Cartoon: The Only Way Democrats Can Win

If you enjoy these cartoons, please help me make more at Patreon. Even a $1 pledge makes a difference for me.

I think this comic pretty much explains itself. :-)

I’m happy with the art, especially with the two female figures. I drew someone in high heels! That may not seem like a big deal to you, but you don’t know how deeply and truly I suck at drawing high heels. They’re a very complex shape!

I also had a lot of fun drawing the middle lady’s tattoo sleeve, although looking at it now I’m not sure I should have made it the same hot pink as her hair. Ah well.

Thanks so much for those of you supporting my Patreon! I’m so lucky to be able to make my cartoons about whatever I want, and still get paid. It’s amazing living in a time of social media and crowdfunding.

I have two nieces living with me, who are now 11 and 13. When I was their age there was no internet; we thought having two phone lines the house was pretty cool and high-tech. The world has changed so incomprehensibly fast. What will it be like when they’re my age? Hope I’ll still be around to find out.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

The cartoon has one panel, which shows three people having a heated discussion. The three people are an older Black woman, a young white woman with tattoos and pink hair, and a middle-aged Latino man wearing suspenders and a collared shirt.

OLDER WOMAN (smiling, holding up a forefinger as she explains): There’s only ONE message that will let Democrats win elections, and that message is what I already think.

TATTOOED WOMAN (angry, holding up a hand in a “stop!” gesture): RIDICULOUS! The only winning message for Democrats is agreeing with what I think!

SUSPENDERS MAN (angry, with his arms outspread): You FOOLS! The BEST message is what I agree with!


This cartoon on Patreon

This entry posted in Cartooning & comics, Elections and politics. Bookmark the permalink. 

13 Responses to Cartoon: The Only Way Democrats Can Win

  1. 1
    Ortvin Sarapuu says:

    The problem with this cartoon is that it draws a false equivalence between the policy preferences of black people and white people, men and women.

  2. 2
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    I think Democrats can win elections if they return to being more centrist. However that does not really match my policy preferences, which lean more left-libertarian. The things I wish the democrats would do, and the things I think they can win with, are not necessarily the same. What does that make me?

  3. 3
    RonF says:

    Hilarious!

    It has struck me lately that we see various news organizations (CNN, HuffPost) deciding to send staff out on a tour of the “heartland” to get a better idea of what people are thinking and to try to find an explanation of how Pres. Trump won and how he continues to retain support. What’s really struck me is – why do they have to make the trip? Why don’t they have staff and contributors that are already in the “heartland”? Especially when you’re talking about CNN and the New York Times? You’d think they’d go to the effort to specifically hire people in those locations. They report on what’s going on there all the time – or at least what they thjnk is going on. You’d think it would occur to them that you can’t objectively report on such things without having people actually physically based there.

  4. 4
    Ortvin Sarapuu says:

    @RonF: How is what you’re saying relevant to this cartoon?

  5. 5
    Ben Lehman says:

    It’s the one true way that Democrats can win.

    (I love this cartoon. Although clearly the lady on the left is correct, and others are full of it.)

  6. 6
    LTL FTC says:

    The funny thing is that their policy preferences are 95% similar and their main disagreements are on priority and emphasis.

    After all, Hillary did have a great rural policy paper (for example) buried deep within the bowels of her campaign website, where it could be dusted off and pointed at if challenged. A lil’ something for everyone.

  7. 7
    Harlequin says:

    RonF: they do have staff in the heartland. It’s very easy to find lists of those news organizations’ bureaus if you’d like to confirm.

    Amp, I love the slightly upturned toes on the high heels–I can picture in my head just what those shoes would look like in real life.

  8. 8
    desipis says:

    I think it’s less that they don’t have staff in those areas, and more that the media sees its role to tell people what they care about, rather than listen to what things people actually care about. Anyone who doesn’t care about the things the media thinks they ought to care about is considered ignorant, backward, bigoted, etc.

    Given most media is based in major cities, and thus has liberal cultural values, this leads to a fairly hostile disconnect between what the media says people care about, and what the people actually care about. The only variations being the media organisations that intentionally push a conservative line to cater to that market, or the hometown publications that don’t get wide readership.

  9. 9
    Ortvin Sarapuu says:

    ” the media sees its role to tell people what they care about, rather than listen to what things people actually care about.”

    Maybe when it seems that the media is telling you what to care about, it just listened to some people who don’t agree with you say what they cared about.

  10. 10
    Kate says:

    Most of the media that I’m watching is focused on the healthcare debate and the Russia investigation.
    I thought conservatives were very interested in repealing and replacing Obamacare. They are split on whether to save or abolish Medicare and Medicaid. It does seem that conservatives don’t like the infighting on their side to be publicized, or analysis of the real-world results of their proposed policies. But, that’s because they don’t like bad press, not because they aren’t interested in either the topic or the outcome.
    I know most conservatives think that the Russia investigation is a witch hunt. However, if equivalent things were coming out about Democrats, you can bet that they’d be interested. Again, they don’t lack interest in the topic generally. They just don’t like the focus when the problem is with their side.

  11. 11
    desipis says:

    Maybe when it seems that the media is telling you what to care about, it just listened to some people who don’t agree with you say what they cared about.

    I wasn’t referring to my interpretation of what the media says, I’m referring to the way the mainstream media totally failed to predict Trump, Brexit, etc.

  12. 12
    Tamme says:

    Even if their predictive powers failed (and the extent to which Brexit was unforseen has been greatly exaggerated in retrospect) that doesn’t mean they are “telling people what to think”. They may just be trying to listen to what people are thinking, but listening poorly.

  13. 13
    Tamme says:

    Also, the preferences of people outside urban centres was the one thing that US media correctly predicted re: the 2016 election. It was always foreseen that rural voters were going to support Trump in overwhelming numbers.

    So when it comes to predicting the voting preferences of rural voters, I’d say the mainstream media seems to be listening pretty well.