Exactly. It doesn’t matter what people say, or how well-presented their arguments are: you cannot convince those who have already been brainwashed.
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I’m not even saying that it’s fair or anything else, or even whether she might want to or not. It’s just a combination of the following factors:
- Of all the prominent Democrats and potential 2028 candidates, she’s the most unemployed and highest profile one at this moment.
- She’s the figurehead of the opposition to Trump, however successful or unsuccessful she was. In fact, precisely because of the latter, she’s in a position to speak to people watching the horrors unfold and say to them: “look, I said this would happen, so we need do x, y, or z to forestall these terrors”.
- She’s a former prosecutor, so without much inspection of her record in that office, I would expect her to at least hopefully be able to make a succinct case when she has the attention of people in smaller town hall-like environments or radio talk shows.
- It’s literally recent precedent that the losing presidential candidate keeps airing grievances and making themselves an obvious candidate for opposition to the incumbent to circle around.
- She now has 4 years to make her case (again, assuming the existence of a United States of America, with free and fair elections then), in contrast to the 4 months she had previously.
I’m not saying she will be the candidate for the next elections, but if she wanted to make the case that she cares, that she is sincere about her motivations, it’s better to start now and demonstrate that she’s not just about a few months to get into office, but she actually cares and speaks to the issues.
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-Insert 1984 quote here-
edit
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No, that is disgusting.
Théoden was a kind man with good in his heart who was unfortunately ill-advised.
Huge world of difference.
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But those are not the people the Dems should be trying to sway. They ARE a cult, and are too far gone to reason with. They will do exactly as told.
What the Dems need, is to coalesce a message, and coalesce as a group. The strong personalities and orators need to be sending this message repeatedly. They also need to be counterpointing Trump, and his policies with quick, direct messages showing why this is bad for America and Americans.
Right now, it seems most Dems are trying to formulate some intricate battle plan to take on the right wing. Time is of the essence now. Great, protesting out front if the Treasury is really getting somewhere, NO! Go on right wing media outlets, and have a succinct message as to why this particular policy is not good for you.
Dems have been trying to fight the right at every talking point, and their message is getting blurred out, because the right has hit on the fear and anger trigger to build their cult. It’s their go to. When all else fails, the right just tells them who to fear, and what to be angry about that day. If Dems want relevancy, they need to find that foil encapsulated in a repeatable message.
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I dont think the experience of Tester and Brown reject this idea. I think they speak to the difficulty of even a good candidate breaking through to voters once they have decided you are in a party offering something they don’t want. Even more so when they are making their offers to voters at the same time as an all consuming national race.
There will be some thermostatic swinging back now the GOP are in power, almost certainly accelerated by the absurdity of Trump’s performance. That will make a critical number of people open to hearing from the Dems. Just as important, it will make the same people less willing to accept the Dems are who they are told they are by the people they are currently most angry with. That opens a door and you need to then have someone who has a clear message for what they are offering in contrast. Just as importantly, it needs to be something the rest of the party, full of people less talented than this rhetorical focal point, can ride. Even for me thinking lots of the criticism of Harris is off the mark, she isnt that person. In her decade at the forefront of Dem politics, she has yet to find this elevator pitch about even herself, let alone what the party is.
And that is why I think the way forward is the opposite of this
Hence my point being that it’s not about the personalities, it’s about a genuine ground game and effort to reach out to voters and convince them, with a well-thought through plan, and listen to their anxieties and tell them why your plan will work.
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These people have never been available to Dems and not the people who are needed to win.
The people who will determine the next election, should there be a real one, are the people who pay superficial attention, are not committed to the GOP, but think it is absurd that Dems spent $50b sending condoms to Gaza and so take this as representative of Dems’ focus on culture wars.
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I think it goes way deeper than that. The Democrats and here in the UK Labour have simply offered more of the same. They need to start doing something radically different.
Trump promised that and he is delivering but he will, in my opinion burn his bridges long before the next election, if there is one.
I dont know what the answer for them is. Sensible politids and policies arent working anymore
EDIT everyone discussed this above
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They havent though. Biden’s domestic policy was a drastic change from the status quo to a degree that no one would have believed you had you said in the 2019 primaries that is what a Biden administration would pursue and deliver.
There are definitely issues specific to the Biden administration for why no one seems to know this - their efforts to message their priorities and successes was pathetic, and what they offered was too rhetorically focused on “being back” and “restoring” things back to normal. But there is a bigger cultural issue that made people not care. For lefties nothing is ever good enough to avoid being virulently crtiicized, and for everyone else they lived in a culture where MAGA won the cultural wars and that has meant that for the moment people simply dont care what Dems have to offer.
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Nah, probably needs to get worse before it might get better first. I struggle to empathise with people who base their decisions on stories about tampons in boys rooms or fricking pronouns. Apparently these people don’t have any real issues to worry about.
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I think that anyone who was and still is paying superficial attention with everything that has been at stake is just as much a lost cause.
There are not the same as Trump’s fanatics, but they were just as culpable for electing him in the first place, if not more, and nothing positive should be expected out of them.
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This Demo is what is and always has decided elections. Washing your hands of them might feel good, but gets you no where.
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I think currently we only have somewhat free and fair elections in America. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, scrubbing the list… lots of dirty tricks have skewed it. In addition, with Musk coming onto the scene, there’s a very real possibility that he has found a way to turn the dial - and I don’t just mean with his $44 Billion megaphone and all the disinformation. Trump hinted as much recently - he’s very good with the computers, Elon. Something like that. In a normal world it would have been huge news, and jumped all over and investigated. But the sheer volume of shit flying, since Trump has started his second term, makes it all but impossible to drill down on anything.
All this is to say, I think the next election will be even more skewed. The Democrats will have to win by a large margin to win by a small margin, if you see what I mean.
If it is to be possible, a few things need to happen:
People need to experience hardship under Trump’s policies. One of the most unfortunate ironies is that he is no friend to millions of poorer people who voted for him. There is already a bit of a thing growing - don’t laugh - with many people regretting their vote and saying, ‘I didn’t think he would do this…’
A Democrat leader needs to emerge who can speak well and connect with people. Put the work in. Do the miles. Seek to understand the real needs and motivations of the electorate. AOC looks like she could be that candidate to me.
Put forth a clear message about what you are offering that is different/better. It will need to be concise and compelling. Hammer it home. Consistently. Get on all the media outlets. Right wing. Podcasts. The lot.
It might have a chance.
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Stop playing nice is what I say. It’s not like the other side is doing it.
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What? Did you not hear Schumer yesterday? He called his pointless messaging bill “stop the steal” to mock Trump. You cannot get more gangsta than that
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Completely agree!
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I don’t doubt there will be an election, but with the Supreme Court and Justice hopelessly compromised, there are going to be states where the GOP thumb on the scales takes them out of the potentially winnable for the Democrats. NC and GA come to mind.
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That’s kind of what I was trying to get at by raising those examples. However good or bad Harris was, isn’t really proven through this election.
That still goes back to the fixation of having something to sell. If it was about having something to sell, then why on earth did Trump win? Nothing but fantasies, not concrete plans to achieve those goals.
It’s the same in the UK. It’s something you mentioned before. It’s a vibes issue. It’s about convincing the population that you’re on their side. Trying to sell them a different message makes no difference. It’s just another variant on the whole “who would I rather drink a beer with”. If the issue is that Democrats are being seen as out-of-touch elites, who don’t understand people, preaching on high, then it makes no difference what the message is. Especially when trying to solve the complex problems requires more complex solutions than many voters are willing to grapple with. The point is not to sell them something but to win their trust. You can’t outsell “I will solve this for you by kicking out the enemies within”.
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