Reality doesn’t matter to conservatives because conservatism isn’t a con game, it’s a conspiracy theory centered around narcissistic persecution fantasies.
Conspiracy theories live and grow because evidence against them becomes part of the theory. i.e. “The court convicted Trump? THIS GOES HIGHER THAN WE THOUGHT!”
Persecution fantasies live and grow because there’s literally nothing too small to use as evidence of persecution. “They took muh plastic straws! Incandescent light bulbs! Muh dirty coal!”
And of course cultural narcissism thrives on ridicule. There’s literally nothing too small not to act aggrieved about. “That mean lady said Trump can’t give his son a title of nobility! White genocide!”
Nothing can dislodge this kind of cognitive malware except for exposing the entire house of cards for what it is. That’s the most important task for this country right now. Even more than impeachment and removal… we have to expose Trump for what we know him to be, a bankrupt mobster with the intellect of a baboon and the temperament of an infant, running an elaborate international criminal grift for his own family’s gain, exposed by the smart woman currently in charge of the House.
Even that won’t be enough to persuade some people. We have many in this country who believe they have a right to white power administered by a white royal family. We can’t reach them all but we have to try.
Always interesting to see what the world looks like through MAGA goggles. What a piece of crap article. If it wasn’t for the decent grammar, I’d think Donald wrote it.
Slogan schmogan. Donald hasn’t won over very many votes with his performance over his 3 year reign of error. Chances are, if you voted for Hillary in 2016 you found nothing over these 3 years to change your mind and vote for him in 2020. I don’t see the Democratic vote decreasing in 2020. Certainly Biden will improve on Hillary’s numbers, particularly in places like PA, WI, and MI. Some of the Donald 2016 voters were those who voted on a lark, thinking they were voting for a clown, not a monster. So the MAGA cult has a slogan that feeds into their persona of perpetual victimhood. The MAGA cult votes. The MAGA cult ALWAYS vote. They ALWAYS vote red. Meanwhile, demographics chip away at their numbers. Some MAGAbots died since 2016. I don’t think there are enough new MAGA recruits to match the losses due to attrition. This slogan crap isn’t going to be enough.
I think the dems would be smart to showcase something that would actually help people in places like where I am from. They don’t trust dems for a good reason - shit didn’t go well for them when Obama was president. Was it Obama’s fault? Not really, the mechanization of the agricultural sector has been going on for years and years, but the hammer in the nail was automation. Automation wasn’t political at all, it was and is natural evolution of capitalism. Automation has displaced a lot of people in these rural areas that seem to matter for the electoral college. Dems can’t come out with “job training” because that is absolute bullshit to these people. Job training means to these people “I am going to lose my house and have to move into the city and live in some shit apartment and barely scrape by on some McJob that has no future.” They are seeing housing prices skyrocket, even in rural areas as the rich are desperate to buy any real estate they can to park their profits in a tax shelter. When their neighbor’s house and land suddenly is getting sold for dollars on the penny, it causes their own taxes to jump up and price them out of their family home.
I keep telling Dem politicians that speak to me that they would have all elections locked down if they could do something about this that is meaningful. Fuck health care, fuck everything else. Get these people working in a stable job that tracks with the costs of living. Limit the amount of property rich people can park their profits in, fucking the little guy, and destabilizing housing prices. Shut down “property management companies” that merely collect rent for a landlord, but in doing so, increase the prices and requirements for these housing units.
I have spoke of this in another thread, but I’ll repeat here: I am the guy coming along and shutting down agricultural production facilities and automating them. I put at least 20 people out of work a month in these distressed areas so the businesses that they used to work for can stay open and compete with China. I talk with these people every day. They don’t care about Russia, or criminal phone calls, or withheld tax returns. They do not care if a criminal is in the white house. It doesn’t matter. Hope and Change for these people meant skyrocketing housing prices, opioid epidemics, and automation layoffs. They send jobs out of the country because its cheaper than robots for a while. Then they take that plant in Mexico or wherever and automate it there.
It seems like some evil sinister plan to these people, but it isn’t. Dems want to blame the people at the top of these companies, but I get to stay and tend the robots as their bosses weep in a corner of the facility after they have had to lay off the workforce. I had one of these evil bosses literally cry on my shoulder and tell me that she was surely going to hell because they had to lay off these people to keep the businesses open. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her business was toast anyway, it would be bought for dirt by the Large Friendly Agricorp Conglomerate anyway, she just pushed it off a few years.
Dems will not win without a solid plan. At least the Republicans bitch about it like it is to these people. They know Trump is garbage. The religious will vote however their preacher tells them too, but I have news for you guys, there really aren’t that many super religious people as it seems like there is. You might not be able to get the religious to vote how you want or need, but you can convince the guy getting screwed every day that their might be a better way.
You want a message that resonates with farmers? How about “I’ll end the trade war with China, so they’ll buy our produce again”?
Not that it matters. There are no farmers any more, or at least, not enough to be relevant. When people hear “farmer”, they think of hardworking individuals, personally working the land that’s been in their family for generations. But nowadays, most farmland is owned by megacorporations, and worked mostly by immigrants.
What didn’t go well? Getting health care to those who didn’t have it?
Health care has consistently been at or near the top of nearly every demographic’s issues of concern.
And the party that has spent over 80 years fighting Social Security and over 50 years fighting Medicare is going to stand up for the little guy. Right.
Obamacare didn’t do shit for people where I grew up. It was great in states that played along, but a lot of these states that you need to win the EC didn’t play along. The ACA forced people to buy shit they couldn’t afford, or pay a fine because they couldn’t afford it. This is how they remember the ACA. A lot of their employers dropped their insurance, and when the lot of them got laid off, they lost it.
Yeah, I get it, ACA did great things, but I had to move across the country to reap the benefits of the ACA for my family. I had credit cards to do it, most of these folks don’t.
I don’t think you can win them all, but you can win the folks that I am talking about. Do health care or whatever, but nobody has the confidence you can pull it off. If you can keep them in their home, you will get their vote.
You’re the OP who suggested they’re going to fall for Trump’s childish and paranoid ad; I only provided the analysis.
It’s impossible to disrespect the intellect of people who reject the value of intellect. It’s impossible to deplore people who proudly declare themselves deplorable. It’s impossible to reach people who don’t want to be reached.
You are right. There are very few actual farmers anymore, there are people who work in the ag industry and peripherally to it. The guy that does the books for the implement company down the street, and his wife that works as a waitress at the breakfast and lunch place the laborers and lot managers eat at, that type of stuff. Thats what made up my hometown. When the agricorp took it over, the amount of laborers paid cash dropped way way down. When we were kids in the 1990s, there were tons of farm jobs that paid pretty good. I remember us having more money than the teenagers that worked in town somewhere. The machines are way better than they were, and the kids in town don’t have those jobs anymore. They sell meth and stuff now.
But the thing is, any program the Democrats come up with to help people in those states, the Republicans in those states will be able to similarly sabotage. You can’t say “do what the people are actually asking for”, when we’re already doing that. The lesson here should be to throw out those bums in the statehouse who are stopping you from getting what’s coming to you.
Could you show us how to kiss up to those who openly hate us, please?
BTW, does the disrespect, lies and hatred from the Republican side of the aisle ever shock you?
That’s the problem, isn’t it? It’s not that Dems are ignoring the plight of those in poorer areas, including the rural parts of the country. It’s that they are proposing real solutions, which have the problem that is often seen with reality - it’s messy.
Compare that to people who simply make easy promises with no real effort - “You like how things used to be? Vote for me and I’ll bring back that society with those jobs you remember.” And when pie in the sky promises don’t work? “The problem is those people”
I think that’s a pretty damn good slogan. Ten times better than MAGA, honestly.
Trump’s re-election strategy is about mobilizing the 92% of Republicans who either think he’s God or don’t have the guts to break with him no matter what he does.
The Democratic candidate’s strategy runs though getting the 70% of Dems who would prefer a third Obama term, the 25% who now regard Obama as a liberal sellout, and the 30% of Dems who only vote if they have to. (Overlapping math obviously.)
I’m not at all. I moved specifically so the ACA could protect my wife. But that is the problem, Chronos and you nailed it. That is also the hill that anyone is going to have to climb over to convince these people to vote differently.
So whats the plan for that? Pointing out the obvious to these people hasn’t been working. You need these people to win. Whats the plan? The democratic hopefuls for the state and federal congress people I have spoken to in the past three years have yet to formulate a plan for this. If they could, I think their chances would be much much better.
ETA: I think that is why health care is a non-starter in this election. Absolutely, they need a damn plan on how to fix this health care mess, but why stab yourself with it right out the gate? Get elected first.
Fishermen in Alaska are quite concerned about climate change, they’re seeing it first hand and it’s affecting their livelihoods directly. It’s one of the most pressing subjects in the hallways and public meetings where fisheries regulations are discussed. However, the political issue is that individual fishers (and fishing communities) are smart enough to know that if they’re seeing the effects of climate on their fish now, things will get much worse before they get better, even if we were on track to make the drastic carbon cuts needed (which of course we aren’t). And in Alaska, it’s usual to subsist on a variety of seasonal incomes - and the other big one, with it’s attached dividend, is oil.
So in Alaska it’s not even “fishermen versus oil workers” because they’re often the same people/families. In the fisheries, they’re looking to the science/mitigation to figure out how to cope with the next 20 years, but it doesn’t translate into political capital for supporting carbon reductions: while carbon cuts will help the far future (not directly, today), and oil will help them now.