The key thing needed to understand the DLC/Third Way era is that Dems had lost the White House by considerable margins three cycles in a row. The New Deal coalition was over. Clinton came up with a strategy to win again (against an experienced incumbent who just won a war).
Then Gore won a narrow majority but lost the Electoral College. Bush won in 2004 but Obama had strong wins in 2008 and 2012. Clinton again won a good majority in 2016 buy you know what happened. And now Biden.

So Dems don’t really have a problem winning the presidency.. so…
Talking about presidential strategies doesn’t make sense! It never has. Because we are talking about Congress. And Dems have many obstacles to winning seats that can’t usually be transcended by electoral strategy.
Yes gerrymandering and yes demographic concentration in cities. but also nationalization of politics.

• • •

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

Keep Current with Peter A. Shulman 📚

Peter A. Shulman 📚 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 @pashulman

8 Oct
Here’s a fun fact: the first modern Gifted and Talented programs were initially created in Georgia and North Carolina in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
They were definitely pushed by educators and psychologists who had sincere reasons for doing so—many believed there was a population of unusually bright children not only under-challenged by standard coursework but actively hurt by it.
The Cold War pressure for math-science education was another influence. The country needed more scientists and engineers!
Read 6 tweets
1 Oct
Utterly, impossibly incoherent.

You could laud enslaved people struggling for their freedom but not answer against whom they struggled.

People who contributed to American society can only have done so beneficially, so those who did negative things cannot be mentioned?
You could maybe teach abolitionism but not the most famous speeches by Frederick Douglass or William Lloyd Garrison attacking the Constitution.
Teachers might mention a book called Uncle Tom's Cabin galvanized northern opinion about slavery but, as fiction, not teach it?
Read 6 tweets
1 Oct
I know competitive college admissions is baseline stressful for everyone going through it, but there are over 25,000 high schools in the US; most have some kind of valedictorian, who is typically among a group of other also-high achieving, activity-leading, high-scoring students.
Harvard, Yale, and Princeton each admit about 2,000 students a year. Also include the high number of international student applications and the many applicants who are elite in some unique area and thus attractive to admit but not necessarily valedictorian or SAT-perfect.
It really is hard to stand out when these elite schools have not grown their class sizes as their number of applicants has grown enormously.
Read 8 tweets
22 Sep
Two quick thoughts: one, my 11th grade AP History teacher, Mr. Carey, used to beg us to do some clever prank, the cleverer the better. Move the whole classroom to the gym. Stuff like that. But not fundamentally destructive stuff. Channel the desire for adolescent mischief.
Two: when I first started at MIT, I took the midnight "Orange Tour," which involved several hours of guided explorations of sub-basement tunnels & the roofs of the dome & stuff. MIT has a long tradition of pranks ("hacks") & this tour was a way to teach new students the rules.
At one point on the tour, we were brought to a kind of underground "commandments" for hacking. All I remember was prioritizing being clever and not permanently damaging property or risking injury.
Read 6 tweets
12 Sep
I've been off the internet most of the day but there's still a bit of time to recount my incredibly banal where-I-was-on-9/11 story.
I had just started grad school. Between the time I'd left home to walk across campus to my office, the first plane had struck the North Tower. A large group of students, mostly management students, were already clustered around a lobby tv watching the news.
I truthfully cannot remember if I saw the second tower get struck or if it had also just happened. I've seen so many videos everything blurs together. Eventually I pulled myself away to get to my actual office, where I found fellow shocked students packing up to head home.
Read 14 tweets
18 Jul
Because this is making the rounds, it’s important to understand the broader context, and also how Texas Republicans did something foolish then tried to clean it up by doing something that also looks foolish.
When Texas Republicans passed their H.B. 3979, they tried to balance it’s misguided awfulness—and assuage critics—with a list of *positive* civil rights topics for teachers to continue to teach. It’s a good list! legiscan.com/TX/text/HB3979…
It’s also a ridiculously detailed and lengthy list in an already-confusing bill. Is every social studies class in Texas supposed to include every name, document, & event—in this bill? Does it supplement existing state standards? What gets cut to make room? Why these & not others?
Read 6 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!

:(