I think sometimes, as Democrats, we get stuck in our own liberal bubble

[bearsfootball516]

We know about all the great things Dems do, the hard work President Biden and his staff have done over the past 4 years. I also think acknowledging that Independent and GOP voters see things differently than we do can go a long way in helping win those voters over (at least swing voters).

The best example I can give it, say you run into someone on the street who makes 35K a year, and they tell you "This economy is awful, I can barely afford my groceries" we spent the last couple years telling them "Well, the economy actually is pretty good, unemployment rates are at historic lows!" That doesn't change the fact that grocery prices have gone up 20 percent over the last four years, and they are barely holding it together.

A better response is to acknowledge that they're hurting, and explain that Biden and the Democrats want to go after companies that are price gouging to bring down costs, while Trump wants to apply tariffs that would cause prices to increase even more.

Our policies are a million times better, I think we need to find a way to message it better, and that means remembering that the people we're talking to, don't always have the same viewpoint we do.

[Yavin4]

1. Trump voters are not hurting.

Sales of Ford F150 are setting records with the cheapest model selling for $38K. People hurting economically don't spend that kind of money on new vehicles.

[bearsfootball516]

2. I"m not talking about people buying new Ford F150s.

If someone buys a brand new 50K vehicle and then has the gall to say they can't afford groceries, they can jump off a cliff lol.

I'm talking about swing voters who truly are financially strapped, or swing voters who really are well-meaning, but don't pay the same sort of attention to politics that you or I do.

[Alice B.]

20. 200% this. And there are people legitimately hurting.

I said throughout the election that there were times in my life that, if I lived in a different context (different friends, family, upbringing, education), I might be susceptible to the bs TFG peddles. The Obama years were not awesome for me. Now, to points above, I do know a lot of people who b**ched and moaned about hard they were having it during Obama and during Biden, while gloating over the McMansions they bought out of someone else's foreclosure, showing off their new vehicles on Facebook (and they ones they bought for their newly licensed, still in high school kids), and taking a ton of pricey vacations. I'm eternally livid over that myself.

But then there are people waking up in the middle of the night, crying over dental problems they can't afford to fix and seeing how many necessities $7.43 will get them at the Dollar Tree. And knowing .30 could overdraw their account. These people are out there. I have been that person and someone needs to demonstrate an awareness of that audience.

I argued and argued with other progressives in my community who kept citing the good economic stats and thought the folks complaining about their economic circumstances were just being ... dumb. Employed, college-educated, and many of whom worked for or still work for the local university. I thought it was really dangerous to dismiss or fail to acknowledge that progress occurs unevenly and some people aren't feeling it.

[spooky3]

59. Obviously I wasn't present for those conversations. But

What I have heard liberals say is somewhat different. They say:

—yes, inflation has been bad. The pandemic and mismanagement of it was the primary cause of why. If you are hurting, why aren’t you blaming Trump, and what exactly did he do as Prez and what exactly WILL he do as Prez to LOWER prices (which has rarely happened without a disastrous recession)?

—inflation is now about 2.5% per year, because the Fed Reserve has raised interest rates to make it harder for people to borrow a lot of money to buy stuff; easy money pushes up prices. The Fed is independent of the Prez. Presidents have little control over “free market” economies, especially when their party does not also control Congress. It doesn’t make high prices easier to cope with but you have to have an understanding of how economies work and what really influences prices to know what can and can’t be done.

—working people’s incomes on average per DOL have increased MORE than the rate of inflation over the past 3 years. Yes, it’s still tough on retirees and others whose incomes have not kept up.

—and so on.

[Yavin4]

26. Most of those people voted for Kamala

The people buying Ford F150s voted for Trump.

[Kaleva]

4. Ford sales have declined in the past year

"Ford F-Series & Ram Trucks Sales Decline Significantly: 1st-Half 2024 Truck Sales Report"

https://tfltruck.com/2024/07/ford-f-series-ram-trucks-sales-decline-significantly-1st-half-2024-truck-sales-report/

Where did you get your disinformation from?

[Igel]

13. A one month uptick.

A small reversal to a large decline can, if you are (accidentally or intentionally) unaware of any greater context.

I dislike pundits because often they slice-and-dice the context and facts to assemble into a nice, coherent, enticing picture that's completely supported by "the facts" but utterly not supported by the entirety of the facts.

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

15. Actually our voters are more likely to be not hurting

This year Dems won a slight majority of families with over 100k income.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls]

We also had more billionaires backing us.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/10/30/kamala-harris-has-more-billionaires-prominently-backing-her-than-trump-bezos-and-griffin-weigh-in-updated/]

Our breakdown records 83 billionaires supporting Harris and 52 backing Trump so far (see the lists for both below).

Billionaires leaning toward Harris may seem incongruous, since she often criticizes Trump for advocating for policies favorable toward billionaires—but there are practical reasons why the ultra wealthy may favor Harris.

A letter signed by more than a dozen billionaires last month endorsing Harris explained their belief Harris “will continue to advance fair and predictable policies that support the rule of law, stability, and a sound business environment,” indicating the support for the status quo as the U.S. economy and stock market exhibit strength, while a recent survey of millionaire investors—which found a 57% to 43% split in Harris’s favor—identified technology, healthcare and sustainability stocks as the sectors most poised to benefit from a Harris win, a mix friendly to many of her billionaire backers from Silicon Valley, who grew familiar with Harris during her time as a California prosecutor.

It appears we are becoming the more affluent party as the working class voters shift towards the republicans.

[Yavin4]

27. Large metro urban voters vote Democrat

But their incomes skew the data. But the bottom line is this. Whites have the second highest median household incomes, far higher than African Americans, and a huge majority of them voted for Trump.

So, please spare me the tears about how Trump's supporters are hurting.

[Jk23]

39. If you look at the exit polls Trump voters tend to be poorer

In a lot of areas Trump voters are working class without a college education.

This idea that all the Trump voters are rich wealthy white men is one of the reasons we did so poorly this time around.

[Yavin4]

41. White median household income is $89K. Black median household income is $6.5K

See my post for links

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219699382

[Jk23]

44. I'm assuming your decimal points in the wrong place there

There is no way that black median household income is six thousand five hundred dollars.

[Yavin4]

45. NOPE!!! See for yourself.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/233324/median-household-income-in-the-united-states-by-race-or-ethnic-group/#:~:text=U.S.%20median%20household%20income%202023%2C%20by%20race%20and%20ethnicity&text=In%202023%2C%20the%20gross%20median,2021%2C%20with%2022.8%20percent%20uninsured.

[Jk23]

47. Okay I looked at it it says 56,000.

Lower than white. Asians and Hispanics. Asians is the highest then white than Hispanic.

There is a significant Gap but a lot of it honestly is because of the marriage rate since we're talking about household income.

[Yavin4]

50. Okay. My bad.

I'm really fucking angry today. But, my point still stands. White people aint suffering economically.

[Jk23]

46. Also Rich whites did go for Harris

Democrats tend to do very well and wealthy white enclaves it's where the Democrats live.

Notice how poorly we do in places like West Virginia or Mississippi.

[Elessar Zappa]

3. Yes.

I’ll admit to being a bubble. I was convinced by liberal bloggers, tweeters, podcasters, my own brain, etc. that Harris was really ahead by significantly more than the polls were showing. And I’m one of those fixed income people who has been severely hurt by grocery prices. Of course with Trump they’ll probably go up even more.

[TheProle]

37. Your honesty, analysis and empathy

Throughout this post-election phase have been refreshing and commendable.

[Elessar Zappa]

48. You're too kind!

I’m just hoping I survive these next four years. I consider myself a realist and not given to hyperbole but if the ACA somehow gets repealed and I lose Medicaid, I won’t be able to afford the miracle drug I take for cystic fibrosis (it’s $329,000/year).

[TheProle]

49. Best wishes. Hang in there and keep the flame burning

For kindness and rationality.

[TheKentuckian]

5. I'm struggling to make ends meet. What is Chump giving the uberwealthy tax cuts,

moron Musk doing crazy austerity, or RFK making polio great again going to do about that?

The excuses ring beyond hollow.

Fuck those morons, bigots, and assholes.

[Dem4life1234]

28. Thank you!

Many of us are struggling! I don't like the grocery store prices, but we had sense enough not to vote for some rich fat fuck up who doesn't care about anyone who isn't rich.

I'm sick of these excuses. These people supporting him are simply bigots and assholes.

[TheKentuckian]

32. You're welcome!

The inference that we don't know what the pit in the belly come rent time comes

or seeing our savings evaporate while the credit card balance rises

or sitting there at the register and having to figure out what to do without a quarter way through scanning the shit

and then having the fucking nerve to be pondering if we sacrificed enough for the campaign and why we aren't doing outreach to the reckless and hateful idiots is insulting.

No, it is the comfortable that know nothing about it.

The democracy demolition crew did what they did. No excuses.

If the cretin lovers can reach out so damn mightily well then why the hell are we having the conversation.

They love these fucks then go get them and stop hectoring us.

[bearsfootball516]

8. Thank you, this is exactly right.

The claims that I see that Trump rigged the election, the machines switched D votes to R, etc are ludicrous.

The truth is, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of voters, who are BARELY making ends meet, and the price increases over the last few years have been brutal on them. They may not love Trump, but they're desperate for their dollar to go as far as it did when he was in office, and they don't care that he spews fascist garbage, because they don't know how they're going to make rent this month or put food on the table for their children.

It doesn't make that swing voters a bad person. It means we have to be better about how we reach out to them and explaining how we're fighting to for them.

[moonscape]

9. All well and good, but they are

in their own FOX et al bubble, much more impenetrable than ours because at least we get facts in our broader media landscape, and extremely tough to reach.

We at least have conversations about needing not to buy in to conspiracy theories. We’re usually pretty good at nipping them in the bud and there are far far fewer of them on our side.

I am not being defeatist here, but the problem is not a DU bubble.

[LSparkle]

58. Bingo! FUX in every auto service dept, medical waiting rooms ... propaganda is why they voted for him.

We can only do so much to break into THEiR bubble ... and I thought we tried this cycle. Pete and Tim W went on FUX frequently and Kamala took the leap with Baier. Hard to pull people out ...

[ancianita]

61. "I am not being defeatist here, but the problem is not a DU bubble."

It's also a fair observation that DU silos news, corporate and otherwise, that Dems think are relevant to their interests, more than news Dems need to read -- because conditions on the ground have changed around the country.

That's why we didn't know the electorate we were really, in fact, up against, or the electorate that no longer believed or trusted us. That electorate made up Trump's gains across demographics and blue states and areas like New York City.

[Arthur_Frain]

12. That's part of it, certainly.

Social media has been brutal to us though. We didn’t understand how to use it, while their side (or the baser elements of their side) understood its potential almost intrinsically. Tfg bleating “fake news” and “alternative facts” from the get go, the explosion of far right so called news sites that peddle nothing but stressors, the ready assistance of certain foreign entities.

I’m not sure I share your optimism about the nature of swing voters. I don’t wear my politics on my sleeve much, and I’m at an age where I get fairly well ignored in a room, so I get to listen a lot. Let me tell you, the tenor of the conversations this week? In the locker room at the gym? In the cafe/coffee house? If you thought they were emboldened by their success in 2016, I can tell you that you ain’t seen nothing yet. And it’s not just his base, there’s an anti Democratic Party swell in the general populace from what I can see. There’s a whole lot of young men who think Joker is their hero, and they want to watch the world burn.

And you couldn’t much tell that from anything you read here in the previous month or so. Guilty of Monday morning quarterbacking? Sure. But it isn’t like I haven’t been here saying, “wait just are minute, don’t any of you see this”? Sure, tfg wasn’t responsible for the success of his economy, he rode Barry’s coattails, but RW social media amplified his claim that his was the greatest economy ever was all that you could hear. They don't take the pandemic into account because RW social media told them all it was fake.

And here’s the neat part, somewhere along the line, with the final gasp of local, printed newspapers, the completion of ascension of the 24 hour news channel to dominate the airwaves, social media became where most folks get their news, so it’s all curated.

We all live in bubbles of our own construction.

[LisaL]

17. I say, let them learn the hard way.

Let them see how far their $ will go under Trump, maybe then they will figure it out.

[TheProle]

40. 10 million "they" were "us" in 2020.

[Dem4life1234]

29. We fucking have trouble because the media twists our words and kisses his dumbass!

I'm struggling too but I had sense to not vote for his lying ass.

[TheKentuckian]

33. Nonsense. Chump has only offered inflationary policies.

Then the morons will declare a return to the policies of his early term but cannot identify a damn one because he passed jackapple shit other than his deficit busting tax cut.

They are really weapons grade stupid and ruinously shitty motherfuckers that have not enough sense not to set their own junk on fire but will declare their little personal weenie roast an economic miracle if that Orange piece of shit is free to grift from on high no matter what shit costs because they are stupid, selfish devils.

[oasis]

34. +100,000,000........

[alarimer]

25. I agree with this

Any postmortem of the election has to be honest. We cannot simply cheerlead about how great the campaign was. It was missing something. Lots of us have ideas about what that was and they are probably all correct at some level.

But perhaps the largest problem is the lies that Republicans are allowed to spew and we cannot counteract (such as that inflation was Biden's fault) because you simply cannot counteract lies with the truth. It does not work.

[Ndp5]

56. Persuadable swing voters were deceived

Last edited Sun Nov 10, 2024, 09:18 PM - Edit history (1)

There are a lot of people who don’t follow traditional news but are on social media and voted despite being uninformed. Our news ecosystem is broken and that’s part of the problem.

I think Dems also had trouble counteracting the other side because, among other things, they made a textbook mistake. Read Geoffrey Nunberg’s “Talking Right.”* You can’t repeat your opponent’s points and then argue against them; that just reinforces your opponent’s points. That doesn’t mean the truth stands no chance, but one has to use winning communication strategies.

I don’t think the answer is stifling individual humans’ speech, but billionaires’ super PACs and dark money are poisoning our civic culture and you saw that in the number of misinformed voters in this election.

(*Edited because I mixed up Nunberg’s book with George Lakoff’s “Don’t Think of an Elephant.” But that’s worth reading too. The Nunberg book shows that the project to redirect populist anger from economic elites to cultural elites has been a long-term one.)

[andym]

7. Remember Bill Clinton's line: "I feel your pain" that helped him beat Bush Sr.

Grocery prices which are not included in core CPI have really gone up, as have housing costs due to the Covid era housing speculation.
Kamala addressed both in her plans, BUT they were not the central focus of her campaign. If she focused using Bill Clinton's other line: "It's the economy stupid", and explained that she would have done things differently from Joe by making these her priority she would have won. Trump and Vance especially spend lots of time trying to pin responsibility for the high prices on Harris as part of the Biden-Harris administration.

[krkaufman]

22. 100 days

She couldn’t have altered the mood within the last 100 days, and there’s something to be said that the admin didn’t do enough to use its bully pulpit to address price gouging/profiteering and real estate speculation/hoarding.

[Jk23]

42. The problem is Harris's plans actually cost her votes

The $25,000 for new homeowners is a lot like where governments going to be giving your money to somebody who is you who qualifies under our arbitrary regulations.

Also the price of housing is going to go up because we're getting over 25,000 to buy one.

Whether it's true or not I don't know but I have certainly been reading in places like New York Times in the Atlantic that a lot of our policies turned off Hispanic voters because they came across as government control of the economy.

[kansasobama]

57. What bright ideas do these Hispanic voters have?

They do not want Harris government helping but they also say Trump will bring down prices. How?

Price of housing is going up because economy is good. Maybe they want a recession, lose their jobs, but have affordable homes in a bad economy?

[Prairie Gates]

10. The better response is to have an actual economy-oriented left in this country

We have an identity-oriented left, and we've abandoned the economy. Now, to be fair, identity issues are important and they should be a concern of the left, but we've ceded the economic space to the MAGAs, who have gladly taken it. The added bonus for Republicans is that the identity-oriented left operates in a way that alienates economy-focused voters (of all kinds, as it turns out).

[krkaufman]

21. Honestly sounds like someone in thrall to RW media

… and too much Bill Maher. This also wreaks of blaming Ukraine for the war within its borders. The RW generates and defines the culture war and then blames the left for defending those being dehumanized and attacked.

[Keepthesoulalive]

31. I think it's called republicans

They talk economics but practice identity politics . Don’t say gay, kids are going to school and coming back as the opposite gender, don’t teach black history white children might feel bad and oh my god woke. We are multi cultural many of us support the democrats because we feel we do better with democrats in office as opposed to republicans. Many marginalized people felt Bernie didn’t see them , it seems if he fixed economic inequality everything else would fall into place. Ask killer Mike and Joe Rogan. If the democrats become the party of supposed disaffected white boys , the future of the party will be bleak. It appears the teamsters voted for trump. One more thing a lot of poor whites don’t bother to vote . They do not see or understand why they should vote.

[Jk23]

43. The identity politics is like the soft on crime policies

It appeals to certain portion of the base but it's an absolute disaster in the general election honestly we need to dump it.

[NickB79]

11. Same with gas. We're pumping record amounts of oil

But the Trumpers constantly said Biden was restricting oil production.

[LuvLoogie]

14. I don't vote based on the economy.

My roof is leeking in 5 places. I just want a compassionate society for my teenage daughters to grow in.

[BannonsLiver]

16. Many people here think it was just racism and misogyny.

While that no doubt played a significant role it’s just an excuse to avoid any kind of reflection etc. that might be uncomfortable.

[TheKentuckian]

35. Let's reflect. No excuses, just keep in mind some offered won't be tolerated either.

If you want to cement the tired economic anxiety stuff you better do it quickly because the Chumpers will fuck it up for you no later than January 23nd and will be overflowing with economic confidence and are already feeling much better, I assure you.

[BannonsLiver]

38. So there's another vote for "we did everything perfectly"

No notes. Nothing to learn.

[krkaufman]

19. And there's one problem...

and explain that Biden and the Democrats want to go after companies that are price gouging

They didn’t. Where was the price gouging/pandemic profiteering Presidential commission? Why wasn’t anything added to the Inflation Reduction Act to treat price gouging and profiteering during the continued post-pandemic crisis period as a crime?

Smacks of failing to hold the financiers accountable following the 2008 crash, with similar results.

[alarimer]

23. They see things incorrectly, though.

EVERY single thing the Republicans tell the public are LIES. There is no crime wave by immigrants (they are more law-abiding than we are), inflation is not caused by any BIden policy (it is caused by corporate greed).

But you are right, messaging should be better. I don't know how you counteract the firehouse of flat-out LIES, though.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

24. What makes you think people here aren't experiencing what you describe?

[doc03]

30. Saying we are going to crack down on price

gouging, just sounds like the bullshit we hear every year and it never happens.

[TheKentuckian]

36. It KILLS the Chump prescriptions of tariffs and tax cuts for those richer than gods.

Her never happening policies would result in lower prices than his promises being fulfilled so if by any chance hers were enacted then Katy bar the door, we are cooking with gas.

Tell us about Chump's great plans, I'll hang up and listen.

[chowder66]

51. If by bubble you mean not voting for a rapist then

Count me as being proud to be in THAT bubble.

[oldmanlynn]

52. I get it. Your angry. Disappointed

But you dont have to put their shoes on to see if maybe we should ban abortion or maybe we should be mad at immigrants.

Everything that is making you feel angry about losing is because of massive amounts of propaganda. There is no shame in being on the side of righteousness and caring with compassion.

Dont let misinformation make you think otherwise

[spooky3]

54. I heard Harris articulate your third paragraph, in multiple speeches.

So, I don’t think that is the solution.

I posted a link in another thread to a graphic showing that voters who believed factually incorrect info about inflation and three other topics were more likely to vote for Trump than were people who knew the facts. This is just one example suggesting that misinformation was a huge problem in this campaign.

[kansasobama]

55. Yes but Trump cannot bring down grocery prices

This is a market economy. Your point on tariffs is good

[radical noodle]

60. We're not in a bubble, they are

And the bubble they're in is RW media up to their eyeballs. They have absolutely no clue what's going on in the real world. I've been asking trump voters that I see on Facebook questions about why they voted for him. When I ask them specific questions, they tell me that it was Antifa that stormed the Capitol, that women aren't having trouble getting health care, that there are no total abortion bans, that the documents at Mar-a-lago were planted there by trump's enemies. Some also believe that Kamala was a prostitute when she was younger, that she got her jobs in California by sleeping around, that Biden has a body double and he is really blithering somewhere in a rest home while the body double pretends to be him. I won't go on but you get the picture.

THEY are in a bubble and not likely to come out of it unless something is done about the propaganda that spews every day from the media they watch like they're hypnotized.

We need to stop blaming Kamala's campaign or our work for the working class or any other freaking thing and focus on how to combat this onslaught of lies.

[Ndp5]

64. Take away the economic anxiety and...

… some of them will let go of the right-wing talking points.

But I agree others of them are just beyond help and enjoy arguing. What’s that old Molly Ivins saying? Never mud-wrestle a pig — you just get dirty and the pig enjoys it. I think she said it about Limbaugh? Or Newt? One of those guys.

I don’t think Americans can ban Rupert Murdoch from owning news outlets in this country. So it’s a matter of strengthening the alternatives to Fox and The Federalist and Joe Rogan (I know, Rogan plays at being nonpartisan, but he’s a tool of libertarian misogynists).

[radical noodle]

65. No, of course we can't ban Fox or anything else

What we need to do is learn to combat it in some meaningful way. Just sitting back and pretending that somehow they'll hear reality over the lies is delusional. This is only going to get worse.

BTW, welcome to DU!

[bigtree]

62. why do we need to hear what Trump was selling in his campaign and republicans were eating up like dog food?

..which fucking lie or threat to Americans, or criminal act of theirs are we supposed to learn from?

[JCMach1]

63. Those explanations will do nothing when you are competing

Against social media, highly target and designed to get them to sit on their couch.

It's at least twice as easy as getting someone to vote.

The only thing that mattered is we didn't counter program the voter suppression with our own targeted at MAGAs.and potential constituencies.

We unilaterally disarmed, or didn't understand the order of battle this time.

We ran an amazing race for say, 2000... Not 2024.

[Abolishinist]

66. I live in a bubble.