So-what does anyone here think it would take those who voted Trump this time...

[Ken Burch]

...to think again in 2018 or 2020?

What would make them say "hey-this was all bullshit!"?

Just wondering whether folks here think anything at all would get through to those folks.

Even if we don't try to appeal to them, we should WANT them to get out of this headspace, shouldn't we?

[LonePirate]

1. Wait until they lose their health insurance, the wall is not built and the jobs don't return.

[pangaia]

17. I can't wait that long. without medicare and SS I'm in big doo doo...

as are millions of others...

[uponit7771]

22. Yeap, the UE rate in WI is 4.4, in PA its 4.8 and is 5.6 in MI...I don't see DPutin making those ...

... numbers greater.

[jfern]

26. The unemployment rate doesn't count people who gave up trying to find work

But I guess you'd rather lecture to them about how great they have it.

[uponit7771]

27. The LFPR is up and the U6 rate is down in those areas too, I don't peddle RWTP's, they're usually

... not factual.

The national LFPR is up too for a whole year....

Obama didn't tout the nations good economic news because he didn't have shit else to do

[jfern]

29. Median incomes are still 1400 less than in 1999.

[uponit7771]

30. ... which is excellent after a GOP great depression. There's very few bad caveats to the economic ..

... news and I believe that's one of the reasons dems got dinged in this election is not pointing out the contrast in econ ideals and performance constantly to America's middle class.

Democrats are better for America's middle class.

DPutin isn't going to improve on Obama's factual numbers, they can make shit up ... but 4.8 nationally and a rising LFPR is going to be hard for DPutin to beat.

There's not that many tax breaks for contractors to get them to hire a ton of people to go to work

[Tommy_Carcetti]

43. But they'll have wonderful Health Savings Accounts to use!

They can put in the money into them that they don't have and watch them not grow!

[LuvLoogie]

2. I really don't care about Trump voters. It's the idiots who didn't vote

and who voted Johnson/Stein that will move the most

[RAFisher]

6. Yep. After Johnson voters find out AG Sessions will be enforcing federal marijuana laws they'll will

Purely speculation on my part. However Session is an anti-drug idiot and don't really see recreational weed being 'legal' in states when he's AG.

[Ken Burch]

11. As a party, we need to be actively involved in persuading nonvoters to start voting.

And the tone of that needs to be persuasion, not demands.

[LuvLoogie]

13. Use it or lose it. That is the extent of my persuasive speech.

If the people around you who you supposedly care about aren't inspiration enough for you to at least vote, then why should I waste my time with you. Enough coddling. If you don't see it as life or death. Hasta la vista.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

37. Maybe this will bring the glorious progressive revolution

the Greens are forever telling us is going to soon be upon us after the election of another disastrous Republican instead of a impure "Centrist" Democrat? Whatever happened to Bernie's looming revolution?


2018 midterms should (hopefully) give us some indication if they care enough to come out to oppose the upcoming Trump/GOP travesties.

[rwheeler31]

3. Stop delivering beer outside the city limits and tell them

Trump ordered it make them loose weight.

[mythology]

4. I think if Republicans are actually stupid enough to kill the ACA without having a real plan

would do some serious harm. If all of a sudden 20 million people find themselves without insurance, or Republicans cause premiums to skyrocket due to trying to keep the parts of the ACA people like, while doing away with parts people think they don't like.

Also I think if there is a terrorist attack and Trump does something stupid (either stumble into a major war or tweet about how tough he is while doing nothing).

I think it would really help if Democrats could develop some sort of simple easy to get concept for what our vision for the future is. Clinton had it's the economy stupid, Bush had compassionate conservatism, Obama had yes we can and we are the ones we've been waiting for, Trump had make America great again. I think in the social media age, we need something that fits in a tweet, on a bumper sticker, that's sticky in people's heads. As Bush and Trump proved, it doesn't matter if your concept is idiotic and you have no intention of living up to it.

I think we as a party need to be better focused on how we want to move the U.S. forward. We have some amazing challenges, not just health care, but climate change, population growth, shifting to renewable energy and how that impacts our infrastructure (what happens when we don't need coal, oil or gas stations for example), the radical change automation is having on our labor market, globalization, etc.

[LuvLoogie]

14. They'll kill the ACA and blame Obama. And they'll get away with it.

[pangaia]

18. That's my take also.

Whatever they do they will blame dems.
And the dems in congress haven't a clue what to do about it.. at least the ones who really care.. and they are becoming fewer and fewer...

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. It will depend on their reasons for their votes.

1. The Hillary-haters will be pissed off if he doesn't follow through with his threatened prosecution of her - and he almost certainly won't. In fact, I'm betting he'll make nice with the Clintons and try to ingratiate himself with them because being accepted by important people is crucial to his fragile ego. And the Clintons are still players, regardless.

2. The racists/xenophobes will be disappointed when the Mexican wall doesn't happen and the Mexicans and the Muslims are not instantly deported.

3. Those who voted for him because they believed his promises to bring back manufacturing jobs will wonder what happened if a couple of years from now the factories and coal mines are still closed and there are no more union jobs with high wages and good benefits.

4. If the ACA is repealed and not replaced with anything comparable, the 20 million people who no longer have insurance are going to be very unhappy.

5. If people's Medicare and Social Security are reduced or eliminated there will be hell to pay.

I don't want to have to say "I told you so" to those people, but...

[NanceGreggs]

7. Yes on all counts.

That's my list as well.

[akbacchus_BC]

8. When they start losing their health care, they will wake up. Trump made a lot of bold promises

to the people who identify with him and trump is not clearing the swamp, he is emboldening the swamp. Most likely, his supporters are too daft to understand that they were fooled!

[LuvLoogie]

12. No they won't wake up. They will keep blaming

minorities and liberals until the grave.

[akbacchus_BC]

15. Do not underestimate ignorance. He promised them a bread basket and sooner than

later, they will wake you to find out he is a liar. He is not going to build a wall. He got elected by default. The asshole has no idea how to govern. His own people will rise up against him.

November 8 was a sad day when that liar got elected, but am hoping that after 4 years, Americans will vote that liar out. Imagine an America with a fool like trump as President! I am still thinking it is a nightmare that that fool got elected. The world is grieving along with you and I.

[pangaia]

20. 4 YEARS !!!

We don't have that long.. IN 2 years America is min the crapper.

What to do? beats me. I wish I knew...

[pangaia]

19. You are right.

[msongs]

9. in too many districts there is NO dem on the ballot at any level. lost dems might come back

to the national ticket if they could vote for dems on a more regular basis locally

[Ken Burch]

10. That is an excellent point.

The local, state and national Democrats have to put together a much more aggressive candidate recruitment effort.

[pangaia]

21. That is what the repubs started doing at least as long agho as 1980.. in the '70s really..

Under the radar, town councils, school boards, county road commissioner, etc etc...
It started invisible, then grew like a cancer....

But, we also do not have that long.
These guys are after everything right now.


And one really scary thing is, they want the internet !!!

So.. what do we do in the very near future .. like NOW.. to save ourselves?

[Ken Burch]

24. I've felt, for the longest time, that establishment core of this party fears grassroots involvement.

In fact, that that core would rather see the party continue its process of perpetual slow decline on the local and state level, if the choice is between continued decline, with continued establishment control, or multilevel recovery and rejuvenation but with loss of establishment control.

[boston bean]

33. That is just not the case.

[Ken Burch]

38. My experience, watching Democratic politics since the early 1970's

is that the party still blames grassroots activism for the McGovern defeat(in fact, the blame for that lies solely with the party regulars who refused to support McGovern even though he had done nothing to betray them) and prefers this to be a party with as little passion and grassroots enthusiasm as possible. It's why the Rainbow Coalition was driven away after 1988 and it's why Dennis Kucinich's supporters were treated with such utter scorn and contempt, even though the ideas Dennis supported were much more popular than his own presidential campaign.

That's the only explanation I can think of for why the party insisted, immediately after the 2008 election, on blocking the Obama movement from continuing on any level other than an empty-shell fundraising organization.

We should let this party be a place where people can fight for what they care about, and where helping to elect a Democratic president and Congress means you get a say in what that president and Congress try to do.

It never strengthens us to tamp down enthusiasm and tell people to just shut up and take what they're given. Yet that has been the choice I've seen the party make over and over again, in my experience.

[uponit7771]

23. THIS !!!! Deans 50 state all counties should be dem mantra RIGHT HOT DAMN NOW... don't

... expect people to vote for our platform if we don't talk to them at all.

[frazzled]

39. Well, there are also a kazillion districts where there is no Republican on the ballot at any level

On my 12-page ballot, there were maybe 1 or 2 Republicans running for any office (County Clerk of the Courts was one, and she lost). And most of the Democrats were running unopposed.

So I think that evens out.

[33taw]

16. Guns. Rural voters care about their right to buy any kind of weapon.

[Doreen]

25. Do those people

truly think the Repub party will let them keep their guns? When the repubs start taking "everything they have to lose" away they might want to fight back. I think gun ownership rights for the common person is actually going to be dealt with. The new government can not have the peasants protecting themselves with guns.

[33taw]

28. Yes, they think the republicans will let them keep their guns.

Gun sales have dropped off since Trump was elected because they no longer fear the democrats will take them away. Go to the local feed mill in every rural community and you will find that they think Obama took their guns and that Donald Trump served his country in Vietnam and is a war hero. I have actually heard this in these communities. They think the family farm and mining jobs are coming back to their communities.

[Doreen]

41. I do not know

whether to feel sorry for them or roll my eyes at their stupidity.

[Warren DeMontague]

31. I think a lot of them don't really understand what the GOP stands for, what it has in store for 'em

as others have noted in the thread, it may just have to be a matter of waiting and watching it play out, unfortunately.

They don't seem to understand that when Paul Ryan talks about "getting rid of entitlements", he isn't snatching overpriced bon-bons from mythical limo-riding welfare queens, he's talking about their medicare.

When they hear promises to "end Obamacare", they think it will be replaced with something better. The idea that they'll be left uninsurable due to pre-existing conditions, and told that in place of the catastrophic coverage they lost they should "invest in a health savings account" on their minimum wage pay, is apparently unfathomable.

They're told they'll get a tax cut- who doesn't want one of those? And for the people pulling in over 400K a year, there will be BIG tax cuts... but for the folks eking by on 16K a year, or the single mom with 4 kids making 40K, there will actually be a tax increase. Ooops!

They'll figure it out, and that will be part of the pendulum swinging back. It always does.

[Vogon_Glory]

32. I suspect watching their loved ones sicken and die will have an effect

I suspect that watching their loved ones sicken and die because both the ACA and Medicare have gone away is going to have an effect on some of Trump's Magoo followers, at least in the rural areas.

Struggling rural whites seeing that their children go hungry because they no longer have food stamps are also going to have horrible enlightenments. POC-bashing does not fill hungry children's empty stomachs.

I feared something like what's about to happen would occur for nearly 15 years now. I thought the country would turn away from right-wing madness when President Obama got elected in 2008, but my fear never really went away. At this point, I think this country is like a hard-core alcoholic: as a country, we won't sober up until we hit rock bottom.

[Txbluedog]

34. You all have too much faith in people

Trump's base is going to go to their graves blaming democrats, minorities for all of their problems. This is because they are extremely poorly educated and by the time Mrs. deVos gets done with the public education system, people will be able to graduate a public high school without having the ability to read or write their name. Thus, they will be susceptible to what ever "false" news is fed to them

[Buckeye_Democrat]

35. Loss of health insurance, benefits, jobs, etc.

That would absolutely do it.

[gollygee]

36. Some people vote based on their personal feelings about the world rather than how they're affected

By policy.

Their personal feelings about the world include that women have no right to bodily autonomy, LGBT people are sick, and people of color are taking over. How do you work with that?

[Hugin]

40. I respect what you're asking, however, I don't believe we should be converting Trump voters.

The path of least resistance is energizing those who didn't vote at all to vote for a Democratic candidate.
Anyway, they don't represent a significant percentage of the total population.

How would we go about energizing a widened base to vote?

[Ken Burch]

42. I'm not talking about trying to convert Trump voters.

If any of them break with the guy, it will be because he manages to alienate them-not because of anything we might say. This was more about pondering what the tipping point might be.

We do need to turn nonvoters into voters-a lot of us have been saying that for years. This involves a major change in attitude towards non-voters. Rather than just attack them for NOT voting, we as a party need to take a look at ourselves and our "offer" and need to try and find out what it is about those that fails to connect with people.

One thing I would argue that we need to change is the tendency to DEMAND votes. We had a lot to offer this year, but the demanding tone a lot of us took mainly had the effect, as it always does, of simply driving people away. People just don't respond well to being told they HAVE to do something. We do better when we phrase it as "we'll do things that will help you, that will make a difference in your life, and that's why we are ASKING for your support". People, as a general rule, to be asked. They hate to be given orders and treated as if they owe something with no expectation of getting anything in return. We can get more votes by making our appeal positive, and we had the chance to do that with what we offered this year. Instead, rather than emphasizing over and over again how good our platform was and how it would help people, far too much of our pitch, especially in the last month, was "They're monsters-you HAVE to vote for us". My experience is that, when people hear that type of a pitch, they don't think "you're right, we HAVE to vote for you"; instead, they think "If all these folks have to say is that the other side is horrible, then THEY must not have anything to offer that's going to be good for us", or simply "screw you-don't tell me what I have to do".

Now obviously, the other side was and is horrific, but if we wanted to do well enough to keep the other side out, we needed to not only say "they're horrible", we also needed to say "but here's why WE'RE BETTER". If we had found the way to make that kind of appeal, we would be celebrating now instead of quaking in our boots. And the key to winning in the future will be finding a way to make a positive appeal, to get people to vote FOR rather than just against.