This all depends on whether or not the Howling Yam keeps his job. If he’s no longer the POTUS, for whatever reason, wouldn’t the republicans have the advantage there too? Those who voted republican but not necessarily because of Trump would be loving it. The GOP candidates would just have to point out Trumpy’s stupidity but remind them of the great new conservative laws that were passed under a GOP majority (religious freedom act, cuts in spending) and they would keep doing those kind of GOP things.
Dems-- I dunno. Trashing your opponent no matter who they are doesn’t always seem to work. So their best bet is to talk about the future and how to make the country progressive again. All I can think of.
That’s a terribly uncharitable view of your political opposition. Only death will work? No. Try figuring out what appeals and motivates people then exploit that. No need to wish for death.
Depends how sincere those are. Showing his base that he still values them increases his odds of being remembered as a good president, rather than throwing himself into the fray against a competent challenger.
America validated Donald Trump once, why injure that by risking it all again ?
Whatever the candidate’s message is, it shouldn’t involve Trump specifically. When you get into “He promised you this…” or “He’s chaotic,” he controls your message.
If the next dem candidate just runs as Not Trump, he/she’s likely a goner.
IMO, the message needs to dance somewhere around fairness, equality and/or justice, which addresses some of Trump’s biggest flaws but with a positive angle. I proposed a “Justice for All” message in another thread recently and was laughed at by some, but I still think that would be solid, especially when you can substitute the “All” for any audience (veterans, immigrants, women, lgbtq, working families, etc). Plus it’s taken directly from the conservatives’ favorite prayer: The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of 'Merica. You use a message your opponents value and co-opt it to show how they’re failing to live up to it.
There is no cure for The Cult of Donald. His supporters either live in an alternate reality or simply don’t care about facts. They get all their news from Hate Radio and right wing Facebook memes. They are beyond redemption. Thankfully, each of them has a limited life span. The problem isn’t Donald- it’s that 60 million people ignored what he is and voted for him anyway.
It worries me that his response might be “the Democrats/establishment wouldn’t let me”. Certainly his supporters would believe it.
I’m thinking of Toronto mayor Rob Ford, the high-charisma, wealthy but “low class” crack-smoking mayor. Despite running the city no better than Trump runs the US it took a year or so before his popularity really fell, and even then his hardcore supporters hung on to the bitter end. They wanted to vote for Ford, but Ford died, so they voted for his brother (and replacement) instead. The main opponent of the Fords, another right winger (but far less extreme) defeated him primarily because he wasn’t Rob Ford.
You find the people who can’t stand him and get them out to vote. But to increase the numbers of people who can’t stand him, you want to be able to pin what they feel to be worse about their and the country’s situation on his failures.
Candidates won’t be running against Trump; they’ll be running against the perception of how the country is doing with Trump in charge. If the economy is chugging along and there are no major foreign policy debacles that get pinned on him, then he stands a good chance at re-election. People might not like Trump but they wouldn’t want to vote to fix something that, in their minds, isn’t broken. I do suspect that a lot more minorities will at least try to participate in the next election. But I also suspect that there will be vote suppression efforts not witnessed in years, if ever.
How about; promise to be more extreme. Trump wants to deport illegals and build a wall, you will flog all illegals before deporting them and will drop an H-Bomb on Mexico City.
The problem to running against Trump is you have to first run against all the other contenders in your own party. Win the party faithful with one set of statements then most likely pivot about to run against Trump with another. All the while he is spewing about your change of direction while ignoring his own.
#1. Drop the identity politics. Act as though you are really trying to put Americans first instead of putting some subset of Americans first. #2. Stop assuming that you are better than anyone who voted for Trump. You aren’t and pretending to be superior just pisses people off. Really folks, the constant refrain of ‘Trump voters are dumb’ isn’t going to work because it isn’t true. For example Trump *beat *Clinton with college educated whites by 4%. Calling people stupid doesn’t win them over to your side. #3.At least pretend to give a shit about anyone who lives outside of the coasts. Ideas that might fly in California and New York make little sense to people in New Mexico or Tennessee. #4. Pick a candidate without any serious ethical issues. #5. Consolidate gains made on the social end of things and focus on the economy.
Of course, none of those things is likely to happen.
Slee
Note, I did not vote for Trump and do not like him. Didn’t like Clinton either. For that matter, as far as I can tell, pretty much all of our politicians are scum and it is *our *fault because we keep voting for the dirtbags.
This is nothing more than the viewpoint of an entrenched privileged class doing everything it can to ignore bigotry, bias, and discrimination.
It’s exactly was homophobes are doing when they say that gays are asking for “special rights.”
What you are saying is “abandon all your principles and any attempt to make our society fairer and more just.”
And what you are specifically asking of someone like me in particular is to just accept that I am a second-class citizen in my own country.
It’s true, it isn’t lack of education. Its racial resentment and racism, or at best, indifference to racism and a whole lot of other pretty disgusting shit.
How exactly did the right show they cared about rural areas? Their entire platform for the last 50 years has been some kind of hatred for an other. Whether it’s racial or otherwise.
Who do you think actually benefits from universal health care, family leave rights, clean air, clean water, and stuff like that?
What? Is this a joke? Trump’s election proves that voters don’t give a shot about ethics.
In any case, no matter what candidate gets chosen, the right’s propaganda machine will just invent ethical issue and then you’ll be back here saying see? Not ethical enough!
[quote]
#5. Consolidate gains made on the social end of things and focus on the economy.
Of course, none of those things is likely to happen. [/quoye]
The previous president presided over the fastest economic recovery in modern history. All in the face of intransigent opposition. For more than two decades, Democratic administrations have proven they are better on economic issues than Republican ones.
If you’re talking about reviving dying industries or occupations, no party is actually going to be able to fix that. The left can at at least offer assistance to a way forward where the right only offers false promises.
All of this is just apologetics and goalpost-moving.
To my eyes, it had no clearly stated set of campaign promises or messages. I could not faithfully tell you, without looking it up, what the central messages of her platform were. Even then she still got a majority of the votes, they just weren’t arranged right.
If you want people to vote for you you need to give them a reason to vote for you. “I’m Hillary Clinton” is not a great reason; indeed, the most common reasons I saw repeated for voting Clinton were “she’s not Donald Trump,” which is compelling to me for isn’t a positive reason, and “she’s the most qualified candidate to ever run for President,” which was untrue, not of interest to anyone, and rather obviously ignores the fact that volume of qualifications have no effect at all on which candidate wins a Presidential race; in fact, the less “qualified” candidate won the previous two battles between candidate who were both not sitting Presidents (Obama-McCain, Bush-Gore.) “I am going to do X, Y and Z” is what gets voters interested.
Trump’s platform was REALLY clear. It was stupid, but it was clear; he was going to cancel NAFTA, build a giant wall on the border with Mexico, and deport all the brown people. It was a bad platform, but it was a platform, and was enough to squeak out a win for a hilariously terrib le candidate.
If the Democrats run a campaign with a clear set of simple, easy to understand promises, they will win the Presidency in 2020. It does not matter who their candidate is.