I don’t know that it comes down to being the party that stands up for minorities vs. the party that hates minorities. As far as I can tell, the perception isn’t that the Democratic party hates white people, but rather preferentially sticks up for minorities at the white majority’s expense.
And the country is something like 65% White, 16% Hispanic, 12% Black, 5% Asian and 2% mixed and everyone else. It would be short-sighted to disregard the white majority just yet… they outnumber the minorities by nearly 2:1. It’ll take a while before that even ends up at 50/50.
Beyond that, I think that social issues are still an issue somewhat; see the huge backlash to the ACA, and the opposition that’s still around to gay marriage, various welfare programs, etc… Also, the idea of big vs. small government is still very much in play; the comment I read on another thread about how FDR would be a Democratic hero because he expanded the scope of the Federal Govt, struck me as being a reason he’d be considered a Republican villain.
The biggest problem is that both parties tend to play to their “bases”, which means the set of people who are the most invested in the political process, and who almost by definition, don’t represent the rank and file of American society. Many of the more vocal Democrats on the SDMB are essentially the Democratic equivalent of Tea-Partiers, so we may well do to look at their proposals with a critical eye.
Unfortunately, once they promise to do something about lobbyists, and then break that promise, they lose credibility, and that hurts the brand.
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Frame the narrative the way Bernie Sanders is framing it (essentially the same way FDR framed it back in the day). Deemphasize the social-cultural issues (on which progressive victory is eventually inevitable in any case), and emphasize economic issues and class issues (defining the middle class and the working class to include the white middle/working class, but all other colors as well). Drive a wedge between the 1% and the 99%.
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Absolutely. That’s why Bernie has such a lock on the nomination and is on an almost inevitable path to the White House. That’s why Occupy Wall Street foreshadowed a Democratic tsunami, and why its effects linger to this day.
You’ve put your finger on it, BG - class envy all the way.
Let’s say that it’s 65-35 white to minority. If Republicans cede 95% of the minority vote to Democrats, then Republicans would need a bit more than 74% of the white vote to get a majority, or about a 3-1 margin among whites. With the Republican war on women, they need a super-dee-dooper majority among white men to cling to power. As the white majority decreases, as it will, and Republican hostilities to minorities increases, that will mean that Republicans simply cannot win the presidency.
In point of fact the Democratic party has long been the party of the working class. The success that the GOP has had in convincing White working class voters that supporting equal for rights for the marginalized must mean taking from them has been part of what has given them control of much of the South.
Correct that the Democrats need to reverse the success of that canard and make it clear that income inequality is pushing down the working class and the middle class and even the upper middle class … that wealth redistribution is the reality in the land now, redistributing it from the workers of this country increasingly into the pockets of the very few, and that that wealth redistribution is what the Democratic Party stands against.
Both sides know that fear and anger motivate most and most easily. The GOP core is smaller but they have lots more of each and it is sustained during mid-term years. The GOP has relied on that fear and anger for so long that they have painted themselves into a corner: winning a national primary without appealing to it strongly is very improbable; having won the primary by appealing to it creates the (exploitable) fear and anger in the Democratic base.
A (if not “the”) core “progressive” issue right now is income inequality. A good campaigner can rally the swing voters to the realization that this really is the issue of greatest importance to them and to their children’s and grandchildren’s futures. “We” may be in middle or even upper income bracket but our college educated kids are not having an easy time finding great paying jobs … they are struggling to service education loans and we struggled to pay what we could of their education expenses using up lots of whatever wealth we had. Our kids and some of us even are dropping out of the middle … the progressively hollowing out middle. Meanwhile the very richest are becoming richer with more and more wealth concentrated in the hands of the very few.
“Progressive” is not necessarily anathema to winning the swing voters.
They got 52% of the House vote in '14. Yes, the impact was amplified to 57% of the seats because of the impact of gerrymandering, but Democrats still lost the House popular vote.
Plus you can cry all you want about gerrymandering but it is still the facts on the ground. You won’t change it until you win enough in local races despite it to reverse it. So you’ve got to figure out how to win local and Congressional races, at least in states that have any tinge of purple to 'em.
The Democrats have at a national level won the culture war. At local and Congressional levels however culture wars play to GOP strength … the greater fear and anger that leads to a highly motivated and energized GOP base.
The GOP brand fails to successfully sell itself to the rising majority of this country, 'tis true, and they are at an increasing handicap in national elections going forward so long as such is true.
And the Democratic brand fails to successfully sell itself to the White “working class” and less educated, many of whom don’t care all that much about social conservative causes either way. The brand needs to win them back with economic populism that is both able to messaged in simple sound bites and based on sound approaches to address the hollowing out of the middle and frightening future Millennials and those who will follow them are facing.
The Democrat edge with women voters is only a few percent. The Republican party’s platform on abortion and contraception and women’s rights, etc. hasn’t changed appreciably for decades. So, either women (on average) don’t particularly agree with your framing of the issue, or they’re awfully slow on the uptake.
Really? Linked in the sibling thread but here, I’ll spoon feed it.
Among women the GOP plus GOP lean is 36% and the Dem plus Dem lean is 52%. 16% is a big “few.” Straight up GOP to Dem is 23 to 37% with 35% Ind. Also a dang big few.
You can argue that party affiliation in the general population is more important than actual votes. You might be right. But what I said was that the edge with voters is only a few percent. Which is true. I intended my second mention of “women” to also refer to “women voters”, but I didn’t explicitly say so. I think it’s clear from context, but maybe not. It hardly rises to the level of “making shit up”.
Fear and anger are the easy way to motivate, but not the most effective. Giving people something to vote for works far better, it just takes more effort. Obama brought out more Democrats in 2008 than loathing of GWB did in 2004. Kerry just did not represent the hopes and dreams of Democrats. But Democrats sure thought that hatred of GWB would be enough to spark unprecedented turnout. This was the birth of the “skewed polls” theory.
In mid-terms (2010 to 2012), to quote your first cite
Your other cite does not say what you report it says. It notes that there was one outlier poll that put women preferring the GOP in advance of mid-terms out of a series of other polls that showed a Democratic preference of +7, +9, and some in double digits. And as noted in your first cite, during that mid-term there was in fact a major gap in male to female voting.
Sorry to be “shirty” but I have little tolerance for posters stating fictions as if they are facts.
I do think that the GOP has learned to back down from the rhetoric that earned its rep as a war on women, at least at national levels, and stoking that fire in the absence of that rhetoric is not a winning approach. I could be wrong about that lesson learned but I think so. But the point is still valid that the combination of a consistent female lean to the D side and significantly better female turn-out makes the point valid … while the GOP continues to increasingly do more poorly with female voters (as they have) they must win Whites males by an increasingly large “super-dee-dooper majority” to pull off a general election win.
Honestly I wish it was true that voting FOR something motivates turn-out more effectively than does fear and anger but I think human nature is actually otherwise.
It is, and I do not mean this in a partisan manner, what is bankable in the GOP, and why they have a fighting chance even with smaller voter leans. Their base is afraid and angry and that fear and anger is played to and stoked with great skill by conservative media sources. It gets turn-out of the base consistently.
I hate negative ads and negative campaigns but I am not quite fool enough to not recognize that the GOP’s fear and anger machine is highly effective at pushing their turn-out. The down-side of that efficacy is however the fact that your formulation seems pretty much on target to me … you need two out of three and the magnitude of the fear and anger results in a counter-fear and anger that drives turn-out of the opposition and loses more of the swing than they can afford to lose.
That said, this is the Democratic brand’s future thread … depending on your opposition to deliver the ammo to use against them is not an ideal long term approach. Yes you need to stand FOR things even if turn-out is more driven by fear and anger.
That said you can have a two-fer. The hollowing out of the middle, the increasing concentration of wealth and power (and power is ultimately what wealth buys … wealth is not owning 10 sports cars … its the ability to buy them even if never bought, and to buy politicians almost as easily) in the pockets of the very few, the 0.1%ers … hits both ways. It is being FOR greater income equality; for college affordability; for middle class jobs … so on. But is also the fear of losing our place in the middle class; the fear and anger that our children may not be able to be middle class; the anger that those of us who are not middle class are losing the paths to pull ourselves up anymore.
Demonizing the wealthiest in my mind fails as it is mere demagoguery and will not delivery effective change. We need businesses to do well … and we need to find ways to assure that all get a fair piece of that pie and to prevent all the over-concentration of wealth that is occurring whether businesses do well or they do not.
You’re right in terms of things like negative ads being more effective than positive ads, but negative campagining seems to reduce turnout, not increase it. It just seems to be easier to reduce your opponents votes than increase your own.
But Democrats do have the capability to win all three. It happened in 2008(Dem turnout was higher than normal, Republican turnout lower, and Obama won swing voters), and it sorta happened in 1992 and 1996. Clinton seems to be going all-in on just inspiring high Democratic turnout, which is not playing to her strengths as a candidate.
a) You do realize we are not even at the pre-game show yet?
b) The theme so far is focus on “boosting economic security for the middle class and expanding opportunities for working families” with lots of inclusive imagery. Seems to me that is what swing voters, and even lots of the White working class males who are the key demographic of the GOP base, care about most too … not just the Democratic core. The key will be whether or not people will judge her as actually able to deliver. And the exact words chosen will have to both resonate as a progressive message (and that is addressing creeping “income inequality”, the great threat to middle class economic security) and those who are scared of anything tarred by the words “progressive” or “liberal.”
It ain’t the same. Trade deals can be and generally are done without appealing to any electoral base, but redistribution of wealth is never going to happen without a powerful electoral mandate.
You might also need to deal with the fact that those in power are wealthy themselves. A party committed to wealth redistribution needs to elect workers to Congress and the Presidency.
