Comment by bigstrat2003
12 hours ago
> What is the point in changing the messaging when racism and sexism are at the root of the problem?
Because it is in fact the messaging which is the problem, not racism or sexism. Why on God's green earth would you expect people to vote for a political class that openly hates them, as indeed posters here are kindly demonstrating? I can tell you from personal experience that there are a great many Trump voters who aren't racist or sexist in any way. They are friendly and helpful to all whom they encounter in life. But they believed (rightly or wrongly) that Trump would best represent their interests, so they voted for him. Excoriating them as Bad People (TM) is only going to convince them that they were right to vote for Trump, because they can observe that Trump's opposition hates them.
If your goal is to reduce support for Trump (or at this point his successor, since he can't be president again), then your #1 priority should be to work on messaging. It is the messaging of the Democrats that pushed so many people into Trump's arms, and unless that is changed it will do so again. Painting with the broad brush of "they're just racist" is not only intellectually lazy and untrue, it is actively harmful to the Trump opposition's cause.
> Because it is in fact the messaging which is the problem, not racism or sexism
Yes, of course, the reason Republican voters embrace the concept of deplorable is because the Dems are mean to them. That totally makes them noble and not in fact deplorable.
> It is the messaging of the Democrats that pushed so many people into Trump's arms
He got less than 50% of the vote, if the Dems are pushing so many people to Trump they are doing a crappy job of it.
Though I do agree that the Dems suck on messaging, it is not because they villainize Republican voters. It's because they don't focus their efforts on bread-and-button progressive priorities like labor and healthcare. They blew their wad on trans rights, which just isn't a great strategy to move a lot of voters to the polls.
> Yes, of course, the reason Republican voters embrace the concept of deplorable is because the Dems are mean to them. That totally makes them noble and not in fact deplorable.
I don't think anyone ever embraces being called deplorable, that seems like a strange take. If anything, being called deplorable would just make someone dislike the name-caller. Don't take my word for it, this is behavior exhibited by children and adults every day.
Or are you twisting up a reference where HRC called the right "a basket of deplorables" ?
I've got a number of right wing acquaintances, they 100% call themselves deplorable. And yes, in response to Hillary's use of the term. Even though she didn't call everyone on the right a deplorable, this did not stop them from running with it.
And they do embrace it. To the point where they say 'dirka dirka' when the topic of our Indian managers comes up (never mind that the original movie reference was about Arabs, but whatever), and making comments about women in positions of authority at the company. That's in addition to the comments about trans people.
Hard to say whether that attitude came first or second. And while I can definitely appreciate that nobody wants to be looked down on, there is no requirement that you respond to that by doing that which you are accused of.
If the messaging doesn't change there is a ~50% chance JDV wins next, and the joke will be on the whole world. It is absolutely in the best interest of the entire _world_ for the left to figure out the messaging.
There was a time right after the election [0] where messaging was being talked about, and it seems that effort tailed off as people got more emotional and angry, which I suppose isn't surprising.
[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/22/democrats-woke-lang...