High-aggression is a negotiating tactic with basic goals - to intimidate the other side into thinking you are implacable, and to make you seem unstoppable.
It's a tactic. Like everyone else, they have interests and goals and needs, and they can be deterred in the same way. The problem is, nobody really tries. The Democrats keep doing the same ineffective things - a demonstration of being cowed and intimidated.
For example, the Dems have almost no ability to communicate with the public. Whatever Trump and the GOP say are effectively true because there is no counter voice (beyond some third parties). The Dems don't do anything about it; they just keep communicating in the same way.
The Dems have no talking points. A few of them are organizing now around 'economic populism' - in other words, they are completely cowed and will avoid all the major threats to freedom, democracy, the rule of law, safety; the corruption, cruelty, and hate. They are going to their safe space - economic policy!
I can't imagine what kind of talking points one needs to offer past "uh, we aren't criminals and we're not incompetent".
If the response is "yeah, we're good with those things, what else have you got?" I don't know what to say. You want bread? Maybe some circuses?
The Democrats did have plenty of policies. Realistic ones. Not the most exciting. If the public wants to be excited, and aren't picky about it, then indeed they should have that. But I'm not going to be able to provide it.
> I can't imagine what kind of talking points one needs ...
> The Democrats did have plenty of policies. Realistic ones. Not the most exciting. If the public wants to be excited, and aren't picky about it, then indeed they should have that. But I'm not going to be able to provide it.
I think it's obvious that such an approach doesn't work; does that matter to you? You seem defiant to me (though interpreting tone from text is very uncertain); who are you defying? There's nobody to defy - you either get the results or not.
It's also obvious, IMHO, that the issue isn't policies but politics and ideals - freedom or oppression, humanitarianism or cruelty, power or democratic equality, democracy or authoritarianism, etc. How many bridges to build next year doesn't measure up, and if that's what a politician talks about, they are clearly hiding from a difficult reality.
The Democrats also tried to fool the American public like “Weekend with Bernie’s” and prop Biden up for way too long and couldn’t have a proper primary. Harris couldn’t distance herself from Biden.
No, the democrat's problem is they weren’t willing to just flat out lie. They told the public the truth, basic facts like no, the president doesn’t have the power to unilaterally lower your grocery prices. And whether due to desperation, or lack of education, or otherwise, the voting public chose the proven pathological liar who said he would be the one to lower the price of eggs. Right up until the week after the election when he had to explain why the prices weren’t going down.
There are countless interviews with voters quoting the laughable and provably impossible promises/lies Trump spouted during the last campaign as their reason for voting for him.
If what you’re advocating is that the democrats need to embrace denying reality and lying to the public if they want to win, I can’t disagree with you. But I also think historians won’t have a tough time pointing to the end of the American experiment.
> They told the public the truth, basic facts like
Just telling people the 'truth' isn't effective communication at all (in fact, it can be dangerous) - that should be obvious to anyone with some experience in life. To tell the 'truth' and then throw up your hands because it didn't work is just being at victim.
A major political party knows all that - it's shameful and corrupt that they don't care to be effective.
I know it takes more than telling the truth. It's that voters are seeking out obvious lies. That is where I throw up my hands.
I don't expect the voters to love boring truths. But if they actively want to be lied to, and revel in getting away with lies, then democracy is not the tool for me.
Yeah, Bill Clinton is a very effective speaker; wow. Or compare people like JFK or Bobby Kennedy - look up their speeches. Or Ronald Reagan, to be bipartisan. It's like the Dems have forgotten that leadership involves vision, charisma, inspiration, courage, ...
However, I was referring to the lack of a mechanism. Whatever the Dems say, almost nobody hears it. Name a major statement by a Democrat in the last week? In the last month?
Name a major Democrat. There is none. After 3 electoral cycles when party bureaucracy each time crowned the candidate instead of a candidate rising through the primaries the party has no leaders anymore - note the difference between a leader and a top bureaucrat, the Dems have no deficit of the latter.
Yeah, but that's just a tertiary strategy. Think of it this way: The Dems are so pathetic, their best option is to try to use the enemy's communication mechanism.
They simply need to solve their problem. That they have it is absurd and makes them look pathetic, cowed, and ineffectual victims - not something people vote for. What is more important to a political party than a means of public communication?
What makes a statement "major" is the amount of attention it is given. That is out of your control.
Democrats are making many statements. If they are not "major", it is perhaps because nobody cares about statements. They care about the exercise of power, and Democrats have none. Any statement they make is easily dismissed as bluster.
> What makes a statement "major" is the amount of attention it is given. That is out of your control.
The first sentence is true, the second absolutely false. Public, political communication is all about that second issue - look how effective the GOP is. They can make absolute nonsense into a norm; they can shut down any speech they don't want.
Even when it is directly connected - ie. the people will see much higher prices copy pasted everywhere due to the Trump’s import taxes while Trump will be giving to the billionaires the tax cut financed by the tariffs - and the people will still cheer up on Trump.
Because the policy is not the issue. Trump has never been consistent or carried through much on policy; he lies to everyone. It's the politics and ideology - extreme reactionary politics of destroying 'liberals' regardless of the cost.
Coming from a UK background something I've been long curious about is is there a constitutional reason for when the opposition presidential candidate is selected.
It seems like the current way of doing things leaves the opposition rudderless through most of a presidential term, followed by a bitter fight where their own side rip each other apart followed by only a few months to try and establish oneself as leader in waiting.
Could the democrats do their primaries now? It feels like that would
1. Distract from Trump so he doesn't get run of the news
2. Mean that all the "candidate X is a bad democrat" stories could be long forgotten by the next election.
3. Give a pedestal to the actual presidential candidate as the go to person for the media to get reactions from
4. If they turn out to be genuinely terrible there's a lot of time to find out and potentially replace them.
Primaries are actually a relatively recent innovation. Before that, the candidates just appeared from the party machines. All of the ugliness went on out of public view.
For the last several elections people complained that there wasn't much difference between Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. And there isn't. They are a center leftish (by American standards) bunch.
The party has a small wing further to the left, but it just isn't enough to put forth a strong candidate. That is the biggest ugliness we get now: they don't feel represented and often, they don't vote.
> Coming from a UK background something I've been long curious about is is there a constitutional reason for when the opposition presidential candidate is selected.
That's a very interesting point. On the other hand, the GOP did have a leader through the Biden administration - Trump.
Even when they don't, such as under Obama, they do have effective means (Fox, social media, etc.) and content (effective, disciplined talking points) of communication. The Dems have neither.
the problem is that running any sort of campaign that effectively reaches the continental and population scale of the US is incredibly expensive. Bernie Sanders for example raised $228M during his primary campaign in 2016. it would be hard to see how to make that happen more frequently.
Constitutional? No, except that states run the primaries.
... but when the primaries are is encoded into state law, so it would be a challenge to change it for every state if one wanted to shift when "the primaries" as a whole concept are.
> The Dems have no talking points. A few of them are organizing now around 'economic populism' - in other words, they are completely cowed and will avoid all the major threats to freedom, democracy, the rule of law, safety; the corruption, cruelty, and hate. They are going to their safe space - economic policy!
Because sadly, thats what the people respond to. When given the choice between food on the table / roof over their head / cash in the bank account and abstract values like "republican government", "rule of law" and "protecting human rights" etc. they will choose the former. Especially as long as its OTHER people's rights, and OTHER parties getting surpressed, they don't care quite so much. We've seen this play out in Russia. Granted they did not have the long history of Republican government that the US has had.
The irony with Trump is they may get neither. At least some of them. Authoritarians have way of mollifying that minimum % that actually matters. Mostly people with guns and willingness to use them. In the US we're talking as low as 25% (so 75% of us are effectively screwed). And when you have billionaires controlling the information space, it would be very difficult to organize opposition.
I'm now looking out to 2028. Trump and his cronies may be plotting to crash the system and "declare an emergency" so elections get suspended. Or the alternative, he just runs again and dares anyone to stop him. The blue/purple states should at the very least, bar him from appearing on the ballot there's a question of whether there will have enough backbone and could not be sufficiently threatened/bullied into backing down, or if he tries to pull a 2020 again with an "alternate electors", at the very least cause confusion so the election can be thrown to the House where GOP almost assuredly would have control over the state delegations. Lastly, the various Federal agencies, possibly even the military would be sufficiently "Trumpified" such that they will threaten, maybe even resort to force.
> When given the choice between food on the table / roof over their head / cash in the bank account and abstract values like "republican government", "rule of law" and "protecting human rights" etc. they will choose the former.
That's the opposite of the truth. Republican regions have long voted against their economic interests in favor of their values. Look at all the white working class people in the South that have long voted Republican over values, even as the GOP took away or blocked their benefits, education, health care, minimum wage, labor rights, etc.
They vote for their economic interests, in the sense that they vote in the way that they believe furthers those interests. Whether that vote actually furthers those interests is another matter. Republicans have been very successful at convincing people that they’re the ones who are good for the economy and everyone who works hard will prosper under their policies.
I don't think thats the way most of them see it. Right-wing propaganda has effectively convinced them that unions, government regulations, worker and environmental protections, etc. are all bad and the free market will magically solve everything.
Decades of Red Scare propaganda convinced those people that benefits, healthcare and labour rights are commie desires… and how dare you want to bring communism into America
It's a tactic. Like everyone else, they have interests and goals and needs, and they can be deterred in the same way. The problem is, nobody really tries. The Democrats keep doing the same ineffective things - a demonstration of being cowed and intimidated.
For example, the Dems have almost no ability to communicate with the public. Whatever Trump and the GOP say are effectively true because there is no counter voice (beyond some third parties). The Dems don't do anything about it; they just keep communicating in the same way.
The Dems have no talking points. A few of them are organizing now around 'economic populism' - in other words, they are completely cowed and will avoid all the major threats to freedom, democracy, the rule of law, safety; the corruption, cruelty, and hate. They are going to their safe space - economic policy!