If the Democrats can gain 20+ seats in congress without a “message” I’ll count that as a success.

Implicit support for corporate globalization which vastly diminishes the bargaining power of the working class.

Calling people racist and bigots?

I assure you, those of us for whom gun rights are a central issue - an issue of basic civil rights - care.

As it is, I have no particular love for the Republican Party, but I simply cannot see myself voting for a Democrat for state or national office given their history of voting as a bloc against gun rights.

Objectively, I have no idea if gun control is a net positive for the Democrats at a national level - but I'm confident that by branding themselves as the party of gun control they are driving away a large number of people who would otherwise be reachable.

My man Bernie had a simple message: free healthcare and college education. And love him or loathe him so did Trump: build the wall. Clear, to the point, and instantly everyone knew what they were promising.

Democrats are not convinced Republicans have an advantage in technical skill or available domestic technical workforce, they are convinced that there is an assymetry between parties in the willingness to partner with hostile foreign powers and engage in criminal methods of cyberwarfare in pursuit of electoral victory, which mitigates the advantage Democrats believe they retain in lawful use of technology.

Reading this made it seem to me that this tech can be extremely effective. By pinpointing exactly who was worth their time talking to (i.e. if husband of target answers the door you ask for target otherwise politely leave) the Koch brother's were able to overturn an initially very popular public transit bill.

I didn't mean in my original comment that technology is entirely useless. More that it's a distant second to the things that have always worked in politics, and that "our tech is worse than theirs" is the refuge of a losing party looking to cast blame for their losses.

Republicans are usually a middle aged male female team. They are very polite and will discuss the election in general before admitting who they represent. They will also try to sway with fiscal voting histories and moderate policy choices.

Democrats will usually be a group of twenty year olds or middle aged teachers. They are pleasant, but immediately hand you the flyer and start to discuss 'stopping' this or that. They usually don't talk about their candidate, but discuss negatively the competition and Republican national level platform concepts and of course recently Trump. The majority of flyers they send out are negative campaigns.

There is one campaign this year and the only ads running on TV right now is a negative ad against the Republican because he voted against funding bills that claimed to support some senior citizen project and schools. I honestly think this is a smooth play on the Republican party to keep quiet.

I would not consider myself "right wing" - I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and have no problem with the vast majority of the social issues embraced by the left. I take issue with the way they intend to address them sometimes but that applies to all parties and to government in general.

Still, I often bite my tongue when guns come up as a topic of conversation in a professional settings, because when I speak on that topic it's automatically assumed that I'm a Republican. Democrats (and assorted other leftists) seem to regularly project their preconceived notions of what a Republican is onto me, and assume that they are correct.

It's almost like politics optimizes to get 50% of the people on each "team" \s.

It's not “politics”, it's the US electoral system, and particular:

(1) single-winner majority or plurality legislative (and state executive) elections and

(2) Indirect federal executive elections where the voters are elected in winner-take-all plurality elections at either state or a mix of state and district levels.

Together, this strongly encouraged a system of two major national factions, each of which strives to acheive a winning coalition with as little compromise on policy priorities as possible, which in effect means minimal size to acheive victory.

Instead we get everyone telling the mob what they want to hear and no one can figure out why the votes counted don't reflect the "consensus".

I watched the video and if I remember right somebody did come up and gave a reminder that they should be considerate that there were Trump voters. They were promptly booed.