Comment on Why is Kamala Harris being held at such a higher standard than Trump this election?
electric_nan@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
It’s because democrats are unwilling or unable to deliver on real policies for working people. Of course, republicans are the same, but they more or less don’t even pretend to, choosing instead to whip up their constituents with culture war nonsense. Nobody has any faith in things improving. Repubs just want to get revenge on their cultural enemies, and democrats (voters) just want to prevent a total slide toward the far right.
Dem politicians can’t whip up excitement because it is impossible to get people excited by neoliberal policies, but that’s really all they have. Vague platitudes only work so many election cycles in a row before voters just can’t even pretend to be excited anymore.
tl:dr republicans are awful but at least their base believes them.
Delusional@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Their base believes in them simply due to decades of propaganda and brainwashing coming from AM radio first and then normalized on fox “news”
I’m sure if democrats were lied to about nearly everything and were told republicans were immoral enemies that are the cause of all your problems for decades, they’d have more belief in the democrat party.
electric_nan@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
It doesn’t matter why the republican base believes in their party. Incidentally, you’re not entirely wrong about why, but they’ve had rebellion too: see the TEA party.
The democrat party strategy is different. Their base isn’t aggrieved axe-grinders. They’re earnest believers in the system. The problem is that the leadership doesn’t actually want to accomplish anything that would threaten corporate profits. Trump is great for them, since all they have to do is not be him! Policies be damned.