> Trump didn't give a million reasons for us to oppose Hillary, he had 1.

Which 1? Building the wall? Draining the swamp? Locking her up? Making America great again? I may be missing more.

You missed a bunch of other ones.

One my dad reliably latches on to is “they’re going to take your guns”. Trump used this, I’m pretty sure, all three races. Weirdly there were never even moves toward doing this the time he lost. It’s as if this was just bullshit. But, it gets voters fired up (getting people to show up for you is more important than swaying anyone to your side)

Lots of people voted for him this time for overtime and tips being tax-exempt. Some (especially on the overtime thing) have since come to regret it when the fine print didn’t include them, but it got their vote.

He ran on lots of issues. “Build the wall” echos what tons of Republican voters have been saying for decades. Their politicians wouldn’t do it—hell, Trump didn’t, he just half-assed a little bit of it and called it done—because it’s a really bad idea, but he sold people on the notion that he’d get it done, where “it” was something they’d long wanted done.

Many other issues like that, that did get him votes.

> succinctly and stoically state a handful of memorable counterpoints to appeal to the common man

That is how democratic party loose and I suspect people who push for it know exactly that.

Trumo won by being emotional, entertainingly toxic and sucking media attention. "Stoic" calm just makes you look like a weak sucker.

The right is a master class in political messaging. They learned this One Weird Trick™ to manipulate the masses: people are stupid and vote their emotions. By defining the language they win almost by default: family values, school choice, pro life, death taxes, etc.

They learned that it doesn't matter if it's true, relevant, or hypocritical, as long as it feeds fear and anger in their constituents.

The left fails because the issues they support can require nuance and consideration and that's a lot to ask of a voter who just wants to be told who to vote for.

My assessment isn't meant to be tribal, there's plenty to critique on the left from DNC leadership to "overexubernt" members whose excess is used to define the left as a whole (wokism).

It's heartbreaking that the divide is now complete and is not likely to change without some unfortunate actions.

> ...as it is for the left wing to act oppressed.

I'm sorry, but "the left" hardly has a monopoly on that.

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Both are true. The Democratic policy platform is unpopular, and Trump is running a scam on foolish people.

I voted third-party.

> > The "Democratic"/"left wing" platform is not as popular as you believe; not in the US, not in England, not in Canada, not in Germany...

At least the Democratic platform is a platform as opposed to the other party who is being held hostage for 13 years by a single individual who cannot complete a coherent sentence without rambling and weaving (and he couldn't do it in 2015 either)

American democrats aren't what is considered left wing in Europe. They're neoliberals which classes as moderate rightwing in Europe. Left as we see it in Europe doesn't really exist in America. Except perhaps some outliers Bernie Sanders.

I don't think the democrats should lower themselves to messaging like trump's though. In doing so they would give up their own worth. And copying your enemy is never a good idea because nobody can be better at it than the real thing.

I don't think the democrats are great (I'm European left wing) but I do absolutely think that Trump is running a scam on foolish people. He has even said so himself in the past.

The problem is also that the republicans manufacture issues. There are no issues with trans people. Most people wouldn't even know a trans person (which is also why it's such a good group to demonize, people don't often have friends in that group to dissuade them from hating). There's no issues with immigrants as such, the issue is more that some groups are very poor and turn to crime. This is not exclusive to immigrants. The actual solution is to make sure even poor people have opportunities that don't involve crime. But hey that's 'communism'. You can call it what you want but life is a lot safer here in Europe. But they're just riling people up in order to create a platform.

The thing is, you can't fix issues that don't actually exist. So this is a very hard situation to solve.

Exactly. People forget this, and "forget" this, but democracy's power is not based on picking the best (or even merely not disastrous) rulers. Italy, Germany and more recently Russia illustrate that pretty disastrous choices have been made by democratic institutions (I don't mean the Ukraine war, I mean electing Putin in the first place).

Democracy's power is almost entirely in voting out bad rulers without destroying the entire country. That's why a great deal of people's ideas of democracy are ridiculous. For example, democracy can tolerate the existence of fake news or terrible/fake science, just go read newspapers from the interwar period. Take an alternative of the islamist gulf monarchies. They'll end in destruction and fire, war or revolution, because that's the only way to replace the government, so you can pretty much guarantee that's what will (eventually) happen.

The simple truth one hopes America, including democrats, can embrace is that Biden was bad, and allowing him to cling to power was horrible (if he'd made Ms. Harris president halfway through his presidency, THAT might have worked). What was done during the election ... seriously? Yes, Trump is worse (and he'll be voted out, or at least take the GOP down, like he did before), but that doesn't matter in most people's minds. Besides, taking the "least bad" option, what democrats generally advocate these days, is how Italy and Germany destroyed their democracy (Mussulini and Hitler were put in power, not elected, because any other choice would have resulted in civil war. How that worked? Easy: they instructed their supporters to fight until they were the least bad option, and the police couldn't keep control. Which is why I think countries like France are playing with fire since every extreme party in France and Germany, the various extreme left, right, green is trying the same playbook now: elect them or they sabotage the entire country. Why? Same reason Hitler did it: he only had maybe 20% of people really behind him. But 20% of the population can sabotage the entire country, easily. Of course, Hitler was the only one doing it, and these parties are not)