What can the Democrats do to actually win elections again?

Bootstoots

Bootstoots

Deity
Retired Moderator
Joined
Mar 2, 2003
Messages
9,436
Location
Mid-Illinois
As we all know, the Democrats have really sucked at winning elections for the past six years. It gets worse: they've pretty much been sucking at winning non-presidential elections since 1994, except for 2006 and 2008 when voters were finally so tired of W that they actually voted for Dems, before flipping right back to their usual behavior in 2010.

Dems have sucked at winning elections despite the fact that their economic policies are clearly better for the majority of Americans than anything the GOP has offered. Furthermore, the country has gotten a lot more diverse since 1994, which should favor them as well. And yet they've still managed to suck at elections, and show no signs of getting better until our first orange president finally overstays his welcome.

How can they get better at convincing people? Are there more convincing or popular messages that they could emphasize instead of what they're currently doing? What can they do to increase turnout? Are there any policy positions they should consider changing, or priorities that should be rearranged?

Discuss!
 
Democrats need to learn that Americans wanna kick ass, not have things be nice for them.
 
So what sort of ass-kicking would be best? Obviously military ass-kicking becomes unpopular pretty quickly. We kick ass at tech innovation, but that doesn't really inspire votes. There must be some sort of ass that would be popular to kick.
 
Probably not be venal centrist technocrats so much
 
Bootstoots said:
Furthermore, the country has gotten a lot more diverse since 1994, which should favor them as well.
Click to expand...

I always hear people say this, and it just doesn't make sense to me. From what I've seen, a lot of our immigrants are coming from countries that are socially and politically conservative, and those immigrants bring that conservative mindset with them when they come here. To me, it would seem to be a no-brainer that a not-insignificant amount of those immigrants would vote Republican once they become citizens. Not to mention, they probably raise their children to be conservative as well, so there's some more potentially Republican voters as well. All of this becomes especially true if those conservative immigrants end up settling in a conservative community, as that only reinforces and encourages their conservative mindset. So I would say the US becoming more diverse is actually hurting the Democrats more than helping them.

A prime example of what I'm talking about would be Hindus in the US. That is a significant non-white, non-Christian community in the US that is also a growing community, and there is significant support for the Republican party among American Hindus. Before Trump, there was also some pretty solid support for the Republican party in the Islamic community as well. However, Trump's rhetoric killed that as American Muslims overwhelmingly voted for Clinton.
 
Empirical question, I googled, found a reputable source saying immigration increases the Democratic share of the vote, except for cases when immigration is high enough or sufficiently popular of a topic to get native-borns riled up.
Source: http://ftp.iza.org/dp9543.pdf
Spoiler :
We empirically analyze the impact of immigration to the U.S. on the share of votes to the Republicans and Democrats between 1994 and 2012. Our analysis is based on variation across states and years – using data from the Current Population Survey merged with election data – and addresses the endogeneity of immigrant flows using a novel set of instruments. On average across election types, immigration to the U.S. has a significant and negative impact on the Republican vote share, consistent with the typical view of political analysts in the U.S. This average effect – which is driven by elections in the House – works through two main channels. The impact of immigration on Republican votes in the House is negative when the share of naturalized migrants in the voting population increases. Yet, it can be positive when the share of non-citizen migrants out of the population goes up and the size of migration makes it a salient policy issue in voters’ minds. These results are consistent with naturalized migrants being less likely to vote for the Republican Party than native voters and with native voters’ political preferences moving towards the Republican Party because of high immigration of non-citizens. This second effect, however, is significant only for very high levels of immigrant presence.

So I think Boots is correct, though you're right (AKAIK) about immigrants being more conservative than native-born Democrats. The GOP is definitely more skeptical of immigration. I'd also guess that it's common for immigrants to be socially conservative* but they don't have economically conservative ideologies. Maybe they come from more socially conservative countries, but I think most (edit: possibly all) of these countries are more statist than the GOP. To somehow make this a response to the OP, the GOP benefits from having economic platforms that are better synchronized with American nationalism. The Democrats definitely try to couch their policies in these terms, but it doesn't work as well because Americans hear "big government = not how America is supposed to work."

*See Arwon's comment below
 
Last edited:
Conservative means different things. The sort of angry racially-anxious queer-obsessed anti-state culturally protestant weirdos that dominate US institutional conservatism don't necessarily resonate with other "conservative" cultures of a more collectivist, paternalistic, family-oriented or hierarchical bent. Certainly they involve very different ideas about the exercise of political power and the role of the state.
 
Last edited:
And they don't do a whole lot to try to court that non-evangelical christian xenophobic anti-statist conservative element.

You got Republicans calling Islam an inherently violent and malicious cult and declaring they'll "glass the whole damn Middle East." So conservative Muslim populations are out.

They're unequivocal on not granting amnesty or any kind of a path to citizenship, and the soon-to-be president is writing off all Latinos as murderers and rapists, so they're not scoring any points with any non-Cubano latinos.

The evangelical black voters aren't going along because the party is decidedly white and racist in innumerable and obvious ways. So that's out.

So I mean, who do you have left? The hardline zionists? Not much of a base to build around. It's something that's actually pointed out quite a lot, even by the Republican party. There's a ton of fertile ground out there, but the Republican party does nothing whatsoever to try to court these groups and, instead repeatedly antagonizes them in an effort to double down on their white, male, (older) evangelical, anti-state base.
 
All the dems had to do to win the election was to have a reasonable nomination.

Another issue (the first being about party nepotism and out of touch politicians) is that the media is a hack-and-troll-fest of ludicrous dimensions by now.
 
I think it would be a good start if they voted. You know, quit talking so much internet game and, like, vote.

I would have been pretty happy had Trump not won. You know why Trump won? Not enough dems voted in states like Michigan, Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. It was pretty close in many states, within 70k.

So, like, you know, encourage people to vote.
 
Kyriakos said:
All the dems had to do to win the election was to have a reasonable nomination.

Another issue (the first being about party nepotism and out of touch politicians) is that the media is a hack-and-troll-fest of ludicrous dimensions by now.
Click to expand...

Yep. Starting with fair and transparent primaries and not rigging them in favor of the most disliked candidate they could find comes to my mind here.
 
MRM said:
Yep. Starting with fair and transparent primaries and not rigging them in favor of the most disliked candidate they could find comes to my mind here.
Click to expand...

Except Hillary got the most votes. So she won. What kind of backwards democracy do you live in where the person who commanded the most votes shouldn't win an election?
 
Owen Glyndwr said:
Except Hillary got the most votes. So she won. What kind of backwards democracy do you live in where the person who commanded the most votes shouldn't win an election?
Click to expand...

The presidential vote isn't a "pure democracy" procedure. It never has been. The process worked the way it was intended, so that one or two states with very high population don't dominate the other 48 states. That is just the way it is. People promoting this "popular vote" thing need to stop. It's fanning flames of ignorance. There is a procedure, the procedure was followed.

If you go by counties, which isn't "it" either, Trump won by a ridiculous margin.

Want to know something more messed up? Clinton didn't get all of her electoral votes, because a significant number of her electors became "faithless electors".
 
AppleDumplingHead said:
The presidential vote isn't a "pure democracy" procedure. It never has been. The process worked the way it was intended, so that one or two states with very high population don't dominate the other 48 states. That is just the way it is. People promoting this "popular vote" thing need to stop. It's fanning flames of ignorance. There is a procedure, the procedure was followed.

If you go by counties, which isn't "it" either, Trump won by a ridiculous margin.

Want to know something more messed up? Clinton didn't get all of her electoral votes, because a significant number of her electors became "faithless electors".
Click to expand...

Wasn't talking about the presidential election.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Zardnaar
Zards Political Theories In Action
2 3 4
Replies
61
Views
2K
Arwon
Arwon
Crezth
  • Locked
Why Should the security of Ukraine cause the U.S. government to shut down?
4 5 6
Replies
101
Views
5K
Birdjaguar
Birdjaguar
Askthepizzaguy
[RD] The threat to American Democracy
15 16 17
Replies
328
Views
17K
Sommerswerd
Sommerswerd
Zardnaar
  • Locked
Why the Left Doesn't Need to Be Woke
2 3 4
Replies
61
Views
4K
Arakhor
Arakhor
B
Reflections on Fast Diplo/SS Win At Regent Level
Replies
1
Views
259
BlackBetsy
B
Top Bottom