it forces compromise. But it doesn’t, even in the most optimistic rendering, because the right has no such limitation. The right can easily secure governing trifectas with a minority of the vote
The undemocratic structure of our government has created a one-way ratchet: Republicans win total control and further clamp down on civil society, then government becomes divided, creating an interregnum in which they block any swing in the other direction.
Read 8 tweets
9 Nov
It’s really striking how all the GOP ads imply Dem reps are crooked and the puppet of an unpopular party leader.

I wonder if Dems could have alleged something similar, but decided to talk about health care instead? Nah, probably not, that would be crazy.
Moderate Dems: “We all ran behind Biden! It’s AOC’s fault!”

Me: “Did you... did you try to tie your opponent to Donald Trump and yourself to Joe Biden?”

Moderate Dems: “No! We spent three years specifically avoiding it and begging Pelosi not to nationalize our races!”
In a little bit of historic irony, it was specifically Conor Lamb’s 2017 special election that convinced House Dems that the key to winning was to deemphasize Donald Trump. At the time, a few of us on here were very concerned over it, begged the party to rethink.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!