Should Democrats make any changes to their current approach to regain favor and support from voters?

rahl said:

Trump doesn’t have a say lol

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He is pressuring them, as is all of Maga.

Companies instituted DEI on their own and Maga pressures them to stop it.

j brown's body said:

Of course it does. Vance feels that the US is based on those who have been here for generations over newcomers.

Here is a primer on the historical basis for it.

Hierarchy (Conservatism)

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That wasn’t the claim you made.

j brown's body said:

He is pressuring them, as is all of Maga.

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Which is meaningless, and also incorrect.

j brown's body said:

Companies instituted DEI on their own and Maga pressures them to stop it.

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Which is meaningless.

rahl said:

Which is meaningless, and also incorrect.

Which is meaningless.

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My point is that Dem candidates shouldn't run from DEI but point out that its not about being social justice warriors, but that organizations find that diversity makes their organizations more robust. One way, as Fortune Magazine points out, it can "accelerate Complex Problem-Solving With More Perspectives And Ideas."

j brown's body said:

My point is that Dem candidates shouldn't run from DEI but point out that its not about being social justice warriors, but that organizations find that diversity makes their organizations more robust. One way, as Fortune Magazine points out, it can "accelerate Complex Problem-Solving With More Perspectives And Ideas."

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Overthinking things is routinely more problematic in marketing strategies than the reverse.

People don't need their soap company to tell them that being fat is beautiful. They need to know that the soap does an effective job of cleaning their skin while minimizing other kinds of damage. Diverse opinions commonly introduce a lot of unnecessary stupidity into marketing that does more harm than good.

As a conservative in his 50s I’ve always loved discussing politics with Democrats. It used to be harder in the 1990s and early 2000s. Then the discussion would be that I, as a Republican would argue that the best use of the government was to ensure favorable conditions for the free market to work. My Democrat friends would agree we need a robust free market, but point out that a rising ship doesn’t always lift up all ships and there needs to be government assistance, a point I would concede. The discussion would then go to what was too much that breeds dependency and what was too little that would leave working families without essentials. It was an interesting discussion in which both sides applied logic that could be accepted, if not agreed to, by both sides.

The most contentious issue was always abortion where I would point out that we are talking about human lives—both the mother and the unborn child. The Democrat would respond that they wanted abortion to be safe, legal, and rare. Again, while in total disagreement with each other, we could always talk about the merits of both perspectives without name calling.

In the intervening 30 years, we’ve actually seen the republicans move towards the middle. A large majority, of republicans, including myself, are supportive of gay marriage. Even on the issue of abortion, most republicans will accept term limits. Remember the Dodd decision was concerning a Republican law that did not ban abortion, but had a 18 week limit which was as liberal if not more liberal than the laws in most European countries. Certainly not all republicans have moved towards the center. But when we have union leaders speaking at our national convention, it’s hard to argue against the notion that the GOP’s evolution has been to move towards the center.

For the democrats, the worst thing I used to call democrats was “socialist”. They now call themselves this. The party has become captive to the critical theory infused socialists of their party who are calling for defunding of the police, dismantling of the free market and desolation of a merit based society. To see how far to the left the Democratic Party has moved, look at President Clinton. He would be considered a moderate Republican today and would not be able to gain the Democratic nomination for city councilman, much less for president.

As a republican, a relish the democrats becoming so extreme as it makes elections so much easier to win. As an American it terrifies me.

uptower said:

They are still the Democratic Party of the nineties and will drown if they don't learn to swim in the new current.

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How are they still the party of the 1990s which posited that abortion should be rare, supported putting 100,000 more police in the streets, declared that the “era of big government is dead”, argued against illegal immigration, and cut capital gains tax rates?

StillServing said:

How are they still the party of the 1990s which posited that abortion should be rare, supported putting 100,000 more police in the streets, declared that the “era of big government is dead”, argued against illegal immigration, and cut capital gains tax rates?

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I'm talking about their marketing and their strategy in Congress rather than positions, which of course shift with the times (Jesus, look at what's happened to the Republicans).

Dems have fallen out of touch, clung to corporate donors, insisted on taking the high ground when low and dirty has proven to work better, and consistently misjudged the better nature of their opponents.

It's barely about policy anymore - Christ Trump has none. If they don't learn to sell themselves they'll lose the next round too.

uptower said:

I'm talking about their marketing and their strategy in Congress rather than positions, which of course shift with the times (Jesus, look at what's happened to the Republicans).

Dems have fallen out of touch, clung to corporate donors, insisted on taking the high ground when low and dirty has proven to work better, and consistently misjudged the better nature of their opponents.

It's barely about policy anymore - Christ Trump has none. If they don't learn to sell themselves they'll lose the next round too.

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I think it is about policies. My undergraduate degree was in advertising and I remember one of my professors telling us “the fastest way to bankrupt a company is to give it great advertising.”

I would argue that President Trump succeeded despite all of the personal flaws he has specifically because the democrats have rushed to the left. If the democrats would have retained the working man, moderate liberalism, they would have crushed us.

In 2028, we will have a candidate that the left will still call fascist, racist, and a Nazi. But whoever it is will certainly not have all of the moral weaknesses that President Trump has. This will leave the democrats unable to campaign in “Orange Man Bad” and policies will be what will be for sale. I don’t think a majority of the country agrees with the socialist, critical theory-influenced, anti-police policies that the democrats have been pushing for the last 8 years. It won’t matter how they package it. It’s a defective product for today’s American voter.

StillServing said:

I think it is about policies. My undergraduate degree was in advertising and I remember one of my professors telling us “the fastest way to bankrupt a company is to give it great advertising.”

I would argue that President Trump succeeded despite all of the personal flaws he has specifically because the democrats have rushed to the left. If the democrats would have retained the working man, moderate liberalism, they would have crushed us.

In 2028, we will have a candidate that the left will still call fascist, racist, and a Nazi. But whoever it is will certainly not have all of the moral weaknesses that President Trump has. This will leave the democrats unable to campaign in “Orange Man Bad” and policies will be what will be for sale. I don’t think a majority of the country agrees with the socialist, critical theory-influenced, anti-police policies that the democrats have been pushing for the last 8 years. It won’t matter how they package it. It’s a defective product for today’s American voter.

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If they’d gone to the left on kitchen table issues as well the woke stuff wouldn’t hurt them much. But it’s easy to say to the average worker, “Look - they care more about trannies than you,” when they make such a big fuss about it.

But voters misread the Republican message, which is, “We don’t care about you either, but at least we hate trannies as much as you do...”

StillServing said:

I think it is about policies. My undergraduate degree was in advertising and I remember one of my professors telling us “the fastest way to bankrupt a company is to give it great advertising.”

I would argue that President Trump succeeded despite all of the personal flaws he has specifically because the democrats have rushed to the left. If the democrats would have retained the working man, moderate liberalism, they would have crushed us.

In 2028, we will have a candidate that the left will still call fascist, racist, and a Nazi. But whoever it is will certainly not have all of the moral weaknesses that President Trump has. This will leave the democrats unable to campaign in “Orange Man Bad” and policies will be what will be for sale. I don’t think a majority of the country agrees with the socialist, critical theory-influenced, anti-police policies that the democrats have been pushing for the last 8 years. It won’t matter how they package it. It’s a defective product for today’s American voter.

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Trump is a genius at advertising. His policies (if you can call them that), in practice, are fairly unpopular.

Hello My Son said:

Democratic Party support remains in the toilet at levels of net -26.2 favorability. The most recent measure was even worse, at net -32 favorability.

To put it in perspective of just how horrible that is, the Republican Party is at net -13 favorability and Trump himself is at net -9 favorability.

What changes, if any, should Democrats make to their approach in general? Please elaborate.

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If Trump continues to poll over 50% disapproval, the Democrats are pretty much guaranteed to win back the WH. The Democrats approval ratings are bad because they have no effective leadership and have yet to combat Trump’s authoritarian actions. Why would anyone approval of a political party seen as weak. The whole thing is not complicated — people wanted change in 2024 and see what the GOP can do to curb inflation and economic inequality. If they continue to fail, then people are going to pick the Democrats to lead the charge.

Gatsby said:

Some changes for the Dems to make:

• It's fine to protest against ICE overreach, but it's not fine to imply that ICE doesn't need to exist or that enforcing immigration laws is unimportant.
• Don't try to defund the police.
• Knock it off with the trans stuff. ALL of it. Since Dems have gone completely insane on this stuff, they have lost the right to have any opinion beyond "I support the anti-discrimination protections under Obergefell v Hodges and Bostock v Clayton County." Just say that and then shut up.
• The same is largely true of racial identity politics. The country has moved on from woke weirdness. Just say that you'll treat everyone equally based on their race. You don't need to do a bunch of handwringing about how oppressed the Latinxes and BIPOCs are, just be normal.
• Don't cheer for political assassinations or make excuses for murdering the children of political opponents.
• Don't support urban decay: Homelessness, prostitution, open-air drug markets, panhandling, fare-jumping, etc. If the reaction of Dems to hearing about any of that is to say "hOw DoEs ThAt AfFeCt YoU?" then they are part of the problem.
• Stop talking about communism, or democratic socialism, or smashing late-stage capitalism, or whatever the latest euphemism is. We aren't doing that. We are doing a market economy with a social safety net.

In general, Dems need to pay less attention to people who live their lives on Bluesky or Twitter or academia, and actually touch grass. However, all these things are downstream of the fact that the primary system has allowed the party to decay in more conservative areas, so that Democrats usually can't even get elected in places that voted for Trump. I think we need to bring back the smoke-filled rooms of the old days to replace Democratic primaries, at least in red districts/states.

Some astute observers may notice that some of these same criticisms can be leveled against Republicans. Yes. Yes they can.

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Didn't we have a market economy with a social safety net?

What happened to it?

Edit: Or was it one of those things we were going for but never reached?

BrotherFease said:

If Trump continues to poll over 50% disapproval, the Democrats are pretty much guaranteed to win back the WH. The Democrats approval ratings are bad because they have no effective leadership and have yet to combat Trump’s authoritarian actions. Why would anyone approval of a political party seen as weak. The whole thing is not complicated — people wanted change in 2024 and see what the GOP can do to curb inflation and economic inequality. If they continue to fail, then people are going to pick the Democrats to lead the charge.

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Did you look up the Democratic Party’s unfavorability rating before making this post?

The Mark said:

Didn't we have a market economy with a social safety net?

What happened to it?

Edit: Or was it one of those things we were going for but never reached?

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Yes. That is what we currently have and what most people want.

Gatsby said:

Yes. That is what we currently have and what most people want.

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I see one of two things as possibilities.

Either the 'market economy' accepts and includes the influence of money/power on what the rules apply to and how they are enforced, which in turn allows monopolies and other forms of power consolidation which squash competition and prevent that competition from resulting in a better product for consumers. Edit: And, in fact, are resulting in a worse product with little alternate option available in many cases.

Or it doesn't, and we do not currently have a market economy.

If the former, then I do not want a market economy, or at least not one which accepts that degree of what I consider corruption.

Edit 2: However, going by this definition, we don't have one - but perhaps I expect too much.

The Mark said:

I see one of two things as possibilities.

Either the 'market economy' accepts and includes the influence of money/power on what the rules apply to and how they are enforced, which in turn allows monopolies and other forms of power consolidation which squash competition and prevent that competition from resulting in a better product for consumers. Edit: And, in fact, are resulting in a worse product with little alternate option available in many cases.

Or it doesn't, and we do not currently have a market economy.

If the former, then I do not want a market economy, or at least not one which accepts that degree of what I consider corruption.

Edit 2: However, going by this definition, we don't have one - but perhaps I expect too much.

Market economy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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I support the anti-trust laws we have in place and I am not opposed to more campaign finance laws.

I don't see what that has to do with a market economy though. Markets require competition, or at least the threat of competition.

Gatsby said:

I support the anti-trust laws we have in place and I am not opposed to more campaign finance laws.

I don't see what that has to do with a market economy though. Markets require competition, or at least the threat of competition.

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I'm saying that we're well into trust/monopoly territory, and part of how we got here was via our politics being corrupted by the money and power generated and concentrated by our economic system.

I think we need to go quite hard on the anti-trust and campaign finance enforcement and regulation, to try and ensure this cannot be the case again.

I cannot help but wonder if there's something inherently flawed about the economic system that needs addressed, though. This isn't the first time we've had trust/monopoly issues.

Edit: It doesn't seem enough to say that we need to maintain vigilance and regulation to prevent this, when we did that at least once already and we're back in the danger zone again.

Gatsby said:

Some changes for the Dems to make:

• It's fine to protest against ICE overreach, but it's not fine to imply that ICE doesn't need to exist or that enforcing immigration laws is unimportant.
• Don't try to defund the police.
• Knock it off with the trans stuff. ALL of it. Since Dems have gone completely insane on this stuff, they have lost the right to have any opinion beyond "I support the anti-discrimination protections under Obergefell v Hodges and Bostock v Clayton County." Just say that and then shut up.
• The same is largely true of racial identity politics. The country has moved on from woke weirdness. Just say that you'll treat everyone equally based on their race. You don't need to do a bunch of handwringing about how oppressed the Latinxes and BIPOCs are, just be normal.
• Don't cheer for political assassinations or make excuses for murdering the children of political opponents.
• Don't support urban decay: Homelessness, prostitution, open-air drug markets, panhandling, fare-jumping, etc. If the reaction of Dems to hearing about any of that is to say "hOw DoEs ThAt AfFeCt YoU?" then they are part of the problem.
• Stop talking about communism, or democratic socialism, or smashing late-stage capitalism, or whatever the latest euphemism is. We aren't doing that. We are doing a market economy with a social safety net.

In general, Dems need to pay less attention to people who live their lives on Bluesky or Twitter or academia, and actually touch grass. However, all these things are downstream of the fact that the primary system has allowed the party to decay in more conservative areas, so that Democrats usually can't even get elected in places that voted for Trump. I think we need to bring back the smoke-filled rooms of the old days to replace Democratic primaries, at least in red districts/states.

Some astute observers may notice that some of these same criticisms can be leveled against Republicans. Yes. Yes they can.

Click to expand...