Quote:
Originally Posted by GirlySports
I'll start with a debrief, please discuss.
The Democrats have generally presented themselves as the party of common interest (equal rights for all, pay a fair share of taxes, etc.).
The Republicans have been a party of self interest (right to defend yourself, don't take my money for taxes, what's mine is mine, etc.)
As our society has become both more diverse and more individualized/less interactive, people are voting less with a mindset of common interest. More now than ever, it's easier to move and work wherever you want. You can surround yourself with people like you. Your online experience, your music experience, your shopping experience, your entertainment experience, these are all becoming increasingly curated and individualized.
When you are trying to get everyone to agree on things, and the country is more diverse and divided and self-centered than ever, that's a lot harder than telling people to vote for themselves.
And even though many people voted for Trump when it is NOT in their self-interest, he convinced them that it is.
Dems try to sell a common good agenda. People don't believe them. Nor do they believe the Democrats can make it happen even if they do believe them.
I never really heard the case FOR Harris. She was just a fresh coat of paint on an old, sputtering car.
The Democrats run on this promise and then don't deliver when in power. Its probably that simple. We can do the "but what about the things they're good on" all day but if you have a lower income person who doesn't care about trans rights or Ukraine or whatever, then what?
If their lives aren't any better under Democrats, what's the persuasive argument for them to pick you? Its as easy as looking back at union Democrats; a bucket load of these people are spiritually and socially no different than Trump's base but they know which side protected their livelihoods. Take that approach to entirety of people making under $___ per year and watch how money and personal interests can sway people. You don't need full ideological consistency, you just need a coalition that accepts and supports enough of the larger plan.
But Democrats remain terrified of attaching themselves fully to popular policies (medicare for all) or actually fighting for ones they embrace (minimum wage) because a fight risks losing the centrist-leaning-right voter and that's who matters most to them. They celebrated an endorsement from Dick Cheney while running from immigration because, again, humanizing undocumented workers, explicitly pointing out their contributions and laying out what their absence would mean scares some of those people whose votes mean the most to the party.
So what are you? As Pepsifree puts it, what is your 'soul'?
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I think this is good, but the bottom line to me, is the Dem's made two major mistakes, and whether it was due to sheer arrogance or not will need to be discovered.
The bottom line, is that everyone knew that the two key issues were the economy and immigration.
The Republicans and Trump focused on that and didn't let the Democrats pull them off that hill
The Democrats focused on social or progressive issues, and didn't read the room that if they had polled American's that this the Democratic issues were far down on the chart, they wanted to hear about economics and solving the border issues. The Democrats did a piss poor job during their campaign of addressing that.
Maybe and more likely it was a huge tactical mistake to let Biden sit in that seat for as long as they did. Harris really needed more time. And in the brief time that she did campaign and steadily lost momentum, I don't think that American's were overly impressed with her presentation, and maybe, they saw her as phony.
I don't think that the over reliance on celebrities helped, and espcially the celebrities that they chose to roll out. I remember watching Meryl Streep on a Q+A with Kamala and a few others phoned in and it was cringe and came across as more insincere and scripted then anything else.
Every election we all talk about the old saying "Its the economy Stupid". This one was literally about the economy and the Democrats refused to believe it, and instead relied on issues that really didn't resonate this time around.
I think an undervalued issue was the choice of VP candidates. Walz was a disaster and was marked as dishonest almost from the start and then he fumbled badly in the VP debate. They literally gave JD Vance a questionable candidate a lot of energy and momentum.
Now we are going to see the Democratic Party literally fall on each other and we're going to see a power struggle as the party will be pretty much decapitated and there will be a massive power vacuum.