Hard Choices: Why Trump won and how the Dems must change (Lyin' Steve's autopsy)

[Lyin' Steve]

The media is being flooded with think-pieces today by people from all walks of the political spectrum trying to write the Democratic party's post-mortem report for it.  For the most part, all the ones I've read were pretty self-serving.  Republicans said she was doomed from the start because of Obamacare, climate change, or gun control.  Sanders supporters said she was a corporate neoliberal who rigged the primary and they should have nominated Bernie.  Trump haters glumly said that the Democratic party has to start appealing to racist sexist homophobic xenophobic transphobic misogynists or risk extinction because everybody is horrible.  I'm going to be straight up and do this in three parts.  First, why Trump won, second what's wrong with the Democratic party, and third how the party must change going into the future and what I believe its new strategy must be for the next four years.

It won't be easy, but as someone who followed this election very closely and with empathy for all sides (by empathy I mean the ability to put myself in their shoes and understand where they were coming from, not that I was kind to them) I think I've got a pretty good start.  Unlike most of the forum, media, etc., I kept my finger on the pulse of all sides.  Throughout the election I listened to Progress, POTUS, and Patriot on Sirius XM during my commute.  I gave Fox, CNN, and MSNBC their fair share of my attention.  I read Breitbart, HuffPo, and Drudge in addition to my normal diet of Politico and the New York Times.  I periodically checked up on r/the_donald and r/political_revolution.  I went to watch parties for debates that were hosted by both the Republicans and the Democrats (and the Tea Party Patriots) and have friends who supported virtually every primary and general candidate.  I say all this not to brag but because I want to establish that this is coming from a very informed perspective, and this is not my wishful thinking.  I really hope you lot take it seriously.

Contents:
1)  Why Trump Won
  1A:  Character vs. policy
  1B:  Refusal to defend policy
  1C:  Media and messaging strategy
2)  The Problem with the Democratic Party
  2A:  Accusations of fundamental personal evil
  2B:  Moving the goalposts
  2C:  Pandering at the expense of the country
3)  What Comes Next?
  3A:  Reassessment of existing policy and strategy
  3B:  New policy areas and strategies
  3C:  New leaders
Conclusion


Part 1:  Why Trump Won

1A:  Character vs. policy

The primary reason that Hillary Clinton lost this election is that she tried to make it entirely about character and ceded the entire policy arena to Trump.  You might say, what on earth am I talking about, Hillary knew way more about policy than Trump!  Yet I bet if I gave you sixty seconds to write down each candidate's policy positions you could write down far more of Trump's than Hillary's.  Trump really played the policy arena quite masterfully.  Starting in August or September of 2015 he followed an easy pattern where he would make a big, bold speech with a completely novel and controversial idea, and then spend the next week hammering home the problem he was trying to solve.  People would argue about his idea, but whether they liked it or disliked it they almost always accepted that the problem he was trying to solve was a real one, and by dominating the airwaves he was able to raise the prominence of these problems and drive their importance into the minds of his base.

Illegal immigration, the wall.  People talked about the wall so much, but he just kept hammering home again and again that illegal immigration was a huge problem.  Syrian refugees, ban all muslims.  Trade, repeal NAFTA.  Education, get rid of common core.  One by one, he laid out his policy planks with one core, memorable policy that people could stick to, and focused his firepower on defining the problems that he was choosing to address as the biggest, worst problems.  His policy on jobs was nothing more than "put a huge tariff on imported goods to force our companies to stay here", but every single person in America knows about it because he would tell the stories of manufacturing plants leaving the country, people out of work, Carrier going to Mexico, over and over and over again.

Meanwhile, what were Hillary's positions?  She had nuance, to a certain extent, but she was never able to boil her positions down to anything memorable or concrete.  It was all vague.  What is "stronger together"?  What does that mean, what does that entail?  "Make America Great Again" was a summary for a core set of policies that everyone knew.

I think everyone knows what "stronger together" really meant, though, which brings me back to my original point.  "Stronger together" was supposed to be the opposite of Trump, the divider.  Even the slogan invited the comparison -- we're stronger together than if we let Trump divide us.  At every step of the election, Hillary attacked Trump.  When you think of all the points in the election where Hillary was doing well, it was always because she had successfully attacked Trump, never because she'd done well for herself.  Every time the effect of an attack wore off, Trump slipped back into a tie or a slight lead, because the default state of the race was that he had policies and vision and she had nothing but a bunch of attacks to fling at him.  By the time we got to the convention we were already completely exhausted and worn out of attacks on Trump.  But she kept going for four more months.  At a certain point it just stopped mattering to most people.  Trump became a known quantity, he had hit his approval floor and she wasn't going to drive him down any further.  But she kept focusing solely on character.  Meanwhile, it was easy for Trump to close the gap with easy hits on her over e-mails, the foundation, made up nonsense, etc.  If you went to a Trump rally, you would hear those policies, with some attacks on Hillary but it was almost like she was a distraction.  If you went to a Clinton rally, you'd hear a lot of vague platitudes but attacks on Trump were the core theme.

One key thing to point out here.  Hillary claimed the mantle of optimism and the media pushed Trump into the pit of pessimism.  But other than at the conventions, where the Democrats were briefly able to offer a truly positive message on the final two nights with Obama, Hillary, and General John Allen's excellent speeches, Hillary was the pessimist, characterizing her opponent and (implicitly) his supporters in the most damning, derogatory terms, while Trump was out there identifying problems but offering a clear set of solutions to them and a vision for how his policies would make things better.  He was the real optimist the whole time.

1B:  Refusal to defend policy

Here's another problem with Hillary, policy-wise:  She never was able to defend or illustrate her positions.  Hillary ceded ground to Trump in almost every arena where Trump chose to fight.  On trade, she never bothered to defend free trade or defend NAFTA.  She made up an opposition to TPP that absolutely nobody believed.  On illegal immigration, she never pushed back or tried to defend amnesty or her plan, she just said Trump's plan was terrible, heartless, oh so monstrous and absurd.  But what even was her immigration plan?  Can anyone even tell me?  Trump convinced us all immigration was a problem, he set the stage, and then he completely took it over and all she could do was complain.

[Lyin' Steve]

I think part of this honestly is due to the primary.  Hillary was forced by her base to stake out a bunch of positions that were not her own and that were, frankly, indefensible.  In order to beat Sanders she had to get to his left on guns, which meant arguing that people should be able to sue gun manufacturers when their guns are used to kill people, an utterly non-serious policy position.  She adopted the $15 minimum wage and free college tuition (or was it "affordable"?  what was even the difference?) for everyone.  She started talking about how the economy was biased in favor of those at the top and they needed to "be made to pay their fair share" (which most of America heard as "punished").  These are positions that 60-70% of America does not support, and she was unable to really stand up for them or adopt them because she was unable and unwilling to truly defend them.  As a result, most of the major planks of her platform in some key areas of strength never made it onto the battlefield.  She couldn't engage Trump on a pro-business tax policy because she'd spent so much energy focusing on the part of her tax policy where she promised to punish and soak the rich, which she didn't even really believe in.  She couldn't fight back in a defense of globalism because her own base had put a gun to her head and told her to condemn it.  You all may be expecting me to blame Bernie or the activist left for this, but this is entirely Hillary's fault.  I pointed out way back in the primary that she was taking the easy way out by essentially ceding the whole policy stage to Bernie rather than standing her ground and arguing the difference between them.  If she had the confidence to argue her positions or the integrity to maintain them, she wouldn't have had this problem.

1C:  Media and messaging strategy

There is another key area where the two candidates were in stark contrast, yet here I believe it was more a case of Trump winning than Hillary losing.  Media.  Trump's online game is vastly superior to Hillary Clinton's due to his ability to appeal and attract interest among constituencies outsides of his base.  His communities are more tight-knit, his videos have a clear message and go viral instantly, his whole support network and empire is well-organized and has key players at every corner.  Who was Hillary's equivalent of Scott Adams, the guy who sings Trump's praises and makes you feel smart or clever for paying attention to him?  Who was Hillary's equivalent of Roger Stone, the clever and charismatic little devil who constantly injects new talking points and conspiracy theories into the discussion?  What was Hillary's Breitbart, the media outlet that was supporting Trump and building the case for his presidency at every opportunity?  Most of the media was on Hillary's side, but they weren't helping Hillary so much as they were just lambasting Trump at every opportunity.  HuffPo wasn't writing pieces about Hillary's foreign policy.  Paul "If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never" Krugman wrote a lot about how awful Trump was but didn't have much to say about why Hillary was better.  Hillary had a scattershot smorgasbord of half-hearted viral videos against Trump -- women saying they cried when they heard Trump talking about women, Latinos talking about how afraid their children were, all set to the appropriate music and color theme.  Trump's strikes were clear, powerful, and extremely well-organized.  His narrative was easy to understand and at every new leg of the journey, his step forward was simple and overwhelmingly presented.  Everyone knew where he stood, what his arguments in his favor were, and why.  Trump built a movement.  Hillary had a much bigger army but they were never organized or focused, and they had no clear mission except to kill Trump.  In the last month of the election, the message often became "Hillary isn't that great, actually she's pretty bad, we get it, but you have to stop Trump."

These were the key overarching reasons why Donald Trump was able to defeat Hillary Clinton.  In the next part I will go into why the Democratic Party lost, and lost badly, dragging Hillary Clinton down with it in what otherwise may still have been a winnable race for her.

[Lyin' Steve]

Part 2:  The Problem With The Democratic Party

The problem with the Democratic Party is simple and easy to understand.  The party has gone overboard with its identity-politics-based "coalition of the ascendent" strategy, it's drowning in snark, self-righteousness, moral superiority and ego, and it goes out of its way to alienate vast swaths of the country.

2A:  Accusations of fundamental personal evil

At nearly every policy juncture for the last two years, the Democrats chose to accuse their opponents of being hateful bigots.  Not ok with planned parenthood receiving federal funding to perform abortions?  You're anti-woman, sexist, hate women.  Don't like amnesty for eleven million illegal immigrants?  You're a racist.  These are basic examples.  It's become such a default bludgeon that the Democrats frequently take it to ridiculous extremes.  I've heard arguments like that if you're against gun control, you're a racist because more blacks get shot each year than whites.  Candidates ran entire campaigns on identity politics and accusing the other side of bigotry this year.  This is fundamentally different from the Republican attacks, which mostly revolve around the naivete of the Democrats.  In 2004 the GOP attack line was that if you were against the Iraq War you didn't support our troops, but it wasn't really about you being an evil person so much as a lily-livered liberal who didn't was too anti-war to respect those sacrificing their lives for you.  You were misguided but not a fundamentally bad person.  "Tax and spend liberal", "big government", "47% who refuse to take responsibility for their lives", all of these attacks say that your worldview or choices or lifestyle are misguided and wrong.  Calling someone a bigot is different.  It's basically unforgivable and immutable.

The Black Lives Matter movement has been a perfect example this year.  If you don't believe me, go talk to a conservative about what's wrong with this country, and within five minutes you'll probably hear about BLM.  It's not that conservatives don't care about police brutality.  And it's not really about the false narrative driving the movement.  It's that in BLM they see social disorder, riots, absurd demands, black power movements, anti-Americanism, and racism in a very thin disguise of a political movement.  When Beyonce comes out at the Superbowl and does a black power thing, many Americans see that as a threat against them, racism, promotion and glorification of a violent organization.  When Colin Kaepernick refuses to kneel at the pledge because America is a racist country, many Americans see that as the next evolution of an anti-American, anti-white (after all, who are the racists he's talking about?) movement.  BLM, Beyonce, Colin Kaepernick, they're not the problem in and of themselves or in isolation so much as they are crystallizations of this feeling among so many white Americans that the left wants to shove down their throats that they are racist, privileged, and therefore socially inferior to minority groups, that they don't deserve to be heard or have their concerns addressed, that they should have things taken from them to help those minority groups.

Now let me tell you something else.  For most of the liberals on this board, when you read that last paragraph, you probably immediately tried to dismiss the conservatives and justify it as "they're all just a bunch of racists."  Maybe you came up with some snarky response like "big surprise that a white male like Lyin' Steve thinks the Democrats should stop caring about black lives."  And that's the problem.  There's nothing wrong with you, it's a knee-jerk reaction that your party and your media bubble has ingrained in you, and you can purge it the same way you get rid of songs that are stuck in your head.  But this knee-jerk reaction has created a toxic discourse in the country and especially within the party, where we can't even talk about these issues or acknowledge the concerns of the other side without fear of getting the scarlet letter treatment.

Put yourself in the shoes of some fella who runs a bar in Iowa.  He just read in a newspaper that Hillary Clinton has illegal immigrants going around neighborhoods in Arizona working for her campaign.  He thinks that's outrageous, those people broke the law, they should be sent back home until they can come here legally, not put on the payroll of a political campaign!  He grumbles about it to some of his regulars and some of them agree, some of them try to have a conversation with him about it, there is a reasonable position here that if we're not deporting illegals then there's no reason political jobs should be uniquely barred when they're able to get most other jobs.  But then what's the message coming out of the media and the Hillary campaign towards him?  That he and his ilk are afraid of foreigners, afraid of change, afraid of people who look like them.  Samantha Bee gets on television and does some little impersonation of a white man going to the supermarket and demanding all the bartlett pears be deported because they have brown skin.  Deep down, he's told, you just have a hatred of brown people, you're a racist.  Maybe not explicitly, but that's the general tone and implicit message that he's getting.  Now this guy is saying, well I know I'm not a racist, but I'm definitely not going to change my mind because I feel like abandoning or changing my position would be admission that I was racist for holding it, since that's the only argument that the world is presenting to me.  By insulting, mocking and degrading him, the left has pushed him further into his positions and away from ever joining the party.

[Lyin' Steve]

2B: Moving the goalposts

Let's take another example, LGBT rights.  The Democrats were, and still are, very close to securing victory here.  They got gay marriage approved by the Supreme Court.  There's been a huge cultural shift and a majority of the country favors the ruling.  The Republican nominee for president is quietly pro-gay and candidates were able to speak favorably of the gay agenda on stage during the primary debates with no repercussions.  What did the Democrats do next?  They started calling everyone who couldn't accept the ruling bigots and homophobes.  They demanded Kim Davis's head.  They immediately switched gears to pushing the transgender agenda, holding up Caitlin Jenner and raising the bar for not being a bigot so that if you didn't think that it was ok and perfectly normal and acceptable for a man to just one day decide he was a woman and turn into one, you were a terrible awful no good person.  It was a bridge too far.  But here again we see that once the Democrats had scored a victory, they just kept pushing further and further and further until they reached the limits of what society was willing to accept.  It erodes trust.  There are plenty of people out in the country who have gay friends and are ok with them being married and all, but when the Democrats just push on to the next thing and immediately tell these people who just decided they're ok with the gays that they're now bigots for not being ok with Bruce Jenner putting on a wig and running into the girl's bathroom, Rick Santorum's warnings about the future of the gay agenda being people marrying animals start to sound a little less wacky, and we get pushback against the politicians who rubber-stamp the gay agenda, no matter what it is.

Please understand this, because it is critical.  The opposition isn't necessarily to the policy itself.  The opposition is to the bad faith way in which the Democrats approach the debate, the way they shove their ideas for social change down the throat of middle America, and the tolerance they have for atrocious behavior as long as it's coming from their side.  The automatic dismissal that Democrats have of anyone who disagrees with them, and the media chorus of snark and hatred for those people, is absolutely alienating and, importantly, uniting.  I've read a couple people today who said "whites voted like a minority group."  Perhaps that's because whites have been demonized at every turn by the Democratic party for the last few years, and the problem keeps getting worse and worse.  I opened my Facebook feed this morning and saw a bunch of college students sneering about how horrible/stupid "white men" had elected Trump.  They kept going out of their way to say "white men."  Not Republicans, not conservatives, no the enemy is a race/gender group that can do no right.  When you do things like this, when you treat whites, men, Christians, the uneducated, the wealthy, etc. as an enemy group with an evil agenda, rather than just a political disagreement, you alienate them and cause them to turn to each other for solace, which then unites them as a political voting bloc.

2C:  Pandering at the expense of the country

Here's another critical fact:  Most of the people in these alienated groups believe that the main reason this is happening is because the Democrats want to appease these different blocs and win their support.  In some cases, glaring hypocrisy provides ample cannon fodder for this, like in the Baltimore riots when the city was burning and the media was busy finding white people to harass about whether or not they thought black lives mattered.  Not even hypocrisy sometimes, but just a neverending stream of outrages, such as the story of Kate Steinle being murdered by a psycopathic murdered who was being protected by sanctuary cities because he was an illegal immigrant.  People see these, go "that reaction or that policy doesn't make any sense", and decide that the Democrats must be on that side because they want to win the support of those voting blocs.  It's not an unreasonable position to take, the Democrats themselves take the opposite position, like that Trump talks about the terrible state of the inner cities to appeal to KKK members who want to believe that blacks are animals.  But this all amplifies the frustration and alienation because they feel like their very real concerns or very valid viewpoints are being dismissed and demonized, not for any valid reason, but for the political expediency of the party.

This is far and away the key problem with the party.  It panders to the concerns of the patchwork minority groups in a very obvious way, demonizes anyone who disagrees with those pander positions, and then smugly pats itself on the back while mocking all the evil others while meanwhile those others look for alternative media sources like Breitbart where they won't be demonized and their concerns are understood, start coalescing into a political bloc, and eventually deliver Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio to the least qualified presidential nominee in history.  The Democratic Convention this year's theme was basically "identity politics vs. Donald Trump", and we had one minority after another get up and say things like "as a proud lesbian muslim latina woman, daughter of immigrants, I just want to say that we can stand up to hate!"  If the democrats thought that sacrificing the non-minority vote would be ok because of changing demographics, the fact that Trump won more blacks and hispanics than Mitt Romney despite a two-year long effort to paint him as literally the KKK ought to be an alarming wake-up call.

[Lyin' Steve]

Part 3:  What comes next?

3A:  Reassessment of existing policy and strategy

The Democratic party has gone astray, but it's not so hard to find its way back.  The party needs a serious reassessment of what its policy planks should be and how they should be sold.  If planks like supporting the highway-blockers of BLM without question are only in there to appeal to that minority group, strip them out and start making the appeal to that group based on real civil and economic policies.  If some members of the bloc stray from the party as a result, accept it; leaning on 95% black vote every year is unsustainable and completely handcuffs the party's ability to take a practical approach to racial issues.  On the other hand, if planks like granting uniform amnesty are defensible, find a way to make the case to voters in a clear, concise way that this is the best path forward for all of America.  This is critical, do not just appeal to latinos, and for the love of God don't demonize the opposition as racists and xenophobes for not agreeing with you, or do so implicitly by claiming to be "pushing back against hate" or protecting latinos.

3B:  New policy areas and strategies

Hand-in-hand, as many have pointed out, the Democrats need to begin to appeal to blue-collar workers, rural and small-town populations, and working-class whites again.  Most of the economic platform of the Democrats can be modified fairly easily to remove the perception that it's restrictive of small businesses, farmers, and manufacturing.  They can build a tax message not around getting revenge on rich people but rather around building small businesses and accelerating job growth.  They could also use some new ideas and policy areas to try to create appeal.  Agriculture is an issue where the partisan lines are not clearly drawn or particularly restrictive, and voters are open to hearing new ideas and new cases -- Ted Cruz won Iowa this year running against ethanol, after all.  The Democrats also, with Trump in charge, have a huge opening on military issues.  They did a good job of exploiting this and beginning to claim the mantle of the patriot party at the convention, but never went anywhere with it.  Veteran's issues have been deplorable for generations, and if someone came along and really made a big deal out of them and pushed for a real overhaul and solution, more than just "I care about our vets!" with no substance, I think that could really play in the Democrats' favor.

This doesn't mean giving up on issues like gun control and climate change.  It means finding reasonable, small-step policies that can be explained in clear and easy terms without alienating those whose minds you're trying to change.  If 80% of the country supports universal background checks, why not just pass that instead of always poisoning the well by trying to push through an assault weapons ban and a no-fly-no-gun law at the same time?  The Democrats have a long way to go to earn back the trust of the voters they've pushed away with these policies, and taking big steps to try to do it fast isn't going to work.

3C:  New leaders

If the Democrats abandon their identity-politics-based approach and take this advice, I believe they can have a solid base in four years to run for president again while also being able to compete on the federal and local level in many rust belt and heartland states.  But their spark is going to have to come from someone with charisma who can embrace, channel, and lead with this message the same way Obama led with the generational change and diversity message of eight years ago that brought the youth and minority base into the party.  The obvious current choice is Cory Booker, certainly the most charismatic figure in the party today.  I've heard Kamala Harris bantered about, but mostly from people who like her because she agrees with them and checks a bunch of identity politics checkboxes (her wiki page, in near self-parody, touts her as "the first female, the first African-American, the first Indian-American, and the first Asian-American attorney general in California") but she doesn't seem to have much special about her other than that.  Right now many Democrats are looking to Elizabeth Warren to be the savior, when I think she would be the absolute worst choice.  Uncharismatic, coldly stern, relentlessly negative and far-left, she will be unable to unite the country or bring the optimism that the part can provide.  To be perfectly honest, the best choice for the Democrats may be to run a popular general after the War on ISIS is over, another swing at the Wesley Clark ticket.  The party should also be begging Mark Cuban and Bruce Springsteen to consider running for office, not necessarily because they'll be great candidates, but because each of them embodies an appeal that the party could capture but is currently failing to.  Cuban, Springsteen, Allen and Vilsack would be a powerful set of messengers for the party to bring a new message and appeal to huge swaths of the country that it's currently missing.

Conclusion

This is a party in crisis, and it desperately needs to make a change or it will die a slow death condemned to the inner cities and liberal coasts.  I'm sure few, if any, of you Atlasians have read all of this, and nobody from the Clinton campaign or the DNC will ever see this post, but I feel more at peace with defeat now knowing that I've done this.  There's a small chance that any of this will come to fruition -- frankly, I think the party is going to tear itself apart in the next four years, for reasons I've outlined in other threads -- but at least I can imagine I've put some hope on the map on this very gloomy day for the party, the country, and the world.

[Blue3]

You're doing a lot of these very long posts. I like to read long posts, and these are even too much for me. Please summarize, or give bold subsection headers, a numbered list, something.

[AtorBoltox]

utter dross

[Lyin' Steve]

You're doing a lot of these very long posts. I like to read long posts, and these are even too much for me. Please summarize, or give bold subsection headers, a numbered list, something.

I added a bunch of subheaders and a table of contents to make it easier.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I think you are correct to a large extent.

Even Bill Maher said the Democrats went too far when they got away from Comprehensive Immigration Reform and promising to "penalize employers" as Obama did in 2008 to promising to "end all deportations" like Hillary did in a speech in 2016.

The former is a more reasonable policy choice that would appeal to the vast majority while still fighting to provide legalization the undocumented. The latter is irresponsible pandering.

Also, as you said about going with unpopular riders. Every Comprehensive immigration reform bill has tanked largely because NumbersUSA and other groups attack the vast increases in legal immigration as a special interest give away to silicon valley and corporate America. These provisions usually poll at 58% against and just like Assault Weapons bans, basically end up being a poison pill. Enforcement with legalization and nothing else would be incredibly popular and a much better position for the Democrats to take to working class voters.

I think a General/Governor, Governor/General would be a powerful ticket combination because it can run as Washington outsiders.

[Umengus]

Part 2:  The Problem With The Democratic Party

The problem with the Democratic Party is simple and easy to understand.  The party has gone overboard with its identity-politics-based "coalition of the ascendent" strategy, it's drowning in snark, self-righteousness, moral superiority and ego, and it goes out of its way to alienate vast swaths of the country.

(...)

The Black Lives Matter movement has been a perfect example this year.  If you don't believe me, go talk to a conservative about what's wrong with this country, and within five minutes you'll probably hear about BLM.  It's not that conservatives don't care about police brutality.  And it's not really about the false narrative driving the movement.  It's that in BLM they see social disorder, riots, absurd demands, black power movements, anti-Americanism, and racism in a very thin disguise of a political movement.  When Beyonce comes out at the Superbowl and does a black power thing, many Americans see that as a threat against them, racism, promotion and glorification of a violent organization.  When Colin Kaepernick refuses to kneel at the pledge because America is a racist country, many Americans see that as the next evolution of an anti-American, anti-white (after all, who are the racists he's talking about?) movement.  BLM, Beyonce, Colin Kaepernick, they're not the problem in and of themselves or in isolation so much as they are crystallizations of this feeling among so many white Americans that the left wants to shove down their throats that they are racist, privileged, and therefore socially inferior to minority groups, that they don't deserve to be heard or have their concerns addressed, that they should have things taken from them to help those minority groups.

the best part

On the whole, I disagree with you on economy: I think that "tax the rich people", high minimun wage,... are popular.

[Blue3]

You're doing a lot of these very long posts. I like to read long posts, and these are even too much for me. Please summarize, or give bold subsection headers, a numbered list, something.

I added a bunch of subheaders and a table of contents to make it easier.

Thank you.




EDIT:

Now I've read through it.

I agree that one of the main problem was that  the Democrats' focus/approach/communication/marketing regarding their policies was off this year. I think they just assumed the people knew what the Democrats were for, instead of spelling it out again and in easily comprehensible sayings and bits. Yeah, we shouldn't need to do that, but that's the world we live in.

As for this piece:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I agree, but GOOD LUCK trying to tell this to the most vocal Democrats (of the Bernie Sanders and BLM wings) right now.

[Meclazine for Israel]

I think you have some great points in there Steve.

Character was a big deal. Even though Trump misfired on some of his communication, he did communicate things directly to people with a familiarity like their uncle, and those things were heard.

Even though he has narcissistic ideals and a history of poor sexual conduct, the populous appears to have forgiven that in exchange for someone who will change the country.

And then Hillary continually attacked Trump without ever realising his "actual" popularity vs his "perceived" popularity.

As John Howard, former Australian Prime Minister noted:

"Never underestimate the intelligence of your most average voter."

And you highlighted that well in Hillary's continual attacks.

As for the Democratic Party, dont be too harsh , only missing out by a very small amount.

107,000 votes from winning all three of WI, MI, PV

[Egalit]

Dems cannot change in principle. To introduce any change they need an ousider just like Trump. But they  will never accept an outsider as a frontrunner,  and Sanders is a good example. Clinton used several dishonest schemes to stop him.

[muon2]

The point I think that was well put is about the non-college white vote becoming a bloc. I've been hearing complaints for years from people in that group that they felt like a minority with concerns that politicians didn't respect. The Census tells us that they are a large but shrinking minority. Perhaps it shouldn't surprise us that they are now bloc voting like a minority.

[ApatheticAustrian]

i disagree with you on some important parts but i don't want to dismiss such a big and well-written eassy with a few snarky one-liners, so...kudos, nice job.

while i generally agree that some democrats overplayed their cards hard, i think a big part of that problem is a matter of communication.

what a democrat says and what someone else understands or is told about its meaning are totally different things.

in fact, dems have done more for the poor people and the working class in the last few years than pubs have done in decades.....just doesn't look so appealing, which means the question of "heart-felt" respect seems to be more important than practical money matters.

i am in general against hard shifts...the republicans haven't shifted at all against all evidence to do so and still got reward plentiful. (and democrats would have won this red wave election too [in fact they have won it] with just 2 points difference in 4 states.....with quite a low turnout)

i am all in for shifting but in fact: the democratic party was the center party to begin with during the last years and it seems like less center, more populism would have won it.......no easy answers, no clear message, no "third way" affiliation like 1988, imho.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Don't have time to read everything, but I want to address this:

Please understand this, because it is critical.  The opposition isn't necessarily to the policy itself.  The opposition is to the bad faith way in which the Democrats approach the debate, the way they shove their ideas for social change down the throat of middle America, and the tolerance they have for atrocious behavior as long as it's coming from their side.  The automatic dismissal that Democrats have of anyone who disagrees with them, and the media chorus of snark and hatred for those people, is absolutely alienating and, importantly, uniting.

So, you're gay, and you've spent your whole life being told you were perverted, sick, evil, that your love wasn't real, that you are second class citizens only deserving of a "special kind" of marriage that wasn't real marriage.  You've been beaten, sent for shock therapy, in many cases killed.  And now they tell you you should be nice because the rest of society will eventually come around to treating you like a human being?!

Sorry, with all due respect, f*** that.

[Lemmiwinks]

I agree with what you've laid out here. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

[Devout Centrist]

I'd love to post a longer rebuttal but I just don't have the time. But I do want to say that the Democrats are probably going to move in he complete opposition direction. Identity politics works because Donald Trump made it work. All the advice from the 2012 post mortem was proven wrong Tuesday and I think any post mortem for the Democrats is at best premature and at worse, completely opposite of what the base thinks.

[ApatheticAustrian]

All the advice from the 2012 post mortem was proven wrong Tuesday

not really.

the re-alignment worked and doubled down in the right area....the talented mister trump just pierced the right states at the right time...perfect storm.

the most important question right now is, if trump is able to make the GOP into a big-government nationalist party or just doesn't care anymore after winning the title and goes along with peak cruz.

[Erich Maria Remarque]

All the advice from the 2012 post mortem was proven wrong Tuesday

not really.

the re-alignment worked and doubled down in the right area....the talented mister trump just pierced the right states at the right time...perfect storm.

the most important question right now is, if trump is able to make the GOP into a big-government nationalist party or just doesn't care anymore after winning the title and goes along with peak cruz.

Maaan, you are from Europe. You are know that it was not about "perfect storm"

[Lyin' Steve]

Don't have time to read everything, but I want to address this:

Please understand this, because it is critical.  The opposition isn't necessarily to the policy itself.  The opposition is to the bad faith way in which the Democrats approach the debate, the way they shove their ideas for social change down the throat of middle America, and the tolerance they have for atrocious behavior as long as it's coming from their side.  The automatic dismissal that Democrats have of anyone who disagrees with them, and the media chorus of snark and hatred for those people, is absolutely alienating and, importantly, uniting.

So, you're gay, and you've spent your whole life being told you were perverted, sick, evil, that your love wasn't real, that you are second class citizens only deserving of a "special kind" of marriage that wasn't real marriage.  You've been beaten, sent for shock therapy, in many cases killed.  And now they tell you you should be nice because the rest of society will eventually come around to treating you like a human being?!

Sorry, with all due respect, f*** that.

This is part of the problem.  There are some people in America who are the whole Fred Phelps, fire and brimstone, assholes who think gays are perverted, sick, evil, and their love isn't real.  Then there's a whole much larger section of the country that legitimately buys the argument that marriage is a bedrock institution of society where a man and a woman raise children together and continue the family chain, not just an escalation of love and commitment like the gays want it to be.  You may believe they're wrong, but by attacking them as bigots like you're doing in your post, and then saying that you don't want to "treat them nice", you are threatening them multiple ways, you are driving them away from your viewpoint, and you're encouraging to coalesce in a bloc against you.  The sad thing is that because you've been in your bubble so long you probably don't even believe me that 80-90% of anti-LGBT Americans don't want to kill you, or you think that they're putting up a front and secretly they'd leap at the chance.  This kind of inability or refusal to understand other viewpoints, and the mockery and attacking of those who hold those viewpoints, is a big part of what's destroying the party.

[Devout Centrist]

Don't have time to read everything, but I want to address this:

Please understand this, because it is critical.  The opposition isn't necessarily to the policy itself.  The opposition is to the bad faith way in which the Democrats approach the debate, the way they shove their ideas for social change down the throat of middle America, and the tolerance they have for atrocious behavior as long as it's coming from their side.  The automatic dismissal that Democrats have of anyone who disagrees with them, and the media chorus of snark and hatred for those people, is absolutely alienating and, importantly, uniting.

So, you're gay, and you've spent your whole life being told you were perverted, sick, evil, that your love wasn't real, that you are second class citizens only deserving of a "special kind" of marriage that wasn't real marriage.  You've been beaten, sent for shock therapy, in many cases killed.  And now they tell you you should be nice because the rest of society will eventually come around to treating you like a human being?!

Sorry, with all due respect, f*** that.

This is part of the problem.  There are some people in America who are the whole Fred Phelps, fire and brimstone, assholes who think gays are perverted, sick, evil, and their love isn't real.  Then there's a whole much larger section of the country that legitimately buys the argument that marriage is a bedrock institution of society where a man and a woman raise children together and continue the family chain, not just an escalation of love and commitment like the gays want it to be.  You may believe they're wrong, but by attacking them as bigots like you're doing in your post, and then saying that you don't want to "treat them nice", you are threatening them multiple ways, you are driving them away from your viewpoint, and you're encouraging to coalesce in a bloc against you.  The sad thing is that because you've been in your bubble so long you probably don't even believe me that 80-90% of anti-LGBT Americans don't want to kill you, or you think that they're putting up a front and secretly they'd leap at the chance.  This kind of inability or refusal to understand other viewpoints, and the mockery and attacking of those who hold those viewpoints, is a big part of what's destroying the party.

But they are fundamentally prejudiced because being anti-LGBT is a prejudicial position, same as bing anti-white to any degree. Regardless, telling people they're in a bubble is the perfect way to get a huge backlash.

[Confused Democrat]

This is right on so many levels.

[ApatheticAustrian]

regarding the gay thing:

it is surely true that a gay person can't understand how "classical conservative" voters feel about this change.

but the question is two-sided....since.....many of those classical conservatives also never asked how the gay person feels.

i understand that in terms of raw vote, the cultural conservatives are of bigger concern than gay americans but regarding respect, this runs both ways.

[KingSweden]

Thank you for writing this. Some great points, some things I'm nkt totally there with you on, but well done overall