Let’s be fair: he might’ve been defending zero-down subprime mortgages or mafia loan sharks.
If someone says ‘happy holidays’, you are a victim of secular humanism. If you can’t find a job, you’re a victim of foreigners stealing your job. If your business goes under, you’re a victim of government overregulation. If you lose your job for dropping bigoted comments, you’re a victim of political correctness. If you get impeached for gross abuse of power, you’re a victim of meany-pants Democrats.
As I pointed out earlier, the victim rhetoric is much, much stronger on the R side, they just don’t like to admit it.
Lies can be easy to understand; the truth is more complicated and people like it simple.
Just goes to show you, my little Shodan RoseAnnadana. Two kinds of problems in the world, the ones that can be solved, and people.
Exactly. Democrats run on a platform of victimhood and "white, police, this, police are evil, etc.
Yes, white supremacy is prevalent in America and there is a policing problem, but the way how a lot of far-left people demonize police day in and day out doesn’t bode well.
The Republicans run on a platform of “immigrants this, immigrants that”. Climate deniers, union busters, etc.
The Democratic Party has a party of tribes and coalitions but with a bigger demographic share in the future.
On reflection, I think it’s actually more than that. Republicans seem to focus on consolidating and expanding their power. So they target the largest demographics and appeal to the groups that have the money.
Democrats tend to focus on “fairness” and hope it will be self evident that everyone has that same sense of fairness. But I think for most Americans, they want to hear more about how Democrats will make their lives better, rather than how mean history has been to everyone who isn’t a white male. And even when they have ideas that will make everyone’s life “better”, they are often impractically expensive or too abstract to actually be implemented.
And I would argue that putting Democrats in charge objectively “makes life better for everyone”. Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey have exorbitantly high taxes that are driving people and businesses away. San Francisco is covered in human shit. Under De Blasio, there is a perception New York is seeing increased crime and homelessness.
Business Insider ran an article two years ago: “Liberals have a hamburger problem.”
The “hamburger problem” example given in the article was this, as written: If a man wants to eat a hamburger while watching a Redskins game, conservatives say, “Sure, you do what you want.” But liberals would tell him that his burger meat is factory-farmed, that meat contributes to global warming, and that the Redskins team name is racist.
We would?
Ask the author. Those are his words.
“Liberals: would you tell a man who wants to eat a hamburger that his burger meat is factory-farmed, that meat contributes to global warming, and that the Redskins team name is racist?” sounds like a perfect title for a poll thread. What are you waiting for?
The argument put forth in the Business Insider article (in the follow-on paragraphs) was that Democrats often resonate with many voters in terms of economic/job/healthcare policies, but that their style or tone put them off. There is broad support in many swing-state circles for healthcare reform, a higher minimum wage, etc.
The real challenge for Democrats was that they became less white, which wasn’t a problem until white middle class people started getting displaced en masse in the 1980s. In fact, their diversity was arguably an advantage given the increasing number of minority voters.
But there were two tactical approaches they made that cost them the support of “Joe and Jane Six Pack” middle class whites.
One of those was competing with Republicans for campaign cash, cozying up to the very corporations that middle class white voters wanted protection from. Name brand Democrats were stroking Corporate America while Corporate America was gutting the middle class like fish. So that was one tactical decision that probably came back to bite them in the ass.
The Democrats probably compounded this mistake by becoming the party that defended the rights of undocumented immigrants. To be clear, I think undocumented immigrants and even legal immigrants have been scapegoated, but what I’m saying is that the Democrats established themselves as the party that defended the rights of people who weren’t legally allowed in the country at a time when white middle class America was in a steep decline – white factory workers, white plumbers, white mechanics, or white retail store workers who were no longer able to keep up with their wealthier white counterparts working in finance and tech.
And then…the Great Recession. The moment that will be seared into the memories of the generation that experienced it firsthand. Millions of people went from working at a company and earning a not great but good and steady income as a loan processor or some other mid-level job one day, and unemployed for months on end after. Many saw their retirement collapse. Many homeowners had to walk away from the home and their only investment. And yet, there the Democrats were, working with the Republicans to bail out the big banks and the billionaire class while the middle class white guy - and middle class black and latino guy I’d add - got screwed out of everything. At this point, the Democrats aren’t just disconnecting with middle class whites, but they’re increasingly making some middle class blacks and latinos wonder how their lives are improving as well. And when they look around, they see that they’re not.
Once you’ve got this economic anxiety, it’s easy for cultural anxieties to exacerbate the problem. Look at what happened after 2009, and particularly after 2010: Black Lives Matter, protests over police-involved shootings, gay marriage protected by the Supreme Court, DACA, and so on. And yet, after the election of Barack Obama, Democrats made another strategic decision that had major consequences: they approached campaigns and their agenda on the inevitability of America’s future diversity - the assumption that, like in California, America would eventually became a majority non-white society. Conversely, the Republican party’s response after 2012 was their post-mortem in which the Republican Establishment essentially reached the same conclusion, portending a bleak future for their party unless they changed.
But underneath it all, there was deep resentment, particularly among lower income and less educated whites. As Democrats continued to rub elbows with the very corporations that screwed their communities out of work and out of their homes, as Democrats continued to rush to defend the rights of people who didn’t play by the rules to get into the country while seemingly ignoring the plight of those who grew up here, as Democrats and progressives campaigned to protect the rights of the relative few while ignoring the silent suffering and rising anger and displacement of the many, and as both parties spoke openly about the need to campaign away from middle class white communities, middle class white America wanted to send a message…and Donald Trump became their messenger.
Fox News and right-wing radio have successfully inculcated in their audience a (mostly false) idea of what the “style or tone” of Democrats is that is specifically designed to turn them off. There’s pretty much nothing Democrats can do about this when this audience avoids any media that tells them how liberals and Democrats feel from their own words (except for the times when a Democrat says something dumb that will fit into this narrative).
This is a very good point. Liberalism can generally only thrive in a society/nation that is prosperous and doing pretty well. In time of crisis, such as severe economic depression, war, being preyed upon by neighboring nations, right-wing strongmen tend to rise. A lot of grievances will want a scapegoat (or legit target of blame).
This gets my vote for “Best Answer.”
I should add: Democrats would be wise to read asahi’s analysis so that they could learn a few things. But even though I’m definitely “left-leaning,” I know that Democrats won’t learn squat (I share the very same frustrations with that political party that the OP does since I absolutely loathe the Republican Party).
What I’d say that, right now, in December 2019, the Democrats haven’t really responded to the problems that cost them the election. In fact, with all of the attention focused squarely on impeachment, they are in grave danger of coming across as tone deaf. I say this as someone who, reluctantly, agrees that they have no choice but to impeach at this point. But the point I’m trying to make is that they’re playing away from their strengths, and into Trump’s hands. All Trump really has to do at this point is to tell voters to look at the scoreboard: you wanted me to be a good economic president, well, look at the scoreboard.
Even if Democrats do everything right, it’s hard to beat an incumbent in Trump’s position (i.e. riding an economy that’s performing statistically as well as it has in decades). But they really need to make the economic inequality a real focus of the campaign. They actually need to do what Republicans tried to do with Obama and make labor participation rates an issue, and they need to point out economic inequality. They need to point out the collapse of farming in some states and the continued loss of manufacturing jobs, and the rise in the number of uninsured and the continued surge in healthcare costs and tuition costs. And then point out that beside all of this, Trump and the GOP’s first priority was tax breaks for the rich, which threaten social security and medicare. That is really their only chance, and as much as I fear Bernie Sanders as president, there’s no debating that at least some of his message on economics should be co-opted by Biden if he wants to win.
Y’know, I’ve long suspected that whatever the president does (or doesn’t do) has MUCH less effect on the economy than what people want to give him credit for (or to blame him for, whichever is the case) and I think that what’s going on under this current “president” proves that since he has absolutely no idea what the hell he’s doing. If what that moron is up to really HAS had an effect on our economy then he’s done nothing more than luck into it. Stupid S.o.B.
What do you mean by “white middle class people started getting displaced en masse”? Displaced from where to where?
Plus do you think constantly referring to working class whites as “Joe Sixpack” endears them to vote Democrat? Or acting as if they are clueless serfs while attacking the corporations that provide their livelihood?
I’m referring to the well-documented fact that at one time you could get a pretty decent paying job in this country without anything beyond a diploma. Whites weren’t the only ones to be displaced – the collapse of industry hurt black Americans, such as those who had fled the South to the North in the 40s and 50s. But it was white middle class America that had purchasing power, and white Americans have had, and still do have, socioeconomic status and political power. But demographic changes have left whites without degrees and without work feeling vulnerable.
No, but I’m not a campaign speech writer and I don’t see any of the candidates using that kind of language. I, on the other hand, am free to describe people any damn way I please.