Yeah everyone; try to be more like me 
(…or don’t do the snark in the first place, apologies @DrDeth. Although I am keen to hear some elaboration).
No problem.
And- that post was a bit of a hijack, and how many times have I been Mod Noted for going along with a hijack and hijacking it even more?
I said what was needed, and dropped it.
To recap my contribution to this thread: Democrats have not been successful infiltrating or otherwise convincing Trump voters because Democrats disparage Trump voters and it is difficult to win votes from people you’re disparaging.
Remember the “basket of deplorables” incident? That gaffe alone may have been enough to push Mr. Trump over the finishline in 2016.
~Max
Still waiting for evidence that the opposite approach actually works.
- It was a very close election and there were a number of any single things that could have swung the result.
- She was absolutely right, as is being proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, when she said:
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” Clinton said. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it.”
So she was just “telling it like it is”. That’s the kind of straightforward talk those other half Trump voters appreciate, right? And about that other half:
She said the other half of Trump’s supporters “feel that the government has let them down” and are “desperate for change.”
“Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well,” she said.
Except that other half would rather look the other way while fascists take over the country. Not exactly a profile in courage, are they?
The question isn’t whether her claim was correct. The question is whether it was a good idea for her to say so, right then. Do you believe that she concluded — soon after having, uh, said so — that she shouldn’t have said that right then, and that it’d be a good idea for her to backpedal on it?
And the point was that those voters who appreciate leaders “telling it like it is” should have flocked to her, or at least acknowledged her correctness in hindsight. But for some reason they haven’t, nor will they. Trying to appeal to voters that ignore basic facts is a fool’s game.
Do you think her saying that made things worse for her election odds — or better, or that it made no difference? Because it seems to me it’s entirely possible to have a situation where (a) like you say, one can’t really build up a bigger appeal; but (b) one can still keep from making things worse.
Long run, little to no difference. No one promised this story has a happy ending.
The closest animal we’ve had in the US to Trump is Huey Long. Nothing stopped him but a bullet.
More likely what helped Trump was all the people bashing her for it, just like they bashed Tim Walz for calling them weird, and for anything other than abject submission to the Right.
Because absolutely nothing is going to convince the Right to vote for anything other than bigotry and cruelty, but constantly groveling to the Republicans does a good job of driving away potential Democratic voters. And encourage both the Republicans and their base since they accurately see it as a sign of weakness.
The Democrats haven’t convinced the Right because nothing and no one ever convinces the Right. They will remain intransigent and hateful until the day they die. The Right is defeated or worked around, but never convinced. They are only ever outmaneuvered, forced into compliance or outright defeated in war.
Right.
Let’s also remember that Clinton used the expression “open borders” once, in a private meeting with business leaders, and was clearly talking about open trade. Yet it remains one of the most successful (and recurring) attacks in modern US politics.
My point being, the 2016 election was based on a right-wing that had been throwing mud at Clinton for many years and now was escalating the disinformation machine in the new media landscape. In the alternate universe where Clinton had not made the deplorables comment there would have been something else that they would have spun as Clinton being elitist. And you can show her you’re a true-blood american by voting for the golden toilet guy! 'murica!