Campaigns are always run aspirationally, but elections are referendums. For so many Americans, the stultifying small-bore, rules-bound persnicketiness of the Democratic Party became a huge turnoff. People don’t want to feel that they are being told what they can or cannot say. They’re sick of a culture of walking on eggshells. The proof is right there in the election results—and what’s a presidential election, really, if not a quadrennial performance review of an entire nation?
~ Mike Pesca

via The HR-ification of the Democratic Party
published by The Atlantic on November 12, 2024

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The average HR professional is likely to be college-educated, younger than the median worker, and wealthier than the average American. She (and usually it’s a she: 73.5 percent of HR professionals are women) is more likely to be Black or Hispanic, which is also true of Democrats.
~ Mike Pesca

via The HR-ification of the Democratic Party
published by The Atlantic on November 12, 2024

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Democrats will tell you that they are the way they are because they’re trying to help Americans, because they know what’s best. But this was no more convincing to voters than a corporation’s insistence that the HR department exists to help employees. Absolutely no one believes that, of course. HR departments work for the people who hold the power, and they reinforce the company line, whatever that may be.
~ Mike Pesca

via The HR-ification of the Democratic Party
published by The Atlantic on November 12, 2024

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The Democrats banked on the idea that classic mommy-party traits—nurturing, fretting about life’s dangers—would appeal to voters worried about the chaos of Trumpism. Instead, their warnings came across as scolding, while Donald Trump’s wild antics were either embraced by his party as a selling point or dismissed as the harmless by-product of his showmanship.
~ Mike Pesca

via The HR-ification of the Democratic Party
published by The Atlantic on November 12, 2024

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Like human resources, the Democrats are a party of norms, procedure, bureaucracy, DEI initiatives, rule following, language policing, and compliance. It is in this way that the Democratic Party feels not so much infuriating and threatening, but just kind of an annoying bummer.
~ Mike Pesca

via The HR-ification of the Democratic Party
published by The Atlantic on November 12, 2024

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I’ve been thinking this past week about how the Democratic Party is seen, and it hit me: The Democratic Party resembles that most American of institutions: the HR department.
~ Mike Pesca

via The HR-ification of the Democratic Party
published by The Atlantic on November 12, 2024

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