[lisper]

Saying that people are voting against their best interests assumes that you know what those interests are. Maybe what they really want is not what you think they want, or what you think they ought to want. This is an attitude common among liberals. They know best, and if you disagree with them, you are simply wrong.

Electing Trump was a big FU to that attitude. The astonishing thing is that liberals are so cocksure of themselves that they have not yet figured out this simple truth and are still carrying on as if Trump were simply an anomaly rather than a predictable response to their own actions. The magnitude of the tone-deafness in the Democratic party is simply staggering. And I'm a Democrat, or at least I was until I realized how utterly incompetent they are.

[UPDATE] Ironically, the fact that this comment is being downvoted into oblivion actually demonstrates the very point I am making.

[UPDATE2] With regards to my saying that Democrats are incompetent, this is manifestly true at least with regards to 1) winning elections and 2) controlling Donald Trump. Maybe they are competent at other things, but that seems like a bit of a moot point to me under the present circumstances.

[AshleyGrant]

I disagree. When it comes to "voting against their best interests," these best interests are not determined at an individual level, but rather through what is in the best interests of that group of individuals.

It is provable that, for example, having a strong emergency response infrastructure is in the best interests of the people of the United States, and especially in the best interests of, e.g., Floridians. Natural disasters happen, and having a strong, coordinated response to assist the victims of natural disasters is in society's best interests, even if individuals (generally wrongly) think that they are self-sufficient enough to handle that situation.

So what I'm saying is that while folks that are "voting against their best interests" may on an individual level have decided that their best interests are different from the best interests of their neighborhood/region/state/country, it doesn't make them <i>right</i>.

A rural voter voting for candidates who will enact policies that will close the only hospital within 100+ miles of where they live is, by definition, voting against their own best interests, as it is in their best interests to have access to that hospital when it becomes necessary, as it could literally be a matter of life or death. Those voters opinions of what might be in their own best interests don't actually matter in terms of determining their best interests, but it matters a lot in terms of getting them to vote against their own best interests.

What Democrats are incompetent at is coming up with messaging that stands a chance of being more convincing than the blatant lies and propaganda of the modern Conservative media machine.

[ratelimitsteve]

>Those voters opinions of what might be in their own best interests don't actually matter

This is the fundamentally patrician attitude that is killing the democratic party, and it should

[AshleyGrant]

No. There is nothing patrician about it. Stating "it's in your own best interests that the only hospital within 100 miles of your house stays open" is not a "patrician attitude" at all.

Again, it is stating a fact. It is not in those voters best interests to vote for politicians whose stated goal is policy that will cause that hospital to close.

There is nothing derogatory or "patrician" in that. It is a cold, hard fact. Politics are politics, and facts are facts. That people choose to go with feelings and reject facts is beside the point. Their feelings do not determine their best interests.

But we also have a long history of using regulations and other inducements to get people to act in their own best interests. The current regime has just decided that it will act in the best interests of monied interests, to the detriment of a large swath of the people who voted for them.

Now, if you want a liberal, "patrician" attitude, here's one: Fuck 'em. They voted for politicians who openly told them they were going to do things that would be absolutely horrifically bad for them. Let them deal with the consequences and feel morally superior because they've "owned the libs," or whatever other BS helps them sleep at night as their poor, mostly rural communities fall apart around them. Do I think it will get them to vote for politicians who have their best interests in mind? Absolutely not, at least not at a scale necessary to change elections results.

I spend a fair amount of my time in rural America. It's not pretty, and it really doesn't matter if it's a red state or a blue state, rural America is hell bent on its own destruction. It's a shame, but apparently, it's what they want. So let 'em have it.

[ratelimitsteve]

If you're not free to make (what someone else believes to be) the wrong decision you're not free. Dems assume that they can tell voters what's in their best interest because Dems assume that they can tell voters what those voters value and what those voters think is the best way to achieve it. That's the patrician attitude, the idea that the vast majority of the population is too stupid to make decisions for themselves with the ipso facto evidence being that they don't want the same things that the patrician does. Whether it works out in what is judged to be their "best interests" or not, that attitude is why people are abandoning liberalism and it's a very good reason to do exactly that. Is it cutting off your nose to spite your face? Probably, but after years of someone looking down that nose at me I might be tempted to cut it off as well and damn the consequences. Between that and the way Dems run on "no kids in cages" then rule on "expanded open-air detention facilities for underage migrants", they run on "student loan forgiveness" then rule on "partial forgiveness for people who were already legally qualified", they run on "healthcare for everyone" then rule on "access to insurance marketplaces for everyone with a small subsidy to help pay for insurance that's mostly useless". They run on "women have a right to choose" and when given the chance to make that a law they say it's "not a legislative priority" (Obama, 09). Even if I do concede that Democrats have "my best interest" at heart I don't trust them to actually do any of it.

[AshleyGrant]

I'm not sure why you seem to completely ignore what I'm saying.

Let me state again, and plainly: What a person thinks is in their best interests, and what is actually in their best interests are two completely different things.

But you did a great job of boiling down the typical Trump/Republican voter's ethos: "Is it cutting off your nose to spite your face? Probably, but after years of someone looking down that nose at me I might be tempted to cut it off as well and damn the consequences."

This is what we are dealing with in the United States at this point: Stupid people that are pissed off that they're not allowed to be stupid and through their own stupidity endanger the lives of the responsible adults in society.

"That's the patrician attitude, the idea that the vast majority of the population is too stupid to make decisions for themselves with the ipso facto evidence being that they don't want the same things that the patrician does."

Well, when an ever-growing portion of the population is proving that out, maybe the stupid people are the problem. Case in point: anti-vax attitudes, we're having measles outbreaks because stupid people refuse to vaccinate themselves and their children.

Your entire argument in this post seems to be that "Democrats did a bad job of keeping their promises, so I'm going to vote for stupidity, even if it hurts me."

[ratelimitsteve]

At what point did I say I was a Trump supporter? I've voted Democrat every election since I was first allowed to in 08. My point was that if you think you're just going to tell voters "no, you're wrong, you're supposed to want this rather than that" then you're just gonna get your teeth kicked in by Trump a third time.

[mindslight]

> Saying that people are voting against their best interests assumes that you know what those interests are. Maybe what they really want is not what you think they want, or what you think they ought to want. This is an attitude common among liberals. They know best, and if you disagree with them, you are simply wrong.

This is such a tired refrain. As a libertarian who was telling my aghast friends in 2016 that Trump was really speaking to people's frustrations and likely to win (thus you know, demonstrating that I at least understand many of those concerns, if not outright share them), this still doesn't explain it. For the most part Trump's policies do nothing to effect his (non-financier) supporters' professed interests, yet they keep lapping it up and coming back for more.

Perhaps with my libertarian biases, I could still be putting too much emphasis on the economic and liberty-based complaints rather than the contingent that wants to criminalize healthcare, put a handful of unlucky brown people in concentration camps, and other negative-sum social policies. But it still really doesn't feel that is where the broad support is coming from in the first place.

Ultimately from where I'm sitting, the responsibility for the communications breakdown mainly rests on Trump supporters for seemingly making "owning the libs" into their primary KPI. The Democratic party certainly has a similar "rabid" dynamic with regards to social justice / diversity, but that's a much narrower contingent (vocal, but still only a slice of policy) whereas for the Republicans it has broadly taken over the entire party platform.

[ratelimitsteve]

As a fellow recovering Democrat I couldn't agree more. When the party shifted to neoliberalism in the 90s an incredible arrogance came with it. The attitude went from "How do we represent working people and get government to do what they want" to "We know how to govern better than the plebs, how do we get them to want what we're willing to do?" And their reaction to Trump has been to dismiss him as a flash in the pan and try to wait him out like bad weather, but they completely fail to reckon with the idea that whatever else he may be he's currently the guy batting .667 against them and in 2024 managed to maintain the support of open racists while gaining ground with every minority except women.

Trump isn't a disease, he's a symptom. He's an emergent property of a system that has been hilariously blatant about the fact that it doesn't value the people it needs to to continue functioning. Trump fits in a hole the government left in the hearts of the American people when it decided that its primary operating principle is "give the voters just enough to get them to put us in power give everything else to the donors and then buy stock in their companies". Doubly so because the lesson the Dems learned from Obama was that they can exploit identity politics to give the populace a symbolic victory and then govern in a way that directly transfers wealth from their voters to the donor class. Since 2008 the Democratic primary has been a game of "Who will you accept neoliberal market worship from?" An african american man (08, 12), a woman (16), your choice of an old white man, a mixed race woman or a gay man (20), the same mixed race woman from 20 who flat out told us when asked if there was anything she would do differently than the historically-unpopular old white man said "Not a thing that comes to mind" (24). They're the Pizza Party, the manager at work who has been given the impossible task of trying to buck up a completely demoralized staff while not being permitted to offer them anything of substance. The neoliberal wing of the Democratic party has been feasting on the seed corn since 1992 and can't figure out why the fields are empty and their serfs are angry.

Their response to Trump has been internally contradictory to a delightful degree as well. In 2015 HRC specifically instructed Dem-aligned media to elevate Trump's campaign with the theory that he would frighten people so badly that they'd vote for her without her having to offer anything substantial to voters. You'll remember the focus of the campaign was threefold: she's a woman and it would be neat to have a woman president, she's qualified, it's her turn. More of the same policies that pissed everyone off, very little in the way of material support that actually makes the average person's day to day life better, a lot of scolding people for not already being on the Dem side rather than figuring out what it would take to get them on the Dem side ("basket of deplorables") and generally treating voters as a resource that needs to be managed and then exploited for maximum value rather than as the people that you as an elected official serve.

To me, the defining feature of the modern Democratic party is their self-assurance that Trump is an idiot combined with a complete unwillingness to acknowledge the fact that that idiot just keeps kicking their asses. If your opponent is weak but consistently puts you on your back what does that make you?