I think that many that tells us that we should “not go low” when dealing with this issue are ignoring how in the past, a lot of people that indeed are not much involved can be”reached” by not pulling back, one has to lower the levels and be more direct, while still keeping a bit of accuracy.
I do remember how James Burke in the Day the Universe Changed, showed how the growing protestant movements in Germany took on the corrupt pope and his indulgences in 1545.
Turns out that the way was not only to go high, but to know also when to take the gloves off… or fart in the general direction of the ones corrupting government and demolishing laws and institutions while appealing at all levels of understanding.
(The day the universe changed. Episode 4.Episode 4: A matter of fact: Printing transforms knowledge. James Burke.)
“[Luther’s] techniques came together in the pamphlets, color anti-pope cartoons for the illiterates, German for the locals, Latin for the church men, but in any form the message is clear.. [fart noise]”
I have to say it, we will have to go high and low against the current corruption.
I suspect it largely comes down to a combination of decades of propaganda about the evils of socialism, the common American conviction that they’ll be rich one day, and a probably-accurate disbelief that the Democrats will even consider actually doing something about it.
I think we’re running into some psychological issues here. You can’t explain to them how the economy works because it’s a reminder they were fooled by lies any fool should have easily seen through. They should have easily seen through Trump’s like that China would pay the tariffs and fill America’s coffers. When you tell them how tariffs work, it makes them feel stupid, so they lash out at you.
I think this is the biggest factor. Plenty of people don’t understand economics and don’t want to spend the time to do so, but that means they have to trust the experts - to know what they are doing, and to have their best interests at heart. A large chunk of the population no longer does.
I also agree with this. There’s a definite lack of vision. And this is one area where the moderates are worse than the far left. When so many people are unhappy with the economy and with life in general, promising more of the same with merely minor tweaks is not a winning message.
And, honestly, economic issues are complex, and actually understanding them takes knowledge, as well as an ability and willingness to put thought into the effort. Most people don’t want to make the effort to work hard at understanding it (among many other complicated things in modern life).
IMO, a big part of Trump’s appeal has been in saying, “the Democrats tell you this is complicated, but it’s really not. It’s simple, it’s straightforward, and I’ll fix it.” And that messaging – as well as the messaging, mentioned upthread, that “it’s the others’ fault” – is understandable, and viscerally appealing.
This will come off as rude, but I see this and other comments trying to explain this phenomenon and I just shake my head.
This board is founded on the idea of asking questions and getting answers. And so it attracts people who like to ask questions and get answers. A large percentage of humans, possibly even a sizable majority, are not wired this way at all. Spending any significant amount of time in any kind of service job where you serve a large-ish sample of other humans tends to support this idea.
A large swath of the population operates on simple operant condition; “If I do X, then I’ll get Y.” “WHY might X lead or not lead to Y?” is not a question that is considered. “I voted X, did I have more money than before?” Yes, then vote the same way. No, then vote differently or not at all. Never mind that there are a dozen reasons why one might have more or less money that have nothing to do with who holds political office; a large percentage of people have no interest in “why.” Attempting to explain just results in the Charlie Brown noise-perception of teachers, and it’s annoying.
Outline a vision. Tell people what they need to do to achieve the vision. Deliver on the vision. Hope for some luck, and hope forces outside your control don’t derail you in your quest to deliver. Stop trying to explain how things work. Many people don’t give a damn why; they just want to know what they need to do to get what they want, ideally with the least amount of effort on their parts.
I’m not entirely sure centrist candidates will appeal to majority of activist Democrats. For that matter, I’m not sure centrist candidates will appeal to the majority of Republicans. Instead, centrists in either party will get primaried out, leaving the general elections to whichever party does a better job of turning out their base, and creating another cycle of disaffected centrists.
I’m entirely sure. They will not. I do not think self-described activist Democrats, in red districts, love voting for centrists like Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Jared Golden. So a few Democratic activists might quietly vote for the Greens from time to time, or do a write-in, but they will normally vote Democratic. Enthusiastic or not, each of us only gets one vote!
I was thinking more of districts where the GOP state legislature and/or House candidates has historically run unopposed in November. That’s when the DNC would need to recruit a candidate.
As for running a progressive in a red district, maybe that is better than having the election be unopposed. The risk is that a Democratic candidate, who has views too far removed from those locally prevalent, will wind up reminding Republicans to vote. Plus there’s always the possibility that the Democrat will win in an upset. And situations where progressives win general elections, in districts requiring an upset, have recently been somewhere between rare and non-existent.
P.S. This may have been a confusing post because one normally thinks of the top of the ballot – races for governor or U.S. Senate or president – having coattails that pull in voters for more local offices. That’s usually true. But it goes both ways.
The question for the party has always been how many activist Democratic voters are there compared to how many centrist Democratic voters. (Ignoring that centrists can also be activists, but I’m presuming you mean progressive in the comparison.)
Pew Research has the party split evenly between liberals and moderate/conservatives. (That’s two years old but the percentages stayed steady since 2019.) The centrist New Democratic Coalition slightly outnumbers the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the House, but the numbers haven’t changed much since 2016. Politico had an article this year about how well centrists were doing in state elections.
Of course the Democrats have to be loudly proactive but they absolutely need to determine where the voters are and what they’ll respond to. Most people on this site prefer progressives but I’m extremely doubtful that plays well outside of some few areas.
The issue, AIUI, is that a lot of those districts are pretty safely red; the Democratic Party doesn’t run candidates (or, at least, doesn’t actively back them with financing) in a lot of them because, frankly, it’s a waste of time and resources.
Democratic candidates in those districts have a close to zero chance of winning in the general election, and running to get their name and their party’s platform out there is useless in districts where a sizeable majority of voters aren’t going to vote blue if their lives depended on it.
FWIW, I live in the reverse: a Hispanic minority-majority U.S. House district in suburban Chicago, which is also a deeply blue district. The GOP usually does post a candidate for the seat, but the Democrat gets about 70% of the vote, so whatever GOP palooka runs for the seat is absolutely going to lose, and it usually winds up being some fringe loony tilting at the windmill, with minimal support from the party.
Not untrue, and it’s led to candidates in both parties largely having to pass purity tests in order to make it into office. For Republicans, it means that nearly all of them tout the exact same things:
Just want to say I endorse @Caldazar’s entire post. I can say I’ve shared a lot of their observations regarding voter motivations vis-a-vis the board in general and the voting public in general. Mix in a bunch of lies and misinformation and it becomes easy to control the narrative.
Here’s how Dems can use the economy to win low-information voters:
Use billboard advertising, with the slogan “Trump did this to you”.
Print.the price of two items, (say, eggs and bacon) , labelled “before Trump” and “today”. Change the billboard every week, with different items.Show a picture of Trump doing his goofy smile with thumbs-up hand gesture, pointing at the higher price.
Cover the country in a massive campaign, starting today and running permanently for the next 3 years. with billboards everywhere, alongside every Walmart and Target.
That’s just a one time solution, even if it was to work. Give it four years and we’d see those same billboards, only with Gavin Newsom’s (or whoever else’s) name and picture up there. In fact, my hypothesis is that people who base their votes on this type of campaign tactic is the reason why George Bush Sr.’s win in 1988 is the only time we’ve had a 3rd or more straight term of the same party winning the presidency since Harry Truman.
I think the 2024 election is an anomaly. The voters were offered two unappealing candidates and had to choose.
Harris only had a few months to campaign and change many people’s perceptions of her as cold and unapproachable. Maybe things would have turned out differently if she had a more traditional time to campaign.
Harris needed time to define what she stood for and wanted to accomplish. She’s changed horses several times. Originally an aggressive California AG and then very Liberal Senator. Harris shifted to the center as Biden’s running mate. I think Voters were unsure about Harris’ position as a Presidential candidate.
It could have been different if Harris had started campaigning a year earlier.
This works fine as long as you have a strategy to make that thing better. Otherwise, you’re just running a pure “the incumbent sucks” strategy, which is a short-term victory.
One area of Trump’s campaign focus was inflation and the rising costs of living. Great, except that there’s no actual plan to try to address the issue. So all the resentment against Biden on the matter just gets transferred to Trump.
“Repeal and replace Obamacare” is a reasonable critique if you actually have a replacement in mind. Otherwise you just get into office, bumble around, and as McCain pointed out, make voters actually like the Affordable Care Act more.
