Don't tell the naysayers. They want us to believe that the base of the party isn't good enough so they want to try to get young white men to vote for them.

The midterms should be interesting.

We had objectively the best economy in 40 years, but could not get that message across. And if we can't get that message across to young white men, we probably can't convince anybody.

Dems keep making the same bad assumption that these things should be obvious to everybody, so there is no need to blow our own horn. Couple that with the equally bad assumption that Americans will easily remember how things were even a month ago, let alone 4 years ago, and we have a disaster. A million+ dead Americans were barely mentioned during this campaign.

Must ... not ... go ... negative.

How did that work out.

Last edited Wed Nov 27, 2024, 02:44 PM - Edit history (1)

I have followed some of them on a Tesla-oriented site. It is all about, "become a billionaire like me."

Most of them have lost money because TSLA stock has been a huge fraud, with the overwhelming benefits going to insiders who get special deals when buying in (they politely call this graft "syndicating",) and the insiders get special access to information helping them get out before the frequent collapses.

Despite that, the tech bros have mostly remained in the trance for a decade. And more horrifying, they have quickly evolved from Elon the altruistic visionary who will save humanity, to Elon the world's foremost Nazi. And that evolution happened in a 3-year span practically seamlessly, with practically all the Elon worshipers flipping from liberal to Nazi right along with Elon's sharp-shifting.

This was not the only electoral problem, but it is a big factor that Dems have been ignoring.

They don't want women, people of color, LGBTQ+, immigrants, working people or protecting the environment to take their rightful place at the table. We need to understand that this is a power struggle.
We also need to understand that the tech bros have created their algorithms to keep feeding people what they first click on so if they first click on RW rubbish, that's all they'll ever see. This is an additional problem that won't be getting better any time soon either.

who have no power, but they think that learning the tech bro buzzwords, they will turn into billionaires like Leon.

These are people who normally have a low voting turnout, and therefore were surely under-represented in the polling. This is a serious problem, but ultimately it is just another variation on the large-scale disinformation environment we are in. It used to be that the mainstream news and commentary was mostly aligned with the facts. In today's world, it is more like 80% of the "information" is false and the 20% that may be true is sanewashed. We are losing a whole generation to this propaganda. And of course, that is how Putin wants to fight WWIII.

so I have to disagree with you. Pure and simple, the white, anglo men want the best jobs and the best educations for themselves. They don't want anyone else taking their rightful place at the table. They don't care that their individual lives and the lives of everyone not part of the power structure will be made miserable by the few at the top. This is what we're up against.

You are talking about a macro factor, and what you say is certainly true.

I am talking about a particular demographic of young men, typically 20s to mid-30s who identify strongly with Musk. When they look at Musk, they don't see a fascist or nazi. They see a guy who is involved in all the new stuff: crypto, electric cars, brain chips, AI, rockets to Mars. When Musk was presenting himself as a liberal philanthropist, that's who they were. And now that he has revealed himself as a world-class fascist, they are all in with that,

These people were clearly under-represented in polling because young men don't normally vote much. All the conventional wisdom is long gone now, yet the Beltway is full of people who still don't recognize how radically and how quickly things are changing.

The radicalization of young, white, angl omen, goes far beyond the "tech bros".

Conventional wisdom says young people don't vote much, and the ones who do tend to be more liberal in their youth. I am saying conventional wisdom is all out the window. Don't make the mistake of underestimating the attraction to Musk and the lifestyle he represents. Musk is all the worst things that are rampant in the whole MAGA culture.

I have said from the earliest times that Musk and Trump might as well be twins separated at birth. I can't tell you how many liberals told me how wrong I was about that -- that Musk was nothing like Trump. Well, here we are a dozen years later. This election was not a fluke. Much of what liberals have believed about the nature of America has changed.

You don't understand that this goes well beyond the so called "tech bros". Throughout our history, America has always been a sexist, racist, hateful country. Our country was rigged from the beginning to favor white anglo men and today's generation of white anglo men want to keep it that way. Elon Musk is a 21st century robber baron, pure and simple.

You seem determined to find some difference. The only difference, I believe, is that I have a particular exposure to tech bros with my professional background, so I am simply passing on how strongly that particular segment departs from the Beltway conventional wisdom. If you are saying that other young white men, not so techie/crypto inclined, are also departing from the Beltway conventional wisdom, you get no argument from me. I can easily believe that is true, and a big problem.

that your "tech bros" are a tiny fraction of the overall white anglo male population. White anglo male union members voted in droves for Trump. They're a far bigger portion of the over all white anglo male population. What about them? They don't care about Musk.

Elon and the far right alternate media universe are radicalizing an entire generation of young white men who want power over women and who only want the best educations and the best jobs for themselves.

when SCOTUS illegally stopped a state-mandated recount in Florida, handed the presidency to W Bush only to have the media tell us all to JUST MOVE ON.

The media in the US are a dead roadkill corpse. They are compromised (WaPo, NYT, Sinclair, etc.) or wholly incompetent (every local TV station and skeletal newspaper).

And that media has destroyed this nation.

I called a local TV "news" station here in Pittsburgh and asked them why they didn't go to a school board meeting and ask school officials and the superintendent of schools about this. Is it happening? ... They hung up on me.

You have it exactly right about the pro repug media. The archives of the Daily Howler blog are the only written record of the pro repug media's war against Al Gore. 15 of my 24 years of working on dem election campaigns was spent in Florida. Our country also died on 12/12/00. It's been a downhill slide ever since. On 12/20/25, our country becomes a Nazi dictatorship.

Trump is just another manifestation of the failing media... not the first, and not the last.

Let's look at some other examples...

This is the media:
Dow soars on hope of quick war

This is the media:
The Sunday Talk Shows Didn’t Ask A Single Presidential Candidate About The Kalamazoo Shooting

This is the media:
On September 6, Senator Joni Ernst tweeted that “enough fentanyl to completely wipeout entire cities in the U.S. has been seized at the southern border.” The Iowa Republican’s statement echoes recent claims from federal and local law enforcement agencies that seizures of the potent synthetic opioid prevent thousands—or even millions—of deaths. On August 5, Newsweek cited a U.S. Customs and Border Protection press release, and reported that “a shipment heading through the U.S. that contained enough fentanyl to kill just over 50,000 individuals was recently seized by officials.” ... “It is like seizing a cache of 10,000 bullets from a criminal’s arsenal and saying there was enough ammo to kill everyone in town,” said Brandon del Pozo, a health and medicine professor at Brown University and former police chief of Burlington, Vermont. But those who are at risk of fatally overdosing are mainly those who purchase illicit drugs.

I'm not going to forget... how about you?

because all the 'packages' they offer include Faux News and a few other rw stations. I quit Directv about 2 years ago when I realized I was supporting Faux News. I use an antenna-no monthly fees! MSNBC is better than a lot of the msm, but you cannot get it except via cable or Directv. Or watch selected shows after-the-fact on YouTube.

And I dont plan on watching anytime soon. All they do is fawn over the orange Hitler and breathlessly report on his evil antics. Well now they will be censored to favor dumpt and many will lose their jobs and possibly being imprisioned if they don’t report good things about orange Hitler 2.0

They let Air America, which helped Obama win, fall into bankruptcy.
And wealthy Democrats refused to buy radio stations when they had the chance.

And Democrats fail to fight back when Repubnantcons lie and steal elections.

Democratic party leadership and the media failed.

The lack of advertisers, most whom either demanded progressive talk radio toned down their left-leaning content, is what doomed progressive media. They considered lefty media a money loser.

When did Democrats become "they?"

I've been calling them CorpoPravda and Plutocracy Pravda for years. Now that they've succeeded in installing Trumputin, we can expect them to become full-on Pravda.

Because they cannot accept responsibility.

All the blowhards who attacked Biden daily, refused to tell the truth about Trump are now in danger of losing their several million dollar jobs!

A little irony there,or do we call it Karma?

Democrats played nice while Lucy once again, pulled the football.

right look squeaky clean. They could do no wrong. The drums should have been beating about the files he refused to return. The soldiers harmed by the leaked info from those files. Things we know and that are knowable to the mainstream media are not touched so not to offend the powerful.

Democrats have and always had to try harder and be way better yet WE will always be judged while blind eyes are turned to the right that apparently can do no wrong.

But, the Democratic party once again played nice with them. It's just so disappointing when you want a fighter during the war and you get peacemaker.

And the traditional media has less and less a share of the eyes/ears/attention of the public with social media and "influencers" increasingly ascendant in peoples' awareness. And there is the sad fact that increasingly few pay any sort of close attention to much of politics that matters. While we expect much of the media, and should, I think the failure is in Americans ourselves. When they get hurt by their own political decisions maybe they will learn, but until then they will take the easy road and the quick answer, no matter how wrong for the long run. Biden shepherded thru many good policies for manufacturing and the economy and the average working family but they are slow to manifest and a tax cut and money in the pocket is so much quicker, easier even if wrong relative to national debt and making the kind of long term capability and infrastructure improvements we really need for sustainable gain.

When Kamala can raise a billion dollars from grass roots supporters, and all it takes is ten guys like Elon Musk giving a hundred million each to match it, we've got a serious problem after SCOTUS opened the the flood gates to dark money with the Citizens United ruling.

Maybe 350 million was individuals. But lots of corporate.

and our politicians can start working for us and not their donors. Most of them hate having to spend time raising money when they could be working for the people.

because we didn't understand the electorate.

There is no sugarcoating a popular vote loss. That it is under 50% is a little solace, but we lost TO a rapist liar.

We need to own that -- we lost to the most loathsome figure in American politics. We need to figure out a message that trumps Trump.

Vice President Harris raised a lot of money. A lot of my money for that matter!

HRC raised a lot of money.

Money doesn't win Democrats elections. My spider sense tells me only charismatic orators can.


MR

I’ll accept responsibility for any loss - when I’m the one calling the shots.

My "we" is inclusive. I don't understand the objection. I mean, I guess I do, but I don't know what good it does.

All those Magats watch Fox News, there's no way to get them to watch other stations that tell the truth, or at least more truthful.
So it's not just that we don't understand the electorate, we haven't figured out how to get them to realize that Fox News is really Faux News, and that they are being duped.

What can?

Fox didn't create the market. They tapped into an audience that was already there.

If somehow Fox became more factual, they'd lose their audience.

Lots of their viewers gravitated to Newsmax and OAN or whatever, which are even more right-wing than FOX News.

People need to understand that close to half this country wants what Trump is selling.

The polls showed us that but we refused to believe it.

Post-election polls also showed that Trump won the voters who DON'T WATCH CABLE NEWS.

He got the low-information voters. Voters who don't pay attention to the MSM.

https://news.northeastern.edu/2024/11/06/trump-voters-news-divide-research/

This used to be a demographic Democrats won.

There's an entire RW media universe that our side was no where to be found trying to challenge. Most of the dem campaign money went to traditional broadcast and radio media. That's not where the electorate is anymore. Because of that, there was no money for dem GOTV and the turnout reflected that.

2 words - CITIZENS UNITED

I have decided it's all those people who DID NOT VOTE. Now I'm going back to my mint chocolate chip ice cream and romance novels.

though the general population does not get a free pass, cause it was clearly BS and as you accurately note they turned to a complete and total deranged sociopath.

It was either extreme fear of appearing partisan regardless of facts, he was paid or he was theatened badly and thought it was a true threat. Regardless, he betrayed us and let tsf and Putin steal the presidency - AGAIN!!

Worst Democratic AG EVER.

and only acted because he got shamed into it by the Jan. 6th committee. Let's also not forget that none of W's crowd who organized, financed or participated in the 2000 "Brooks Brothers" riot at Government Center in Miami were ever prosecuted either. That failure to prosecute gave a green light to election stealers everywhere and paved the way for Jan 6, 2021. BTW, Roger Stone was involved in both attacks.

Biden's accomplishments that were for the people - not the wealthy - were never mentioned on the news because it has been trump all the time every day 24/7. That is the control the media has, and they used it.

I realized that my media sources, including MSNBC and DU were all sucked in to the trump stories. No more. I do check on DU but have stopped most media until I get more centered about all of this.
We failed Biden.

Back in the 1930s. But no, he had to save it. He worked to shut up the socialist. He quieted them down, along with the American Communist party, so capitalism could take control again. He planned and passed the New Deal. It worked. Socialist and communist quit complaining.

The US became a functional capitalist economy again, unlike Nazi Germany and most of Europe. But the goal was to control capitalism with strict regulations and strong union support.

And then capitalism turned around and did the same thing all over again. More crashes, fewer regulations, capitalism gone crazy.

I guarantee you we will have a huge economic crash before Trump's first 4 years are up. It will be a Great Depression worse than the pandemic because there will be no safety net anymore. There will be no functional assistance from the rubble of our federal government.

Marx predicted this is what would happen if capitalism was allowed to go unchecked, uncontrolled and unregulated. He just thought it would happen a whole lot sooner.

Thanks to FDR, it didn't happen in the 1930s, it happened now because all the breaks on the abuses of capitalism have been removed......all that remains is the FDIC. And Trump has plans for that to end soon.

I see a lot of posts suggesting "..this or that lost the election." But what is really scary for people - especially educated people to admit
is that some problems don't have a solution that can be fixed with better messaging. For example, a poster above said that Fox would lose its viewers if if went factual. That's true because Fox viewers want to be lied to about the causes and solutions to their pain (whatever the source). Most if not all of them don't want to change the way they think and prefer to blame others for their problems. Moreover, many look at elections like football games; they vote for their team no matter what, and fail to consider the real life consequences. So this is a deep set cultural problem of low curiosity, low expectations, denial and belief in a make believe world with judgment (and justice) after death. To a degree, portions of the electorate are quite medieval in mindset. Childlike minds are only charming in a child. And for childlike minds, the only teacher is experience not persuasion.

Experience is going to catch up with these medieval, child like minds.

Trumps fourth year is going to be bad. The democratic president in 2029 will have a huge task to fix the economy again. It’s like clockwork.

Groceries, cars and gas will go up by 25%. Major inflation, here we come.

He’s going to do some bargain with those countries.

He's already signed executive orders to start them on Jan 20.

Seems weird.

that he would slap 25% tariffs on everything coming in from Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on everything from China starting on Jan 20. This will raise the cost of groceries, cars and gas by 25%. Disastrous inflation, here we come.

Just like deporting every migrant in America. Can’t happen for numerous reasons.

Trump campaigned on tariffs falsely claiming that the country that the tariff is leveled against would pay the tariff and not consumers. His supporters are in for a very rude awakening. Trump is too much of a racist to not follow through on his mass deportation scheme, He'll purge the military leadership, install his loyalists and use the Army to do his dirty work.

It's also important to understand that any increase in tariffs will be inflationary which will be the exact opposite of the lie he told during the campaign. Raising tariffs will be just the beginning of the terror and damage he'll cause this time that will far out pace what he did the last time.

In America.

But he will terrorize them, break up families, put kids in cages and may even force them to labor for Amazon, Walmart and Tyson for free.

He just wants them to suffer.

have hundreds of Trump executive orders ready to go at noon on Jan 20 in a display of shock and awe to overwhelm our country. No offense but you seem to be terribly nieve about what's coming on Jan 20, 2025.

I just refuse to believe we are in for hell. I just can’t bring myself to believe it. He didn’t get a thing except tax cuts from his first term. He was to consumed with inaugural crowd size for most of the term. I’m sure he’ll find something else to harp on the second term that will consume the four years.

and realize that Trump has learned from his mistakes in his first term. This time, he's making sure that there's no one around him to block him from his worst dictatorship impulses. We're going to find out what hell on earth looks like. I've spent 24 years working on dem election campaigns with 15 of those years in Florida so I've been around the block. I sure know what's coming and am bracing for it. It's time for you to do so as well.

nieve about what's coming on Jan 20, 2025.

A lot of lessons should have been learned from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Are for free, and in many cases broadcast over our taxpayer funded networks. Blue sources are frequently behind paywalls, and not as readily available and not “in you face” like Faux is.

...of doing nothing but discarding democratic norms, revisiting every settled debate possible--no matter how fucking old--and normalizing insanity.

A trust fund baby as a "populist of the people" and worker class party with a candidate that actually worked at McDonalds and not just cosplayed it for an hour or two as "ELITE".

THE PRESS DID THAT

I refuse to blame our party or our candidate. I have NEVER seen the level of bias on the part of the media than I saw during this election season. It was reprehensible.

the media seems shocked that tariffs on all imported goods will be be paid by the consumers
and may be bad for the economy.

The economists were telling us this all summer.

FUCK THE MEDIA.

All of us here need to convince any democratic representative we know to start a YouTube series explaining every pug proposal and it's affect on ordinary people

I was beginning to think I missed a meeting or something. Both sider bull and the press completely ignoring the hate that man spread on a daily basis, ignoring legislation brought about by Dems to help low income citizens that was voted down by R’s. Fox viewers have a misguided view of immigrants in this country. They cling to these views because it allows them to hate others. Hatred is a byproduct blow back of the leader of MAGA. It can’t be argued any other way. They voted for the guy that loves to hate because they do too!

We play fair, they don't.

We have a reality based view of the world, they don't.

We make rational and workable decisions, they don't.

People are easily deluded. We take account of that, they take advantage of it.

Vested interests in MSM play dirty. Propaganda games.

But it's a cycle. R presidencies destroy, D presidencies repair.

Harris, in 4 years' time?

multi-faceted to not only rightfully criticize them for the many wrongs but also to hurt their viewership, subscribers etc. Major media in this country declared war on us long ago and it is high time we fought back in an organized, formulated way to help people turn away from them by giving people alternatives, like Bluesky has just shown, and being merciless in tearing apart the crappy "journalism" relentlessly. Rip into their stories and their advertisers. For example target a single advertiser (that way you stay focused with your impact) about the displeasure with them supporting this kind of media with an organized campaign of letters and e-mails. Then if they do not change in a short time hold gatherings of our people and burn piles of that advertisers products and put the video on-line. Don't do it just once. Do it repeatedly so that you create that stigma and drill that image and memory home in people's minds so that when they hear that company name or product that image of piles of burned product are what comes to mind for people. Repetition is important. Think of it as turning advertising techniques back around and directed at the advertiser.

maggots in toll.

I keep wondering when, if ever, folks here will finally stop posting what CNN et al are reporting.

I read it half a century ago, but it's a work of pure genius that never got the recognition it deserved. We need another Karellen. But even if we got a visionary who could unite the good, and redeem the not-so-good, Republicans would assassinate them, after they crucified Christ a second time for being too "woke".

He brings better ratings with chaos then sanity, a sane president and government is boring and bad for ratings !!

Damn I really enjoyed the sane years of government, wish we could have had more

information; treated warm and fuzzy like, as a mic; at a *rump rally that being, quick and superficial with multitudes of breaks after short intervals for selling shit.

Thanks for the thread rainy.

Modern journalism.

couldn't bring themselves to vote for her this election. Also, she is a woman and a woman of color.

I was naive enough to think we were past that BS. Alas...

She got into it too late to divorce herself from Biden's administration.

Especially in Michigan.

What we need is a housecleaning and a break-up of the large media corporations.
Not to mention major reforms in voting such as you needing more than 5% more of the voters to vote for you than you won the last time to win another term. It would encourage the politicians to actually work for the good of everyone and not just their own good or only for people that they share the same beliefs with.
It won't happen before I die though and to be honest I doubt it will ever happen.

Let's not forget...

It was passed by Congress in January 1996 and signed into law by Pres. Bill Clinton in February 1996.
Additional provisions of the act removed restrictions on media ownership and resulted in immediate consolidation within that segment of the industry.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Telecommunications-Act

Read an article detailing this.

We need to get our message on those alternative platforms - it's not enough to rely on MSM. Videos on youTube and TikTok, and more. Get our message in multiple forms - not just preaching or ads - insert our message into entertainment. Get entertainers to message tidbits along with their fare.

etc.

It has been 8 years since the Cambridge Analytica debacle. Surely our oiligarchs have learned a lot since that. I doubt if we fully understand the tactics that were used in this election.

Let's examine the facts: Sure, Jeffrey Epstein famously supplied underage girls for rich, old white guys to have sex with, but he also served shrimp kabobs!

What's more likely? That Trump went to those parties for the girls? Or that he really, really liked the kabobs?

Joe Biden used in 2020. They would have still applied. She could then have used charts showing the side-by-side performance of the 2 administrations. Only then hit Trump on abortion and some of the other issues. While I thought Harris ran a good campaign I felt her priorities were off a little.

a big part of the problem is that repubs own the news media - TV, talk radio, podcasts Rich left leaners need to step up. We have no balance in the news.

All they know is that chicken and cereal are up 50% in the last two years (ignoring bird flu), eggs and beef are what your mommy used to make...

Forgetting how people all over the world worked to stop plague-levels of extinguishment..

But if your butt has been thrown out on the street, won't you vote to have somebody else??

((just saying..,.))

I'm tired of throwing crap at the TV...

Unless said goon was beyond help or did something too public to deny. (And, they LOVE to deny.)

In 2000, W could do nothing wrong and Al Gore couldn't do anything right. Back then it still took 4 corrupt repug SCOTUS judges to thwart the will of the people and install W.

faults, plans, and moronic rambling. They also reported on the Democratic agenda. The right wing media did neither of these, and created an alternate universe composed of lies that Trump voters totally believed.

Hmmmmmm!

Trump won voters who don't even pay attention to the news:

https://news.northeastern.edu/2024/11/06/trump-voters-news-divide-research/

That's a demographics Democrats used to do well in and Trump seized it. He's literally going to be president again because he won a group who isn't focused on anything related to the MSM.