General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Keith Ellison: [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)"No TPP" would have made it much harder for Trump to peel off lunch box voters. Take that out, and he didn't have enough to win them over. Racial resentment by itself would not have flipped that many of them.
"We Stand With Standing Rock" would have flipped the third-party left our way. It would have said to them "things really have changed and the Dems are listening again".
Our party's strategy with both groups was simply to demand their votes. The "You HAVE to vote for us" strategy has been used with next to no let-up since 1980 or so. I agree that all these people should have just voted for us, but the electoral results since 1980 prove that that doesn't work.
The presidential elections we've won in this century(2008 and 2012) were based on saying "here's why you SHOULD vote for us...we NEED your votes".
What I'm saying is we COULD have run a campaign like that this fall, with the campaign ads focusing on the platform and those two fairly small changes(changes that wouldn't have harmed anyone in the Obama/Clinton coalition) and probably won.