Welcome to our community

Be apart of something great, join today!

EXIT POLLS & TURNOUT DATA - The Red Shift

  • Thread starter Thread starter nycfan
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies: 581
  • Views: 15K
  • Politics 
I’ve presented what I think the future of the Democratic Party should be. I’d like to pose of question to those of you who think Harris couldn’t win because of misinformation, or racism, or sexism.

Where does this leave the party? How should we run in 2026 and 2028 if the lesson is Americans are too sexist or racist? How should we run if the lesson is Americans actually don’t care about populist policy?
This is a cope out answer But likely the orangeturd cluster%uck of an administration will shift a lot of votes back to the Dems Not policy related. People will suddenly remember and have buyers remorse--- the Chaos. And of course Child Care, Elder Care , college expense , price of eggs-none of that will change for the better
 
I’ve presented what I think the future of the Democratic Party should be. I’d like to pose of question to those of you who think Harris couldn’t win because of misinformation, or racism, or sexism.

Where does this leave the party? How should we run in 2026 and 2028 if the lesson is Americans are too sexist or racist? How should we run if the lesson is Americans actually don’t care about populist policy and/or populist messaging?
I think a start is for the Democratic party to step away from the Hollywood endorsements and Oprah Winfrey interviews. Those things are great when they're working, but the internet has changed the way a lot of folks access news.

Going to have to humble themselves and go engage with Joe Rogan, get more creative with tweets and TikTok/Insta, build more soundbites that transcend the noise and 24 hour news cycles so ideas "stick" in the psyche of Americans. Start letting younger, progressive party members take lead publicly in promoting the agenda.
 
I also think Trump not running will help. When a personality like that just absorbs all oxygen in the room and has developed a cult living within another reality entirely, it's really difficult to overcome that even with a deliberate and digestible message.
 


“… Elsewhere, Anson County, N.C., which is 40% African American, voted GOP for only the second time since Reconstruction. And Bucks County, Pa., an upper-income suburb outside Philadelphia, went Republican for the first time in more than 35 years.

… Across the board, there’s been a rise in the share of paycheck-to-paycheck households since 2019, BofA said. One in four households fits the bill.

… That prompted voters to look for someone to upend the status quo, and they gravitated toward Trump for his tough talk and uncompromising attitude, regardless of how they felt about him personally, Luntz explained.…”
 
Most Trump voters I know say they based their vote on "policy over personality." They don't view "progressive" policies as creating real progress, the opposite in many cases. As pointed out previously, given that the housing issue is a result of lack of supply, goosing demand with a $25k supplement actually makes things worse. Many policies are also viewed as being part of zero sum games; they hurt someone else in the process of helping one segment. Those trading up in housing are put at an unfair, in their minds, disadvantage. Kamala's desperate late proposed policies to attract Black male voters is another example. Why give forgivable loans only to Black men? Why do Black men need a separate regulatory framework for digital assets? Why not Black women? Why not Native Americans? Why not everybody?


They don't like Trump on a personal level, he's just the only alternative. Going back to LBJ and the "Great Society" movement, they've seen government programs that perpetuate problems rather than solve them. I think the racism/sexism element is overplayed also. The candidacy was admittedly Trump's from the start, but the closest Republican opponent was an Indian American woman who won early primaries.


Overwhelmingly exit polls cite economic issues, not Trump's rants on illegal immigrants eating cats or the other dumb stuff. I will admit that I'm surprised the abortion issue didn't carry more weight. If Democrats want to enact change on abortion they need to do it at the state level obviously.
 
I also think Trump not running will help. When a personality like that just absorbs all oxygen in the room and has developed a cult living within another reality entirely, it's really difficult to overcome that even with a deliberate and digestible message.
Yep. One thing I mentioned during the campaign is that Trump does have a real talent for stealing the spotlight and keeping it off his opponents. And he does it partly by saying outrageous stuff and all of his other antics to dominate social and legacy news media, but it doesn't seem to hurt him and and it means that his opponents can't get any airtime. This year Kamala dominated the news cycle for awhile when she first became and candidate and then chose Walz as her running mate and Trump during that time seemed lost and exhausted, and Kamala seemed to have momentum. But then he regained the media spotlight with the whole ridiculous "Haitian immigrants taking over Ohio towns and eating white people's pets" nonsense, and that was it. Kamala virtually disappeared for long stretches of the campaign, and the focus was entirely on Trump again. Assuming they don't change the Constitution to allow him to run again, at least Democrats won't be facing that again - I just don't see a JD Vance or Josh Hawley type having Trump's skill in that area.
 
I’ve presented what I think the future of the Democratic Party should be. I’d like to pose of question to those of you who think Harris couldn’t win because of misinformation, or racism, or sexism.

Where does this leave the party? How should we run in 2026 and 2028 if the lesson is Americans are too sexist or racist? How should we run if the lesson is Americans actually don’t care about populist policy and/or populist messaging?
Idiocracy is the answer. Find a cute fucking squirrel and name him chief of viter outreach. Then promise whatever sounds good to whoever you're in front of and make fun of whoever you're not in front of.

That's the way to reach the American electorate.
 
Idiocracy is the answer. Find a cute fucking squirrel and name him chief of viter outreach. Then promise whatever sounds good to whoever you're in front of and make fun of whoever you're not in front of.

That's the way to reach the American electorate.
I've said for several days now, the blue party is effectively abrogating their influence by not flooding the zone of social media with lies EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. In effort to land viral after viral after viral.
 
If that’s you’re actual takeaway then that’s why this level of analysis is so unserious.
OK, explain to me how the campaign that just won is anything other than complete and total idiocracy. Explain one actual policy position they took. Explain what message they have that resonated with voters on anything other than a viceral and inherently silly level. All this deeper level thinking seems to me to be completely counterintutive to what the voters are screaming that they want.

The dumber the candidate, the sillier the platform, the more outrageous the take...that's what gets the attention of the majority of Americans.
 
You make the mistake of thinking elections aren’t won at a visceral level when they are. Images, feelings, etc.

We are in a post-liberal political world. Look around you and you see it everywhere. Liberal democratic institutions of the post-WWII years have been discredited by the neoliberal policy of the post-Cold War years.

People want something different than a defense of the system that has utterly failed to provide Americans with the basic standard of living that we had come to expect as Americans.

Above all, Trump offers blame and vindication. He offers a home for people who feel alienated from the status quo, which is a lot of people when society is as isolated as it has become. He offers reasons for why people’s standard of living have declined. It’s immigrants coming to steal your jobs, it’s the money given to trans people, it’s the liberal elite.

The Democratic Party offered a defense of the current system and little else. The few progressive policies offered by Harris came off as half-baked given her flip flops and lackluster messaging. This wasn’t helped by her literally embracing someone who was emblematic of the failures of American policy over the last half century: Liz Cheney.

TL;DR: The Democratic Party is still trying to operate as a liberal party at a time when liberalism has been thoroughly discredited in the minds of the average American. We are in an era where policy of left vs. right matters less than policy of pro or anti establishment.

I, of course, happen to think left policy solutions work. It doesn’t matter if we can’t win power to implement them.
How am I making the mistake of saying that elections aren't won at the visceral level when im bluntly stating that's ALL it takes to win. There is no policy. There is no direction. There is no anything that appeals to Americans any longer other than rage, blame, fear, angst, and humor. Make them laugh and make them mad. They'll do anything.

Also, this notion of a slip in standard of living is ludicrous. Im 46 and the standard of living is FAR higher right now for even the lowest members of our society than it was for the lower middle class even in my childhood.

Nearly everyone has food. Nobody is eating government cheese and peanut butter which we practically lived on. Everyone has multiple televisions and smartphones. Nobody is using outhouses...which were still a thing in my childhood in places.

Here is what middle class looked like for us:

--2 incomes afforded 1500 square feet in the country.
--we MAYBE ate out once a month and cooked every other day
--we got food help from the government
--we shared a party line home phone with our neighbors because of cost
--we worked on cars that were as old or older than my parents to stay on the road
--we gardened and canned/preserved everything to eat during winter
--no air conditioning and one wood heater in the middle of the house which we cut wood ourselves for
--one 24 inch color console tv with antenna and one 13 inch balck and white in my parents room
--one pair of shoes to start school and one more at Christmas. Never any others
--furniture was always a mishmash of handmedowns and everything was used until threadbare

That was middle class rural America in about 1985.

Those who were a notch down from us lived 8-10 people in a single wide heated by Kerosene heaters in the middle of the floor.

Where is this drop in standard of living?
 
Last edited:
I don't know if it would have made a difference but I wish Harris and her campaign would have stressed what a mess they took over. They allowed, perhaps they could not avert it, the election to be only a referendum on the last 3 1/2 years. People needed to be reminded, continuously reminded, what a disaster Trump was during COVID. His leadership was horrendous. The economy tanked, partly, because of his awful leadership. The campaign, as I mentioned in another thread, needed to stoke some fire. Talking about how unfit Trump is as a person, getting Republicans to agree he is unfit, is not enough to get people's anger up. They needed to remind people with specifics from Trump during the pandemic.
 

Source and worth the read. Standard of living is about a lot more than how many phones and TVs we have. Your point about indoor plumbing is well-taken. It’s true, most people have indoor plumbing now. There’s still a ton of people on government assistance if that’s the metric you’re going to use, though.
I looked at the article, the numbers and such but how were those numbers collected? Were they self reported or what were they based on?
 
Because I’m arguing that Democrats must run a campaign that activates the same emotions in people by casting blame on who is actually responsible for the ills plaguing our society. Otherwise the Right will win by blaming those who aren’t actually to blame but easy to scapegoat.

People make the mistake of thinking I’m asking for Democrats to run some technocrat who throws out 100 page policy memos. I’m not.

As far as standard of living is concerned, real wage growth has not outpaced inflation. It has become nearly impossible for young people to enter the housing market due to skyrocketing costs. People are concerned about the failing quality of public education. People are scared of climate catastrophe.

Just because your situation has gotten better over the last 40 years doesn’t mean everyone shares that experience. A lot of young people see the future as one where we will live out a lower quality of life than our parents.

We can’t continue to discount people’s lived experiences of the economy by pointing out graphs and figures about macroeconomic indicators invented right after the Depression. To act like the people going to the grocery store everyday or the people who have to send off the rent check every month don’t know what their economic circumstances are is arrogant. It’s the exact attitude that has caused the Democratic Party to end up where we are today.
And you are also trying to have it both ways. You say that we shouldn't point to macroeconomic indicators (which i have not) and not ignored people's lived experiences. Im not. I'm telling you that their perception doesn't match their lived experience. I didn't share my anecdote because it was my experience. I shared it because it was the common experience and that common experience now is in a far better place.

We are in an era where wages will never again outrage inflation because we have so many external factors printing money such as crypto currency. Wages are such a poor way to measure how people are doing now. The reality is that Americans have allowed social media to create totally unrealistic expectations of lifestyle. Half of America is mad now because they can't yearly go to Disney World when that has never been a remotely attainable goal.

And i sympathize greatly on the housing front. I have worked for 20 years to create housing affordability. But again, the expectations are insane in many cases. Youth now think that they should be able to buy a 2200 square foot house in a prime location living by themselves. Those with realistic expectations and a decent handle on other debt we can still find homes for.
 
You make the mistake of thinking elections aren’t won at a visceral level when they are. Images, feelings, etc.

We are in a post-liberal political world. Look around you and you see it everywhere. Liberal democratic institutions of the post-WWII years have been discredited by the neoliberal policy of the post-Cold War years.

People want something different than a defense of the system that has utterly failed to provide Americans with the basic standard of living that we had come to expect as Americans.

Above all, Trump offers blame and vindication. He offers a home for people who feel alienated from the status quo, which is a lot of people when society is as isolated as it has become. He offers reasons for why people’s standard of living have declined. It’s immigrants coming to steal your jobs, it’s the money given to trans people, it’s the liberal elite.

The Democratic Party offered a defense of the current system and little else. The few progressive policies offered by Harris came off as half-baked given her flip flops and lackluster messaging. This wasn’t helped by her literally embracing someone who was emblematic of the failures of American policy over the last half century: Liz Cheney.

TL;DR: The Democratic Party is still trying to operate as a liberal party at a time when liberalism has been thoroughly discredited in the minds of the average American. We are in an era where policy of left vs. right matters less than policy of pro or anti establishment.

I, of course, happen to think left policy solutions work. It doesn’t matter if we can’t win power to implement them.
You have, on numerous occasions, explained this at a level and with articulation that should be clear to all. Why some here can't seem to comprehend it is beyond inability. They willingly refuse to read your posts, or they are deliberately refusing to acknowledge it, throwing up straw men and trying to change the conversation as they go. It's frustrating for me, and thus, must be incredibly frustrating for you, as you are devoting a lot of your time to continue to educate on this topic.
 
Back
Top