The Democrats are somewhat hampered by their focus on facts and rationality ("play fair") rather than spouting bullshit, conspiracy theories, and whatever bigotry is currently hot ("win at all costs").
Unironically yes. You have to meet the median voter where they're at, even if you find some of their positions dumb or bigoted. That's why Obama spent the 2008 election cycle pretending to be opposed to gay marriage.
The party has evolved an idea that you can do away with those kind of dirty political shenanigans, and construct a rational fact-based proof that will leave voters no choice but to support you, and I think that pretty clearly doesn't work.
It is some sort of tribalism. Believers can't see it. E.g. we gotta remember that people were gaslighting eachother into pretending Biden is not what could charitably be described as about to be senile.
Refusing to see one self as part of the problem, fundamentally.
They planned poorly with their candidacy; Biden and Harris were the obvious candidates being president and vice-president, respectively, but Biden was too old and they couldn't find a different candidate that wasn't as well known as Harris quick enough.
That said, the Republicans would have the same problem if Trump dropped out or if that bullet didn't miss.
Also by the fact that their unwillingness to turn on their capital sponsors, who don't really care whose in power and whose needs are ostensibly better met by republicans (so long as republicans don't start a trade war...)
Dems will continue to make the mistake of coasting deeper into the right wing, picking up 0 voters in doing so (why would I vote for a "tough on immigration" candidate when I can vote for the one who gleefully promises to deport all the browns?), meanwhile disenfranchising any left wing voters left in the USA and creating no new left wing voter bloc by presenting a coherent alternative to the reactionaries.
The same mistake is being made by neo liberal parties across the world.
>why would I vote for a "tough on immigration" candidate when I can vote for the one who gleefully promises to deport all the browns?
I'm always surprised by how bipolar US politics is. There's no place for nuance or third options, it's always one or second extreme. In this case, to answer your question, maybe you want to limit an influx of new people into your country (for ideological, or economical, or whatever reasons) but don't want a full on ethnic cleansing. That's OK, people don't have to only hold extreme opinions.
> In this case, to answer your question, maybe you want to limit an influx of new people into your country (for ideological, or economical, or whatever reasons) but don't want a full on ethnic cleansing.
As this election shows, then, you would vote for Trump, who is "better on immigration." You would tell yourself, as many Trump supporters demonstrate in interviews, that "he wouldn't actually do that."
If you're looking for a quote of him saying that word for word, no. But it is not an unreasonable interpretation of the things he has said he wants to do. Especially when he's used language saying immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" and makes up lies about immigrants eating pets.
It sounds to me that this is crass exaggeration and one of the many reasons why there is such a big divide between supporters of both factions. The whole exaggerated narrative and associations to nazism is definitely off putting.
That's what Trump's circle wants, though. They want to deport 25M immigrants. Generously, the number of people here illegally is only half that. They don't care if people here legally get caught up in it and deported as well.
Deporting even a couple million people will require mass raids, round-ups, and the construction of concentration camps. It is physically impossible to deport that many people quickly or quietly or efficiently.
They're afraid of losing the white majority, plain and simple. The sad thing is so many non-white people don't see this and voted for him.
The party has evolved an idea that you can do away with those kind of dirty political shenanigans, and construct a rational fact-based proof that will leave voters no choice but to support you, and I think that pretty clearly doesn't work.