Many Americans Say the Democratic Party Does Not Share Their Priorities

[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."

 

[WaynetheDrain]

Democrats have an extreme marketing problem. Polling shows it.

That I completely agree with. But that's not the same as saying our entire political philosophy needs to change.

 

[UNCatTech]

The "One Big Tent" approach bit the Dems in the ass in the last election. There are too many issues that, rightly or not, are perceived as zero sum games; a loser for every winner. Diversity hires are seen as taking jobs from better qualified candidates.

At least you used the word "perceived".

It would be nice if people went beyond their perception to actually understand that it isn't a zero sum game.

But, I believe many don't want that because it would conflict with their racist/misogynist positions.

 

[Duke Mu]

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.

There was a global anti-incumbent vibe in 2024. Harris and Walz began the campaign with a populist message. Biden and Harris campaign manager Jen O'Malley squashed the positive messaging and reduced the separation between Biden and Harris. A huge mistake.

Also, a lot of young voters and far leftists stayed home over Palestine. Good job.

Dems need to go on the attack NOW over tariffs, placing American lives in danger (FBI, FAA, NSC firings), insanely horrible cabinet appointees.

 

[UNCatTech]

What I would just add is that the Democratic Party needs some kind of principle to moor it. It feels rudderless because of a lack of leadership, I think. They need to pick a lane, even if it’s one I don’t like, I’d prefer if they pick a theme and stick with it.

So, which direction does this take them:

Ken Martin wins election as the next chair of the Democratic National Committee

The DNC’s chair election marks a first step for a party looking to fill a void of leadership after the 2024 election.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[Zoo_View]

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.

Except the weather in North Carolina rarely changes with much speed or frequency.

 

[UNCatTech]

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.

Damn lost vowels.

 

[farce©]

Democrats have an extreme marketing problem. Polling shows it.

Agreed, but I believe their marketing problem is less about the content of their messaging and far more about the lack of platforms willing to amplify the Democratic/liberal message. Republicans have spent over 30 years establishing and expanding a propagandized media infrastructure to amplify and never question their message. The media executives are significant insiders in Republican politics, helping create the narrative and providing welcoming platforms for the GOP to spread their “message” while demonizing their opposition.

The “messaging” is irrelevant without a platform to reinforce it. When we talk about how the perceived Democratic message in the last election (social justice warriors) isn’t accurate and the reality is Democrats did promote an economic/healthcare message, what we miss is that Democrats were defined by the Republican media machine. This was possible because they controlled a powerful media platform that simply does not exist on the Democratic side.

The mainstream media is busy trying to be fair while those watching right wing media are being told the MSM are nothing more than liberal shills. There is no Democratic answer for Fox News, OANN, Newsmax, WorldNetDaily, Breitbart, and on and on. More emphasis needs to be spent on how the message is distributed instead what the message should be. Until the media imbalance is addressed, all the hand-wringing about the content of that message is just more Democratic navel-gazing.

 

[CFordUNC]

Same old same old.

Definitely remains to be seen but I am at least encouraged by the fact that he is from Minnesota and Minnesota is probably the best example of really effective Democratic governance as exists anywhere in the country

 

[finesse]

Damn lost vowels.

You know how it is. Principals can draw interest.

 

[superrific]

Same old same old.

Maybe the problem is that people who have been in politics for 30 years don't want to be lectured by 26 year old Marxists.

You used the word Marxist to describe yourself. Nobody made you do that. You chose to do that. Now you're irrelevant. Those of us who've been around the block understand that embracing "Marxism" or "socialism" or "social democracy" or whatever's in fashion is alienating and counter-productive to the Americans whose support you seek.

That's the subtext of your conversation with wmheel. He has said that he won't vote Dem if Bernie is on the ticket. Could he get behind 80% of Bernie's program? Probably. I'm sure he will weigh in. But he isn't interested in signing up for socialism.

There was a time in 2020 when it looked like Bernie had a lot of momentum for the nomination. Then he started to speak favorably about Castro. The oppo researchers brought up his politics from the 1980s, and instead of disowning that as he should have, Bernie went on about how Castro had done some good things. Sandinistas also. And almost immediately the Dems rallied behind Biden, because they know what would have happened if we had run a guy saying good things about Fidel Castro.