“Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.”
–Bruce Lee
You must be logged in to post a comment.
BY: notaskinnycook
IN: Monday Open Thread
BY: 2Jung2Die
IN: Monday Open Thread
BY: JohnInDenver
IN: Monday Open Thread
BY: 2Jung2Die
IN: Monday Open Thread
BY: spaceman2021
IN: Monday Open Thread
BY: spaceman2021
IN: Monday Open Thread
BY: joe_burly
IN: Monday Open Thread
BY: Duke Cox
IN: Monday Open Thread
BY: 2Jung2Die
IN: Monday Open Thread
BY: spaceman2021
IN: Monday Open Thread
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!
"Fool me once, Shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
Supermajoritarian Thinking. Josh Marhall at TPM.
Trump won with 49% of the vote. Harris had 48%.
Most people support the Democratic Party policies, if our arguments can reach them. I really believe it is the medium (fox), not the message that gets in the way. However:
@PH: Dems definitely need better and more thoroughly vetted messaging. Case in point: a valid concern for trans-gender kids; admittedly a pretty small minority of youth; turned into allowing boys into girls' sports and into girls' locker rooms. DEI makes some sense, especially regarding getting kids into the outdoors. Dems had no asnwer when the far right mangled the message. Remember what happened with Bud Lite sales? Instead, progressive pundits like Ibram Kendi doubled down on the same failing messsge. Off the culture issues, Biden created a strong economy. Again, Dems had no coherent response when the far right kept saying the economy was "terrible." Hopefully you see the point.
It's fear. Fear is in the way. None of us are willing to rethink our view of the world when we're afraid.
It is impossible for me to believe that all 74 million Trump voters are hateful, racist, misogynistic, transphobes. So what would cause someone like me, who is none of those things, to vote for Trump? The only other reasons I can come up with are ignorance and fear.
The vast majority of us are pretty ignorant about macroeconomics and immigration policy. I know I am. In order to address our ignorance, which could allow us to be better educated to come up with actual solutions to make sure our economy and immigration policies work well for everyone, we need to be willing to admit ignorance.
None of us are going to admit ignorance, nevertheless address it, if we're afraid.
Republicans have done an excellent job in the past few years of building their own echo chambers and reinforcing the edges of those echo chambers with fear.
We need to alleviate those fears to get decent people to stop aligning with Trump and MAGA and be willing to address their ignorance.
All of us (especially people who voted for Trump) need to ask ourselves "If a stranger is telling me to be afraid, what do they gain by doing this?" and maybe that question can help us not be so willing to feel fear and make us more willing to address our ignorance and discuss things.
Trump is a selfish asshole. He is whole-heartedy embraced by mediocre people whose insecurity drives them to harm and demean others (white nationalists, christian nationalists, misogynists, transphobes, etc.).
I think what the Harris campaign was trying to do was to point out how Trump is embraced by those groups and separate Trump from the people who were going to vote for him out of fear and ignorance. Essentially saying "We know you're afraid, but we know you're not like THAT! You're decent people and Trump's an asshole. Vote for us." but that fell on deaf ears because if we're leaning towards voting for Trump out of fear and ignorance and that fear is being amplified, we're not even gonna listen to that Harris person!
Anyway, if we can alleviate the fears of decent people who voted for Trump then we have a chance to be heard and to win elections.
The alternative is to fear them more until we're all so afraid that we all stop seeing each other as humans.
Maybe not all 74 million Chickenheed but I would guess there is a hefty chunk that have racism and mysogyny at the top of their voting priorities.
"A good chunk"…that would be the 1/3 of Trump voters that Hillary correctly labeled "deplorables". I think she vastly underestimated the number of them though….
Yeah I want racists and misogynists and other hateful, mediocre assholes to be afraid. I want them to know, without a doubt that their views are unacceptable and that the only way to not be afraid is to give up those views.
I think we stop trying to convince Trump voters and instead try to excite the democrat base and disaffected nonvoters. I can't think of anything more disempowering to a person who doesn't vote because they don't see a point than seeing Kamala Harris sitting next to Liz Cheney. Like….. so you're telling me there really is no difference.
I feel like going after non-voters is harder than going after people who vote but I like this too! At approximately 90 million (According to US News), that's also a bigger pool of people to appeal to. Although it's also a more diverse pool of people which makes it harder to appeal to them.
As long as we're reducing the influence of hateful fucking idiots, I'm game!
So, with Trump hiring a bunch of quacks like RFK, Jr to fill his administration, is that how he plans to “Get your Ducks in a Row”?
Next up, Dr. Phil for Surgeon General?
Instead of us (largely) armchair strategists second-guessing I'm waiting for the DNC to admit mistakes were made. If THEY don't, the same mistakes will be made, over and over.