Yeah, this. We’re in the position of having no influence over who the US elects, but still having to deal with that person. And when that person is known for holding epic grudges, step one is not going out of your way to annoy them.
Every other country in the world is going to spend the next several years walking the tightrope of not annoying Trump, while also trying not to just roll over and give him everything he wants. It’s not going to be fun or easy.
Yes, exactly. While I don’t think we should call them stupid, we need to acknowledge the reality that they are stupid. Part of fixing that will be putting a lot more money into schools, but that won’t fix the stupid people who have already graduated.
No, I don’t understand. Why do you claim that lefty rhetoric is damaging to Dems, while ignoring the vast scale and toxicity of right wing rhetoric. Dems are not communists, nor are they drug addicts on adrenochrome or doing anything of the insanity claimed by the right.
There is no comparison here.
At some point, I have to conclude that if my side is failing to communicate with the overwhelming majority of white people without a college education - you know, the working class people that the Democrats are supposed to represent - then that’s a problem with my side’s communication.
Repeating that the root cause is that those people are stupid is not helpful. Unless the plan is to set up reeducation camps, we’re going to HAVE TO find a way to communicate our message to them.
Because that rhetoric is damaging to them too, and I consider that a good thing rather than a problem to be solved.
For example, I disagree with Kamala Harris on plenty of things, but I wasn’t about to vote for Trump, mostly because of that toxic rhetoric (and the actions that back it up).
I didn’t make one.
Democrats have won 3 of the 7 elections in years starting with 2. They won two because they had a charismatic candidate and one because of dissatisfaction with the incumbent. This time around, they didn’t have either of those advantages. They needed to find a message that would persuade voters and they didn’t accomplish that,
That’s not a persuasive message.
Well, yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. How do you craft a message to explain that Trump’s positions on tariffs are fundamentally flawed? We had hundreds of academics saying that, and it didn’t work. And we can have this same discussion about almost anything Trump said.
Democrats need to start workshopping easy-to-understand catchphrases. That, or just become Trump and lie about everything.
Oh, and btw, Trump’s “They’re eating the cats!” type nonsense is also predicated on the underlying assumption that the voters are too stupid to see through the obvious lies, so enough with that. Their stupidity has already been weaponized.
Well I think you put the Dems loss on the fact that they were off putting to voters, I just cannot square this idea when the party that they voted for ran on a platform of personal vendetta and revenge.
Trump used the most hateful rhetoric at all times during his political life. I don’t understand.
No; they won’t under any circumstances vote for the people they want to hurt and kill. And they can’t be persuaded otherwise, so there’s no point trying.
Trying to persuade these people to support them - usually at the expense of their own supporters - is one of the reasons the Democrats have had more and more trouble winning elections. It never does anything but lose them votes and make them look weak and untrustworthy.
They are not just stupid, they’re utter morons. They actually want prices to go down — which would only happen in a total economic collapse! And…they think Trump somehow can magically make that happen, and would have magically made the whole global inflation never happen in the first place!
They are true imbeciles. All of them.
At the risk of nitpicking, it’s not stupidity - it’s willful bias.
I have never personally known a stupid Trump voter. To the contrary, many of them hold high positions of management, or degrees in science, literature, music, have extensive experience in challenging fields, etc. Tens of millions of Americans with college degrees voted for Trump.
What most had in common was a willful slant or bias to the right. One Redditor comment stuck out to me, a woman who complained that her father, a Trump voter, called himself a “skeptic,” but what he meant by that was that he held Trump to the lowest of all evidence standards while holding the left to the highest of rigorous standards.
I doubt that a strategy of I’m not going to call you stupid, I’m just going to treat you like you’re stupid will be effective. And an education strategy could take up to 40 years to have an impact. Maybe the Democratic Party could try having a candidate and policies that would inspire people? Nah, that’s probably not realistic either. It certainly didn’t happen yesterday,
You never present any evidence for these assertions…
Then why did Trump win while doing slightly worse with white voters but much better with Hispanic voters and slightly better with black voters? Are all these people just self hating racists?
No, they just think the leopards won’t eat their face. Watch those same black and Hispanic Trump voters be surprised when they end up targeted in the persecution too.
How do you “inspire” people who heard, “They’re eating the cats!”, and thought, “Yeah, he’s got my vote!”? Should the Democrats just adopt all of Trump’s positions, minus the cat-eating ones?
I think the majority of voters, and a larger majority of voters on the right, decide who to vote for based on how the person makes them feel. They build a rationale for their decision after having made it.
This is why Trump is so unsinkable. If he appeals to a voter and something comes out that the voter doesn’t like, if the voter can still come up with a rationale for supporting him, they will do that. Hence “he was joking,” “he won’t really do that,” “liberal media/fake news,” etc. Very few people are so shaken by a revelation that they can’t rationalize it away.
See above. That factually accurate message takes more than a sentence to explain, and if one isn’t paying close attention, one might think that support for tightening border security and deporting people who are not here legally is being tarred as racist. It’s easier for people who like Trump to just accept the assertion that she’s the one who let them all in.
And who a person likes or feels good about as a candidate can definitely be influenced by unconscious factors like bias. So the voter might be voting as they are for racist or sexist reasons, but they won’t see it that way.
Because to many people, religion trumps race.
Hispanics are by and large religious and socially conservative. Many of them are conservative/religious to the point where they’d even vote for a racist guy like Trump if he furthers their religious views. To be sure, they don’t like his racism, but they are willing to overlook it in the name of the bigger cause.
I used to attend a Chinese church in Texas. Many of the people there supported Trump despite every bad thing he said about China and Kung Flu and whatnot - because he was in line with their religious views.
Yeah, we need to radically shift strategy. We need to focus on the issues that people care about - in this election, that was immigration and the economy. And unfortunately, even if true, the message “we are actually doing great in these two areas” doesn’t resonate with people.
It seems like social issues, even federal protection of abortion rights, are losing issues. And honestly, that was surprising to me. Multiple states went for Trump while also voting to protect abortion at the state level. That should tell us something. I didn’t expect that, but I’m learning from it.
Because people find bullies hot and identify with them.
Maybe - just maybe - we are wrong about that being the appeal.
I think we cared a lot more about that line than Trump supporters did.