Like:
People should be allowed to exist
Social programs aren’t communism
The system isn’t working for the people
Edit:
I’ve changed my mind on this.
Let the DNC go full MAGA and when they lose, because they will lose, they get the heat and we can eject them forever. At least sit them in a corner.
Progressives, you fight if you want but I don’t believe the elections will be fair so it’s a win win for you.
Trying to shift further right won’t work. You can’t do “what the other party does” because they already do it and they do it better.
Find original messaging, take back the narrative. Then you get to tell the story you’re good at.
Trump does this exceptionally well. By spouting all kinds of shocking horseshit, the media doesn’t stop talking about him. This lets him dominate the narrative. You could see them panic when Kamala was nominated, because suddenly the DNC controlled the narrative for a bit, and polling showed Kamala taking the lead. That advantage evaporated as Trump seized control of the front pages again.
This doesn’t just happen in the US. Here in the Netherlands, the campaign was not initially but later on dominated by talk on migration from the PVV. Of course other parties tried to respond by talking about migration, which only helped to legitimise the PVVs talking points.
The blue MAGA are here on Lemmy and I ran into couple of them. They keep shouting to the rooftops that the Democratic party did nothing wrong and berate Trump voters as stupid and ignorant. But they are tone deaf when you point out that the Democratic party is not willing to run on the platform on Medicare-for-all, build more social housing and increase federal minimum wage (and ditch Israel), which made the party unappealing and lose consistently. Basically, blue MAGA don’t want to go left, because even if they are socially progressive on issues, they benefit from wealth inequality because they themselves are affluent in spite of being socially progressive.
Edit: yep, the blue MAGA came out of the woodwork. They think Medicare for all, affordable housing, and increasing minimum wage are red fascism.
They keep shouting to the rooftops that the Democratic party did nothing wrong
Yeah I don’t believe you. People aren’t saying that. That is you taking the liberty of recharacterizing their thoughts.
im not even from the US and i see this shit constantly on Lemmy
I have been accused of loving Democrats for saying things like “what are Democrats supposed to do about voters who would let trump win?” It’s as though nuance was outlawed and people cannot understand that a problem can have multiple causes.
And yes I’ve heard all that about being inspiring. The reality is that educated people would’ve made very different voting choices. Americans are incredibly ignorant. Democrats can’t hypnotize people into not being idiots
What Democrats are supposed to do is sell those voters on a platform of meaningful change that addresses their fears and concerns. It’s a candidate’s job to win voters over to their side, and if they can’t do that, you have to actually ask questions about what went wrong and learn lessons from it instead of throwing your hands up and declaring it’s everyone else’s fault but the DNC’s. Otherwise that attitude is what will lead to doing the exact same thing in 2028 and getting the same results.
throwing your hands up and declaring it’s everyone else’s fault but the DNC’s.
The worst of the mindless drivel I find so incredibly frustrating. Things can have more than one cause, as you’re so clumsily trying to ignore. When voters need convincing to exit a burning building, that would indicate a problem with their mentality as well. I’m done arguing about this extremely simple concept.
The point is that blaming voters isn’t actionable or useful. It isn’t a lesson we can learn for 2028. And when that’s what people keep deflecting the conversation to, it sure seems like a way for the DNC to avoid taking responsibility.
When you ask the question “what are Democrats supposed to do?”, the answer is not “nothing”.
Rendering the voters blameless is ignoring a reality that necessarily is a part of strategizing moving forward.
When you ask the question “what are Democrats supposed to do?”, the answer is not “nothing”.
No shit? They didn’t do “nothing”, they did ineffective things half assedly. But sure it’s really helpful just to think of everything as black and white. It’s been working out SO well recently. Now, get back to defending not voting as somehow blameless
The…dominance of small-dollar donors? I wish.
If the small donors are dominating… Why would you abandon them?
Because they’re not giving the bribes that the big donors give. Politicians expect a high paying effortless lobbying job as reward for selling out their country.
The rightwing coup within the DNC. Those staffers and consultants need to be blacklisted from politics. They have done nothing but drive the country into fascism.
A good bit of literature has studied the problem and arrived to recommendations that overlap in parts & depart in others with this playbook.
A former parliamentarian of the Hungarian government studied its slide into illiberalism, and suggested remedies for the current, similar trend in the US. Resist in the courts & media, and build a powerful social base at the state & city level throughout the country. The latter means
the Democratic Party must reconnect with the working class to preserve liberal institutions
Doing that means
- “creating new and strengthening existing local organizational structures, especially labor unions”. Do not focus “on issues important to the active base only” such as “media freedom or democracy”: this leads to “failures of mass mobilizations”. “[E]ngage with [ordinary people] outside elections, focusing on issues that matter to them”.
- “[T]o push through popular reforms that elites oppose”, free “the party from elite capture” by shifting financing “from the corporate elite to small and micro-donations”.
- “[C]ommit to left-populist economic policies”.
- “[L]earn symbolic class politics”, “embrace the mundane and be down to earth”.
you don’t protect democracy by talking about democracy — you protect democracy by protecting people
I’m seeing the playbook overlap a bit with points 1 & 4, diverge from point 2, and not treat point 3.
Another article reviews research observing a decades-long trend of class dealignment: workers abandoning the left-wing party & joining the right. As unions have weakened and Democrats abandoned them, the party has increasingly relied on & shifted appeal to urban middle class professionals & minorities. The review names 4 paths researched or discussed to reverse dealignment.
- inclusive populism: “appeal to working-class voters’ sense of resentment at economic elites and stress how elites use racial resentment to divide segments of the working class that share a common interest in economic justice”
- anti-woke social democracy: make “a clean break with factions of the party that embrace unpopular social and cultural messaging that alienates working-class voters”
- deliverism: “pass and implement large-scale economic reforms that benefit working Americans”
- institutionalism: reinvigorate a “labor movement capable of advancing working-class interest in politics and [re-embed] Democratic and progressive politics into the lived experiences of working-class communities”
It looks like the playbook is going with anti-woke social democracy & institutionalism, rejecting inclusive populism, not mentioning deliverism.
They seem to think the way to win the working class is to go more MAGA-like (anti-woke social democracy) instead of trying a competing strategy like inclusive populism. It also looks like they’re choosing not to break free of elite capture, which seems like a huge mistake.
Jesus Christ, is this real?
Big cities have problems, but they are still far better off than small town rural America. There isn’t some specific failure happening in large cities, you’re seeing the broad inevitable enshittification of Capitalism as a system.
Democrats must be some serious masochists, they would actually rather take the blame thenselves than admit capitalism is wrong.
DNC: we tried bootlicking billionaires and it didn’t work, what if we double down on bootlicking billionaires even harder.
The top of the Democratic party basically wants to become the party of big money and try and steal this mantle from the Republicans.
Obviously, this isn’t going to work because the donors will just go for the party that will give them more, and they will always be the Republicans party.
This is basically just the campaign advisors trying to get as much money into the campaigns as possible, because they get a cut of every ad buy. They’re not interested in making things better for the people, just looking at their bottom line.
It’s also reported here. This fits with the reports of complaining that Democratic Congresspeople have been doing about the progressive wing of the party wanting them to fight back against DOGE. They and party leadership may well be aiming to not just talk like it, but fully become the new Republican party, in hopes of having a stampede of “moderate” Republicans who aren’t happy with Trump come their way.
Also, big donors are angry at them, so I guess they’re trying to win those donors back.
It’s always about the dollars, not about the votes
Don’t forget: dollars are votes.
This is just the other half of the one party state
Love America, stop letting extremists speak for us, get involved with regular people, foster community, and govern better. The democrats might have a chance after all.
