Summary
Following Kamala Harris’s unexpected defeat, Democratic leaders are scrutinizing their party’s failures, particularly with working-class voters.
Figures like Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy, and Ro Khanna argue the party lacks a strong economic message, especially for those frustrated with stagnant mobility and neoliberal policies.
Sanders emphasized Democrats’ disconnect from working-class concerns, while Murphy criticized the party’s unwillingness to challenge wealthy interests.
DNC Chair Jaime Harrison announced he won’t seek re-election, leaving the party’s leadership in flux as Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries prepare to assume top roles amid a Republican resurgence.
They have got to stop talking down to voters, gaslighting voters, and they need to give people something to vote FOR instead of against. I find Kamala to be a good speaker and easy to understand but people saying she’s using word salad…at first I didn’t get what that was all about, especially when Trump makes absolutely no sense whatsoever but I think I might get it now. She’s talking to well educated people but a huge swath of this country is not well educated, uses social media extensively, and maybe it actually does sound like word salad to them when democrats start using words that normal people never use and probably don’t understand. If you never went to college and only graduated high school because standards have been reduced, maybe she kind of sounds like an alien sometimes. They need an economic message that speaks to people who have been getting crushed more and more since the 80s and they need to say it in terms we can all understand. And when voters tell them “this is how I feel” for the love of God they need to stop saying “no you don’t”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(sociolinguistics)#Register_as_formality_scale
I’m not sure about the specifics, but the core I can agree with, that is: ‘people speaking the same language, but with vastly different backgrounds, will have difficulty communicating effectively.’
Yes perfect, thank you for this. I literally majored in Linguistics but didn’t even think of this because school was so long ago. The ability to code switch where someone could use the professional language while governing but colloquialisms and everyday language while giving public statements would be nice, to be better understood. We all understand basic informal American English but not everyone has a great education.
Nice, glad to help! And cool that you did Linguistics in school!
How can you NOT appear to talk down to someone who is Trump vocabulary / concept or less about issues that are actually complex and nuanced? Trump can talk out of both sides of his mouth to different groups with radically conflicting messages tuned to the audience. If anyone did that while trying to cater to the left, you would be immediately strung up for being duplicitous while at the same time being excoriated for being vague and nonspecific with your plans. No “concepts of a plan” are going to fly for someone running outside the Republican party.
Trump is basically bowling with the gutter guards up and it’s because the Republican electorate is angry and not exactly… uh… discerning when it comes to complex or academic issues.
TIL speaking plain English is word salad.
If you’re uneducated and someone is speaking more formally it can be, depending on the topic and the word choice.
So national health care, workers rights, shifting the tax burden to the richest and most fortunate of us, eliminating monopolies and enforcing anti-trust, eliminating corruption among politicians and judges aren’t something to vote FOR? That’s a lot of what Harris’s platform was.
She stoped supporting single payer, she backed off worker rights, she backed off on taxing corporations, and a huge part of the platform was against Trump’s abortion ban and against Trump’s authoritarism.
Show us where she did this. Come on.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/19/medicare-for-all-harris-progressives-2024-elections-00174447
He tax an was tweaked with a more pro corporation lean on the advice of her brother I law Tony West and probably others but all the articles on that are behind paywalls and I don’t really care enough about convincing you to look for a way to bypass them.
As for Trump’s abortion ban and things like that, I remember her saying it because she said it. https://www.instagram.com/kamalaharris/reel/DBz9j1zquQx/
I genuinely feel that most people don’t vote for a policy they vote for a feeling.
I also think that either the DNC doesn’t understand the anger that many have about the wealth inequality or they just ignore it due to the donors they were courting. If they did understand this and understand that people vote with their feelings, I believe it would have been a closer race.