Raving Trump

While better than the GOP alternative, elements of the Democratic party are pretty flawed. Democratic partisans owe it to their nation to be self-critical of the party. Bringing to light, addressing, and resolving those errors will help to ensure that the Democratic party is better able to craft good platforms, win elections, and improve governance.

The knee-jerk response of correlating criticism of the Democrats with support of the GOP is ill-considered, counterproductive, and immature.
 
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The funny thing is the last I saw he seems to also think that you can convince Trump voters to change their minds rationally, that it's wrong to see them as simple bigots.
It seems flawed to see voting decisions as a fully, or even mostly rational process in general.

You may think Im reading too much into it, but I dont see the two lines of thought being advanced as contradictory as much as a recognition that people vote on emotion as much as any "rational" concern.
 
Emotional arguments are pretty effective at convincing voters. Consider Obama’s “Hope,” W. J. Clinton’s “Man from Hope,” and Trump’s “Make America Great Again;” all effective emotional slogans that won over voters. Contrast this with Gore, McGovern, Romney, or H. R. Clinton’s campaigns that were more technocratic in their appeals.

What Democrats need to remember is that positive arguments are way more effective then negative ones, both in terms of winning votes and for setting the stage for future governance. While many people will rightly point to the negativity in the Trump campaign, what he was selling to his voters was the promise of a better tomorrow.

Rather than hoping that condemning Trump will lead people to the polls, Democrats need to sell an even better tomorrow to voters. Once they come around to this, they’ll be pretty effective as the Democratic party advocates many positions that, unlike their rivals, actually will create a better tomorrow for more voters. But first Democrats need to excise the hate.
 
Emotional arguments are pretty effective at convincing voters. Consider Obama’s “Hope,” W. J. Clinton’s “Man from Hope,” and Trump’s “Make America Great Again;” all effective emotional slogans that won over voters. Contrast this with Gore, McGovern, Romney, or H. R. Clinton’s campaigns that were more technocratic in their appeals.

What Democrats need to remember is that positive arguments are way more effective then negative ones, both in terms of winning votes and for setting the stage for future governance. While many people will rightly point to the negativity in the Trump campaign, what he was selling to his voters was the promise of a better tomorrow.

Rather than hoping that condemning Trump will lead people to the polls, Democrats need to sell an even better tomorrow to voters. Once they come around to this, they’ll be pretty effective as the Democratic party advocates many positions that, unlike their rivals, actually will create a better tomorrow for more voters. But first Democrats need to excise the hate.

What they need is a good mix of positive and negative emotions. There needs to be a positive vision of the future with a catchy slogan, combined with a series of ads featuring sympathetic victims of Trump's policies. Such people should be hard-working Real Americans™, i.e. disproportionately white - because swing voters are disproportionately white, and they don't want to trigger their implicit racist assumptions (e.g. blacks are on welfare). Most of Trump's horrible remarks and behaviors should be ignored, but amplify the ones where he implies he's better or smarter than everyday people, and use those in attack ads.

Swing voters, after all, are mostly low-information white voters, many of whom have plenty of implicit racism but almost none of whom are explicitly racist. That just is what it is. So their campaigning should be done with the knowledge that explicitly focusing on minority groups may turn off more white voters than it will increase turnout among minority voters.

That applies for the areas which are mostly white, particularly in the Midwest. Where the calculus appears to favor it - i.e. the number of minority voters who failed to vote in 2016 is higher than the swing to Trump among white voters - do the opposite and run plenty of targeted ads to minority groups.

Ideally the candidate will be either black or Hispanic him- or herself, but speak in the dominant General American accent. Obama showed that this is a very viable option. This seems to drive up turnout among minority voters without turning off white swing voters. It would actually not be surprising if this has a positive effect on white voters too: most white people are implicitly racist but like to think of themselves as not racist, and voting for a black or Hispanic person who talks and acts just like they do helps them to convince themselves that they're not racist. In particular, General American-speaking blacks are extremely heavily represented in TV commercials, which suggests to me that advertisers have found that this combination works really well.

So yeah, the best option would probably be Cory Booker portraying himself as an Everyman and focusing lots of attention on middle-class whites, with a sleek advertising campaign pushing positive feelings with a catchy slogan. Hey, it worked for Obama - why argue with success?
 
Emotional arguments are pretty effective at convincing voters. Consider Obama’s “Hope,” W. J. Clinton’s “Man from Hope,” and Trump’s “Make America Great Again;” all effective emotional slogans that won over voters. Contrast this with Gore, McGovern, Romney, or H. R. Clinton’s campaigns that were more technocratic in their appeals.

What Democrats need to remember is that positive arguments are way more effective then negative ones, both in terms of winning votes and for setting the stage for future governance. While many people will rightly point to the negativity in the Trump campaign, what he was selling to his voters was the promise of a better tomorrow.

Rather than hoping that condemning Trump will lead people to the polls, Democrats need to sell an even better tomorrow to voters. Once they come around to this, they’ll be pretty effective as the Democratic party advocates many positions that, unlike their rivals, actually will create a better tomorrow for more voters. But first Democrats need to excise the hate.
:clap::agree:
 
So yeah, the best option would probably be Cory Booker portraying himself as an Everyman and focusing lots of attention on middle-class whites, with a sleek advertising campaign pushing positive feelings with a catchy slogan. Hey, it worked for Obama - why argue with success?
Cory Booker is a more complicated case than it appears at first blush. Booker would be running as a 50 year old who has never been married and is pretty guarded about his private life. That makes his extremely vulnerable to attacks based on his sexuality. His approach to this has always been to say that sexuality shouldn't matter, and that has worked for him in the past, but I don't know if he is going to be able to deal with it that way running for POTUS. I'd like to think that if he was gay that it would actually help him, but that may be wishful thinking on my part.
 
Cory Booker is a more complicated case than it appears at first blush. Booker would be running as a 50 year old who has never been married and is pretty guarded about his private life. That makes his extremely vulnerable to attacks based on his sexuality. His approach to this has always been to say that sexuality shouldn't matter, and that has worked for him in the past, but I don't know if he is going to be able to deal with it that way running for POTUS. I'd like to think that if he was gay that it would actually help him, but that may be wishful thinking on my part.

Huh, I didn't know that. I don't know if being gay would help or hurt him either. The last poll I could find on this was from 2015, where 74% of people said they'd vote for a gay president (link). Given that support for gay rights has shot up very rapidly in the last decade, and even Republicans have mostly stopped talking about it (in favor of attacking trans people), it's likely that it wouldn't make much difference.

I'm guessing that the vast majority of the 26% are solid Republicans. Then again, maybe not. People also might be somewhat reluctant to admit that being gay would affect their vote, and it may hurt him among the Obama-Trump types. FWIW, only 81% said they'd vote for a Mormon, even though we'd already had a Mormon candidate.
 
Read the final two paragraphs of this excerpt from this article:

Trump claims that somehow the move will also help the US broker a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians. To anyone who watched the scores of Palestinians killed and the hundreds wounded by Israeli troops, such remarks feel like a preposterous, sick joke. (The White House repeatedly refused to condemn Israel’s actions and instead blamed Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza.)

No, it is clear that Trump cares more about the November midterms and his chances of re-election in 2020, than he does about the basic rights or lives of the millions of Palestinians who feel cheated by his move to ignore decades of international agreement and unilaterally recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – something nations collectively believed should be decided by Israelis and Palestinians as part of a broader peace accord.

It is also clear Trump knows he needs those evangelicals to turn out and vote.

A few weeks ago, one unofficial but influential evangelical adviser to Trump, Johnnie Moore, was asked by The Independent to square the community’s support for the president, with his scandalous, seemingly unchristian antics.


“Evangelicals are very focussed on the issues,” he said. “They have a way of not being distracted by what the media may be talking about every day.”

and you'll see that the only thing you have to do is win an emotional battle. Donald J. Trump and his associates are intellectually bankrupt, culturally ignorant, and morally skint, and their defeat in the criminal and civil courts is a matter of time (not that they cannot simply issue pardons for themselves and everybody else involved), but they might just get re-elected yet again, based on these type of shenanigans and the institutionalised distortion known as the Electoral College.

Oh, and btw:
I know you are, but what am I?
A Garbageman
I know you are, but what am I?
A Garbageman
I know you are, but what am I?
Takes one to know one
FTFY, man.
 
It seems flawed to see voting decisions as a fully, or even mostly rational process in general.

You may think Im reading too much into it, but I dont see the two lines of thought being advanced as contradictory as much as a recognition that people vote on emotion as much as any "rational" concern.

I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about the person you're talking to.

Look at his latest pithy speech on how to convince Trump supporters when he's just said before that there's no convincing them that they've been lied to. It's quite contradictory. If the two claims are both to be true, the implication is that you have to sell Trump supporters a even bigger lie that would entice them. How about "Make America Greater Than Ever" for a slogan, to start with? That'll one up Trump in convincing people who can't be convinced by telling the truth.
 
"Make America Greater Than Ever" is too Trumpy. It will remind people of Trump as the Dem candidate tries to portray him or herself in a positive light. That might cause them to associate a Trump-related slogan with positive emotions. Not that I have a good idea myself.

Winning elections is about playing to the hopes and fears of people as they actually are, and running a sleek marketing campaign to exploit them. I don't share some of BvBPL's optimism about people seeing reason and voting for moderates, but I do agree with him that the right campaign with a strong dose of positive emotions (balanced with negative ones, but more positive than negative) can swing enough Trump voters to win, if it's conducted well enough.
 
I suppose you could always use a certain tagline from "Team America: World Police" as your campaign slogan.:smoke:
 
If you wish to become a so-called moderate, we would welcome you, Sommerswerrd. But be warned! The path of so-called moderation is filled with alleged thorns and reported pit falls. What’s more, if you choose to join us then you will forever earn the enmity of the Aelves of Lion City, who since ancient times have sought to slander and defame the so-called moderates for some perceived wrong lost to the mists of time.

But should you choose to brave these suspected perils then you shall be rumored to have anointed by the oil of temperance that you may stand proud among the so-called moderates.
 
People also might be somewhat reluctant to admit that being gay would affect their vote, and it may hurt him among the Obama-Trump types.
How much overlap do you think there is between the folks who would conceal their unwillingness to vote for a gay candidate and the folks who would be unwilling to vote for a black candidate? I suspect that it might not be such a direct correlation... which makes the factor an even wilder variable. In the face of Trump, who exuded unpredictability during the campaign... so much so that pundits started referencing his predictable unpredictability :crazyeye:... a wild card might inject much needed excitement. Given the choice between Biden, or some other Democratic/Liberal old-guard running, versus Booker... I'd rather see Booker run.
I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about the person you're talking to.
Oh I know. I made my point with that in mind, and I think my point stands... do you see what I mean?
"Make America Greater Than Ever" is too Trumpy. It will remind people of Trump as the Dem candidate tries to portray him or herself in a positive light. That might cause them to associate a Trump-related slogan with positive emotions. Not that I have a good idea myself.
What about A Better Tomorrow... Tomorrow?
 
It seems flawed to see voting decisions as a fully, or even mostly rational process in general.

You may think Im reading too much into it, but I dont see the two lines of thought being advanced as contradictory as much as a recognition that people vote on emotion as much as any "rational" concern.

Winning elections is about playing to the hopes and fears of people as they actually are, and running a sleek marketing campaign to exploit them. I don't share some of BvBPL's optimism about people seeing reason and voting for moderates, but I do agree with him that the right campaign with a strong dose of positive emotions (balanced with negative ones, but more positive than negative) can swing enough Trump voters to win, if it's conducted well enough.

I don't think the fact that some people are primarily irrational means that you can win them over emotionally, if only you did it right. Without changing your platform entirely, that is.

We're talking about Trump voters that won't admit they've been lied to. Who are these people and, in light of that, what makes you think you can win them over without a platform that is, well, Trump-like? Even if you can create a message that resonates with them emotionally to some extent, how are you going to beat the emotional resonance that racist, sexist rhetoric gets? Trump tells them he's against the people they hate. How long can you get away with selling them an emotional message without them knowing that you are for the people they hate?

The stubborn denial reality only means one thing: These aren't people who are looking for somebody to save them. They'd have come round to the fact that their would-be saviour is far from it. It means they want somebody to pander to them, and I don't think it's a contest the left-wing would win.
 
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As it bears on the thread topic... the Senate investigation has concluded that Russian agents, under the orders of Putin, interfered in the US election with the specific goal of helping Trump win.

I think this will not move the needle one bit towards impeachment, removal, or anything else...
 
Republicans will just say "Both the president ands fox news say that there is no collusion, therefore the findings are fake news. Furthermore the investigation failed to investigate Her Emails, therefore proving its anti-american bias!"
 
Emotional arguments are pretty effective at convincing voters. Consider Obama’s “Hope,” W. J. Clinton’s “Man from Hope,” and Trump’s “Make America Great Again;” all effective emotional slogans that won over voters. Contrast this with Gore, McGovern, Romney, or H. R. Clinton’s campaigns that were more technocratic in their appeals.

What Democrats need to remember is that positive arguments are way more effective then negative ones, both in terms of winning votes and for setting the stage for future governance. While many people will rightly point to the negativity in the Trump campaign, what he was selling to his voters was the promise of a better tomorrow.

Rather than hoping that condemning Trump will lead people to the polls, Democrats need to sell an even better tomorrow to voters. Once they come around to this, they’ll be pretty effective as the Democratic party advocates many positions that, unlike their rivals, actually will create a better tomorrow for more voters. But first Democrats need to excise the hate.

"Make America Greater Than Ever" is too Trumpy. It will remind people of Trump as the Dem candidate tries to portray him or herself in a positive light. That might cause them to associate a Trump-related slogan with positive emotions. Not that I have a good idea myself.

Winning elections is about playing to the hopes and fears of people as they actually are, and running a sleek marketing campaign to exploit them. I don't share some of BvBPL's optimism about people seeing reason and voting for moderates, but I do agree with him that the right campaign with a strong dose of positive emotions (balanced with negative ones, but more positive than negative) can swing enough Trump voters to win, if it's conducted well enough.
The biggest force driving hate, partisanship and divisiveness in this country is Rush Limbaugh. For three hours every day 12 million people listen to his hate filled political entertainment. His goal is to feed the fires of hateful partisanship and keep this country divided so his ratings will stay high.
 
The biggest force driving hate, partisanship and divisiveness in this country is Rush Limbaugh. For three hours every day 12 million people listen to his hate filled political entertainment. His goal is to feed the fires of hateful partisanship and keep this country divided so his ratings will stay high.

Well I managed to listen to his 17 May 2018 podcast for all of its first 6 minutes.
 
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