word.

A litle maybe but not if it results in the other side controlling the agenda and occupying all the useful news time. Replacing it with real stories on our terms is far better.

We agree that a resonating message matters as well, but we want ours based on real policies.

In 2008 when Obama said NAFTA was a big mistake that resonated in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

It's not my job to educate the ignorant. If it was (or if people being ignorant greatly diminished my ability to do my job), how I would chose to deal with it would certainly be totally different from how I post here. I'm sure thats true for everybody.

The weird thing is we all know this in our day to day but we missed the forest for the trees. Every lawyer in America knows the difference between an argument you sell to the judge and the argument you sell to a jury. It's not because the jury is stupid, it's just the jury hasn't spent their lives learning about the law and the case, they just learned about all this **** today. So you gotta boil it down to Big Ideas that are easy to understand.

I spent a year and half of my life in this very forum patiently explaining to people why a technocratic solution to help the 50 million people without health care was good public policy. Each attack came in the form of some overly simplistic explanation as to why the ACA would fail, or why some individual component was in fact a socialist plot or whatever. These were all pretty simply refuted with a few paragraphs of explanation and a cite of one or more experts weighing in on the issue. What I did not understand was that any policy that could not be explained or defended with language that was at least as simple as the language used to attack it was actually poor policy.

Trumps advantage over HRC (and to a lesser extent GOP over DEM since 2010) was simplicity and clarity and its one that the Dems will need to deal with both in terms of which issues to prioritize and the messaging that is wrapped around those issues.

I agree and that seemed like one of Bernie's strengths and how he managed to amass the level of support that he did given the circumstance.

So we know the problem now, but what the **** is the solution? Like I said before, the truth is rarely simple to wrap up in a 2 sentence package. You can't make "Hillary Clinton will work to help those who have lost jobs in sectors that aren't coming back get trained for new jobs" into something sexy to combat "I WILL BRING BACK ALL LOST JOBS!!!" and when they try to do something sexy like "Look at this ****ing lunatic you're about to vote for." It falls on deaf ears, so how is it fixable?

There was one. It was: "You see that buffoon over there spouting all these quasi-racist, unintelligent, thin-skinned things, I'm not that guy."

The Dems trusted that message was good enough and that it wasn't is a massive indictment on the character, morality, and decision making of millions of Americans.

It is, obviously, but the messaging was even simpler. Trump sold the feels of winning and mattering- it's irrelevant that "winning" is turning out to be repeatedly punching yourself in the dick as you get robbed blind and "mattering" being bullying huge classes of vulnerable people to keep you distracted. Trump gave them a sense of purpose, even if the parts that weren't total nonsense are actively horrible. That's a message that can play when it's up against an unlikable/disliked candidate who's as inspiring as dryer lint.

Bernie had a different message of who he wanted to **** to death (banks, corporations/lobbyists, etc), and obviously not all of it actually made sense, but he rallied the same sense of purpose and was at least mostly aiming in the right direction. The Bernie/Trump crossover wasn't on any issue of policy, it was people who were angry and wanted to **** somebody, and only one candidate in the general offered that.

I think you may be just overestimating the nasty, feral nature of humanity.
You Americans take enormous pride in your country so I think many of you find it shocking that someone like Trump gets elected. Europeans are much less surprised about the election of useless ****bags.

Trump is not an aberration. He's what you are.

Maybe Sanders would have done better. He did poll better. But ultimately I believe more people define themselves by their race, or rather their hatred of other races, and to a lesser extent their gender, than their class.

It's pretty much exactly what I'm talking about.

Sure, no argument that plenty of the Trump support was from the hardcore Nuck Figgers type of crowd. That's obvious, and no D messaging is/was going to reach them anyway. I'm saying there were a meaningful amount of Trump voters who were just in it to rage and would have been content to aim it at Bernie's targets if that had been an option. But it wasn't and they wound up joining up with something obscene that a lot of them probably weren't all that ideologically aligned with coming in.

I'd like to think that. But the demographics were compelling: basically the whole of white male America. They had to vote for him: he'd directly insulted everyone else.

To reference your other post, I still think there were plenty looking for a tribe this year. Sanders smashed Clinton in those demographics/areas, and it's likely that the reason he constantly polled so much better nationally against Trump was because he was an acceptable anger outlet for those people. Those weren't preordained Trump voters as far as I can tell.

Yeah that's what interests me. I'm not sure what "tribe" Sanders represents. Millenials love him-but they aren't unionized and never knew a world that was. Difficult to see why they identify with him.

Peace, love, helping others, a mission to make the world a better place.

Their "tribe" was the same as all populist tribes. Poorly informed idiots who hate anyone who isn't a poorly informed idiot.

Trump won white women voters also.

I think a lot of this discussion over-complicates what happened. Had Obama been able to run for a 3rd term, for ex., he beats Trump easily. Even with all the racists who would vote for Trump. If Sanders runs against Trump, he probably wins.

Hillary was historically unpopular. She ran a bad campaign and had no message other than "that other guy is crazy". She connected not even the slightest bit with rural voters. She had an aura of dishonesty and corruption about her that she was never going to shake.

If the Dems want to win back the White House the answer is simple. Pick a better candidate. Trump will likely be a horror show so the presidency should be ripe for the taking in 2020.

Must say I have gotten a kick out of your continual bashing of Bernie supporters, Bernie himself, and his entire 'movement'. Would hate to rock the boat amirite?

Those crazy proles and their demand for reasonable universal healthcare, public education, the end to corporations making billions and skirting proper taxation, overturning Citizens United, sensible drug laws, etc etc.

Those fools!! Amirite?! Don't they know that lobbyists and bankers and corporations everywhere said his tax plan was crazy and would kill the economy!

Praise Blankfein ty ty ty amirite? Sorry your corporate Queen got shlonged, I am not too happy about the Trumpening either! (but for different reasons I am quite sure)

The aura of corruption is entirely made up. The GOP would attack anyone like that. It wasn't any different than Obama born in Kenya or Kerry doesn't deserve his Purple Heart. Historically unpopular is the outcome of propaganda, not some legitimate reason to pass up voting.

It took the full cyber resources of a foreign power, domestic radicals, and a few randoms trying to make a buck who exploited the republican-created social and education crisis in almost all of the red states to defeat her, in addition to some mistakes that her campaign and party leadership committed. And still the margin couldn't have been much closer. The popular vote wasn't even particularly close.

And still I am not saying you should think of this as a one outer, or some huge oversight in the beginning. The rules of engagement changed and every democrat would have had a much tougher time this time around. They weren't prepared or they weren't prepared to counter it with the same dirty tricks. I understand how both may have happened, but I am mostly looking in what to do now.

Yeah, pretty much this exactly.

Yeah dog you seem just heartbroken over it

Surely you can understand the difference between 'heartbroken' "not too happy" and 'angry the democrats and the DNC and the Hillary campaign has resulted in a Trump presidency and complete loss of the Senate and House' "not too happy", I would hope.

Anyhow, sorry for using some humor and language to say "Sorry Max but Hillary and Corp lost to Donald Trump" when referring to the woman you like / thinks great / thinks was a great candidate / thinks would have been a terrible president / thinks would have been a good president / called to lock up after losing / defended so strongly when criticized / whatever the hell it is you flip flop about.

Your Queen still got schlonged bro I guess ol Nate Silver wasn't doing things "on a hunch" as you so lol-said when ignorantly assessing his methodology.

Educate yourself, read your little freakout after the election, take your own words to heart my man! (whatever they may be at the time tho amirite?)

You aren't angry, though? You're using "schlonged" there, that's Donnie's line! You literally have no ****ing idea how we feel so you keep breaking character to act like every other ****ing Trumpkin bragging about his landslide.

How have actual Bernie supporters like, I dunno, Bernie Sanders been talking about the election? Do you even know? I don't think so. Because your media ecosystem consumption seems to include just right wing mixed with the occasional mainstream("liberal", in your eyes, corporate centrist in our eyes) views.

I'm just constantly offended by how little effort you put into this act. It would be so easy to do it convincingly.