So it begs the question 'how can we get more people to vote for a meaningful platform?'

nm

because it requires a lot of soul searching and people as usual are looking for easy fixes or solutions, there is not one single easy thing that needs to be fixed to reverse our electoral fortunes. It requires a significant rethink and I just don't believe people are TPTB are willing to do that.

Though I retain hope that a lot of people are soul-searching. They may not be talking publicly now. But I think many are revisiting how they come across to other people. Acting like a know-it-all or using one-issue 'answers' to complicated challenges turns people off.

Has become so powerful that they can turn the phrase "decent human being" into something demonic. Yet they still denounce the "liberal media" whenever they get the chance. If there's anything that I learned from the selection of Premier Trump, is that the right wing are the party of the guy who beat you up in high school. And not only do they beat you good, they love to pour salt in the wound as well.

You know what, I will concede that there may be a bit of a self-righteous know it all quality to some "liberals."

But, you can take the most condescending thing that liberals might say about rural folks and it does not even scratch the surface of the sheer hatred that they have for US.

Hell, I live in a semi rural area and pretty much every business has MULTIPLE signs in them along the lines of "the path to hell is paved with the dead bodies of liberals" in them.

These people think we are spawn from the devil, literally.

Sorry, but the mere fact that we draw breathe is an offense to them, so PLEASE stop with this right wing meme that it is something about us that makes the poor rural person hate us.

IT is 100 percent cultural.

It is 100 percent cultural, and there is NOTHING we can say, or no way we can say it that will magically make them "feel' better about us and "hear" what we are saying.

They are with team R because team R openly advocates against men having sex with men. If you don't knock gay people, there is literally nothing you can say or do that will have them "listen" to you.

They will vote team even though they are likely to have the kinds of programs that they benefit from cut by Rs because Rs are saying they are going to not let "them" take "handouts."

They will vote team R even though team are would jeopardize their SS by putting it into the free market because team will not let ANY gun legislation pass.

The gay issue is a big one, so is taxes, abortion and just being left the fuck alone.

It is a whole different attitude, and one we should not dismiss out of hand. There is a way to reach them. Obama did. So did the first Clinton. And I think a lot of it starts with understanding, truly understanding, where they come from. Because I promise you, they do not think of themselves as racists, bigots, stupid or bad people. And most of them fundamentally aren't, even though they sometimes act like it.

Bill never won an election with 50% of the vote.

I was in my young adult years back where my mother lived and still naive about the world and remember not understanding their deranged hatred for Bill, things were going well, he was "bubba." But, the 90s was when the "silent majority" of the 80s had melded into the full on AM hate radio conservative movement. That was when the disconnect between actual reality and what they wanted to believe was starting to take root.

They hate BHO, just not with the red hot hatred they had for Bill and Hillary. That isn't a reflection of anything that BHO did to "reach out to them" as much as it is him personally. BHO was such a calm and soft spoken person, and don't discount his being a prototype family man. He just is such an extraordinary person it made it harder for them have anything tangible to grab ahold of like Bill being a slut.

You are right, they certainly don't think of themselves as bigots, racists and the such, and in fact most are generally cordial and often generous people.

My inlaws are really good people. They know my politics, and we just respect each other and don't ever talk politics, and that being the unspoken rule they have totally accepted me and are great to me.

Because I am good husband and father, honest and genuine person and make an effort to connect with them and they can accept that I think differently, and maybe that I am even right on some of the things that I don't talk to them about. But, I assure you, if I was to try to tell them things different from what they believe, the dynamics between us would change REAL quick.

I remember going up after Newtown and they were all agitated, they were dead sure that this was going to be the thing that had the liberals coming after their guns, the one time we have sort of talked politics because they were genuinely scared and said something to me and looked at me, so I knew they wanted my opinion.

I told them the same thing I told my liberal friends who were equally as sure - not a fucking thing was going to happen. No one believed me at the time, even though I pointed out that the republicans had the House and there was absolutely no chance, NONE that they would pass any firearm legislation.

Next time we visited, half of them had went out and gotten ARs just to be sure and had brought them over to look at them ...

This summer they invited me and my wife to a river boat dinner they invite us to every year. We sat with some of their friends on top and a discussion about Hillary and Trump started - I probably was the only person who would vote Hillary there, and I am not joking that if I would have said anything that my inlaws would have been had their hands full keeping me from from having to swim ashore.

Sounds a lot like parts of my family

But you'd think that there would have to be some point, some threshold that forces them to confront the reality that Team R is poison to them and that their ability to obtain and maintain their livelihood would- at some point- outweigh their "need" or desire to hate on LGBTs or worry about their gunz? Or are these people masochistic or feel that they have to live poor, miserable, hardscrabble lives in perpetuity and if they don't they are not worthy or something?

There are some who are rural poor, but most of the rural conservatives I know are doing OK.

They have newer trucks, have enough money to put into having a lot of guns, fancy camo for hunting, ATVs.

IMO, they are more than willing to roll the dice that they won't get impacted negatively by the Rs crazy beliefs about taxes and the such and vote for them because they represent the animus they have toward all things not in their culture.

The majority party picks their Prime Minister, unlike our system where such a potential leader deals with INSANE questions about his/her character from the (corporate owned) media and general population.

Not that we'll ever change. Many Americans cling to the idea that this country is the "foundation" of democracy in the world, and they're not going to change it unless it totally collapses. 'Murica!

I asked in an earlier thread how countries like Germany seem to have an easier time adopting policies that help everyone as a whole -- like true universal healthcare and reduced work hours to keep unemployment down -- and this thread might have partially answered it for me! It's easier for their voters to be more issues-focused, for starters!

The right has been building for years from the school boards up.

That's where real change starts. Think globally act locally.

Republicans are really good at presenting a simple message even if it's stupid. Look at the idiots demanding Obama keep his hands off their medicare.

Part of it is that it's hard to fit an actual intelligent policy on a bumper sticker.

But gerrymandering is also a huge problem. We get more votes for House but didn't put much of a dent into the Republican lead there.

Our base is densely concentrated in urban districts, we are inherently gerrymandered. Even with perfect districting to make them as uniform as possible, we will still have many districts with 80 or 90% Democrats... Because that is simply how our base is distributed.

We need to broaden our base

Instead of being ashamed they get angry and deflect.

They start berating & stammering. Too much hot air!

It should be as easy as watching or reading a bit of news each week on one of the major networks. They no longer really report policy so more effort is needed from the consumer. We have to go online and other places in order to read about policy. Overall, that simply means fewer and fewer people are aware of our policy message. We have to work harder to get it to them. Our policies explain themselves well. We just need to get them regularly falling on more people's ears.

It's amazing how many people think Republican equals small government and Democrat means big government. That is a failure in getting the policy to the people and them taking the time to listen.

an engaged electorate. We didn't have enough engaged people on our side this time around. I agree with all the people who are saying that we must engage on local levels - school boards, local races, congressional races on up.

A lot of people also say they believe in democrats for social issues and republicans for fiscal & economic issues. That's another tremendous misnomer that's difficult to break, that somehow democrats are free-spenders who raise the deficit and that republicans are fiscal conservatives who don't.

In fact with republican trickle-down nonsense they raise deficits by giving handouts to the rich while everyone else suffers. It infuriated me (and still does!) when I heard people on the left say that Clinton was proposing trickle-down economics. Her policy proposals were not that at all.

good case to be made for the democrats surviving only by the virtue of Clinton's 3rd way politics in the first place. That we have reached a level of technology that gives us decentralized access to news and opinion has absolutely changed what is possible, but I say "possible," not probable.

When money has its hands in everything, including social media, taking it to the establishment is a very precarious game, likely to leave the brazen fool who attempted it bleeding on the side of the metaphorical road of politics, and his message, either lost in the wind, or used to tie any future upstarts who give it voice to that foolish person who deserved to be road kill. That doesn't mean there aren't moments where things slip through the grasp of the messaging police, but they are few and far between. Should we take those and run with them when they come? I think so, but they'll still probably end the way I just described.

It isn't enough to desire that we give people a message they can get behind either. It still has to be honest. It still has to actually promote good change, not just change, and not just pander to their worst instincts.

Also, you can't say don't talk about the money and media and then talk about how democrats come across as smug assholes, especially in the wake of a Trump Presidency, who certainly doesn't come off as smug, or an asshole, now does he?