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Nov 12Liked by David Thielen

Very good points. Another key hard truth: His voters saw the exact same things we saw. (Seriously - it is insulting to blame it all on misinformation. Jan 6 was not a secret. Neither was his first term. And Trump's campaign antics were widely publicized.) So we need to accept that they saw everything we saw. The only difference? They liked it. We need to look this fact in the eye.

Obviously there are shades of gray. Some love his antics and revel in his cruelty and racism. Others view him as personally unpleasant but worth putting up with to get whatever policy they want - whether that's abortion bans, tax cuts, mass deportations or something else. And some percentage don't think he'll do everything he said he would. Regardless, 99.9% of them saw the exact same man we saw and they voted for him.

That's the reality. And we have to look it head on before we can begin to formulate strategies for winning in the future. Sure, Americans are fickle and he/his party might lose simply because enough supporters turn on them in the next election. But that's not a strategy. If we want to rebuild a winning Democratic coalition we need to face the facts first. Dismissing everyone who voted against us as misinformed fools is not the way forward.

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