Is America's default position "Republican . . until you work REALLY hard to convince me otherwise"?

[HughBeaumont]

Stock Markets perform better under Democratic administrations.

Jobs gained - again, Democratic administrations.

Government spending . . . yep, we win there too.

Consumer confidence. Economic Growth. Unemployment. Democrats, AGAIN.

So why, why, WHY does America CONTINUALLY want to put people in office that continually destroy societal and economic progress?

It seems to me that we have to work SO ridiculously harder to convince the American voter that we're better for them than Republicans do by pretty much just showing up.

I'm saying this as one who wasn't exactly on board with Hillary: In a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, there's NEVER been a bigger gap in qualification. In voting HISTORY. This could NOT have been a bigger "DURRRRRRRRR". COME on.

Also, in light of all the evidence presented above, how did they make so many electoral GAINS since 2010?

It's as if America as a whole looks at us and says "I'm sorry, but you can put up all of the evidence of better economic performance and other things . . . I don't CARE. I just don't LIKE your party. I JUST DON'T TRUST YOU. I like Republicans better. That's my default and I'm not changing. I see THEM as leaders and YOU as Communist-sympathizing weaklings. Give me multiple reasons why I should vote for you."

Am I WRONG on this? Or am I blaming the wrong people? We cannot possibly suck THIS bad at campaigning . . . can we??

[Nay]

1. Because facts don't matter to the great mass of people. They want their emotions

tended to and engaged, and the facts be damned. Add in the two generations of citizens whose faces are stuck in either a TV or a computer (read "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" for details) and you have a recipe for disaster. The disaster is starting to roll over us, and I guess I should simply be thankful it took longer than I thought it would.

[unblock]

2. actually, it's the other way around.

people generally prefer democrats, and people preferred hillary, especially when there was a relatively fair comparison (she had her best leads just after the conventions and the debates).

the problem is that the republicans and the right-wing media *are*, in fact, working hard, constantly, to tear down the democrats and sell any excuse to vote for the republicans.

they have to, they sure can't win on any fair comparison.

[HughBeaumont]

5. Ad dollars matter too.

Why are we so terrible in that area? We should be stomping the shit out of those technologically-challenged dinosaurs.

That "President Pussygrabber" even got 60 million votes . . . I'm still trying to figure out why that is. Especially among WOMEN . . . how could even ONE woman vote for those two rights-suppressing assholes? How self-loathing can you get?

[rainy]

26. I have many white, upper middle class

and higher friends that voted for Trump. They are republicans and were always posting the ridiculous fake news stories. They believed them. The satin one all of them. One actually ufriended me on fb because I said I didn't believe in satin. They are brainwashed by fox and talk radio. That is our biggest challenge. Getting the media to tell the truth!!!

[Eliot Rosewater]

3. "The Other" whether it is the immigrant working 14 hours a day to barely survive

or the black kid who left school to sell drugs because he cant survive any other way or perceives that he cant, or the gay couple down the street, the right has convinced almost half of this country that "The Other" is the reason for whatever ails them.

They dont see the white kids selling drugs, necessarily, only the black ones.

They are uncomfortable around gay or trans people so it is easy to use them as excuses. All the while the billionaires are laughing their way to the bank (s).

We now have to assume very bad things will happen and quickly, war for sure, but what kind? I think you will barely be able to keep up with the incoming news of disaster and chaos starting January 21.

[CrispyQ]

4. Hate radio.

Huge swaths of America only hear Limbaugh & his ilk on the airwaves. Back in the 80s, while republicans were busy funding think tanks & buying radio stations, the dems were running as fast as they could away from the word liberal. Consequently, we've had 35 years of 'we suck less' strategy & 'vote for the lesser of two evils' advice. Maybe if the dems had been a true opposition party for the past 35 years we wouldn't be in this mess.

[OnionPatch]

7. Yep.

When they blanketed the air waves with Limbaugh is when I started noticing Republicans were becoming more than just someone that disagreed with you on certain government policies. They were becoming angry, hateful, confrontational and all seemed to start spouting the same handful of "talking points" like a broken record.

Right wing hate radio was a hugely successful propaganda campaign they're still getting a lot of mileage out of. Many liberals discount how much it influenced our politics (and still does.) I mean who listens to AM radio anyway? But they don't understand how much time rural, working men (in particular) spend in their trucks and how they depend on their radios for entertainment.

[Cosmocat]

28. I stopped to pick up our dog

After she was finished being groomed.

Small local business, a really nice, sweet girl who works out of it, her girl is in our daughters class.

She hits me up with a text to let me know to come get our dog.

I walked in, and she had Laura Ingram on.

The shit is a virus that can infect anyone.

[rainy]

27. I agree

[cilla4progress]

6. Because money and power will always trump.

Power and money naturally aggregate. Once that happens very hard to undo.

Also, America is basically a very conservative country.

Just my take.

[HughBeaumont]

14. America loves religion (particularly "name-it-and-claim-it" Christianity) too much.

That's WHY we're a conservative country. That's WHY we're pretty much conceding 135 electoral votes from the start. You could give starving evangelicals a million dollars apiece and they'd STILL never vote for a Democrat.

[Different Drummer]

8. You're not wrong and you're not blaming the wrong people.

Here's my take--and, admittedly, I may be wrong. The GOP established itself a long time ago as the party of flag/guns/Bible. Those are important, hot button concepts to a lot of people and, since it doesn't require a lot of thought to be for those, a lot of people embrace them as "issues." Somehow, they see Democrats as being soft on all three.

As I said, that's my take. Feel free to disagree.

[KamaAina]

9. No. White America's is.

That's why vote suppression works so well.

[0rganism]

10. it's a cycle of generation and consumption

seems like we go through these cycles faster and faster as time goes on
there's a buildup of wealth, infrastructure, civil rights, education, and relative calm that happens, let's call it an Apollonian phase
then the shysters and con-men see an accumulation of pillage-ready assets, and get to work on redistributing those assets upwards and outwards
thus commences a consumption of said wealth, infrastructure, rights, knowledge and peace, replacing them with poverty, decay, oppression, ignorance, and war. let's call it a Dionysian phase.
after a while, the population gets sick of living in a shitty situation and, democracy permitting, returns to an Apollonian rebuilding of what was previously destroyed.
rinse and repeat.

[treestar]

11. IMO it could be

the undemocratic drag of the Senate and Electoral College.

If we had a parliamentary system, we'd have single payer like the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, etc.

When the majority want to make progress, they are held back by the Senate and the filibuster and occasionally the Electoral College. The way the Senate is constructed, especially with the filibuster, allows conservatives who want no progress to hold it back from the majority.

It's a theory anyway.

[Demsrule86]

12. But what you describe does not help Detroit or parts of Ohio...

They have been left behind...in the global nonsense... we need to address trade...not try to convince people of its worth...because it is not good...and thousands of non-manufacturing jobs are being lost as well. This is why people here were willing to give a person who said he would fix this...a shot...and of course a close election can be stolen.

[Takket]

15. Obama saved the entire auto-industry from destruction, and Michigan went red this election

short attention spans from voters here in MI

[Demsrule86]

21. The industry has shed thousands of jobs and

sent jobs overseas too since Obama saved the autos...and they also have a new tier system for wages.

[HughBeaumont]

17. I address that here:

I don't think ANYthing was ever going to help the economic ills of flyover country. Or rural America. Or Detroit or Ohio's rust belt. That's the fault of corporate greed. Capitalism is not going to solve the problem it creates; mostly because, like any religion, Capitalists think they're incapable of error.

[Initech]

13. The republicans want all of the credit without the work.

[Takket]

16. it seems that way

the country is soundly red until the economy collapses, then the dems fix it, and get voted right back out of office as soon as it is better.

[HughBeaumont]

19. Each crash/recession is worse than it's predecessor.

Yet our memories remain short because reasons.

It's ridiculous and I want them to just admit they straight up hate our party until they want something from us.

[BigDemVoter]

18. No we don't. But when we battle the Goebbels news media for ANY positive story

or try to battle fake news on the internet, we lose EVERY time.

[gulliver]

20. We lost the trust contest with a lot of folks.

Liberals haven't figured out that the basis of any rhetorical argument has to be: "I'm on your side and have your best interests in mind."

We blew that with a lot of people. Trump knew what he was doing. He's a salesman at heart. He completely knows that lying is allowed in a sale. Hiding your weaknesses is. Exaggerating your opponents weaknesses is.

Where did we blow it specifically? Lots of places. We don't understand rhetoric at all. I still don't see anyone in our camp who understands it. Bill Maher comes close.

We blew the Syrian refugee issue for example. Yes, of course America should be giving asylum to Syrian refugees. But the fears needed to be addressed. We tried to shame them out of existence, call on people's better natures, etc. You can only do that once you have addressed the fears, because those fears override shame and people's better natures.

So what if we had handled the Syrian refugee issue this way? "We need to stem the tide of refugees by stabilizing the Middle East. As Mr. Trump noted, George W. Bush and the Republicans created the problem in the first place by their bungling, getting us into the catastrophic Iraq War. The Democrats will stop the refugee crisis at its source."

Notice I didn't say anything about taking in Syrian refugees. The weak, fear driving stuff is just left out.

It's only after you have the people on your side that you can call on their courage and good will.

[Dems to Win]

23. good comment

I don't think shaming the voters is a winning strategy on any issue.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

29. Good post!

https://blog.bufferapp.com/the-science-of-persuasion

If something is against your self-interest, it rarely matters whether it is true or false, you are much more likely to be mistaken with your choice.

Try to depersonalize: It reduces uncertainty and emotional resistance
People can get defensive about change for reasons like loss of control or loss of face (i.e. they look bad). When persuading people, it is hard for it to not be personal: you are changing their world view. In doing so, if people feel attacked, inferior, or wrong, it naturally sparks a desire to resist that change or assertion.

[pnwmom]

22. No, that's the default red state position, and the Electoral college is rigged

to give those mostly-white rural states much more power.

We won the hearts of Americans by a margin of more than 2.8 million votes.

[tblue37]

24. Propaganda works--and unlike the Dems, the Repubs play the long game. nt

[killbotfactory]

25. The way our government works is baffling to a lot of people

There usually isn't a clear cause and effect for various policies unless it is disastrous.

It should also be obvious that most economic gains have been getting siphoned up by the wealthy elite, both under Clinton and Obama. Stock market gains don't trickle down to regular people, unless they have a retirement account, and jobs gained aren't always better than the ones people lost. Working class interests have largely been forsaken in pursuit of corporate donor money.

Every state where a minimum wage increase was on the ballot voted for a minimum wage increase. Our candidate for president kind of hemmed and hawed about it during the primary, instead of just saying "A job is a job, and anyone working full time deserves a living wage".

It's pretty sad the FDR's economic bill of rights would be considered fringe left-wing pony-wishing among a lot of democrats, nowadays.

[BeyondGeography]

30. We do have to work too hard given our respective records

and, certainly in this race, the quality of the candidates. A couple of things seem clear to me. When 2/3 of white men keep voting Republican, you pretty much have to conclude that Red is their default color. Why? Race is certainly a big part of it. The mindset, even when the math refutes it, is we pay for the other and get squat in return. And there are all sorts of personal biases and sentiments that feed the anger that goes along with that view. Entitlement and ingratitude are two that jump out at me. I really wonder if they are incapable of happiness sometimes, and our next President is a poster child for that. At any rate, that's a problem because Democrats propose to make the world a happier place; Republicans will protect you (provided you are a member of the majority population) from the world. It seems the latter view carries with a big part of white male America, no matter how rich or poor they are. So all the communal approaches to big problems that we tend to be enthusiastic about are like fingernails on a blackboard to them. I think this default view makes them scared and/or miserable, but it is a problem for us.

Another big part of the story is anti-government sentiment. Reagan became their God when he said government IS the problem, not least because he exonerated the majority population from all personal responsibility for and to the world. That's not how they see it, of course. Their opposition to government is puportedly wholly practical in nature (i.e. government is in your way), but there's a huge emotional component to it that Reagan tapped into and that has been drilled deep into Red culture via hate media. The government can do no right and the only people who are drawn to it are losers. It's irresponsible, and so are they.

Where Democrats have gone terribly wrong is by not calling out the other side by name for what it is and what it repeatedly does, which is to destroy government. One of my favorite Obama lines from the early days was he wanted to make government cool again. It was smart and Kennedyesque. It was also terribly idealistic, given the odds. But it did reflect something deeply appealing about Obama, and if we don't want to work hard and lose, we'd do well to pick up on it and draw sharper contrasts with our opponents. The work of good government might not be cool, but the outcomes are, especially compared with the alternatives.

[TheFrenchRazor]

31. yes, because the EC and other state based systems rig the game against dems. nt