YUP. She ran a campaign that was focused on middle-class ideas, but very low on working-class ideas. If you’re struggling to buy groceries, starting a small business is as unattainable as purchasing a yacht, no matter what kind of tax credit you’re offered. I didn’t see the ad you’re talking about, but I got that exact feeling when I heard she was campaigning with Liz Cheney.
Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right, and I think that’s why he’s been so effective at winning over people who have gone to Trump. We can argue over whether or not the political class would ever let him have been the nominee, much less allowed hid agenda to pass, but I think his policies are very clear to everyone: higher minimum wages, higher taxes on billionaires, Medicare for everybody. People find that much easier to understand how that will improve their life tomorrow instead of a small business tax credit program.
Yeah, that’s certainly how I feel.
The only reflection I am able to accomplish is to look at the GOP and say “Worse, tho”.
OK, but so far, that hasn’t been a very effective electoral strategy. I think we should try something else.
Well, I would disagree with a lot of that. The average voter may not understand policy nuance, but it’s not just vibes based. Trump made a case for being anti-war. He won the first Republican primary in no small part by being the only person on stage to say that the Iraq War was a mistake. He promised to bring the troops home from Afghanistan and then set a withdrawal date (and then changed it several times, and eventually set it to after his term ended so that Biden would get all the bad optics). I think Trump is a manipulative liar, but his supporters have concrete examples of things he’s said and done that make them think he’s anti-war.
The economy was the number one issue for voters, and I don’t think voters’ reaction was vibes based either. Democrats almost always improve working class conditions more than the Republicans, but look at what happened during the Biden administration; inflation went way up, the interest rates went way up, and what the best jobs market for workers in the last 40 years got nuked. People might not understand why that happened, but they know what happened.
From where I’m sitting, the solution is to go so big that voters can’t misinterprete where you stand. Biden and Harris could have gone after the price gouging that was responsible for so much of the inflation during their administration, but instead, it was a footnote on the campaign. They could have come up with some kind of endgame for Ukraine other than, “send them as many weapons as they need indefinitely.” They should have taken a more confrontational stance with Netanyahu, since he was actively sabotaging the peace process while holding out for a Trump administration.
But again, let’s just say I’m entirely wrong: voters are idiots, they understand nothing, and their decisions are based entirely on vibes, not reality. The question remains the same; what do we do? Because right now, the strategy seems to be offering them incremental, technocratic solutions, then insulting them when they don’t understand how they’re better than Republican lies. And it doesn’t seem to be working.
Saying they’re the party of complacency isn’t really accurate. Obama may not have started any new wars (although there’s an argument to be made that his operations in Somalia represented a new, unsanctioned war front), but he didn’t get us out of Afghanistan, kept joint military operations going in Iraq, and created a massive, unaccountable robot assassination program that killed thousands of people, including U.S. citizens. That’s wasn’t an act of complacency, it was expansion.
To me, the difference in Democrats’ and Republicans’ positions on military use can be best summerize by how Obama and Trump reported drone deaths. Obama reclassified every adult male in a target zone as an enemy combatant so that he could artificially lower the number of civilian casualties. Trump just stopped reporting the numbers. One is obviously better than the other, but I wouldn’t call either anti-war.
But let’s say you’re right; the Democrats are mostly anti-war, but they’re too complacent with the status quo, and Trump voters are all idiots who can’t tell the difference. What are we gonna do about it? 51% of the electorate went to Trump. Are the Democrats going to stand up to the military industrial complex to make their anti-war stance so clear even an idiot could see it? Or are they just gonna lose forever?
I mean, yeah, this guy is wrong for thinking Trump will keep us out of wars, and the idea that you would vote for someone you think it like Hitler to stop new wars is both contradictory and morally reprehensible. But I’ve heard this take before (well, except the Hitler part, that’s bat-shit insane) and it might be worth reflecting why a lot of the electorate no longer sees the Democratic party as the anti-war party. That’s a big shift that’s occurred in my lifetime, and it’s worth examining.
Yeah, that’s exactly what they did to Phillips. I don’t even like his politics, he’s a neoliberal centrist, but he was worried about Biden’s electability and his entire platform was, “I think there should be a real primary, will other people please run too?” They forced him to step down from his leadership positions and suddenly he had a primary challenger for his seat. He decided he’s going to retire from politics when his term is finished.
There was literally only one serious opponent, and his name was Dean Phillips. He couldn’t get ballot access in all 50 states, and the Democrats drove him out of politics afterward.
So this aged great, huh?
Because he’s fucking right. Maybe the Democrats should start listening to people who are fucking right for once.
I’ll also add that you need to primary basically anyone that has been in politics for more than 15 years. There is just too much, “common sense,” in this party that is just wrong. In 2016, it was smart to run a centrist campaign that tried to move moderates away from Trump, and it failed. In 2024, they ran the same fucking campaign, and it failed.
There are well intentioned people that somehow still think that the 1992, third-way strategy will deliver gains through incrementalism, and it’s just not going to happen. Primary them, so that they at least have to contend with the new political realities. Trump picked up working class voters across across all demographics, not just the white working class. Everyone wants change; offer real change.
Then it sounds like the center really fucked up, doesn’t it?
Do they think your odds get better if you’re get thrown down a metal tube on impact?
Sooner or later, you will get trapped somewhere forever. Over the course of an infinite lifespan, the odds that a building collapses on you or a tunnel caves in on you basically become 100%. Someday, you will fall into the hole that you will stay in until the sun explodes, and then you will drift in the void until the heat death of the universe.
Who is this for? They’re acting like getting endorsements from the families of Bush and Cheney is like getting an endorsement from Ronald Regan, but Bush and Cheney were not popular at the end of their administration; they started two interminable wars and ended with the largest recession in recent history. Trump cut his teeth in 2016 by trashing George Bush and curb-stomping his brother in the primary. Conservatives who are still open to Trump probably aren’t huge fans of the Bush family! All this is doing is demoralizing the progressive base and showing conservatives that the kind of Republicans they rejected in 2016 support Harris.
The original commenter did give an example. They referenced the DNC not allowing a Palestinian to speak (which, again, is cited the article that we all presumably read before we started commenting). That example was met with, “citation needed.”
Anyway, I’m not familiar with the quote you gave, I feel no obligation to look it up, but I do feel entitled to your time and energy. Provide me with a hyperlink proving it’s real or it never happened.
Yup. We gotta vote for them this election, but replace them in the next. Otherwise, we’re just hitting snooze on fascism for another 4 years.
What about my original comment led you to believe I thought they were equivalent? As I said, Republicans are vile, hateful, and exploiting our political divisions for power. But the Democrats are just as responsible for the material conditions that have allowed facism to flourish, and demanding accountability and change for that isn’t nitpicking. If the Democrats don’t stop being corporate stooges, this doesn’t end if Trump is defeated; it ends when another fascist finally wins.
Oof, I just watched it, and I can immediately see why it was effective. Yeah, “Willie Horton,” is a good comparison.