The big problem is no one is trying to persuade those that stayed home instead of voting. What's the max sway of getting red votes to turn blue? 2-3%? What if you got back the non voters? 10%? 20%? 100%?
"But they don't vote." What has anyone offered them? What do they want?
Anything but this. This is the one point to which *no* Dems will concede. This is the one angle they refuse to consider. And Fascism is here as a result.
In what world are these mythical "persuadable" voters watching a poor public speaker give a speech that no one outside of a cable green room cares about 3 days from now?
Even maga has enough sense to know the Republicans can't win elections by just talking to them. If all we get is the voters we got in 2024 we'll lose every time.
this assumes that persuadable voters are all centrists who can be appealed by namechecking a guy who became president before most of the country was born, it's the same defective strategy that convinced the harris campaign that they would win by getting reliable GOP voters to move into her column
the harris campaign demonstrated the democratic establishment is afraid of an energized left flank of the party—they deliberately stifled walz so that her campaign could instead pivot to trying to appeal to liz cheney voters—how did that work out? 🙃
Dems tried this with Cheney. We lost the election.
We didn’t lose it *because of* Cheney, but that strategy clearly didn’t work. And I’m a (long since) former part of that constituency who still gets along well with them.
I think we need to revise the definition of “persuadable” since they voted for a convicted felon and rapist. The old rules no longer apply. Pundits and Dems are the only ones who don’t realize it yet.
Going through the filters, we’re looking for persuadable voters who listen to the Democratic state of the union response for reasons other than making fun of it, who also are ok with listening to women and staying up past 11.
Should she be aiming her message at supposed persuadables or at upset people who don't know where to direct their feelings? Iirc, those are significantly different demos.
Yes. That’s why when Kamala did the exact same thing she won the presidency. And it worked gang busters for Hillary. All the persuadable voters came running. All none of them.
Damn. Didn’t realize most people were smarter than Chris Hayes.
MSNBC was under pressure before the current macro conditions. It will get worse. You will lose your platform. People will be marching in the streets, hungry. They aren’t going to care that you voted for the right people. You need to say some shit that’s gonna get you fired.
"Fuck the base, fuck trans people, fuck immigrants - let's make sure that Liz Cheney superfans are happy! they've never voted for us in the past and pandering to them has cost us 2 elections already but this next time it'll work for sure!"
centrist dem leadership has convinced themselves they can win electoral majorities without the left wing of the party, and thats evident in these choices, and the milquetoast response to trump's outright destruction of the govt. that seems like a huge strategic error to me but i guess we'll see...
karl rove openly talked about winning GWB two terms in the white house NOT by appealing to ephemeral centrist swing voters but by energizing the base & increasing turnout
dems are the washington generals, over & over using the same failed strategy of trying to appeal to the center-right
Chris. You’re a smart guy. You cannot tell me that this Lisa Simpson lecture that we’ve heard a hundred times and literally just concedes entire swaths of policy to Republican framing, is more interesting or effective than what AOC is directly, clearly breaking down on Live. It’s just us, be honest.
Why are we in an electoral grindset? Are there major elections happening soon? We need to energize the base, not glaze Reagan, a person every Democrat under 50 hates.
Really???? I don't even know what a "persuadable voter" even is anymore. Dems need to cater to their base and persuade them they will not capitulate, not run to the mythical middle.
Is there any evidence these “moderate republican willing to vote dem” people even exist? They didn’t win us the last election, why are we doubling down on the losing strategy
No but elected Democrats are going to keep admonishing us that they're The Most Important Voters to justify constantly kicking the people who actually vote for and donate to them.
I'm quite literally never going to vote for a Democrat ever again until every one like her is run out of the party with pitchforks and torches, so she did persuade me on that at least.
It's pretty dumb choice to have a two party system where one party is a reactionary movement and the other keeps chasing a shifting center because they refuse to take principled stands against the other party and so every year the country lurches further and further into Fascism.
The roots of the US crisis is that the Constitution was not made for party politics, and more importantly the post-New Deal administrative state powers were given pretty much solely to the presidency, combined with the Supreme Court being way more political due to not being able to fire them.
Aiming for persuasion is a fatal error, elections and especially midterms are won by differential turnout driven by the enthusiasm gap. (How we lost last year.)
Instead of reaching for a middle that fails every time, Dems need to be heightening polarization and division, and demonizing Republicans.
My only problem is that Kamala did this in the election and lost. Why continue down a losing path with the dying boomer population that it’s targeting?
Who are these persuadable voters that the Democrats keep throwing elections to please? Where are they, what are their names? Do they exist, or are they just a rhetorical device to justify the Democrats' own right wing politics?
Comments
"But they don't vote." What has anyone offered them? What do they want?
We didn’t lose it *because of* Cheney, but that strategy clearly didn’t work. And I’m a (long since) former part of that constituency who still gets along well with them.
Shame you can’t see that @chrislhayes.bsky.social
Democrats have no pulse, they aren't together, and they have no idea what rage people feel right now.
How many people is this?
Damn. Didn’t realize most people were smarter than Chris Hayes.
"Guilded towers" keep you miles away from the pulse of humanity, regardless of political affiliation.
dems are the washington generals, over & over using the same failed strategy of trying to appeal to the center-right
And hey, how’d that election in 2024 where the nominee spent all her time trying to reach center right Republican women go?
Instead of reaching for a middle that fails every time, Dems need to be heightening polarization and division, and demonizing Republicans.