So, while having a better economic message is important... Hillary already won those who thought the economy was most important. So it might not win over those who thought building the Wall or having a Muslim Ban were the most important. And Hillary did win the working class and poor and middle class... Trump only won the rich.
Hillary already won those who said having a caring president is important... so Democrats also have to do more than simply prove they're more caring.
Hillary already won those who thought good judgment is important, and foreign policy is the most important issue... so focusing on those Trump gaffes isn't the way to convince them to change their mind.
Hillary did win the moderates. Apparently conservatives alone are more numerous than moderates+liberals in some swing states.
More Democrats supported Hillary than Republicans supported Trump... so Democratic unity wasn't as big of an issue as people thought.
Despite Trump's rhetoric on Muslim Bans and Building Walls, proportionally more African-Americans and Hispanics voted for him than Romney or McCain. So his Wall and Ban rhetoric didn't scare off minority voters from the GOP like so many thought it would.
Hillary did win millennials.
How to convince college-educated whites who voted for Trump not to vote for him in the future? Since Trump did win them, which people probably wouldn't have thought.
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Democrats need to win over Older, Richer, College-Educated White Conservatives, as well as African-Americans and Hispanics, who are mostly Evangelical or Catholic, who care about supporting the Wall and the Ban more than they care about the economy or foreign policy (or the president being caring or having good judgment).... particularly in swing states like those in the Midwest as well as Florida.
How in the world does that happen... any takers?[/quote]
Democrats pick off the margin (assuming that Donald Trump is the Republican nominee of 2020 or has tainted the Republican nominee of 2020) on -- paradoxically -- National Security, something that seemed to have been solid since the Reagan era. But this means that the Republicans get a good chance of winning back the Presidency in 2024 by simply undoing some Trump mistakes.
Promising to undo Trump damage (his Far Right economic agenda and his blunders of foreign policy) will be essential.
People who support the wall on the Mexican border (hey -- that is infrastructure even if it is pure waste!) and the ban on Muslims more than they care about the overall economy are beyond reach. Let the Republicans have those 'toxic' voters, like people who want to outlaw interracial marriage.
Above all, make sure to have an economic message. Trump or Pence may give that to us. A change in the tax structure that reduces taxes on the rich yet bloats the deficits (that are to be solved only with a national sales tax that falls heavily on the non-rich), evisceration of labor unions (the Republicans may be wary of speaking of such, but there are interests tied to the GOP, the National Right-to-Work [for starvation pay] Committee, that want the common man to have pay characteristic of rural China but living costs of New York City), and pushes privatization of public infrastructure to monopolistic profiteers will hurt most Americans. Democrats can resist such.
Unless Republicans can tamper with voting rights through legislation, people who fell for the Great Demagogue will have plenty to vote against. Approval for Donald Trump in Michigan and Pennsylvania, which he barely won in 2016, is in the low thirties. Approval for him in Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, and Wisconsin has gone into the low forties. Some polls have put him dead in the water in four of the states (Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Virginia) that he barely lost. I have nothing so far on Ohio and an old favorability poll on Arizona, and the latter looks really, really bad.
Comparing Trump in 2017 to Obama in 2009 implies a flawed analogue because the personalities could hardly be more different. But there is a big difference between winning 306 electoral votes and winning 365 electoral votes in the first election. Obama did lose Indiana (big!), North Carolina (barely) and the Second Congressional District of Nebraska (only one EV); even had he lost Florida he would have still had 304 electoral votes after having lost 61. Losing even 46 electoral votes (Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania) implies electoral defeat for the President in 2020. As a coincidence North Carolina, where Republican pols are getting very unpopular very fast, would be the 47th through 61st electoral votes that could swing in 2020.
It is unpopular. It creates the perception that the United States is a haven to ethnic and religious bigotry even if it is not in force. An effect may be that someone from Canada might rather visit Portugal than California or that someone from Germany chooses to visit Montreal instead of Chicago.
If I am touting Michigan as a tourist destination (it has brutal winters but only beginner-grade ski slopes), I don't like Donald Trump. We have some beautiful coastlines and some nice cultural attractions at modest cost. Say what you want about Detroit as an urban wreck, it has a fine art gallery, first-rate theater, the Motown Museum, and a world-class symphony orchestra... and some nice venues for gambling... about as good as Vegas. That's before I discuss some shorelines that can compete with those of California for three seasons in the year.
Winning big depends upon firm positives (Bill Clinton or Barack Obama as the winners) or strong negatives of the opponent (the LBJ, Nixon, and Reagan landslides against opponents deemed kooky or out of touch). President Trump is already a political cripple, and that is before the economy has gone into the tank or something has gone awry in one of America's shaky allies.
The news media include the intellectual whores who made a Trump possible. Excuse me, folks, for using that disgusting, often sexist word -- prostitutes are nobler people than those who foist a near-fascist demagogue upon America. I would rather have a treatable STD from an encounter with a prostitute than have Donald Trump as President.
America has never faced so flagrant a demagogue as Donald Trump. Usually the 'establishment' wings of the two Parties are able to offer a solid alternative. But the GOP was heavily splintered, and its establishment found him useful for giving the Republican Party for now overwhelming control of American political life -- most state governments, the presidency, and majorities in both Houses of Congress. If the Republicans couldn't establish the absolute plutocracy of which they dream with an Establishment pol, then maybe they could get it with a demagogic populist who quickly betrays many of his voters as he goes to unqualified support of his class interests.
Donald Trump is the least-attractive sort of capitalist, basically a rentier who exploits a permanent scarcity in housing in a place in which many people must live if they are to hold certain careers. He is no innovator who makes those careers possible; he is the sort who bleeds such people. Intellectual property is now a big chunk of American productivity; landlords like he fleece such people. People in high-rent communities see their landlords as people who make easy money (and if someone bought a house in urban coastal California in the 1970s can now lease it out for the original price of purchase every year now -- what a racket!), and don't see them as job-creators as they might see their employers.
Exploit the disappointments without judging people for voting for Trump.
I remember a bumper sticker against Barack Obama:
"If you made the mistake of voting for Barack Obama out of White Guilt then you don't have to vote for him again"...
(I did not vote for Barack Obama because he was black -- I voted for him despite him being black, because as a black man he would remind conservatives of what they most dreaded -- crime and welfare. I recognize mass poverty as the biggest problem in America, and it is a problem for white people as well as for black people. But if President Obama talked about poverty and called for making poverty sting less, then the Right would call his efforts patronage for black people. Truth be told, most of the poor in America are white. But I understand the dynamics of race in American political life).
In 2020 -- bring economic justice to the forefront, and remind voters that Democrats stand for a return to the sane Bush I - Bill Clinton - Obama foreign policy.
