At the moment, I'm not much interested in the million and one liberal narratives floating around online explaining "why she lost"—all with remarkable certitude. Emotions are too raw and people are mostly just relitigating all their old grievances. But when a party suffers a six-point swing against it in every single state, the problem is something big and fundamental, not whether Kamala was chosen too quickly (please) or the press didn't tell people how bad Trump is (they did). A biggish slice of Americans just don't like the dog food Democrats are selling.
At the moment, I'd say the single most widespread self-critique is that Dems have abandoned the working class, so it should be no surprise that the working class abandoned Dems. The assumption generally is that we abandoned them economically, with no willingness to consider the possibility that liberals need to reconsider their cultural values. I suspect that's a serious mistake, but for now let's go with the economic argument.
Here's my question: What, exactly, can liberals do for the working class? The Trump answer, aside from rhetorical support, is basically (a) small tax cuts and (b) revenge against China for taking away our manufacturing jobs.¹ In other words, it's all vibes, since neither of those things will make the working class noticeably better off.
Kamala Harris's answer was a few small bore things like help with down payments. "Retraining" has historically been a popular suggestion, which wildly misreads what displaced working class folks want. Safety net programs? Liberals have long been hellbent on phasing them out at low income levels that bypass the working class. "Buy American" is popular with both parties, but it rarely gets enforced seriously and people are rightfully cynical about it. This kind of stuff just won't do the job.
I honestly don't know the answer. The problem is that Democrats have been remarkably successful over the years, leaving very few big-ticket social welfare items undone that might genuinely make a difference. Universal healthcare is the obvious exception, and putting long-term senior care under Medicare might be another. But they're both expensive and extremely difficult to pull off politically.
So if we confine ourselves to economic answers, there's not much available. Inflation was supposedly a huge issue this year, but if so it just means Democrats were doomed. Inflation was caused by the pandemic and ended by the pandemic. There was nothing anyone could do about it.
What's the answer? If we refuse to discuss culture-war moderation because, by God, those are moral issues and you don't compromise on morality, we're stuck with purely economic appeals to the working class. But what?
¹Some might add immigration hawkery, but I wouldn't. I feel pretty strongly that when you dig down, anti-immigrant sentiment is far more cultural than economic. "Oprima dos para español" pisses them off way more than the jobs virtually no white people ever lose to illegal immigrants.
I don’t see what Democrats could even compromise on culturally. They’re not going to become openly racist, sexist, or homophobic- beyond the moral issues, they need the votes. They already carefully police their language to avoid offending right-wingers. “defund the police” etc are all things activists say, not Democrat pols, and while the pols can certainly ask activists to tone it down, it’s not something they can control.
I also don’t think the problem is “working class” voters. the problem is our own voters didn’t turn out. Right now Trump is about a million votes ahead of his count in 2020, but Harris is like 13 million behind Biden. Maybe throwing Gaza under the bus and proposing the appoint a Republican to the cabinet wasn’t what Democrats wanted to hear. Maybe Democrats should try appealing to the left for once.
The problems with any of these analyses are that the final votes aren't in yet, and it's going to take months to really sift through the exit poll data. All this will happen well after the "conventional wisdom" settles in, with pundits seeing whatever biases they have in the immediate data.
Being frustrated by all the coverage of the current numbers, I just took a quick look at the actual vote counts so far. There's still a lot not counted yet. Make no mistake, Harris lost, there will be no miracle, but the gap is going to narrow. Harris will probably wind up about 5.5 million votes behind where Biden was.
Accounting for population growth, this election will probably be about 3 million shy of where it should have been if it had the same turnout of 2020.
Trump is going to end up about 4 million votes higher than his 2020 numbers.
So, some of that deficit relative to Biden might be lack of enthusiasm, but I really doubt that it's the majority. The bulk of it is honest to goodness switching to Trump. That's scary.
More frustrating, Harris looks to be missing the electoral victory, but popular vote loss, by about 160K votes total in the the 3 blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. That would have been fitting payback for the inside straight that Trump drew in 2016. And maybe, just maybe, it would have given some impetus to switch to a popular vote.
But all this will be much clearer 6 months from now, after the votes are fully tallied and the exit polls are properly digested. Sadly, few will actually care than, and the conventional wisdom cake will have long since been baked.
Turnout was a HUGE factor in Harris' loss, agreed. Were Dem voters too complacent or was 2020 an aberration and an overreaction to Trump's bungling COVID?
My point is that turnout wasn't such a huge factor. It will end up being not far off the turnout of 2020. We just have to wait for the vote totals to get finalized, but it looks to be only slightly shy of 2020, which means percentage wise only ~1% lower.
Now, it's possible that DJT motivated an extra 4M new voters to show up, and Harris failed to turn out 6M old voters, and that's 100% of the difference. (That's a guess of the final numbers, assuming that one can extrapolate the current votes to the outstanding votes. Total outstanding votes is about right,, but I have no clue how representative the fractions are right now of the true final vote fractions.)
But it really could be that much of that difference is from swing voters switching from Biden last time to Trump this time. And to understand that, we're going to need a much more careful assessment of the exit polls than are available now.
It will be exactly off from us winning, though.
Not a fan of exit polls; self-selected respondents, and you get rationalizations, not causative factors.
But you will be able to see how the polls, the exit polls and the actual vote differed.
"Maybe Democrats should try appealing to the left for once."
The two biggest 'left' 'asks' in 2020 were climate change and student loan relief. Biden went all-in on both.
If you don't reward the politicians who go all out for you, they will stop doing so.
Exactly.
“defund the police” etc are all things activists say, not Democrat pols, and while the pols can certainly ask activists to tone it down, it’s not something they can control.
Bullshit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtSifopiL1g
Btw, it is worth listening to this in full, because the rhetoric being repudiated wouldn't even stand out today ...
What, exactly, can liberals do for the working class?
Nothing, if you're referring to what can we do for them that will be rewarded with votes. It's clear the politics of bribery don't work. How did Democratic support of organized labor work out?
What Democrats can do for themselves is hope the "fundamentals" picture is friendly to the out-of-White House party in 2026 and 2028. Then they run a smart campaign. The probably means running a youngish heartland governor who's good in unscripted moments. I think Andy Beshear is worth taking a look at; I hope he runs.
How did Democratic support of organized labor work out? Very well, from the New Deal until Northern Democrats and moderate Republicans decided to do the decent thing and defend the right of African-Americans to pursue the American Dream of fair pay, decent housing, etc.
Ken: don't be obtuse. We're talking about recent politics, not the desirability of the policies themselves. Dollars to donuts the Teamsters went 80-20 in favor of Trump despite Biden's incredibly generous bailout of their pensions.
If it were up to me the United States would look like a very, very big Finland in terms of its political economy.
But Democrats need to get a whole lot better at winning elections before that happens.
You're right that the welfare state has been a success but why do you take "Liberals have long been hellbent on phasing them out at low income levels that bypass the working class" as a constraint? That part is the easiest part to change! The checks that went out with Trump's name on them, not just to the poor but very broadly, were (predictably) very successful politically. People spontaneously brought them up in focus groups this election season.
Benefits that are big and go to the vast majority of Americans are very effective—and Medicare paying for at-home care for seniors, as Harris proposed toward the very end of the campaign—could be a great example of this. The Trump years proved more decisively than ever before that nobody cares about deficits. That should help put a stop to all the timid narrow targeting that makes benefits both economically and politically ineffectual.
I get the main point of the post which is that progressives should moderate on "cultural issues" and there's plenty of room for that, especially rhetorically, but there's also plenty of room for actual policies that improve large numbers of people's lives economically and the key is to make them visible so people can see that they are actually getting something from the government.
Housing.
Severely restrict short term rentals.
Ban corporate ownership of single family housing.
Overall economics.
Shut down private equity from owning consumer facing businesses, Including restaurants, grocery, auto, medical, veterinarians.
Do something about insurance, in 4 years nobody will be able to get it for anything.
Work.
Stand 100% behind the removal of non compete agreements, free the workforce to move as they need.
Free tuition for trade schools/colleges (and rigorous standards to go with).
Covered child care for people with jobs.
Other.
Affordable long term care.
"Shut down private equity from owning consumer facing businesses, Including restaurants, grocery, auto, medical, veterinarians." I would add ownership of housing too. All forms of housing.
Severely restricting short term rentals only means that working class can't have relatives over, can't move easily, can't take vacations.
It's not a solution - we can stop giving it the same benefits of tax deductions, though.
Restricting them doesn't mean eliminating them, it means not having housing sitting empty 75% of the time because it only needs to be rented on the weekends to cover the mortgage.
There are these things called hotels.
Harris did talk about a middle class tax cut and the Biden infrastructure bill did put create 100s of thousands of working class jobs. But all I heard from conservative men was trans hate, money going to migrants and the student loan forgiveness hate. Could Biden and Dems have floated a middle class tax cut in 23 or 24 even if it was small? Maybe that would have helped.
Trump's biggest ad buy was the Kamala pro-taxpayer dollars for prisoner/illegal immigrant sex reassignment surgery ads (feat. Charlamagne tha God) with the tag line, "Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you." Those ads ran on a loop during football games (especially involving swing state teams) from September through last weekend. Based on what I am seeing here and online, odds remain low that Dems will ever figure out why Harris got her butt kicked.
I agree and saw that add a LOT during games. But what was funny and never fully explained by the Harris campaign was that policy was started under Trump's administration. It feeds into this notion that their money is going to "frivolous" programs for people they don't like and that they don't benefit from. Given the recovery there should have been some attempts by Dems to pass a middle class tax cute this past year. I don't think programs themselves resonate with white working class people.
Single point of anecdata: About 2 weeks ago I was in a doctor's waiting room when an old white guy (I can say that -- I'm an old white guy too) started in on a rant, while his family/companions tried to shush him: "We have a Presidential candidate who thinks we should give gender surgery to illegal immigrants in prison!" My thought at the time: "With all the problems in the country and the world, THAT'S what you're upset about??"
"With all the problems in the country and the world, THAT'S what you're upset about??" Yes, it is. That and gender/transgenders. As if they even experience any of that on a daily basis to affect their lives I'm any significant way. It's hate!
I think that ad was extremely effective. And, as I said elsewhere, I think “transgender” is a cipher for a lot of people’s discomfort with all gay rights issues.
An ad that was completely false, by the way.
Correct. But Harris didn't make any effort to counter the ad, presumably out of fear of angering the most extreme wing of her base. That's what a lot of this boils down to.
What effort could she make? Lies work. Apparently most republicans think Haitians are eating pets. I can’t imagine how much more forcefully that could have been debunked.
She could have spoken about it frequently and said it was a policy implemented under Trump. Maybe say she doesn't agree with it and will look at repealing it. She probably wouldn't go that far, but she should have run ads or at least talked about how it was Trump, not her. But, again, that would be perceived by the far left as being anti-trans, so she couldn't.
Them Trump campaign was a firehouse of lies. Part of the problem faced by both Democratic and Republican political opponents was whether or not to spend your campaign responding to the lies. I do think those last ads in particular were very effective, particularly where they were positioned and Harris’s campaign could have done a better job responding to them.
I don't buy the culture war argument. Nearly all the abortion proposals passed easily, when Dems expected those to power the rest of the ballot choices. It seems people voted strictly for pocketbook issues
The public is center left on abortion and now on SSM. But I do think the Democrats got out too far ahead of the public on the trans stuff-- with the same effect such avant garde positions would have had on gay marriage in the 90s when the GOP was passing referendums against it.
Fuck you.
Republicans are changing the law in the land that has existed since the 90s.
Trans people exist. We have existed. We have used toilets with no problems, gotten health care like any other.
Where are Democrats ahead?
In things which are not fucking real. No kids are getting surgery. No, immigrants aren't getting surgery.
No, puberty blockers only slow development, they don't stop it. If you're cisgendered, they feel terrible. I took them thirty years ago when I transitioned. They aren't new. And they are only given when kids are having trouble with their puberty - just like with precocious puberty.
So why lie about this?
"Republicans are changing the law in the land that has existed since the 90s."
What does this mean?
What pocketbook, though?
The real one or the fake one that Trump offered?
I don't think that it worked well to respond to inflation with "it's not that bad; it's just post-pandemic stuff, wages are rising; the economy is really good" even if these were reasonable arguments. Maybe there was a way we could have shifted public views on the economy, but we didn't, and no one I talked to was particularly convinced by my arguments that our economy was actually pretty good. I wonder if making a big deal about fixing the economy (even if we couldn't get it through Congress) would have helped more.
The Harris campaign's emphasis on price gouging didn't appeal much to me personally. I don't believe any law would really touch most of the quiet gouging you see, and the big stuff you can criminalize doesn't happen often enough to be a signature campaign issue. But I don't know how other voters felt about it.
Aside from that, I don't think arguments about the dangers of Trump resonated the way we wanted them to. I wish they did, but for a lot of voters I think it was just "noise".
I could be totally wrong -- I think we won't have good analyses on what happened until later. But to me, that's what stood out.
Many states already ban blatant price gouging. But that hasn't helped hold prices down overall.
The price gouging stuff seemed like grasping at straws by Harris.
It seems pretty simple to me: although wages grew very fast, and indeed outpaced inflation, they only outpaced inflation by a small amount. For more than a decade wages, while growing slowly, outpaced inflation by a fair amount so most people were used to being noticeably better off year over year. That didn't happen during this bout of inflation, so people felt worse off, even though it was basically a wash.
When Carville said "it's the economy, stupid" more than 30 years ago, he wasn't wrong. All of the navel gazing going on right now is for naught. Pretty much every time there has been a big bout of inflation during a presidency that president was kicked to the curb. This election was no different, except Trump was the other candidate. Ugh.
This.
Also, it would be interesting to compare what the average change in real median wage has been in different administrations. During Biden's time in office, wages have mostly kept pace with prices, but not by much. And so living standards seem crimped. My guess is the real median wage increase has been lower for Biden than it was for most administrations that won a second term.
Yep. The, ugh, WaPo ran a good piece on this a few days ago. They showed that wages had outpaced inflation by a couple of points over the course of his term. Over the course of Trump's term wage increases outpaced inflation by several points and inflation was much lower.
On NPR show which engaged in one of the endless navel gazing sessions we'll see and hear over the coming weeks, Sarah Longwell pointed out that in her focus groups that people who said their situations were worse or about the same Trump was the winner. She was firmly of the view that inflation was the deciding issue.
The problem with any 'over his term' comparison is that when he took office averages wages were artificially HIGH due to lower wage workers being unemployed in the pandemic.
The real measure should be to pre-pandemic - but politically that sounds like 'cheating'.
Of course, WaPo used alternative numbers.
Didn't Carville predict a Harris win?
I want to see numbers on this.
Not everyone saw wages go up. To get a decent raise you almost always have to change jobs these days and many people were averse to doing so and they were stuck at their old salaries with only minimal increases.
One thing Democrats could fight for would be incremental increases to the income limits on assistance. Especially for high-cost services like home health and child care, it would help those on the border between poor and just making it. Of course I'm a socialist at heart so I'd also be raising taxes on the very wealthy, especially inflicting more inheritance taxes. Cheesh, the exemptions are in the millions. That's hardly forcing anyone to sell the family farm.
Why in the world would you want anyone to sell the family farm? Isn't that the dream? To create generational wealth?
Because no family farms were ever sold because of the inheritance tax. This is another Republican lie.
"Democrats have been remarkably successful over the years"
Not for a long time. Democrats were really successful through the New Deal and Great Society years in passing social programs. Up to that time they had the support of white Southerners and other racists, since non-whites were kept in their place. But the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 started the switch of racists to the Republican party.
Economic policy since then has been dominated by Republicans, and this is a major reason that inequality has increased and most GDP gains have gone to the uppermost incomes. The social programs that have been passed since 1964 don't compensate for the way that the economy has become more plutocratic. LBJ's "war on poverty" was not supposed to be permanent - at that time lower incomes were improving. That improvement slowed way down because the "free market" directed the benefits of growth to the upper classes.
Democrats could do a lot more economically if they had the majorities in Congress that FDR and LBJ had. They could raise taxes on corporations and the rich, tax all income for Social Security, pass real universal health coverage, etc. etc. But promises to do these things are not even approved in Democratic primaries.
Maybe a younger Bernie Sanders with a really progressive economic program could succeed, but the grip of bigotry is very strong, stronger than many influential people in the media and elsewhere are willing to admit. They keep claiming that the "working class" supports Trump. It's the White Supremacist Tribe.
Housing.
Severely restrict short term rentals.
Ban corporate ownership of single family housing.
Overall economics.
Shut down private equity from owning consumer facing businesses, Including restaurants, grocery, auto, medical, veterinarians.
Do something about insurance, in 4 years nobody will be able to get it for anything.
Work.
Stand 100% behind the removal of non compete agreements, free the workforce to move as they need.
Free tuition for trade schools/colleges (and rigorous standards to go with).
Covered child care for people with jobs.
Other.
Affordable long term care.
While I generally agree with you, I have two provisos:
Achieve these things using vouchers - as you or another said, checks with a democrats signature on them will go a long way towards building positive associations with democrats. And this prevents capture of these programs by democrat-affiliated rent seekers.
Structure the programs with as little central control as possible. Do not use these programs as a way for California to govern Texas, lest California find itself governed by Texas, instead. The states are the laboratories of democracy -- let them try programs that they think will work for their constituencies. The role of the federal government should be in enforcing transparency, measuring outcomes, and holding states accountable for their promises.
Reatricting short term rentals doesn't help in the long run - it reduces mobility and doesn't address the demand.
People in apartments need to be able to rent an apartment to have their family over, or to vacation themselves. These units need to be available when there's a disaster big or small so that people end up housed instead of in an emergency shelter.
Private equity needs to be reined in everywhere. They shouldn't be able to take loans out on the company dime and then take money out of the business to stuff in their pockets. And yes, they shouldn't be allowed to own certain kinds of property like single family homes or duplexes.
Living in a dark red county in NC, I see firsthand the success of attempts to demonize Democrats. Spectacularly successful. Folks here truly believe religion is under attack, and that it's imperative to stop the spread of communism and degeneration and ensure the continued strength of the patriarchy. No Democratic policy will change their minds. There's already an ingrained tendency to think in terms of Us vs Them (see, e.g., generations of college basketball rivalry), so that mindset is a comfortable place to be.
Very accurate and I see this is purple areas of Pennsylvania
Yes, but those people will die off and slowly lose power. Old school fire and brimstone religion is on it's way out all over the world. Education will do that for ya.
You underestimate young suburban and rural voters. Men especially over the past 4 years have really gone hard right. Harris lost young people.
The Dems lost young people because they can't afford housing, their insurance payments are going up, they can't afford to have children, and they can't afford groceries either. The young people have no future and the Dems have been focused on DEI and trans acceptance.
Religion matters nothing to them when they can't afford to move out of their parents house.
Fuck you, Art.
Liying about Democrats and then using me as the cause?
Fuck you.
You're trash to forward the lie that trans people and DEI are the focus of Democratic policies, or that they're bad.
It's disgusting.
Have you seen the comments here and on other liberal websites? Religion certainly is under attack from many of the commenters. Granted, these commenters are not political candidates, but that doesn't always matter. People see and hear the hatred of religion (read Christianity) from the far left and it pisses them off. They remember that when they go vote and take it out on whoever has a D next to their name.
Noted, you have no citations,
However, you do show up to promote policies that kill women, infants; that demonize trans people living their lives...
None of that is an attack on religion.
Nor is your support for murderers who plan to run over people, and when they threaten pedestrians in a crosswalk, shoot the person who complained about being threatened.
Good one
Where I used to work there was a boss who was a complete jerk. Mean spirited, bitter, treated people like shit. He was a Deacon in his church. A new hire who was very religious and very active in her church, a choir member, came up to me and asked me if it was true that this boss was a Deacon in his church. I told her yes it is true. She kind of got a far off look in her eyes and said “there’s not a drop of Jesus in that man.”
I don’t think that “religion” is under attack by liberals. What is under attack is the hate and anger many in the religious community espouse. Particularly in the “Christian” churches that “don’t have a drop of Jesus in them”.
I agree that's some of it. There are certainly some Christians who use religion as an excuse to foster some anti-christian ideals. But, what I was referring to is the comments I see daily that just attack the idea of Christianity as whole -- it's 2024 why do people believe in the bronze aged stories, Christians are low IQ because they worship the sky fairy, references to the "flying spaghetti monster", they can't think for themselves. It goes on and on. I'm not saying this is all dems. But that kind of anti-religion sentiment definitely exists and many people are offended by it. The vast majority of this country is still Christian.
You have no idea the political affiliation of random commenters on the interwebs who mock religion. Nothing in Democratic policy or legislative actions is directed against any religion. On the other side, certain Republicans have publicly denigrated Islam. Antisemitism shows up on both the extreme left and extreme right. I am sure you are just as opposed to those bigotries …
They say they want economic stuff, but the white working class would return to Democrats if they went more towards 1960s style Southern Democrats. Drop a few n-words, act like Mad Men around women, etc. "Life is not as I am told it should be, give me someone else to blame."
I don't think that's true for the vast majority of people. I think most people would settle for not hearing about pronouns or boys being allowed to play in girls sports or the importance of being "anti-racist".
Ahh, here we are:
It's not religion, it's that you want to spread lies about trans people, harass people about pronouns, and defend racism.
You only show up here to promote policies that kill women and infants and defend murderers and lie about doing do.
You seem to be a little off topic. Wasn't spreading lies, harassing anyone, or defending racism. And no idea what your talking about with your last sentence. I'm contributing to the conversations here but, for some reason, you just want to make off-topic personal attacks.
"So if we confine ourselves to economic answers, there's not much available"
Indeed! If only some Dem would spearhead a couple of major pieces of legislation that would direct ~a trillion dollars~ worth of incentives, grants, and tax cuts towards domestic manufacturing, with most of it focused on the rust belt and other struggling rural areas?
Just thinking out loud here, that money could also be used to spur emissions reductions, so it would not only be good for jobs and incomes but also a public health boon.
Too bad that didn't happen and/or get talked about during the 2024 campaign.
This is a lie. To the extent we do this, it is because it is forced onto us by the center-right.
Right?
This sort of policy shift Drum describes is right out of the DLC/triangulation playbook.
Kevin, you're making the basic mistake Democrats are making. This isn't about "things". It's all culture war all the time. Full stop.
Does anyone seriously think Trump is going to do any of the things he campaigned on? No taxes on tips? No taxes on overtime? Please. And everyone knows that and THEY DON"T CARE. Was the working class better off in 2020 than in 2016? Of course not. And THEY DON"T CARE. Is the working class better off now than they were in 2020? Of course not. And THEY DON"T CARE. Grievance. It's just grievance and culture war.
Oh, bullshit. Reproductive freedom is clearly a winner everywhere except the reddest of places full of old people who will die.
Marijuana approval passes easily in most places.
Nobody bats an eye at same sex marriage anymore.
The number of people who care about drag queen story hour couldn't fill a stadium.
Most book ban requests come from the same 20 people.
The winning side literally spent about $300 million talking about transgender surgeries.
Their message was ALL culture war.
I think the “transgender” issue was just a cipher for all of the gay rights stuff that they hate.
I think you're misinterpreting what culture wars are all about. Hint: it's really not about culture.
Relativity applies to more than just physics. The middle class sees the wealthy getting wealthier and the poor closing the gap and it feels like they're going backwards. They will insist that they have it much worse than their parents, all while living in a larger house in a nicer neighborhood, driving two cars while their parents made due with one Chevy station wagon, etc., etc. You can explain until you're out of breath how much better your policies have made them, but it won't do any good.
Indeed, from right after WWII until about 1980, the middle class gained at a faster rate than in the years since. In the last 50+ years, nearly all the economic gains have gone to the upper incomes leaving only crumbs for everyone else. Who is responsible for that? We know the answer. So it should be no mystery why those responsible support the party that is working to shift the blame to anywhere except where it belongs. Blacks, immigrants, China, gays.. The tell is in the scattershot approach. It doesn't matter where the blame is directed as long as it's not where it belongs. In fact, the more different groups to blame the better.
This is what culture war is all about.
Yes, entirely about misdirection. Also, promising tax cuts is part of it; you’re struggling because the big bad government is taking your money to give to Those Undeserving — not because the managers and owners have been taking what should have been labor’s share of productivity gains.
Hint: it's really not about culture.
It's not about culture for right wing political operatives and candidates. That's true. They're just pushing the buttons they think will work.
It very much is about culture for the recipients of the messages. A lot of people are nervous about getting their pronouns wrong, or about having their five year olds convinced they're trans, or about police budgets getting slashed. I realize this stuff is wildly exaggerated by right wingers who seize upon a few edge cases. But in the age of internet virality, Democrats have to be smarter about messaging and candidate selection to counter the perception among persuadable* voters that they've drifted too far to the left.
And the border really has been pretty chaotic. That's not a fantasy.
*The vast majority of voters are not persuadable, true, but in a 48-48 nation, their votes are critical.
So why did you show up and blame trans people?
Or mention drag queens?
Because you're willing to lie about us to blame us - trans people haven't fucking changed in thirty years. What the fuck is wrong with you to blame us for the Democrats being demonized?
Fuck you, Art.
Somehow, tips and overtime will be things only millionaires will get a tax break on.
" (a) small tax cuts and (b) revenge against China for taking away our manufacturing jobs.¹ " In reality, (a) Trump is planning massive tax increase on the working class in the form of tariffs and (b) the vast majority of manufacturing jobs were lost to robotics/ automation, not to china. The US manufactures as much as they ever have. The auto industry manufactures as many cars as they ever have with les than 1 tenth the labor they had at the peak of employment. (And yes manufacturing he same number of cars as in the 70s ignores that we buy a lot more cars.).
Democrats need to learn how to talk to stupid.. er... "low information" people. The Republicans have Oxford-educated Dr. Frank Luntz, who has been helping them sell policies that are absolutely devastating to the working class for... {checks calendar...} 30 years. I mean... death tax? His thesis is that "80 percent of our life is emotion, and only 20 percent is intellect," and that's why Republican appeals are all to the emotion. If you think about any of their policies, you realize they're bonkers. I find it distasteful, but not as much as 4 years of Trump. It's time to stop treating voters as if they're capable of rational thought. Then again, the price of bacon is going to skyrocket once Trump starts deporting the people who work in the processing plants, and that's sure to provoke some of those flag-wavers.
If you go by the ads, it was transgenderism, inflation and immigration. IOW, cultural war stuff, by and large, those issues will remain where there are the next four years and Trump will not accomplish much on these matters (tg is a state matter, inflation has been whipped, and there no way to deport the number of undocumented immigrants that they want)-yet these are the issues people seem to have voted on.
Yes
Xenophobia and that a handful of trans girls play HS sports.
That seems to be what animates many voters
Correct. So what are dems going to do about it? Why do they dig in and make a big deal about defending a few few boys that play in girls sports?
Far be it for them to know that trans people have been here the entire time.
I think this is pretty much correct. I think the left is missing how much ordinary people don’t understand trans issues, especially with regards to chemically transitioning children. It’s not talked about a lot but I think that issue alone makes a lot of people very uncomfortable with the left and is easy emotional target. Then you have inflation, again, most people are very low information, they only know stuff costs more. They don’t read and analyze, to them beating inflation means making prices like they were a few years ago, not slowing the increase. Most voters know next to nothing, simple emotional arguments about how they are losing out work very well. Complex arguments about how it’s not that bad don’t work.
On the other side you have Gaza and support for Israel, this issue zapped enthusiasm for the younger crowd. I saw a lot of not voting for genocide from 20 something liberals who hate Trump but simply didn’t vote.
It all combined to give us what we got. Republicans are great at simple emotional arguments that make people feel like they are getting screwed and the other side is crazy. Democrats basically suck at that kind of messaging and liberals purity police themselves out of the same kind of lockstep unity we see on the right.
"On the other side you have Gaza and support for Israel, this issue zapped enthusiasm for the younger crowd. I saw a lot of not voting for genocide from 20 something liberals who hate Trump but simply didn’t vote."
On the schadenfreude front, the irony there is that Trump will give Bibi the green light to bulldoze Gaza and any remaining survivors into the sea so Jared can put in his hotels.
And when the kids protest same, the cossacks will be unleashed upon them.
Well the subject du année next year is going to be extending taxes (with the resultant effect on the deficit, Social Security, etc). Dems should be for raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to make sure the deficit comes down and SS is protected. Let Trump argue for tax cuts for the rich.
I disagree. Dems should have tried to pass a populist middle class tax cut and forget about the deficit and national debt. Why are Dems always trying to balance the books?
"Some might add immigration hawkery, but I wouldn't. I feel pretty strongly that when you dig down, anti-immigrant sentiment is far more cultural than economic. 'Oprima dos para español' pisses them off way more than the jobs virtually no white people ever lose to illegal immigrants."
So 'Oprima dos para español' is what pissed off the Latino men who went from +33 with Clinton to -10 with Trump? Huh. Never would have guessed.
Basically the problem is that Democratic-controlled institutions treat poor white people with undisguised contempt.
This, of course, is a lie. Democratic-controlled institutions bend over backwards to try and extend sympathy and understanding to poor whites, and have done more for them materially than any other institutions in the nation, ever.
Keep losing.
So no rebuttal then.
Got it
Don't worry, poor whites will lose more in the next four years. Some will probably thank Trump and ask for more because they can feel free to be the bigoted assholes that they are. The futility of retribution politics will never stop being pathetic.
I voted for Biden, you cretin.
The problem is people like you. You. And SeanT. And MisterMeyer. And FrankM.
And all the other people on this blog who performatively clutch your pearls and deplore the Republicans as irredeemable racists and misogynists.
You people are a cancer.
You are telling these voters that you hate them. And they aren't going to vote for people that hate them.
Ha. I voted for Harris. I did really like Biden, though. Bravest president of my lifetime.
>You are telling these voters that you hate them.
Nope. Not me, anyway. Although I will note that "those voters" include the people driving around with pickup trucks flying giant "FUCK YOUR FEELINGS" flags, but that's OK.
What I said - and I'll repeat it here - is that we don't have a Frank Luntz to craft a message for people who don't pay attention to the issues, know little to nothing about civics, don't understand economics, blah blah blah.
It is an undeniable fact that 50% of the population is not as smart as the other 50%. Live with it. Learn how to embrace it, and use it. Exploit it, just like the Republicans do. I mean... even if you REALLY think that the temporary spike in the price of eggs and gas sunk the Democrats, that's more proof that people don't understand simple things like... the President has no control over bird flu epidemics (that caused the egg price spike) and Biden actually used the strategic oil reserve skillfully to bring down the price of oil and make a nifty profit in so doing. (He sold high, then bought low.) Trans people? Not a real issue for anyone. Immigration? Only an issue for people who don't understand who it is that works in the fields and meat processing plants and in the construction industry. Frank Luntz would know how to 'splain it to those folks, and we Dems ought to learn how, as well. Call that condescending if you'd like, but it's just a recognition of reality.
And I voted for Harris, would have voted for Biden.
"Immigration? Only an issue for people who don't understand who it is that works in the fields and meat processing plants and in the construction industry."
The number of ostensible leftists that say shit like this... like it's ... some kind of natural law.
Mind-boggling.
As recently as 1990, only 14% of farmworkers were illegal immigrants. Here is the source:
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor/
From the same source, labor costs are only about 10% of gross revenue. Significant increases in wages result in marginal retail price increases because most of the value added is downstream of the growers.
For example, a 1 cent per pound increase in the price suppliers paid amounted to a $60-80 per week increase in wages for tomato pickers in Florida in the 2000s
https://archive.ph/SBhIU
Ah. Use data from 1990, change the terms of the debate, and Voila! You've made... a point?
Johns Hopkins, in their 2017 report* "Public Health, Immigration Reform, and Food System Change" found that 80% of agricultural and meat processing workers were immigrants. Note that under Trump's promises, "legal status" has no meaning; he has already promised to revoke the legal status of many immigrants, and he will undoubtedly round up many U.S. citizens unlucky enough to have the wrong shade of skin.
As for wages... if you don't have a large enough pool of available workers, wages don't matter. And if you don't have the workers, you can't put out as much product, be it lettuce, bacon, or tomatoes. Or houses. In California and Texas, 40% of construction workers are immigrants**. Elsewhere in the U.S., it's 30%.
* - https://bit.ly/3UK2kgZ
** - https://bit.ly/40FVFbg
What's wrong with this as an answer?
Every incumbent party in the western world has been getting the absolute shit kicked out of them for the past four years or so. Ideology doesn't matter; if you were the incumbent party during the pandemic and the aftermath, people either kicked you the fuck out or are about to do so. Why is this explanation insufficient?
"What's wrong with this as an answer?"
As an explanation of what actually happened, nothing -- it's exactly right.
As a political message to defuse the issue, I don't think it works at all. (I could be wrong, of course.) Almost certainly the Harris campaign came to the same conclusion: explaining what actually happened would sound like making excuses, and any time spent discussing inflation would just be playing into the other side's most effective issue.
My Two Cents:
Two words: Racism and Misogyny.
The democrats ran two very competent women and both lost
The republicans ran a very repugnant, OLD, incompetent white male candidate 3 times and won twice.
That is the lesson Americans sent to the world.
We are finished.
"What, exactly, can liberals do for the working class?"
I think the question is worse than that...The Biden administration delivered more for the working class than any in literally generations.
This election pretty much proved beyond any doubt what we thought 2016 showed us.......that *delivering* policy doesn't matter a damn.
Whether it be 'delivering' half century unemployment lows, literal checks for $1400 and generational real income/wealth gains to the working class or whether it be 'delivering' massive climate change policies and student loan relief (thwarted by the rightwing courts, but still) to young progressives......'delivering' does not win votes.
That's your proof that it really IS about identity politics. To the core.
Agreed, chaboard. Dems can win by using identity politics that appeal to SOME broad swaths of the working class. Obama won twice. My own suspicion is that gender mattered a lot. If Dems run another female candidate for president, they'll lose again.
Trump's campaign was built on hatred, fear and lies, most of all lies. He lied about America's "problems," so often and so casually, that his supporters -- and a good many who were not supporters at first -- simply accepted the lies. They sounded like they could be true and eventually it didn't matter to his fans if they were true or not.
How do you strategize against that? Even if you are operating in good faith, every legislative proposal to help the people who need help takes years of research, hundreds of hours of negotiating with the other side, endless public statements and TV interviews to get the word out, signing up sponsors, bringing it to a vote both houses, and then some jerk like Matt Goetz can torpedo the whole thing if he feels like it.
Or if you're Donald Trump, you can simply announce that you've done more for the working class than any president since Julius Caesar. Problem solved.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. The thing that works for Trump is the power of lies. People believe him or want to. He tells them what they want to hear and it makes them happy. I just don’t know how to fight that. Trump is the best liar on the planet.
We are moving from a manual labor workforce to a mental labor one. No one misses blacksmiths any more and pretty soon you won't even have to know how to drive a car. Immigrants pick our crops, so we don't even have to do that. I spent a working career in the computer world (mostly) and that worked for me and my family. I would recommend that people develop skills that companies are looking for, and that's mainly mental.
Moderating on cultural issues would imply deciding who to throw under the bus. In this country, that means actual people’s lives will be endangered.
Bear in mind also that Trump’s Christian Nationalist believers are not going to stop. They want it all: abortion ban, birth control ban, divorce ban, gay marriage ban (of course, what they really want is to “ban” gays). They will never run out of culture issues to run on, even if their ultimate goals remain out of reach. They don’t want “moderation;” they want our unconditional surrender.
Many of Trump’s openly endorsed policies, not to mention Project 2025, are horridly unpopular even in theory, let alone as enacted. Trump only cares about Trump, but he’s going to be staffed by true believers. Then, there’s the question of whether he will even be in charge of his own presidency? He seems impaired and diminished; he may wind up as a figurehead trotted out for photo ops while the people around him get down to business. What then?
If his policies crash the economy, and catastrophically weaken our national security, as they well could, that may be something that even his voters will notice. Of course, it may turn out to be the case that inflation, recession and war only make Democratic presidents unpopular.
I’m not sure that there is much of anything that the Democrats can do, on their own, to change voters’ minds. Al Smith couldn’t beat Hoover in 1928, and it took the Great Depression for FDR to beat him in 1932. Something that bad, or worse may, be what it takes now.
It'll take something worse. And a GOP controlled government is just the thing to deliver it.
The Democrats didn't jump at the chance of blaming Bush Jr after 9/11 happened. Republicans play the blame game all the time. The democrats rarely if ever do.
Why is it confusing? It's just vibes. You don't have to do anything but campaign on vibes. Convince them that you'll put more money in their pockets.
Yes, that means lefties will have to stop splitting hairs and insisting upon 13 policy proposals with associated white papers. And stop insisting that the nominee do 3 more Serious Interviews and Media Appearances.
As stupid as Trump is, and he's astoundingly stupid, the one thing he understands (clearly instinctively) is how to communicate vibes. Mostly because that's not the hard part, or at least it shouldn't be. The substance once you're in office is the hard part, but it seems pretty clear to me that Democrats have been stuck in egghead mode for decades and it gets them written off. Nobody cares about the details of a tax plan, and nobody on the other side and no low-information voters are convinced in any numbers that matter by things like charts and graphs.
It's all about values and whether you communicate them to voters. Democrats have always done a goddamn shitty job of communicating their values to voters, except for Obama. He wasn't an amazing president but he was S-tier at communicating values and vibes.
I think you lean to heavily into what Trump says. What he says doesn't matter - the people who vote for him don't care.
But the people who vote Democratic do care what you say.
I don't know how to fix that.
What he says, bullshit as it may be, does matter though - because it's what gets reported, and when people want change even those low-information headlines make a difference. It doesn't matter that Trump's lying, all that matters is that he tells people who want change what they want to hear.
The Republicans are really good at ads the push people's buttons as well as full on grievance culture, i.e. give their supporters someone to blame for their problems.
All those people in power DC saying Trump was fascist--well, they're all the "establishment". Who cares if they were Trump's cabinet members.
Student loan forgiveness....well I didn't go to college because we couldn't afford it, so why should I pay for their debt relief?
And the general, my benefits were earned, theirs weren't!!!!
Home prices--blame immigrants.
Food inflation--blame immigrants.
Gas prices high--blame immigrants.
Does it make sense, no. But vibes!!!
I used to think threading the needle below was a bridge too far, but now I think somebody needs to figure this out.
Dems have to move from being perceived as "pro-minority" (which for purposes of this post means pro-brown, pro-black, and pro-woman, the historically discriminated against groups) to being perceived as "pro-LABOR" -------- the problem is that its hard to be "pro" a group ("Labor") which includes uneducated white dudes who don't think they ought to get a write up at their job when they ask when the Mexicans are getting back from the taco truck.
Right now, millions of those dudes see the Democratic party as the party who is, at a minimum, telling them what they can and cannot say, and, at a maximum, are giving their jobs to some minority. They also think that Dems are shipping their jobs overseas. The last one is wrong but having a poor propaganda arm is for another post.
It is just a tough needle to thread. And we have not been threading it well enough in terms of perception. People react more to a policy which restricts them, then a policy with a connection to help them.
What NOT to do when trying to win the white working-class vote:
- Spend $1 trillion to pay off student debts for middle class college kids.
- Don't go on spending binges which drive up budget deficits and make Democrats appear irresponsible.
- Give off the vibe of turning a blind eye to illegal immigration over the southern border. (Many on the left seem to care little about security on the southern border, as if it’s a bit racist to do so.)
- Act like your job is done simply by supporting unions. (Only 6.9% of workers are in private sector unions, and rural whites care little about unions or are anti-union. Trump may have won the vote for private sector union members, but there are no polls specifically for this.)
Also, Trump did get out ahead on trying to smack down China a bit. Note that Biden kept the Trump tariffs in place.
What are the big things needed to win back the white working-class vote? I don’t know. Strange, the Republican Party now is perceived as more empathetic towards the white working class, and Democrats are seen as snobby elitists. This perception is hard to reverse. Crazy, somehow billionaires and the white working class are in bed together having a lovefest.
So do what Biden did!