Many Americans Say the Democratic Party Does Not Share Their Priorities

[wmheel1287]

Respectfully, I think you’re off base on what you know about me and how I approach politics.

I can only judge what I've seen here as we all do with posters.

 

[Yosef]

Another poster on here a few responses back was correct. Cultural issues can win elections. Republicans picked up on some of these issues and ran with them marketing them to their base and it worked. Democrats also used Hollywood as their "supporters" and while this isn't a bad idea many Americans can't identify with those elites in LA. They also used J6 constantly as their " got ya" moment and as bad as it was it got old to the working class people.
The mistake was allowing Biden to run for a second term when the American people knew he was senile and the Dem's still told us he was running circles around others in closed meetings. The American people are not that stupid. Kamala was a horrible candidate but it was pretty much their only choice at the time.

 

[BlueSmoke]

How do you suggest Dems do that?

Fair question, but before going there on this Board there would need to be some agreement that the tire needs changing. Don't see that in comments since the election. For instance, If I had a dollar for every time someone on here blamed the election results on the voters..........i'd have a nice little nest egg. Blaming the voters, I completely reject as unproductive. Whether low informed or adversely influenced by media its just part of the landscape that has to be navigated.

I also reject this notion that the Democratic party is full of talent. Yep, establishment talent. Yep elite upbringing. A look at the folks who are likely to run in four years shows elite college backgrounds, lawyers, political science majors, and a communication major or two. Nothing that screams down to earth American. Just try passing that by the electorate again.\

I said all that the lay the context to answer your question. Best thing to do is what Reagan did. He pushed supply side economics and rebranded his Party in the minds of the voters and kept the attention off his more conservative extremes. Best thing for Democrats to do is something like that and rebrand their economic ideas into a new name with all the focus on economics and thus avoid the attention on woke or cultural.

Now, its going to take a new Party leader to emerge in four years to be point on that. But we can be talking about forming a new plan NOW to set the stage for that and to change the conversation and our poll numbers which will help resist Trump in the short term.

 

[finesse]

Fair question, but before going there on this Board there would need to be some agreement that the tire needs changing. Don't see that in comments since the election. For instance, If I had a dollar for every time someone on here blamed the election results on the voters..........i'd have a nice little nest egg. Blaming the voters, I completely reject as unproductive. Whether low informed or adversely influenced by media its just part of the landscape that has to be navigated.

I also reject this notion that the Democratic party is full of talent. Yep, establishment talent. Yep elite upbringing. A look at the folks who are likely to run in four years shows elite college backgrounds, lawyers, political science majors, and a communication major or two. Nothing that screams down to earth American. Just try passing that by the electorate again.\

I said all that the lay the context to answer your question. Best thing to do is what Reagan did. He pushed supply side economics and rebranded his Party in the minds of the voters and kept the attention off his more conservative extremes. Best thing for Democrats to do is something like that and rebrand their economic ideas into a new name with all the focus on economics and thus avoid the attention on woke or cultural.

Now, its going to take a new Party leader to emerge in four years to be point on that. But we can be talking about forming a new plan NOW to set the stage for that and to change the conversation and our poll numbers which will help resist Trump in the short term.

How can you not blame the voters? They elected these idiots. Bottom line, it's always the voters. That's why we vote. If they are misled or lied to and they just blindly followed, it's still their fault. These things are not hidden and it's your duty to be an informed voter.

I don't think we need to change our focus but redirect everybody's focus on just who stands for what. It's the Republicans who are bad for the economy nd show people that is provably true. Show that St. Reagan is the president that really increas3ed the national debt. Show that they are the party of exclusion, of taxation, of privilege for the rich. That's all true and demonstrable.

 

[ZenMode]

If you lose to Trump twice In three elections, I think it almost has to be viewed as a blowout. Many factors have contributed to those losses, but there's one issue Democrats are going to have to overcome. It's the perception that the far left fringe is representative of the majority of the party.

 

[BlueSmoke]

It's the Republicans who are bad for the economy nd show people that is provably true. Show that St. Reagan is the president that really increas3ed the national debt. Show that they are the party of exclusion, of taxation, of privilege for the rich. That's all true and demonstrable.

So your strategy is the exact same as what we did for the last 12 years. Show how bad the other folks are. Isn't that what the Democrats just did with 1.5 Billion and still lost? Sorry, but I just don't go with a proven losing strategy.

 

[WaynetheDrain]

Fair question, but before going there on this Board there would need to be some agreement that the tire needs changing. Don't see that in comments since the election. For instance, If I had a dollar for every time someone on here blamed the election results on the voters..........i'd have a nice little nest egg. Blaming the voters, I completely reject as unproductive. Whether low informed or adversely influenced by media its just part of the landscape that has to be navigated.

I also reject this notion that the Democratic party is full of talent. Yep, establishment talent. Yep elite upbringing. A look at the folks who are likely to run in four years shows elite college backgrounds, lawyers, political science majors, and a communication major or two. Nothing that screams down to earth American. Just try passing that by the electorate again.\

I said all that the lay the context to answer your question. Best thing to do is what Reagan did. He pushed supply side economics and rebranded his Party in the minds of the voters and kept the attention off his more conservative extremes. Best thing for Democrats to do is something like that and rebrand their economic ideas into a new name with all the focus on economics and thus avoid the attention on woke or cultural.

Now, its going to take a new Party leader to emerge in four years to be point on that. But we can be talking about forming a new plan NOW to set the stage for that and to change the conversation and our poll numbers which will help resist Trump in the short term.

Let's play a game:

Replace "Democratic" or "Democrat" with "Republican" in your above post. Let me know if anything changes in terms of accuracy.

The winning candidate in the last election is a billionaire wannabe oligarch. Explain to me how this screams "down to earth American."

Also, are you actually suggesting that a way to appeal to common folks is to roll out a trickle-down economic package? Seriously?

 

[CFordUNC]

I’m with Finesse. I think we can absolutely blame the voters. We can blame the voters who don’t care enough to be informed. We can blame the voters who are informed but who do not vote. We can blame the voters who are informed and who know that the sources from which they are informed are BS yet still vote accordingly.

As reprehensible as I find the Republican party to generally be these days, and as much as it is easy to find fault with the overall majority of the things that they do and say, one area where I cannot find fault with them is the mechanism by which they reach voters. It is unbelievably effective, and very enviable. The goal of elections is to win them, and the Republican Party does exactly what it needs to in order to do just that.

 

[StrangePackage]

Democrats represent institutions that have been failing the majority of Americans since the 1990s. Republicans have determined to destroy those institutions, and are doing a very good job of it. People aren't going to like it, but if the choice is "something that isn't working" and "something else" then most are going to go with something else.

Democrats who cling to defending a failing system will continue to fail. Put me in the camp of massive overhaul. They need to be offering a better "something else."

 

[BlueSmoke]

Let's play a game:



Also, are you actually suggesting that a way to appeal to common folks is to roll out a trickle-down economic package? Seriously?

Absolutely not. I used that as an example of how to change the tire. May even have even pointed to doing it with OUR economic proposals. What you call it of course would be a long a different line and have different meaning. This is about how to CHANGE THE TIRE.

 

[Zoo_View]

Fair question, but before going there on this Board there would need to be some agreement that the tire needs changing. Don't see that in comments since the election. For instance, If I had a dollar for every time someone on here blamed the election results on the voters..........i'd have a nice little nest egg. Blaming the voters, I completely reject as unproductive. Whether low informed or adversely influenced by media its just part of the landscape that has to be navigated.

I also reject this notion that the Democratic party is full of talent. Yep, establishment talent. Yep elite upbringing. A look at the folks who are likely to run in four years shows elite college backgrounds, lawyers, political science majors, and a communication major or two. Nothing that screams down to earth American. Just try passing that by the electorate again.\

I said all that the lay the context to answer your question. Best thing to do is what Reagan did. He pushed supply side economics and rebranded his Party in the minds of the voters and kept the attention off his more conservative extremes. Best thing for Democrats to do is something like that and rebrand their economic ideas into a new name with all the focus on economics and thus avoid the attention on woke or cultural.

Now, its going to take a new Party leader to emerge in four years to be point on that. But we can be talking about forming a new plan NOW to set the stage for that and to change the conversation and our poll numbers which will help resist Trump in the short term.

Reagan ran on plenty of social issues in 1980: anti-choice, pro-school prayer, anti-busing, anti-integration, states’ rights (mentioning busing and/or states’ rights was the dog whistle saying you opposed civil rights), anti-Equal Rights.

Reagan opened his campaign for the 1980 presidential race at the Neshoba County Fair for a reason. He spoke at Bob Jones University for a reason. It wasn’t to focus on the economy.

 

[BlueSmoke]

Let's play a game:


The winning candidate in the last election is a billionaire wannabe oligarch. Explain to me how this screams "down to earth American."

Yep, and Trump has always known he had a marketing problem on that front and has always gone directly at it. What you think his "I'm on your side" or whatever was about.

Democrats have an extreme marketing problem. Polling shows it.

 

[finesse]

So your strategy is the exact same as what we did for the last 12 years. Show how bad the other folks are. Isn't that what the Democrats just did with 1.5 Billion and still lost? Sorry, but I just don't go with a proven losing strategy.

No. Mine is to outyell the liars and maybe getting people to pay attention. I'd rather do that than throw people under a fucking bus, surrender my principles and try to out lie a group that has a professional organization of liars in place. At least, I will have taken up for all those who are poor, sick, the wrong color, the wrong sex, the wrong sex life or anything that some rich white Christian asshole thinks should deny them the right to be part of our society. Maybe, just maybe people realize that all those distinctions actually add up to one , the people that privileged society doesn't want to give a fair shake.

There's only one side in all this that tries to find every possible way to decrease the number of people sharing power, disenfranchise voters and gain special privileges to smaller and smaller segments of society. That ain't us. If society doesn't buy this, to hell with them.

 

[BlueSmoke]

one area where I cannot find fault with them is the mechanism by which they reach voters. It is unbelievably effective, and very enviable. The goal of elections is to win them, and the Republican Party does exactly what it needs to in order to do just that.

I love this point: so let me ask a question. Just how effective would the Republicans be if the Democrats had a shiny brand instead of the dull, offensive brand it has now in the mind of voters?

I have always thought of Trump as a snake that slithered his way to election in the first place 12 years ago. He was a snake, saw his opportunity in how weak the Democrats were, and slithered right into the opening.

 

[BlueSmoke]

No. Mine is to outyell the liars and maybe getting people to pay attention. I'd rather do that than throw people under a fucking bus, surrender my principles and try to out lie a group that has a professional organization of liars in place. At least, I will have taken up for all those who are poor, sick, the wrong color, the wrong sex, the wrong sex life or anything that some rich white Christian asshole thinks should deny them the right to be part of our society. Maybe, just maybe people realize that all those distinctions actually add up to one , the people that privileged society doesn't want to give a fair shake.

There's only one side in all this that tries to find every possible way to decrease the number of people sharing power, disenfranchise voters and gain special privileges to smaller and smaller segments of society. That ain't us. If society doesn't buy this, to hell with them.

I imagine in 1935, you would be the one telling FDR he couldn't sign the Social Security legislation because it didn't meet your principals. I wonder what he would have said? Fact is you have to win elections for principals to have legs.

 

[finesse]

I imagine in 1935, you would be the one telling FDR he couldn't sign the Social Security legislation because it didn't meet your principals. I wonder what he would have said? Fact is you have to win elections for principals to have legs.

Most principals have legs. That's how they generally get in the front door of the school. Principles, otoh, seldom have much to do with elections. As we saw with this one, hot many people have them.

Your logic here is sound as as not blaming the voters for the outcome of an election.

 

[BlueSmoke]

Most principals have legs. That's how they generally get in the front door of the school. Principles, otoh, seldom have much to do with elections. As we saw with this one, hot many people have them.

Your logic here is sound as as not blaming the voters for the outcome of an election.

Sorry if I seem overly pragmatic. Not my intent. This election has built a great deal of frustration which I certainly share. Just trying to figure out a helpful way to move..........so principals can move forward.

 

[lawtig02]

Multiple things can be true here.

1. Dems are not good communicators right now. And Biden was one of the worst communicators we’ve seen in a LOOONG time. Political communication in this age is about volume and speed more than substance. Trump has mastered that, and with his buyout of Silicon Valley, his advantage there will only increase. Dems MUST figure out how to counter this, and they realistically need to get that done in the next six months or so.

2. Pubs will almost certainly be their own worst enemies now that they have unchecked power. I suspect we’ll soon see historically low approval ratings not just for Trump, but for the whole GOP.

3. Social issues are much more politically effective when you’re using them to attack than when you’re playing defense. It’s not like this is a new playbook for American conservatives. The people railing against trans rights and inclusion now are from the same segment of the political spectrum as those railing against the Civil Rights movement in 1965 and the gay rights movement in the 1990s. I’d pretty much guarantee you that the 2055 versions of HeelYeah, Calltoroy and Zen won’t give trans inclusion even a second of attention because it will be so widely accepted. Maybe not Ramrouser — there are still people who oppose the CRM even today, after all. But the point is that conservatism will always have a bogey man to hang around liberals’ necks. It’s part of the identity of the movement, and it has been for a long time. So it’s not like Dems can ignore it, but we also shouldn’t be wringing our hands about it. It’s not the Dems who will have grandkids embarrassed that their recent ancestors opposed basic human rights.

 

[CFordUNC]

Multiple things can be true here.

1. Dems are not good communicators right now. And Biden was one of the worst communicators we’ve seen in a LOOONG time. Political communication in this age is about volume and speed more than substance. Trump has mastered that, and with his buyout of Silicon Valley, his advantage there will only increase. Dems MUST figure out how to counter this, and they realistically need to get that done in the next six months or so.

2. Pubs will almost certainly be their own worst enemies now that they have unchecked power. I suspect we’ll soon see historically low approval ratings not just for Trump, but for the whole GOP.

3. Social issues are much more politically effective when you’re using them to attack than when you’re playing defense. It’s not like this is a new playbook for American conservatives. The people railing against trans rights and inclusion now are from the same segment of the political spectrum as those railing against the Civil Rights movement in 1965 and the gay rights movement in the 1990s. I’d pretty much guarantee you that the 2055 versions of HeelYeah, Calltoroy and Zen won’t give trans inclusion even a second of attention because it will be so widely accepted. Maybe not Ramrouser — there are still people who oppose the CRM even today, after all. But the point is that conservatism will always have a bogey man to hang around liberals’ necks. It’s part of the identity of the movement, and it has been for a long time. So it’s not like Dems can ignore it, but we also shouldn’t be wringing our hands about it. It’s not the Dems that will have grandkids embarrassed that their recent ancestors opposed basic human rights.

Agree with all of this. To add to it, I also think that people tend to want to parse election results with far too much nuanced analysis. For the most part, American electoral results are easy to explain regardless of which party wins. The American electorate tends to dislike the incumbent party, tends to be generally low-information, and votes predominately based on economic “vibes.” In my voting lifetime alone, the Democrats won in 2008 as a sweeping repudiation of the 8-year run of the GOP getting us involved in two wars while exploding the national debt. In 2010 the Republicans won as a sweeping repudiation of the incumbent Democratic administration. Same with 2016. And then 2020, the opposite way. And then 2022. And then 2024.

Sort of like how we like to say “if you don’t like the weather in North Carolina, wait 10 minutes” I think it’s generally true that if you don’t like the current political party in power, wait 10 minutes.

 

[Duke Mu]

Multiple things can be true here.

1. Dems are not good communicators right now. And Biden was one of the worst communicators we’ve seen in a LOOONG time. Political communication in this age is about volume and speed more than substance. Trump has mastered that, and with his buyout of Silicon Valley, his advantage there will only increase. Dems MUST figure out how to counter this, and they realistically need to get that done in the next six months or so.

2. Pubs will almost certainly be their own worst enemies now that they have unchecked power. I suspect we’ll soon see historically low approval ratings not just for Trump, but for the whole GOP.

3. Social issues are much more politically effective when you’re using them to attack than when you’re playing defense. It’s not like this is a new playbook for American conservatives. The people railing against trans rights and inclusion now are from the same segment of the political spectrum as those railing against the Civil Rights movement in 1965 and the gay rights movement in the 1990s. I’d pretty much guarantee you that the 2055 versions of HeelYeah, Calltoroy and Zen won’t give trans inclusion even a second of attention because it will be so widely accepted. Maybe not Ramrouser — there are still people who oppose the CRM even today, after all. But the point is that conservatism will always have a bogey man to hang around liberals’ necks. It’s part of the identity of the movement, and it has been for a long time. So it’s not like Dems can ignore it, but we also shouldn’t be wringing our hands about it. It’s not the Dems who will have grandkids embarrassed that their recent ancestors opposed basic human rights.

Agreed. Dem messaging, especially from the Jen O'Malley/Schumer Milquetoast wing is weak and misdirected.

"It's the economy, stupid."