After the 2016 election - and up to the present day - there have been Democrats/liberals who have repeatedly said things like, *“Democrats push for what’s in the interests of all Americans” *and “How did Hillary lose when she had by far the better, more thought-out policy plans than Trump,” “How did Hillary lose when she has been Senator and Secretary of State while Trump has never held elected office or public service?” “Why do rural Americans vote Republican when Democrats have the better policies for rural America?” etc.
Also referred to as the “What’s the matter with Kansas?” question, whereby Kansans vote against what is considered to be in “their best interests.”
This reflects a Democratic mindset that **trying to win an election is akin to applying to Harvard, or acing a job interview **- that your candidate puts forth his proposals and credentials against the opposing candidate’s proposals and credentials, and whoever has the better resume or white paper, wins. When in fact an election is nothing of the sort. Indeed, the past four presidents have all come to power despite being less experienced and having a shorter resume than their opponents - Clinton beating Bush Sr., Bush Jr. beating Gore, Obama beating McCain, and Trump beating Hillary.
The Democratic assumption is that voters are motivated primarily by policies - that voters value substance over style, head over heart, and logic over feelings. There is no reason to believe that this is how voters actually behave. Such a model or assumption fails to take into account that spite or anger can play a strong role in getting voters of a certain political stripe to vote against Candidate X or Party X if they feel that Candidate/Party X is condescending or “not one of them.” Republicans have tapped into this sentiment of late more effectively among certain categories of voters, and that is why the Kansas Problem exists - emotion and feelings can wield considerably more power than logic or facts.
When you put a candidate with Ivy League degrees, decades of Beltway experience and detailed policy proposals up against a demagogue who channels the anger and frustration of voters, the demagogue will almost always win.
some voters will look at the resume of the person running, how many I don’t know. Each party starts out with about 40% of the vote. It’s that middle 20% that makes the difference. I think the people who run Dem campaigns know that not everyone votes based on the resume. For example very religious people are not going to vote Dem except in rare cases.
In the general election, it’s hard for me to imagine any circumstances in which I could vote for a member of the current version of the Republican party. I care too much about opposing misogyny, sexual assault/rape, racism/bigotry, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, the environment, and many more issues, to even consider voting for the side that represents all the wrong things on these issues.
some religious voters will freely admit Trump has done a lot of bad stuff but they don’t care as long as he promotes what they want like right wing judges.
This is something I missed out on adding in the OP: Democrats assumed that conservative voters would fall on their own swords and vote (D) or abstain from voting rather than vote for a candidate with all kinds of flaws (Trump; especially after how conservatives lambasted Bill Clinton in the 1990s.)
Its nautral for people to expect other to behave/feel as they themselves behave/feel.
The Democrats don’t run people who channel hatred and anger not because they don’t think those people can win an election, but because the Democrats don’t like candidates like that and so such candidates don’t win the primary. That is also the reason why attempts to make a liberal version of Fox news or talk radio have been unsuccessful. Dems, by and large, just don’t like people lying to them the same way Republicans do.
The Democrats are not idiots. They are aware that there are a lot of people who pick who to vote for on the basis of the candidates’ public personalities.
But elections aren’t that simple. There are also people who vote based on which candidate they think will do a better job. There are people who vote based on which candidate more closely matches their position on a single issue they consider vital. There are people who vote based on what authority figures they consider reliable tell them to do. And there are a lot of people who pick a candidate for a mixture of these reasons.
You can’t reduce it down to picking a candidate the voters will want to have a beer with and you’re sure to win.
American politics can pretty much be summed up as follows for a lot of America.
On one side you have people who have high authoritarian tendencies and believe in strict social hierarchies (men over women, whites over non-whites, native born americans over immigrants, christians over other faiths, heterosexuals over LGBT, etc and feel those higher on the social hierarchy deserve better treatment) and who believe democracy is a hindrance to creating a society they want.
On the other side you have people with low authoritarian tendencies who believe in egalitarianism and believe democracy is necessary.
It sucks, but it is what it is. Maybe a small % of voters will be swayed by policy ideas, but most people know this all subconsciously and know which side of the isle they stand because of it.
The Obama voters who voted Trump in 2016 tend to fall into the first group, the Romney voters who voted Clinton in 2016 tend to fall into the second camp.
Some, yes. It does depend on the particular version of the religion – some take those instructions about how one treats the stranger in one’s midst much more seriously than others.
The part I don’t get: I can understand (not agree with, but understand) the fundamentalists who always vote for the guy who pretends to be a fundamentalist. I can even understand if the guy they’re supporting is doing a really bad job of pretending. But that’s not Trump: Trump isn’t even doing a bad job of pretending to be a Christian. He’s not even trying, at all. And they still think he’s the Chosen of God. Why!?
There are several Christian myths like that, most notably Cyrus (I think) of Persia. On a related note, Ben Carson exaggerated his criminal past (in order to make his “redemption arc” stronger). Carson had a lot of Christian support too.
Because Trump won an election they thought he would lose, and as long as he is in power, there will be lots of conservative judges getting appointments. Many on both sides think he will win the next election, which would mean even more conservative judges. (My brain tells me that such an unpopular leader cannot win another election. My heart fears that he will win somehow anyway.) I figure the less religious Republicans support him for electoral reasons as well - he somehow won an election they all thought they were going to lose, big time, after being repeatedly stomped by the Obama coalition.
It’s hard to generalize about groups as large as democrats and republicans and a lot of the responses are, sadly, inaccurate and unjustifiably self congratulatory.
If I had to post a short stereotype of how each party views the voters of the other I’d say democrats wrongly believe that their values and how they weigh those values are universal and people who vote against that assumption are spiteful. Republicans view democrats as motivated by the desire for power and the willingness to say and spend whatever it takes regardless of the strategic ramifications in order to get it.
This is another oft-ignored aspect. Republicans were desperate for electoral victory after two defeats to Obama and being told for a decade that demographics consigned them to be a minority party forever. Trump saved them - temporarily. When a man is drowning in the ocean, he isn’t going to reject a life preserver that’s thrown to him just because it’s not his favorite color.