SwingingTheLamp

To continue this thought, you might be interested to know how neuroscience tells us the brain works: In short, the unconscious mind decides and acts, and the conscious mind makes up stories about why. Quite often, the story is just wrong, or at least misguided. Those voters have a real reason that they don't understand or won't admit to themselves, and a million reasons that they give instead to explain it.

Yes, we need to drop the misconception that people rationally decide about much of anything, and learn about their real reasons.

Reminds me of that joke about how there are only two races: White, and political. It's disheartening to see folks (some here on Lemmy) confusing listening to the concerns of brown-skinned people with leftism. The Arab-Americans in Michigan, for a relevant example, are just people with a range of political opinions like the rest of us.

I just typed another reply to the effect that Democrats can't express strong values because of the inherent contradiction of being a corporatist party trying to appeal to workers for votes. I would add that it's not only a bad look, but a bad political tactic: If you don't state your values, your opponents are more than happy to fill in the blanks with whatever batshit nonsense serves their purpose.

Agreed, just a little left-wing populism would've gone a long way. I'm cynical, so I see it as that the Democrats can't be or do those things, because the need for campaign donations has turned them into a fundamentally neo-liberal party that stands for wealth and corporate greed. Like the GOP used to be, before it departed for Crazy Town in a lifted pickup truck.

See also: Joe Biden breaking the rail strike. (Before somebody points he followed up by getting some of the unions some of what they wanted, eroding union power generally was the headline news.) Can we imagine him nationalizing the rails and forcing the companies to strike a deal with the unions in exchange for using them? It would have been a stunning political sensation, but would've crossed Democrats' corporate benefactors.

Yes, totally agreed, and I feel this discussion circling straight back to the OP point: Whose job is it to dismantle the machine, and counter the misinformation? It's us; there's no global referee that we can appeal to. How do we do it? Through the political process, because we don't want violence and civil war. Since the winner-take-all voting system mathematically leads to two parties, our agent in the political process is the Democratic Party.

So, it's not the DNC's fault that the misinformation machine exists, but it is their responsibility to fix it, and we can certainly blame them because they're really bad at it.

That is exactly what they were hoping for, actually.

Harris seemed hyper focused on avoiding any criticism by Trump or Republicans.

Compare that with, "They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred." That line came from some four-term-President loser.

I feel like the very existence of TERFs shows daylight between cis and trans women. In any case, even if it may not matter politically at the moment, I'm still interested in the answer to the question.

That's a bold statement only a day after a campaign based on going hard-center crashed and burned.

Yeah, but that's democracy. Those 75+ million people wanted something, and they voted for it, and they got it. Anything else is irrelevant. There's no asterisk in the Constitution with a footnote that says the election is invalid if one side consists of hateboner-stroking bigots. If Democrats want something different, then they have to convince enough people to show up and vote for something different. They have to get good at public messaging and at running campaigns. Righteous indignation changes nothing whatsoever.

I disagree. At the risk of oversimplifying, American voters tend to respect strength of conviction, even if they don't always agree with the policy, over milquetoast candidates. That's why Sanders attracted so many voters who went on to vote for the other party's candidate in the general election. Democrats need to decide what they believe in, and say it long, loud, and proud.

Oh yes, sorry, I try to use Lemmy as a place for discussion, not an arena for rhetorical warfare. I had enough of that at the red site. So, I'm not challenging you, but building on your point.

Thanks for the Devil's Advocate explanation. That's what I suspect the answer is, too.