The solution for the "Liberals fall in love, conservatives fall in line" problem

Politics & Elections
1

Quite possibly the single biggest factor that lost the 2016 and 2024 elections for the Democrats (and also came within a whisker of losing 2020 as well) was the “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line” phenomenon.

Republicans dutifully turn out to vote, even if their candidate is abhorrent. Democrats, meanwhile, have not turned out with gusto to vote for a candidate since Obama, and that was only because Obama was an unusual once-in-multiple-generations candidate who combined unusual charisma and many other attributes in one.

The “Democrats need to fall in love” factor is an artificial handicap ceiling that always limits the D’s to maybe only 70% of their full potential, artificially deducting maybe ten million votes that would or should have been the D’s in every election cycle. To be sure, vote suppression, the Electoral College, gerrymandering all have a depressing effect too. But the refusal of many Ds to turn up to vote unless they feel genuinely inspired or enthused by a candidate has already cost the blue team numerous elections, and will continue to cost them many more in the future.

For instance, Kamala had her flaws, but she was, overall speaking, far superior to Trump in 2024. (Well, almost anyone was/is.) Yet, because “she wasn’t nominated via a primary process,” “she laughs at the wrong time,” “she isn’t really likable,” she ended up losing to Trump, when if Democrats would have simply just shown some of that same cult-ish “We fall in line, we don’t need to be in love” energy, she would have won in a landslide.

Like Michelle Obama said, “He gets to be lawless, she needs to be flawless.”

Now, Democrats can’t and shouldn’t go full-in cult like MAGA does in terms of lunacy and brainwashing, that would be terrifying. But what can Democrats do to vote like the Trump cult, in terms of sheer devoted crawl-on-knees-over-broken-glass-to-vote-for-our-guy energy, so they can truly unlock 90% or 100% of their voting potential? If the Ds behaved like MAGA in this regard, they’d win every single presidential election, and always have control of Congress.

2

Re-animate JFK?

Beg Michelle Obama to run?

3

I think you are catastrophically oversimplifying how the electorate votes. Anecdotally, I’m not aware of any Democrats I know who didn’t vote in the Trump era. OTOH about half of the independents I know either voted 3rd party or didn’t vote (myself included). Independents make up about 40% of the electorate. Democrats lose elections because the DNC targets traditionally Democratic voters. Republicans in the Trump era have consistently targeted independents. All of this is a gross oversimplification, but your premise is flawed to start with. If Democrats want to start winning they need to focus on convincing “middle America” to vote for them.

4

Yeah. This premise fundamentally misunderstands how unpopular the Democratic party is. The problem isn’t voters only like and not love Democratic candidates . Voters largely despise the Democratic party. Biden’s approval numbers were abysmal. Democratic congress is even worse. New voters, who should be a fairly liberal group, only become Democrats a quarter of the time. The only reason the party does as well as it does is that a lot of voters hate the Republican party even more. But a lot of voters dislikes Biden/Harris enough to just vote for the other guy too so elections are often a tossup.

Also, given the Democratic party’s current coalition, voter suppression probably is a net positive for the party. Democrats do better when turnout is lower. There is no giant group of would be Democrats who would vote for them if only it was a little bit easier.

The solution is to understand why voters don’t like you and fix things instead of blaming everything on the voters/media/voter suppression etc..

5

I genuinely think that Rahm Emanuel and Pete Buttigieg ticket is what America and Dems needs in 2028.
But the Dem electorate would scream bloody murder because: two white guys, one Boo! Jewish, the other … I don’t know what’s not to like about Pete but they’ll find something.

6

I think the people who need to feel inspired to vote are low-information, disengaged voters. The educated classes vote much more reliably, and they have recently become a solidly Democratic constituency. During the Trump era, we have seen that lots of his voters ONLY show up when he’s on the ballot. Relying on the educated vote to win elections has its drawbacks as a strategy, but I think this particular problem has been solved for the time being.

7

I think there are about three different phenomena being conflated here:

– Some people are just generally apathetic about politics, and don’t vote unless they are really motivated. They might vote for president if they like the candidate, but not if they don’t, and they tend not to turn out for midterms at all. Mostly, these people are young and / or poor and / or not college educated. Traditionally, these groups skewed Democratic; nowadays, it’s less clear that this is the case.

– Some people are VERY passionate about politics, but are “purity ponies”; they threaten to stay home if, for example, the candidate doesn’t talk about their pet issue in the exact right way, even if that candidate otherwise agrees with them on most stuff and the opposition agrees with them on nothing. I think this IS mostly a left-wing phenomenon, but I’m not really familiar enough with what Republicans say among themselves to know for sure. In any case, these people are a loud but relatively small portion of the electorate, and I suspect that for many of them, “opposing authority” is simply part of their personality, and trying to get them to fall in love with a major party’s standard-bearer is a fool’s errand.

– Some people just really don’t want to vote for a woman, or a candidate of a particular ethnicity, but they don’t want to say that, so they will find fault with random frivolous stuff, like Kamala Harris’s laugh. I think this is likely true for voters of both parties, but hits Democrats harder because 1) they’re more likely to nominate candidates who belong to some disfavored group; and 2) Republicans are more likely to just say the quiet part out loud.

8

I think that may be part of it. It used to be that part of the identity of (many) liberals was that they were non-conformists who liked to “stick it to the man” and go against authority. Which is great when the authority is a Republican government or something like that, but when their own party’s leadership, the DNC, is telling them to do something, then they rebel against their own leaders because it’s in their bones to do so. (Not that the DNC leadership hasn’t itself been awful, but the liberal voters are inherently harder to tell what to do and expect them to obey.)

9

He’s a Millennial!

10

Right. Entitled, lazy bastard.

11

And some of them will only notice there’s a general election when the big ad buy shows up during the baseball playoffs. They had no idea there even was a midterm primary.

12

I would support a Biden/Hillary ticket before I’d go for that. (Joe, Jill or Hunter, doesn’t matter)

13

Americans by and large don’t want a woman president. Or a Jewish president. Or a gay president. Or a black president.

Leave it to the Dems to nominate a black Jewish gay woman next time. They are that out of touch.

14

I don’t buy this at all. That’s exactly what they keep trying. It’s what they’ve always done, and it’s why you don’t get the passion the right has.

Trump didn’t at all try to appeal to independents. He went hard right. Unlike other Republicans (like say McCain, Romney) who kept trying to move to the center. His positions are always extreme, not moderate at all, so that he appears tough.

Dems are always seen as wishywashy.

15

Who should they nominate to appeal to sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, racist voter? Ya know, to get back in touch with America.

16

And yet, Joe Biden got about 12 million more popular votes for president than Obama got 12 years earlier (in fact, more than any other presidential candidate ever). And I’m not sure if anyone “fell in love” with Joe Biden.

Is it possible the Democratic Party can neither fall in love with nor fall in line behind a woman?

17

Trump managed to attract quite a few people who weren’t far right during his first run for office. Ashli Babbit, who died for Trump on January 6th, had voted for Obama. My mother, who was largely an apolitical individual of the “They’re all crooks” variety throughout most of her life, went full MAGA. During his third campaign Republicans made a concerted effort to reach out to younger people and embracing RFK, Jr. helped him get some of the woo woo crowd.

18

Well, given a dearth of solutions proposed in the thread to date, let me propose the “solution” used in the functioning democracy over here. Compulsory voting.

Proposed simply as a contrarian and counterintuitive to the “Only American solutions for American issues” dogma. Similar to the concept of a non-partisan electoral boundaries commission to fix that other great blight on what passes for American democracy i.e. gerrymander to the extent that representatives choose their voters.

19

A look at the numbers shows that the OP’s premise is faulty.

Harris got about the same percentage of her party’s vote as Trump did.

Harris lost because of erosion of support among certain groups, including young voters and Hispanics, and was expecially out of favor on key issues of the economy and immigration. She lost some previous Biden voters and didn’t pick up enough independents.

An analysis:

The next Democratic presidential candidate needs to do a lot better job appealing to independent voters.

20

Did not see that coming. Say more.