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2 months agoThis is an issue that Biden has consistently refused to understand to be a political loser well before any suggestion of a decline. He’s consistently vocal on it in a way that would suggest he genuinely believes it to be a winning position.
In reality, it’s practically impossible to do and mostly serves to energize the right and alienate voters in states he actually needs to win. It’d literally be better politically to say nothing on the topic, but he insists on pouring fuel on the “they want to ban our guns” fire.
I have been, on the whole, positive about Biden, but this is a massive blindspot he’s held for a long time.
Deeper than that. Obama inherited the party infrastructure Howard Dean built as DNC chair that was effective at state and local levels. That infrastructure completely fell apart after Obama loyalists took over the party after 2008. Dean ran a 50 state strategy and had built the party to support lower level candidates and contest elections Democrats had traditionally ignored. Post Obama the party shifted back to a focus on marquee races that didn’t really provide support to state parties and startup candidates.
That’s genuinely the single biggest Obama fuckup that doesn’t really get talked about much because it’s very insider baseball. But it’s had very real effects on how Democrats have failed in lower level elections in the years since, which has percolated up into everything else since.