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To paraphrase Rumsfeld: "You go to elections with the populace you have." If the Dems don't/won't/can't account for it by changing their messaging, devising be

To paraphrase Rumsfeld: "You go to elections with the populace you have." If the Dems don't/won't/can't account for it by changing their messaging, devising better or more readily understood platforms, then it is on them. You have to meet people where they are, not where you think they should be.

crazygringo 2y ago
But the Dems did. They did everything you're asking for. Their messaging was totally different from 2020, everything was clear and understandable. That's what's so sad. The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution. The Republican campaign was a disaster in execution, but they won anyway. The message of this election isn't that Democrats did something wrong. It's that they did everything right, and a majority of voters simply still don't care. They don't think the insurrection mattered, and they think Trump will fix inflation because he's a strong businessman. And they don't listen to anyone who says otherwise. I don't see anything the Dems could have done about that. You can't force people to listen, you can't force people to understand economics. That's not something campaigns can do.
- si1entstill 2y ago
  Its hard to say what happened internally, but Biden could have stepped down in time for them to have a proper primary.
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  The democrats told people who are suffering 'the economy is great, this is what great looks like to us'. How is that a winning message with people suffering?
- drawkward 2y ago
  >The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution. Objectively untrue; Harris lost. >You can't force people to understand economics You're correct. So you have to reformat the message. The Dems failed to do this. I can tell you have never been a teacher: teachers are forever having to change their messaging because different people understand in different ways.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    This teaching thing is a terrible comparison. As a teacher you have a captive audience with a (somewhat) agreed upon goal: the student(s) are going to learn something. This is absolutely not the model for candidate<->electorate relationships in any way. If anything, the elector(ate) wants the candidate to simply tell them things that confirm what they think they already know.
    - aydyn 2y ago
      Are you serious? The entire nation was fully captivated this election cycle.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        Captivated is not captive, and even if it is etymologically adjacent, most of the electorate did not expect to have to learn about stuff like econometrics ...
        aydyn 2y ago
        Then I meant captivated AND captive. Why are you being pedantic?
        PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        How was anybody captive? I didn't see a single campaign ad or watch a single rally, except for a couple of brief excerpts that I chose to. You're missing the critical point: it's not about captive, it's just that this helps with the critical point, which is an expectation of learning taking place, rather than worldviews/prejudices confirmed.
        aydyn 2y ago
        I see, I missed that nuance in your point.
- indigo0086 2y ago
  > The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution. She had 0 counties where she outperformed 2020 biden.
- vladimirralev 2y ago
  > can't force people to understand economics People were actively deceived along the way. Do you remember that intially Yellen (and Powell together) called the inflation "not broad enough to be considered inflation", then called it "transitory" and justified printing so much money all the way into 7% inflation. At 3% PCE, Powell said everybody to relax, that nobody should doubt they will use every tool they have to fight inflation. Bostic at 2% PCE said he is not worried, he welcomes higher inflation, approaching 4% inflation would be cause of concern and would require action. Action that never came. They just lied and misinformed the people for years. People listened to this, it was all over the media. It's wrong to suggest people didn't listen. Do you remember after 5 years of review they came up with symmetric inflation target of 2% and they instantly abandoned it because that would require lower inflation for decades to come. And nobody in media questioned it, they said people "misunderstood the target". They don't want to educate people about the economy, they want people as stupid as possible.
  - jkubicek 2y ago
    Your criticism of Yellen and Powell's messaging is valid, but I have a very hard time believing that had any impact on this election. The US fared better than almost industrialized nation post-pandemic. Our inflation is currently under control, unemployment is low, wages are rising. I have a hard time believing that anyone could have handled a hard situation better than the Biden administration. Meanwhile, Trump's stated economic policies (no income tax, make it up with tariffs) are unequivocally bad ideas that would make the prices paid by most Americans far far far higher than what they're paying today. The overlap between "People who know Jerome Powell and think he did a bad job" and "People who think Trump's fiscal platform will be good for the average American" is close to zero people.
    - drawkward 2y ago
      >Trump's stated economic policies (no income tax, make it up with tariffs) are unequivocally bad ideas... ...but they are very good memes, as in units of information that compete for attention. I think we are now, post-2016, in the social media era of elections, where policy content matters far less than policy vibes.
- burningChrome 2y ago
  >> Their messaging was totally different from 2020, everything was clear and understandable. But when you have the VP is running for the office that her boss has just occupied for the last four years, the whole point of the VP running is to continue what they started - not suddenly say you would do a bunch of stuff differently when YOU were riding shotgun on the poor economy, inflation, immigration and crime. Harris was asked repeatedly what she would do differently and said "nothing". She was a horrific candidate. She couldn't speak to voters without a teleprompter, she was a cringe worthy public speaker, she was never on message and always reverted back to, "Well Donald Trump did this and that." which never connected with voters. She also had a front row seat to Biden's mental decline and repeatedly went in front of the media and defended him to the very end when he was removed and she replaced him. Harris was the same person who got zero financial support from democrats during the 2020 campaign, had to drop out and didn't even make the primaries because of the lack of support from voters. If you were paying attention, this was completely predictable. By contrast, Trump was on message, had a plan, left all of his divisive rhetoric at the door. He connected with voters, reached across the aisle and formed a coalition with RFK, Gabbards and Musk. He went on podcasts to reach younger voters. Anybody else see Vance on the Theo Von podcast? He campaigned relentlessly in the key battleground states, he did tons of impromptu interviews. There's a reason he's projected to get 300+ electoral votes AND win the popular vote and nothing in your comment would seem to understand why. Take a look at the markets today. Take a look at the price of Bitcoin right now. The country wanted significant change and they voted that way.
  - msie 2y ago
    Trump was on message, had a plan, left all of his divisive rhetoric at the door - Hardly.
  - michaelmrose 2y ago
    "By contrast, Trump was on message, had a plan, left all of his divisive rhetoric at the door." This is when I knew you were screwing with us.
  - nrdvana 2y ago
    I think every single thing Trump did during the last 3 months hurt his campaign, actually. It had just already gotten to the point where nothing he said mattered, because people were choosing him based on their experience in 2019
- yumraj 2y ago
  > That's what's so sad. The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution. The Republican campaign was a disaster in execution, but they won anyway. So, put differently, you're saying that Democrats did not have Product-Market fit, while the Republicans did. Yes?
- EricDeb 2y ago
  Dems are not in the venues where people are talking about these issues. I see tons of right wing youtubers, tiktokers, podcasts, and there is just far less dems in these environments or willing to go to these places. You need more Bernie types (not necessarily his politics exactly) but the willingness to go these places repeatedly and talk about ideas.
  - Lord-Jobo 2y ago
    Buttigieg did this literally nonstop on behalf of Biden and Harris. Did nothing.
    - EricDeb 2y ago
      The problem is he's not harris and he just started doing this like a month ago.
- sleepybrett 2y ago
  > The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution. polls had 'country on the wrong path' at ~75% Kamala Harris wouldn't break from biden on anything, even when she was begged by the media to do it several times over several days. That's just one example of dumb shit the dnc/kamala did.
dclowd9901 2y ago
There is no competing message to be had. The people believe that whoever is in charge is bad because their lives are terrible. They just ping pong between parties without caring to investigate policies. You can’t appeal to voters like this apart from not being the person in charge.
- nightski 2y ago
  The election was close. I don't believe this at all. It's simply being tone deaf. Not to mention the strong democrat support in the mid terms (when inflation was arguably worse).
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    Just a guess but midterms probably emphasised the educated vote which seems to have swung Dem recently.
    - vundercind 2y ago
      The college educated have been trending strongly toward Democratic affiliation since some time between ‘04 and ‘11, depending on your source.
  - dclowd9901 2y ago
    The election wasn’t close at all? I’m not sure what you mean by this. Trump won both the popular and handily won the EC. I’m willing to put money down right now that the next president is a Democrat. Not by virtue of messaging or campaigning but just because people will still be suffering and the dems will be the opposite of the status quo.
xnx 2y ago
It's hard to conceive of a change in the Democratic strategy that would have gained more votes without losing others. In contrast, there is seemingly nothing that Trump could say that would lose him support. Trump had a very high "floor" that he could not fall below. Democratic voters are fickle and would just as soon stay home or vote third party as a protest vote.
vundercind 2y ago
You can manufacture a favorable electorate. Republicans have been extensively working on that far harder than the Dems have since some time around Goldwater and the last great re-alignment, and it kicked into overdrive in the 80s. They pushed for loosening rules around mass media so they could do it better, and they succeeded. This current re-alignment of their party is an outcome of that “farming” they did over decades growing out of control of the party leadership post-Citizens United and the huge shake-up in campaign spending that brought in. This observation admittedly provides little actionable for democrats in the near-term. But one strategy that demonstrably works is picking demographics and pushing media at them that creates a demand for solutions to issues they didn’t previously think existed (and need not necessarily exist). Look at e.g. the molding and elevation of the modern pro-life movement for an early example, or at their entire current platform, very nearly, for a bunch more-recent ones.
JeremyNT 2y ago
Trump's a pretty singular personality. He floods the zone with bullshit and denigrates vast swathes of the electorate. His insane ramblings are just considered by his adherents to be part of his allure and mystique. The American people can't seem to get enough of it, presumably because they so strongly identify with his character. I have no love for Democrats but it's unclear to me that there's really anything they could have done. The common wisdom in the past had been that Trump is some kind of liability for Republicans, but at every turn he has been underestimated and I question that assumption. To me Trump looks like a true master of his craft, and there is no line of carefully triangulated messaging that will resonate more with typical Americans than his stream of vitriol and lies.
- theonething 2y ago
  > it's unclear to me that there's really anything they could have done Don't choose such a unpopular candidate as Kamala. Have a primary instead of appointing someone.
  - dboreham 2y ago
    Unpopular meaning "a woman"?
    - theonething 2y ago
      oh please... identity politics helped lose this election for the Dems bigly. Let's not bring it here. There are a plethora of reasons she's unpopular, she can's string two coherent sentences together without a teleprompter, she cackles at inappropriate times, she won't talk to anyone off the cuff, she doesn't give straight answers on policy questions thus the word salad meme, she fumbles critical questions like what would you do different in the last 3 years, what a terrible answer...
      - JeremyNT 2y ago
        > There are a plethora of reasons she's unpopular, she can's string two coherent sentences together without a teleprompter, she cackles at inappropriate times, she won't talk to anyone off the cuff, she doesn't give straight answers on policy questions thus the word salad meme, she fumbles critical questions like what would you do different in the last 3 years, what a terrible answer... What I think I'm reading here is that you feel like Trump is a better public speaker than Harris. Assuming that this is a genuinely held belief that you have, I suggest that you consider that perhaps this is very subjective.

crazygringo 2y ago

But the Dems did. They did everything you're asking for. Their messaging was totally different from 2020, everything was clear and understandable. That's what's so sad. The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution. The Republican campaign was a disaster in execution, but they won anyway. The message of this election isn't that Democrats did something wrong. It's that they did everything right, and a majority of voters simply still don't care. They don't think the insurrection mattered, and they think Trump will fix inflation because he's a strong businessman. And they don't listen to anyone who says otherwise. I don't see anything the Dems could have done about that. You can't force people to listen, you can't force people to understand economics. That's not something campaigns can do.

si1entstill 2y ago
Its hard to say what happened internally, but Biden could have stepped down in time for them to have a proper primary.
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
The democrats told people who are suffering 'the economy is great, this is what great looks like to us'. How is that a winning message with people suffering?
drawkward 2y ago
>The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution. Objectively untrue; Harris lost. >You can't force people to understand economics You're correct. So you have to reformat the message. The Dems failed to do this. I can tell you have never been a teacher: teachers are forever having to change their messaging because different people understand in different ways.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  This teaching thing is a terrible comparison. As a teacher you have a captive audience with a (somewhat) agreed upon goal: the student(s) are going to learn something. This is absolutely not the model for candidate<->electorate relationships in any way. If anything, the elector(ate) wants the candidate to simply tell them things that confirm what they think they already know.
  - aydyn 2y ago
    Are you serious? The entire nation was fully captivated this election cycle.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
      Captivated is not captive, and even if it is etymologically adjacent, most of the electorate did not expect to have to learn about stuff like econometrics ...
      - aydyn 2y ago
        Then I meant captivated AND captive. Why are you being pedantic?
        PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        How was anybody captive? I didn't see a single campaign ad or watch a single rally, except for a couple of brief excerpts that I chose to. You're missing the critical point: it's not about captive, it's just that this helps with the critical point, which is an expectation of learning taking place, rather than worldviews/prejudices confirmed.
        aydyn 2y ago
        I see, I missed that nuance in your point.
indigo0086 2y ago
> The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution. She had 0 counties where she outperformed 2020 biden.
vladimirralev 2y ago
> can't force people to understand economics People were actively deceived along the way. Do you remember that intially Yellen (and Powell together) called the inflation "not broad enough to be considered inflation", then called it "transitory" and justified printing so much money all the way into 7% inflation. At 3% PCE, Powell said everybody to relax, that nobody should doubt they will use every tool they have to fight inflation. Bostic at 2% PCE said he is not worried, he welcomes higher inflation, approaching 4% inflation would be cause of concern and would require action. Action that never came. They just lied and misinformed the people for years. People listened to this, it was all over the media. It's wrong to suggest people didn't listen. Do you remember after 5 years of review they came up with symmetric inflation target of 2% and they instantly abandoned it because that would require lower inflation for decades to come. And nobody in media questioned it, they said people "misunderstood the target". They don't want to educate people about the economy, they want people as stupid as possible.
- jkubicek 2y ago
  Your criticism of Yellen and Powell's messaging is valid, but I have a very hard time believing that had any impact on this election. The US fared better than almost industrialized nation post-pandemic. Our inflation is currently under control, unemployment is low, wages are rising. I have a hard time believing that anyone could have handled a hard situation better than the Biden administration. Meanwhile, Trump's stated economic policies (no income tax, make it up with tariffs) are unequivocally bad ideas that would make the prices paid by most Americans far far far higher than what they're paying today. The overlap between "People who know Jerome Powell and think he did a bad job" and "People who think Trump's fiscal platform will be good for the average American" is close to zero people.
  - drawkward 2y ago
    >Trump's stated economic policies (no income tax, make it up with tariffs) are unequivocally bad ideas... ...but they are very good memes, as in units of information that compete for attention. I think we are now, post-2016, in the social media era of elections, where policy content matters far less than policy vibes.
burningChrome 2y ago
>> Their messaging was totally different from 2020, everything was clear and understandable. But when you have the VP is running for the office that her boss has just occupied for the last four years, the whole point of the VP running is to continue what they started - not suddenly say you would do a bunch of stuff differently when YOU were riding shotgun on the poor economy, inflation, immigration and crime. Harris was asked repeatedly what she would do differently and said "nothing". She was a horrific candidate. She couldn't speak to voters without a teleprompter, she was a cringe worthy public speaker, she was never on message and always reverted back to, "Well Donald Trump did this and that." which never connected with voters. She also had a front row seat to Biden's mental decline and repeatedly went in front of the media and defended him to the very end when he was removed and she replaced him. Harris was the same person who got zero financial support from democrats during the 2020 campaign, had to drop out and didn't even make the primaries because of the lack of support from voters. If you were paying attention, this was completely predictable. By contrast, Trump was on message, had a plan, left all of his divisive rhetoric at the door. He connected with voters, reached across the aisle and formed a coalition with RFK, Gabbards and Musk. He went on podcasts to reach younger voters. Anybody else see Vance on the Theo Von podcast? He campaigned relentlessly in the key battleground states, he did tons of impromptu interviews. There's a reason he's projected to get 300+ electoral votes AND win the popular vote and nothing in your comment would seem to understand why. Take a look at the markets today. Take a look at the price of Bitcoin right now. The country wanted significant change and they voted that way.
- msie 2y ago
  Trump was on message, had a plan, left all of his divisive rhetoric at the door - Hardly.
- michaelmrose 2y ago
  "By contrast, Trump was on message, had a plan, left all of his divisive rhetoric at the door." This is when I knew you were screwing with us.
- nrdvana 2y ago
  I think every single thing Trump did during the last 3 months hurt his campaign, actually. It had just already gotten to the point where nothing he said mattered, because people were choosing him based on their experience in 2019
yumraj 2y ago
> That's what's so sad. The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution. The Republican campaign was a disaster in execution, but they won anyway. So, put differently, you're saying that Democrats did not have Product-Market fit, while the Republicans did. Yes?
EricDeb 2y ago
Dems are not in the venues where people are talking about these issues. I see tons of right wing youtubers, tiktokers, podcasts, and there is just far less dems in these environments or willing to go to these places. You need more Bernie types (not necessarily his politics exactly) but the willingness to go these places repeatedly and talk about ideas.
- Lord-Jobo 2y ago
  Buttigieg did this literally nonstop on behalf of Biden and Harris. Did nothing.
  - EricDeb 2y ago
    The problem is he's not harris and he just started doing this like a month ago.
sleepybrett 2y ago
> The Democratic campaign was A+ in execution. polls had 'country on the wrong path' at ~75% Kamala Harris wouldn't break from biden on anything, even when she was begged by the media to do it several times over several days. That's just one example of dumb shit the dnc/kamala did.

dclowd9901 2y ago

There is no competing message to be had. The people believe that whoever is in charge is bad because their lives are terrible. They just ping pong between parties without caring to investigate policies. You can’t appeal to voters like this apart from not being the person in charge.

nightski 2y ago
The election was close. I don't believe this at all. It's simply being tone deaf. Not to mention the strong democrat support in the mid terms (when inflation was arguably worse).
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Just a guess but midterms probably emphasised the educated vote which seems to have swung Dem recently.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    The college educated have been trending strongly toward Democratic affiliation since some time between ‘04 and ‘11, depending on your source.
- dclowd9901 2y ago
  The election wasn’t close at all? I’m not sure what you mean by this. Trump won both the popular and handily won the EC. I’m willing to put money down right now that the next president is a Democrat. Not by virtue of messaging or campaigning but just because people will still be suffering and the dems will be the opposite of the status quo.

xnx 2y ago

It's hard to conceive of a change in the Democratic strategy that would have gained more votes without losing others. In contrast, there is seemingly nothing that Trump could say that would lose him support. Trump had a very high "floor" that he could not fall below. Democratic voters are fickle and would just as soon stay home or vote third party as a protest vote.

vundercind 2y ago

You can manufacture a favorable electorate. Republicans have been extensively working on that far harder than the Dems have since some time around Goldwater and the last great re-alignment, and it kicked into overdrive in the 80s. They pushed for loosening rules around mass media so they could do it better, and they succeeded. This current re-alignment of their party is an outcome of that “farming” they did over decades growing out of control of the party leadership post-Citizens United and the huge shake-up in campaign spending that brought in. This observation admittedly provides little actionable for democrats in the near-term. But one strategy that demonstrably works is picking demographics and pushing media at them that creates a demand for solutions to issues they didn’t previously think existed (and need not necessarily exist). Look at e.g. the molding and elevation of the modern pro-life movement for an early example, or at their entire current platform, very nearly, for a bunch more-recent ones.

JeremyNT 2y ago

Trump's a pretty singular personality. He floods the zone with bullshit and denigrates vast swathes of the electorate. His insane ramblings are just considered by his adherents to be part of his allure and mystique. The American people can't seem to get enough of it, presumably because they so strongly identify with his character. I have no love for Democrats but it's unclear to me that there's really anything they could have done. The common wisdom in the past had been that Trump is some kind of liability for Republicans, but at every turn he has been underestimated and I question that assumption. To me Trump looks like a true master of his craft, and there is no line of carefully triangulated messaging that will resonate more with typical Americans than his stream of vitriol and lies.

theonething 2y ago
> it's unclear to me that there's really anything they could have done Don't choose such a unpopular candidate as Kamala. Have a primary instead of appointing someone.
- dboreham 2y ago
  Unpopular meaning "a woman"?
  - theonething 2y ago
    oh please... identity politics helped lose this election for the Dems bigly. Let's not bring it here. There are a plethora of reasons she's unpopular, she can's string two coherent sentences together without a teleprompter, she cackles at inappropriate times, she won't talk to anyone off the cuff, she doesn't give straight answers on policy questions thus the word salad meme, she fumbles critical questions like what would you do different in the last 3 years, what a terrible answer...
    - JeremyNT 2y ago
      > There are a plethora of reasons she's unpopular, she can's string two coherent sentences together without a teleprompter, she cackles at inappropriate times, she won't talk to anyone off the cuff, she doesn't give straight answers on policy questions thus the word salad meme, she fumbles critical questions like what would you do different in the last 3 years, what a terrible answer... What I think I'm reading here is that you feel like Trump is a better public speaker than Harris. Assuming that this is a genuinely held belief that you have, I suggest that you consider that perhaps this is very subjective.