Why identity politics benefits the right more than the left

[The Romulan Republic]

Which then raises the question of how you get out that vote, and especially in swing states. It sure as hell didn't turn out in 2016.

Indeed.

Personally, I think a lot of that was due to the poor choice of the Dems at the top of the ballot, and the divisive primary. In an anti-establishment mood, Hillary Clinton was probably the worst choice the Dems could have made, in hindsight. She had the experience, she had the credentials, she had the connections... and she had a trail of baggage a mile long, and not enough personal charisma to overcome it. Some of it was real, some of it was fabricated by a three-decade long campaign of malicious defamation against her, but it came to the same thing in the end. Which lead to dissatisfaction that was only amplified by the aura of "inevitability" around her, the sense that she was the "heir apparent"- all of which was then ruthlessly and effectively exploited by both the Trump campaign and Russia to suppress turnout.

[aerius]

Which then raises the question of how you get out that vote, and especially in swing states. It sure as hell didn't turn out in 2016.

1) Identify the key issues & problems that voters actually care about. Education, poverty, and the gap between rich & poor are of course all important issues, but if you spend all your time harping on those issues when no one give a fuck about them you're just throwing away votes. Newsflash, voters don't give a fuck about education and wealth inequality. It's sad, but that's your reality.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most- ... oblem.aspx

2) Once those key issues are identified, build a clear, concise platform around them.

3) Now that you've got the key issues down and built a platform on them, get the message out to the people.

If we look at the 2016 campaign, the Democrats utterly failed at all the above. They ran on the wrong issues, then got pulled even more off-track by the GOP campaign. Their platform was an incoherent mess, and then their campaign actually neglected several States, they actually flew over some of the fly-over States without even making a stop during key parts of the campaign. They shot themselves in the foot so bad that it's a miracle they didn't bleed out and die.

[The Romulan Republic]

Actually, education, poverty, and the wealth gap are all very important issues to progressives and the base. The perception that Clinton was on the wrong side of those issues was a big part of the reason why a no-name Independent Socialist from Vermont managed to turn a coronation into a contested primary.

They aren't the only issues, of course, but they can't be neglected either.

Another thing you forgot to mention: you need to run candidates who can emotionally engage and excite voters. Barak Obama, Justin Trudeau, and Donald Trump are all very different people, who ran very different campaigns, but they all had this common denominator: They were relative outsiders who promised something fresh and new and exciting, and had energy and a sort of personal charisma. There's a lesson to be learned there, I think.

Edit: I'll add one more thing- the Dems desperately need someone who, as much as possible, can bridge the divide between Bernie supporters and Hillary supporters.

[aerius]

Actually, education, poverty, and the wealth gap are all very important issues to progressives and the base. The perception that Clinton was on the wrong side of those issues was a big part of the reason why a no-name Independent Socialist from Vermont managed to turn a coronation into a contested primary.

They aren't the only issues, of course, but they can't be neglected either.

Did you look at the survey? They're all 1% or 2% issues, it's simply not important to most people. You win by going after the big percentages. Let's go back to 2016. Dissatisfaction with government has usually been a 20% issue, more or less, so what was one of Trump's key promises? Oh yes, that would be "I will drain the swamp and fix the government". That's a clear message targeted at an issue that 1/5th of America thinks is the biggest problem in the country.

Or a hypothetical for right now. Immigration/illegal aliens is currently sitting in the #2 spot at 14%. Come up with a platform & message to address it and you've got 1/7th of the voters. Then go after race relations & healthcare, that's another 11%. Either one by itself is worth more than the 7% combined for education, poverty, and wealth inequality. I know where I'm putting my efforts in a hypothetical campaign.

[The Romulan Republic]

The poll asks what people consider the most important issue. But just because something is not the single most important issue to most voters does not mean that it is not an important issue to them.

You also have to look at any biases in the poll. For example, the category labeled "Immigration/illegal aliens". The poll lumps those two terms together, implicitly equating all concerns over immigration policy with opposition to "illegal aliens". That's going to screw with the results you get. It might inflate the number of people voting for that option, because it will be counting both those who object to Trump's neo-fascist boarder policies and those who object to the presence of brown people in the country under the same umbrella category. Or it might decrease the number of people voting for immigration, because it implicitly equates "immigration" with "anti-immigrant". And, in any case, trying to pander to the concerns of those who see "illegal aliens" as the most pressing concerns is not going to help the Democrats, both because it will both alienate Latino voters and their own base, and because Republicans already have that vote locked up.

Note also that Gallup has a long-standing reputation of leaning Right compared to most other polls in its results.

Government corruption is a major issue, yes, but I'm not sure you can separate it from income inequality. To a lot of voters, and the Bernie crowd in particular, they're part and parcel of the same problem: a political system rigged to benefit corporations and the wealthy and the expense of the working class and middle class. Though I'll grant that targeting government corruption, real or imagined, is always likely to be a winning card, particularly in America's political culture.

I also agree that health care is probably a winning card for the Democrats, and if the party leadership was thinking straight they would unequivocally endorse single-payer.

[Dominus Atheos]

Actually, education, poverty, and the wealth gap are all very important issues to progressives and the base. The perception that Clinton was on the wrong side of those issues was a big part of the reason why a no-name Independent Socialist from Vermont managed to turn a coronation into a contested primary.

They aren't the only issues, of course, but they can't be neglected either.

Did you look at the survey? They're all 1% or 2% issues, it's simply not important to most people. You win by going after the big percentages. Let's go back to 2016. Dissatisfaction with government has usually been a 20% issue, more or less, so what was one of Trump's key promises? Oh yes, that would be "I will drain the swamp and fix the government". That's a clear message targeted at an issue that 1/5th of America thinks is the biggest problem in the country.

Or a hypothetical for right now. Immigration/illegal aliens is currently sitting in the #2 spot at 14%. Come up with a platform & message to address it and you've got 1/7th of the voters. Then go after race relations & healthcare, that's another 11%. Either one by itself is worth more than the 7% combined for education, poverty, and wealth inequality. I know where I'm putting my efforts in a hypothetical campaign.

The one who said it best was, shockingly, Barack Obama:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Of course he immediately apologized for saying that because he was a milquetoast president, but he spoke the truth at least that one time.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Did you look at the survey? They're all 1% or 2% issues, it's simply not important to most people. You win by going after the big percentages. Let's go back to 2016. Dissatisfaction with government has usually been a 20% issue, more or less, so what was one of Trump's key promises? Oh yes, that would be "I will drain the swamp and fix the government". That's a clear message targeted at an issue that 1/5th of America thinks is the biggest problem in the country.

Or a hypothetical for right now. Immigration/illegal aliens is currently sitting in the #2 spot at 14%. Come up with a platform & message to address it and you've got 1/7th of the voters. Then go after race relations & healthcare, that's another 11%. Either one by itself is worth more than the 7% combined for education, poverty, and wealth inequality. I know where I'm putting my efforts in a hypothetical campaign.

Unless you can dig up some more information about that survey, I'm going to say that you really shouldn't put any stock in it. Nowhere on that page do they describe HOW these numbers were calculated (what people were surveyed, using what methods, what questions were actually asked, etc.). They vaguely mention that the percentages sum to more than 100% due to "multiple response", but without further context as to the degree of multiple response (or non-response, for that matter), the numbers are largely worthless. We don't have a meaningful denominator.

[Dominus Atheos]

Did you look at the survey? They're all 1% or 2% issues, it's simply not important to most people. You win by going after the big percentages. Let's go back to 2016. Dissatisfaction with government has usually been a 20% issue, more or less, so what was one of Trump's key promises? Oh yes, that would be "I will drain the swamp and fix the government". That's a clear message targeted at an issue that 1/5th of America thinks is the biggest problem in the country.

Or a hypothetical for right now. Immigration/illegal aliens is currently sitting in the #2 spot at 14%. Come up with a platform & message to address it and you've got 1/7th of the voters. Then go after race relations & healthcare, that's another 11%. Either one by itself is worth more than the 7% combined for education, poverty, and wealth inequality. I know where I'm putting my efforts in a hypothetical campaign.

Unless you can dig up some more information about that survey, I'm going to say that you really shouldn't put any stock in it. Nowhere on that page do they describe HOW these numbers were calculated (what people were surveyed, using what methods, what questions were actually asked, etc.). They vaguely mention that the percentages sum to more than 100% due to "multiple response", but without further context as to the degree of multiple response (or non-response, for that matter), the numbers are largely worthless. We don't have a meaningful denominator.

They asked people what the most important issue (singular) was, took that single answer, added all of them up, and posted it as a list of what people thought the most important issues (plural) were.



Surveys do not work that way! Goodnight!

[Ziggy Stardust]

They asked people what the most important issue (singular) was, took that single answer, added all of them up, and posted it as a list of what people thought the most important issues (plural) were.

<snip picture>

Surveys do not work that way! Goodnight!

I'm not entirely sure if your post is meant to be agreeing with me or not?

[Gandalf]

1) Identify the key issues & problems that voters actually care about. Education, poverty, and the gap between rich & poor are of course all important issues, but if you spend all your time harping on those issues when no one give a fuck about them you're just throwing away votes. Newsflash, voters don't give a fuck about education and wealth inequality. It's sad, but that's your reality.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most- ... oblem.aspx

2) Once those key issues are identified, build a clear, concise platform around them.

3) Now that you've got the key issues down and built a platform on them, get the message out to the people.

If we look at the 2016 campaign, the Democrats utterly failed at all the above. They ran on the wrong issues, then got pulled even more off-track by the GOP campaign. Their platform was an incoherent mess, and then their campaign actually neglected several States, they actually flew over some of the fly-over States without even making a stop during key parts of the campaign. They shot themselves in the foot so bad that it's a miracle they didn't bleed out and die.

Indeed. This is what happens when one essentially says that they'll only campaign to enough people to win. Having just read Shattered, the weird thing was that the campaign was nuts about voter data, until it contradicted something that inner circle "knew." I'd like to think that while Clinton learned the lessons of 2008, Trump learned the lessons of the subsequent year.

With the power of data science, and the money floating around, it should be simple (albeit a massive undertaking) for a party to essentially Moneyball an entire political platform based around a candidate.

[Alyrium Denryle]

They asked people what the most important issue (singular) was, took that single answer, added all of them up, and posted it as a list of what people thought the most important issues (plural) were.

<snip picture>

Surveys do not work that way! Goodnight!

I'm not entirely sure if your post is meant to be agreeing with me or not?

It is. He's basically saying they misrepresented their own survey.

[Dominus Atheos]

Right. Trump is a constant ongoing dumpster fire in everything he touches, and asking us to pick a single issue out of all the shit he has caused is already a bad idea for a survey. That result write-up implies that people don't care about any other issues, which is total bullshit.

For example, the environment is an important issue, but right now Trump is trying to start a nuclear war with two different countries and very recently was throwing brown children in cages, so my top issue could be foreign policy, immigration, or even just bad government. I'd never say that the environment is my top issue. It's still an important issue that may kill millions of people eventually, but nuclear war is a little more pressing.