This is the less-fun part of what I had planned. Here, I’m going to try and run through what is, I think, the ultimate best-case scenario of the second Trump administration. I’ll try to discuss it with the mindset of what I think the Democrats could do to improve their position with the voting demographics that they lost ground with and what that means for their national scale. For the sake of my own sanity and well-being (which, as of November 12, is hanging on by a thread), I’m not going to dwell too deeply on what I think of as the most-likely outcome of this (which is Trump and his cronies remake the electoral process in such a way that the GOP is now the only realistic federal power broker), but that might be something I have to write out just for my own therapy, even if I don’t post it. So, here we go.

As I see it, the Trump electorate (and others, as we’ll see) can be split into four segments:

1. The dyed-in-the-wool MAGA crowd;
2. Evangelicals and Protestants following the recommendation of their community, regardless of whether or not they, individually, believe what Trump is selling; and
3. The people who only care about the price of goods they see in front of them. (In consultant terms, I believe this would be “low-engagement voters.”)
4. The apathetic vote

You’ll have some individual segments outside of that (California ideology types; New Hampshire libertarians; etc), but those, to me, are the base of who turned out to vote for Trump.

If I were a strategist for the Democratic party, I’d essentially write off the first two segments. In my previous post, I wrote about how the Harris campaign’s strategy (a continuation of federal-level Democrat strategies since time immemorial) focused on appealing to moderates and conservatives and how that is, at its core, a flawed if not pointless attempt at courting a group of people who do not care about what you’re selling. It’s like trying to sell a car to someone who cannot legally buy a car. Those two segments – MAGA and Evangelicals especially – are essentially dyed-in-the-wool Republicans. There are, of course, a substantial amount of non-evangelical Protestants set who are more open to your message, but they’re likely already going to vote for you and don’t need to tune in to your convention.

Rather, the Democrats need to focus in on group three: The people who are going to be most brutally shut-down by the very economic policies they’re voting for. In order to do that, the Democrats need to take a look at what those people want, where they’re getting their information, and think long and hard about how they can engage them at a local level. For despite all the Democrats’ messaging about grass-roots organizing and small donors, they don’t seem to be getting their pitch for President across. You can knock doors, you can buy TV ads, you can do everything in your power to get across to them using traditional means, but at the end of the day, the people who get sticker shock when they go out to buy candy as a small reprieve from the horrors of the world won’t want to vote for a person who doesn’t speak their language.

But before we get into that, we have to explain why this is even worth doing, rather than what the Democrats are seemingly stuck on doing: Eating the progressive wing of the party. Right now, at this very moment on November 12, people are responding to AOC’s Instagram post asking for their reasons for splitting a ticket. And that is exactly what happened across the country: A lot of voters split their tickets. They voted for progressive policies like enshrining abortion rights and then turned around and voted for the very people who are trying to take away those rights. What those people are saying seems to be similar: They don’t trust what the Democrats are selling because it’s too polished. AOC’s constituents who split the ticket between her and Trump said that they like her and Bernie because the two of them talk to them at their level and their concerns. Harris, for all intents and purposes, did not. If you were really paying attention, she did, but most people don’t pay attention to that degree. Most people, they get off of work and they’re exhausted. They have responsibilities to attend to or they’re too dog-tired to do anything but veg out or listen to something brainless (i.e., Joe Rogan). They don’t have time to sit there and watch rallies, or listen to debates. That’s just not the way life in the 21^st century operates.

But you know who gets that and shows up, and talks in common-sense language about the problems people are facing? The progressive wing. AOC, Bernie, Rashida Tlaib? These are people who keep getting re-elected to their districts even as the American electorate apparently shifts to the hard right at the Federal level. And, even though he is remarkably full of shit, Trump speaks at a level people can understand. (Kind of. Sometimes. Most of the time it’s a rambling, incoherent mess, but surprise, surprise, CNN didn’t spend nearly enough time talking about that as they did covering Biden’s stutter, so here we are.) Their voting base feels a connection with them and knows that, at the very least, they’re not mainstream politicians, which they respect.

This is, further, borne out in some of the surprises across the country. Surprises like the one city council race in deep-red Kentucky where an openly transgender candidate was elected. This is, admittedly, a sample size of one, but it does show that such things are possible. You can get progressive, marginalized people elected at the grass roots level if you are willing to stick your neck out on the line and support them.

As another indicator of this, in my town of Portland, voters brought in a surprisingly progressive city council. (This might partly be a result of people not voting down-ballot, but, in my opinion, I think that view assumes that people have a conservative slant and were too flummoxed to vote with the new rank-choice voting system, which I disagree with. But that’s another essay.) The new councilors showed up in multiple venues, threw parties, talked to people in neighborhoods, and schmoozed in a way that you don’t typically see from candidates. The new mayor, too, showed up at the recent Book Festival early on and just quietly hung around, letting people come up to talk to him for a quick chat and made connections that way. It was a surprising blind spot for a lot of other candidates: One of the points of Portland’s pride is Powell’s Books – the city loves books! Why didn’t you show up to the damn book festival, bud? Schmucks, I tell you.

All of this, then, leads me to wondering what, exactly, the Democrats could possibly do to win over the “apathetic vote.” (This, of course, assumes that we will have a free and fair election in four years’ time, which is very much in doubt.) Well, those thoughts will be in part 3. And apologies in advance, but that one’s going to be much, much longer.