# How can the Dems better appeal to suckers, chumps, marks and rubes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [December 2, 2017, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-dems-better-appeal-to-suckers-chumps-marks-and-rubes/803395 "2017-12-02T22:33:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2017, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-dems-better-appeal-to-suckers-chumps-marks-and-rubes/803395/61 "2017-12-04T18:06:39Z")
I have to admit he has stuck to the agenda he touted in his campaign. It isn’t working, he’s accomplished little, remarkably little considering his party controls both houses of congress, but he’s not forgetting about that wall and he’s still bashing immigrants and taking pot shots at Hillary and Obama. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2017, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-dems-better-appeal-to-suckers-chumps-marks-and-rubes/803395/62 "2017-12-04T18:22:36Z")
Right. “I’m trying, but I’m being obstructed/not supported enough by losers”… his voters BUY that because they don’t hear him backing down, and their anger goes towards those who are seen as hindering him, rather than towards his failure to close the deal. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2017, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-dems-better-appeal-to-suckers-chumps-marks-and-rubes/803395/63 "2017-12-04T19:03:04Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Well, OK, **John** , tell us what you learned. If there’s anybody to trust for having his finger on their pulse, gotta be you. What do they believe that we have failed to understand? That millions of illegal voters bolstered HRC’s election numbers? That Trump is a “blue collar billionaire”, who has down home, working class values? Roy Moore is the very embodiment of Christian teachings? That tax cuts for the wealthy are “rocket fuel” for the economy? > > You believe any of that? Is it a result of you sitting next to the old cracker barrel with some old crackers, and letting their wisdom wash over you? You must have listened, otherwise, no way you would urge us to, right? Shirley you are not urging us to pander to their ignorance and folly! Maybe if we were nicer, is that it? > > Show us the way, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you! First of all, where did I ever say I did this? I’m not running for office, so the advice doesn’t even apply to me. But I think it’s good advice. Second, are you arguing that Democrats should not sit down and talk to the so-called rubes that the OP is calling out? Once again, I’ll remind you that modesty prevents me from talking too much about myself in these threads, although it is flattering that you want me to once again. IOW, it’s not you, it’s me. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2017, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-dems-better-appeal-to-suckers-chumps-marks-and-rubes/803395/64 "2017-12-04T19:24:07Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > AFAICT, Trump has been more true to his campaign promises than any president I can remember. Unfortunately for his supporters, he has gone about it in a very hamfisted way, and hasn’t gotten a lot done, and partially as a result of his many personality and character flaws has been blocked by courts and stymied in congress. But he’s certainly tried to get done what he said he would, and what he could do by executive order he has. > > I suppose you could argue that his supporters are “rubes” for thinking that these policies are the right policies to have. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that Trump has played these people, in the manner depicted by the OP. He’s said “I’m going to do X”, and has gone about trying to do it. For the most part, Trump supporters have gotten exactly what they expected out of him (a lot more than I expected, frankly - I thought he would normal out after the election). I don’t think you are quite getting what I am saying. I am saying that people who voted for Trump’s and the GOP’S economic policies out of economic stress are suckers. It isn’t that they did not run on tax cuts, they did. But the reason why, trickle down economics, is a lie. These people got scammed. It will go further when they try to trim back Social Security and Medicare to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. Trump specifically Did promise that is not what would happen, but they are already talking about it. What a bunch of chumps! ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2017, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-dems-better-appeal-to-suckers-chumps-marks-and-rubes/803395/65 "2017-12-04T19:24:59Z")
> [@gatorslap](#): > > I think you’ve got that one backwards. It’s Republicans who have been focused on transgender people’s bathroom usage, trying to put into law that transgender people be required to use the restroom that matches their birth sex. But I think this issue is already being put to bed fast because it’s not a winning issue for Republicans. > > Speaking of which, Danica Roem’s election last month in Virginia is a great case study. She made headlines for being the first openly transgender candidate elected to a state legislature. The incumbent Republican that she defeated was the author of the Virginia trans restroom bill. But she didn’t campaign on calling her opponent a bigot. She stuck to the issues, did a lot of knocking on doors type campaigning, and centered her campaign on her plan to fix a local highway. Her opponent tried to hammer her on “transgenderism”. The lessons here are pretty clear. Also, gay and trans people are born into poor and/or rural communities at the same rate as they are born anywhere else. It may be the case that they are less likely to feel free to openly identify as such, and also more likely to move elsewhere if they have the economic ability to do so, but this is NOT an “urban elite” issue by any means. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2017, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-dems-better-appeal-to-suckers-chumps-marks-and-rubes/803395/66 "2017-12-04T19:32:54Z")
The rural areas are also much more likely to be homogeneous in any definable way - ethnic, religious, educational, economic, professional, whatever. But actually it’s the cities, full of people of all different types and backgrounds and lives, that are the “bubbles” full of “elites”. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2017, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-dems-better-appeal-to-suckers-chumps-marks-and-rubes/803395/67 "2017-12-05T15:18:31Z")
> [@ThisIsTheEnd](#): > > 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. It is one way to go about it. But I think what’s found in that [link](https://medium.com/basic-income/the-real-story-of-automation-beginning-with-one-simple-chart-8b95f9bad71b) I posted suggests another way > [@](#): > > Decade after decade, medium-skill manufacturing/office jobs have been disappearing, and in response, the unemployed have found new employment in new low-skill service jobs. People unemployed by machines still require income, so they end up finding what they can get. At the same time, they are competing against others doing the same thing (as long as the labor market remains involuntary) and thus people are bidding down their own wages and taking any job they can get in a race against the machines. This also serves to make investments in automation less attractive. As an added bonus, the jobs that are being automated are more productive jobs than most of the jobs being newly created. Cheaper human labor and an increasing number of low productivity jobs together then result in a “paradoxical” deceleration of productivity growth. Long story short, the middle of the labor market is disappearing. If there is a way to combat this trend, then even at nearly full employment we could see those employed people enjoying better jobs, which would serve to decrease economic anxiety. But hey, maybe increasing economic anxiety is serving the GOP’s electoral purposes, and that’s why they seem focused on exactly that. [Republicans Are Coming for Your Benefits](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/opinion/republican-tax-bill-benefits.html): > [@](#): > > Republicans don’t care about budget deficits, and never did. They only pretend to care about deficits when one of two things is true: a Democrat is in the White House, and deficit rhetoric can be used to block his agenda, or they see an opportunity to slash social programs that help needy Americans, and can invoke deficits as an excuse. All of this has been obvious for years to anyone paying attention. > > So it’s not at all surprising that they were willing to enact a huge tax cut for corporations and the wealthy even though all independent estimates said this would add more than $1 trillion to the national debt. And it was also predictable that they would return to deficit posturing as soon as the deed was done, citing the red ink they themselves produced as a reason to cut social spending. > > Yet even the most cynical among us are startled both by how quickly the bait-and-switch is proceeding and by the contempt Republicans are showing for the public’s intelligence. > > In fact, the switch began even before the marks swallowed the bait. If nothing else, the fuckin’ thing government could do is not make people’s economic situations worse. But, that’s what suckers vote for, and that is what we are getting. The trick is figuring out how to express “2+2=5” in the right way such that people buy into it. The GOP, gotta hand it to 'em, they’re good at it. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2017, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-dems-better-appeal-to-suckers-chumps-marks-and-rubes/803395/68 "2017-12-05T15:53:12Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > AFAICT, Trump has been more true to his campaign promises than any president I can remember. Unfortunately for his supporters, he has gone about it in a very hamfisted way, and hasn’t gotten a lot done, and partially as a result of his many personality and character flaws has been blocked by courts and stymied in congress. But he’s certainly tried to get done what he said he would, and what he could do by executive order he has. Trump has not actually made any effort of significance to build a giant wall on the Mexico border and have Mexico pay for it, which was his most famous campaign promise. He has not made any effort to pass health care legislation that would actually cover all Americans at costs cheaper than the ACA, also a key campaign promise. Remember, his promise was not “I will repeal Obamacare,” which he attempted to do. He SPECIFICALLY promised that Americans would have better care at lower prices. He promised to renegotiate the Iran deal, and has made no visible effort at all to do so. I mean, these aren’t things buried deep in the Trump campaign pamphlet, they’re major planks. ---
**Author:** ![ThisIsTheEnd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thisistheend/32/4713_2.png) [@ThisIsTheEnd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisIsTheEnd)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2017, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-dems-better-appeal-to-suckers-chumps-marks-and-rubes/803395/69 "2017-12-05T17:07:49Z")
Call 'em rubes all you want, but they weren’t stupid enough to vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2017, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-dems-better-appeal-to-suckers-chumps-marks-and-rubes/803395/70 "2017-12-05T17:11:56Z")
To answer the OP: 1. Talking about “privilege” almost never is a vote-winner. Even if privilege exists and is a thing, talking about it - and even more so, lecturing about it - is a recipe for losing votes. The Democrats can’t win the target demographic of your post if they keep hammering the privilege message. 2. Don’t make people feel they are being “gaslighted.” Many voters (on the right and left) have their own perception of truth and reality. If you say something that goes against their perception of truth and reality, they will feel you are trying to “gaslight” them and that will usually lead to a strong backlash. You need to tell people what they already “know to be true.” You need to say things that make them go “Yes, yes, that’s right; he’s nailed it.” ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2017, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-dems-better-appeal-to-suckers-chumps-marks-and-rubes/803395/71 "2017-12-06T03:48:28Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > 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. I think if we are to stick with the brutally honest, confront suckers as suckers approach, it would be very important to stress the difference between reasoned observations and judgments. How did we get here? Suckers. But they’re only human. They are the victims of perpetrators. Then you could casually point out the literal Jesuseyness of not judging. Cultivate a demeanor that expresses it (Pence is good at this). It would only take a little. Then, if the RS start to get preachy as they eventually do, challenge 'em to a Jesus duel. Put up your humble non-judging honesty against anything in their party. Let’s see, prolly not the child molester, um, pay no mind to the screaming orange pussy grabber, and the whole party has been bribed by the wealthy… What do they really got? Mike Pence I guess. Do Not get into a public one-on-one Jesus duel with that guy. If you can’t escape, attack the Pence Rule as sex discrimination when applied in the workplace. But don’t judge! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2017, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-dems-better-appeal-to-suckers-chumps-marks-and-rubes/803395/72 "2017-12-07T05:29:41Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > To answer the OP: > > 1. Talking about “privilege” almost never is a vote-winner. Even if privilege exists and is a thing, talking about it - and even more so, lecturing about it - is a recipe for losing votes. The Democrats can’t win the target demographic of your post if they keep hammering the privilege message. I have given it a lot of thought, and I still can’t see why you say I am talking about “privledge”. I talk about a lot of things, some of them controversial, even to me, but I don’t see why you think I am referring to “priviledge”. > [@](#): > > 1. Don’t make people feel they are being “gaslighted.” Many voters (on the right and left) have their own perception of truth and reality. If you say something that goes against their perception of truth and reality, they will feel you are trying to “gaslight” them and that will usually lead to a strong backlash. You need to tell people what they already “know to be true.” You need to say things that make them go “Yes, yes, that’s right; he’s nailed it.” Were you demonstrating gaslighting me by taking my post to be about priviledge, subjecting me to the subjective experience to sort of plow the ground for compassion to sprout? I like to think that is what you were doing. 🙂 I am more comfortable with point 2. I think some things will have to be off-limits. Dems shouldn’t blame minorities as groups for social/economic problems. That’s racist (sometimes) and is a historical problem in this county. There needs to be a party with some hygiene on this issue, and I think the Dems are our only hope. I think “no sexual harassment” is a worthy cause to stand for. If you want to make America great, how about we stop randos going around grabbing women’s tits &etc. Is this a country or a skeevy subway? Seriously, wtf? Where do some people think they are that they can just grab strange women? What do they believe to be the context? Ok, I’m supposed to be going for “he’s nailed it”… I am going to propose “math”. Everybody can check the validity of mathematical arguments for themselves, if only they know how. Math is pretty easy if you take it step by step, and it can be used to settle common disputes. Let’s say crazy uncle Bob says climate change is a hoax. In a universe in which it is possible to get an audience to follow the math, everyone else could be convinced about what we know about AGW, and that it isn’t some conspiracy. But if math requires education, it raises taxes and therefore is socialism. What is the best response to this objection? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-dems-better-appeal-to-suckers-chumps-marks-and-rubes/803395.md?page=3)