2016 Democratic approach: An establishment candidate (who doesn’t inspire much enthusiasm) wins the (D) nomination. Meanwhile, Democrats continuously remind America that Trump is a lying, corrupt, racist, sexist, childish, unsuitable, bigoted dictator-loving fascist who poses a grave threat to democracy. (Which was true.)
2024 Democratic approach: An establishment candidate (who doesn’t inspire much enthusiasm) secures nearly all delegates for the (D) nomination. Meanwhile, Democrats continuously remind America that Trump is a lying, corrupt, racist, sexist, childish, unsuitable, bigoted dictator-loving fascist who poses a grave threat to democracy. (Which is true.)
There seems to be no discernible difference between that strategy then and the current strategy now. What have Democrats changed in their gameplan to make a repeat of 2016 any less likely? Right now, based off of how Biden is polling, a repeat of 2016 looks very plausible.
(Before someone says, “2020,” that election was won by Biden by only an extremely narrow margin in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, and Trump performed much stronger than expected. It most easily could have turned horrible like 2016 as well.)
You have a conventional approach against an unconventional candidate.
The discernable difference is that 2016 Trump was Zaphod Beeblebrox “How bad can be it be?”.
This time you have his track record as POTUS and his stated policy of being even more reprehensible second time around.
You can’t go maverick in opposition, only the cartoonists would win.
So Plan A & B is “vote for me and conventional wisdom and the union will stand”
Hopefully a better run campaign that focuses on the swing states; now we can run both against Trump’s record and his criminality; we can also run on abortion and against the SCOTUS, which was not applicable before. Among other differences.
In 2016, the assumption was that even if you feared a Trump presidency, you didn’t have to sully yourself by voting for Clinton because she really didn’t need your vote to win. Democrats have finally learned to hold their noses and get their asses out to vote if they really don’t want Trump to be elected again.
I feel a lot of people didn’t take Trump seriously in 2016. A lot of people (including me) didn’t think anybody would be stupid enough to actually vote for Trump on Election Day. We were wrong; Trump voters are much stupider than we thought.
The result is that people weren’t complacent that Trump would lose in 2020. They got out and voted against him to make sure he lost. I feel we can count on that again in November.
Secondly, as already has been mentioned, Trump was an unknown quantity in 2016. We could imagine he would fail as President but nobody knew for certain. Now we know. Trump was a terrible President before and he would be a terrible President again.
Third, Trump has dropped since losing in 2020. He lost before he committed treason. He lost before he was convicted of felonies. He’s in worse shape now than he was when he lost in 2020.
Fourth, it was a race between two challengers in 2016. We didn’t know what Trump or Clinton would be like in office. This time, Trump is running against Biden. We know what Biden is like as President. Yes, he may not be inspirational but nobody is scared of what Biden might do as President. He’s a safe choice and a lot of voters want to feel safe.
Unfortunately, a great many Americans think Biden is intentionally trying to destroy all that we love about our country. It’s insane, but it’s happening.
If 51% of the people allowed to vote in this country believed everything the Republicans said, then Donald Trump would be in the final months of his second term (and trying to get the Supreme Court to overturn the 22nd Amendment).
Fortunately, there isn’t a maga majority in this country. Trump needs to convince some people outside of his cult to vote for him in order to win.
Agreed. Perhaps I read your comment too literally when you said “he may not be inspirational but nobody is scared of what Biden might do as President.”
…I’m not going to hijack this thread: but in many progressives eyes, Biden’s character isn’t worth jack-shit over the things he has done over the last nine months. And if its Biden vs Trump, they are just going to stay home.
Anybody who thinks the progressive cause will not suffer more under four years of a second Trump term than it would under four years of a second Biden term is an idiot. I have as little respect for them as I have for somebody who is planning on voting for Trump because he’ll make America great again.
Assuming a linkage between these two thoughts (apologies if that is not the case), the problem here is that progressives are not the base in a broad sense. Young progressives, who seem to be those most likely to be disenchanted with Biden, are absolutely, positively not the base. Which is unfortunate, as I identify more progressive than not. But the progressive left, however defined, by one account seemed to make up maybe 12% of the Democratic base in 2021.
We can quibble about the numbers (10-15%? 20%?), but while quite significant they are not the tail that wags the dog. Rather just one more minority bloc in the sprawling amoeba of the Democratic Party (and generally dem-supporting independents such as myself). The youth vote, who are never reliable enough voters to ever count on, are a much smaller cohort in that bloc.
You can argue cogently that alienating such a sizeable group is bad politics. But you can also argue cogently that favoring their bloc over others might be even worse. Politics are hard and there are no good answers. Especially since liberals in a broad sense seem to be behaviorally far less inclined to fall in line than conservatives.
That’s already been tried for eight years. We’re eight years into the Trump era by now. If “basing your campaign on character” worked, Trump would have long since been trailing Biden by 30% by now (or been obliterated by Hillary) as opposed to leading Biden by 3%.
I don’t know what does work (any of us who did could earn million-dollar consultation salaries from the DNC), but calling Trump a fascist, liar, sexist, fascist a million times has been about as effective as telilng people the sky is blue.
It includes young progressives. But it also includes a significant amount of people living in swing states that have been directly impacted by decisions made by this administration.
My argument is that “Trump will be worse” is not going to be enough. You have to give them something to vote for.
As I said on the other thread, a few days ago Biden tweeted (from memory) “If I’m relected, I’ll bring back Roe vs Wade.” That was it. No other context, no plan, no strategy on how he will do that if re-elected. Why would anyone believe this? People know that it’s just an empty promise.
You’ve got to win the presidency. You’ve got to win the senate and the house with a large enough majority to be able to get things done. What’s the national game plan here apart from “Trump bad?”
As I’ve pointed out, it’s July. The campaign has just begun. It would have been pointless to spend last year running ads reminding voters that Trump was a terrible President.