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OT: American Politics

thehabhater said:
Also, Dems need to message properly. They need to realize that they have to reach more than their base.
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Honestly, kind of hard disagree here. The problem is that their base is out of alignment with the political establishment. It's not a messaging problem anymore. It's a "you can't be for us and your corporate masters at the same time" issue. The democrats aren't going to win by embracing a Cheney and not presenting a case for why economic life is difficult for the middle class. As fucked up and wrong as the Trump vision of America is, he told his voters who the cause of their economic problems were. China and the illegal aliens are doing this to you! If Democrats aren't going to present their own villains to their narrative, they're simply not talking to a lot of economic protest voters.
 
MindzEye said:
Honestly, kind of hard disagree here. The problem is that their base is out of alignment with the political establishment. It's not a messaging problem anymore. It's a "you can't be for us and your corporate masters at the same time" issue. The democrats aren't going to win by embracing a Cheney and not presenting a case for why economic life is difficult for the middle class. As fucked up and wrong as the Trump vision of America is, he told his voters who the cause of their economic problems were. China and the illegal aliens are doing this to you! If Democrats aren't going to present their own villains to their narrative, they're simply not talking to a lot of economic protest voters.
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It's pretty crazy to consider how different the world might be, if Bernie Sanders had won the nomination (and the presidency) in 2016.

In my view a lot of this populism is misguided and not a proper evaluation of the world as it actually is, but it seems pretty obvious that there's a message here that resonates with people. And the Dems need to figure out how to tap into it. I guess Obama did this to some extent.

Problem right now is that people are getting too much of their information from social media, and too many people are completely incapable of filtering out the truth, from the partial truth, from the batshit crazy lies and disinformation. I don't know if there is an answer to this problem, at least in the short term.
 
MindzEye said:
Honestly, kind of hard disagree here. The problem is that their base is out of alignment with the political establishment. It's not a messaging problem anymore. It's a "you can't be for us and your corporate masters at the same time" issue. The democrats aren't going to win by embracing a Cheney and not presenting a case for why economic life is difficult for the middle class. As fucked up and wrong as the Trump vision of America is, he told his voters who the cause of their economic problems were. China and the illegal aliens are doing this to you! If Democrats aren't going to present their own villains to their narrative, they're simply not talking to a lot of economic protest voters.
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Harris went into the election with a bank of 226 Electoral college votes. And she added exactly zero to that total.
 
Volcanologist said:
Dems need somebody who can crack the top 5 of podcasts.
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They need to start funneling some money at comedians to start them tbh, but getting the fuck out of the way and let the comedians be comedians. I generally dislike when comedians complain about bad jokes that used to hit with crowds not hitting anymore because certain tastes have changed, but the flip side of that is that the pearl clutchers need to fuck off and let some comedians tell a joke aimed at "insert minority group here" and let the only real arbiter, the audience, deterimine if it's comedy. Start allowing culture to be culture and stop trying to police it and pass it through bullshit ideological purity filters.
 
thehabhater said:
Harris went into the election with a bank of 226 Electoral college votes. And she added exactly zero to that total.

If she had gone on Rogan's podcast once, it wouldn't have made any difference to the outcome.

What she should have done was go on multiple times and appealed directly to Rogan's audience. That, would have moved the needle.
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Again, honestly. I disagree. I think the message fell flat, it's not about who heard it. I think the lack of a functioning answer for a handful of important questions were the turning point

- How are you different than Joe Biden?

Regardless of how you felt about Biden's presidency and his record, it's definitely clear now that a certain amount of anti incumbency went into overall sentiment. Was that rational? No, fuck no. But the electorate doesn't have to be rational. "We are not beholden to what was" or whatever the fuck that weird answer was just didn't do it for people. She was in a tough position though, where she kind of had to run on a record that was hers and not hers all at the same time. But when it came time to delineate between her and Biden, she had like 2 boiler plate lines that didn't move the needle. She had a couple of ideas, but none of them were big enough to create daylight.

- Whatcha doing about illegal immigration?

The Republicans put her in a box on this one that she didn't find her way out. Blaming the Republicans for obstructing the bill didn't get any traction. There was no pivot, no alternative vision presented. It was basically "we're going to be tough, but not as tough as that other guy" too much of a move to the right on the issue imo that isn't going to attract anyone who wanted action. You can't out crazy Trump on the border, imo the answer was to go the other way and present an alternative vision. But the democrats don't have one other than boring politics as usual.

- How are you going to stop inflation?

As frustrating as it is for someone as data driven as I try to be to admit, you're just not going to convince people who don't give a fuck about economics that inflation has been handled, that Biden did a better job than anyone else in the world, etc. They were looking for someone to punish for how they felt about inflation, not for nuanced macro economics discussion. Trump held up China said "fuck these guys, they did this, tariffs" and held up "illegal immigrants" and blamed the rest on them without showing his work as to how that makes the least bit of fucking sense. The democrats countered by...doing nothing of real value. In absence of a villain to blame, the obvious blame in their narrative falls on the administration in charge at the time...theirs. Did their economic policies make more sense? Of fucking course. Nobody cared in the end. Dropping a few lines about price gouging and then not presenting a sweeping vision about how you're going to deal with it, and who is going to pay for what was done to the American public just didn't resonate. Instead of "we're giving you money to help buy a house at these fucked up prices" it should have been "and we're going after wall street speculators who are buying up all of the single family homes, that will put more choice at better prices back on the housing market" but that would have upset the donors.

I don't think people not hearing her message was the problem. It's that the voters who didn't have their minds made up long before the election wanted change and only one candidate was offering it. He offered a fucked up change, but as we've seen in some of the exit polling since, these people mind fucked themselves into believing that he either wasn't talking about them when they were in groups he's very much intending to hurt, or that he's not actually serious about doing the things his team is very, very deeply serious about (repeal the ACA, cut medicare/medicaid, reduce social security benefits, etc, etc)
 
Ever since Michelle Obama preached "When they go low, we go high" I've been saying that this is the precise wrong thing to do. America is a nation of selfish, delusional morons. Appealing to the better angels of their nature does not work. So if you want to win elections, when the GOP goes low, you need to go lower. You need to get down into the shit and start flinging. That is the only thing that gets people's attention and it's something that the MSM love because it generates "engagement".
 
WeHaveMoreCupsThanYou said:
Ever since Michelle Obama preached "When they go low, we go high" I've been saying that this is the precise wrong thing to do. America is a nation of selfish, delusional morons. Appealing to the better angels of their nature does not work. So if you want to win elections, when the GOP goes low, you need to go lower. You need to get down into the shit and start flinging. That is the only thing that gets people's attention and it's something that the MSM love because it generates "engagement".
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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjOPLTTjnwc
 
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