Where do we go from here?

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rodoheel said:
Bullshit. I know plenty of insufferable liberals. I also know plenty of patient, kind, caring, thoughtful liberals who will patiently and thoughtfully talk with anyone of any background. Guess what? Conservatives shit on all of them the same. You think liberals project arrogance? Have you ever watched one second of Charlie Kirk or Elon Musk or JD Vance or Donald Trump or Ben Shapiro or Dave Portnoy or Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly? They're the most arrogant people on the fucking planet, and conservatives eat it right up. Why? Because that arrogance is being directed in their favor, not against them. Every MAGA troll thinks they are better, smarter, more important, and more of a "real American" than liberals who go to some fancy-schmancy college. They call us arrogant for having the temerity to point out to them that Donald Trump is lying to them every second of every day. They call us arrogant for saying that vaccines are safe and that Haitians aren't eating cats and dogs. They call us arrogant for explaining why some grainy video Rudy Giuiliani waves around isn't "ballot harvesting." They will call you arrogant for explaining any real-world fact that they don't understand to them. What should we do? Just put on our best Joe Rogan face and say "wow, that's crazy" as they explain how George Soros is using paid actors to fake support for Kamala? At what point do we have an obligation to not be complicit in whatever lie Trump wakes up and decides to tell because we refuse to correct it?
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Everything I read here is the same arrogance I'm talking about. It's 100% their fault and 0% our fault. Every single one of the people who voted for Trump is a stupid simple minded rube. But that curb stomping last night suggests otherwise. Whether you like it or not there are are a lot of small town folks who bake cakes for strangers and never utter a political word mixed in there too. There is a massive disconnect between dems and rural whites. The entire demographic is gone. And frankly it doesn't matter if they are all dimwitted sheep. You have to find a way to reach them and acting all better than is not it. Liberals have a massive PR problem and I'm not seeing much hope on this board of fixing it.
 
Just fwiw, only about a sixth of the middle class in the US is rural. When you say it disappeared, you were right but it was more completely than just for one party. I have no idea how that 17% split but it's not a large segment for any party.
 
Paine said:
Even though Osborn didn’t win last night, I think the Democrats need to examine his candidacy closely. If we can pick up some seats in these prairie states by running populist working class candidates, things start to get a lot more interesting in the Senate.

Osborn outperformed Harris and the Democrat running in the other Nebraska Senate race by about ten points. There’s something to that.

It’s easier for independent candidates like Osborn to do this in places where the Democratic brand is in the garbage, but I could also see Democrats running this kind of campaign now that they are out of power.
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That is who Jon Tester was for years. Didn't work out this time.
 
Peppers49 said:
If I had to distill down why Trump is going to be president again, it’s simply the internet. People are naturally reactive, they get constantly bombarded with a bunch of dumbed down content about grocery prices and inflation, and that’s all it takes.
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Thanks, Al Gore.
 
farce© said:
That is who Jon Tester was for years. Didn't work out this time.
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Right. Part of Tester’s issue was being tied to the Democratic brand and being an incumbent for years, IMO. I’m also not sure how populist of a campaign Tester ran. I can’t speak on it really.
 
LosPollosHermanos said:
Everything I read here is the same arrogance I'm talking about. It's 100% their fault and 0% our fault. Every single one of the people who voted for Trump is a stupid simple minded rube. But that curb stomping last night suggests otherwise. Whether you like it or not there are are a lot of small town folks who bake cakes for strangers and never utter a political word mixed in there too. There is a massive disconnect between dems and rural whites. The entire demographic is gone. And frankly it doesn't matter if they are all dimwitted sheep. You have to find a way to reach them and acting all better than is not it. Liberals have a massive PR problem and I'm not seeing much hope on this board of fixing it.
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Seeing Alex Wagner on MSNBC do a focus group at some Michigan (I think) union hall was pretty stark. All white guys (and a few women) - all the old heads were pro Harris and all the young ones were Trump or "I don't know/I need to research/but immigration is the top problem." The folks that are doing blue collar jobs used to be the backbone of the party because the contrast was "Party of the Working Man" vs. "Party of Big Business." Now it's been totally flipped and the blue collar folks are not mad at the business owners, they're just mad at the people who get a college degree and don't get their hands dirty, I guess.

There has to be a way to meet some of these people where they are. I'm not talking about the red hats who actually go to the rallies, but there's at least a few percentage points of people who are convinced the republicans offer them better economic prospects right now. And obviously a shitload of Dem friendly voters that just totally sat it out.

Just like people said "demographics is destiny" 10+ years ago, it's also destiny to keep the GOP in charge if we can't crack the code. The entire Rust Belt is slipping and the New South is not moving fast enough to do a straight trade.
 
finesse said:
Just fwiw, only about a sixth of the middle class in the US is rural. When you say it disappeared, you were right but it was more completely than just for one party. I have no idea how that 17% split but it's not a large segment for any party.
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I mean I'm sure it comes down to how "rural" is defined. Are Harnett, Johnston, Franklin counties rural or do they not count because they border the most populous county in the state? I don't know, but it doesn't particularly matter because we've lost that demographic no matter where they live.
 
HeelInTheOzarks said:
Seeing Alex Wagner on MSNBC do a focus group at some Michigan (I think) union hall was pretty stark. All white guys (and a few women) - all the old heads were pro Harris and all the young ones were Trump or "I don't know/I need to research/but immigration is the top problem." The folks that are doing blue collar jobs used to be the backbone of the party because the contrast was "Party of the Working Man" vs. "Party of Big Business." Now it's been totally flipped and the blue collar folks are not mad at the business owners, they're just mad at the people who get a college degree and don't get their hands dirty, I guess.
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It isn't about "not getting their hands dirty." The anti-college sentiment among blue collar workers is resentment toward the countless MBAs that come to their factory floors and tell them how they should be doing things. It is all the Six Sigma kaizen warriors with their MBAs who are deployed by their companies to shave fractions of a cent off the end product and reduce the direct labor cost. They go back to their bosses showing minuscule savings while making the job of the guy on the shop floor a lot more difficult. MBAs don't have to live with the lasting results of their cost savings adventures, the blue collar workers do.
 
HeelInTheOzarks said:
Seeing Alex Wagner on MSNBC do a focus group at some Michigan (I think) union hall was pretty stark. All white guys (and a few women) - all the old heads were pro Harris and all the young ones were Trump or "I don't know/I need to research/but immigration is the top problem." The folks that are doing blue collar jobs used to be the backbone of the party because the contrast was "Party of the Working Man" vs. "Party of Big Business." Now it's been totally flipped and the blue collar folks are not mad at the business owners, they're just mad at the people who get a college degree and don't get their hands dirty, I guess.
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I grew up in shit town, NC and of all the people in my high school I would consider smart, only two of them are still there. And they both inherited family businesses. The smart people get the hell out as fast as they can and the ones who are left indoctrinate each other with bullshit.

ETA: And the post above makes a lot of sense too. The smart people who move to these areas to become the boss are not making too many friends with the regular Joes.
 
LosPollosHermanos said:
I mean I'm sure it comes down to how "rural" is defined. Are Harnett, Johnston, Franklin counties rural or do they not count because they border the most populous county in the state? I don't know, but it doesn't particularly matter because we've lost that demographic no matter where they live.
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We lost the rural middle class when agribusiness moved in. They mostly ended small farms, hurt local farm and equipment dealers because they were bulk buying direct and reduced things to more off a worker/owner society. There are niches for some but they won't last, imo, without doing something like specialty farming and the like.
 
LosPollosHermanos said:
Everything I read here is the same arrogance I'm talking about. It's 100% their fault and 0% our fault. Every single one of the people who voted for Trump is a stupid simple minded rube. But that curb stomping last night suggests otherwise. Whether you like it or not there are are a lot of small town folks who bake cakes for strangers and never utter a political word mixed in there too. There is a massive disconnect between dems and rural whites. The entire demographic is gone. And frankly it doesn't matter if they are all dimwitted sheep. You have to find a way to reach them and acting all better than is not it. Liberals have a massive PR problem and I'm not seeing much hope on this board of fixing it.
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Communication with "rural whites" is not the problem for liberals. Rural whites have been a strong conservative constituuency for decades. Rural people in general have been reliably politically conservative since approximately the French Revolution, or whatever you want to flag as the beginning of a popular political identity. And in any event rural whites don't want to have anything more to do with urban liberals than the other way around. The actual messaging problem is with working class people everywhere, of all different races.

But back to the main issue - I'm not going to deny that liberal arrogance exists, or that it exists on this board. (The best example people have been throwing around of that actively harming Democrats is the promulgation and use of "Latinx," a term that the Hispanic population clearly did not want that was foisted upon them by well-meaning but out-of-touch academics.) But it's silly to act like this is some unique, unilateral problem for liberals, that they look down on others and that's why they're losing. Again, bullshit. Conservatives look down on us, and that arrogance didn't just stop them from winning an election. Donald Trump is the most arrogant fucking person on the planet, and he spent his whole campaign talking shit about almost every group of people possible, saying that everything is 100% their fault and 0% his voters' fault. Conservative voters love arrogance when it's directed on their behalf and not against them. The idea that the reason working class people are fleeing liberals because of "liberal arrogance" just doesn't hold water. Working class people just increasingly don't like liberals, and it's only partially because of anything liberals have done. The bonds that bound working-class people and liberals together - like unions - have faded, and working class people don't even really like those anymore, and vote for the people who kill unions. They vote for the people who lie to them and say they can fix it. If what you really mean by "liberal arrogance" is that liberals won't lie to working class people like Republicans will, then I would agree with that.
 
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HeelInTheOzarks said:
We can't wait for them to die. It's not just the boomers.
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The two things I never wanted to hear from liberals/leftists again, that we said in 2010 and 2012 but have been proven to be absolute fool's gold:

"The electorate is going to become more liberal as old conservatives die off and young liberals move in"

"Demographic shifts are going to make it impossible for Republicans to win overall/win in the Sun Belt without reaching out to minorities"
 
rodoheel said:
The two things I never wanted to hear from liberals/leftists again, that we said in 2010 and 2012 but have been proven to be absolute fool's gold:

"The electorate is going to become more liberal as old conservatives die off and young liberals move in"

"Demographic shifts are going to make it impossible for Republicans to win overall/win in the Sun Belt without reaching out to minorities"
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Fair. I’ve said some variation of both of those, but in my defense I actually thought Americans were largely decent people. I’ve been thoroughly disabused of that notion.
 
LosPollosHermanos said:
Everything I read here is the same arrogance I'm talking about. It's 100% their fault and 0% our fault. Every single one of the people who voted for Trump is a stupid simple minded rube. But that curb stomping last night suggests otherwise. Whether you like it or not there are are a lot of small town folks who bake cakes for strangers and never utter a political word mixed in there too. There is a massive disconnect between dems and rural whites. The entire demographic is gone. And frankly it doesn't matter if they are all dimwitted sheep. You have to find a way to reach them and acting all better than is not it. Liberals have a massive PR problem and I'm not seeing much hope on this board of fixing it.
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Is it less arrogant to tell them it's not their fault how they chose to vote? I don't want others to suffer the consequences of their votes, but I assume they are capable of knowing what they want and I hope (at least on an individual level) that they get it.
 
rodoheel said:
The two things I never wanted to hear from liberals/leftists again, that we said in 2010 and 2012 but have been proven to be absolute fool's gold:

"The electorate is going to become more liberal as old conservatives die off and young liberals move in"

"Demographic shifts are going to make it impossible for Republicans to win overall/win in the Sun Belt without reaching out to minorities"
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To win you have to win back hispanics and working class white people. Not majorities of the latter, but at least 10-20% more
 
farce© said:
It isn't about "not getting their hands dirty." The anti-college sentiment among blue collar workers is resentment toward the countless MBAs that come to their factory floors and tell them how they should be doing things.
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Is that why Wayne LaPierre said that the enemies of the American people are journalists and academics?

What accounts for the hostility on this board of our conservative posters who detest people of learning? They hate MBAs too? I am not going to say that what you're saying is wrong, but rather it's incomplete.
 
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