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Bernie is getting thousands of GOP voters at his anti-Oligarchy stops. It's not a hint, it's a fucking massive revolt in their base.
There’s a lot of Republican/Trump voters that just want politicians who at least sound like they want to represent them and “fix the government.” Do that and they’ll vote for you.
Democrats since Obama have failed to convincingly do that simple thing.
Meanwhile, Republicans lie that they’ll help them and get elected. They inevitably don’t help them and blame liberals/immigrants/trans etc.
If enough Democrats would follow Bernie’s lead, they would win, handily.
The bigger problem is the latter of your comment. Republicans have no issues with lying about everything, and promising undeliverable things. It's unconscionable, but they know these people never leave their lesson and continue voting against their own interests as long as they can concoct this fascist "US v Them" narrative.
Democrats have been there out spouting the truth of the situation, but that's not enough. They need demonstrable proof to illustrate their points, and this is that. If there isn't a massive shift in voters because of this fucking mess, nothing is going to do it. Sanders and AOC are on the right track, and we need more of that. Go to where they are and talk to them. Illustrate the points and what is going to happen if they don't switch their votes.
Exactly. In order to promise to "fix the government" you need to lie to them and claim the government is broken, first. That's where liars have a leg up.
A lot of people here are developers or tech adjacent so I'll offer this strained analogy: this "the government is broken" narrative is tantamount to an intern hot off their Learning NodeJS course coming in and telling everyone that their complex production systems are trash and need to be completely rebuilt. That intern doesn't have any of the context, experience, or knowledge to make that determination and often creates conflicts within the team instead of just looking forward to the next iteration for improvement. Meanwhile, the professionals have to keep cleaning up their mess.
Elon Musk is this intern. Boebert, MTG, Tuberville, etc, are this intern. The GOP has been promoting and encouraging these interns and has since Reagan.
Can the government be improved? Absolutely. Should the interns be doing it? No.
Well, there are some broken parts of the government thst do need fixing. The courts don't have a way to enforce rulings. Laws that limit executive overreach don't have an enforcement mechanism. Too much power is concentrated in the oval office.
It is broken, but not because of spending or any of the stuff Republicans claim to be broken. It is broken because it allows for their shenanigans.
Dems could have run on fixing the actual flaws in the system that are allowing this coup, but they chose to appeal to moderates instead. In the future they could run on fixing the flaws, but would need to follow through when they have the ability.
It would have accomplished exactly nothing if they did. Voters aren't interested in "fixing the system". It would have come off as Democrats caring about nothing but "making power grabs" while ignoring kitchen table concerns such as the price of groceries. It would have come off as Democrats being more disconnected from the needs of everyday voters than they already are.
Harris, or whoever the dem nominiee would have been, would have been focusing on "fixing the system" while Trump just made all the same empty promises about "bringing down the price of eggs on day one", and he would have won by an even wider margin. Your average voter gives exactly zero shits about how things work in DC and what does and doesn't need to be fixed.
Even if it didn't have that outward appearance, the liars would have lied to ensure that was the message.
Here's an example of this with Democrats trying to improve access to voting:
https://barr.house.gov/2021/3/rep-barr-denounces-house-democrats-h-r-1-the-election-power-grab-act
Here's Democrats trying to fix the courts:
https://www.courthousenews.com/republicans-wont-budge-as-biden-details-supreme-court-reform-plan/
Here's the Democrats trying to give people in DC access to representation:
https://oversight.house.gov/release/hearing-wrap-up-republicans-warn-h-r-51-is-an-unconstitutional-unworkable-democrat-power-grab/
This isn't hypothetical partisan complaining.. the past is littered with examples of Democrats attempting to do the very things that people complain they aren't doing -- with Republicans whipping up lies to feed the electorate undermining those efforts.
Right. But here's the thing.
Those issues you brought up probably don't even make the top 10 in terms of issues that are important to the average voter. Your average voter doesn't care about "fixing" a system that they believe has been long since broken anyway, regardless of who is offering to do the fixing. It's not even a matter of who's right or wrong. It's the fact that the entire issue is just not important to the average voter to begin with. To your average voter, it will just come off as Democrats being out of touch with kitchen table issues and just trying to implement "fixes" that will primarily cement their own power. Even if those fixes end up having benefits for the average voter, they'll be seen as largely irrelevant if it doesn't actually help them pay the bills.
Put that up against someone who's making promises (regardless of how empty) that he will do things that will actually impact everyday voters, and the ones making those promises are going to win every time. Kamala Harris promising to fix the government while Trump is promising to actually bring prices down (Yes, I know....) would have just led to her losing by an even bigger margin.
That's the rub. The issues that the average voter thinks they're concerned about were spoon-fed to them by the liars. Which means we can either have Democrats also lie, or they can tell the truth and fix the actual problems.