Soul-Searching, Recriminations Within Democratic Party

[meganew]

I don’t give a fuck about trying to build bridges. We can cut that part off and push them out into the sea for all I care.

[meganew]

Honestly, I feel like we have to stop expecting voters to be able to understand the policy. We have to spell it out. The illiterate-friendly signs that said “Trump Safe, Kamala Crime” were really popular in the red parts of Philly.

[neverfstop]

I wonder if we wil ever know the true extent of Russian interference and online propaganda that fed the algorithms and stoked hate. All the over the top fear mongering about trans issue and abortion. When we look back, I think the online echo chambers and the bots will have played a much bigger role than any of us can comprehend in this moment.

[mmmomof2]

Nov 6, 2024 18:59:43 GMT -5 meganew said:

I don’t give a fuck about trying to build bridges. We can cut that part off and push them out into the sea for all I care.

The majority of the country?

[Patsy Baloney]

I’d like to see a 50-state strategy during every election cycle. I think republicans are so successful at winning because a) they mess shit up and blame everyone but themselves, b) they have simple, boogeyman messaging, c) they are everywhere, at every level, in every town, on every platform, etc. Their voters are lock step.

I live in a blue state, reddish/purple area. 3-4 of the races on my ballot were unopposed with R candidates running. We really don’t have a candidate for coroner? County board? Throw a name on there ffs.

I genuinely don’t think it’s good strategy to let Rs go unchecked at any level of local, state or federal government. Give them a run for their money.

[neverfstop]

I think this sums up what we've been circling around in this thread.

Democrats took minority voters for granted. It cost them the election.
Harris and her party must accept responsibility for Trump’s success among a diverse coalition.
GIFT wapo.st/3NVEcUv


There’s an irony, of course. In the final stretch, the Trump campaign trafficked in casual racism, demonized immigrants and generally appeared unhinged. There will be a temptation to dismiss the expanding share of Trump voters as irrational and oblivious to their own real interests. This should be resisted. The responsibility should be put squarely at the feet of the Harris campaign and the Democratic Party for failing that most basic of tests: the test of persuasion.

------------
If minority voters — or anyone else for that matter — choose not to vote blue, they presumably have a reason for doing so. Not all grievances are legitimate, but many of theirs were. With the stock market reaching all-time highs and economic growth chugging along at an impressive clip, the system worked — but not for everyone. Given high interest rates, a housing crunch, an affordability crisis and crime still elevated relative to pre-pandemic levels, it was perfectly reasonable for poor and working-class Americans to question whether more of the same was good enough.

Even with ample time to prepare, Harris repeatedly struggled to answer the challenge of how her administration would differ from President Joe Biden’s. Unsurprisingly, 80 percent of voters who said their financial situation was worse than four years ago went for Trump. As sociologist Musa al-Gharbi notes in his new book, “We Have Never Been Woke,” the 2020 reckoning over racial injustice raised expectations for a new era, but little changed materially. If anything, he writes, the country witnessed an “exacerbation of inequalities,” with upper-income liberals “exploiting desperate and vulnerable people, whose poverty and precarity are prerequisites for the elite lifestyles [they] enjoy.” If tens of millions of Americans don’t believe the system is working for them, maybe it’s because it isn’t.

[jeaniebueller]

Today’s PSA ep was really good I thought.

I understand that we are all heated and mad today. Trump won the popular vote. Shits not working. The party is not connecting with the working class and Dems are constantly talking like everything they say came from a focus group. It’s not just white voters. This has been happening for a long time—the pandemic exacerbated it. If we keep doing what we are doing, we don’t win elections.

[jeaniebueller]

Nov 6, 2024 17:39:35 GMT -5 neverfstop said:

Just saw the n social media “the reason the educated vote blue….”

We HAVE to stop the name calling and shaming. The insinuation that anybody that voted red is stupid or evil isn’t opening up a dialogue to have conversations and build bridges. We also have to stop with purity tests and silencing anybody that has differing opinions.

Threads is a cesspool of this stuff right now. Once the smoke clears the party and Dems need to do some real introspection.

[meganew]

Nov 6, 2024 19:22:28 GMT -5 mmmomof2 said:

Nov 6, 2024 18:59:43 GMT -5 meganew said:

I don’t give a fuck about trying to build bridges. We can cut that part off and push them out into the sea for all I care.

The majority of the country?

Sure, bye

Editing, because I can’t get this out of my head. I haven’t seen you participate in any of these threads. Does this seem offensive to you because you don’t want to get pushed out to sea?

[emilyj]

Nov 6, 2024 19:01:54 GMT -5 meganew said:

Honestly, I feel like we have to stop expecting voters to be able to understand the policy. We have to spell it out. The illiterate-friendly signs that said “Trump Safe, Kamala Crime” were really popular in the red parts of Philly.

They were ALL over South Jersey too. I also saw ones that said “Trump Low Taxes, Kamala High Taxes.”

[jeaniebueller]

Nov 6, 2024 22:20:57 GMT -5 emilyj said:

Nov 6, 2024 19:01:54 GMT -5 meganew said:

Honestly, I feel like we have to stop expecting voters to be able to understand the policy. We have to spell it out. The illiterate-friendly signs that said “Trump Safe, Kamala Crime” were really popular in the red parts of Philly.

They were ALL over South Jersey too. I also saw ones that said “Trump Low Taxes, Kamala High Taxes.”

When I saw those signs, I thought to myself that someone in the Trump org learned about word association. They were effective. They talk abt this on PSA. Dems are constantly worried about saying the wrong thing so they don’t do short and simple.

[mmmomof2]

Nov 6, 2024 20:42:29 GMT -5 meganew said:

Nov 6, 2024 19:22:28 GMT -5 mmmomof2 said:

The majority of the country?

Sure, bye

Editing, because I can’t get this out of my head. I haven’t seen you participate in any of these threads. Does this seem offensive to you because you don’t want to get pushed out to sea?

lol, long term lurker. No not offended, just pointing out the ridiculousness of the outrage.

[thejen626]

Republicans win because they teach their children to vote for the person with the R next to their name. Don’t matter if they are a child rapist or they embezzle money or what the fuck ever.

Democrats lose because TOO MANY fucking democrats want the perfect ideal candidate. They don’t vote for the D person because of a war in the Middle East, or because they aren’t left enough, or because they aren’t conservative enough, or because their husband got their dick sucked by an intern thirty years ago. Twenty million democrats that voted for Biden, didn’t vote for Harris.

[wise_rita]

Nov 7, 2024 0:11:06 GMT -5 thejen626 said:

Twenty million democrats that voted for Biden, didn’t vote for Harris.

Jesus, is this true? I haven't heard it stated do clearly before. (I've kept an arms length on information in an act of self-preservation).

Well at least they'll get what's coming to them. Sadly, so will everybody else.

[meganew]

Nov 6, 2024 23:20:25 GMT -5 mmmomof2 said:

Nov 6, 2024 20:42:29 GMT -5 meganew said:

Sure, bye

Editing, because I can’t get this out of my head. I haven’t seen you participate in any of these threads. Does this seem offensive to you because you don’t want to get pushed out to sea?

lol, long term lurker. No not offended, just pointing out the ridiculousness of the outrage.

And what exactly is so ridiculous about it?

[Velar Fricative]

If this thread is reflective of the soul-searching the Ds end up doing…oooooh boy, buckle up.

This is the time to be angry. I’m angry as hell. So we need to give ourselves time to be angry.

But it seems like people need to get out of their bubbles and actually see why people voted for Trump. Living in a red part of NYC, I see this every day. Guess what? Except for the cultists who would never vote for Ds, local people who voted for Trump didn’t do it because they hate gay people. Or that they didn’t care about women’s healthcare. A lot of these voters have voted for Ds in the past and will do so again with the right steps taken. Some of these people aren’t dumb or hateful - they just don’t perpetually pay attention to politics like we do. We have the luxury of paying attention to insults and seeing the lies and hate because most of us here are probably not struggling to keep our homes or put food on the table. It is frustrating that more people don’t understand why prices are what they are and what the POTUS can or cannot do to influence prices, but clearly that is work we could have done better for a longer time than how we tried to do that.

I hate to say it, but we need to be inspired by the GOP long game. Remember when we thought the GOP was dead after the Obama years because of demographic shifts? We were wrong. It’s okay to admit when we are wrong. I truly don’t believe we need to sacrifice our commitment to human rights to pander to hate. But the GOP succeeded in, yes, “dumbing down” the message and had what their true goals were in their back pocket. I believe we can tell people what they want to hear without outright lying too. There are soooooo many people who just don’t care about a lot of issues we care about but have a “live and let live” attitude, and so it boils down to a few key issues and the yearning for change. Astead Herndon mentioned on the Daily yesterday that the GOP has successfully become the party of change. That is wild to hear after 2008, but he’s not wrong.

More importantly, people shifted less per the numbers so far; voters we lost mostly stayed home. I believe that was an intentional choice for many of them. They may not have voted D if they voted, but I see potential there and not in just assuming if they turn out, they’ll vote our way. We need to do the work.

[wise_rita]

Nov 7, 2024 6:05:14 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

I truly don’t believe we need to sacrifice our commitment to human rights to pander to hate.

This could just be the grief talking but I don't buy this.

No matter how low information a voter is, they know that trans people DON'T MATTER, women's healthcare DOESN'T MATTER, undocumented people DON'T MATTER.

Even if they have only pure intentions to lower the cost of eggs by 12 cents, they know 100% that they do this at the expense of vulnerable people. And they do not care.

Hate sells, or at the VERY least is perfectly welcome and acceptable here.

[tamarindy]

Nov 7, 2024 5:52:38 GMT -5 meganew said:

Nov 6, 2024 23:20:25 GMT -5 mmmomof2 said:

lol, long term lurker. No not offended, just pointing out the ridiculousness of the outrage.

And what exactly is so ridiculous about it?

Do you actually want an answer?
If you want the Dems to ever win an election again, it would be pretty ridiculous to say “fuck the majority of voters in the country” no? I’m a registered independent, I hate the two-party system, I voted for Kamala this election and Biden in the last. I’ve never cast a vote for Trump. I don’t post here a ton because I know that expressing my opinion will only end up with me in flames because this is an echo chamber and if you aren’t as far left as possible, you’re a fucking idiot, right?

[sequins]

I think Ds have lived the last 10 years like Trump is an aberration. Once we get past him, we'll go back to civility and bipartisan bills.

And we hid behind so many arguments. "He lost the popular vote" or "there was no red wave in 2018" or "he was a one term president".

No, this is what the country is. A country that doesn't care about the morality of its candidates because hey politicians suck anyway. It's time to be radical and break with "this is how it's done". Pack the SC, statehood for DC and PR, campaign finance reform now. And this needs to happen right along expanding medicare, and good things people need and don't think about. We gotta get rid of the DNC. People like Pelosi need to go.

[konapoppy]

A reminder that Biden has terrible approval ratings and that dems have won 3 of the last 5 elections. I don’t know that we need to throw out the baby with the bath water.

While racism and sexism are alive and well (and always will be), Kamala was intrinsically tied to the unpopular administration.

Everything isn’t broken, but I do think people are more exhausted and selfish since Covid. The Dem messaging hasn’t adjusted to that, IMO.

[dontlook]

Nov 7, 2024 7:17:20 GMT -5 wise_rita said:

Nov 7, 2024 6:05:14 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

I truly don’t believe we need to sacrifice our commitment to human rights to pander to hate.

This could just be the grief talking but I don't buy this.

No matter how low information a voter is, they know that trans people DON'T MATTER, women's healthcare DOESN'T MATTER, undocumented people DON'T MATTER.

Even if they have only pure intentions to lower the cost of eggs by 12 cents, they know 100% that they do this at the expense of vulnerable people. And they do not care.

Hate sells, or at the VERY least is perfectly welcome and acceptable here.

I don’t want to be rude or insensitive to your pain, but as a person that lives around a lot of these Trump voters I want to say I agree with Velar Fricative. I think indifference to the plight of others isn’t quite hate even if it feels that way. The only human rights they are focused on are the ones directly impacting them. I think the dems miss how narrow some people’s view of the world is.

@@@@
I have a roof over my head, food in my fridge, heat at my house, my kids are safe (as safe as black kids in America can be). I have the headspace to be concerned about my neighbor, my state, my country, my world. I will be ok if my grocery bill is a little higher, if my taxes are higher, but some people can’t and aren’t. They want to know who is “taxes lower vs taxes higher” and they want it just that simple. That’s the person they will vote for every.single.time because their pain is the only pain they feel.

[Velar Fricative]

Nov 7, 2024 7:17:20 GMT -5 wise_rita said:

Nov 7, 2024 6:05:14 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

I truly don’t believe we need to sacrifice our commitment to human rights to pander to hate.

This could just be the grief talking but I don't buy this.

No matter how low information a voter is, they know that trans people DON'T MATTER, women's healthcare DOESN'T MATTER, undocumented people DON'T MATTER.

Even if they have only pure intentions to lower the cost of eggs by 12 cents, they know 100% that they do this at the expense of vulnerable people. And they do not care.

Hate sells, or at the VERY least is perfectly welcome and acceptable here.

So how do you get them to believe those things matter? I have egg on my face now from thinking the way to do that is to insult them. Clearly that did not work. Why not try something new, like talking about how this is a basic value in our party that isn’t negotiable because of who we are as a party, but we want to add or talk about more values that can appeal to a wider swath of voters, including brand new voters? The old way will simply not work. You might be right that it’s pie on the sky, but we don’t know that yet and we still need to figure things out.

Basically, I’m trying to win the next elections. Without winning elections, we lose on the policies we hold dear to our heart as individuals and as a party. For example, I think Obergefell is on the chopping block now and that scares the crap out of me.

[Patsy Baloney]

The other thought that occurred to me as I was brushing my teeth this morning is how Ds need to do something with the power they are given and market it well.

I’m an average person. Cognitively, I know this administration was working to halt and lower inflation. But I don’t really know how that works. I trust that they’re doing it, but there was no flashy, “We’re making these greedy mfers stop raising prices” talk. I’ve seen the articles - I know grocery execs and companies were making money hand over fist. Nobody stopped it, or at least in a way that I could see and understand.

It’s like abortion. Dems sat back on that with, “Well, Roe makes it legal.” Ok, but you didn’t codify it. You didn’t make sure fed money could go toward it. Even deeply red states want abortion and they’re doing it themselves or trying really hard and getting really close now that they have to.

Instead, they’re trusting us to believe that they’re working on it. For the most part, I do trust the government and believe that unsexy work is the work that gets things done. But I’m not everyone, and when I’m looking at the last 4 years of Covid recovery, it would be easy for someone without trust, low-information, less of an understanding of economic systems/political systems, to enjoy and vote for the message of, “I’m gonna fix it!” even if the current guy is fixing it.

Also, I do believe hate and fear sells. People have been eating that up since the dawn of time.

[themoneytree]

Nov 7, 2024 7:21:35 GMT -5 tamarindy said:

Nov 7, 2024 5:52:38 GMT -5 meganew said:

And what exactly is so ridiculous about it?

Do you actually want an answer?
If you want the Dems to ever win an election again, it would be pretty ridiculous to say “fuck the majority of voters in the country” no? I’m a registered independent, I hate the two-party system, I voted for Kamala this election and Biden in the last. I’ve never cast a vote for Trump. I don’t post here a ton because I know that expressing my opinion will only end up with me in flames because this is an echo chamber and if you aren’t as far left as possible, you’re a fucking idiot, right?

This is me except I’m a registered Democrat. Agree with everything else you’ve said. Working with dems is impossible and is why we lose.

[ellipses84]

Ultimately we lost this election due to low Dem. voter turnout when the message everyone was hearing is that we were going to have record voter turnout. Did people think we were safe and they didn’t need to vote? Did people in swing states hear about hour long waits, think we were good and they didn’t have time for that? Were they sitting out due to Gaza? Did we only have record turnout in 2020 because it was the pandemic and people had more time and less to do? Did purging of voter rolls, voter suppression and movement between states impact it?

I know we had a lot of first time voters of every age coming out for Kamala. I’ve voted in every election since I was 18, so I just can’t imagine not voting in such an important election when Democracy, the Supreme Court and Women’s Rights are on the line. Especially in swing states where you know your neighbors are MAGA and every vote counts. When visiting AZ I know I wasn’t seeing MAGA signs where you used to so maybe there was a false sense of security that people weren’t going to vote for him with all the awful things he’s done, like 2016.

[themoneytree]

Nov 7, 2024 0:11:06 GMT -5 thejen626 said:

Republicans win because they teach their children to vote for the person with the R next to their name. Don’t matter if they are a child rapist or they embezzle money or what the fuck ever.

Democrats lose because TOO MANY fucking democrats want the perfect ideal candidate. They don’t vote for the D person because of a war in the Middle East, or because they aren’t left enough, or because they aren’t conservative enough, or because their husband got their dick sucked by an intern thirty years ago. Twenty million democrats that voted for Biden, didn’t vote for Harris.

YES.

[ellipses84]

When I was hearing about the hour long waits, I was worried the real reason was voter suppression and high R/D turnout, not just high D turnout. I was hopping the high Independent % would break D but it was a lot of R’s.

[abs]

Covid fundamentally changed us all. It changed how we consume media and what media we consume. Working from home means we no longer interact with people face to face unless we choose to. It made us all fearful and selfish. You see it out and about all the time so of course the election was going to be the same. You never have to leave your echo chamber. Me first, other people later. So totally agree that the messaging needs to be simple, easy to access, and stop thinking people will do the right thing to protect others. They won’t.

I also said this in another thread but Democrats have to have a reckoning with religion. Christianity has a huge hold on the Republican party. I have no idea how to break through that cult but we don’t have a chance until we do. So many people I know hate Trump but voted for him anyways because Jesus. I’m not religious at all so I don’t get it but it’s clearly a huge hurdle we need to figure out.

I have more thoughts later.

[ellipses84]

Nov 7, 2024 8:32:56 GMT -5 themoneytree said:

Nov 7, 2024 0:11:06 GMT -5 thejen626 said:

Republicans win because they teach their children to vote for the person with the R next to their name. Don’t matter if they are a child rapist or they embezzle money or what the fuck ever.

Democrats lose because TOO MANY fucking democrats want the perfect ideal candidate. They don’t vote for the D person because of a war in the Middle East, or because they aren’t left enough, or because they aren’t conservative enough, or because their husband got their dick sucked by an intern thirty years ago. Twenty million democrats that voted for Biden, didn’t vote for Harris.

YES.

@@ Someone told me Southern Republicans raise their children to HATE Democrats. I hadn’t realized that before and I feel like with MAGA and Christian Nationalism that has spread. Voting Dem to them is literally one of the worst things you can do, the biggest sin. That is what we are up against.

[sakoro]

Nov 7, 2024 8:15:12 GMT -5 Patsy Baloney said:

The other thought that occurred to me as I was brushing my teeth this morning is how Ds need to do something with the power they are given.

I’m an average person. Cognitively, I know this administration was working to halt and lower inflation. But I don’t really know how that works. I trust that they’re doing it, but there was no flashy, “We’re making these greedy mfers stop raising prices” talk. I’ve seen the articles - I know grocery execs and companies were making money hand over fist. Nobody stopped it, or at least in a way that I could see and understand.

I live in a district where a lot of latinos voted for Trump for the first time. They aren’t wearing red hats or putting Trump flags on their pickup trucks, so I don’t think they have the cultural identification that many white men had in 2016. However, they didn’t feel like Biden is on their side with increased housing costs, grocery costs, higher electricity prices, cancelation of homeowners insurance policies and felt the biggest impact from COVID closures (as small business owners and working in the trades). So millions ignored the insulting things he said about Mexicans being rapists and voted (for what they believe to be) in their economic interest.

Dems are overly reliant on identity politics and too timid in pushing back on corporate interests - such as grocery companies— probably because that’s who funds campaigns.

None of Trump’s policies are going to solve any of these problems- particularly the 20% tariff and tax cuts for the rich.