There isn’t only one way to discuss politics.
Arguing - for parties, dueling protest lines, Hannity, etc.
Debating - more serious public discussion, panels, etc.
Persuading - mostly a personal level thing.
Name-calling never helps. But if you can’t resist, then keep it in the Arguing situations only.
Nobody converts one way or the other in the Argument setting and that’s fine. It’s the dog park of politics, just stretching the legs, sniffin’ a few butts and showing some teeth.
Few are converted in debate settings in any sort of real time manner. But good debate performances and related data build a foundation for change in larger audiences over time.
Persuading is something only really effective on a personal level. When you know WHY somebody is or has become misguided politically then you have a much better chance of driving the discussion in a direction which might hit home.
Adults often have simple but weak reasons for being Dems. Locality or family tradition. Bad life experience perhaps wrongly blamed. And, of course, many simply don’t hear accurate news and don’t have correct or up-to-date definitions of party platforms and policies.
The young have little life experience and don’t care about tradition. The young who are Left are almost always that way due to ubiquitous malpractice of Big Education, Big Entertainment and / or Big Religion.
With the adults you can likely use more logic and plant seeds of truth which their environment had likely been filtering out. Remember, just like with Christianity, you don’t fish for freedom-oriented minds using a hammer.
With kids it is almost entirely emotional. Despite all the great history and data to draw upon, don’t bother trying to convince them that capitalism is good, for example. Dollars and sense mean nothing to someone who has long ago made a moral judgement against whatever the word capitalism means.
Talk instead about freedom, individual choice and the inherently invalid uses of government force.
Even today’s mis-taught kids still have an innate sense that those three things are important in general. If you can’t agree on that, it’s political pearls before swine - move on. If you can agree, then depending on your judgement of their capacities either proceed to the basic civics lesson today’s over-educated/under-learned youth desperately need or just be satisfied with the valuable progress of establishing a common base for later discussions.
Don’t try to win the war in every battle.
And don’t place men above the mission. Lots of people hate Trump or dislike his style for valid and invalid reasons. If the discussion was not already directly about him, then don’t let it veer off and die by trying to convince someone how great he is in your opinion. Persuade at the issue and platform levels. If your target is persuaded and mature, they have a good chance of voting correctly despite personal dislikes. If they are either unpersuaded on the mission or immature in general then trying to sell them the man they don’t like would not have worked anyway.
It’s really not so hard.
It’s all about sales.
1. Know your audience.
2. Don’t try to sell them anything
3. Ask Questions.
4. Take away their objections before they state them.
5. Leave yourself with plenty of “Outs”. Don’t get specific.
6. Ask enough questions that will box them into a position that can be defined by them.
7. Ask more questions about what they NOW have stated they believe to be true.
Leftist are a lot like Muslims, they have no fricken idea what they believe in and when questioned they will either reflect honestly or lash out in violence.
Another tactic in debating liberals: Don’t debate; don’t assert anything. Just ask questions. When they make any kind of assertion, ask them to define their terms, to supply evidence, to illustrate their idea, to follow their logic to its conclusion. They, and you, will find that they really don’t know much about their beliefs, or of how the world really works. And expect a lot of angry and snarky responses.