You need someone who's very obviously pushing a "change and prosperity for all" message at this point. A standard neoliberal has very little chance of winning at a time when we've suffered 2? 3? once in a lifetime economic crises in the last 25y.
There needs to be some plan to include everyone in the economic prosperity that we've funnelled to the top 10% and the candidate needs to beat that drum over and over until there's no space left to talk about anything else. We already know Democrats are for women's issues, we already know Democrats are for equal racial opportunity, we already know Democrats are (generally) more sane than the other guy - now we need to tell folks that we've got the better plan to uplift everyone that's fallen behind over the last 30y.
When the other side has candidates willing to say "I'll break the law to change things" you really have to step up your game beyond "we're better for long term growth and stability, and by the way we're not the other guy and we ❤️ PoC."
(Honestly it's exhausting that this needs to be spelled out, it's like national Democrats don't know a single person who's been left behind over the last 30y.)
Dems under Biden tried to pass an immigration reform bill that Republicans wrote under Trump and Republicans shot it down so they could run on an immigration reform platform and pass it themselves
Now add a major new program aimed at blue collar voters (Harris lacked this) and a major new program aimed at Latino and/or Black voters (Harris lacked this too).
This is it right here, Dems didn't have a big economic plan to get folks back to where they were before the pandemic and so blue collar voters just didn't turn out for them.
We've had 32y of the neoliberal Democrat party and the bulk of the wealth created during that time has funnelled to the top 10%. Voters want to hear about the plan to give them a share of prosperity too and until that's on the menu they're not going to show up unless a previous Republican administration makes some sort of catastrophic fuck up.
Bush walked into the 2008 crash with his face and Obama ran on change and opportunity for all. He won, then passed healthcare reform and won again. Hillary pushed neoliberal business as usual and her foreign policy expertise and failed. Biden won because Trump catastrophically fucked up the government's COVID response and voters didn't trust him to steer the country out of it. Harris ran on neoliberal business as usual at a time shortly after record setting inflation (and corporate profits) without spending any time talking about how she'd address these things or how they were going to make new opportunity for the working class. It shouldn't be a surprise that her campaign failed, neoliberalism isn't particularly popular with anyone except the wealthy and the educated who see the long term benefit of democrats other policies.
It's pretty easy to see the pattern, Democrats don't represent the change voters want to see unless we're coming out of a catastrophic economic fuck-up during the prior administration.
What does that buy you, an unpredictable win every 8-12y followed by 4 more years of business as usual?
The other side did propaganda, lies, and criminal activity better.
So learn what messages the public wants to hear, it's obviously not "we'll keep doing what we've been doing." Maybe take a different tack with the propaganda instead of "you should be ashamed we weren't elected"
That's the part the DNC doesn't get. Every single successful campaign since 2000 has run on a change and reform platform. This time they ran with "we'll continue business as usual" and it's absolutely no surprise they were crushed.
(Edit. Seriously, listen to Kamala on The View when asked what she'd do differently to improve the economy. Her response was that they're very proud of Bidenomics and nothing would fundamentally change.)
Voters want reform so that 95% of the profit from the economy doesn't go to Wall St. Voters want public spending on things that make everyone's daily lives better. Better roads, more reliable electrical grids, bridges that aren't falling apart, downtowns with actual businesses that aren't corporate franchises, houses that they can afford. Reboot the CCC and offer jobs building those things, offer jobs that pay enough for people to move out of their parent's houses and start their own lives, offer to crack down on corporate profiteering, offer labor something other than "we're less bad than the Republicans are." Offer to bootstrap small and medium businesses, talk about kick-starting American manufacturing, talk about the jobs you'll create and the spending you'll do making lives better for everyone rather than just the corporate profiteers.
We already know that neoliberalism works for Wall St, voters are waiting to hear about what works for them too. Make that the core of your campaign if you want to win the popularity contest.
The liberals will do what they always do: blame the American people. They love America, at least technically. They love the theory of America, the concept of America, the mechanisms, but they hate Americans. They can't stand the troglodytic unwashed, uncouth, irreverent, ignorant masses.
I think it's more accurate to say that they love American profits, personally.
If they loved America or the American people they would have done more than the bare minimum for the middle and lower classes over the last 25y.
Or we could just get the neolibs out of the core of the Democratic party. They've been more concerned with corporate donor profits than the welfare of the working class since the 90s.
Ah, we're still in the blame everyone phase of the defeat aren't we.
Usually when you lose a popularity contest the thing to do is ask what the other side did better, not blame everyone else for being wrong.
I voted for Harris. Biden and Clinton 2 - at the time they were the least bad option of the two presented. That wasn't enough for a lot of people and we should probably start trying to understand why.
It's hard to motivate people to show up when the platform has been "it puts the neoliberal on its skin or else it gets the Trump (again)" for 8y. Couldn't we have talked jobs and material improvements for the lower and middle class or something?
Edit: if anyone's curious how the Democrats lost this election just scroll down this comment tree. Instead of asking how we can do better everyone's consumed with finger pointing and "you deserve this!" as if we just shame our own voters enough we'll surely win next time. Take a beat and really think about this: what do you do to win a popularity contest? If you lose the popularity contest how do you do better next time? It's not this.
Oh yeah, and after that he had the church of scientology throwing a parade of women at him to see if one would stick.
He's the textbook old money nepobaby and while I have no qualms about his competence (they prepared him for big money politics extremely well) I don't think he's the change the working class wants to see in America. He certainly hasn't brought much change to CA outside of funding primary education. We haven't even begun to tackle living conditions for the bottom 80% here, he's just a less bad option than whatever unpopular Republican ends up running against him. All of the social reform that actually works (boosting minimum wage, providing single payer healthcare, running cooperative local utilities or tackling corruption) is happening at the city and county level or as a ballot proposition. There's resistance from Sacramento when anyone brings these up as statewide policies.
Yes! This is it right here, this is how you grow the fediverse. Props to UoG for figuring this out early! Here's to hoping that other universities catch on that providing Mastodon hosting to their employees and students has more value than offloading all of that discussion onto Twitter or Facebook where it can be shaped by a potentially hostile corporate owner.
Lemmy, I like the simple post structure with all related commentary under the original submission.
Mastodon is fine for people who like it but it's hard to follow the thread of replies as every reply is its own individual post.
I guess the twatter format makes sense for dashing off quick messages but I find it hard to follow and it's difficult to find communities and topics of interest without also including a shit-ton of noise along with the signal.
You need someone who's very obviously pushing a "change and prosperity for all" message at this point. A standard neoliberal has very little chance of winning at a time when we've suffered 2? 3? once in a lifetime economic crises in the last 25y.
There needs to be some plan to include everyone in the economic prosperity that we've funnelled to the top 10% and the candidate needs to beat that drum over and over until there's no space left to talk about anything else. We already know Democrats are for women's issues, we already know Democrats are for equal racial opportunity, we already know Democrats are (generally) more sane than the other guy - now we need to tell folks that we've got the better plan to uplift everyone that's fallen behind over the last 30y.
When the other side has candidates willing to say "I'll break the law to change things" you really have to step up your game beyond "we're better for long term growth and stability, and by the way we're not the other guy and we ❤️ PoC."
(Honestly it's exhausting that this needs to be spelled out, it's like national Democrats don't know a single person who's been left behind over the last 30y.)