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Republicans have a vision. Democrats have a list of policy proposals. Average people can grok the vision but since they read at a 6th grade level they don't grok the policy proposals.
Democrats need to stop acting like nerds if they want more people to like them.
But I was told it was just that our policy proposals weren't left enough?
Unironically, you're right. Most voters don't vote based on any kind of coherent ideology. They vote on feels.
God help us all.
If the policy proposals were far left enough they'd start to look a helluva lot more like a vision.
Ha. There is that.
(I wasn't sure whether to edit my comment or reply to your first post, so I'm putting this here)
As for people voting on feels: I think that's always been the case for most people. Most people are of average intelligence, with an average education and average interest in politics. They're gonna vote based on vibes, so you have to get the vibes right or the average person won't vote for you.
And you can't fake vibes by having a bunch of celebrities around.
Clinton 1 and Obama were our last successful Dem candidates. You need a charismatic candidate with a consistent message that speaks to everyone if you want to win the popularity contest. Gore, Clinton 2 and Harris failed on both of those counts. Biden won only because of pandemic and government abuse/mismanagement backlash, he would have lost to Trump in other circumstances.
In the immortal words of Bowling for Soup: "High school never ends."
Would be helpful if they had more than 3 months to convey it too.
They’re gonna vote based on vibes, so you have to get the vibes right or the average person won’t vote for you.
And you can’t fake vibes by having a bunch of celebrities around.
So why'd they vote for a rapist who is in pictures with goddamn Epstein? That's the part I don't understand. Are we seriously saying the average (American) is okay with a rapist being president because they like his vibes?
As far as I can tell, it's not that people who would have otherwise voted for Kamala instead voted for Donald. It's that people who would have otherwise voted for Kamala, including many of those who did vote for Biden, just stayed home. "We've got policy plans and whatever" yeah that would never make it to implementation through a gridlocked congress and a hostile supreme court.
It’s that people who would have otherwise voted for Kamala, including many of those who did vote for Biden, just stayed home. “We’ve got policy plans and whatever” yeah that would never make it to implementation through a gridlocked congress and a hostile supreme court.
I honestly think you're giving them more credit than they deserve. My point is that a _rapist, fascist, cruel, racist, misogynist who has said aloud all the horrible things he will do was running for office and a lot of people just shrugged their shoulders and refused to vote. I can't imagine that kind of apathy when a fascist is taking over. "Sure Hitler and the Nazi's are bad, but what am I going to do, vote socialist?"
(Also this because people need to remember he was anti-capitalist as well.)
Apathy or exhaustion?
Maybe. If so, Slipknot was right and people really do = shit. I cannot imagine saying to my women friends and family "okay so you're losing bodily autonomy, but I'm super exhausted about this whole voting thing."
I voted. Most of the women in my family didn't. Most of the women in my family are not and never have been registered to vote.
And this is the sound thundering through my soul for the last few days.
They’re fucking weirdos with weird vibes.
I’m much more interested in the folks who didn’t vote.
I want a country where everyone pays less for healthcare. If it can be done for seniors, why not everyone else?
I want a country where everyone's private medical decisions remain between them and their doctor, without being cleared by your local, state, or federal representative or by a judge.
I want a country where everyone who works, pays taxes, and does not commit violent crime or property theft can stay and keep working without having to look over their shoulder.
I want a country where if you work full time, you can afford your rent/mortgage, put food on the table, start a family, and still be able to retire.
There's a vision. Apparently all of these things have become radically progressive leftist positions and are attacked as such by the media and conservatives alike.
See, the problem with all of these ideas is that they’re at odds with the billionaires’ vision that you slave away in servitude to them, while their imaginary worth line goes up to infinity.
It’s really nothing more complex than that. And, as soon as the non-billionaire conservatives—your neighbors, your coworkers, the people you pass by every day—wake up and understand that they’re covered by that vision, too, the sooner things get better for all of us.
All of these social programs suddenly become much more popular when they are restricted to the majority population. There have been surveys demonstrating this. Another way to see it is to point to places with a lot of those policies, one of the first rebuttals you will receive is a yarn about the homogeneous population, or at least one far more so, in those places.
So, it isn't that they think they won't be covered, it is because so many think it will cover people they don't want it to.
With capitalism, a middle class does not occur organically, it is created by the governing body through subsidies. If you do not subsidize a middle class there can be no middle class. This is fundamental. We really started to feel it in 2015 or so. I called it the squeeze. This tightening grip of not subsidies but further attempts to squeeze more and more blood from rocks.
Why? Our government has been subsidizing the wrong class for a while now. Trump did kick that up a notch the first time. The data is in. Trickle down economics doesn’t work.
As with a middle class, health care has to be subsidized. The governing body won’t allow richer people to pay the same taxes as the poorest of us so that will never happen.
And now Elon Musk is promising “hardship” going forward, as opposed to whatever this is the last 4 yrs, on us, the poorest, rather than paying mor taxes himself. Like that would impact his alien ass at all (he’s weirdly shaped, looks like a slightly melted wax museum figure, and was born into so much money he has no idea how humans live, that’s what I mean by alien). So don’t count on it ever happening going forward.
If you have preexisting conditions expect loss of coverage. And as a fallout from that expect the healthcare system to get slammed with much sicker people trying to find loopholes and other diagnoses so they can actually keep living and working.
The data is in. Trickle down economics doesn’t work.
It works for the rich. Relatedly, shitty economies where the government pumps tons of cash into rich people's pockets also work for the rich. They inflate their assets with their additional government handouts and use those inflated asset prices to get loans to buy more mega yachts.
the system works - for them! You spend your hard earned money and help support their death
How the fuck do democrats win here then? After the Harris/Dump debate i feel like there was a lot of conjecture about how Harris didnt talk about policy enough. How do you get away with talking about policy but not "sounding like a nerd" to uneducated voters? See I think this is more about the average voter not being educated enough to understand the issues and the policies potential nominees have pertaining to them, or how their lives would be affected depending who/what they vote for.
Start offering policies that help average people. Run on medicare for all. Run on forcing pharmaceutical companies lowering drug prices. Run on building new factories to create solar panels, geothermal equipment, and wind turbines. Run on creating affordable housing and ending corporate landlords. Run on campaign finance reform with a promise of ending political ads that everyone hates.
The Democrats problem is tha they won't do any of that because their donors dont want it. But as long as the DNC values their donorsore than their voters, they will continue to lose elections.
The Democrats problem is tha they won’t do any of that because their donors dont want it. But as long as the DNC values their donorsore than their voters, they will continue to lose elections.
The entire American political system we have is dependent on big money donors since citizens united. America has been an oligarchy since at least the early 2000s. You will not get a Democratic party with policies that vary wildly from what industrial heads and CEOs want simply by voting (or not) every 2-4 years. And even small deviations from what they want aren't tolerated by many of the oligarchs (e.g. Elon Musk).
i feel like there was a lot of conjecture about how Harris didnt talk about policy enough
Yeah, from other nerds
The Democrats don't win here.
Just like the Tea Party transformed the GOP, we need a Guillotine Party to drag the Democratic party to the electorate.
Republicans also like to defund public schools and or encourage people to go to religious private schools. That way they’re either too dumb to vote for policies, or too indoctrinated to vote for the candidate that isn’t promising Christian nationalism.
How about do basic stuff that people understand ...
... like tax the hell out of billionaires and use the money on people in the country.
... stop financing overseas wars and use that free money on people in the country
.... then just keep repeating and blasting everyone that all the money the government is collecting from rich idiots and not spending on war is being spent on everyone ...... rinse, repeat 10,000 times.
Yep. And there's precedent for this. (Even though with this Supreme Court precedent counts for jack shit...)
Every time Bernie got asked a question he'd turn it around to mentioning the top 1% and how they're fucking us over. And people liked him for it. I had MAGA hat folks tell me they liked him because of it back in 2016.
MAGA would say that and vote straight R
Yeah but they wouldn't say that about anyone else I can think of. And we're not trying to get MAGA, we're trying to get people to fucking vote at all.
They'll say that about anyone claiming to be an outsider.
If insiders have done fuck all except blow money up billionaires asses, who can blame voters for liking outsiders?
But Trump isn't an outsider
Yes and no. Of course he has power and connections, but to his followers he is an outsider (although I don't understand how they ignore everything that shows the opposite) and the media and many politicians treat him (rightfully) as a pariah. That gives him legitimacy in the eyes of his or undecided voters.
Now, nothing he proposes will change anything for the vast majority of his voters for the better, in fact it will make things worse. And that's ignoring everybody else, especially migrants. But when he says "I see your problems, voters, here's the solution: fascism", they more readily believe him because he is perceived as an outsider, not like politicians who frankly haven't done shit for them.
Because the DNC sceapped those proposals for more neoliberal bullshit that every one hates. People are vocal about what they care about. If people tell me they want steak and i keep giving them tacos, they are going to leave the restaurant and get pizza from the sketchy local joint next door instead.
What proposals for what neoliberal bullshit.
Also neoliberal policies from a neoliberal party?!? Surely you jest!
If a neoliberal party can't win 2 out of 3 elections against a fascist, maybe they should pivot away from neoliberalism.
To what exactly? Neoliberalism is left wing in this shit hole.
Don't say progressive. If that was popular there would be more than two states that have a progressive party.
I think that's a false premise. Third parties are virtually always losing propositions due to the structure of our elections. In a race of red versus blue, if an orange candidate enters the race and some of the red voters vote orange instead because orange more closely fits their preferences, then blue wins with 40% of the vote when 60% of the electorate wanted a warm color.
I'll also point out that Obama campaigned on a message of hope and progress to two victories.
There was an era where the nerds placed up a facade to give the illusion of meritocracy and measured governance. Unfortunately that just drove a wedge between people and the "ruling class." When it came out that bill was getting blowies in the oval office people's brains broke and the facade was forever tarnished. Today, democrats still hide behind it and pretend like we don't know they piss and shit like everyone else. The Republicans decided to erect a monument to trump their lord and savior, the only thing keeping them from being a foot note in the history books.
We need to look to our founders. Flawed in every way possible they did have one idea that we should still cherish. They believed in an america they could make by their own hands. They did, it sucked, it was also amazing somehow. We should be like them but be just as kind to our future as we are to the present.
Do they have a vision? The scary thing about Trump that it’s uncertain what he will do the next 4 years. Will he undo democracy or keep it? Will he continue to support Ukraine or not? Will he leave NATO or not? Will he impose those tariffs or not? Will he apply project 2025 or not? Will he impose a federal abortion ban or not?
Kamala had a clear but boring vision: 4 more years of the current status quo. Nothing new will happen.
It's right there on the hat: Make America Great Again.
And the neat part is it's so vague that people can project whatever they want onto it.
Well that part I’m aware of, but that’s more of a slogan rather than a vision. It doesn’t tell what has gone wrong with America and how to fix it. Trump says a lot of things that sometimes contradict each other or may or may not be taken seriously, so it’s difficult to piece together a concrete vision.
They have a concept of a vision so to say.
He has concepts of a plan
Democrats need to stop acting like nerds if they want more people to like them.
If you told me this was a quote from Ideocracy I would not have doubted you for a second.
you are incorrect.
Republicans are scared of brown people, and they cried about it.
democrats closed the border, reformed border control, and have set up a rational immigration system to allow as many legal immigrants into the country as the system can provide for and integrate into the US economy.
Republicans are scared of vaccines, and they cried about it.
democrats got vulnerable populations vaccinated.
Republicans are afraid of other countries exports, and they cried about it.
democrats increased employment, supported domestic businesses and funded domestic production.
Republicans quake in their boots, democrats take action.
Republicans won the last election.
Democrats... didn't.
dems won the election before that.
Wow that's so helpful right now
i know. that's why I wrote it.
Democrats have a list of milquetoast, bottom of the barrel obvious stuff that they hope could show bipartisanship, and even then they half-ass it. There is real fixing that needs to get done, but the side they isn't actively making things worse has no will to actually do it.
Democrat: *pushes up glasses, adjusts pocket protector* "Um, we propose to implement a 2-10% excise tax on health insurance plans which will allow us to increase access to Medicare by 16% according to these models."
Voters: "I just want health care."
Exactly. Tiny bullshit, when they should be talking universal healthcare
And I'd take some incremental improvements as long as their explanation of what happened ended with "this gets us closer to our goal of universal single payer."
