As I’ve said before, Democrats are a center/left party and need both wings flapping to get off the ground. When a Democrat loses, it’s generally because one of those wings has “let them down”. Harris though, I think, lost a little at both edges and, in an election that was this close (despite MAGA chest-thumpers saying otherwise) that was enough. She lost folks on the left because of Biden’s Mid East policies and she lost folks in the center due to race/gender issue and te transphobic ad barrage. A lot of folks, while not hardcore MAGA were trump-comfortable (trumpfortable?) saying: Hey, trump 1 wasn’t so bad, we survived (Well, most of us, anyway). They saw Harris as a gamble and weren’t willing to take it.
Heck, that kid in Butler may have gotten trump that 1.6%. We don’t know, I don’t think we can know, but that’s my analysis.
Watch as everything is destroyed. Fortunately I’m white male, fairly old and childless; with any luck I’ll be dead or at least able to kill myself before they get around to me. And I won’t leave anyone after me to live in the hell we’ve decided to create.
That’s not the strategy it’s just the truth. It’s just going to take some time to come up with a strategy for reaching out to those stupid/racist/sexist/bigoted Trump supporters.
It is just about 2% of the base that changed. And there is evidence that a lot of them fell for propaganda of the worst kind.
And many times, it was propaganda offered by the “leaders” of the Republican party.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance told CNN on Sunday. Days earlier, Vance had acknowledged that “it’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false”—a confession that implies that he does not care whether they are true.
Second, a good number of the fence sitters did fell for exaggerations and fake info about what Trump would do for them, that is a double edge sword that is bound to cut very quickly in the other direction as many on the fence do mind being had.
As the number one reason for their vote was because of the economy, this is bound to be like what took place in Britain. The economic effects of Brexit and the lies told about using the leave vote to “solve” immigration issues, turned into not being amusing to most of the British voters nowadays, and they voted the Tory conservatives out.
And yet despite all that somehow the Democrats only lost by a point and a half and actually gained seats in the House.
I don’t disagree that the Democratic party need to make changes at least at the national level. They are clearly out of touch with a big swath of society. They do not understand these voters and these voters do not trust the Democrat platform. Some of it misinformation, but some is handwaving away people’s economic concerns because some metric looks good is not going to get you voters.
I think where we disagree in how fixable a problem this is. A lot of these voters were mad about inflation or Biden policy. That is not going to be on the ballot next time. And if lives don’t generally get better, which I don’t think they will, then they will have a new party in power to blame.
Democrats need to understand that modern elections are fought with podcasts and youtube videos and not going door to door and going on CNN. They need to listen and understand. They need policy proposals on housing on jobs and other economic factors and they need to sell it well. But they shouldn’t feel as hopeless as you are implying in this for these 2026 races. I suspect two years from now is going to be a really good environment for Democrats if they can take advantage of it.
3rd time - did you read the article I linked upthread? Cohn makes a strong argument about how and why the Democrats are seeing their traditional base drift toward the populism offered by Trump and the GOP.
People have been predicting the decline or death of the GOP since Trump came on the scene. Looking at this information it seems it is more likely the Democrats who are ceasing to be relevant to their historic base. And ignoring it won’t do anything but make it worse.
And I do think this is fixable. However, it is going to take longer than the next two or even four years. The Democrats have to rebuild relationships with a lot of these groups. At this point they seem to be convinced the GOP cares more about them than the Democrats.
You make good points but the crucial thing is the Democrats have to learn how to combat the lies and propaganda being spewed by the GOP and all the online bots. I see little to make me think they have a clue how to do it.
Lies and distortions about the economy and immigration were the main things that pushed a good chunk of the D base toward the GOP. I didn’t see anything that made me think the Dems had a clue how to combat it.
I’m a little surprised / disappointed that this thread - which asks just about the most important question we face at the moment - has devolved into just another political rant thread. If that’s what the OP intended, then I apologize and will shuudup about it.
When we all get over our understandable, well deserved grief, what are we going to do to counter the shit that’s coming down the pike? Nothing for us to do about the new Blight House, but what about locally? I’ve always kept track of what’s going on politically but never really did anything. Recently I signed up and attended my first Democratic Party meeting and wrote to my congresswoman about R9495. I know some here are already politically active (Bravo!); maybe we can inspire one another to get involved in the fight.
To get the thread back on track, I suggest (for the left):
The left needs to infiltrate the right from within. Every progressive needs to enter the Trump social media circle and slowly undermine it from within. No attack from outside works.
Democrats need to embrace a fiscally liberal but socially centrist stance. America is begging for leftism in the workplace, stimulus, UBI, higher minimum wage, union protection, etc. But SJW-ism and wokism is still unpopular. Instead, we got the worst stance: we got a Democratic Party that was woke and SJW while still allowing the minimum wage to languish at $7.25/hr, allowed the top 1 percent of Americans to hog immense wealth, etc.
Ditch identity politics.
Embrace performative patriotism, like Babale suggested. Stop letting right wingers claim to be the true patriots.
Thank you; those are great suggestions and really in line with what I’m hoping for. In my mind, I will not give up on what I think is right, but rather be a little more cautious how I express it around people to whom I know are intractable. It’s not a zero sum game, unless we continue to make it one.
“Yeah, I am pretty liberal socially, but right now I’m more concerned that none of us are going to succeed with 25% tariffs”.
I for one can’t think of a better way to ensure the Democrats never win another election than by publicly informing minorities that we don’t have their back and will not stand up for their rights.
I agree. I’m a white male that’s not in the LGBTQ+ community, and I don’t know many people like me, personally, who except the Right Wing framing on these issues.
The most likely result would be them converting to MAGA, not them convincing people. Don’t presume you are immune to propaganda; lots of people ended up getting sucked into the far right because they could just hang out unaffected.
Maybe, but I can’t think of an alternative. Nothing else has worked.
I have always been firmly of the opinion that the best way to defeat a political enemy is from within and the worst is head-on. MAGA-ers are folks who will swallow anything uncritically as long as it comes from a perceived ally and reject anything as long as it comes from a perceived foe. So a hollow-them-out-from-within or steer-the-boat-by-hijacking-it approach is the only option that liberals have left, IMHO.
And there we have it. A better candidate (by far), better ground game, good economy, respect of our allies, more money, and the most deplorable and incoherent opposition candidate in American history and we didn’t win. Nothing will work. Sad but true.