Can Democrats Get Their Voters Off the Couch?

Gosh, if only they had landed that George W Bush endorsement things would have been different, I'm sure. The party relies on essentially blackmailing their base while pursuing 1% of Republican voters who don't vote for them anyways, over and over.

Focus on actually helping out the working class and you'll get all the votes you need. Until then, throwing out a few progressive scraps has stopped working because people are sick of the bullshit rainbow capitalism.

This podcast is very relevant:

https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/news-brief-elite-media-dems-blame-woke-headwindseveryone-but-themselvesfor-trump-win

To be entirely honest, I don't think that would work. I wish it were true she lost because all the real leftists stayed home or voted for trump in protest, but that's obviously not true. She lost because this country is racist and sexist.

Actual leftists have no power over anything and are very small in number, that's why she ran a more conservative campaign in the first place. But, it didn't work. Despite doing everything in her power to not look like a leftist, everyone still labeled her as a radical leftist because she's a black woman. That is why she lost.
- Actual leftists have no power over anything and are very small in number, that's why she ran a more conservative campaign in the first place. But, it didn't work. Despite doing everything in her power to not look like a leftist, everyone still labeled her as a radical leftist because she's a black woman. That is why she lost.
  
  My initial reaction to reading this was visceral, but in rereading I think you need to expound a bit about who you mean. I do not agree, but I can see why you think that.
  
  What I find more useful and interesting is trying to figure out who it is that didn't vote and how we can move them from the disenfranchised existence they are in. There are a lot of them, many are urban which means they likely lean left. So a GOTV that actually got even 75% voter turnout out would give the right a stomping.
  
  Why that failed is worth understanding.
- Compared with 2020, about 20 million prior Dem voters stayed home. Care to try again l
- Unless you have some evidence, please don't go blaming it on leftists. That's just establishment bullshit. Leftists have been Democrats narrated to be the most consistently reliable voters in the country with more engagement than even Bible thumping nationalists. Engagement (including voting) is lowest at the middle of the political spectrum, which is exactly where anyone who thought about it for two seconds would expect it to be.
  
  The establishment always bitched about leftists going third party (Although the Libertarians hurt Republicans far more than the Greens hurt Democrats) but that was clearly not a real factor this time, so now they insist that leftists went to Trump. No matter what, it always must be the fault of the left, not the precious "centrists" they love so much.
  
  Step one in fixing this broken down wreck of a party is to stop buying their bullshit excuses. They lost because they didn't do enough for the American people, and because they weren't loud enough about what they did do. If they bragged about helping unions then they might piss off their corporate sponsors and they won't get to go on tour after leaving office and get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for 45 minute speeches.
- I wish it were true she lost because all the real leftists stayed home or voted for trump in protest, but that’s obviously not true.
  
  Left policy isn't for the leftists, it's for everyone except the capitalists. Left policy polls incredibly well when it's divorced from democrats that have shown over and over will not do what their base wants.
  
  Republicans fear their base, democrats despise their base.
  
  She lost because this country is racist and sexist.
  
  Do you think Biden would have done better?
  
  Despite doing everything in her power to not look like a leftist, everyone still labeled her as a radical leftist
  
  She told her base to fuck off, the genocide will continue, the wall will be built, we will have the most lethal military in history, all so that republicans would vote for her.
  
  And then 5% of her vote came from registered republicans, down from 6% in 2020.
- It's not about actual leftists; leftist policy is where you naturally get when you do things for the people. And both people like politicians who do things for them and hate politicians who don't. Democrats think they can get people to show up by doing nothing and they simply can't. I can't find it now but I saw an article around here that shows how as the election came closer Harris dropped anti-establishment rhetoric such as taxing wealth and combating price gouging and defined her platform by being a conservative, not being Trump and that idiotic border wall. Coincidentally, as she did that support for her dropped.

I think it's important to highlight the importance of primary elections here. Unlike most other countries, the process of choosing who a party nominates to stand for election is entirely controlled by voters in the USA through primary elections.

The Democratic Party loses because the Republican Party nominates populists that people are excited to vote for. If the Democrats want to win, they need to do the same—nominate people that voters are actually enthusiastic about.

Primary elections have historically rubbish turnout. If progressives, social democrats, and socialists want their candidates to be nominated, they should be starting information campaigns to get their fellow left-wing Democrats to vote in primary elections.

the process of choosing who a party nominates to stand for election is entirely controlled by voters in the USA through primary elections.

Courts have ruled consistantly that the political parties, which are private institutions, have control over all aspects of the primary process. Political parties are private tyrannies that put their agenda above the will of voters.
True enough but the DNC is absolutely not innocent here with how they like to fuck around in their primaries.
- Of course that's true, but the rules surrounding superdelegates and other tomfoolery wasn't enough to make a difference in any recent presidential primary. 2024 was an anomaly but it seemed pretty likely Kamala would have won the nomination regardless (this is not an excuse to not hold a primary).
  
  The rules for primaries to legislative or local offices are actually completely clean and fair, at least as far as I can tell.
The important part of a primary isn't the actual person, it's that they force the democrats to acknowledge what their base wants and pretend to want it too.
- It's also the best opportunity candidates get to frame issues and demonstrate vision. Conventional wisdom is that a contested primary is bad for the general, but that hasn't been true for decades. Election after election, a contested primary wins the general.

'We should've done more podcasts'

If they're staying on the couch and not voting, they're not voters.