DAMMIT, you're all overthinking it.

[usonian]

I see many posts about how Dems used the wrong messaging, how we can't believe that so many people fell for Trump. Well, let me make it clear and simple.

With pictures in fact.

Why?
1. THEY VOTED FOR RACISM AND MISOGYNY, USING EGGS OR WHATEVER AS A COVER.
In the past it was Willie Horton, it was Joe Biden's age, any excuse to cover up their racism.
Did age really matter?
Without racism and misogyny there IS NO Republican party since Lee Atwater and the "Southern Strategy"


Why the hell else would slobs just squeaking by vote for the rich?

How?
2. THEY FELL FOR THE YEARS AND. YEARS OF "24 BY 7 BY 365" LIES.



And for what?
3. FOR THE LOVE OF THE GOD OF MONEY


Churches have sold out. There IS NO moral fiber in "Team Scum"


THEY WILL DO ALL THEY CAN TO GET YOUR EYES OFF THE PRIZE.
Look at my thumb, Gee, you're dumb.

Clickbait can wait.
Our cause is great.

Unite and fight.

[Hekate]

1. Thanks -- you said it with pictures

[ananda]

2. Excellent OP. Totally agree!

That sums it up well.

[MustLoveBeagles]

3. K&R

[malaise]

4. Nailed it

Rec

[DJ Synikus Makisimus]

5. Because what we need is more of the same?

Look where that's gotten us.

Oh, and every time someone's told me I'm "overthinking," it's a demand that I be obedient. Not gonna happen.

[BOSSHOG]

6. I'm with You My Friend

I heard the Dems message, liked what I heard, voted for it.

I heard trumps message, hated what I heard, voted against it.

Pretty simple to me.

And your pictures are spot on. Banks are Churches. No greater truth.

[JMCKUSICK]

20. Were you ever undecided during this election?

Maybe I'll say it like this.
I feel like Democrats ran campaigns designed for and by MSNBC watchers, in other words, informed voters. So of course you agreed with their message. So did I. But I was in the bag already.

How many times have you heard one constituency or another point blank tell Democrats that you only show up during election season and ignore us the rest of the time?
When is that going to get decision makers to a different place? To a different conversation?
For me, there's one simple solution, not a fifty state strategy, but a 3143 county strategy.
Fayette County Dems Facebook page has exactly 4 posts since Nov 8.
4.
I've been here since Nov 2020 and registered to vote here in 2021 and have never received a call, text, invitation, piece of mail. Nothing.
A poster stated that he/she felt that most rural voters were shit.
I think by and large, the Democratic party agrees in action as it sure seems that no-one is trying to get these voters back or even offer an alternative to the many disaffected R's that have been completely ignored in the sense that the only outreach they may have gotten is a commercial.
I remember hearing that Candidate Kamala Harris gave 25 million dollars to help down ballot candidates and that was a big deal cause no one was doing it before.
Most of the campaigning is concentrated in a few counties in a few states. There are 1958 non-metro counties in the USA. According to Axios, Dems spent 4.5 Billion dollars in the 2024 election. Are you telling me there's not enough money to set up real offices with full time employees doing voter outreach FULL TIME all the time?
I'll close with this simple question:
When was the last time Dems engaged in a listening tour of the USA?

[BOSSHOG]

25. Never Undecided

We all have known for decades who and what trump is and was. I spent 30 years in uniform supporting and defending our constitution. The Republican Party led by a convicted felon is chock full of domestic enemies of said document. Tell me how horrible Dems are and I’ll still vote to put them in charge of our constitutional liberties.

I suggest you use your energy to get rid of the electoral college. Designed by slave owners to protect the rights of slave owners. That’s why republicans cherish it. That is why campaigning in a few places may seem to some like a strategy. I was flooded with texts daily for months. They are slowly trickling to an end.

We can point out failures of the campaign. I voted for good over evil.

[muriel_volestrangler]

28. "get rid of the electoral college" is a pipe dream when the party can't take Congress and the presidency

It's not a constructive thing to aim at, right now.

[BOSSHOG]

30. So when do we aim?

After how many more trumps lose the popular vote and get elected? In its early stages D-Day was a pipe dream. The electoral college is a cancer on democracy. After ours dies it will be too late to dream.

[muriel_volestrangler]

32. When there's a persuadable number of people in state legislatures and in Congress

Build up from places you can win, instead of saying "we should concentrate on the most difficult thing to achieve of all". If you want to continue the D-Day analogy, WW2 was not won by saying "only D-Day counts, concentrate on that and don't worry about anything else".

[BOSSHOG]

33. Oh My

Who said only DDay Counts? Thank Goodness we did concentrate on DDay which was the beginning of the end of WWII. The Anything Else happened long before DDAY and was carefully planned for.

You have a fine DU Day.

[muriel_volestrangler]

36. No one said that; that's the point. You suggested a DUer's effort should just be getting rid of the electoral college

and brought up D Day as a big thing to aim for. The point is that people didn't just plan for D Day. They did all sorts of other things too, and you know very well the "Anything Else" did not just "happen long before D Day". There was the war in the Pacific, which lasted longer than in Europe; there was the invasion of Italy, which similarly went on long after D Day. There was the bombing of Germany, and so on.

Telling people in WW2 to "just plan for the invasion of France" would have been a bad idea. Telling people now to just work for the abolition of the electoral college is a bad idea.

[DENVERPOPS]

41. Totally agree Muriel

I recall, in 8th grade speech class, we had to have "debates" on different topics. One was, should the Electoral College be abandoned.......

and that was in 1962.....................

[calimary]

43. But it STILL needs to be done. Somehow. And at some point.

And we should be building toward that goal RIGHT NOW.

[JMCKUSICK]

34. As did I and always will vote for the good

[travelingthrulife]

31. You must have missed all the outreach done by Harris.

She didn't come to your house?

[JMCKUSICK]

35. Not sure if that was snark

The party needs to stop trying around election time and build a lasting infrastructure. Instead of running non-stop ads with that money, build from the ground up.
A great restaurant gains it's loyal customers one experience at at time. One of the best meals I've ever eaten was at Mike Shannon's Steakhouse in St. Louis, Mo in 1989. I recommended it to anyone who cared to listen for almost 30 years until he retired and closed it.
I was visiting the area and plucked it out the yellow pages and my family walked in at 9pm and they treated us like royalty even though we were all in jeans and t-shirts. Everything was perfect, the bread fresh, the lettuce on my salad ice cold, the steak a perfect MR. The four of us were the equivalent of rural voters that Dems have pretty much abandoned. Mike Shannon's treated us like we'd been going there for years.
Dems decided we weren't worth the investment a long long time ago and you can tell.
The Entire Rural Map of America is deep red.
As long as people keep blaming voters and refusing to look in the mirror, this will only get worse.
Maybe my best analogy would be the Miami Dolphins.
They won Super Bowls in 72 and 73. Since the early 80's to today with some lean years built in, (sound familiar?) they have fielded very competitive teams that were exciting to watch but couldn't win the super bowl again.
When are we going to remember that winning teams win because of what they do, not because they're "right" on paper?

[Quiet Em]

7. Post of the day!

Well done.

[Auggie]

8. Bookmarked ...

that first meme:

[usonian]

12. Share. I got them all from the internet.

I had to copy some to image hosts because many URL's won't render here.
Some minor edits only.

[LoisB]

9. I agree.

[Dem4life1970]

10. Well said. I agree 💯.

[Wild blueberry]

11. Great post!

Unite and fight.
With you. All of us.
Thank you.

[patphil]

13. Well said, thank you.

[Jack Valentino]

14. GOSH, did THAT many 'racists' vote to give Obama the overwhelming victories

which he achieved ????

Because if everyone who voted for Trump is a racist,
then a huge shitload of 'racists' voted for Barack Obama...


It's an over-simplification.

YES, many if not most members of the Republican party have racist tendencies---
but nearly a third of all registered voters now claim to be independent.

Lots of voters who voted for Barack Obama also voted for Donald Trump--- sadly--
but I presume that most of those were never 'loyal Democrats'.

Those who did had hurt feelings over high prices, IMHO-
and yes, a number of them couldn't get over the great big BLACK WOMAN hill...

but to define every Trump voter as a racist is a mistake, it is wrong,
it is not even accurate,
and it is counter-productive for this party moving forward.

(Personally, I think we lost the election on party base turnout,
and the numbers compared to 2020 back that up---

and in fact, we lost this election by a relative "eye-lash" )


Our party does not need to go "MAGA" by any stretch of the imagination---
but our emphasis should be on economics, and the workers who make this economy work,
and historically have been the backbone of this party, until the Trump era--
Trump has only managed to capture some of those, because he could 'talk the talk'--
but he has NEVER walked the walk--- and after January 20th,
he will be responsible for the high cost of eggs and Doritos!

[TRHST82]

46. It's more about personality and culture than economics.

The party needs a stronger media ecosystem as well as crafty, ruthless politicians to energize the base and win over low-info independents.

[onecaliberal]

15. No question. Fuck the patriarchy.

[Iggo]

16. THIS: "They got you fighting a culture war to stop you from fighting a class war."

I keep telling my malinformed coworkers, “If you’re trying to figure out where your money went, stop looking at the people who don’t have any, and start looking at the people who have more and more.”

[JMCKUSICK]

17. I disagree for one main reason

Dems had 3 great Presidents in the last 32 years. All three accomplished great things, from being the only one to operate on a surplus, to the other two getting us out of economic catastrophes, along with great moral leadership from last two and finally amazing legislative achievements from the second and third.
Each R President destroyed our economy.
Somehow, they're the ones that keep getting elected following D's successful presidencies but we don't have a messaging problem.
50 jobs D's created for every 1 R's created. When former President Bill Clinton uttered those FACTS during his convention speech, I thought no way. If that were really true, every Dem would be shouting it from the rooftops.
I live an hour from St Louis and was inundated with ads day and night and yet that startling fact was never on any of those ads.
Candidate Kunce, ran F'ing ads about standing up to protect the border " no matter who's President."
The Border was the issue inn middle America according to his advisers.
50-1
Why would anyone run on anything else when the economy was supposedly the main concern of every day Americans?

I know it's not that simple, but we need to stop running focus group designed campaigns and start talking straight to people.
Based on the success of our Presidents, how did a single R get elected?

[usonian]

22. start talking straight to people.

You've got it right there.

I promised to write up ways to coordinate efforts, and the first draft took me most of the evening.
Posting in Activist HQ and will update.

That said, I do stand behind the idea that any old issue that registers with the yokels (it could have been (and was for a while) "banning gas stoves) and was variously eating pets or something to do with cat litter. They LITERALLY throw shit against the wall to see what sticks.

WAY MORE things went down in price while eggs went up, but "IT WAS THE EGGS". The power of propaganda to take an outlier and make it seem the norm. Do you remember Willie Horton? How many were there? And her emails?

Dems won't go there for obvious reasons. We are not scumbags, nor should we be.

Hate just shifts from one target to another, as in cults. I just ran out of space for targets. Immigrants, I might add, but that is a form of racism to me. Each wave was targeted. Italians were "not white"

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/12/opinion/columbus-day-italian-american-racism.html
If paywalled, https://archive.ph/sZKNY

Not to digress, start locally, yes.
How? Let's work that out here if centrally-organized and run efforts are failing.

[JMCKUSICK]

23. You're not wrong either

In the simplest description, it seemed like the only voters that mattered were swing staters.

[pansypoo53219]

18. economy + the moron is on my teevee. stupid won. he is the moron whisperer.

[soldierant]

19. Ran across this quote and threw the image together

[JMCKUSICK]

21. I love it

[Initech]

24. They have us fighting a culture war so we don't discover who the real bad guys are.

But this recent murder has us figuring out who the real bad guys are.

[doc03]

26. What do we do, I think we should go all out class warfare. nt

[viva la]

27. That's something that needs to be said over and over.

It is hard to debate/discuss/defeat an opponent who constantly-- constantly-- lies and cheats... especially when the media holds you to a standard of scrupulous accuracy and lets the other lie with impunity.

[Lonestarblue]

29. Point #2 is the one causing much of the damage.

We are governed now by big corporations, not democratic institutions. Corporations were known entities (though much smaller) to our nation’s Founders, yet not once is the word “corporation” mentioned in the Constitution. It is politicians and the courts that have given them so much power, not the Constitution.

[lindysalsagal]

37. Not sure how, but we need more of the stupid votes.

Really no idea how.

[usonian]

39. A few more union member votes might have done it.

So many bought lie #2 above. (and others, there were so many lies)

[OMGWTF]

38. Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank; give a man a bank and he can rob the world.

[Raven123]

40. EXACTLY! It's one big bait and switch.

[Jit423]

42. Truer, more sanguine words were never written.

And people only pretend they didn't know this.

[FoxNewsSucks]

44. Damn right

[Clouds Passing]

45. Thank you Usonian for explaining the real problem so simply and accurately.

[Aussie105]

47. Nothing unusual.

Republicans destroy, Dems build.

Dems building stuff is largely invisible and boring, destroying stuff is more fun, so people vote for Repugs.
Nothing personal, it is just the way people are.

Then they see the destruction, and go vote for a Dem government next time.

Just the Circle of (political) Life.

[usonian]

48. Agree. Destruction is easy. Creation is harder.

Life depends that creation exceedi destruction.
But it shouldn’t be such a tight squeeze.

I posted elsewhere about Vasily Arkhipov.

On October 27, 1962 Vasily Arkhipov, a senior Soviet Naval officer prevented a Russian submarine from launching a nuclear torpedo against ships of the United States Navy at a crucial moment in the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. And averted nuclear war.