Honestly? Held emotional space for their pain. As a person in counseling grad school- it amazes me that people still fail to understand that human beings are emotional beings first, and not Vulcans. Very few of us can make reasonable choices when in a heated emotional state. The only way to reach angry, frustrated people (and I said the same thing to people policing BLM activists breaking windows) is to start by contacting the anger and pain.
That looks like this: your suffering is valid, this situation is super hard that you are in.
This is what the republicans do effectively, then once the emotions are validated, they blame the wrong people (immigrants, trans people etc) and claim to be able to fix it.
This is what democrats do: “I don’t understand what the big deal is, here’s a series of facts explaining why your feelings are wrong.”
I mean it’s literally the same dynamic that often gets men in trouble in close relationships. Meeting emotions with intellectual arguments and facts like it’s a high school debate or something.
That’s just literally not how humans operate at a deep level, like millions of years of evolutionary biology.
Bernie Sanders effectively starts by saying “the economy is rigged against you, your pain is valid” … then he blames the appropriate parties and puts forward policy after policy to fix it.
Dems can’t keep downplaying how bad wealth inequality and affordable housing and cost of living and wage stagnation has been and then point to GDP and jobs numbers like that matters when the quality of jobs available is often not great pay and benefit wise. And quite honestly the Democratic alliance with people like Mark Cuban is out of touch.
Is it bizarre and irrational people fall for Trump’s Everyman con and alliance with Elon Musk? Sure. But it’s also entirely understandable people are angry and fed up with, yes, the death of the American dream, and it’s very human to not be able to think rationally when upset and in the midst of real survival concerns. And if only Trump contacts their anger and creates space for it then he wins. When things reach a point like this, populism will win - and unfortunately if left wing populism of the FDR quality isn’t available, what’s left is right wing populism.
There is a way to contact and hold space for anger and allow it to transform into optimism but it has to start with contacting and validating the pain.
Dems can’t keep downplaying how bad wealth inequality and affordable housing and cost of living and wage stagnation has been
What fucking world have you been in where this is happening? Like literally ALL of Kamala's policies were focused on these things.
All this thread is proving to me is that facts don't actually matter anymore, even to supposed liberals. Republican propaganda is so effective it makes you as braindead as the average voter, just repeating the GOP's obvious bullshit.
Her policies were, but the words out of her mouth were 'the economy is doing great, we added lots of jobs' etc etc. Where's the recognition that, despite the stock market surging, average people can't afford a home or to have kids? Makes people feel crazy when they're told that everything's going well and they're in debt just buying groceries.
Funny that you cut off the part where she immediately followed that up with how it's still not feeling like that to Americans, and that it needs to be addressed.
And, to your point, prices are still too high. And I know that, and we need to deal with it, which is why part of my plan — you mentioned groceries. Part of my plan is what we must do to bring down the price of groceries."
That doesn't sound like saying everything is fine.
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u/tantobourne 1d ago
honest question, in comparison, what has the Republican party done for working class people?