How can the Dems better appeal to suckers, chumps, marks and rubes?

Politics & Elections
1

First, let’s divide the GOP base into who I am and am not referring to. I am NOT starting a discussion about voters, if any exist, who were motivated by racist appeals in supporting Trump. Pro-racism GOP voters would not be what I consider suckers- they are getting the maximum government oppression of various minority groups offered by any candidate.

I don’t mean that as an accusation. It is a sensitive subject. This thread is just not about such voters. I don’t think the Dems can change in a way that will appeal broadly to racist voters, and so I propose just letting them vote R. I will call out specific acts of racism going forward, but no longer in the context of politics or partisanship.

But what about the ones that voted for Trump out of economic anxiety? Trump is going to bring back coal! Better health care for less, and more jobs, because, growth!

Well I don’t mean it in an insulting way (I’m not posting this in the pit), but if that is what persuaded someone to vote Trump, they are some kind of sucker, chump, mark or rube. They swallowed the bait, but then actually got Tax Cuts for the Wealthy.

I could have told them in advance. I have been saying for years that the GOP’s MO is to run up the debt, then use that as an excuse to cut or eliminate Social Security, Medicare, SNAP, CHIP, basically repeal the New Deal and anything done in the same spirit. Tax Cuts for the Wealthy could be considered the raison d’etre of today’s GOP.

But the GOP couldn’t exactly run on that. Instead, they ran on what people want. Want jobs? Oh, we’re gonna do jobs. Want growth? Oh yeah, major growth. National prestige, winning, and also great health care? All of the above!

But it was a con job aimed at marks and rubes. It is pretty transparent how it works. Promise jobs, and insist that the path to that is Tax Cuts for the Wealthy. Reinforce a rhetorical link whether or not there is any causal link. Tax cuts generate increases in government revenue! They’ll pay for themselves! History shows that this is false, if common sense does not.

Sell 'em what they want, and insist the way to get it is to give us what we want, Tax Cuts for the Wealthy. 10 years from now the middle class tax cuts will expire, but it appears the plan is to reduce Social Security and Medicare for people who will retire in 10 years. No tax cuts, and your benefits taken away, to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy! Somebody who voted for that is a sucker who ought to feel like a chump, one who was targeted for a mark because they were already a rube. And the rest of us have to live with it.

Well, the only way to improve this state of affairs in our 2 party system is to put Democrats in office. Winning the votes of suckers, chumps, marks and rubes would go a long way in making that happen.

But do you see the dilemma? It is a sensitive subject. Before someone has a chance to post it, let me say, “I would have totally voted D if only they had called me a sucker, chump, mark or rube just one more time, said no voter ever.” But it isn’t meant as an insult, they literally Are suckers, chumps, marks and rubes. Just compare what they voted for with what we got.

One way to go is to accept that the first casualty in politics is honesty, and just pander to these people as if nothing happened. If these people present as credulous and easily led, use that to the country’s advantage and come up with another bait and switch, only one that will benefit the population at large. But the Dems can hardly call out the Rs if they adopt their dishonest tactics- what would be the difference?

Another way to go is to simply remain honest. Sorry folks, I’m afraid you got suckered, here’s how: the GOP targets rubes as marks and makes chumps out of them. We Dems on the other hand are honest about these things and won’t pull the same shenanigans to benefit the wealthiest Americans. Here’s the plan to benefit the general population- what we’re telling you now is what we will do if elected. Look, the plan contains facts, details, reasons, specifics! The other guys’ plan is just a bunch of emotionally-appealing, empty rhetoric. They already pulled this bait and switch on you.

Which approach would work best? It is a coarse age, so maybe the sting of insult would fade if the point were really pressed. OTOH, conservatives are constantly complaining about condescending liberals. They seem especially sensitive to the suggestion that some people are better informed about a subject than they are, as if being good with math makes someone an overall better person somehow. Fancy big-city folks think they know everything! Maybe the pragmatic thing to do is accept reality and start dabbling in demagoguery.

Obviously there are other ways the Dems could convert voters. People were fed a lot of hyperbole about how the Dems are coming for their guns, but there is at least a grain of truth in that line. If Dems gave up on ambitions for gun control beyond background checks, maybe people would not be so paranoid about them. Maybe.

What else would work? How do we best go about this?

2

Those voters don’t believe the bits about bringing back coal, etc. Those are just applause/throwaway lines.

In an economy with a 4% unemployment rate there isn’t a fuckin’ thing repubs or dems can do about economic anxiety, and everybody knows it. All they can do to raise those people up is socially, by dragging everybody else down.

As you point out, that works.

3

I don’t have an answer. But one of the main challenges is that many rubes buy into the narrative that Republicans are the party of low taxes and Democrats are the party of high taxes and socialist wealth redistribution. So I’m not really sure how you fix that.

4

First, stop thinking of people as being a bunch of rubes. Put that out of your mind, and just treat them as people. As long as you think they’re rubes, you’re unlikely to reach them.

5

This is a completely valid question, although I’d phrase it differently: how do the Democrats appeal to people whose votes are earned by facile arguments coming from a charismatic and bombastic individual with a flair for showmanship and a sense of humor? OK…basically, rubes, I guess.

Just don’t say that on a hot mic.

OK, a sense of humor helps. I’m gonna be totally honest, I found Trump to be entertaining as hell during the primary. I didn’t vote for him; I didn’t think he would be a good president; but I enjoyed seeing him give it to the other Republican candidates. Especially Ted Cruz, who I actually hated more than Trump and who I think ultimately would have been worse than Trump.

Speaking off the cuff helps. For a long time I’ve thought that politicians spoke too much in “politician-speak”. I think voters responded very well to Trump’s totally un-polished, crude, stream-of-consciousness style of speech. Of course, a Democratic counterpart wouldn’t need to take it anywhere near as far, but a little dose of it wouldn’t hurt.

I agree with the poster above who mentioned gun control. The Democrats should not make it a campaign issue at all. If questioned about it during debates, they should simply say “it’s an issue of crime, not guns, and our solutions for reforming the criminal justice system and drug policy will address the gun violence, as will making mental health care more readily available.” That’s all they need to do. Shut up about assault weapon bans and magazine capacity.

6

I keep thinking there must be some way to steal the “christian” angle from the Republicans. Something like 80% or more of Americans identify christian values as a positive thing. If the Democrats could find a way to hammer away at the fact that the Republicans are fakers who only use jesus as vote-fodder, they could undermine the Republican message pretty effectively. The devout Evangelicals would stand fast with the Rs, but they are a small minority. The lion’s share of American Christians could probably be drawn away from the Republican bullshit.

7

I don’t know if there is a difference between “devote evangelicals” and “evangelicals”, but evangelicals make up about 25% of the US population. If you think they are a “small minority”, you’re already off the mark. And if The Dems decide to suddenly go all Christian on us, the non-Christians are going to start rethinking their support. And the problem with evangelicals is abortion. Could be the newer generation is more pro-choice, but they are mostly a pro-life group.

No, I think the Democrats are best served if they respect religion without trying to push it.

8

I have to disagree that it was Trump’s “totally un-polished, crude, stream-of-consciousness style of speech” in itself that appealed to voters: it was what he was SAYING in that unpolished, crude style of speech that was the tipping point. If a liberal candidate, or even a less extremist one, used a little of that style, Trump die-hards wouldn’t say “How refreshing! I’m gonna vote for that guy!” The reason Trump sounded so good to them was that he was, from their viewpoint, throwing away all this PC BS and telling it like it is. If you’ve never gotten past stereotypes and can’t objectively analyze issues, hearing that Mexico is sending us its rapists sounds like truth at last. And if “politician speak” means not simply making up BS as you go along, as Trump did , I’d much rather hear that than Trump’s stream-of-unconscious style.

But to the OP: you are not going to win those people over. There’s a great article on this on politico:

These core supporters have little or no interest in what the President’s role is* supposed* to be. I’d almost bet most of them would happily abandon the Constitution and three branches of government and go for an absolute monarchy as long as Trump were at the helm.

Better to focus on winning over those voters who supported Trump solely because they hated Hillary Clinton.

9

Really? because it sure as hell not stopping the GOP from reaching them. In fact the dumber they treat them the better they do.

10

This is my advice as well.

Not that it is going to win a lot more elections. Our system is set up for rotation in office. The next President will probably be a Democrat regardless. And whether the next transition occurs in January 2020 or January 2024 will probably be determined by business cycle factors barely influenced by presidents.

I have other reasons not to want them called rubes.

For one thing, until early last year, I was an officially registered Republican, and don’t want to think I used to be a sucker, chump, mark, or rube :smack:

11

For some reason I have this old Cher song from the early 70s stuck in my head.

12

The funny thing is that with Democrats, the middle class gets lower taxes and more benefits. More money in the hands of the middle class —> actual growth, which would surely pay for the higher taxes the wealthy are call upon to pay. With the GOP, the middle class gets higher taxes and loses their benefits, yet react to a lot of screaming about socialism on TV (I think) such that they view the government doing something positive as some kind of negative.

It just seems like there are so many false narratives fed to conservatives. Am I wrong about that?

13

The argument I kept hearing right after the 2016 election is that the Democrats didn’t even make a pitch to those voters. That the Democrats as a party have been focused solely on issues affecting urban dwellers. And so what the Democrats need to do is merely listen to their concerns (about small towns dying, certain industry jobs going away, and so on), treat them as valid, and offer some kind of response, because currently they’re offering nothing.

I’m not optimistic that if the Dems would just follow this advice, they’d win landslides across the country. It’s not that simple. But I do think it’s worth putting the effort in. After all, if these people only voted GOP because they were suckered, that means they can potentially be “suckered” back by the Democrats.

14

I voted for Trump hoping to get a conservative Supreme Court Justice, a repeal of ObamaCare, a tax cut, less government regulation, an undoing / shrinking if Utah’s oversized national monuments, and fewer illegal immigrants. I’m getting most of that, or at least progress on pretty much all of those points.

15

Sort of. Obviously, don’t insult the people that you are talking to and don’t expect them to not get that you’re not being insulting to them, even when you speak just as nice and dear as you ever could. Humans are real good at body language. You’re probably not going to fool them.

But even if you accept that some percentage of people are rubes and yokels, or whatever, they’re not the ones who decide what direction the pack is going.

Most people look up to a few sources that they trust, to tell them what to believe on topics that they don’t know enough about themselves. If you try and press them on their lack of knowledge, you can’t change their mind because they know that they don’t know anything. You’re just being mean by picking on them. And, obviously, you’re stupider than Rush Limbaugh, Mark Helprin, Michael Moore, Paul Krugman, or whoever else, and surely they’d trounce you in an argument.

Some of the thought leaders, to be sure, are crazy assholes and little more and they make a profit from being dishonest, spinning everything, and keeping the party line. But a lot of them are just the random people out in the world who have a day job and an interest in what’s going on in the world, and give their opinions to others at work and elsewhere. You have a lot of priests and preachers across the country who may or may not include politics or politically relevant topics in their teachings. You have teachers and professors who are going to talk about all sorts of things with their students. These are all people who are probably sitting down and getting at least somewhat familiar with reality, the arguments that are out there, and trying to make a reasonable decision based on what they can find, and what thought leaders they have listened to.

And so there’s an actual value to making reasonable, rational arguments. Actual policy points can matter, because it might be what sways one of these people from going one direction to going another, and they’re going to have a large effect on everyone who is keying off of them.

If you want to get people to move over from the other side, understand their arguments and figure out if you have a better solution to the problem that they’re talking about. Engage with the subject like it’s a real subject that merits real investigation and debate.

16

They didn’t get suckered.

I just checked some of Trump supporter HurricaneDitka’s posts from late last year. He or she was concerned that maybe Trump would revert to being a liberal. Hasn’t happened. But if it did, that’s what would be turned HurricanDitka into a sucker.

The voters Democrats can plausibly gain are the swing voters who reductantly voted for Trump. Theirs was not a HurricaneDitka-style concern that Trump might revert to liberalism. The swing voters went for more neutral reasons – one often being a desire to give someone different a chance.

Now that the Republicans have had their chance, most of these people will come back on their own. Give them room. And don’t insult them. Enough of them will, eventually, convince themselves.

17

It seems to me that the Democrats have trouble appealing to Democratic voters as well. I remember listening to C-SPAN radio and hearing a lot about “A Better Deal” and when Schumer and Pelosi rolled it out I thought I would come here and see a lot of discussion about it. I didn’t see a single thread about it; there might have been one that didn’t get a lot of response, but in either case there really was very little discussion about it. I almost started a thread myself about it - it was something I was pretty excited about at the time, I liked the new tone and direction the party was going in. But then I thought why bother, hardly anyone reads the crap I post and my grammar skills aren’t very good anyway. I just found out what syntax is about three weeks ago.

18

  1. Run a candidate who really, really understands TV and self-presentation. (Up until two weeks ago, I was hoping that candidate might be Al Franken; sadly, I don’t know who it should be, now.)

  2. Make sure the candidate is very good at projecting assertiveness and confidence, whether warranted or not. (Honestly, I think one of the main reasons Trump was elected is that people who aren’t very good at judging substance LIKE blowhards; they mistake arrogance for competence. And I hate to say it, but the 2020 candidate should probably be male.)

  3. Put a campaign office in every town, staffed by actual people, and recruit local volunteers to talk to people, ideally face to face. None of this micro-targeting or remote-phone-banking business. You need to BE THERE in the community and let people see that the candidate is supported by their neighbors. Howard Dean got it. I’m not sure anyone in the current party leadership does.

19

I’ve got one from the musical Cabaret: A suck’r, a chump, a mark and a rube, a mark and a rube, a mark and a rube…

20

Swing voters often want a change. So after a dignified president, they go for a Trump. And after a Trump, the last thing they want is another Trump.