Comment by dclowd9901
1 day ago
I understand the need to frame arguments in an objective and clinical way. At the same time, it's frustrating because it just feels like being so distant emotionally doesn't drive deep enough into the way the current environment shakes so many people to their cores. It's an egregious assault on individual experiences and there's no real way to sugarcoat that.
You can deport illegal immigrants without taking away their dignity and without frightening the ever living shit out of everyone. But this isn't that. The intention is fear.
The intention is to express political dominance. By panicking and responding emotionally, you are feeding the trolls. It is as much an ego trip for the right to act oppressive (within the bounds of "the rules") as it is for the left wing to act oppressed.
If the democratic party is going to win, they need to succinctly and stoically state a handful of memorable counterpoints to appeal to the common man. What we have had for the past decade is a ton of noise from the mainstream media explaining a million reasons why we should oppose Trump. The left wing does not equip it's supporters to argue against the right well.
Trump won in 2016 rattling on about Hillary's emails. Trump didn't give a million reasons for us to oppose Hillary, he had 1. He would have a single canned response and name for each of his opponents. The point is you have to agree on a couple of memorable weak points to attack.
> Trump didn't give a million reasons for us to oppose Hillary, he had 1.
Which 1? Building the wall? Draining the swamp? Locking her up? Making America great again? I may be missing more.
Those are just slogans. But in terms of arguments, I would say he had one major negative argument "Her Emails" and two major positive arguments "Make America Great Again" "Build a Wall".
The most important thing is that these are points that are so simple even an idiot can understand them.
I can't even keep track of all of trump's controversies because they are so numerous and complex. But if I was a democrat I would just stick to one or two points that even moderates can resonate with like the "Epstein Files" or Palantir or the nuclear secrets or something.
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You missed a bunch of other ones.
One my dad reliably latches on to is “they’re going to take your guns”. Trump used this, I’m pretty sure, all three races. Weirdly there were never even moves toward doing this the time he lost. It’s as if this was just bullshit. But, it gets voters fired up (getting people to show up for you is more important than swaying anyone to your side)
Lots of people voted for him this time for overtime and tips being tax-exempt. Some (especially on the overtime thing) have since come to regret it when the fine print didn’t include them, but it got their vote.
He ran on lots of issues. “Build the wall” echos what tons of Republican voters have been saying for decades. Their politicians wouldn’t do it—hell, Trump didn’t, he just half-assed a little bit of it and called it done—because it’s a really bad idea, but he sold people on the notion that he’d get it done, where “it” was something they’d long wanted done.
Many other issues like that, that did get him votes.
They've been using the guns argument since at least Reagan, who passed gun restrictions as governor of California. I know I've heard it my entire life, but I've yet to see anyone even propose such legislation
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Crazy thing is that they are discussing taking guns from trans people.
It's now a cult and they're voting for him not for his policies.
"A republic, if you can keep it" -- Ben Franklin
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> succinctly and stoically state a handful of memorable counterpoints to appeal to the common man
That is how democratic party loose and I suspect people who push for it know exactly that.
Trumo won by being emotional, entertainingly toxic and sucking media attention. "Stoic" calm just makes you look like a weak sucker.
Ffs dude it's lose not loose.
The right is a master class in political messaging. They learned this One Weird Trick™ to manipulate the masses: people are stupid and vote their emotions. By defining the language they win almost by default: family values, school choice, pro life, death taxes, etc.
They learned that it doesn't matter if it's true, relevant, or hypocritical, as long as it feeds fear and anger in their constituents.
The left fails because the issues they support can require nuance and consideration and that's a lot to ask of a voter who just wants to be told who to vote for.
My assessment isn't meant to be tribal, there's plenty to critique on the left from DNC leadership to "overexubernt" members whose excess is used to define the left as a whole (wokism).
It's heartbreaking that the divide is now complete and is not likely to change without some unfortunate actions.
I agree. It's all about the memes. I think this is a great teardown of the 2016 election:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Y-P0v2Hh0&t=1567s
This is why attorneys use more emotion based arguments when before a jury instead of a judge. No only do lay persons like you and I not have legal education but we’re less likely to follow dry technical and boring evidence and legal details. (If the legal technicalities and detailed evidence do help their client they might ask for a bench trial!)
“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.” –Carl Sandburg
> ...as it is for the left wing to act oppressed.
I'm sorry, but "the left" hardly has a monopoly on that.
I think you're right actually. Now that I reflect on it, there are many times where the roles are reversed. For example, with this recent assassination of charlie kirk, the right wingers are role playing as the oppressed and are practicing the crybulling tactics of getting people fired from their jobs for politically incorrect speech.
But I think the right generally appeals to people with a more tyrannical personality, and vice versa.
the intention is to normalize extrajudicial government force by starting with vulnerable people technically "outside of the law"
it really is a "first they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist..."-esque program at this point
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The fact that you think Trump is running a scam on foolish people, while the natural state of things is an altruistic Democratic government is why you lost and will likely continue to lose.
The "Democratic"/"left wing" platform is not as popular as you believe; not in the US, not in England, not in Canada, not in Germany...
This all stems from backlash against those policies. You need to fix the issues, not tell people "you voted for the wrong guy".
Both are true. The Democratic policy platform is unpopular, and Trump is running a scam on foolish people.
I voted third-party.
> > The "Democratic"/"left wing" platform is not as popular as you believe; not in the US, not in England, not in Canada, not in Germany...
At least the Democratic platform is a platform as opposed to the other party who is being held hostage for 13 years by a single individual who cannot complete a coherent sentence without rambling and weaving (and he couldn't do it in 2015 either)
American democrats aren't what is considered left wing in Europe. They're neoliberals which classes as moderate rightwing in Europe. Left as we see it in Europe doesn't really exist in America. Except perhaps some outliers Bernie Sanders.
I don't think the democrats should lower themselves to messaging like trump's though. In doing so they would give up their own worth. And copying your enemy is never a good idea because nobody can be better at it than the real thing.
I don't think the democrats are great (I'm European left wing) but I do absolutely think that Trump is running a scam on foolish people. He has even said so himself in the past.
The problem is also that the republicans manufacture issues. There are no issues with trans people. Most people wouldn't even know a trans person (which is also why it's such a good group to demonize, people don't often have friends in that group to dissuade them from hating). There's no issues with immigrants as such, the issue is more that some groups are very poor and turn to crime. This is not exclusive to immigrants. The actual solution is to make sure even poor people have opportunities that don't involve crime. But hey that's 'communism'. You can call it what you want but life is a lot safer here in Europe. But they're just riling people up in order to create a platform.
The thing is, you can't fix issues that don't actually exist. So this is a very hard situation to solve.
Exactly. People forget this, and "forget" this, but democracy's power is not based on picking the best (or even merely not disastrous) rulers. Italy, Germany and more recently Russia illustrate that pretty disastrous choices have been made by democratic institutions (I don't mean the Ukraine war, I mean electing Putin in the first place).
Democracy's power is almost entirely in voting out bad rulers without destroying the entire country. That's why a great deal of people's ideas of democracy are ridiculous. For example, democracy can tolerate the existence of fake news or terrible/fake science, just go read newspapers from the interwar period. Take an alternative of the islamist gulf monarchies. They'll end in destruction and fire, war or revolution, because that's the only way to replace the government, so you can pretty much guarantee that's what will (eventually) happen.
The simple truth one hopes America, including democrats, can embrace is that Biden was bad, and allowing him to cling to power was horrible (if he'd made Ms. Harris president halfway through his presidency, THAT might have worked). What was done during the election ... seriously? Yes, Trump is worse (and he'll be voted out, or at least take the GOP down, like he did before), but that doesn't matter in most people's minds. Besides, taking the "least bad" option, what democrats generally advocate these days, is how Italy and Germany destroyed their democracy (Mussulini and Hitler were put in power, not elected, because any other choice would have resulted in civil war. How that worked? Easy: they instructed their supporters to fight until they were the least bad option, and the police couldn't keep control. Which is why I think countries like France are playing with fire since every extreme party in France and Germany, the various extreme left, right, green is trying the same playbook now: elect them or they sabotage the entire country. Why? Same reason Hitler did it: he only had maybe 20% of people really behind him. But 20% of the population can sabotage the entire country, easily. Of course, Hitler was the only one doing it, and these parties are not)