The target demographic is exactly the one I named: white men, specifically those who, like Zoster, perceive current Democratic priorities as hostile or exclusionary. Zoster is a real person and represents a cohort of millions of self-described centrists (and I am sure quite a few of them post on this message board).
Arguing over whether their feelings are “true” is a strategic dead end. In politics, perception is a mechanical reality you have to solve for. Telling these voters they are wrong hasn’t won a single election.
I’m asking for the alternative. If the remedy isn’t Zoster’s “policy subtractions,” what is the specific, actionable plan to neutralize this perception? If the only response is “call it a lie,” then you aren’t answering the prompt.
Some of those white men are dyed-in-the-wool Republicans (perhaps forty percent?). I doubt there is anything the Democratic Party can do that will appeal to them.
As much as I disagree with the premise, II won’t fight it. For 50 years the Republicans have been the party of well-to-do white men and the wives who depended on them.
The swing vote here is labor. If the Democrats have a problem with labor, all they need to do is play up their defense of the blye-collar worker.
I’m genuinely curious, though: let’s say the ‘28 presidential debate moderator offers up a possible softball question to the Republican candidate: “if a white man is up for a job or a promotion, and so is a black woman who’s about equally qualified, should either of them get preferential treatment?”
“No,” the candidate replies.
The moderator turns to the Democratic candidate, and asks the same question. What response would you recommend?
Kent_Clark, focusing on labor is a classic additive strategy, but it runs into a specific hurdle. Historically, the white working class has often rejected universal economic policies if they perceive those policies as narrowing the status gap between them and non-white workers.
This is the core of the branding friction. How do you design an economic platform that white workers won’t reject simply because it also helps non-white workers?
If the “remedy” is a return to labor-centricity, how does the party message it so it doesn’t fracture a naturally fragile alliance? Is there a way to frame these policies that satisfies the white working class’s desire for status without actually betraying the non-white working class, or are we stuck in another zero-sum trap?
Waldo, a smart candidate simply says: “I hope the hiring manager and the HR department will follow all applicable local, state, and federal laws regarding fair employment.”
That answer effectively kills the trap. It moves the conversation from a cultural grievances debate back to the rule of law. The fact that this is viewed as a difficult moment proves the branding problem is real, as shown by both you and Zoster (who I strongly suspect would also see this as a devastating question for a Democratic candidate).
The actionable plan is to change their factually mistaken impressions. Not to accept the Republican-generated falsehoods as if they were truth, then gut the democratic platforms to kill the democratic bogeyman the Republicans painted onto us.
You fight propaganda with propaganda. The alternative, us fighting their propaganda with our policies, turns us into simply their puppet whose dance they can call.
The fact you keep doubling down on your demand indicates you’ve bought their line about how they’re describing reality and we need to react to it. That is false. We’re describing reality and they need to react to it.
So let’s figure out how to make them react to our reality. That’s where we start winning.
The remedy is to ridicule the very premise that Democratic policies are “Anti-White Male” and the cry babies who bemoan that their demographic gets a shorter head start than they once did.
LSLGuy, saying “fight propaganda with propaganda” is a rhetorical goal, not a specific actionable plan. It doesn’t explain how you actually move the needle for a voter like Zoster.
If a voter perceives the brand as hostile, telling them “you are being brainwashed by the other side” is just another version of telling them they are wrong. It has the same failure rate. You are essentially proposing that the party wins by simply being louder and more convincing about the existing reality.
The friction remains: Zoster and millions like him have a specific list of grievances. If your answer is that those grievances are entirely artificial and can be messaged away without a single policy or rhetorical concession, then how does that message actually reach them?
What is the first sentence of “pro-Democratic” propaganda that makes a white male centrist stop and think the brand has changed? If you can’t articulate the content of the propaganda, you aren’t addressing the issue.
Czarcasm, treating the friction as “fiction” because you dislike the specific person articulating it is a strategic error. Political parties do not commission focus groups or target outreach toward specific cohorts because they are chasing a single person on a message board.
If the friction is fiction, the Democrats wouldn’t be struggling to reach these voters in actual elections. If your position is that there is no brand problem to solve, then you are not engaging with the prompt.
These “white male” voters, per @Varl_Hobe, will vote Democratic only if Democrats can guarantee that Whiteness will mean ‘higher status.’ In other words: these are that fraction of white males who like racism, and demand racism from their politicians.
Democrats will never appeal to these people no matter how much Brand Repair they attempt. Democrats are never going to be the party of We’ll Make Sure You’re Accorded Superior Status If You’re White.
The “issue” itself is, as several have noted, an attempt to gaslight. There is no “branding” problem that Democrats are going to solve by openly embracing racism.
Now if what the OP wants is the Openly White Supremacist Party and the Apologists for the White Supremecists Party, well he can have that within his comfortable worldview.
But I don’t want to live in a country where those are the two major parties.
My actual belief is it will take a concentrated propaganda effort for about 40 years = 1-1/2 generations to move the needle to where Americans think more about loyalty to economic status than to race. Then for the first time, a party based the interests of the 90% will begin to be able to attract voters. It’ll probably also take another Depression and some bread lines. That seems to be the only thing that jolts racists: being hungry.
If the friction isn’t “fiction,” and it isn’t just “Zoster being Zoster,” what is your assessment of the brand’s standing with his cohort?
Rejecting Zoster’s specific list of grievances doesn’t automatically mean the current strategy is the right one. If you believe the brand needs a remedy, but that Zoster’s direction is the wrong path, what is the practical alternative? If you don’t have one, you’re just arguing against a specific person rather than addressing the problem.
I never said either of those things. I’ll respond when you start to get it right-responding to points never made in the first place is a fool’s errand.
LSLGuy, you are mischaracterizing my position. Identifying a grievance as a brand obstacle is not the same as endorsing the worldview of those who hold it. Analyzing the branding “pickle” the party is in isn’t an act of apology; it is a diagnostic necessity.
Furthermore, waiting for a forty-year propaganda cycle or a literal Great Depression isn’t a “remedy”—it’s a surrender. If your solution requires a generation and a half of social engineering and mass hunger to make the platform palatable, then you are admitting the brand is currently broken for this electorate.
In the real world, parties have to win with the voters they have, not the ones they hope to “jolt” into submission through economic misery. If we can’t find a way to neutralize the “hostile” perception without waiting for bread lines, then the “anti-white male” brand has already won.
Is there any practical path that doesn’t involve waiting half a century for the population to change?
In Post #32, you stated: “The ‘friction’ is, for the most part, fiction.”
In Post #34, you stated: “Once again Zoster represents Zoster.”
My previous post addressed those exact points. If you’ve changed your mind and now believe the friction is real and represents more than just one person, then we can move forward.
If you agree there is a functional brand problem, what is the remedy? If you still maintain the friction is “fiction,” then how do you reconcile that with the brand’s actual standing with this group of voters?