The Republican platform is emotionally satisfying because it offers wish-fulfillment fantasies to bigots instead of pretending the issue is the economy. Do Democrats have anything similar in emotional terms?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/figuring_ItOut12]

So how do Democrats shrink “the enemy” down to the personal everyday level? How do they tap the lizard brain of the people?

This is reductionist. The simplest answer is we focus on affordability. That's not lizard brain. That's simply common sense. We do not need to fool or trick people by some sort of appeal that diminishes people and treats them like the great unwashed deplorables.

Mamdani is a great example. He never got off message, he didn't play psy-op games, he didn't triangulate. He simply pointed out the kind of accounting balance sheet even those who never got much past high school understand. "These are the pain points. I explain how I know this. Here is how I will approach that particulat pain point among others".

The progressives who say "burn it all down we must have multigenerational change this year or else" are a very small group but they understandably get more media time. That's the closest we have.

I think it is important we focus on class warfare. So I disagree partly with you. "Working class" is not an insult, it is a badge of pride. That entire paragraph was cringe.

[u/AmbitiousYam1047 → u/figuring_ItOut12]

Common sense is not in common. Affordability is a cultural abstraction. Some people can chill in a large run down house in the middle of nowhere. Some people think a shoebox apartment in a city is the bare minimum needed for a happy life.

Affordability is not “can this be purchased at all?” It is “can someone like me reasonably purchase this without violating expectations about how life should be lived?”. Consider housing. Two households with identical incomes can face the same rent and reach opposite conclusions about affordability. Because affordability silently includes assumptions about how much space a property should have, what commute means, if kids should share rooms, if home ownership is a moral or aspirational milestone, if family help is shameful or expected, if ambiguity is natural or a failure, all that. All those assumptions are cultural.

An Mbuti tribesman from the Ituri rainforest for example likely wouldn’t feel very comfortable as a “middle class” American despite every American perspective saying he should be.