There's just zero leadership within the Democratic establishment.

It's a party run by an entrenched, aging cadre of folks who have been around forever *because* they never made waves or rocked the boat.

I say "aging" not to be down on elders, but because the elders in the establishment have not built up any meaningful back bench of younger leaders and actively fight emerging young leaders.

The problem isn't the presence of elders, it's the absence of any sort of age diversity.
In lieu of accepting a diversity of age in leadership in a way that would allow for younger voices to be represented, they pay a small universe of privileged younger operatives to tell them what they want to hear-- that they can win young people with slick, empty marketing.
That's how you get a campaign like HRC in 2020, with its attempt to replace actual attention to millennial generation issues with a slick and often cringey hard push on celebrity surrogacy (and perpetual mom-trying-to-do-instagram vibes).
It's condescending, it's misguided, and we see it in every jokey Biden White House press release.

The playbook is, be 2007 Obama without making any of the bold promises that millennials naively assumed 2007 Obama was making (explicitly and implicitly).
Except, millennials learned from Obama that vague rhetoric doesn't mean big action.

We've learned to want actual meat in terms of promises *and* in terms of action, and the Dem establishment is still hoping they can sell us Shepard Fairey poster platitudes.
And again, it's not even like they're playing chess.

They're just the most party loyal, the ones that displayed the least real leadership, risked the least for justice or positive change.

They're just bureaucrat lifers.

There's no grand plan beyond, retire in a coffin.
They're coasting off Trump's loss right now.

What scares me is that they simply aren't equipped to counter the inevitable next wave of white supremacist electoral populism.

They weren't equipped to handle this past one, and Trump very much isn't the end.
The fact that they can't even manage to use this impeachment to compellingly close that chapter, tell this story, and build some shared narrative here is ample evidence of that.

It's beyond disappointing, but also completely predictable.

This is the state of the party.

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1/“What would need to be true for you to….X”

Why is this the most powerful question you can ask when attempting to reach an agreement with another human being or organization?

A thread, co-written by @deanmbrody:


2/ First, “X” could be lots of things. Examples: What would need to be true for you to

- “Feel it's in our best interest for me to be CMO"
- “Feel that we’re in a good place as a company”
- “Feel that we’re on the same page”
- “Feel that we both got what we wanted from this deal

3/ Normally, we aren’t that direct. Example from startup/VC land:

Founders leave VC meetings thinking that every VC will invest, but they rarely do.

Worse over, the founders don’t know what they need to do in order to be fundable.

4/ So why should you ask the magic Q?

To get clarity.

You want to know where you stand, and what it takes to get what you want in a way that also gets them what they want.

It also holds them (mentally) accountable once the thing they need becomes true.

5/ Staying in the context of soliciting investors, the question is “what would need to be true for you to want to invest (or partner with us on this journey, etc)?”

Multiple responses to this question are likely to deliver a positive result.