Even if so, it’s also telling them that it’s OK to continue to vote Republican for Congress because they’ll totally be good again once Trump is gone. Not a great plan if you ever want to hold enough seats to actually do anything.
CraigM
2773
Yes, reach out to the people if you feel you must.
Absolutely fucking do not reach out to Republican politicians.
You don’t win primaries by aiming your pitch at the other party.You dance with the one that brung ya.
If Biden isn’t willing to reach out to the Democratic base now, during primary season, he certainly won’t in 2020 and beyond. Why should I support a guy who says he wants to let the GOP off the hook when I believe they are ruining the country (and not just for the last couple years, but for decades?)
I want someone who will stand up for the principles of the Democratic party, not someone who goes out of his way to give unearned praise to the opposition.
My preferred candidate is changing every few weeks. First Harris, then Buttigeg, now Warren.
I don’t love the fact that Warren is nearly 70, but she’s got so much energy that I’ll give it a pass. She’ll outlive me.
Maybe, but ignoring what candidates say when trying to understand what they mean is a pretty failure-prone methodology.
The problem with Biden is that lots of Republican pols are his friends. Now, naturally, his friends couldn’t be bad people, so Republicans can’t really be bad people, can they?
If you feel you must??? We need to win the elections, so of course we are reaching out to the people.
The question is always HOW to reach out to WHICH people. And that is an incredibly difficult question.
I am pretty sure that some of the commonly applied strategies do not work. Like telling everyone who voted for Trump/GOP in the past that they are deeply defective human beings who we would not want in our tent anyway. And highlighting cultural issues that divide the have-nots, as opposed to highlighting economic issues that unite the have-nots. But as to what WILL effectively reach out among the promising issues, I suspect this will depend more on charisma and messaging skill than anything else. I think of the Reagan and Kennedy types as opposed to the Mondale and Gore and Hillary types, and it seems to me that it was charisma more than message turned history.
I definitely agree. We must never allow them to pull the good cop/bad cop scam on us. The Republican Party exists to keep power and wealth for the very few, and that is always their goal, even when they put other faces on it for tactical purposes.
However… if the public wants a Democratic leader to reach out to Republican leaders and would be more likely to vote for one who does, then that complicates things. Because, in that case, we want someone who claims to be totally open to negotiation, but never for a moment believes it will work. And as Dem voters it is almost impossible to tell the difference between a candidate of that stripe and one who actually will fall for the scam.
But in any case, we need to do whatever it takes to win and win big. It will prevent heinous harm to remove Dump, but it will not actually do much positive unless we also win in the Senate and extend our advantage in the House. Dump provides us with a tactical opening here, he makes the GOP vulnerable. But in my bones I fear that Democrats will squander this opening.
…unless the size of that particular public is pretty damned small, which it seems to be.
You’re talking about the group who:
- Are not already committed Republican voters who will not change their minds, and
- Are not already committed Democratic voters who will not change their minds, and
- Will not vote for a Democrat unless he/she gives lip service to comity with Republican politicians.
That’s…a pretty small group, isn’t it?
Honestly, I am not sure, which is why I started that with “if.”
People whose conversations are mostly with dedicated partisans can possibly have a skewed impression of things. But I don’t know whether this is one of those cases.
However, your wording
might be misleading you. I mean, no one says, “I love lip service, I’ll vote for that.” But the image of being open to tamping down extreme partisanship? That might win over votes. My hunch is that it would, but I am uncertain.
That’s what I meant. Who are that constituency, those who will vote for a Republican unless some Democrat says he/she is open to cooperating with the other side? Does it even exist?
It might not be someone who will necessarily vote for a Republican. There’s a lot of people who just aren’t involved in politics. But if they saw a nice cooperation message that resonated, they might come out instead of staying home that day.
Every single candidate runs on unifying rather than dividing. It’s one thing to say you’re a reasonable person, and another to pretend to be so obtuse as to believe there are good compromises to be had with today’s Republican leadership on any issue of importance.
Biden says he thinks the Republican leadership are basically good people led astray by Trump, and I take him at his word when he says he believes that. He’s obtuse.
Pretty much what Rock8man said. Millions of disaffected people who are not happy with the partisan atmosphere and might well not vote at all. Or even vote for a third party candidate in a few cases.
I’d think they would tend to be older, nostalgic for a past era of more (apparent) negotiation. Maybe lower information and less one or two issue people. And, it would not surprise me if a fair number with some connection to a union background.
I don’t doubt that some such people exist. I’m asking why you think there are millions, and why you think Biden’s bromance with his Republican Senate brethren will move them. Where’s the evidence of that?
I mean, people claimed they voted against Obama because he was a divider who divided the country. Should we take them at their word, and grant that Obama was truly divisive, or should we suspect that maybe that’s not really their reason?
Just to clarify, I think there are millions of people unhappy with the partisan atmosphere, not millions of people whose votes would necessarily be affected by a campaign that claimed to be reaching out to Republicans. I stick to me original “if.” IF a campaign believes that it will win them votes, go ahead and create an image of a person willing to reach out. (As long as the person is not in truth gullible about this.)
And I have no opinion whatsoever as to how Biden would affect such people. I pay no attention to him because in my opinion he is too old to be president, so I know I will be voting for someone else in the primaries.
Edit: This is completely about the pirate-like phrasing.
I don’t know enough about politics in general and US politics specifally to agree or disagree with this, but I do have a question.
Wouldn’t it serve their interests more if everyone were richer?
And aren’t they losing the fight anyway? General standard of living has gone up and continues to do so.
A dollar today buys you more than a dollar did 100 years ago, for many (not all) things like food and clothing, and some (many) things now available didn’t exist 100 years ago.
I’ve been reading Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker.
I’m not sure I can recommend it because it makes for very dense (not sense, autocorrect) reading, but his points are very thought provoking.
Menzo
2788
Haha, you must be new here.
https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2018/10/18/Photos/NS/MW-GS047_annual_20181018145601_NS.jpg?uuid=752454f2-d307-11e8-b8d3-ac162d7bc1f7
There’s only so much money to go around. If you give a dollar to a poor, that means the 1% don’t get that $1.
rowe33
2789
Yeah, but if you give that $1 to a poor person, they’re going to spend it on crack or an abortion. If you give it to a wealthy business-savvy man, he’s going to use it to create more jobs, like spending it on a yacht, which means he’ll need to hire a captain, first mate, cabin boys, and a chef.
KevinC
2790
And the cabin boys spend all their money on crack and recreational abortions, so everyone wins!
Sharpe
2791
For the GOP elite (by which I mean the Mitch McConnel donor-servicing-national GOP, not the more populist Trump base) the focus is on maximizing the wealth and advantage of the wealthiest Americans, and if that means the rest of the country does well, or does not do well, they don’t really care. However, there is a catch here, in that they are also opposed to any efforts to organize economic or political power by the bulk of the population (which they view as threats to the wealth and power of the top few) which means that keeping the bulk of the population in a relatively precarious economic status is a feature, not a bug.
If the country as a whole does well, they don’t really care. However, if the country as a whole does well and the bulk of the population use that improved economic situation to organize economically (unionizing for example) or just to improve their overall bargaining power, that’s not something the GOP elite and their donors want.
There is also an element of “true-believer-itis” for many of the donor class: some of them truly believe that what is good for the top few will be good for everyone, evidence be damned.
