Caveat: I'm going to frame this thread around a dichotomy that is almost certainly a strawman; I don't expect that anyone holds completely to either idealized position I'm going to contrast. But it seems like a useful enough way of starting a conversation and it's something I think is interesting.

The dichotomy is between two idealized views of "doing politics". The first I'm going to call "The Marketplace of Ideas" approach, and the other the "Motivate the Base" approach. And the reason for contrasting them is just to think about the question: how does political persuasion work (or does it work?) in contemporary politics?

That is, it does seem that some commentators celebrate this ideal of the "marketplace of ideas" very centrally, and seem very interested in principles related to that -- open debate; civil discourse; presenting arguments aimed at convincing the skeptical, and so on. Others conceptualize democratic politics mostly around winning elections, and winning elections primarily as a function of getting the people who already agree with you to turn out; or even as a function of adhering to positions which are already popular.

How do these two ways of thinking about politics intersect? When does persuasion matter and when doesn't it? It seems like one answer is that the dichotomy is just conflating elections with the whole of politics. That is, it makes sense in a single election that takes place over a short period of time to focus on GOTV operations and making pitches that are already popular to motivate voters. Persuasion is too slow/difficult and clearly being popular and winning elections is how you actually get and hold power.

But then, our election cycles are getting longer and longer. Is GOTV all politicians really do? If so, where does persuasion come into play? Is it mostly something attempted by pundits via political media? What role do the kinds of conversations people have with each other on social media play? Are we doing politics here, or something else?

Persuasion 'winning the argument' and policies is nearly all of politics. Mobilising the base and being popular are hugely important especially in the very short term of the election happening but the two are related. It's massively easier to mobilise the base when they are excited by the policies and ideas.

Then when they get into power it really helps with future elections to have started with well thought out policies.

Finally but much under-rated in importance is that you can change policies by winning the argument even when you don't win the election. Win the argument sufficiently and the other side move your way and may even try to take credit for it (probably the biggest win in politics even though it's annoying).

Now if you asked instead "what is the role of propaganda in Democratic politics" there might be an interesting thread.
The idea that voters have some sort of choice or that the opposing sides are actually opposed to each other starts us off hopelessly on the wrong foot.

With the MoI approach the goal is to persuade someone that P is true, whereas with the MoB approach the goal is to persuade someone who basically already agrees that P is true to take political action.
The goal of both is to persuade, it’s just that the primary objective of MoI is to get someone to adopt/change a belief and of MoB to act on the belief. So the various persuasive tactics or at least some of them would seem to apply to both. What those particular tactics are and how they're employed would make for an interesting, yet mostly omitted, topic in political discourse.

I'm aware that I'm starting from premises which you don't share, but that's OK IMO.

On the other hand, if you think propaganda matters then you must think that in some sense it matters what hoi polloi thinks about politics. Propaganda is, after all, something like an attempt at persuasion, right? There would be no point in producing propaganda if it didn't matter at all what people thought. And to be clear I wouldn't want to limit the role of citizens in a democracy to only voting; there are other forms of civic participation that are important. Just as an example, the success of various social movements in the 20th century hinges on a lot more than voting.

To this end, nobody has done more to reinvigorate electoral politics than Trump, imo. Prior to the 2016 election you increasingly saw the view that electoral politics did not matter and had the 2016 election been decided between somebody like Jeb Bush vs HRC you would have had that view validated as the election would have been decided between "insider/neocon types" that most sentient people were starting to wake up to.
Trump blew all of that all up though and got people thinking that "politics is real" again. I don't think that the goal is merely just to revert us back into electing standard neocon types again but the full breadth of my thesis here might need to wait a bit.

You have to make a difference between theory and practice. In theory the political discussion is a market place of ideas. In practice politicians are trying to sell a product and the product is them. Politicians are competing for a job that includes personal advantages. In practice it is a market place for advertisement.

It is very important to realize that people are voting for candidates and not for ideas. That is why the "informed voter" doesn't exist. Nobody knows what politicians are really thinking, not even their own mothers. They can tell you whatever they want.

Hitler didn't win the election in Germany because he told people that he wanted to start another world war and kill all jews. He told them that he will create a socialist superstate and end poverty. If he had told them the truth, they would have put him in an asylum. Once they found out, it was too late.

The best modern example is shown in the documentary "Our Brand is Crisis". It shows how liberal political campaign managers based their whole campaign exclusively on what voters wanted to hear. It worked like a charm and their candidate won the election, but his administration was that a complete disaster. In the end he even had to flee the country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Br...sis_(2005_film)

Hitler did not win the election. He controlled the biggest party, but not a majority and his party's popularity was actually declining, so it is doubtful he would have ensured one at the next election.

Hitler's rise to dictatorial power was ensured by a series of backroom deals and paramilitary actions where political opponents were told they would be killed or comply. This ended with him being appointed chancellor and removing checks and balances on the chancellor position.

It's also somewhat of an exaggaration to call it an election to begin with. In the 1932 election, the anti-democratic parties (the communists and the nazis) both had very active paramilitary organizations, political violence was rampant and the Weimahr republic was pretty much over.

Not that the popularity of the Nazi party wasn't a major factor in his abilitiy to seize power, but the biggest enabler was the slow and painful erosion of oversight, political civility, checks and balances and rise in bitter political partisan divide that had occured in the previous decade.

I used Hitler as an example, but I am not going through another discussion about german history, because it is pointless. The history that really happened and history that is written in american books are two very different animals, and then there is the History Channel where former FBI-agents try to find Hitler.

https://www.history.co.uk/shows/hunting-hitler

It would be a huge step forward, if you just accepted the fact, that history is just part of our daily dosis of propaganda, like you must be reminded of the existance of the devil by priests every time you visit church.

Because it's so funny, I will add one beautiful example, probably the most beautiful example ever:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahlre...l-3.-Reich.jpg

That's a german ballot from 1936 and it says "for freedom and peace". Isn't that cute?

Hitler got 98.8% of the votes in this "election". Yes, he was the only candidate, but how can you not vote for freedom and peace? Everyone wants freedom and peace, so there was no need for another candidate.

If you want to use historic examples, then you need to know the facts about said history and you need to apply them.

When you don't, you are literally just making stuff up.

That's true and you noticed it. I literally made that ballot up. It's a photoshop.

Same goes for the Reichstag elections where Hitler had:
43.9% in March 1933
92.1% in November 1933
98.8% in March 1936
99.1% in April 1938

Yes, I even made up the entry in Wikipedia to fool everyone. You got me though!

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichs..._1933_bis_1938

Except all the elections you are talking about came after Hitler rose to power. If we look at what happened that put him into power in the first place you see exactly what tame_deuces said. From the wikipedia article about Hitler's rise to power

"At the July 1932 Elections, the Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag, yet without a majority. Hitler withdrew support for Papen and demanded the Chancellorship. He was refused by Hindenburg.[56] Papen dissolved Parliament, and the Nazi vote declined at the November Election.[57] "

By the time of all the elections you mention the Nazi party had already seized power and were using their paramilitary to terrorize political opponents - by Nov 1933 they had banned all other political parties so using any sort of statistics from those as evidence of his popularity is ludicrous. So as tame_deuces said, you are using historical events as examples while not accurately knowing the details of those events.

Willd wrote a good reply, so I won't re-iterate that.

But it is obvious you were not referring to the elections after Hitler had seized power in your original post, that doesn't fit the arguments you were building.

You are now applying research in a completely backwards way. You didn't do any before you made your claim, and instead of learning from that you are angling sources to make a bad argument stick. Do your research beforehand next time.

And I'll stop the off-topic posting, before the mods step in again. Last word is yours.

Let’s just agree that Hitler is a poor example of how politics work and how to win elections in the USA. What about what I bolded from the Shandrax post?

I will go first, I think it is accurate.

Todd Akin ran against Claire McCaskil in 2012 for the Missouri Senate seat. He made a really dumb statement about abortion and rape. Was crucified in the media. Fair enough but what he stated was arguably irrelevant regarding Republican policy initiatives in the Senate. Josh Hawley ran against McCaskill in 2018 and won. In reality Hawley’s support for the Republican agenda in the Senate arguably is not very much different than Akin’s would have been. Also McCaskill is a liberal in a pretty much red state. McCaskill’s ideas didn’t change and the Republican agenda hasn’t changed that much since 2018. Put another way, Hawley and Akin pretty much support the Republican agenda in Congress (Akin served in the House) which aligns with the majority of Missouri voters as McCaskill’s views don’t pretty much.

Shandrax is replying to well_named contrasting two idealized views on how politics work: "The marketplace of ideas" (politics is about policy) vs "Motivating the base" (politics is about elections). The statements in parentheses are my paraphrases. An objection to either view isn't interesting. It is already admitted that they are idealized. I also don't see why he frames it as criticism of the "marketplace of ideas" view, as what he describes is more than aptly covered by what well named calls "motivating the base".

As for my view? That being good at winning elections isn't necessarily the same as being good at making policy is a discussion as old as democracy itself. Indeed the first known "democracy" in recorded history, ancient Athens in Greece, did not have elections for that very reason. You voted for policy, officials were largely selected by lottery.

But in general I don't like "uninformed voters" arguments, it's just a lazy way to understand politics. It's a view that is popular on the "frontlines" of political discourse, where people view politics as being about sides and it is very comfortable to view the other side as dumb or misinformed. However, in that setting you don't see the whole picture, only a small vocal fraction of it.

You're always persuading someone, whether it be your base, the independents, or even yourself.