Paul--I have been thinking this forever--thanks for spelling it out. This is not rocket science--I grew up in rural Iowa. Tell them--"The Republicans are screwing you--taking money out of your pocket to give it to billionaires. You have common sense. Stop being a chump!
I live in rural Upstate New York. You could also win with a similar message - "What have Republicans done for you lately? Right, not a damn thing." It was central to the message that won in NY 22.
The problem is also that in this quixotic quest to show “respect” for voters (often while willfully ignoring the things that actually motivate our fellow humans) they’re showing huge disrespect to the 75 million people who actually voted for them. And donated and volunteered and generally worked their tails off to fight off creeping fascism. But elected Dems (who we got elected) seem to disdain their own voters almost as much as the corporate political media. Our elected leaders are turning their backs on the people who did the work and voted for them and are now looking for them to show actual leadership. It makes them look weak and unprincipled, but it’s also just bad politics and no way to build a winning coalition.
Interesting take on using "respect" as the key word for the problem Democrats have with the casual, or non, voter. I agree totally with this: we need "to produce messages that are simpler, easier to understand, and more emotionally resonant." That shows respect in the good sense of the word and deed. Yes, we should be hammering Republicans with three easy issues: healthcare, workers' rights, and economic fairness - as one commenter on a Thom Hartmann essay wrote. Republicans are horrible in practice on these issues, and they affect ALL of us.
Examples: "Republicans (or candidate so and so is) are killing us", this is how they do it. "Republicans want you to be poor", this is how they do it. "Republicans hate the working person", this is how they show it. Nothing wonky about it, directly to the point.
>>> This is not how Republicans campaign. They assume the worst of the electorate. They believe voters are ignorant, easily manipulated, amoral, ungenerous, and governed by emotions, especially the darkest ones. No one has less respect for voters than Republicans do. Especially Donald Trump.
>>> Does that always work? No. Democrats win plenty of elections. But the Republican approach does tend to produce messages that are simpler, easier to understand, and more emotionally resonant.
And let's not forget that Republicans win a shipload of elections when it is painfully clear that they have almost no policies, and the very few policies they have are almost never favored by a majority.
I think that's because the GOP is openly hostile to the "other" and so are many voters. They like being cruel. Because it will "never" rebound on them personally.
I am going to risk making a suggestion: We could discover our own charisma and actually appeal to voters of all persuasions if we made very public, very loud and frequent, and confident war against the war against Social Security: Tell the people again and again (it DOES take time and repetitiion from many voices) that Social Security DOES NOT CONTRIBUTE TO THE DEFICIT...it is paid for by the workers themselves...and DOES NOT BURDEN THE YOUNG...they are paying while they are working for what they will need when they themselves can no longer work. and the "LOOMING BANKRUPTCY" of Social Security is a SELF FULFILLING LIE...we are going to be living longer than our grandparents. living longer takes more money. we need to save more in order to have enough for a longer life expectancy after we can no longer work. the safest way to insure that we will have enough is to raise the Social Security payroll tax...really a savings account and insurance policy. The amount the tax needs to be raised is one tenth of one percent per year while real wages are going up one full percent per year. that is about ONE DOLLAR PER WEEK PER YEAR while wages are going up TEN dollars per week per year...at he end of the day you will have nine more dollars in your pocket for every dollar more you paid into Social Security...that is SAVED FOR YOUR OWN FUTURE NEEDS.
Tell the people this and you will win elections. Do it and you will have done the most important thing for them that you can possibly do now...and that should help them trust you to do other things for them if they only vote for you.
I will onlypoint out the Democrat record on Social Security: Carter said "Social Security is not sacrosanct." Clinton agreed with Gingrich that "raising the retirement age is the obvious solution." Obama tried to sell out Social Security by using a phony cost of living index that would have cut benefits over time so that older retirees were no longer able to afford food and housing. And just the other day Democrats joined Republicans to enact a "fairness act" that gave money to relatively well off people who had not paid into Social Security at the expense of moving the exhaustion of the trust fund forward by half a year...meaning that the poorer people would suffer a 20% benefit cut six months sooner.
Meanwhile if no one does anything about Social Security at all the benefit cuts will happen all by themselves with no one having to take the blame, but get to say "we told you so," and then most likely doing something that will kill SS altogether ...but over a long enough time that no one will see it happening or remember why.
Sorry for the shouting. But that is what it takes. You want to win elections. You and everyone need to save Social Security. It is still easy to do. Do it.
Rita Mahaffa [comment this thread] is probably right: this is what showing respect to those voters means. but having real solutions that they can understand will help them, and telling them that with confidence, will create the "charisma" you have been talking about. Obama had that. but he didn't deliver, and neither did Biden or Kamala in any way the voters could understand. "sure, the economy is better but I'm not better off!" there is a good chance that it is not possible to deliver that under present conditions. I have voted for Democrats since 1964 (yep, Republican before that) because I was gradually coming to understand better how things actually work. But the Dems have not really delivered on any of the things i think i know about, from war to Social Security to over agressive police and prosecutors to justice without mercy. and have fallen [the people on line more than the actual politicians] for the hate-thy-enemy trap .. same trap that is the R's go-to strategy [except, I think, eisenhower all those years ago...but he had Joe McCarthy and Paul Harvey handling the hate for the R's base].
meanwhile I have heard that Trump did not get more voters than last time, but Kamala got less than last time (for Biden) maybe because the Left Left stayed home.
It's hard to deliver when the GOP controlling the Senate and House collude to "make [you] a one-term president" and defeat anything that might be good policy but make the president look successful.
I don't think we get anywhere if we always have an excuse for "our guys."
maybe if we thought ahead a little we could control thehouse and the Senate, but as I remember that did not do Obama much good. It may now be too late...it's really hard to get anything done when the other guys control the house and the senate and the president and the supreme court as well as half the votes.
Yes. Stop the race to the bottom. They’re never going to be won over. Stop it now. Take care of the base, as wildly diverse that is. Stop pandering to the damned. They hate us and will always hate us no matter what you do. So stick them in the fucking eye and be done with it already. I’d rather be a member of a minority party that stands for something than one trying to attract cretins. Fuck ‘em.
A lot of wreckage between now and then but you’re correct-the destruction of the constitutional order won’t hold and there will be hell to pay. It’s going to get ugly and those dotards leading the Democrats will be swept away along with the destroyers. Whoever emerges will have a lot of rebuilding to do.
I daresay that a repulsive cretin like Trump & his bootlicking toadies are going to lose their corporate media halo of radium rather soon, and once civil society really starts to buckle, things will "correct" in ways we can't imagine. In the meantime, wheezing "bipartisans" like Schumer & James Clymer have to be sent to the back benches.
All the good ideas democrats have need to be framed in simplistic yet powerful terms.
No need to be defensive nor apologetic about what’s good for the average person.
For example, being woke means not wanting to rape a niece. Helping kids with college tuition is to take back our jobs from billionaires who’re rigging the system.
"woke means..." i have no objection to what the Right calls "woke" or to the legitimcy of black people calling attention to the way they are systematically treated badly in our country. but i have had a few experiences directly, and read about many more, where "woke" means being insufferable to your neighbors and too self pitying to be taken seriously, and so demanding "respect" that you put yourself in danger (of, yes, being beat up or worse by cops who are looking for an excuse}.
the Right, in general does not make up grievances out of whole cloth. they start with something that is true, or that people believe is true, and work it up, with twisted logic and exaggerated claims until they create a group-think mob enraged at imaginary injustices they suffer.
please don't think i am on their side. but i think we need to be aware of how the process works and our part in getting it started at least.
This is all about having the wrong definition of respect. This means coming to where voters are and devoting time to them. But it also means being honest with them. Showing up desperate to buy their votes with any gimmick you can think of is not respect.
I have ZERO respect - another way of saying I have 1000% disrespect - for trump voters and supporters. That includes family members. It takes a special kind of willfull ignorance, stupidity, nonempathy, blind loyalty and questionable ethics to fall for a con man and convicted felon.
"This is not how Republicans campaign. They assume the worst of the electorate. They believe voters are ignorant, easily manipulated, amoral, ungenerous, and governed by emotions, especially the darkest ones. No one has less respect for voters than Republicans do. Especially Donald Trump." The crowds at MAGAt rallies are proof that his supporters lap that shit up with a spoon, and the TV coverage lavished on the rallies gives the impression that support is greater than it really is.
Paul--I have been thinking this forever--thanks for spelling it out. This is not rocket science--I grew up in rural Iowa. Tell them--"The Republicans are screwing you--taking money out of your pocket to give it to billionaires. You have common sense. Stop being a chump!
I live in rural Upstate New York. You could also win with a similar message - "What have Republicans done for you lately? Right, not a damn thing." It was central to the message that won in NY 22.
The problem is also that in this quixotic quest to show “respect” for voters (often while willfully ignoring the things that actually motivate our fellow humans) they’re showing huge disrespect to the 75 million people who actually voted for them. And donated and volunteered and generally worked their tails off to fight off creeping fascism. But elected Dems (who we got elected) seem to disdain their own voters almost as much as the corporate political media. Our elected leaders are turning their backs on the people who did the work and voted for them and are now looking for them to show actual leadership. It makes them look weak and unprincipled, but it’s also just bad politics and no way to build a winning coalition.
Interesting take on using "respect" as the key word for the problem Democrats have with the casual, or non, voter. I agree totally with this: we need "to produce messages that are simpler, easier to understand, and more emotionally resonant." That shows respect in the good sense of the word and deed. Yes, we should be hammering Republicans with three easy issues: healthcare, workers' rights, and economic fairness - as one commenter on a Thom Hartmann essay wrote. Republicans are horrible in practice on these issues, and they affect ALL of us.
Examples: "Republicans (or candidate so and so is) are killing us", this is how they do it. "Republicans want you to be poor", this is how they do it. "Republicans hate the working person", this is how they show it. Nothing wonky about it, directly to the point.
>>> This is not how Republicans campaign. They assume the worst of the electorate. They believe voters are ignorant, easily manipulated, amoral, ungenerous, and governed by emotions, especially the darkest ones. No one has less respect for voters than Republicans do. Especially Donald Trump.
>>> Does that always work? No. Democrats win plenty of elections. But the Republican approach does tend to produce messages that are simpler, easier to understand, and more emotionally resonant.
And let's not forget that Republicans win a shipload of elections when it is painfully clear that they have almost no policies, and the very few policies they have are almost never favored by a majority.
I think that's because the GOP is openly hostile to the "other" and so are many voters. They like being cruel. Because it will "never" rebound on them personally.
Now to find a way to break THIS message out to the mainstream. Democratic politicians need to read this.
This is excellent
I am going to risk making a suggestion: We could discover our own charisma and actually appeal to voters of all persuasions if we made very public, very loud and frequent, and confident war against the war against Social Security: Tell the people again and again (it DOES take time and repetitiion from many voices) that Social Security DOES NOT CONTRIBUTE TO THE DEFICIT...it is paid for by the workers themselves...and DOES NOT BURDEN THE YOUNG...they are paying while they are working for what they will need when they themselves can no longer work. and the "LOOMING BANKRUPTCY" of Social Security is a SELF FULFILLING LIE...we are going to be living longer than our grandparents. living longer takes more money. we need to save more in order to have enough for a longer life expectancy after we can no longer work. the safest way to insure that we will have enough is to raise the Social Security payroll tax...really a savings account and insurance policy. The amount the tax needs to be raised is one tenth of one percent per year while real wages are going up one full percent per year. that is about ONE DOLLAR PER WEEK PER YEAR while wages are going up TEN dollars per week per year...at he end of the day you will have nine more dollars in your pocket for every dollar more you paid into Social Security...that is SAVED FOR YOUR OWN FUTURE NEEDS.
Tell the people this and you will win elections. Do it and you will have done the most important thing for them that you can possibly do now...and that should help them trust you to do other things for them if they only vote for you.
I will onlypoint out the Democrat record on Social Security: Carter said "Social Security is not sacrosanct." Clinton agreed with Gingrich that "raising the retirement age is the obvious solution." Obama tried to sell out Social Security by using a phony cost of living index that would have cut benefits over time so that older retirees were no longer able to afford food and housing. And just the other day Democrats joined Republicans to enact a "fairness act" that gave money to relatively well off people who had not paid into Social Security at the expense of moving the exhaustion of the trust fund forward by half a year...meaning that the poorer people would suffer a 20% benefit cut six months sooner.
Meanwhile if no one does anything about Social Security at all the benefit cuts will happen all by themselves with no one having to take the blame, but get to say "we told you so," and then most likely doing something that will kill SS altogether ...but over a long enough time that no one will see it happening or remember why.
Sorry for the shouting. But that is what it takes. You want to win elections. You and everyone need to save Social Security. It is still easy to do. Do it.
Paul
Rita Mahaffa [comment this thread] is probably right: this is what showing respect to those voters means. but having real solutions that they can understand will help them, and telling them that with confidence, will create the "charisma" you have been talking about. Obama had that. but he didn't deliver, and neither did Biden or Kamala in any way the voters could understand. "sure, the economy is better but I'm not better off!" there is a good chance that it is not possible to deliver that under present conditions. I have voted for Democrats since 1964 (yep, Republican before that) because I was gradually coming to understand better how things actually work. But the Dems have not really delivered on any of the things i think i know about, from war to Social Security to over agressive police and prosecutors to justice without mercy. and have fallen [the people on line more than the actual politicians] for the hate-thy-enemy trap .. same trap that is the R's go-to strategy [except, I think, eisenhower all those years ago...but he had Joe McCarthy and Paul Harvey handling the hate for the R's base].
meanwhile I have heard that Trump did not get more voters than last time, but Kamala got less than last time (for Biden) maybe because the Left Left stayed home.
It's hard to deliver when the GOP controlling the Senate and House collude to "make [you] a one-term president" and defeat anything that might be good policy but make the president look successful.
Keenan
I don't think we get anywhere if we always have an excuse for "our guys."
maybe if we thought ahead a little we could control thehouse and the Senate, but as I remember that did not do Obama much good. It may now be too late...it's really hard to get anything done when the other guys control the house and the senate and the president and the supreme court as well as half the votes.
Are you listening, democrat leaders? I’m more shocked and dismayed over the weak
Yes. Stop the race to the bottom. They’re never going to be won over. Stop it now. Take care of the base, as wildly diverse that is. Stop pandering to the damned. They hate us and will always hate us no matter what you do. So stick them in the fucking eye and be done with it already. I’d rather be a member of a minority party that stands for something than one trying to attract cretins. Fuck ‘em.
A lot of wreckage between now and then but you’re correct-the destruction of the constitutional order won’t hold and there will be hell to pay. It’s going to get ugly and those dotards leading the Democrats will be swept away along with the destroyers. Whoever emerges will have a lot of rebuilding to do.
I daresay that a repulsive cretin like Trump & his bootlicking toadies are going to lose their corporate media halo of radium rather soon, and once civil society really starts to buckle, things will "correct" in ways we can't imagine. In the meantime, wheezing "bipartisans" like Schumer & James Clymer have to be sent to the back benches.
I agree
All the good ideas democrats have need to be framed in simplistic yet powerful terms.
No need to be defensive nor apologetic about what’s good for the average person.
For example, being woke means not wanting to rape a niece. Helping kids with college tuition is to take back our jobs from billionaires who’re rigging the system.
suri
"woke means..." i have no objection to what the Right calls "woke" or to the legitimcy of black people calling attention to the way they are systematically treated badly in our country. but i have had a few experiences directly, and read about many more, where "woke" means being insufferable to your neighbors and too self pitying to be taken seriously, and so demanding "respect" that you put yourself in danger (of, yes, being beat up or worse by cops who are looking for an excuse}.
the Right, in general does not make up grievances out of whole cloth. they start with something that is true, or that people believe is true, and work it up, with twisted logic and exaggerated claims until they create a group-think mob enraged at imaginary injustices they suffer.
please don't think i am on their side. but i think we need to be aware of how the process works and our part in getting it started at least.
Excellent advice, thank you..
Paul thanks for saying it out loud.
To your final point, remember "Please like me."?
Remember the response? Well-deserved mockery.
This is all about having the wrong definition of respect. This means coming to where voters are and devoting time to them. But it also means being honest with them. Showing up desperate to buy their votes with any gimmick you can think of is not respect.
I have ZERO respect - another way of saying I have 1000% disrespect - for trump voters and supporters. That includes family members. It takes a special kind of willfull ignorance, stupidity, nonempathy, blind loyalty and questionable ethics to fall for a con man and convicted felon.
"This is not how Republicans campaign. They assume the worst of the electorate. They believe voters are ignorant, easily manipulated, amoral, ungenerous, and governed by emotions, especially the darkest ones. No one has less respect for voters than Republicans do. Especially Donald Trump." The crowds at MAGAt rallies are proof that his supporters lap that shit up with a spoon, and the TV coverage lavished on the rallies gives the impression that support is greater than it really is.