What did Democrats do wrong?

[d4m10n]

if i was you i wouldn’t cede the ground that maga is made up of blue collar americans or represents them

Whether MAGA prevailed based on lower-income voter support is an empirical question, and I don't think the answer is much in doubt.

i think it’s a bit of a sneaky move to substitute in blue collar when it’s not what you originally said.

Already addressed this above.

bottom line is you don't get a donald trump presidency from a bunch of smart people making good decisions.

Bottom line is that the Democrats failed to appeal to people below average in income and education, demographics which were solidly supportive within living memory. Instead of blaming voters, they should ask how they lost touch.

 

[Tero]

What could we have done? There is no compromize. But aside from all that, how will theu run America? They are opposed to government. How will they run FAA, ports, airports? Just close off and start putting those iPhones together here with our screwdrivers from Lutnick? Oh wait, we don't make the parts either.

 

[dirtywick]

Bottom line is that the Democrats failed to appeal to people below average in income and education, demographics which were solidly supportive within living memory. Instead of blaming voters, they should ask how they lost touch.

i think people not affiliated with the party are allowed to express frustration with those voters making bad decisions, and you treating those people as if they are dems is silly

 

[dann]

This is not limited to the USA.
The only heroes are "our guys", civilians in their way had the misfortune and bad taste* to be in their way towards the glory of "our" country.

Yes, I see the same tendency in Denmark. That is what brains on patriotism inevitably look like. .
But I expected something better from the alleged 'radical left', i.e. people like Graham Platner and Bernie Sanders, as I pointed out in post 4,896.

 

[Donal]

Whether MAGA prevailed based on lower-income voter support is an empirical question, and I don't think the answer is much in doubt.

You mean white low-income voters. Which is not all "blue collar" voters.

Already addressed this above.

Bottom line is that the Democrats failed to appeal to people below average in income and education, demographics which were solidly supportive within living memory. Instead of blaming voters, they should ask how they lost touch.

50+ years of Southern Strategy and propaganda targeting institutions like education. Democrats going along with consolidation of media and defunding education and other essential services. Poor white people believing that they are poor because some black girl with a baby can get SNAP and not because billionaires are buying up all the businesses, downsizing their jobs away, and then bribing politicians to repeal or just ignore regulations meant to protect those poor whites.

 

[Susheel]

Yes, I see the same tendency in Denmark. That is what brains on patriotism inevitably look like. .
But I expected something better from the alleged 'radical left', i.e. people like Graham Platner and Bernie Sanders, as I pointed out in post 4,896.

I am glad you put it "radical left" in quotes. If anything...these guys are centrists.

 

[dann]

When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?


Guilty as charged! I am one of those people who don't understand progressives like Bernie Sanders and Graham Platner!

Sometimes I have a hard time understanding progressives myself! In fact, sometimes I despair at the stupidity of U.S. progressives who ought to know better!


1:10--> Graham Platner about Memorial Day: ... a little complicated, I think, for those of us who remember our friends who we lost. It's also, quite frankly, at this day and age, a reminder that the best way for us to honor those who have sacrificed for this country is to not create more opportunities for the government to waste people's lives, like were seeing in the war in Iran. I very much believe that we need to take moments like today and realize that we have a resource in this country, the young men and women who are willing to serve it. It cannot be squandered lightly.

It's difficult for me to empathize with "young men and women who are willing to serve" in U.S. wars! I can empathize with people who were drafted against their will, and to some extent I can empathize with naïve young men and women who volunteer because they see no other way out of their current circumstances and have been fooled by their nation into believing that it's a good cause. However, they have to be really naïve and ignorant to believe that, but there are a lot of hurdles for them to find out the truth.

And if you hoped that Bernie might be better than Platner, prepare to despair!


Bernie, do you know who else died in those wars? Women and children!

Do you know how long those walls would have been to include the names of Vietnamese, Laotians and Camodians killed in that war? Do you think it would be a good idea to include those names?
Do you know that people who were not at all prepared to sacrifice their lives died, too? And still do!!!
(And no, the Americans drafted in the USA against their will are not the ones I'm thinking of in this case!)


You guys know that these young guys and gals are the ones that your own "young men and women who are willing to serve" in U.S. wars will be sent to kill next, don't you? You probably don't care because they don't like the U.S. president, they look a lot like Vietnamese and speak English with an obvious accent. (English is their second (!) foreign language. Until fairly recently, many of them thought English was way more cool than the first of those foreign languages.)

Now tell them how important it is to honor Americans "willing to serve."

I don't think Jimmy Kimmel has ever been labelled a progressive. I think he's a liberal Democrat. But this is his definition of Memorial Day:

Trump Skips Don Jr’s Wedding, Attacks DUMOCRATS on Memorial Day & Claims His Physical Went PERFECTLY (Jimmy Kimmel Live on YouTube, May 27, 2026 – 13:10 min.)
The Knicks completed a second consecutive sweep to earn a spot in the NBA Finals, Don Jr and his new bride Bettina were married on Saturday on an island in the Bahamas and Trump did not make it, they have begun construction on the arena for the big UFC fight scheduled for Trump’s 80th birthday next month, we are now on week thirteen of Trump’s “little excursion” in Iran, he posted a message to social media for[/hilite] Memorial Day,[/hilite] he gave himself a glowing report about his health after his physical, RFK Jr. decided to pick up snakes at Dr. Oz’s house, and after months of delays the Trump Mobile phone is finally shipping to customers.

4:00--> Memorial Day, the day on which we honor the women and men who gave their lives to protect our country, our freedoms, our ideals, everything we used to stand for.

Why does it never occur to those brainwashed American patriots, be it progressives or slightly-left-of-center Democrats, that wars (or 'incursions') fought in the Middle East, in Southeast Asia, in Afghanistan, in South America and potentially in Greenland and Cuba, why does it never occur to them that those wars aren't "to protect our country." They are to protect and expand the interests of the U.S. Epstein class all over the world. The "women and men who gave their lives" to that cause should be told the truth about those wars. I wouldn't want to be the one to tell the sons and daughters, the spouses or the parents of those dead soldiers what they died for, but they nevertheless ought to know.
'This is what your son/daughter/husband/wife/father/mother died for! And so did the people they killed!´
It's obvious that Kimmel isn't up to it.

 

[dann]

I am glad you put it "radical left" in quotes. If anything...these guys are centrists.

In the rest of the world, they would be. In MAGA land, they are the extreme left of the "radical left Democrats."

 

[d4m10n]

i think people not affiliated with the party are allowed to express frustration with those voters making bad decisions

How might expressing that frustration in this thread lead to any insights about what the Democrats did wrong?

 

[Flo]

In the rest of the world, they would be. In MAGA land, they are the extreme left of the "radical left Democrats."

Then why would you align yourself with a definition held by insane people ?

 

[dirtywick]

How might expressing that frustration in this thread lead to any insights about what the Democrats did wrong?

it’s an argument for the 8th option down in the poll imo

 

[d4m10n]

I'm continually surprised at how often people confuse calling other people stupid with making an argument.

 

[dann]

Then why would you align yourself with a definition held by insane people ?

I wouldn't. I don't align myself with "the alleged 'radical left'" or with MAGA's definition of them.
You'll have to go a couple of posts back in the thread to see that I don't.

 

[dann]

I've never met a progressive that understood anyone slightly not far as left as them so, there!

Intensive studies of Social Media Feeds show that the Right-Wing Bubble is much thicker than the progressive one.
And I have yet to meet a conservative who understood their own ideology, never mind progressivism.
No one who is not opposing Trump can call themselves a Conservative.

Guilty as charged! I am one of those people who don't understand progressives like Bernie Sanders and Graham Platner!

Sometimes I have a hard time understanding progressives myself! In fact, sometimes I despair at the stupidity of U.S. progressives who ought to know better!

The Great Zaganza, do you understand what happened here?
Do you understand the trick ahhell was playing on you?

 

[dirtywick]

I'm continually surprised at how often people confuse calling other people stupid with making an argument.

do stupid people exist?

 

[d4m10n]

do stupid people exist?

Some people are much less intelligent than other people, but that doesn't make their votes or their values count for any less in a pluralistic democracy. If you want a system which only works for "smart people making good decisions" then what you are asking for is not really democracy.

 

[dirtywick]

Some people are much less intelligent than other people, but that doesn't make their votes or their values count for any less in a pluralistic democracy. If you want a system which only works for "smart people making good decisions" then what you are asking for is not democracy.

first of all, i didn't say all that, you're putting words in my mouth. you're also just calling them "less intelligent" instead of stupid because it's a little less insulting i suppose, but it's the same thing. you just don't like the term

what i do agree with is the part about their values are terrible, but they are stupid people so that's to be expected. trump appealed to them by validating their worst impulses, including just plain old racism, to all of our detriment. so i agree with that part. trump specifically targeted stupid people as a demographic. the paul brothers, joe rogan, adin ross and the kick streamer community, ufc, wwe, white nationalists, he cultivated mass appeal to that type of person and found millions of disengaged voters to show up to the polls by doing it. unfortunately, voting for him was a poor decision. i mean, take a look around at what's happening. all pretty predictable, all pretty bad. things aren't going good. this stupid demographic delivered this to you.

and while you might not like it, it's what happened.

 

[d4m10n]

what i do agree with is the part about their values are terrible, but they are stupid people so that's to be expected.

You are conflating intelligence with morality; someone can be an innovative genius and still have terrible values. Quite a few famous German scientists and researchers fit this description, not to mention Henry Ford.

he cultivated mass appeal to that type of person and found millions of disengaged voters

There is nothing in the Democratic Party platform which prevented them from appealing to disengaged voters who enjoy masculine-coded pursuits like streaming, gaming, and fighting. They failed to do this in part because they (like you) dismiss such activities as for the deplorable masses rather than the enlightened elites.

 

[theprestige]

Democrats: Masculinity is toxic.

Also Democrats: Where have all the men gone?

Since we're talking about things Democrats did wrong.

 

[dirtywick]

You are conflating intelligence with morality; someone can be an innovative genius and still have terrible values. Quite a few famous German scientists and researchers fit this description, not to mention Henry Ford.

i didn't say it was limited to stupid people

There is nothing in the Democratic Party platform which prevented them from appealing to disengaged voters who enjoy masculine-coded pursuits like streaming, gaming, and fighting. They failed to do this in part because they (like you) dismiss such activities as for the deplorable masses rather than the enlightened elites.

first of all, i think the dems tried some outreach on digital media through gaming and streaming(in fact, aoc and ilham omar had the third highest watched stream of all time at the time it aired), it just didn't gain a lot of traction.

but you say that like watching adin ross or the nelk boys play rigged slot machines with drill rappers on kick or rumble gambling streams sponsored by online crypto casinos isn't stupid. want to watch rampage stage fights with neon? how do you explain colby covington, that was just a big work and he admits it. do you know who sean strickland is? i do.

you do know dana white and trump are friends right? 24:30 you can listen to him tell it himself


now there's a ufc arena being built on the white house lawn. vince mcmahon too, linda is in his cabinet lol like the dems had a shot at getting into these spaces. i saw it happen, and i dismiss these activites because they're ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ phony