My take (not that anyone will even see it, in a sea of 5000 comments):
Democrats were the party of the little guy - the minority, the immigrant, the working class. That worked pretty well for them.
Democrats were in support of civil rights. That was the right thing to do, even though there was plenty of opposition. It cost them the south for at least a generation. They knew it would, and they did it anyway. Good for them.
Then they saw abortion as the next "civil rights" issue. They keep framing it that way: "a woman's right over her own body". The problem is, the people who oppose abortion rights don't hear anything in that but an attempt to hide the issue. A fetus is not the woman's body - it's a genetically distinct individual, and anybody who's taken junior high biology knows it. The issue isn't about the woman's right over her body, it's about the woman's right over the fetus. And all the "a woman's right over her body" talk, to opponents, looks like an attempt to sweep that under the rug and ignore it. "But they want to control our bodies!" No, most of them don't. They want you to not kill the fetuses. It has the same result, but a different motivation.
The Democrats have always been in favor of immigrants. They became the party in favor of illegal immigrants. But immigration hurts the working class, which the Democrats also claim to represent.
Lately the Democrats have become focused on gay rights and trans rights. Look, trans people shouldn't be beaten up and killed for being trans. No question. But here's the problem: There are a large number of working-class people who at best don't care about trans people, and at worst are actively hostile. There are a large number who oppose abortion on moral grounds, holding the life of the fetus as a higher priority than the woman's body. Now, if you're the Democratic Party, what do you do?
What the Democrats did is decide that such working-class people were moral lepers, and demand that they convert or face cultural extinction. This has been going on for a couple of decades. "Clinging to guns and religion". "Deplorables". "Garbage". The Democratic Party really despises such people, and it keeps coming out.
Well, it turns out that despising the people who are a big chunk of your voting base, and demanding that they convert, doesn't make them feel like you're their party. Talking down to them doesn't make them vote for you. It just makes them feel that you've abandoned them. And you have.
And it makes them angry. And here's Trump, harvesting their anger.
The Democratic Party has always had difficulty with holding the different elements of their coalition together. What they've done lately is assume they could ignore one of their largest ones, that it would always support them no matter how much they despised it and insulted it.
If your reaction is to deplore how horrible the majority of voters are, you're still not listening. If you want to win elections, you'd better start listening. There are people out there, people that you claim to represent their interests, and you're despising them instead of listening.
> The issue isn't about the woman's right over her body, it's about the woman's right over the fetus. And all the "a woman's right over her body" talk, to opponents, looks like an attempt to sweep that under the rug and ignore it. "But they want to control our bodies!" No, most of them don't. They want you to not kill the fetuses. It has the same result, but a different motivation.
I agree the democrats have long been screwing the pooch with the "pro choice" messaging extreme, but you're taking it too far in the other direction. Abortions past viability [outside the womb] are generally highly illegal in even the most "liberal" states, because that would indeed be murdering the fetus.
What the religious fundamentalists want is for everyone to have to pretend that a non-viable fetus, likely suffering from genetic defects, is actually a person (with a "soul" per their beliefs), for as long as can be done until the life of the mother is finally threatened. They are of course free to push this narrative to their own communities, but making that regressive anti-scientific regime the limit for "medical care" available to everyone is utter dark ages insanity.
And once again, I do completely agree with the overall point about the democratic party being a general failure - in both messaging and concrete policy. But I'm also not going to focus on this too hard right now because they're not the ones who actually pulled the giant self destruct lever. Responsibility where responsibility is due.
> What they've done lately is assume they could ignore one of their largest ones, that it would always support them no matter how much they despised it and insulted it.
Democrats were the party of the little guy - the minority, the immigrant, the working class. That worked pretty well for them.
Democrats were in support of civil rights. That was the right thing to do, even though there was plenty of opposition. It cost them the south for at least a generation. They knew it would, and they did it anyway. Good for them.
Then they saw abortion as the next "civil rights" issue. They keep framing it that way: "a woman's right over her own body". The problem is, the people who oppose abortion rights don't hear anything in that but an attempt to hide the issue. A fetus is not the woman's body - it's a genetically distinct individual, and anybody who's taken junior high biology knows it. The issue isn't about the woman's right over her body, it's about the woman's right over the fetus. And all the "a woman's right over her body" talk, to opponents, looks like an attempt to sweep that under the rug and ignore it. "But they want to control our bodies!" No, most of them don't. They want you to not kill the fetuses. It has the same result, but a different motivation.
The Democrats have always been in favor of immigrants. They became the party in favor of illegal immigrants. But immigration hurts the working class, which the Democrats also claim to represent.
Lately the Democrats have become focused on gay rights and trans rights. Look, trans people shouldn't be beaten up and killed for being trans. No question. But here's the problem: There are a large number of working-class people who at best don't care about trans people, and at worst are actively hostile. There are a large number who oppose abortion on moral grounds, holding the life of the fetus as a higher priority than the woman's body. Now, if you're the Democratic Party, what do you do?
What the Democrats did is decide that such working-class people were moral lepers, and demand that they convert or face cultural extinction. This has been going on for a couple of decades. "Clinging to guns and religion". "Deplorables". "Garbage". The Democratic Party really despises such people, and it keeps coming out.
Well, it turns out that despising the people who are a big chunk of your voting base, and demanding that they convert, doesn't make them feel like you're their party. Talking down to them doesn't make them vote for you. It just makes them feel that you've abandoned them. And you have.
And it makes them angry. And here's Trump, harvesting their anger.
The Democratic Party has always had difficulty with holding the different elements of their coalition together. What they've done lately is assume they could ignore one of their largest ones, that it would always support them no matter how much they despised it and insulted it.
If your reaction is to deplore how horrible the majority of voters are, you're still not listening. If you want to win elections, you'd better start listening. There are people out there, people that you claim to represent their interests, and you're despising them instead of listening.