Memes

Democrats keep losing because they have a fundamental misunderstanding of the game they are playing. Democracy is not a game of having the best ideas or plans or even character. You can win hearts and minds with passionate leadership and rational persuasion, but we'll never win another election if that's the only lever they want to press. It's a progressive truism that people, given the same information and the same priorities, will reach the same conclusion. So therefore if a conservative has a difference of opinion, they must either not have the same information, or they must have different priorities. That's why progressives are so frequently astounded at the hypocrisy and mental gymnastics required to support Trump while claiming any moral highground on any position.

How can they claim they want traditional family values when Trump is a thrice-divorced rapist with an obvious attraction to his own daughter? How can they oppose immigration when Trump has had two foreign national brides and Musk was an illegal immigrant? How can they oppose a woman's right to choose when Trump has paid women to abort fetuses he sired? How can they claim to be patriotic while Trump gargles Putin's sweaty raisin bag? How can they claim to want fiscal responsibility when Trump has driven his businesses into the ground, routinely declaring bankruptcy and using his political influence to line his own pockets? How can they claim to want lower costs of living when Trump plans to raise tariffs on imported goods, making literally everything more expensive?

The answer is that they don't care. They don't care about having all the information, or having true information. The conservative mind is not a rational actor. It's not built on priorities or fundamental beliefs. There is only one core idea at the nexus of every conservative ideology:

Me good.

That's it. That's all there is. Dig down far enough, under all the bullshit and psychological spaghetti of beliefs, and you'll find one nugget of truth. I am a good person, therefore whatever I want is good, and anyone that wants something else is bad. If it helps me to lie or cheat or murder, then I'll do those things and they will be good because I did them to help me.

This has always been the comforting lie of conservative thought. Conservatives claim to want stoic preservation of national values, but the reality is that those values inexorably align with their own personal gain. It is not, as most conservatives prefer to believe, a resistance to change for change's sake, but a narcissistic demand that all policies and decisions benefit themselves.

It's more transparent now because Trump has worn thin the veneer of reasonable discretion, but the closer to the surface it gets, the more effective the messaging. It's OK to be selfish, and ignorant, and cruel, and criminal, because deep down we deserve to do whatever we want. We deserve to get whatever we want. Anyone trying to keep it from us deserves to be destroyed. Anything we do to destroy those who would stop us is righteous. Cuz me good.

You're never going to convince a conservative to vote for the lesser of two evils, because the greater of the two will simply lie to them. The greater evil will tell them they can have it all, that the dangers of climate change or viral pandemics aren't real, that they don't have to change their behavior or learn something new. They don't have to get out of bed in the morning, they can stay warm under the covers and skip school or work or adulting, and everything will be just fine.

To win an election, you have to convince the conservatives that it is in their best interest to vote for the progressive candidate. That might sound like a tall order, but we already know how to do it. We already see the gameplan that works on all conservatives. We have seen how centrists and moderates and neoliberals win in conservative strongholds.

Progressives just need to start lying.