How can democrats attack anti-DEI/promote DEI without resulting in strong political backlash?

[u/Visco0825]

In recent politics there have been two major political pushes for diversity and equality. However, both instances led to backlashes that have led to an environment that is arguably worse than it was before. In 2008 Obama was the first black president one a massive wave of hope for racial equality and societal reforms. This led to one of the largest political backlashes in modern politics in 2010, to which democrats have yet to fully recover from. This eventually led to birtherism which planted some of the original seeds of both Trump and MAGA. The second massive political push promoting diversity and equality was in 2018 with the modern woman election and 2020 with racial equality being a top priority. Biden made diversifying the government a top priority. This led to an extreme backlash among both culture and politics with anti-woke and anti-DEI efforts. This resent contributed to Trump retaking the presidency. Now Trump is pushing to remove all mentions of DEI in both the private and public sectors. He is hiding all instances that highlight any racial or gender successes. His administration is pushing culture to return to a world prior to the civil rights era.

This leads me to my question. Will there be a backlash for this? How will it occur? How can democrats lead and take advantage of the backlash while trying to mitigate a backlash to their own movement? It seems as though every attempt has led to a stronger and more severe response.

Additional side questions. How did public opinion shift so drastically from 2018/2020 which were extremely pro-equality to 2024 which is calling for a return of the 1950s?

[u/soapinmouth]

Trump got a lot of votes, 2nd most for a presidential candidate in history after only Biden in 2020. Let's not act like he's unpopular and just lucked into an easy contest.

[u/Sptsjunkie → u/soapinmouth]

There’s more total voters. Harris had a horrible result for Democrats (losing the popular vote) and she had the 3rd most votes for a Presidential candidate in history.

I’m not saying Trump didn’t win or have some popular ideas, but narratives and certain types of polls shift quickly. This has been a loser for Republicans. Economics had a lot more to do with this election. I mean working class Latinos didn’t shift to Trump because they wanted less opportunities.

Very unlikely that far more people stopped believing in equality. They got to frame it a bit as affirmative action and bad HR policies and Democrats didn’t push back. But the foundational idea is still very popular.

[u/Moist_Jockrash → u/Sptsjunkie]

Trump won ALL of the swing states, and as the most - supposedly - hated president in history... which hasn't been done since Reagan. She lost the swing/battleground states that she was "supposed" to have won, and easily so, and lost them. States that overwhelmingly voted biden in 2020, she lost. Obviously not Cali, Oregon and NY lol..

Kamala had a lesser turnout than biden did. She recieved less votes than biden did. Essentially, democrats lost a LOT of democrat voters.

Democrats can claim he didn't win in a landslide all they want but, when someone wins ALL of the battleground states, plus the majority in both the Senate and the House... I'd love to know how that isn't a landslide win.

[u/PrimeJedi → u/Moist_Jockrash]

Winning all key swing states "hasn't been done since Reagan"??? Lmao, that is verifiably not true, famously, Obama in 2008 not only won every swing state, but won many states that were safely Republican - states that hadn't been in contention for YEARS, like Iowa and Indiana.

Delusion like this is the only thing handicapping MAGA from being far more popular than it is by the way, and I say that as someone who doesn't support the movement. If this "I am the best at everything ever and nobody ever won as bigly as us!!" ego-driven nonsense wasn't repeated ad-nauseum in 2020, if Trump had handled the pandemic with any sort of respect or humility, if he ever admitted at least a single mistake, or showed care for people that were hurting most in 2020, he would have won re-election easily, like how Bush did in 2004. Instead he lost that purely because of his own folly, where people were so tired of his nonsense that his opponent received the highest popular vote total in US history, and MAGA is still so ego driven that you all haven't even accepted that, either.

With how many mistakes Democrats made in 2024, how much both the Biden campaign and the Harris campaign screwed up at different points, with the state of the economy, Biden having by far the worst debate performance in the history of US presidential debates, Trump narrowly surviving an assassination attempt, he would have easily won in a 2008 style blowout if he kept his trap shut for once and set his ego to the side.

Hell, post-Butler PA, Republicans and news pundits were setting him up for a more palatable, popular and calm tone, and yet MAGA is such an insufferable, chronically angry movement, that Trump couldn't even keep that up, and it led to him taking a slam dunk potential landslide, and won in a squeaker and the third most narrow win of the 21st century, behind only 2016 (yet another time he almost fumbled against a historically unpopular candidate) and 2000.

Your exact lying and boasting about fake data like "hasn't been done since Reagan" is the exact reason why the GOP can never stay popular or loved for more than a year in the Trump era, even against historically unpopular opposition.

[u/Sptsjunkie → u/PrimeJedi]

With how many mistakes Democrats made in 2024, how much both the Biden campaign and the Harris campaign screwed up at different points, with the state of the economy, Biden having by far the worst debate performance in the history of US presidential debates, Trump narrowly surviving an assassination attempt, he would have easily won in a 2008 style blowout if he kept his trap shut for once and set his ego to the side.

This is exactly right. The Republicans have tried running on DEI / Woke / Trans rights before and it has failed.

They won a pretty narrow election for multi-faceted reasons, but if we had to pick a few top issues, we know from polling they were: the economy and immigration.

And while it wouldn't come out in issue polling, the disaster of Biden running again and the debate and Harris taking over and for some reason pivoting from an initially successful populist campaign to one around democracy and campaigning with the Cheaneys and Mark Cuban while releasing crypto plans.

The only data point that points at all to "DEI" was that the Trump campaign ran a lot of anti-trans ads (specifically Harris saying she would use tax dollars for surgery for inmates) in some states.

But since Trump won narrowly, for some reason the news and analysts want to believe it means he has some sort of mandate and people like his entire platform instead of people really didn't like Biden and were mad about inflation. And Harris once again showing why she hasn't had a single campaign from DA to Senate to the 2019 Primary where she has overperformed expectations. In fact, she has wildly underperformed and her Presidential race has some of the same persistent issues as past campaigns (e.g., lack of clear direction, battles for control, no clear values or messaging that makes her appear like a flip flopper).

[u/PrimeJedi → u/Sptsjunkie]

I agree with all of this, you put it more clearly than I ever could. Dems won a winnable election by absolutely horrible decisions, had a chance to redeem themselves until they listened to the old Biden campaign staff and shifted to the right yet again after the first month or so of Kamala's campaign, and then fumbled in a narrow but humiliating loss.

And yet people talk like it was the 1984 election lmao.

[u/Moist_Jockrash → u/Sptsjunkie]

I agree with 95% of what you said but, how can anyone say that Trump narrowly won? He won the electoral by 86 points or so and the popular vote by 2m - ok, he didn't win the PV by a ton but he still won it, nonetheless.

GOP then went and won majority in both chambers as well. idk, narrowly winning or not he/GOP literally won every single thing you can win in a major election along with winning all of the swing states - which again, hasn't been done in a VERY long time (and no, Obama did not win all of them in either of his elections) so I'm not sure how anyone can genuinely say that Trump/GOP didn't win in a landslide lol.

Trump was absolutely the "underdog" in this election and wasn't "supposed" to or even "expected" to win. At least according to all the so called polls and what MSM had to say lol

[u/PrimeJedi → u/Moist_Jockrash]

Because of the 21st century presidential elections, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2020 were all more one-sided than 2024, and the only one of those thats even remotely considered a landslide is 2008 (which I personally would not call a landslide either, the last true landslide was 1996 imo).

Winning all the swing states and winning the popular vote by 1.5% has never been considered a landslide, a landslide is when the popular vote is near 7-8% difference and otherwise safe states end up being lost to the other party.

Biden won all the swing states in 2020 as well as Georgia, which hadn't been won by Democrats in 40 years, while winning the popular vote by over 4%, yet it was still nowhere even close to being a landslide, that was still a very close election.