What are new tactics that haven't been used against Trump/MAGA yet?

Politics & Elections
21

Problem with that is that the US system isn’t nearly as supportive of multiple parties as the UK system is.

One thing we can definitely be doing better is spreading the word about just how impractical those citizenship tests are. For starters, the SAVE act, if passed, would disenfranchise most of the women in the US, and nobody’s complaining about that.

That’s not a hyperbole. It really would disenfranchise most women. Under the act, there are only three acceptable proofs of citizenship for natural-born citizens: You can use a passport, which most people don’t have. You can use an Enhanced State ID, which most states don’t offer. Or you can use a birth certificate bearing exactly the same name that’s on your photo ID, which most women don’t have, because most voting-aged women are married, and most married women in the US change their names.

22

Trump’s approval is below 40 nowadays, and his MAGA solutions like immigration or the economy are in similar territory.

23

He’s been mocked by comedians for the last ten years and even politicans like Jasmine Crockett on occasion, but what I’m suggesting is Democratic politicans relentlessly mock Trump and other MAGA politicians every single time they talk about them or their policies. Don’t refer to him as President Trump, call him Diaper Don, Cheeto Benito, Mango Mussolini, or something, anything that isn’t respectful or ominious. Frequently refer to MAGA as the party of pedophile protectors who want to look at your daughter’s genitals before she plays 6th grade basketball. I want to see a concerted effort on the part of the Democratic Party to relentlessly mock MAGA at every turn. That has not been tried.

24

I neither said, nor intended, every outlet to do this.

Just one is all it would take. Given a choice wouldn’t you watch the one pointing out the lies? I would. I’m not confident I’m catching ALL the lies. There are so many, and he’s well practised, I’m certain to have missed a couple. I wouldn’t mind the assist.

Everything he says should be fact checked, but the lies are so many. No one can google all that! A news outlet needs to step up their game. Personally, I believe their ratings would soar.

25

You would, and I would. But lots of folks wouldn’t. The people who would prefer this aren’t the people we need to capture.

26

I think you’re mistaken, I believe, at this point it would be popular with both sides. In increasing numbers as the midterms near.

Of course it would have to be somewhat middle of the road politically, to start from. Unallied to either party. (Hmmm, might be trickier than I imagined.)

27

I made the suggestion years ago that trust fund babies and remote workers should all move to where their votes would have the best impact, and I still say that is probably the only way to change the voting to less red/maga/stupidity.

The board I was on didn’t seem to think it would work but then when you point out that the entire voting count for some counties is in the hundreds, adding 100 persons / families to one of those sparse counties would be making a large change in voting. Remember that Rajneesh [?] in Oregon that took over the county with voter slamming.

28

It’d be easy to accomplish at the county level, but what would it accomplish? All counties vote on is county-level issues. To accomplish anything at all, you’d need to at least flip a state legislature seat, and those are all required to be equal population. Even the smallest legislative districts, New Hampshire’s, still have over 3000 residents, and that’s only because they have a very large house, so flipping one seat would be even less impactful. And still only affect one state, and that’s a state that’s already blue anyway.

29

Well, 2 thigs:

One: The polls are pointing at the numbers of people that needed capture as being enough for change to come.

Two: As many discussions in the past showed, there is very little one can do for the remaining MAGAtheans :slightly_smiling_face:, We just have to ensure they get defeated and for them to go into hibernation.

30

This. There really is not any way to defeat MAGA directly. The correct tactic is to unite everyone else who isn’t MAGA. That would be best accomplished by, as you say, having a better Democratic Party.

They just need to draw new cards and play those. In other words, adopt more positions that will actually help ordinary Americans rather than catering to the wealthy oligarchs. No more slow playing the liberal agenda like the Democrats did during the first two years of the Clinton and Obama administrations. Be more forceful in enacting those policies when they do gain power (and doing those things in states where Democrats are in charge to show that they work).

31

have to start somewhere.

32

I’ve said before here, that on a personal level, people need to cut MAGA out of their lives and tell them why they are cut. That means MAGA grandparents don’t see their grandkids anymore and it means racist uncles are eating Christmas dinner alone at Denny’s. You don’t argue with fascists, you make their presence completely unacceptable in decent society. Every time you sit down with a fascist, you are endorsing their world view.

33

I agree. But I think we have to start at the top. And then let JD know, in no uncertain terms, that if he keeps this shit up, he will also be impeached.

MAGAs will of course rant an rave. Fine. Let them. You don’t allow toddlers control your life.

34

There was a thread on Bluesky several months ago where someone was posting in real time about a bus driver that was going miles out of their way. Effectively kidnapping all the passengers and driving them away from their destination.

Anytime the passengers, and eventually the driver’s boss over the phone, tried to tell him he was going the wrong way, he just got angry and ignored them. So once it became apparent there was no reasoning with him, the passengers turned on each other. Half wanted to basically fight him for control of the bus, others wanted to wait it out.

I feel like we’re in a similar situation with the MAGA movement where everyone is mostly united on where we want to go. But since all of it is filtered through trying to affect irrational and dangerous people presently holding power. The people who are capable of reason are beating each other up, channeling their frustrations into each other, rather than recognize that all us who are trapped on this runaway vehicle all basically want the same thing. We just have favored solutions on a spectrum of more or less aggressive, based mostly on our best guesses for a lot of unknown variables.

35

And it remains a profoundly bad idea. Cutting a cultist off from those who disagree with the cult is how cults keep members. It’s not how they lose them. Losing access to people who disagree is how you create echo chambers and reinforce the worst.

In fact, the only strategy that has ever been shown to be effective to convince diehards is actual human connection. Seeing first hand that your gay son hasn’t actually become evil can persuade some. Someone who has never lied to them gently points out how the things Trump did caused the actual thing they are upset about. They show themselves to be “one of the good ones” which gives you influence.

Cutting people off is the absolute worst way to convince anyone of anything. It would only work if they had nowhere else to turn besides you.

And, for the title of this thread: It is clearly NOT something people haven’t tried. I see it all the time, and not a single story about how it convinced their family to change. It’s literally what LGBT people have been doing for decades when their family is too toxic to stick around, and what victims of narcissistic parents do to find their real “found family.”

36

People who play golf with MAGA or yuck it up with MAGA relatives are part of their support system. They are demonstrating to the fascists that any resistance is merely lip service and most Americans will not push back against it if it involves even a sliver of discomfort or inconvenience. Fascists easily took over the country and for most of the “opposition” there was some hand ringing and eye rolling and what time do we meet at the golf course. If you are a fascist, you are a bad person and if you socialize with fascists, you are a bad person. A decent person would cut a fascist out because they wouldn’t be able to stomach being around one.

So I would say to a lot of Americans to try something they haven’t tried before: stop being a bad person and take a stand against the fascists in your life. Stop making excuse for them, have a modicum of courage and self respect.

37

BigT is absolutely right about cutting people off. See also Jehovah’s Witnesses: my experiences with JW family are what I base this post on. Cutting people off drives them to their found family, MAGA.

However, keeping relationships with them as normal just enables them.

The solution, as with so many things, lies in between. Keep them in your lives, but call them out every single time they say or do anything unacceptable. Do not attempt to argue or reason with them: they will have been trained, even if informally, in all sorts of ways to subvert a logical or reasoned position with fallacious appeals: emotion, authority, religion, whatever. You’ll never change their hearts or minds, but you CAN train them and set limits for what is acceptable among people.

38

This is fun:

Support mass immigration of people from other countries who are likely to vote democratic. Basically highly educated people and POC, and make it easier for them to become citizens to vote so they can drown out MAGA. An extra 10-20 million US voters from Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc who are likely to vote Democratic will drown out MAGA in elections.

Encourage mass movement of democrats out of safe states, and have them move to swing states and swing districts (as mentioned by OP). 200k democrats leaving safe blue or safe red states and moving to swing states and swing districts will swing close elections for the house, senate and presidency.

Encourage large scale voter suppression and voter ID laws in white rural areas (again, mentioned by OP).

OP mentioned infiltrating MAGA, but they should infiltrate MAGA to promote divisions. Democrats should infiltrate MAGA talking about how catholics aren’t real christians. or how latinos and asians will never be white. Or how women will always be inferior. create divisions in MAGA between men and women, between protestants and other christians, between whites and light skinned POC.

Mass rebuilding of the labor movement. High school educated whites have left the democratic party. However high school educated whites who are in labor unions are far more likely to vote democratic vs high school educated whites who are not in labor unions. Mass unionization of high school whites in manufacturing, service work, etc.

Promote propaganda showing Trump being in favor of POC, muslims, feminists to weaken his base.

Ridicule MAGA men for being so spineless and cowardly that they need a child molester to protect them from brown people because they are terrified of brown people, and because they know they’re so incompetent that they can’t survive in an equal society where they have to compete against immigrants who can’t speak english. MAGA are highly driven by concepts of courage, bravery, strength and masculinity; so undermining that would hurt their movement.

Mass support of third parties that split the GOP vote. Libertarians and other 3rd parties.

Give homeless people money to move to swing states and swing districts and vote democratic in elections.

At root the question is how can we increase democratic voters, reduce republican voters, and make sure that this especially applies to swing states and swing districts. Theres a lot of tactics to try to do this.

39

There have been a good number of articles published over the last few years about political divisions leading to damaged relationships within families. To the point where family members have cut one another off not because of abuse but because the disagreements run so strong. While I haven’t cut family members off, political division has damaged my own relationship with my mother because I stopped talking to her about anything serious after she fell down the Fox News rabbit hole. We rarely talk about anything of a political nature because had we continued down that road it probably would have led to us not talking to one another at all.

There are tens of millions of my fellow Americans who either support MAGA or are indifferent to their outrageous crimes, corrpution, or anti-American values. It’s just not practical to cut all these people out of your life. At least not for someone like me who lives deep in MAGA country.

40

You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.

And -

Logic and facts fail when a belief is rooted in emotion, identity, or blind faith rather than evidence.

We WILL win. They will have to crawl back under their rocks.