To beat Trump it's necessary to understand the reason he won.

[jg10003]

Yes, Comey did a lot of damage.
Yes, Jill Stein siphoned off some votes.
Yes, a small number of Sanders supporters stayed home (but a lot more HRC supporters stayed home in 2008 and Obama still won) .

But these are not the main reason for Trump's victory. Trump, like any good salesman, con-man, or demagogue has the devil's wisdom. He knows what people are feeling and what motivates them. And Trump knows what to say to get the response he desires. The best explanation of Trump's success was given by Micheal Moore a month before the 2016 election. I know many people hate Moore and think he a giant asshole, and maybe he is. But Moore's personality isn't important, his analysis is. His analysis of why people respond to Trump was right then and it is still right. Democrats must confront the reason for Trump's success and address it or they will lose again.

&list=WL&index=14&t=0s


So what can the Democrats do to stop Trump's very effective sales pitch? The answer; offer a better solution. Do not ignore the fears, anger, and frustrations that Trump exploits. Admit that those things exist and that they exist for valid reasons. Then offer real solutions that address those fears and frustrations. Our candidate must give people a positive reason to vote for him or her, rather than just saying "vote for me, I'm not trump".

[PatrickforO]

1. Indeed. Lot of truth in that analysis.

[W_HAMILTON]

2. Trump won fewer votes in Wisconsin in 2016 than Romney did in 2012.

Trump's sales pitch was shit and his actual performance in office has been even shittier.

[jg10003]

14. His sales pitch worked. His performance in office is not the topic of the post.

[W_HAMILTON]

23. His sales pitch didn't work.

It netted him fewer votes than Romney in one of the states critical to his electoral win.

His constant shitting on the Democratic nominee -- with the eager assistance of Russians and the no-progress progressives out there -- and his late assist by Comey is what propelled him to barely eke out a win in the electoral college. Not his sales pitch.

[fallout87]

21. and yet tRump is in the whitehouse

...

[W_HAMILTON]

24. Yes, and we are all now dealing with the consequences of the Bernie-or-Bust types.

And now, those Bernie-or-Bust types are getting their just deserts back tenfold as all the people they shit on over the past half decade are uniting against their divisiveness.

[evertonfc]

3. Michael Moore is an expert

in how not to dress and/or take care yourself. He is irrelevant. I refuse to be lectured on political analysis by this guy. I have colleagues that have worked campaigns and been in trenches for 25 years. I'll listen to them.

[jg10003]

12. Understanding the Ad Hominem fallacy

Basic introduction:

A more thorough explanation:

[Eko]

4. Whats the better solution

to making white people feel superior?
To making religious fundamentalists feel better?
To making racists feel better?
To making idiots into not idiots when they are idiots because they feel better being that way?
Should we go back to making them the dominant force in America again?
Should we assuage their fee fees?
Im not going to.

[jg10003]

16. Those are trump's solutions.

Concerns:
The great American middle class is disappearing.
Good jobs are being sent overseas.
College is unaffordable.
Government is only concerned about large corporations.

Trump assuaged these concerns by appealing to peoples worst instincts; racism, xenophobia, jingoism, etc. It's despicable but it works. we have to find a way to appeal to peoples best instincts, if we don't then we lose.

[Eko]

20. Every single Dump supporter I know

And I'm from the deep south so that's pretty much everyone I went to school with and most of my family don't care a rats ass about those things at all. Those are things we care about, not them. Don't deceive yourself. Big brother-racist. Little brother-racist. 50% of everyone in my high school-fundamentalist. And they don't give a fuck about anything other than Dump is pushing religion and is against abortion. You are living in a world that is just not there and that is how they are winning. You think we can fix it for them, motherfuckers care more about guns and how many different types of flies they can tie and cant name a singe reason why the middle class is disappearing and good jobs are being sent overseas or why college is unaffordable or that government is only concerned about large corporations other than the jews are doing it or libtards are doing it. You think this is about changing their minds. They know its a war. Might as well as invent a time machine and go back to Nazi Germany and explain how they are wrong. He didn't assuage their concerns by appealing to their worst instincts, those are their primary instincts. He is not the cause, they are. Period.

[tarheelsunc]

5. Trump won in 2016 because Clinton was deeply unpopular.

We need a candidate who people WANT to vote for, not who they may or may not reluctantly vote for because they're the Democratic nominee. Joe's popularity with less devoted Democrats and with independents is exactly what we need, not someone who turns off those blocs.

[NYMinute]

9. She was the most admired woman in 2015

She was made unpopular by the fake attacks by one person

[showblue22]

6. Every time someone post something with MM

I can't help but to think back to the remark his ex wife made about how he smells like a decomposing body.

[NYMinute]

10. He is a Naderite - he probably IS a decomposing body

[jg10003]

13. See post #12 above

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287608640#post12

[lapfog_1]

7. says the guy with a net worth of $50M

no... I don't care what Michael Moore has to say.

It's almost like he WANTED Trump to win so he could push a Socialist as the "real deal" for the working class in 2020...

[NYMinute]

8. People thought he was a great self-made billionaire and businessman

Not many think that now

[blue-wave]

11. Add me to the bunch who doesn't care what Michael Moore has to say

And your statement: "Yes, a small number of Sanders supporters stayed home" doesn't reflect the real truth of the matter.

Fully 12% of people who for Sanders in the 2016 primaries switched and voted for Trump....yes, they voted FOR Trump in 2016 against the Democratic nominee. The figures further show that Hillary would have won if just a small fraction of these 12% would have voted for the Democratic candidate in some key states. Please stop with the nonsense. Just stop.


"Fully 12 percent of people who voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries voted for President Trump in the general election. That is according to the data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study — a massive election survey of around 50,000 people."

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/545812242/1-in-10-sanders-primary-voters-ended-up-supporting-trump-survey-finds

It's not working out so good for them now, is it? Trump has been a disaster. Sanders, if by some fluke he should happen to win will be equally disastrous. It is so very important to make the correct choices in life.

[Yavin4]

15. Trump won because people got complacent.

Everybody thought at the time that Hillary was a shoo-in. Second, the campaign was sooo ugly that people turned completely off.

[abqtommy]

17. Yeah, tRUMP is responsible for his "win" in 2016 but not due to any of his efforts. It was due to

the ratfuckery of his buddy sPUTIN and the reTHUGS.

[Happy Hoosier]

18. Ah yes. "Economic anxiety."

Bullshit.

It’s the ultimate end-State of the Southern Strategy.

[betsuni]

19. Steve Almond here with some of the actual reasons for Trump support.

"The majority of Trump voters, for instance, were middle-class and wealthy suburbanites. More significantly, Trump crushed Clinton in counties where unemployment had fallen in recent years. ... True believers weren't wage slaves pining for better jobs. They were self-employed, or small business owners -- the petty bourgeoisie, basically -- who wanted white privilege preserved and laws enforced and immigrants deported. Demographically, this far-right coalition was 'concentrated among the older generation, men, the religious minority populations, and the less educated -- sectors generally left behind by progressive ideas of culture value change.' ... But research complied by the political scientist Philip Klinkner shows that racial resentment was second only to party identification as a driver of Trump support. As you move from the least to the most resentful view of African-Americans, support for Trump climbs 44 percent.

"He's the front man for a movement that took root and grew in direct correlation to the rise of talk radio. The GOP establishment embraced the medium because it helped shape hyper partisan, misinformed voters who could be counted upon to embrace a politics of resentment over economic uplift. What they got in the bargain was a president who talks like Rush Limbaugh on the stump and thinks like a dittohead off it ... .

"Take Pennsylvania, where the majority of voters approved of Obama and thought Trump was dishonest, erratic, and unqualified. Why didn't Clinton win there? According to Dan Hopkins, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, the key was the email story, which pushed marginal voters into the Trump camp. ... A team of Buzzfeed reporters studied which election stories garnered the most attention on Facebook. Early in the campaign stories from venues such as the New York Times and the Washington Post dominated. But in the last three months of the campaign, the top twenty items produced by propagandists received more attention than the top twenty stories produced by journalists. Seventeen of these were pro-Trump or anti-Clinton, all easily debunked."

[kacekwl]

22. There is no logical reason for his "win".

Of all the reasons given by those who voted for him none make sense. Maybe for a normal candidate but one only had to look with one eye and 12 a brain to see what a disaster this Orange clown was.