The fight against authoritarianism won't be won in D.C.

Yes - the Democrats need to turn their focus from cobbling together a bunch of small groups on social issues and focus on economic issues, the wealth disparity in the country, the amount of money and influence that the ultra-wealthy have and protect workers, their spouses and families from predatory behaviors.

The Democrats have not done that for some time because they had their own alliances with the billionaires and many of the leaders in the party were wealthy themselves.

They also do not do that by parroting classic socialist tropes - but by getting into specific examples, for example healthcare protections that will help LARGE groups of people. Not some teenager that wants a sex change, but point out things like limits on deductibles - increased federal holidays with pressure on companies to give more time off. Limits on companies getting out of providing healthcare.

If the Democrats appeal to these issues impacting 80% of the country, they will get lots of votes -- the Democrats can take positions on social issues (although I suggest they moderate some of them) but their focus needs to be on improving the lives of people across the 80% spectrum, especially financially and with consumer protections.

 

It is simple.

Americans are not interested in comparing their situation with the situation in the rest of the world. The expectations in the USA are higher than that, so the comparison is how is the USA overall right now compared to 2016 or 2008. Americans have long been the most insulated country in the world - so saying "well we have it the best in the world" doesn't mean jack **** to the family living in a 3–4-bedroom home and have seen their grocery costs and insurance costs go up 25% since pre shutdown. It is the same reason that I said when COVID started, that whomever shuts down everything is going to get the blame, people will not think about the lives saved long term - only the inconveniences.

As for democracy being under-attack, the democrats have said it for so long now that they are the kid who cried wolf. Now - short of there being very tangible negative consequences for everyday Americans, all of these power grabs and abuses will be tolerated. America has never had anything terrible happen internally from internally since the Civil War. So no, there isn't going to be a lot of response.

The Democrats really no longer understand human nature -

 

Leftists have never advocating for healthcare in the manner of "teenagers need sex changes for free"


It goes like this.

Step 1. Trans people exist

STEP 2. Wealthy people need to find scapegoats and do targeting campaigns finding esoteric academic literature and very fringe cases and spam them on platforms they have stakes or ownership in.

Step 3 . Leftists be like "why you picking on them".

Step 4. Neo-liberals lose an election and blame leftists for trying to defend a group that is getting picked on


Democrats don't advocate healthcare policy by injecting teams activism.

They instead tell people that their healthcare law they passed that forced people to purchase private health insurance or pay a fine is their shining piece of legislation of the 21st century.

 

not only have Democrats talked about democracy being under attack for so long that it can be seen as boy who cried wolf by many, they are often seen being buddy-buddy with the very same people they say are destroying democracy and hardly put up any fight

How are people supposed to take them seriously?

Democrats just look so weak

 

Democrats certainly did not handle the trans situation well in the USA - and more importantly failed to control the focus being on helping the larger group of people in this country. A large part of the reason that the Democrats lost is that a lot of Americans did not believe that the Democrats were considering their needs enough, and that includes why some historically democratic voter groups did not show up to vote or voted for Trump.

The focus of the party - the message of the party and the concern of the party needs to be on worker rights, protecting the rights of Americans making under $250,000 a year - pushing some "layups" that are common sense and doing a better job of marketing and understanding the American people.

 

Democrats definitely didn't handle the trans situation well by throwing them under the bus.

When you are a neo-liberal party that also supports "free markets" you will blame trans people for you election loss and throw them under the bus rather than self reflect about mistakes like walking around with the Cheney's or buying into right wing framing about "border security"

The neo-liberal establishment does not have the will power to form counter narratives so they latch on to right wing narratives and just add on "but we aren't as cruel" to the end.

 

Well yeah Biden and then Harris lost the 2024 election. So from a messaging strategy of course it didn’t work.

That being said what I’m getting at is the issue though is at the heart of what unites the coalition that can win… even though on the surface a lot of Americans gloss over the Bidenesque argument as too procedural or academic or whatever. However I do firmly believe it’s still the fundamental issue that ends up impacting our ability to make changes with the issues people say they actually care about.

So blame Biden and Democrats all we want on their poor messaging but we as citizens still can look at the population and think that they still should know better.

 

The population is overworked and still struggling to pay rent. They don't have time to pay attention.

Hence why you blame leaders not overworked laborers.

 

They are too busy to understand that electing criminals promising to be a dictator is bad and to know that there are literally no examples of thriving economies for the middle class in the world where there is a corrupt autocrat in power??

Again not making excuses for Bidens inability to literally put two words together or Kamala’s ability to recover with an impactful campaign but at what point do we expect maybe a smidge of responsibility and accountability?

 

u acknowledge that it didn’t work from a messaging standpoint, but the economic question u asked was basically the same thing Biden and Kamala did

I genuinely don’t think enough people care about the Democracy stuff…I do think a substantive economic platform could bring together a winning coalition, but it won’t matter if the Democratic messaging remains garbage

Dems might as well stop spending so much money on political consultants, and start spending a lot more money on marketing consultants and building a presence on social media…I can be watching a random movie review on YouTube, and still get a Prager U or some other right wing ad

 

Yes they are literally are too busy to judge what political leader is a criminal or not.

We have to remove ourselves from our political junky minds.

Imagine how easy it is for someone with little political education doing 50 hours of labor a week and rearing children to get sucked into a social media algorithm that convinced them that Trump is better for Gaza.

 

Democrats never focused on trans rights. That was never a thing.

When Democrat establishment do social justice politics isn't through advocacy. It's through telling people that a black woman as president solves racism. Biden saying he'll only consider a black woman for a SCOTUS nomination is how they do social justice politics.

 

I don’t disagree. Obviously Kamala lost and Trump won on a “dictator on day 1/free Jan 6 terrorists” message.

Maybe you can get better at messaging on things you mentioned and that makes a difference on the edges enough to win on the margins, but still pretty troubling that it’s even close.

My point though is that at least from my viewpoint (and not saying it should be the message moving forward) it is a democratic system that elevates all of these issues to be solved and if you want to find all of the people that can fit into your coalition to win, it is people who are not into right wing autocracy. All of the other issues (see single payer vs public option debates as an example) get the coalition squabbling and split over nonsense that will never be solved anyways if we allowed Trump to win in 2024 and he destroyed our democratic system that allows for those debates.

So again… not talking about political campaign messaging…. I’m talking about the reality behind what got us where we are.

 

What got us here is that Democrat leaders have the same financial interests and incentives as people like Musk and Bezos.

It's really that simple.

The GOP and DNC are united in things like turning foreign poorer nations into resources and labor extraction centers. The GOP is just more brazen and frank about it. Neo-liberalism is the reason for the modern Democrat party.

 

Any change is going to have to come from within the Republican party. That's a frightening proposition because, if they didn't change after the attempted coup on Jan 6th (they actually doubled down) then what other event could possibly bring them back to their senses?

Republicans are only interested in winning. They don't care how they do it, as long as they do it. If it takes handing the country over to a dictator on a silver platter, so be it. As long as they get what they want in the process.

Republican voters don't care about anything except STICKIN' IT TO THE LIBS. That's obvious, just look at some of the posters around here.

Democrats are totally irrelevant right now because they stayed home on the most important election day of our lifetime. Protest all you want but it doesn't mean anything if you didn't vote.

 

We disagree - the focus and discussions should have been and should be on economic issues and social issues that impact large groups of people.

Joe Biden and his administration focused a great deal on LGBTQ+ and not enough on economic issues- and making claims like "this is the best economy" did not help matters.

There are ways to be supportive and not lose or alienate large parts of your voting bloc

 

Ya man that isn't reality.

When it comes to messaging from Democrats, the focus was protection of institutions, institutions that have eroded trust to majority of Americans over the decades.

A media figure asking a direct question about some obscure trans policy and a Democrat politician answering is not focusing on trans issues.

Leave out the part where they focused on trans issues and keep the part where they tried to gaslight struggling Americans about a an improving economy when diagnosing. It just takes the later for low turnout.

The GOP just stepped in and told Americans "ya you are struggling " and because of that had the ability to create a narrative of why.

That's it. It's that simple. One side had no shame in scapegoating powerless groups of humans and therefore acknowledged the suffering of Americans and the other side said "but our institutions!".

Trans people were just a scapegoat.

And this type of strategy by the Democrats to not address people's angers is a product of the core of the Democrat party still beholden to capital interests. They can't turn their executive buddies into villains.

 

I didn't see "congress vacates in favor of personalist autocracy run by demented gangster in conjunction with a drug-using neo nazi billionaire " as coming anytime soon either - but here we are.