Democrats spending millions to learn how to speak to 'American Men' and win back the working class

[EarlG]

112. Sorry for the late reply

And yeah, perhaps we agree in more areas than I thought. I can boil this down a bit for you so you understand more clearly where I'm coming from.

With regard to my fixation on propaganda, this is actually a pretty good example:

When two thirds of Democratic voters are saying one thing, and it's being dismissed as MSM propaganda in these closed partisan spaces, who's in touch with reality? Over the past two years, just saying "Damn, prices at the grocery store are crazy!" was considered some kind of contrarian statement.

I don't think that's quite it. I'm not saying you're spreading propadanda -- grocery prices at the store were, and still, are crazy. That can't be denied, and I'm not suggesting that we try and build a competing propaganda machine to deny it.

But it also cannot be denied that the economy did improve, and dramatically so, from where it was at the end of Trump's term in office, and throughout Biden's presidency.

GDP was up, and exceeded expectations. Productivity improved. Unemployment was historically low, which improved worker power and increased wages. We invested massively in infrastructure projects -- real blue collar jobs. Individual households saw net wealth gains. All of that is objectively true.

But -- then there was inflation. We needed a huge stimulus to recover from Covid. During the pandemic there were massive supply chain disruptions which caused shocks to energy and food prices. As a result, inflation peaked at about 9% in 2022. But by November 2024, inflation was 2.7%. In fact it was roughly 3% -- barely outside of historical norms -- for most of 2024.

So on the one hand, the economy was clearly moving in the right direction from where it had been. The fact that we were going to recover from inflation with a "soft landing" -- no recession, no massive job losses -- was remarkable.

But on the other hand, the prices of groceries and many other items, went up significantly. People felt that pain in their wallets (and I'm one of them).

So that's a set of facts with two competing narratives. The first narrative was that Joe Biden ran in 2020 on recovering from Covid, and he achieved that. Despite the rise in prices, the US economy bounced back far quicker than most other economies around the world, inflation was falling to normal levels, everyone still had a job, and we were heading in the right direction. The second narrative was that high prices were actually caused by Biden's mismanagement of the economy, and that continued high prices demonstrated that he was responsible for these problems rather than fixing them.

That's obviously a huge political problem, and we saw the outcome in November 2024. But it's not like there was only a single narrative. The story could have been that the American economy was the envy of the world, and that while prices were still high, American exceptionalism still ruled, and we had it much better here than most countries did recovering from Covid.

I'm not saying that isn't a tough sell, because it is. But it's an even tougher sell when the aforementioned gigantic billionaire controlled propaganda machine comes into the picture. It skews the playing field to such a degree that tough sells become impossible sells. It makes double standards more glaring -- if Biden had had the gall to ask people to be patient while inflation improves, he would have been destroyed, whereas if Trump says he'll bring down everyone's prices on day one and then two months later says everyone is going to have to "feel a bit of pain" and "make sacrifices," that's completely fine.

But... I'd like to leave all this aside for a moment, because I think the answer to why Trump won and why Democrats don't yet have an answer might actually be a lot simpler. Forget all the deep-dive studies into things like, "How should Democratic politicians talk to Hispanic men under the age of 40?" Instead, consider this:

The planet is fucked, and pretty much everyone is living in a total state of denial. Every day we're faced with new stories about the effects of climate change, or how millions of people are going to be displaced by rising sea levels, or deadly heat waves, or increasingly dangerous weather, or new diseases, etc. etc. Meanwhile, America appears to be declining as a superpower, military conflicts are increasing, and the world seems closer to the brink of nuclear war that it has in the last 40 years.

This is an era of chaos and confusion, and when people live through eras like that, they vote for daddy. They vote for a "strong man." They vote for somebody that's going to pat them on the head and tell them that he will protect them, and look after them, and that everything is going to be okay.

In 2024 that person was Donald Trump. That's the image he projected, and millions of people bought into it. Ironically, his defiant stance during all his court cases probably played into this. As fucked up as it may sound, people saw him as a fighter. And Biden's decline played into this -- by the time of the debate, he came across as too old and weak to be daddy any more. And Kamala Harris couldn't be daddy, because she ran as mommy. And American voters are still sexist as hell. So Trump, by default -- and probably subconsciously for many people -- became the only possible choice.

Assuming that things aren't going to get any better on the global stage over the next four years, my suspicion is that the next Democratic nominee for president will be a daddy figure. If that is the case, perhaps the question that needs to be resolved, then, is is it possible to be a daddy figure WITHOUT the cruelty and the punching down on marginalized populations?

I believe it is, which is why I don't really by into the "we need to be as mean to people as Republicans are if we want people to like us" argument. Hope that makes sense.