Archive: [ https://archive.is/N9Bp5 ]
Liberals had nine years to decipher Mr. Trump’s appeal — and they failed. The Democrats are a party of college graduates, as the whole world understands by now, of Ph.D.s and genius-grant winners and the best consultants money can buy. Mr. Trump is a con man straight out of Mark Twain; he will say anything, promise anything, do nothing. But his movement baffled the party of education and innovation. Their most brilliant minds couldn’t figure him out.
You’re gonna get downvoted, but you’re partially right. Everyone self-selects their media, and avoids things that challenge their assumptions. Liberals are not exempt from this.
And if we are having nuanced policy discussions, it’s possible to listen to the other side and respond. But when our political discourse is “They’re eating the cats”, and you know that’s not true, what other way is there to respond?
A talking head who gets paid a six figure salary to go on TV and spout inane bullshit about immigrants eating pets shouldn’t be replied to. Cletus in the comment section who has a two year degree and makes an hourly wage to do skilled manual labor and honestly thinks the government will let any migrants who want to do so walk into the country whenever they want and give them a welfare check for their trouble does need to be spoken with.
That’s all a lot easier said than done, but I think that’s the general outline of the problem here.
To be fair, Republicans live in their own information bubble too. But the difference is that the Republican leadership knows how to talk to the middle, and the Democrats don’t seem to know how to do that.