# What should the Democratic 2020 main campaign message be?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-the-democratic-2020-main-campaign-message-be/837768>\
**Category:** Politics & Elections\
**Created:** [July 28, 2019, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-the-democratic-2020-main-campaign-message-be/837768 "2019-07-28T20:38:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 20

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**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\
**Post date:** [July 29, 2019, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-the-democratic-2020-main-campaign-message-be/837768/20 "2019-07-29T17:53:42Z")

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I went with negative for the reasons I gave in the portion quoted below to another thread.

> [@How can the Democrats win the election?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-the-democrats-win-the-election/837262/86):
>
> I am going to go counter to conventional wisdom and say that after the primaries Democrats should not concentrate on a clear positive message for what policies they will bring to the country. Policies are by their nature complicated and imperfect. Any realistic policy will include pluses and minuses. Republicans will find those minuses and focus all attention on what they are. So that instead of being the anti-global warming candidate, the Dem will be the the pro high gas price candidate. You can try to argue back and forth about which is true and which is a bigger problem but it ends up being at best a draw. 2016 showed that empty promises with no details are just as good if not better than complicated policies, but that the real vote getter is fear. People vote with their amygdala, not their cerebral cortex.
> 
> I would recommend concentrating on the president’s corruption, lies, contempt for any checks and balances, and autocratic tendencies. Make it clear that what Trump has been normalizing is anything but normal and that if we continue down this road, we may go past the point of no return. It is easy to cobble together the statements that Trump as made to indicate that he wouldn’t be satisfied with just two terms. We want to leave the impression that the 2020 election is all that stands between us and the world of the man in the high castle.

Also, there is no way that any of the “positive” campaign promises included in a positive Democratic message will actually be achievable. At best there will be a small majority in the Senate patched together with Centrist Democrats from Red states who will flee in terror from any step outside of the box, or more likely a turtled up Mitch who would like nothing better than the complete destruction of health and prosperity in the US, provided a Democrat is in charge at the time.

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