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it's good to look in the mirror and understand the material outcomes of voter behavior (lemmy.cafe)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have problems with people who abstained. The hard thing is, how do you change voter behavior?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

The Democratic platform is really quite leftwing. It contains things like increasing the minimum wage, getting money out of politics etc etc. The problem is in how they run campaigns. The role of consultants is far too big, and this lets the GOP set the agenda.

Example: The GOP talks about the border constantly->media reports on the border-> voters in focus groups report caring deeply about the border->Dems campaign on the border (arguably their weakest point).

If Kamala had campaigned heavily on healthcare (say expanding Medicare), she could have shifted part of the focus away from the border and towards healthcare (the GOPs weakest point), which shifts the momentum.

The same happened with many other topics. The campaign talked about the economy (whatever that means, but somehow voters associate this with GOP), rather than raising minimum wages or building homes (a strength of Dems). Climate change was never even mentioned throughout the campaign.

Dems have to find a way to lead the conversation, rather than follow a conversation set by the GOP or they will never win.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago

The DNC platform in general has a lot of leftwing policy yes. However, they're very... noncommittal about it. The party leadership is a bunch of geriatric centrists who only pass some progressive policy among an ocean of status quo centrism. However, that part alone is... fine. It's not good, but not really a big problem. The big problem is how they sideline their leftwing platform whenever there's an opportunity where they think they can do that without being flayed by voters, such as in this election. I'll paste my reply to the other guy here.

The reason I'm asking is that the Harris campaign progressively dropped or watered down its promises throughout the campaign. For example the wealth tax promise started out good (I don't remember how much) and ended up as an unfulfilled Biden-era promise. Statements or promises from the early part of the campaign, let alone from before the campaign, don't reflect the choice voters had at the ballot box. One example would be the DNC going from rejecting the border wall to promising to build it.

Part of this is bad campaigning, yes, but it's also undeniable that they actively attempted to shift to the right in this election. They didn't campaign on progressive economic policy because, if they did, they'd find themselves obliged to make good on at least some of those promises, which would piss off their donors. I mean remember the "nothing really comes to mind comment"? Talking about the wrong things is one thing, but when asked about the right things the Democrats gave very wrong answers.