You can't instill empathy in people that don't have it. I don't think it can really be learned once you've reached adulthood. Maybe those pathways can be reopened with psychedelics and therapy, but that's kind of a voluntary procedure.

Dem leadership always seems to think that if they just appeal to the empathetic voter base with these types of initiatives that everything will be alright and America will come together on it.

But it won't happen like that. It never has. The only thing that will change minds is positive experiences with people from different backgrounds and most people will never have the time or opportunity for it once they've reached adulthood.

Remember, a lot of work towards race relations has happened because of wars we were involved in: WWII, Vietnam, etc. People of different backgrounds served side by side and stopped fearing the "other".

Dems really really need to get better at branding and finding common ground on issues. They need to be willing to manipulate GOP voters into agreeing with them on things too by better controlling the narrative and a huge part of that is the branding.