Cenk Ulusoy
 | |
| Era | Tweeter Is Not Real Life (cast) |
|---|---|
| Age | 50-65 |
| Home | Los Angeles, CA |
| Demographic | progressive broadcaster, Turkish-American |
| Lean | Strong Democrat |
| Race | other |
The founder and lead host of a Los Angeles progressive network built in the Iraq War years, Turkish-American, who has spent two decades trying to take the Democratic Party from its donors. He is the loudest voice of the party's left.
Who they stand for
He stands for the older generation of the online progressive movement. This is the audience that organised against the Iraq War and against the bank bailouts of 2008, treated the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling of 2010 as its founding grievance, and organised behind Bernie Sanders in the 2016 and 2020 presidential primaries and behind primary challenges to incumbent Democrats from 2018 onward. Its members are working- and middle-class Democrats in their forties and fifties, found disproportionately in California, the Rust Belt and college towns. They want universal healthcare, a wealth tax and public financing of elections, and they blame the Democratic Party's donor class for the party's electoral defeats. They vote Democratic in general elections in November, but vote against the party establishment in its own primaries.
He differs from Crystal Ball because he still fights inside the Democratic Party rather than around it. He differs from Anna Kasparova because he built the media institution where she works. He organises the movement, and she is one of its most prominent voices.
Playing to them
A president wins his support with Medicare for All or a public health insurance option, a wealth tax, a ban on corporate money in political campaigns, antitrust prosecutions, and a public fight with a named industry. He rewards a president who takes a side against political donors and says so openly, on camera. He does not forgive a bank bailout, an austerity budget, a healthcare promise that is dropped, a cabinet drawn from Wall Street, or a president who lets the party's political consultants control the message. In his usage, corruption is simply the ordinary way that Washington works.
Winning his support costs the support of Ben Shindler, Barbara Wise and Mencius Moldrake, who regard his economic programme as confiscation of property. It also costs the support of Elliot Einstein, who distrusts government acting as an investor. Anna Kasparova, Kevin Kulinsky and Crystal Ball tend to support the same things he does on economics. Hasan Radical tends to support him when he is fighting, even though Hasan Radical does not support the Democratic Party itself.