Tinidril

Meanwhile we have a doctor shortage in the US. We're also making college more expensive, reducing doctor pay, removing doctor autonomy, and driving foreign doctors away. Yeah, this is gonna suck for decades, even if we got rid of Trump tomorrow.

The border

Both Biden and Obama before him deported far more undocumented aliens than Trump could manage. Biden completed more of Trump's wall than Trump did. Family separations started under Obama and continued through Biden - with the caveat that people who go through the effort to understand it know that it was much worse under Trump because it was vindictive and intentional instead of being done on a limited bases to streamline cases.

The fact is that, no matter what the Democrats do or say, Republicans will always be seen as "tougher" on the border. They will always be willing to use more racist language and false narratives than Democrats. Trying to out-xenophobe Republicans is a losing fight for Democrats. What Democrats need is fewer xenophobes, and they don't get that by running to the middle, or trying to ignore the issue. They get it by telling the truth boldly and consistently, and mocking ridiculous Republican talking points instead of playing into them.

Republicans don't shape their policy to what polls tell them voters want, they shape what voters want through effective rhetoric, Democrats seem to think that voter opinions are immutable and that they need to find a well tuned platform to please more voters than they piss off until they get to 51% in each district. Republicans destroy them by constantly shifting the poles under Democrat's feet.

Prices at the grocery store. It’s ridiculous but it is what it is.

This is part of the anti-incumbency global tidal wave narrative that Democrats have been using to explain away their loss. I don't argue that it wasn't a factor, but I think they owe us a better explanation. The guy they lost to was Trump. The race should never have been close enough for that to tip it over. The one glaring exception to that global phenomena was Mexico that had a very similar election with an aging left wing male president attempting to hand power to a much younger female protege, in opposition to a far right candidate. In their case the left candidate won, and they did it with a social-Democrat platform, not by running to the middle. This is in a country that is far more conservative than even the US, with a much more firmly established cultural patriarchy.

Yes, border control is a problem. We needed a leader and got nothing.

Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. What we needed was immigration reform and a whole lot more judges to clear the backlog. The Democrats proposed a viable plan (far too right for me, but an understandable compromise to get Republicans on-board) and the Republicans rejected it to keep the issue alive for Trump. Then the Democrats assumed voters would see that and, what, stop being concerned about the border? All that did is send the message that electing Trump would get legislation passed because Biden couldn't do it. The Democrats didn't even try to convince anyone that the Republican plan was wrong-headed and would do far more harm than good. It was a disaster, and the kind of disaster that Democrats create for themselves on a regular basis.

LGBTQ rights. I’m sorry to have to say this, but that’s not going to win you an election.

The whole reason that the anti-woke movement gained so much traction is that Democrats have abandoned the issue or made compromises for years. I agree that standing for LGBTQ rights is not going to win elections, but giving up the high ground can certainly lose elections. Democratic (and corporate) tokenism also played a huge role in driving the anti-DEI narrative. Standing boldly and consistently for minority rights is politically a defensive strategy for Democrats. Democrats can't win elections if they lose the culture wars. That just lets Republicans control the narrative.

You need a sales pitch for purple and red districts that speaks on their issues.

You spoke earlier on how Democrats are seen as "intolerable over educated snobs" and I agree, but I see this as a perfect example as to why. Democrats act like policy preferences are some kind of unalterable genetic feature of "some people" and those people must be pandered to. People in red districts are first and foremost people. Look at how Bernie talks to right wing audiences. He doesn't cater even slightly to right wing ideology, but he does speak directly to their issues with an integrity that they are not used to seeing. And, it works. Bernie is consistently the most popular Democrat in red districts, not the centrists who pander.

Centrist is not evil, it's necessary to win elections

Oh really? Who is president again? Who won the popular vote? Between Harris and Trump, which was more "centrist"?

Your logic is sound, but the model your working from is completely out of touch with how voters and elections work.

First of all, the left to right spectrum is just one dimension of voter preference. Another, and currently more dominant, dimension is populist to establishment. What Democrats call "centrist" is really "establishment", and American voters hate the establishment.

Voters also like leaders with conviction. Centrist Democrats cave on everything. After four years of attacking Trump's boarder policy, Democrats flipped almost entirely. After four years attacking Trump on LGBT rights, Democrats abandoned the issue entirely. Not only does that signal weakness to disengaged voters, it also destroys trust between the party and it's base. The base might show up on election day, but they aren't going to want to canvass or do all the other volunteer work that Democratic campaigns depend on.

If you compare the US to Europe as a whole, there isn't a whole lot of difference. Europe also has many different countries with far more autonomy than US states, yet somehow they are all connected with a far better rail system than the US.

American here. We know exactly why we can't have this.

But he kind of is. I guarantee that most of the politically ignorant folks in the country think he's a Democrat, and he did run for the Democratic nomination, and he does caucus with the Democrats.

I don't agree that it's locked in, but we are certainly at the presupace. You and I are still talking about this without significant fear of the secret police knocking down our doors, so we aren't there yet.

The Director of the United States Marshals Service answers to the president. They protect the judiciary, but they aren't it's police force.

Federal law enforcement ultimately reports to the president, not the judiciary. Maybe that was a mistake, but there is nothing the judiciary can do within the system if the executive refuses to enforce against itself. Maybe they could go outside the system but, so could you.

Or maybe they were looking at their own lives and the lives of people around them? After decades of gaslighting from both parties it's no wonder that Americans don't trust the statistics they are offered.

Biden did do a lot of economic good and it's true that income inequality was reduced on his watch. However it wasn't the kind of fundamental change required for most people to actually experience it in their lives.

Marginal changes around the edges also don't add up to any kind of narrative that Democrats can use to drive participation. Trump supplied a narrative that Biden could use against him in 2020 but, by 2024 that story was old. The narrative around Trump in 2024 looked more like a classic hero arc than the classic Bond villain he was in 2020. The Democrat's narrative was about technocratic competence, something I appreciate but not terribly engaging. Biden's debate performance and late withdrawal also ran counter to that story.

It might sound silly or flippent to talk about narratives, but anybody in marketing will tell you that the narratives around a product usually matter more than the qualities of the product itself. There are effective narratives that Democrats could use, but those narratives cast wealthy Democratic donors among the villains, and most don't have the courage or integrity to do that.