From a perspective of electoral success, how much sense does it make to try to reach out to Trump supporters and convince them to vote Democrat? I think it makes a lot more sense for Democrats to reach out to the apathetic liberals that stayed at home in 2016.
It’s generally counterproductive to say anything that rubs someone’s nose in their own messes. Best effect is to let them reach their own conclusions, and be there when they look for you.
we can do both. Get more of the Democratic leaning voters to the polls, and bring back into the fold some that went for Trump (reluctantly) in 2016. His “supporters” are deplorable and won’t come around, but they’re not needed.
Probably the latter. Hillary lost because she didn’t do either.
Regards,
Shodan
I think this would fall under “do not cast pearls before swine”. Donald’s voters are a cult that cannot be reasoned with. One would think that when he is impeached, convicted, removed from office, and tried and convicted for treason and money laundering that they would re-evaluate their thought process. I’m not holding my breath. Another bombastic bigot will take his place. The best strategy for Democrats is to mobilize the base. Enough of the Clintonesque triangulation, time to run a good old New Dealer type.
Just conceptually, flip this around and ask yourself, is it even worth it for Republicans to try to convert BobLibDem?
On both sides, there are a percentage of dyed-in-the-wool never-going-to-switch voters. Personally, I think it is a waste of resources to directly target those voters to try to change them. The opportunities are in the middle. If, by some miracle, a dyed-in-the-wool voter hears your message through indirect means, good on ya mate.
There are different sets of voters, who voted for Trump for different reasons. Some of his supporters support him because he’s a racist, sexist, etcetera-ist asshole. Those are the deplorables that Clinton mentioned, and as she said, we don’t want them. But some of them are people who have just been screwed by The System, and who hoped that toppling The System might end up getting them un-screwed. Those voters are reachable, and in fact traditionally favored the Democrats. Trump’s win is largely attributable to the fact that he was able to peel off a lot of those traditionally-Democratic voters.
On principle, yes. A political should want to win with 100% of an honest vote since that means that every voter thinks they most suited to the job or best represent them. From a practical point-of-view, no.
All votes count equally, so efforts should be made to identify possible blocs of flippable voters and to get more disaffected voters out to the polls.
That said, there is no pool of “apathetic liberals that stayed at home in 2016.” What happened is that the African-American vote went down seven percentage points. Clinton would, to my understanding, have won if they voted at levels equal to their votes for Obama. Obama was obviously a special case. Ordinary vote building efforts are not going to be effective in replacing those votes.
Going after the Trump base is a waste of time and money. Going after self-identified Republicans is probably just as futile, given the overwhelming percentages by which they continue to back Trump. Self-identified independents may be the best short-term bet, since they are a net negative on Trump.
Long term, the only real solution is to emulate the Republicans and build support up from local elections to national ones. Find some solid positives and ways to make differences. People want competence and solutions. The Republicans currently offer neither. It remains to be seen whether the Democrats can get their act together and become the party of success. They need a few wins now to build on. But the Republicans are providing them with such a huge chin to land a fist on that liberals are going to be sick if the blow isn’t delivered.
Exactly. Call them Reagan Democrats, or whatever, but there are plenty of Rust Belt Trump voters who could be persuaded to vote Democratic in the presidential election and might actually do that fairly readily if the nominee isn’t from the Coastal Elite.
No, they don’t-- not in presidential elections, as everyone should know by now. Courting Democratic votes for president in CA is a complete waste of time. Not so much in PA.
Obviously not all of Trump’s 60+ million voters are equally committed to him. Most of his voters are just regular Republicans and are unlikely to vote for Democrats. However his populist message did attract some non-traditional voters, both Obama voters and non-voters, and the Democrats do need to work at getting some of them back. This should not be difficult given that Trump’s actual agenda has mostly been conventional right-wing but it will require good candidates and the right messaging.
I think this question is illustrative of the huge problem that both parties STILL have, regarding the 2016 election, and the American electorate in general. I don’t see any sign yet that the Democrats OR the Republicans really recognize what happened.
Two notions to recognize:
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the Republicans did NOT WIN THE PRESIDENCY. No, I’m not referring to the popular vote nonsense.
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the Democrats were the better organized and united party during 2016.
The irony? The Democrats LOST, because they were more united, and better organized than the Republicans.
Take a look. Who did the Democrats obviously want to be their standard bearer in 2016? Hillary Clinton. Who did they get? Hillary Clinton.
Who did the Republicans want as their standard bearer in 2016? One of three: Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, or Chris Christie. Who did they get? Donald Trump.
Why did Trump win? He had a larger alliance supporting him. He had the people who hated Hillary, the people who hated Democrats, and over half of the people who hated the Republicans.
Who did Hillary have? Just the people who hated Trump, and less than half of the people who hated Republicans.
Why do I say that the Republicans didn’t win the Presidency? Because they didn’t. Trump did.
Why is the current administration and Congress having so much trouble getting ANYTHING done? Because the Democrats are more united, and because the members of Congress are REPUBLICANS. Not Trumpites, or whatever might be an appropriate name for them. Congress is under the control of the very DISUNITED Republican Party.
Now. If the Democrats want to make progress politically, they need to learn their own most important lesson, which again, I haven’t seen but a few people in the media get right. They don’t need to persuade anyone to vote for them. They need to do exactly what Trump did to win: lead in a direction that a majority of voters already want to go.
For Trump, that meant simply saying back, every antagonistic and vicious lie that the Republican Party had for decades been falsely telling people that they supported (even though they proved repeatedly that they didn’t), in order to fool them into voting GOP…regardless of how contradictory they collectively were…and make it clear that he was actually going to DO all of them.
In short, HE LED.
The Democrats didn’t lead. Hillary in particular didn’t lead. She pointed at everyone else, and said rude things, or made fun of them, or found fault with them.
None of what you described is leadership. It’s just being a con man. Because Trump was more interested in winning than any attempt to stay in power, he could con people and not worry about it.
Democrats can’t afford to do that. They can’t afford to say a bunch of bullshit lies, because, as soon as it became clear it didn’t work, they lose again.
It is true that Democrats and Clinton in particular failed to make a case to the working and middle class whites why they should vote for her besides “Trump is obviously evil.” It is true that we have an unfortunate problem in our country where being evil doesn’t matter, even to so-called values voters.
No, there is no need to convert Trump supporters, if you assume that means people actually devoted to Trump. There is a need to get Trump voters, and not assume that Trump’s own incompetence and evil will make them choose on their own to go Democratic.
Democrats have the stronger platform for actually helping out everyone, no matter what their race or minority status. But they need to fucking sell it.
Don’t rely on the morality of the American people any more than we rely on them to inherently know what’s in their own interest.* That is not a way to win.
*That’s not to say they’re stupid. It’s saying that they just do not seem to look into this on their own, and will just believe what they are told if there is no opposition. So we need to oppose that and show them why what they think is in their own best interest is not, without coming off like elitist snobs.
In all cases, we need to do what it means to be liberal, and show other people that we CARE about them.
Definitely. Everybody loves a knock on the door and finding out it’s the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons come to tell you the Good News.
Plus not only are you guaranteed a couple of hours’ enthralling conversation, but you may be making friends for a lifetime of fun activities and good times. Conversion is always welcome, and what could be better than earnest suited young people telling you what to think, and the life and thoughts of the Blessed Hillary ?
Bonus points for Trump as Satan.
To start, the Democrat Party would have to provide a candidate with some appeal to both Democrats AND Trump supporters/Republicans/conservatives, plus independents.
If they find a candidate with the possibility of a broad appeal, the Democrat collective would need to tone down the hater diatribe. Personally, I don’t believe many of them can do that.
Can reasonable Democrats overcome the haters? If not, then it doesn’t make much sense to try to reach out to Trump supporters, or Republicans, or conservatives. Spent your time getting out the Democrat vote, and hope it’s enough.
Chronos pretty much nailed it. There are, also however, what I call Pavlovian Republicans. The folks who pull the “R” lever simply because that’s what they’ve always done. Some of them, like my former district manager, are reevaluating the wisdom of this mode of behavior and may be reachable with a little effort.
99% of us are incapable of reaching out effectively to Trump voters. We can’t help ourselves - we go full-on “how the fuck COULD you?” even if we vow to ourselves that we will do our best to remain reasonable during any conversation.
Since making it clear how low our opinion is of Trump voters is no way to win them over, I think we’d best stay away from them, for the most part, until we can learn to behave with more restraint. Which is probably never for a lot of us.
I think the best thing is to strive for “big tent” rhetoric and avoid insulting the Trump voters, but don’t waste much time trying to convert them specifically. Our best bet is to act like grown-ups, do what we can to appeal to “apathetic liberals,” and hope that staying away from inflammatory rhetoric will work in our favor with any Trump supporters who are open to changing their minds.
Those are the people that heard the word “Deplorables” and stopped listening, ignoring the candidate that offered plans to create jobs and help them provide for their families.
Instead, they voted for a reality TV star whose biggest reason for “success” is being born to Fred Trump, and has only increased his inherited fortune by screwing over the little people. Ya know, the ones who have been screwed by “The System”.
Re-reading this, I think my answer was incomplete. All of the above is fine, I think, but it falls short of what we really need to do.
We also need to listen to the concerns of Trump voters, and since most of us can’t be trusted to do that directly, we should turn to mediated sources. For example, I recently watched a video clip of a family of Trump voters who still like him, because the dad got a job that he traces (rightly or not) to Trump’s election. Okay, let’s watch those videos/listen to commentators representing their views, even if we can’t stomach direct dialog. What mattered to that family? JOBS. Okay then, let’s make sure the Dems talk meaningfully about jobs.
In other words, don’t ignore Trump voter concerns, just make sure to find ways to deal with them that don’t turn us insane. I’d rather see the spittle-flecked crazies acting out on the Right, not the Left.
I generally don’t have a lot of optimism for voters in this country in general. Clearly a lot of Trump voters are living in an alternate reality, but so are some voters on the left. The average American voter is just seriously ignorant to the point of being incompetent. We have an incompetent electorate, so it’s no surprise that we have a republican majority that fails so miserably at repealing a law it has campaigned against for 7 years that it has to resort to forcing senators to vote for a law they haven’t even seen. It’s no surprise that we have a president who hires and fires senior campaign staffers within 2 weeks and has other former staffers facing criminal probes. This wasn’t a meteor that fell out of the sky. This one’s on us, the voter. Cry about the system all you want, we created the system to a large degree, either through apathy or proud ignorance that we wear on our sleeves like Boy Scout patches. When the Rock seriously talks about running for president, and when Kid Rock seriously talks about running for senator, you know it’s over.