Don’t forget that only 60 k or so votes in 3 States made the difference for the Presidency, and a total of about 3k votes in 3 House races kept the House for republicans. Doesn’t mean we don’t have work to do, but it was an extremely close election. In a way, the destruction that Trump will wreak in his term may be the key factor in future democratic victories.

Newspeak is real.

Elon Musk is a swell dude, bro.
Joe Rogan is obviously the go-to show for truth.


This is the fact-free reality of 2024 and the world in general.

What is the single biggest thing to grab ahold of the world since 2008 and today?
(HINT - Its NOT democratic party policies or platforms.)
ANSWER = social media and the rise of the internet as the single most potent propaganda tool in human history.

Stop and think about it. What do many, many MILLIONS of people do endlessly these days?
Read books?
Study economics?
Attend seminars to discuss topically relevant events?

No.

They scroll on their fucking phones endlessly.
They obsess over 'likes' and opinions and influencers.

They also believe the most insane shit passively and without questioning the authorities that they listen to.

We are in a world of Hindu cows, passively starving to death but protected from on high by the prince of darkness himself.

The Democratic Party needs to start listening to people under the age of 40 and stop listening to those over the age of 70. The reality is that in a smart phone world, we are listening to leadership that probably still has landlines, used magnetic tapes for answering machines, audio tapes and video tapes. This is the defining issue - being out of touch with technology and reality at the same time is a fatal combination.

The other thing that needs to be done is to STOP SAYING TRUMP'S FUCKING NAME constantly. Ignore him or use the generic term "the administration" if you discuss it at all. Starve the beast of the attention it seeks, craves and demands. Quit attacking the giant blob of silly putty and start displaying the effects of this shit show on the average person. Quit allowing lies to have longer half-lives than stone cold but ugly truths.

Ignore that and we will surely watch the loss of the New Deal, the Great Society and Obamacare to the greed and hate of a select few oligarchs and fiends who really control this mess.

well, what I mean is, what people are doing on their phones endlessly.
But when I check in on DU, it appears a lot of folks just haven't yet taken this message in, or to heart. and the same with cable news. same thing.
I keep seeing "news" that apparently made national "headlines" whether it deserved to be a headline or not, posted repeatedly here.
I'm old, I'm pretty close to giving up trying anymore.

They have been letting the GOP, Russia and other countries freely propagandize our citizens and apparently they can or will not do anything about it. They warn us it is happening but seem unable to fight it in any meaningful way.

Doesn't matter what the Dem message is if people are being propagandized by bad people on a gigantic scale.

What kind of messaging do you propose for a cult member who completely denies the reality of jury trials?

Too crazy for words, but societal collapse is
occurring as we speak.

We can't simply blame what has happened in the U.S. on a "global phenomenon." We need to hold ourselves accountable. 2016 was clouded by the superdelegate issue that our own party created. 2024 lacked any kind of meaningful intra-party debate. If you don't listen to your base, you'll lose them come the election. Some of the attrition - particularly when you look at union workers - may now be irreparable. It saddens me to say that the Party appears adrift, more interested in avoiding hot topics than in confronting them and deciding upon a common sense agenda that can give rise to a winning coalition.

not just the ones in the swing states. And they need to take a serious look at why their (seemingly) top-down strategy isn't working. The Democratic Party spent a lot of money on rallies in Pennsylvania, including some big arena-style shows - how many more Democratic votes did those bring in? Does receiving postcards from random out-of-state strangers change anybody's mind? A lot of money was spent - where did all go? Does the candidate really have to show up in person in all the swing states - Covid showed us that a lot could be done with modern communications technology, and I don't think we've done more than scrape the surface.

ETA: Democratic candidates managed to flip a few congressional districts in California. One first step for Democratic party officials nationwide would be to find out how they did it - i.e., go out to the farm country and talk to actual voters rather than sit around theorizing in San Francisco or Los Angeles.

Hillary stomped Sanders. It was not """rigged.""" And it wasn't even Hillary vs. Sanders, it was Hillary vs anti-Hillary, and the Hillary vote won fair and square, no matter how much Russians, Republicans, and Jill Stein voters want to portray it otherwise.

2020 reiterated this point, when even though Sanders and his people literally wrote the rules of the primary, people like myself -- a Sanders voter in 2016 -- went to the polls and took others with us to PROUDLY vote for Biden and rebuke what Sanders and some (many?) of his supporters did in 2016 to help propel Trump to the presidency.

The voters have always had the power in the Democratic primary and they will have the power again in 2028 when we select our next presidential nominee. Any candidate that can't agree with that and thinks they might whine about """rigging!!1!""" after the fact when all but one will inevitably lose should just skip out on the primary and save us all the trouble.

If Gwen Graham has won the 2018 primary.

Georgia and Arizona were red, now they are purple. NC is in play. States have always changed over time. Bill Clinton and Al Gore came from states that would never elect a statewide Democrat again. But NC has had 2 Democratic governors.

We still get half the votes. The problem is that the current distribution of blue and red favors Republicans in the electoral college and the senate, which it didn't always.

The difference now is Republicans cheat (voter suppression, gerrymandering, etc.) and RW media slanders and lies.
Without those, they wouldn't even be in the running.

You say, “ The difference now is Republicans cheat (voter suppression, gerrymandering, etc.) and RW media slanders and lies.
Without those, they wouldn't even be in the running.”

I agree.

but Georgia and Arizona have just recently become swing States and we are still the underdogs in those States. North Carolina is in play and has been in play for 16 years, but only Obama managed to carry it once in 2008. Meanwhile Ohio,Missouri,Florida and Iowa. Have gone from swing States, some of which favored Democrats to deep red States in the blink of an eye and we now have lost Pennsylvania,Wisconsin and Michigan in 2 of the last 3 Presidential election cycles. Georgia,North Carolina and Arizona aren't turning blue nearly fast enough. So we are getting the short end of the stick on the trade off.

We used to have the Unions and lots of White working class men. Now they are overwhelmingly Trumpers. And we are losing men of color. The shift of Hispanics has been enormous and probably was the difference in this election. Disappointingly, we lost White women. So much for RoevWade making a difference. It's the economy, stupid.

The growing income gap, inflation, weakened unions, and RW media designed to dupe low educated voters is the problem. Dems have been moving to the middle white the Right moves right. We no longer address the needs of the working class because we are busy compromiszing, and the Right which never cared about workers just lies and sells them causes like abortion and trans to get them to vote against their economic interests so they don't have to actually solve problems to get votes.

We also have stopped having Democratic Congresses that were the norm for decades after FDR, even through Nixon and Reagan. Republicans have stopped compromising as Dems did with Republican presidents. So we are no longer able to get things through, like the much more comprehensive health care plan that Carter proposed (and in that case, Ted Kennedy helped tank). There was so much in Biden's proposed bills that got lost because of Manchin/Synema refusing to end the filibuster that would have helped people economically. Not that we would have been given credit by the media, but like SS and Obamacare, some things would have been in place that people would have become attached to.

The people are for what we are for, if we could only implement it. And we need to go further: single payer for example. we are still subsidizing the Insurance Industry in the name of moderation.

All this a moot point now. What we should have done. Now all we can hope is that it will all crash badly enough to get us out of this mess, and that there will be a way to recover.

However I think the references to States like Oklahoma were unnecessary, because they never were Democratic strongholds. Democrats haven't carried Oklahoma in a Presidential election sense Johnson in 1964 and even then it hadn't been carried sense 1948. West Virginia,Missouri,Kentucky and Iowa are all more interesting case studies. Michael Dukakis even carried West Virginia. Kentucky just lost the Democratic State legislature in 2017 in which they had held for 95 years. The collapse of the coal mining industry hurt us in West Virginia and Kentucky as the coal mines went so did a lot of union members. Missouri is the biggest mystery of all of them. They just voted for abortion rights on a ballot initiative and for minimum wage increases. So why on earth is Missouri a deep red State now? I don't get it. I think a big part of the problem in what use to be swing States or even former Democratic strongholds is we have run to many moderate/centrist candidates rolling with the punches instead of aggressively pushing back for the sake of winning the next election in which we usually lose anyway and thus contribute to accelerating the erosion of Democratic culture in those States.

Dems had a chance at winning the state legislature and governorship, and the party can't do that anymore. Obviously, there are more recent examples, but it shows the slide away from Dems.

West Virginia was probably the most interesting to me because the slide away from Democrats to Republicans seemed like it happened so fast.

...and which one doesn't have anything comparable.

If the Democrats are going to survive this they will have to stop treating the Republicans as if they are playing by the same rules. The Republicans throughout the rule book after Barack Obama became President. This is point continues to escape everyone that is a pundit and everyone that has an opinion. The Republicans no longer care about the rule of law, hence they ran a person that stole classified documents, is an adjudicated rapist, and convicted felon.

Look at the nominees of the convicted felon, many are either ex cons or people with shady backgrounds. It is obvious that some Americans could care less about that, because they voted for him and his party to run this country in the ground.

The Republicans no longer care about the Constitution, the Supreme Court gave the convicted felon absolute immunity for the crimes he has and will commit in the future. The insurrection to them was an outing at the park where some bad actors caused a little havoc, boys will be boys.

Republicans lie, cheat, and steal to maintain power and control, now that they have it and a sycopath in the White House who knows what will happen over the next four years and beyond. My saving grace is that I am on the last end of life that may not allow me to see all the damage that will be done.

Democrats must fight, I am a lifelong Democrat and will never leave the party, however, I and frustrated that they are so weak, they just voted to keep Schumer and Durbin in the leadership positions of the party again. They are the main reason for this as they do not fight like the Republicans fight. They can't keep their caucus together to pass any meaningful legislation especially the votings rights acts. You will never see the Republicans break rank on any meaningful legislation that they want to pass.

Until the Democrats get some balls and fight for their base like the Republicans do for theirs, they will continue to lose elections to the morbidly destructive party called the Republican Party. They must fight fire with fire, no more of this nice guy crap, they don't have to cheat, lie and steal, however, they have to call the Republicans out when they do it and hold them accountable by broadcasting this to the country.

How do you not remind the country of the disastrous Covid pandemic, advertisements should have flooded the airwaves, or that he is a convicted criminal that stole classified documents, or all of the other nasty things he and many Republicans do and stand for. Again I will continue to vote for the Democrats, because they are the only ones that get things done for the people, but I am like the African American women, as they are tired of holding up a party that does noting but capitulate to the opposition.

moved there. And places like Ohio and Iowa became more right wing becsuse liberal leaning types started leaving.

Virginia And Colorado had changes which have helped democrsts.

Texas Georgia and North Carolina is going through changes that will make them more liberal leaning but it takes time.