The problem the Democrats have had ever since the the 80s with the exception of Bill Clinton -- even with Obama's wins -- is that they always think that deep inside everybody is rational. That's what you'd expect from a party of straight A grade hounds who busted their butts in the academic system.
Democratic policies are superior to Republican policies for Middle America. Democrats think articulating those policies and those advantages is enough. But it isn't if the people who would be helped don't understand, if they don't want to understand, that they would be helped. That's where the Culture War came from -- it was the Republicans' brilliant strategy of getting the voters themselves to jam their fingers in their own ears and shut their eyes. Bill, for all his faults, charmed his way into Middle American living rooms and deep fried the message so the audience would try it. Barack and especially Hillary made it easy for Middle America to retreat into an infantile cultural fantasy, and Trump was the ideal hypnotist to further that self-delusion.
I'd like to see a 45-year old Joe Bidenesque blue collar Democrat grab the party by the balls and speak in the cultural language of Middle America while not changing a single Democratic policy. I'd like to see them pretend to be an aw shucks regular guy, like Reagan did and the Bush clan does.
Without a cultural connection, the facts of policy do not register for most people. We're seeing that right now as Trump voters happily slit their own throats in a cause that makes them feel good. That has been the secret of every ideologue, of every warmonger, who has ever gotten masses of people to sacrifice themselves and their children for a feeling. The secret is that below a high level of intelligence, emotion is a larger motivator of behavior than reason.
Dukakis and Kerry and Hillary, and even Obama, did not grasp that. We need not just candidates but DNC officials at all levels down to ward boss and farm district organizer who intuitively understand that. Irrational people outnumber rational people; you cannot exclusively concentrate on the latter. Politics is the opposite of school. Here the students are the ones grading, and as there are more C students than A students, C studentism is more highly rewarded.
But that never stopped Bill -- an A student who pretended to be a C student and then did A student stuff in office with great popularity. Just a spoonful of down home sugar helps the policy medicine go down.
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