So it's the Democrats' fault for not telling people what the Democrats did for America under Joe Biden? Funny, none of it was secret information. The problem is basically that Americans do not follow the news and are not knowledgeable voters. Stupid people voted for Trump. That's America - stupid.
Some of those “stupid people” in states where Trump easily won also voted for minimum wage increases, state constitutional amendments to preserve abortion rights, and paid family leave. e.g. Missouri and Alaska
If your analysis of why someone would vote for Trump and also to increase the minimum wage and preserve abortion rights cannot explain this seeming contradiction, then your analysis is worthless.
Thank you for proving Rachel's point. Where voters understand what's in their best interests they will vote accordingly eg abortion rights and paid family leave.
But when they can't easily understand Trump's BS about immigration etc is a distraction from his picking their pocket then they will vote for him.
The Dems simply had to craft messages to point this out. Defense. Then attack.
Rachel is right on the money. DNC messaging sucks. If they don't get real they will certainly lose again
“We love working people but we refuse to pass the PRO Act when we have majorities because we refuse to get rid of the filibuster rules.”
“We love working people but we refuse to increase the minimum wage.”
“We love working people but we’re going to make a strike by rail workers illegal.”
“We love working people but there isn’t enough money for Medicare For All. There IS enough money to send billions to Ukraine and Israel for wars.”
All they offered was “we’re not Trump and we respect democracy and vile neocon Republicans love us.”
Not being Trump was not enough. And the Democrats don’t seem to care much about democracy when they are trying to stop third parties from getting on ballots in different states.
The PRO act did not come up until 2023 when Rs had the majority in the house.
In 2021 and 2022 when Ds had the house and a very slim minority in the Senate, 2 DINO senators Manchin and Sinema blocked those other things you mentioned and refused to change the filibuster rules.
Despite all that, Biden and the Ds passed bills that brought significant manufacturing back to working class neighborhoods.
OK, as truth is really important, how much manufacturing was brought back?
How many actual factories have been opened?
How “significant” are they?
All this “bringing manufacturing back” is really supposed to be from the CHIPS Act. Those kinds of projects take years to build, depending on the type.
The point is whatever jobs are created, it’ll be a few years yet before the Act’s effects are felt.
And your sentence, “Biden and the Ds passed bills that brought significant manufacturing back to working class neighborhoods” is weird.
Do you mean someone is building “significant manufacturing” in the “working class neighborhoods” of wherever you live?
You are partly right. People aren’t interested in “issues” only.
They are interested in issues that are part of a larger story.
What is the larger story, the frame around the Democratic picture?
Harris’s story became “vote for me because vile, neocon Republicans like me and Donald Trump is bad.”
Trump’s story was “you are being made poor by financial and social elites who care about illegal aliens more than they care about American citizens. Those are the villains I will fight on your behalf.”
Another part of his frame is “Democrats live endless war. I will end the wars.”
Harris wants to give blank checks to Ukraine and Israel.
Trump is a lying pig but with him his voters know who the enemy is.
Who would Harris fight? Who does she blame for the financial hardships of Americans who earn less than the median wage? Is she credible on this topic.
No. She is not, because she too is in the pockets of billionaires and hundred-millionaires. She got her economic policy from Wall Street investment banks.
People need to grow the fuck up and let go of their own quadrennial cult worship for whatever empty suit candidate the Democrats throw at us. We know the Republicans will always choose some ghoul. Maybe if Democrats picked someone who was clear about who the enemy is more voters would care.
Consider everything Harris said. Compare it to FDR in 1936.
“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace–business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the government of the United States as a mere appendage to their affairs. We know government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today.
They are unanimous in their hate for me–and I welcome their hatred.”
There are no “issues” or policies in that excerpt. There is just a story. It tells us who is the enemy of non-elite citizens and who will fight them.
Who sounded more like that? Trump or Harris?
In some other thread someone said during FDR’s terms, the Democrats were winning so much the Constitution had to be amended to stop them winning.
And if Harris or any other contemporary Democrat talked like FDR, would YOU believe them? Is there anything about Democratic behavior in the last thirty years that gives them credibility?
Yes it very much is the Democrats' fault for not telling people what the Democrats did for America under Joe Biden and pointing out the difference with the GOP. Instead it was all fuzzy "hope" and "we're not going back"
Much of the analysis about why/how Dems lost this consequential election fails to discuss the vast and pervasive disinformation system that outright LIED to people about the Democrats and their agenda. So while Biden was the most pro-union President in my 50 years of voting, union members went for Trump.
I don't know how we could have overcome this, seeing as how we are many decades late to the game now. Plus - Trump had the world's richest man on this side. So there's that.
Lies are as old as politics. Don't blame the beast. Blame the fact the dems allowed the lie to perpetuate. They didnt ridicule it or overwhelm it with a simple strong message - ie what Rachel is saying.
You need to listen to Rachel’s podcast The Ministry of Truth. Overwhelming the right wing propaganda machine is extremely difficult. They’ve successfully convinced 10s of millions of Americans that they’re the only ones who speak the truth even when their lies are outrageous.
Agree with a lot of this but I think there’s something missing in this analysis. You say, “Can a party of union-busters financed by industry and bankers “represent the working class?” Apparently so, as long as they distract them enough from the economic warfare they are conducting against them by leveraging new technology to construct grievance politics as a backlash to our identity politics strategy.”
But the thing not recognized here, I think, is that eventually we Democrats signed-on to what is now known as Neoliberalism, where economic policy was redirected (Trickle-Down economics, repeal of Glass-Steagall, restructuring the tax system) to prioritize vastly enriching a small elite on the (preposterous) theory that they are intrinsically best able to invest this wealth such that it would trickle down to the rest of us.
But what happened of course is that the wealth was transferred, the elite simply went after the biggest profit opportunities globally, and the tens of millions of our working/middle class were economically eviscerated. And the Democrats adopted a studied indifference to this that was not categorically different from the Republicans.
Trump conquered the Republican Party and has rebuilt it in his disgusting image. He has beaten the Democrats twice in national elections and has dominated our politics since he entered the 2016 race. He did this, essentially, by declaring, “a plague on both their houses.” And so we are now duly plagued.
Unless and until the Democratic Party owns-up to it’s bipartisan role in the decimation of our working/middle class and then dedicates itself to reversing our economic and tax policy away from what Michael Alexander (must read/subscribe Substack: America in Crisis) calls Shareholder primacy (elite enrichment) back to Stakeholder primacy (essentially the “common good”), Trump and Trumpism will continue to dominate our politics.
Some argue that Biden did this with his several legislative achievements. But he didn’t. He is treating symptoms, not the cause of the plague. The neoliberal policy still reigns supreme. Until Democrats renounce neoliberalism and champion a new “New Deal, Trumpism and then likely Muslims, will prevail.
Successful brands work in the same way. They stand for one thing in the consumers mind and reiterate that relentlessly. This one thing is the biggest territory you can occupy in any market. Tide stands for better cleaning. Head and Shoulders for dandruff removal. Pampers for drier skin. They tell this story relentlessly year in year out. This is why they dominate . They may have variants for niches, Tide with Downy, Tide with Bleach, Tide with Oxy, but these exist under the umbrella of the main story. Democrats need to abandon conventional consultant thinking and learn from marketers. Since they will find this difficult we need to find new ways of creating messaging. I suggest crowd sourcing of ideas and crowd funding of production. Only when the establishment sees it succeeding will they begin to believe it.
Agreed. Everyday on line I see examples of great, single minded ideas that people outside the system create. If the brief is tight there will be masses to choose from. The infrastructure and processes exist since there are numerous crowd sourcing businesses.
I agree with the message. I am experiencing a City government intent on only helping marginalized groups and a pox on the rest of us. This is coming from issue activists elected to our city government. For the first time since I started voting, I am on the edge of leaving the Democrats and becoming an independent. I am 75.
Trump made major inroads with the working class by emphasizing simple tax changes: no tax on tips - four words easy to understand. No tax on Social Security - five words. Trump out Bernied Bernie. I have yet to hear the Democrat's high priests on these. But they will give you a 20 page position paper. Democrats should hope and pray Trump reneges..
The working class is a marginalized group. They are just to poorly educated to know it. Reference history classroom scene from "Ferris Buehler's Day Off".
You're the Truth Teller. Wish the D's had listened to you! If only we get another shot at messaging in the future. Seems doubtful but I'll always hope.
Incredible how in the interests of "politeness" "fair play" etc Biden is handing the keys to someone who will almost certainly cheat future elections - if not cancel democracy altogether. Bet the fascists can't believe their luck.
I think you are brilliant, but Trump may be more crafty than ideological. He has a mandate and freedom to do Maverick kinds of incremental policy decision that will benefit these same sub groups, and marginalized communities that will endear him to them. In addition, he may even have the will to do something sweeping like give green cards to all immigrants who graduate from college. Or to dreamers. He seems to reward as if you were in a royal court, or deity, and that will give him a freedom that we haven’t seen before to make Maverick decisions. And if he does that, I don’t believe that even your unitary messaging strategy would be as effective as you think. But we have to try something..
Rachel, I'd be interested in reading more about your observation: "a quarter of the electorate is liberal and psychologically predisposed to care about marginalized groups." This jives with my gut feeling about people, but I've never heard this so explicitly stated. Do you have sources on this point you could share?
So it's the Democrats' fault for not telling people what the Democrats did for America under Joe Biden? Funny, none of it was secret information. The problem is basically that Americans do not follow the news and are not knowledgeable voters. Stupid people voted for Trump. That's America - stupid.
Some of those “stupid people” in states where Trump easily won also voted for minimum wage increases, state constitutional amendments to preserve abortion rights, and paid family leave. e.g. Missouri and Alaska
If your analysis of why someone would vote for Trump and also to increase the minimum wage and preserve abortion rights cannot explain this seeming contradiction, then your analysis is worthless.
Thank you for proving Rachel's point. Where voters understand what's in their best interests they will vote accordingly eg abortion rights and paid family leave.
But when they can't easily understand Trump's BS about immigration etc is a distraction from his picking their pocket then they will vote for him.
The Dems simply had to craft messages to point this out. Defense. Then attack.
Rachel is right on the money. DNC messaging sucks. If they don't get real they will certainly lose again
That was the campaign's job. Find those low-info voters, get them informed and persuade them that the Dems care about them. They didn't.
And what would the Harris campaign have said?
“We love working people but we refuse to pass the PRO Act when we have majorities because we refuse to get rid of the filibuster rules.”
“We love working people but we refuse to increase the minimum wage.”
“We love working people but we’re going to make a strike by rail workers illegal.”
“We love working people but there isn’t enough money for Medicare For All. There IS enough money to send billions to Ukraine and Israel for wars.”
All they offered was “we’re not Trump and we respect democracy and vile neocon Republicans love us.”
Not being Trump was not enough. And the Democrats don’t seem to care much about democracy when they are trying to stop third parties from getting on ballots in different states.
The PRO act did not come up until 2023 when Rs had the majority in the house.
In 2021 and 2022 when Ds had the house and a very slim minority in the Senate, 2 DINO senators Manchin and Sinema blocked those other things you mentioned and refused to change the filibuster rules.
Despite all that, Biden and the Ds passed bills that brought significant manufacturing back to working class neighborhoods.
The truth really is important.
OK, as truth is really important, how much manufacturing was brought back?
How many actual factories have been opened?
How “significant” are they?
All this “bringing manufacturing back” is really supposed to be from the CHIPS Act. Those kinds of projects take years to build, depending on the type.
The point is whatever jobs are created, it’ll be a few years yet before the Act’s effects are felt.
And your sentence, “Biden and the Ds passed bills that brought significant manufacturing back to working class neighborhoods” is weird.
Do you mean someone is building “significant manufacturing” in the “working class neighborhoods” of wherever you live?
Or do you mean manufacturing that
No, it wouldnt have been anywhere near that complicated. "The PRO act" lmao
People generally aren't interested in actual issues. Stop blaming the campaign for American stupidity.
You are partly right. People aren’t interested in “issues” only.
They are interested in issues that are part of a larger story.
What is the larger story, the frame around the Democratic picture?
Harris’s story became “vote for me because vile, neocon Republicans like me and Donald Trump is bad.”
Trump’s story was “you are being made poor by financial and social elites who care about illegal aliens more than they care about American citizens. Those are the villains I will fight on your behalf.”
Another part of his frame is “Democrats live endless war. I will end the wars.”
Harris wants to give blank checks to Ukraine and Israel.
Trump is a lying pig but with him his voters know who the enemy is.
Who would Harris fight? Who does she blame for the financial hardships of Americans who earn less than the median wage? Is she credible on this topic.
No. She is not, because she too is in the pockets of billionaires and hundred-millionaires. She got her economic policy from Wall Street investment banks.
People need to grow the fuck up and let go of their own quadrennial cult worship for whatever empty suit candidate the Democrats throw at us. We know the Republicans will always choose some ghoul. Maybe if Democrats picked someone who was clear about who the enemy is more voters would care.
Consider everything Harris said. Compare it to FDR in 1936.
“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace–business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the government of the United States as a mere appendage to their affairs. We know government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today.
They are unanimous in their hate for me–and I welcome their hatred.”
There are no “issues” or policies in that excerpt. There is just a story. It tells us who is the enemy of non-elite citizens and who will fight them.
Who sounded more like that? Trump or Harris?
In some other thread someone said during FDR’s terms, the Democrats were winning so much the Constitution had to be amended to stop them winning.
And if Harris or any other contemporary Democrat talked like FDR, would YOU believe them? Is there anything about Democratic behavior in the last thirty years that gives them credibility?
Yes it very much is the Democrats' fault for not telling people what the Democrats did for America under Joe Biden and pointing out the difference with the GOP. Instead it was all fuzzy "hope" and "we're not going back"
Much of the analysis about why/how Dems lost this consequential election fails to discuss the vast and pervasive disinformation system that outright LIED to people about the Democrats and their agenda. So while Biden was the most pro-union President in my 50 years of voting, union members went for Trump.
I don't know how we could have overcome this, seeing as how we are many decades late to the game now. Plus - Trump had the world's richest man on this side. So there's that.
Lies are as old as politics. Don't blame the beast. Blame the fact the dems allowed the lie to perpetuate. They didnt ridicule it or overwhelm it with a simple strong message - ie what Rachel is saying.
You need to listen to Rachel’s podcast The Ministry of Truth. Overwhelming the right wing propaganda machine is extremely difficult. They’ve successfully convinced 10s of millions of Americans that they’re the only ones who speak the truth even when their lies are outrageous.
Agree with a lot of this but I think there’s something missing in this analysis. You say, “Can a party of union-busters financed by industry and bankers “represent the working class?” Apparently so, as long as they distract them enough from the economic warfare they are conducting against them by leveraging new technology to construct grievance politics as a backlash to our identity politics strategy.”
But the thing not recognized here, I think, is that eventually we Democrats signed-on to what is now known as Neoliberalism, where economic policy was redirected (Trickle-Down economics, repeal of Glass-Steagall, restructuring the tax system) to prioritize vastly enriching a small elite on the (preposterous) theory that they are intrinsically best able to invest this wealth such that it would trickle down to the rest of us.
But what happened of course is that the wealth was transferred, the elite simply went after the biggest profit opportunities globally, and the tens of millions of our working/middle class were economically eviscerated. And the Democrats adopted a studied indifference to this that was not categorically different from the Republicans.
Trump conquered the Republican Party and has rebuilt it in his disgusting image. He has beaten the Democrats twice in national elections and has dominated our politics since he entered the 2016 race. He did this, essentially, by declaring, “a plague on both their houses.” And so we are now duly plagued.
Unless and until the Democratic Party owns-up to it’s bipartisan role in the decimation of our working/middle class and then dedicates itself to reversing our economic and tax policy away from what Michael Alexander (must read/subscribe Substack: America in Crisis) calls Shareholder primacy (elite enrichment) back to Stakeholder primacy (essentially the “common good”), Trump and Trumpism will continue to dominate our politics.
Some argue that Biden did this with his several legislative achievements. But he didn’t. He is treating symptoms, not the cause of the plague. The neoliberal policy still reigns supreme. Until Democrats renounce neoliberalism and champion a new “New Deal, Trumpism and then likely Muslims, will prevail.
It is, after all, still The Economy, St***d.
Yikes, terrible auto-correct. Not Muslims! It’s should read “. . .and then likely MUSKism, will prevail.”
You are right. But in fact Biden stated "Trickle-Down economics" had been a failure. The Dems failed to take this to a broader message.
I like a lot of what you said here but I don’t agree that Ds ever “signed onto” trickle down economics.
People must be doing pretty well to be willing to vote on sex changes that never affect them vs. things that do, like tariffs.
Successful brands work in the same way. They stand for one thing in the consumers mind and reiterate that relentlessly. This one thing is the biggest territory you can occupy in any market. Tide stands for better cleaning. Head and Shoulders for dandruff removal. Pampers for drier skin. They tell this story relentlessly year in year out. This is why they dominate . They may have variants for niches, Tide with Downy, Tide with Bleach, Tide with Oxy, but these exist under the umbrella of the main story. Democrats need to abandon conventional consultant thinking and learn from marketers. Since they will find this difficult we need to find new ways of creating messaging. I suggest crowd sourcing of ideas and crowd funding of production. Only when the establishment sees it succeeding will they begin to believe it.
Exactly that. Not sure it would take much crowd sourcing to come up with some strong ideas :)
Agreed. Everyday on line I see examples of great, single minded ideas that people outside the system create. If the brief is tight there will be masses to choose from. The infrastructure and processes exist since there are numerous crowd sourcing businesses.
I agree with the message. I am experiencing a City government intent on only helping marginalized groups and a pox on the rest of us. This is coming from issue activists elected to our city government. For the first time since I started voting, I am on the edge of leaving the Democrats and becoming an independent. I am 75.
Trump made major inroads with the working class by emphasizing simple tax changes: no tax on tips - four words easy to understand. No tax on Social Security - five words. Trump out Bernied Bernie. I have yet to hear the Democrat's high priests on these. But they will give you a 20 page position paper. Democrats should hope and pray Trump reneges..
Exactly. One liners.
Plus simple but strong messaging "Massey Fergson will pay for exporting your jobs"
The story needs to be told but the question is how to get around the hold that the right wing media has on the country.
One liners conquer all
The working class is a marginalized group. They are just to poorly educated to know it. Reference history classroom scene from "Ferris Buehler's Day Off".
Don't blame the reciever. The GOP managed to get through to them.
Keep it up - hopefully the Democratic Party will finally change course
You're the Truth Teller. Wish the D's had listened to you! If only we get another shot at messaging in the future. Seems doubtful but I'll always hope.
Incredible how in the interests of "politeness" "fair play" etc Biden is handing the keys to someone who will almost certainly cheat future elections - if not cancel democracy altogether. Bet the fascists can't believe their luck.
Agree. BUT, HOW DO WE FORCE-FEED THEM THIS INFORMATION?
One liners
I think you are brilliant, but Trump may be more crafty than ideological. He has a mandate and freedom to do Maverick kinds of incremental policy decision that will benefit these same sub groups, and marginalized communities that will endear him to them. In addition, he may even have the will to do something sweeping like give green cards to all immigrants who graduate from college. Or to dreamers. He seems to reward as if you were in a royal court, or deity, and that will give him a freedom that we haven’t seen before to make Maverick decisions. And if he does that, I don’t believe that even your unitary messaging strategy would be as effective as you think. But we have to try something..
Rachel, I'd be interested in reading more about your observation: "a quarter of the electorate is liberal and psychologically predisposed to care about marginalized groups." This jives with my gut feeling about people, but I've never heard this so explicitly stated. Do you have sources on this point you could share?
Spot on as always Rachel.