Can progressives learn anything from Republicans?

[The Industrial Atheist]

My stance is that I don't want open borders. But I think those that have been here a certain time and have behaved themselves(while working) should have a path towards citizenship. They are Americans in most of the ways that count. I think those from South America and Central America that have come here legitimately to obtain refugee status should be looked at and treated humanely.

I think this is pretty close to what most average Democrat politicians would say.

Most average? Maybe. The problem is that it's the open boarders/abolish ICE sector of the party that gets most of the press, and the average Democrats (if they believe as you think) don't do anything to rein them in.

Same with racism. The average Democrat politician probably doesn't think that every person who voted for Trump is a racist, but that's the message that's getting out.

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Another thing:

IMO Republicans are better at recognizing that there's far right, middle right, middle, middle left, and far left.

A lot of Dems seem to see only two groups: themselves and far right.

IOW, when they paint the real far right in a certain way, they paint so broadly that some in the middle feel included, and are offended.

You'd think that ICE had been around for 60 years lol

They were instituted during the Bush years and seem better at abusing people in custody (including sexual abuse) and harassing brown citizens than stopping people from coming here illegally. They're too corrupt.

Abolishing ICE doesn't mean no immigration control. We can beef up other agencies or perhaps start something different and less perverse. It's rotten to the core.

https://theintercept.com/2018/04/11/immi...e-ice-dhs/

https://www.salon.com/2017/08/29/ice-wan...n-custody/

I think you have a point regarding accuracy and fairness about peoples stances. Most Americans really aren't that big on political terminology, anyway. I've been guilty of saying "right" instead of "far right" sometimes myself.

You have to at least know where you agree and disagree, at minimum.

[Angrboda]

Here in my state, it appears to be a question of rural voters winning out over the better represented urban voters. It was the same with Trump. I'm not sure that's a question of tactics so much as addressing their interests and getting out the vote in those sectors that are important to your winning.

[Brian37]

Right about now, Trump and the Koch brothers and the rest of the Republican party have me disgusted.  The way they're governing is going to leave a scar across the world that will last long after they're gone. And to me and a lot of other intelligent, educated people, we see Trump is an orange skinned windbag with no redeaming qualities as president.  Not only that, but Republicans haven't had a decent president since before I was born.  

But there's one big question: why do they keep winning?

I mean, serious, they've had a habit of nominating complete morons as president and those morons win.  How?  I had hoped after the disaster that was the Dubya presidency, we would have learned our lesson and not voted for idiots.  Then Trump came along and we threw that lesson right out the window.  I would have hoped after the mess they left the economy, we would know better than to believe that tax cuts for the plutocrat class are going to help anyone else.  But those same people are cheering on Trumps tax cuts, the ones that are mostly paying out to the people who benefited from the Bush bailouts.

I guess my question is, why do republicans keep winning with such bad ideas?  And whatever the method to the madness is, can democrats harness that for their good ideas?

Because most humans are tribal. In a very real evolutionary sense, because we are social, and that grouping produces safety in numbers, far too often we will buy a falsehood because it is appealing rather than testing the data to be sure it is accurate.

I would say though, the best thing for democrats to do is stop playing defense and relying on all our old haunts and convey the message that poor rural whites are getting screwed just like poor urban blacks. Our base is solid, but it isn't enough, we need to play offence and take away the narrative from the GOP who has controlled it since Reagan.

It isn't impossible for democrats to win in red states. Montana has a democratic GOV, Oklahoma has also had a democratic gov.

If we push post WW2 policies, the policies that built our middle class and the rust belt, the GOP will lose.

[John V]

Here's a piece on the subject:

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/de...ncna891196

It goes through the problems, but the solution it comes up with is:

Democrats should be able to run on one clear message with which we all agree: Democracy is being destroyed under the Trump administration. The Republican Party is the Party of Trump, and Trumpism is not democracy.

Just... Trump is bad. That's it.

[Angrboda]

Here's a piece on the subject:

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/de...ncna891196

It goes through the problems, but the solution it comes up with is:

Democrats should be able to run on one clear message with which we all agree: Democracy is being destroyed under the Trump administration. The Republican Party is the Party of Trump, and Trumpism is not democracy.

Just... Trump is bad. That's it.

Well, politics usually comes down to either saying we are a good thing, or they are a bad thing. If the latter works better as a message, and given this situation, it might, I don't see why one would not advance it. I don't get whether you're saying there's something wrong with the message, or that such messages should be avoided. Given how the right demonized Obama in order to get out the vote for their candidates, I'm not sure what your point is, or if you're not being a little hypocritical.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Democracy is not being destroyed under Trump. Get real. We survived Obama. You can survive Trump.

[Mister Agenda]

Republicans/conservatism are most popular in highly rural states. The electoral college is a fact of our politics, it has to be taken into account. The concentration of liberals in urban areas makes them more vulnerable to being disenfranchised by gerrymandering.

If Democrats want to swing highly rural states their way, they will need to appeal to rural and small town Americans. And rural and small town Americans don't have to deal with diversity very much, compared to people in urban areas. They are unlikely to diversity issues as relevant to their lives, because many of them can go weeks without ever seeing a member of another race. It doesn't matter as much if your nearest neighbor wants to shoot their gun in their back yard if they live a mile away from you; and you know that if someone tries to break into your house, the deputies can't possibly be expected to get there in time to protect you.

I grew up mostly in small towns and, for a couple of years once, on a farm. I now prefer to live near a convenient city, because I like things like libraries, more than one movie theater, and being close to the central bureaucracy of my state. But in rural Illinois, you can be looked down of for raising a crop that isn't corn. It's a different world, and I still remember my first HS Freshman school assembly when I realized there was not one black kid in the entire school.

Democrats have winning issues in rural America, if they're willing to frame their message in a way that targets their particular concerns. That means a strong economic message. Preserving coal jobs is a fantasy, the percentage of businesses that are started outside of metro areas was around 20% 40 years ago, compared to 12% these days. Change has not been good to rural areas in recent decades. Some of the counties the Dems lost in 2016 had upwards of 40% unemployment and mortality rates shocking in a developed country. There is a price to be paid for addressing the concerns of rural and small town working class whites. They may be a minority, but they're a large one, and they are the majority in many states. 220 counties flipped from Obama to Trump. It's worth some effort, IMHO, to try to flip them back, and gain some, instead of trying to milk more votes out of the 'urbs' and suburbs.

I don't know what the exact message should be. Something that helps farmers and small businesses (the main businesses in small towns). I'm not an economist or a sociologist, but I think there's a segment of farmers and small business owners that see big, arguably nearly if not actually monopolistic businesses like Monsanto and other big agro-corps and the literal handful of companies that control the meat-packing industry as unfair competition.

They won't vote Dem if the Dems don't offer them anything that will make their lives appreciably better.

[John V]

Another read:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bar...e-country/

This goes to something I said above:

Ryan said that Democrats needed to be more willing to accept candidates who didn’t adhere to the party line on every issue. The party needed to look for allies, not heretics. “There’s gonna be pro-life, pro-gun Democrats,” he said, recalling that when he came to the House in 2003 there were scores of Blue Dogs, a nickname for the party’s more socially conservative caucus. “I would disagree with them on those issues, but they voted for a Democratic speaker and we did great things.” The central question for political success going forward, Ryan said, is, “Do we want to do great things, or do we want to be purists?”

[The Grand Nudger]

Democracy is not being destroyed under Trump. Get real. We survived Obama. You can survive Trump.

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Another read:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bar...e-country/

This goes to something I said above:

Ryan said that Democrats needed to be more willing to accept candidates who didn’t adhere to the party line on every issue. The party needed to look for allies, not heretics. “There’s gonna be pro-life, pro-gun Democrats,” he said, recalling that when he came to the House in 2003 there were scores of Blue Dogs, a nickname for the party’s more socially conservative caucus. “I would disagree with them on those issues, but they voted for a Democratic speaker and we did great things.” The central question for political success going forward, Ryan said, is, “Do we want to do great things, or do we want to be purists?”

Uh huh, what the dems should look for..is republicans...because chasing that demographic isn;t a snipe hunt at all.   I get that the stench in the GOP is so bad that republicans desperately want the dem establishment to include them into a coalition of common human decency...but maybe they should just vote for a dem.

[Brian37]

Here's a piece on the subject:

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/de...ncna891196

It goes through the problems, but the solution it comes up with is:

Democrats should be able to run on one clear message with which we all agree: Democracy is being destroyed under the Trump administration. The Republican Party is the Party of Trump, and Trumpism is not democracy.

Just... Trump is bad. That's it.

And?

So he isn't ignoring and or attacking his own REPUBLICAN intel? He isn't attacking the watchdog press which is what Russia and North Korea and China do not have, but instead state media?

Keep it up moron, if 45 wins and destroys our country you better start learning the Russian national anthem. You do know Putin has had journalists murdered? You do know he is a product of Stalin right?

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@NEO

Every point in human history where we see a head of state use political scapegoating and vilification, of even the same nationals, bad things follow. 

45 isn't sticking up for anyone, he is trying to consolidate power, and vilify any challenge to his power. When you insult even McCain, A REPUBLICAN, and you vilify your own REPUBLICAN intel, you are no longer politics as normal.

He is giving Putin exactly what he wants, our destruction.