Thread by @Noahpinion

Interesting thread, but I'm not sure this sort of rhetoric will get anyone's notice. Elected leaders are expected to say this stuff, so people tune them out.

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1457499654787055617

The Twitter activists and media figures who people see -- rightly or wrongly -- as the true face of the progressive movement are not going to praise Columbus or say America is a great nation. So I don't think it really matters what Biden and Harris say here.

Biden already did this with "defund the police". He said, very clearly, from day 1, that he didn't want to defund the police.

But Republicans still run on the message that Democrats don't just want to defund the police, but did, in fact, already do it!

abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden…

Of course Republicans who say that are lying. But they're able to get away with it because the Twitter activists and media figures who are the actual public face of the progressive movement didn't tone down their anti-police rhetoric until pretty recently.

What progressivism really needs in order to avoid being painted as an anti-American movement is for activists and media figures to say pro-American things -- not grudgingly, but loudly and repeatedly.

And to be frank, I don't think they're ready to do that yet.

It might take Republicans winning a few elections on a sunny, pro-American, Reaganesque sort of message (rather than Trump's dark, apocalyptic white-nationalism) in order to convince progressive Twitter activists and media figures that anti-Americanism is political poison.

But frankly, I don't think Republicans are there yet either. Maybe Glenn Youngkin is. Maaaaybe DeSantis. But it's still Trump's party, and Tucker Carlson's party. And they're still on their own anti-American kick.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

Progressive activists and media figures still generally believe that America is a nation based on white supremacy.

And Trumpist activists and media figures believe America isn't really America *unless* it's based on white supremacy.

Meanwhile, the general public in America is still strongly pro-American. Even with national pride being near a record low, almost 70% of Americans are still "very" or "extremely" proud to be Americans.

This pro-American majority is so big that just capturing a little piece of it could lead to smashing electoral victories.

But while *politicians* are happy to pander to that majority, the online activists and media figures on both sides have little interest in doing so.

Whichever movement is the first to figure out how to tell Americans that their country is great while still feeling like they're true to their own hearts and their own principles will control this country for a generation, I think.

(end)