When reading these boards, and looking at American attitudes in general, there seems to be this idea that Democrats are “wrong” and need to earn votes. When something bad happens in politics, it always seems to be the fault of the democrats, whether because their strategy was wrong, they didn’t try hard enough, they were not united enough or whatever else.
Two recent examples in elections
Is there a democratic candidate for POTUS I can support?
So where did the democrats go wrong?
Instead of asking “Where did the democrats go wrong” - why is the question not more along the lines of
why is the American electorate so easy to hoodwink?
How did the Republicans trick / cheat / manipulate their way to power?
Instead of assuming no Democrat is worthy of support, or the Democrat must, for some reason, entice voters away from the Republican, why is the question not more along the lines of
how can liberal gun laws co-exist measures to reduce gun violence?
How do I get rid of Trump while maintaining strong 2nd amendment protections
I may be wrong here, but it generally seems that the starting position is always “Republicans are Right” - and it is harder to get people to move / change from this default.
Generally, the party that is not in power is, by default, considered to be the party in need of change. After 2012, for instance, many pundits were analyzing the Republican defeat and what the GOP needed to do to stay relevant, with many suggesting that if there weren’t reform in its immigration party plank, that the GOP was doomed.
If Democrats win in 2020, the narrative mentioned in the OP will immediately be, “What did Republicans do wrong and need to change before 2024?”
Edit: Another reason is that registered Democrats outnumber registered Republican voters by about 12 million. When one party has that big of a built-in advantage to begin with, it’s natural to ask what went wrong that caused them to lose. It would be like a soccer team of twelve men going up against a team of just nine, and the twelve-man team losing - the analysts would ask why.
(Yes, the GOP has the advantage of the Electoral College, but even then, Democrats usually have to fumble the ball in some way in order to lose.)
That’s because a majority of the posters lean towards the Democrats.
When the Philadelphia Eagles lose, the local commentators don’t typically say that the opposition played unusually well. Instead they usually say that we played poorly.
Likewise, if the Eagles, AKA “we”, win, it’s because the Philadelphia quarterback made fewer mistakes – and not because the opposition failed to take advantage of his mistakes.
Can someone use google to find exceptions? Yes. But usually people will think that their own side makes their fate.
Velocity makes some good points, but in addition: in recent years, we’ve learned a lot about the effect on elections of gerrymandering and vote-suppression tactics. These have been primarily (though not exclusively) employed by Republicans.
So there’s an assumption that the party that needs to refine or improve its message to voters, or that would even be interested in refining or improving that message, is the Democratic party. And that’s because the Republicans aren’t focused on message; they’re focused on tactics (that keep some people from voting). The implication is that Republicans don’t need to change their outreach or their candidates or their platform, but that Democrats might need to change all those things.
Reminder: HRC won ~3 million more votes than than DJT but lost the White House because our system, a relic of slavery, allows installation of losers, as do gerrymanders. Yes, the game is rigged. How will shapeshifting the Dem party fix that?
The Democrats are perceived as being “wrong” because they blew it so badly in 2016 that they’ve branded themselves as fuck-ups on a collective party level.
Dems are the party that is taking responsibility for the future of the country. Rebups are selling the future for gains that are on an even shorter time scale than “near term.”
No good deed goes unpunished.
The dems are wrong because they are suckers who are playing the game by the rules. They are rubes and they are always going to have a hard time on message boards, which are tribal and triumphal. They are the country in miniature and everybody wants to talk about their failures.
He got lots and lots of votes, many more than the opposition. Tramp did not.
“They blew it so badly” because a 3-million vote majority didn’t overcome massive GOP-engineered disenfranchisement and suppression, right? Don’t forget Mr Comey’s funny last-minute notes. This makes Dems “wrong”, how? Because unlike Tramp they didn’t conspire with enemy foreign agents to violate federal election laws? Because they don’t threaten ethnic cleansing of US citizens to a brainwashed base?
What is your recipe for Dems to correct their “wrongness”?
Now I have to imagine what rules the Democrats need to break.
How about:
When Hillary lost, she should have refused to concede. Obama then could have used his power as commander in chief to install her in the White House.
Or maybe you realize that most military members voted for Trump, so that might not be it.
How about some ethnic slurs. Say Trump is partly black.
I don’t think that’s it. Seems a little too twentieth century.
Maybe Hillary could have make something of Trump and Roy Cohn having been best buds. Say he marries the trophy wives to hide his real desires.
Or the Democrats could promise free health care with no co-pays, and lower taxes except for billionaires. I don’t think it will poll well, but, heck, it does break some economic rules.
I’m waiting to see what lies, or phoney promises, you come up with that are going to sound worse to middle America than DJT’s actual words.
Shapeshifting the Dem party (or ‘working on the message’) has the potential to win so many more votes than the GOP will get, that the Democrats can attain enough power to work on changing the Electoral College and other rigged-system relics.
No rule-breaking is required of Democrats, because the incentive-to-vote is powered differently for Democrats than it is for Republicans.
Trump-era Republicans are motivated to vote by Trump’s implicit promise that they can be like him: above the law. So long as they pledge him their fealty, he will make sure they pay no price for lying, cheating, stealing, and worse. Trump is appealing to sociopaths who believe that ‘rules are for suckers’ and that he will enable them to do exactly as they please all the time, just as long as they bow down to him. They are eager to vote for this outcome.
Democrats are motivated to vote by a belief that rules help humans work cooperatively, and working cooperatively is not only satisfying, but the best way to raise everyone’s standard of living. Idealism? Sure. But for non-sociopaths, that’s a powerful incentive to get out and vote. If you believe that honor and decency and integrity are actual things—and not just empty words that people use to manipulate each other, a belief common among sociopaths—then you respond to calls for honor and decency and integrity. Millions of people fall into that category. For Democrats to become lawless mockers of rule-following (as Trumpublicans are) would be to give up all those votes.
By the way, I’m not claiming that everyone who voted for Trump is a sociopath, nor am I claiming that no registered Democrat is a sociopath. (Obviously there must be some.)
I’m merely pointing out the broad appeal of each party. Republicans appeal to those who believe that Winning is Everything (a sociopathic position). Democrats appeal to those who believe in teamwork and empathy.
For Democrats to embrace lying and cheating would be futile, because they’d lose the votes of those who prefer the usual Democratic philosophy, while failing to gain the votes of the Trumpublicans (who want Trump).
In the south a lot of older people are still registered as Dems but almost never vote for a Dem except for some local offices. They don’t bother to change their registration because it does not matter in the general election.
When majority power is taken with a minority of votes, the game is rigged.
When voters are disenfranchised or suppressed, the game is rigged.
When legislators gerrymander districts, the game is rigged.
Without free and fair elections, the game is rigged.
When losers are installed, the game is rigged.
Amy Klobuchar who interestingly enough is a victim of the “likability penalty” by the Dems themselves.
By not running/nominating people that people want to vote for meaning people that actually have a personality. H. Clinton, Biden, Warren, Sanders. The most presidential is Klobucher and because of that she is losing. Why? See #1.
It started back with Bill Clinton. The electorate elected Slick Willy (a known slime bucket) and said we don’t care if you outright lie to us OR to a Court. Then you had GW Bush who people elected saying we don’t need a President - we need a good ol’ boy (which started with Clinton’s election). You don’t need a diplomat, you need a President you can have a beer with. Even with Obama’s election - McCain was vastly more Presidential than the inexperienced Obama but you could relate to Obama. He was a cool guy to hang out with wasn’t he - not like your grandfather John.
So what did we have in 2016? Hillary Clinton which Dems refuse to admit was a candidate that many people voted against against Trump who “told it like it was was” which many people said they wanted in a politician for decades.
Continue #3 - Combine this with Trump realizing that the Electoral College votes for the President and it is not a nationwide popular vote and viola you now have President Trump. Despite you poisoning the well with how you phrase the question, Republicans did not trick / cheat / manipulate their way into power. They won elections. One could argue that with gerrymandering and the lack of any real proportional voting by district (for the House and 2 state EVs) or by state as per EVs that the system is fundamentally broken but that is the system that the Pubs and Dems have agreed to so that one of them will always remain in power. Sometimes it’s D, sometimes it’s R but it is always one of them.
I’m curious, why did you not ask “How did the Democrats trick / cheat / manipulate their way to power in 1976 and in 2008?”
If that’s the game, how come Hillary barely campaigned in
Wisconsin
Michigan
Pennsylvania
Choosing instead to campaign in states that she had already clinched. If you play a low pair in poker and lose all your money overplaying them, do you say the game is rigged because your opponent played it right?
I disagree. They need to show up hard. SJW realy just means stuff we already have been working on a long time, over a hundred years now: income inequality, race, climate.
We going to turn backwards now? Oh yeah…I see that working real well… I guess if we get a big enough police force?
Lets see if the ones who pine for the older times in america don’t start dropping off (attritionally) in a cycle or two and some progress can be intitated.