People are dumb as shit.
Indeed. Imagine the enormous stupidity it takes to think votes can be won by ignoring voters. Only a massive moron would think such a tactic would work. Good thing no one is that idiotic.
or maybe you just have naive comprehension of how people work
“I feel you are both outsiders compared to the rest of DC, and less ‘establishment’,” said one. Another, “both of you push boundaries and force growth”. And: “It’s real simple … Trump and you care for the working class.”
“You are focused on the real issues people care about. Similar to Trump populism in some ways,” said a fourth. Lastly, a respondent said: “You signaled change. Trump signified change. I’ve said lately, Trump sounds more like you.”
Utterly brilliant. Complete geniuses with a firm grasp on current politics. I see why you count these as intellectual kin.
If Democrats can’t learn the lesson here they’re going to keep failing.
These are working class people who want their everyday cost of living needs addressed. They want change. No Trump isn’t going to help them but he says he will. “Trump will fix it!”
If Trump says mass deportations will fix their problems they’re going with that option.
Democrats need to actually do the work and fix their concerns the correct way, by taxing the shit out of or locking up billionaires for a start.
Democrats saying nothing will fundamentally change is not reaching these people, and just calling them dumb and discarding them isn’t a winning strategy.
Democrats saying nothing will fundamentally change is not reaching these people, and just calling them dumb and discarding them isn’t a winning strategy.
How are Democrats supposed to reach these people? They seem to think Biden had a big button labeled “inflation” that he pushed. Everything the Democrats did do to try address things like this were played down and/or didn’t even reach them since the corporate media was not passing that along. Other things were straight up knee-capped by the qons, like loan forgiveness.
How can the Democrats get any messaging out at all, when they are up against hate radio, Sinclair, Faux, bros in podcasting, bros running the algorithms, and so on?
Maybe if the messaging was more radical, the actions were grand enough, and the spokespeople charismatic enough it won’t matter.
But none of those will happen so I guess we’re having fascism. Radical messaging “scares voters.” Big actions “aren’t feasible.” And the spokespeople have no rizz.
and just calling them dumb and discarding them isn’t a winning strategy.
But that seems to be the SOP for Lemmy users, any criticism of the DNC, Harris, or Biden is met with “bUt TrUmP fAsCiSm,” or some variation of you being a racist or fascist or whatever.
AOC sat down with her voters and asked them why they voted for her and Trump, and they gave her their honest answers.
And y’all (not you, the people you’re responding to and the majority of Lemmy) immediately insult them, their intelligence, and their understanding of the world because y’all know better then them.
There were plenty of articles showing despite a good economy, Americans felt more strapped for cash and felt like they were doing worse than four years ago. That’s their lived reality, and the DNC just kept doubling down on “economy good, soft landing,” and then threw out the $15/hr minimum wage from a decade ago as if it would mean anything to most Americans (my state already has a minimum wage of just under $16/hr, and it’s $8/hr short of what our own university said someone would need to afford a one bedroom apartment). So no working class person would have benefitted from that in my state, but the DNC and liberals act like we should be gobbling their nuts because they were so progressive for even briefly mentioning it.
I said right after the election (and was repeatedly attacked and downvoted for it) that the American people want change. And if it’s not going to be progress, they’ll roll the dice on regress. But something has to change, and for better or worse, Trump promises that while the DNC can barely be bothered to maintain the status quo.
People are fucking stupid, but to the previous point that doesn’t mean they can just be ignored. Their concerns are real and need to be addressed, they’re just gullible morons for believing the first snake oil salesman that comes along promising to solve all their problems.
The DNC fucked up and has been fucking up consistently for decades now by ignoring lower and middle class Americans to focus solely on the upper class. Talks of the stock market doing well and the GDP being good means fuck all when that’s all built on the backs of some of the most extreme income inequality and poverty in the history of the US. As the middle class eroded and wealth increasingly is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands it becomes critical to appeal not to the rich but to the poor who overwhelmingly outnumber them. Failure to do so has had the entirely predictable result that elections become impossible to win.
The GOP is fully aware of this, the big difference is they’re more than happy to peddle comforting lies to an increasingly ignorant and stupid populace, due in no small part to Republicans decades of attacking and destroying public education. If the DNC or any other non-GOP party ever wants to hold power again they need to convince the poor to vote for them, one way or another.
The problem here is that helping the working class hurts the people with lots of money to throw at attack ads. As you said, the people are gullible morons, they are not immune to propaganda.
If, hypothetically, the DNC were to fully shift to a pro-working class platform tomorrow, with the policies that implies, their capitalist donors would shift their donations to endless propaganda against them. Everything from half-truths and mischaracterizations to straight up lies.
Elections are not won by superior policy, they’re won by superior popularity. Even if that popularity is based on lies and misinformation. The DNC has no incentive to adopt popular policies if adopting popular policies causes them to lose voters due to gullible morons being convinced by propaganda to vote against their interests.
Frankly I think holding out for the DNC to step up as leftist saviors is silly and ignorant of reality. The Democrats have been, and likely always will be, the less bad capitalist establishment party, which only gets support from the left as strategic time-buying votes (and rightly so, I will continue to vote blue-no-matter-who so long as the probable alternative is fascism). They’re not likely to save us, and we can’t pragmatically expect them to go from less bad to actually good.
There needs to be some kind of solution or compromise though because as has been demonstrated this last election ignoring the working class is just handing their votes to the Republicans. Bernie Sanders demonstrated that it is possible to raise enough money from small donations to run a campaign. Yes the rich donors could out spend that by a significant margin, but I still believe someone with a good plan to address income inequality and out of control cost of living would do well enough to offset that.
The Democrats current policy of catering exclusively to rich donors is a losing strategy. If they ever want to win another election they’re going to have to find a solution to that.
I think your point is well made, and this thread is demonstrative of the entire point I was making to PugJesus.
PugJesus is the definition of incurious when it comes to understanding why their rhetorical approach failed.
Trump … care[s] for the working class.
Fucking idiot.
Not you, pug.
I feel you are both outsiders compared to the rest of DC
Yeah, it sure is “outsidery” to be given half a billion dollars by your dad, have gold toilets, towers with your name slapped on them, and, oh, and having held the office before. Donvict is such an outsider, you guyyyyz
Trump AND AOC? What an odd mix.
It’s people who vote based on vibes rather than facts and consequences. They saw both of them as “outsiders” who “tell it like it is” and want change.
Is it though? Assuming these people care fuck all about politics
Tone Police: “Don’t make fun of the voters! The Democrats have to sell themselves to these people. Don’t mock them lest we’ll call you an elitist” People that voted for donvict: { proceed to say and do some of the dumbest shit imaginable }
I have made similar comparisons before.
I want an exciting government as much as I want an exciting nuclear powerplant.
To make an analogy out of your statement, in this scenario the nuclear powerplant is in the middle of melting down and one party ran on a platform of “Your right, that plant is a problem, but don’t worry we’ll fix it by removing all the control rods” while the other parties platform was “We think all the readings look fine, we’re not going to change anything, the control rods are just fine where they are”. Neither one is actually solving the problem, and one is actively making it worse while claiming the opposite. Everyone is rightfully concerned and wanted something done, and enough morons believed the lies to hand them the win.
I would have zero worry of living next to a boring, well run nuclear powerplant
Absolutely, but that’s not really comparable to the current situation. The US is far from well run and has a ton of problems that need fixing ASAP. While Trump will absolutely no question make things significantly worse, the Democrats message of “this is fine” did not in any way resonate with voters. It very much had the feel of “Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make”.
