US Politics returns: the post-Election thread

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

 Don't alienate the people you're trying to convince.

Hell how many posts did we see over the last year that said "independents don't matter"?  They sure as hell mattered this year.

[OldGimletEye]

5 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Absolutely not.  But target the candidate not the people supporting the candidate.  Or if you're going to target supporters of the candidate only target those who actually support the candidate.

Don't claim that to be a good person you have to support the Democratic candidate.

So in other words don't point out the fact that Trump was pandering to white nationalism and a lot of people found that appealing.

Also, I wouldn't say that people that vote Republican or for Trump are bad people, a lot of them are not, but I don't have much of a problem candidly saying that a lot of them believe in delusional bullshit.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

So in other words don't point out the fact that Trump was pandering to white nationalism and a lot of people found that appealing.

Also, I wouldn't say that people that vote Republican or for Trump are bad people, a lot of them are not, but I don't have much of a problem candidly saying that a lot of them believe in delusional bullshit.

OGE,

Will those who claimed "independents don't matter" hold to their assertion?  Will they continue to use tactics that end up driving people away from their candidate?

[OldGimletEye]

4 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

 Don't alienate the people you're trying to convince.

Hell how many posts did we see over the last year that said "independents don't matter"?  They sure as hell mattered this year.

I just throw this out. Perhaps, that is just a very short term strategy, that is largely self-defeating in the long run.

Perhaps, a better for the Democratic Party would be just keep hammering away on it's issues, hoping in the long run to shift people's views.

I'm sure 8 or maybe 12 years of Republican domination would be helpful here.

Basically, what I'm suggesting here is that the Democrats play the very long game that Conservatives seemed to have adopted back in the 1970s.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

OGE,

The Democrats lost Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  Before Tuesday night/Wednesday morning would you have believed me if I predicted that?  And the DNC and Sec Clinton's team are disclaiming any responsibility for that.  Is no introspection useful?

Do independents matter?

 

[Yukle]

18 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Don't claim that to be a good person you have to support the Democratic candidate.

In fairness, this is pretty much the strategy of every political party ever.

"Abortion is baby murder!"

"Low taxes for the rich is fascism!"

"Taxation is slavery!"

"Political correctness is censorship!"

... and so on. They more or less imply that to disagree is to be Hitler.

 

Although that said, I wish none of them used it, rather than all.

[The Marquis de Leech]

6 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Basically, what I'm suggesting here is that the Democrats play the very long game that Conservatives seemed to have adopted back in the 1970s.

Perhaps it is. There's a weird sort of historical resonance going on:

FDR > Truman > Eisenhower > Kennedy/Johnson > Nixon/Ford > Carter

arguably gets inverted by

Reagan > Bush I > Clinton > Bush II > Obama > Trump.

Democrats now are basically in the same sort of hole that Republicans were in 1976, having just lost a close election to a complete outsider. Of course, if the pattern continues, then the US is in for eight years of Bernie Revolution from 2020...

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

OGE,

The Democrats lost Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  Before Tuesday night/Wednesday morning would you have believed me if I predicted that?  And the DNC and Sec Clinton's team are disclaiming any responsibility for that.  Is no introspection useful?

Do independents matter?

 

A couple of things: Didn't Hillary do worse with minority vote? Do their votes matter? For a multiracial party the answer would seem to be yes.

Also, maybe it might be worth losing some short term battles, if we can essentially shift the opinion of the country. I'm just saying that back tracking after defeat might not be all that helpful in the long run.

[OldGimletEye]

7 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Perhaps it is. There's a weird sort of historical resonance going on:

FDR > Truman > Eisenhower > Kennedy/Johnson > Nixon/Ford > Carter

arguably gets inverted by

Reagan > Bush I > Clinton > Bush II > Obama > Trump.

Democrats now are basically in the same sort of hole that Republicans were in 1976, having just lost a close election to a complete outsider. Of course, if the pattern continues, then te US is in for eight years of Bernie Revolution from 2020...

Yes, I think liberals might be actually be able to learn something from conservatives about how they built their movement after Goldwater got schlacked. It's at least worth exploring and thinking about.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

OGE,

So, no change is necessary after the results of this election you still believe independents don't matter?

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

OGE,

So, no change is necessary after the results of this election you still believe independents don't matter?

Depends, perhaps on whether I'm worried about getting bloodied a couple times in the short term versus prevailing over the longer term.

I'll have to look at the numbers, but I not quite sure your strategy of short term appeasement will be helpful in the long run.

Is it possible that the opinion of the average independent can be shifted in the next 10 years? And how about demographic trends. Does that an important factor? I would think so.

[mormont]

24 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Absolutely not.  But target the candidate not the people supporting the candidate.  Or if you're going to target supporters of the candidate only target those who actually support the candidate.

Don't claim that to be a good person you have to support the Democratic candidate.

I'd agree with that. But I'm not sure that was what the Democrats were actually saying. It seems, rather, to be an assumption that's made by both sides, including those voters who did vote for Trump: supporting racism is only done by bad people, and I am a good person, so if I am supporting Trump it cannot be racist to do so. I would say that's at least as big a factor as people on the other side saying 'supporting racism is bad'. Both sides need to have the maturity to understand that saying something is racist is not the same as saying that good people can't possibly be doing it.

Lots of good people voted for Trump. Doing so was supporting a racist campaign. These statements are not contradictory.

21 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

 Don't alienate the people you're trying to convince.

Scot, here's the problem: you're searching for the magic words. And there are no magic words.

There is no magical secret to persuasion, no matter what people selling books want to tell you. People respond to different approaches at different times. All of these approaches have a place in persuasion. Yes, even confrontation - which is a far, far smaller part of the anti-bigotry discourse than people on this thread prefer to acknowledge.

To tackle bigotry is a complex, difficult problem. It takes a long time, it needs a range of approaches, and in the process, there will be setbacks. We need to have the good judgment to understand that this election result is a setback. It is not a total rejection.

The narrative that's being sold right now is that pointing out bigotry is to blame for people voting for a bigot. There is an agenda behind that. It's being sold and supported by people who want to define all attempts to point out bigotry as confrontational and unacceptable. They're being supported by people who want to believe that the answer to bigotry is just finding the right words to say to bigots, one that will finally make them realise how wrong they are. This is a fantasy. There are no magic words.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Depends, perhaps on whether I'm worried about getting bloodied a couple times in the short term versus prevailing over the longer term.

I'll have to look at the numbers, but I not quite sure your strategy of short term appeasement will be helpful in the long run.

Is it possible that the opinion of the average independent can be shifted in the next 10 years? And how about demographic trends. Does that an important factor? I would think so.

Is it appeasment to say "You're wrong and this is why" as opposed to "You're wrong and you're stupid"?

[butterbumps!]

Ser scot-

are you seeing the failure to win over independents as having been more responsible for the democrat loss than the failure to unite and turn out the base?

and are you advocating a kind of appeasement toward right-leaning values to scoop up the indies, or is this something you see as a failure to communicate to them by the left?  As in the left's values are correct and don't have to change but we need to be better about convincing people of that?

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Is it appeasment to say "You're wrong and this is why" as opposed to "You're wrong and you're stupid"?

You know though with a lot of Trump supporters, it doesn't matter what reasons you give. They will find a way to be offended and play victim.

And reasonable independent sorts should know what Trump was saying was stupid. 

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

2 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

@Altherion

How far would he have to go so that you'd recognize as valid what a lot of us fear and dislike about Bannon, especially as an appointee high in the government?

You know, both Bannon and Trump have a lot of dangerous and hateful speech that you can lay directly at their feet.  But the truly awful, dangerous and frightening thing both of these men do is about riling up followers to go beyond what either man dares directly, encouraging and nurturing it, and never condemning it.  The larger problem with these guys is in how they incite, court and sponsor hate, basically giving it a "safe space" and general validation.   And because they don't do it while wearing white hoods, it allows people to argue the way you are that "oh, it's no so bad, you can't pin anything too egregious on them" as evidence of our overreaction, which only speaks more pointedly to the dangers of this.

I just want to say that I love you

[Fez]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I am surprised by the lack of introspection at the DNC and the higher ups in the Clinton Campaign.  They lost Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  No one was predicting that Pennsylvania and Michigan could be flipped.  Shouldn't it disturb them that the model they were working from appears to have been flawed from the get go?  I agree with IAmMe that doubling down on the existing strategy and ignoring the advice of a two term President seems really foolish in hindsight.

I think there's plenty of introspection going on, but its happening at the individual level and not organizationally yet. And it won't happen organizationally until its clear who is actually leading the party. First comes the fight over who runs the DNC, and along with that comes the introspection. And whoever wins that fight will show what direction the party is going in for the next two years.

It doesn't matter what Clinton campaign officials say either; they're done with national politics for at least the next several cycles. Those that don't retire or move to punditry will be stuck done at the state level until they start winning elections again.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

17 minutes ago, mormont said:

I'd agree with that. But I'm not sure that was what the Democrats were actually saying. It seems, rather, to be an assumption that's made by both sides, including those voters who did vote for Trump: supporting racism is only done by bad people, and I am a good person, so if I am supporting Trump it cannot be racist to do so. I would say that's at least as big a factor as people on the other side saying 'supporting racism is bad'. Both sides need to have the maturity to understand that saying something is racist is not the same as saying that good people can't possibly be doing it.

Lots of good people voted for Trump. Doing so was supporting a racist campaign. These statements are not contradictory.

Scot, here's the problem: you're searching for the magic words. And there are no magic words.

There is no magical secret to persuasion, no matter what people selling books want to tell you. People respond to different approaches at different times. All of these approaches have a place in persuasion. Yes, even confrontation - which is a far, far smaller part of the anti-bigotry discourse than people on this thread prefer to acknowledge.

To tackle bigotry is a complex, difficult problem. It takes a long time, it needs a range of approaches, and in the process, there will be setbacks. We need to have the good judgment to understand that this election result is a setback. It is not a total rejection.

The narrative that's being sold right now is that pointing out bigotry is to blame for people voting for a bigot. There is an agenda behind that. It's being sold and supported by people who want to define all attempts to point out bigotry as confrontational and unacceptable. They're being supported by people who want to believe that the answer to bigotry is just finding the right words to say to bigots, one that will finally make them realise how wrong they are. This is a fantasy. There are no magic words.

Mormont, Butterbumps, OGE,

No.  Pointing out bigotry is important.  

The narrative is more subtle and nuanced than saying "pointing out bigotry lost the election."  It is the manner in which people engaged others that matters.  It is the "I'm right because you're stupid" that turned some people off.  Perhaps enough to bring on this result. 

My first cousin is a huge Trump fan and has in the past bought into a bunch of the conspiracy theories about Muslims surprised me yesterday.  Someone on his feed shared a meme that said "Sharia should be banned in all 50 States".  I would have expected him to jump on that and scream his support to the ceiling.  He opposed it.  

I've been talking with him about this stuff for a long time.  I pointed out that "Sharia" in the US generally comes up when two parties agree to a mediator or arbitrator who will apply the principles of "Sharia" in determining the resolution of a dispute between those parties.  I have to believe that my discussions with him had some impact and as such he saw just how silly this "ban Sharia" meme was.  

I'm saying that talking with people, actually engaging them, can have impact. That the habit of some to merely scream about "bigotry" without more is counterproductive.  

As such, I believe that engaging with independents on an intellectual level and convincing them of your arguments is a harder road but an important one.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, Fez said:

I think there's plenty of introspection going on, but its happening at the individual level and not organizationally yet. And it won't happen organizationally until its clear who is actually leading the party. First comes the fight over who runs the DNC, and along with that comes the introspection. And whoever wins that fight will show what direction the party is going in for the next two years.

It doesn't matter what Clinton campaign officials say either; they're done with national politics for at least the next several cycles. Those that don't retire or move to punditry will be stuck done at the state level until they start winning elections again.

Fez,

So, this is them simply attempting to deflect blame?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

15 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

You know though with a lot of Trump supporters, it doesn't matter what reasons you give. They will find a way to be offended and play victim.

And reasonable independent sorts should know what Trump was saying was stupid. 

See my story above.