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Full disclosure....I'm a moderate who tends to lean slightly right of center but more Libertarian than anything. I didn't vote for Trump or Hillary in the last election and though I would be a tough get for Democrats I'm not a lost cause if they brought great ideas to the table that protected the Constitutional rights they champion and all the other freedoms our Constitution protects. My question to them are what are they offering in terms of policy that would appeal to those who may be on the fence like I was at one point 2 years ago? I'll tell you right now that "RESIST!!!" and "NOT MY PRESIDENT!!!" aren't policy solutions and that will not work and will not win over anyone but the hardcore left wing of the Democratic base. Not only won't will going farther and farther left not work, it will turn off people that aren't already hardcore Trump haters to start with and push support Trump's way. I was very uncomfortable with Trump when he was first elected but have been pleasantly suprised with how he has handled the economy and frankly shocked at how well he has done in foreign relations. That and the media's unprecedented non-stop onslaught of negativity and outright hatred of him and everything he's done has pushed me over the edge. I was still an undecided on Trump as recently as a year ago but now I will happily run to vote for him in 2020 assuming the soft coup attempt to force him out of office or some deranged sky screaming nutcase Leftist doesn't do something crazy to him if the coup attempt by his enemies in the government doesn't force him out first.
So far the only policies and talking points I can see that the Democrats have come up with are rolling back the tax cuts they all voted against, abolishing immigration enforcement by getting rid of ICE, giving Obama all the credit for all the record low unemployment numbers and strong economy, and healthcare for all. The first one is a very, very hard sell and a complete non starter for Libertarian leaning voters like me if you don't also explain how you're going to also cut spending. The second and third are simply non starters altogether. Democrats are severely underestimating the support for either of those ideas among independent voters. Healthcare for all is appealing and would be great except once again there's absolutely no explanation in the Democratic proposal for this when it comes to how on earth it's going to be paid for. The bottom line is that moving farther and farther left and trusting independent and even moderate Democrats to go along with it is not the answer. In fact, the party is losing several moderate Democrats who are disillusioned by the far left socialist wing of the party taking over. The #walk away movement is very real and is evidence of that. The Democratic Party's use of toxic identity politics is losing its power even as the complicit mainstream media tries desperately to convince the public to buy into it. The laughably transparent and shameful last minute hail mary attempt to derail Kavanaugh's SCOTUS nomination with a 35 year old allegation by an accuser who can't even name the year, place, or many other circumstances regarding the alleged assault and won't even tell her story to the Senate Judiciary Committee when given the chance is the icing on the cake. The few million undecided voters who usually decide national elections can see all this nonsense for what it is. The Republican party also has it's Trump haters and Never Trumpers and certainly has played dirty in the past too so they aren't blameless in helping create the toxic political environment in Washington but the Democratic Party has doubled down and gone full on bat#### crazy in their hatred of Trump and anyone who dares support him or even dares to keep an open mind about him. Many who privately support him but won't admit it to avoid the attacks from his haters are out there and any small chance they were not going to be motivated to vote in the midterms is gone after the dirty last minute tricks pulled by Democrats on SCOTUS nominee Kavanaugh. Despite all their crazy deranged anti Trump behavior Democrats still have a very good chance of taking back the House. On the other hand, with an angry base energized by the over the top anti-Trump resistance the Senate staying in Republican hands is practically a given. Barring some major turn of events in the next 7 weeks the Republicans probably add 3 or 4 seats in the Senate.
The original question still stands. What policy solutions are Democrats proposing to win over independents and undecided voters? What do they truly stand for other than "RESIST!!!!"?
I agree with you but I am wondering what good ideas anyone thinks they Democrats have. As far as I can tell, these are there ideas:
Resist Trump and get him out of office
Increase taxes
Give away more free stuff
Demonize police
Allow crime to run rampant
Get an abortion all the way up to the day of the birth
Open borders/abolish ICE
205 your post is tough to read without paragraphs.
Thom J is right the Left runs on hate. They hate Trump. They hate the Deplorables that voted for and that support him. They hate anyone that does not see eye to eye with their twisted policy ideas for America, do they seriously think we as a nation will be better off with open borders and getting rid of ICE or are they only looking at future votes? And finally I think they hate themselves when it comes down to it.
What they are doing now is disgraceful and does absolutely nothing to advance America and if they should win in November we the People that support Trump and those independents that waiver between the parties better hold on tight because they are going to go after Trump like never before.
If they could stop the "resisting and not my President" nonsense maybe they could start working with the Republicans and stop dividing this country? I doubt they ever will.
I honestly don't understand why the Democratic Party thinks "RESIST!!" resonates with Independents and undecided voters
It is not a message for undecided voters. It is what people feel they need to do for themselves. Considering they have a selfish and amoral con man doing great harm to the country, they need to fight back. This didn't come from the DNC.
So it's not about you, if you can not see the problem it is not a message for you ...
I used healthcare for all as the example for this but I'll at least give Democrats credit for being for something at least in this particular instance that would truly benefit everyone and not just their core constituency. The problem of course and what they never follow through and explain is how on earth to pay for it. Healthcare for all by some estimates would cost as much as $35 TRILLION with a T to implement over the next 10 (or maybe it was 15 years). That requires a MASSIVE increase in the federal budget and basically requires the federal government to take it over and given the federal government's track record of inefficiency running any large agency what gives supporters of such a plan ANY reassurance they'll run such a massive program efficiently and anywhere near within that budget? Massive tax increases alone aren't going to cover the cost when the cost of healthcare keeps going up and up. Rationing of healthcare is inevitable at some point and that doesn't even take into account the effect massive tax increases will have on hiring and the economy. I mean I'm all for it if there's a realistic way it could be done without job and economy crippling tax increases on businesses and individual taxpayers and it wouldn't explode the deficit and the national debt but how on earth do you avoid that happening with such a massively expensive increase added to the budget? It just doesn't seem sustainable to any reasonable degree at all.
This whole resist Trump think is not about hating the man. It's about hating what he is doing. He is not in anyone's pocket like they all are. He is addressing the whole issue with China. Many of our Congress people (Diane Feinstein) got rich making deals in China. Look at Google. They are writing a censorship app for China.
Trump was rich before he got in there. He didn't need the money. He just saw all these crooked politicians taking advantage of taxpayers. For years, they told us all the promises they made were not possible. The embassy couldn't be moved to Jerusalem. The manufacturing jobs were gone forever. 2% was the new normal. You can call Trump a narcissist if you want, but when people tell him something can't be done, he doesn't go, duh, ok. He goes why not?
And if you listen to Trump when he is in a news conference or in a meeting, he listens to what people say. He has been listening for a LONG time and finally he had had enough. There's old footage of him out there on the Oprah show from the 80's talking about how China is taking advantage of us and how he would fix all of this. He had just finally had enough after Obama. Obama, who is now worth over $30m.
The midterms will be won on voter turnout. And the Dems are desperate to take the House majority before they lose anymore gravitas and become irrelevant.
The Dems use RESIST !! and all the hate and fear mongering they can muster to get their base riled up and angry enough to turnout for the midterms.
I regularly listen to Doctor Radio. They have a guy who talks all about health insurance and answers caller's questions. People always say we need single payer. This guy is as liberal as they come and he talks about how Americans would hate single payer and why. He says no more private rooms. Wait months for elective surgeries and tests. Not picking their doctor or hospitals. But the most interesting thing he said, IMO, was the part about how we in America do so much R&D and develop most new procedures and drugs. There would be less incentive to do any of that if we had single payer. Why do people think we do most of it here? Duh. But he also pointed out that we are subsidizing OTHER countries by developing these new drugs and procedures.
The progressive half of the nation wants coercive authoritarian collectivism to be "our system." Whatever they have to do to achieve that goal, regardless of whether it is legal, illegal, honorable, or despicable, they will do it. And it is of no concern to them at all that the other half of the nation wants no part of their system. It doesn't matter. That's the way selfishness and Alpha-Politicking works.
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