Submitted 1 day ago by BadmanDan@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Have I been out of the loop on politics?
Wasn’t it the Dems who voted to protect Union Pensions? Republicans voted against it.
Dems voted to extend the child tax credit this year. EVERY Republican voted against it.
And didn’t Kamala Harris run on helping with funding for first time home buyers?
When did the narrative of Dems being against the working class start? Was it just because Bernie said it recently?
I think there’s a misconception about elected officials. Many people believe they work to improve the lives of American citizens, but they don’t. Most of their time is spent fundraising and catering to wealthy donors. The majority of them don’t care about you at all.
I think there’s a misconception about elected officials. Many people believe they work to improve the lives of American citizens, but they don’t.
This. They want votes. They do what they think will get them votes. And yet, often – and in the last election – the democrats that help the people (like by walking a union picket line, supporting LGBTQ+ and basic human rights, legalizing cannabis, reducing penalties petty crimes, etc.) don’t get the votes that are part of the bargain.
They vote for and enact legislation that helps the people, and the people don’t re-elect them. The incentive shifts to satisfying wealthy donors.
Example?
300 years of screwing poor people. Support for the 2008 bailout for Wall Street. Donations from tech companies. They claim to support Medicare for everyone but haven’t done anything about it. Democrats tend to disregard working class and rural populations. In fact they denigrate them and think of them as uneducated hicks. Remember the basket of deplorables? Obama deported more immigrants than any other president.
Yes, the Democratic party is against the working class. Yes, the Republican party is much, much, much worse. Yes, you have been out of the loop if you need examples.
It’s not that they’re against the working class, it’s that they don’t do enough to fight for the working class. How can they when they all take money from billionaires and invest in their companies?
This isn’t a recent phenomena. Bernie’s statement calls out the Democrats behavior over the last 30 years which puts you right in the middle of the first term of Clinton. However, Clinton was the first Democratic executive that had a chance to really enact a strategic change in the Democratic party that was first formulated after the chaos and losses of 1968.
Before 1968, the democrat party was tightly knit with union interest and the selection of a presidential candidate was done behind closed doors by party bosses. This is how it was done in 1968 resulting in Hubert Humphrey. Hubert Humphrey was an establishment candidate and VP to a very unpopular president who decided not to run for a second term. Robert Kennedy was very popular, but assisted before the convention. There were other candidates, but Hubert Humphrey enters the race after the 12 primaries had closed, but before the convention. There were a lot of reasons for chaos at the Democratic Convention in 1968, but this was one. Humphrey was chosen in an undemocratic fashion by party bosses despite lacking wide support by the base. I’m not saying history repeated itself, but it sure rhymes.
So Humphrey loses. The next four years results in reflection buly the party, an internal document called the *McGovern-Frasier *report is created, the selection process becomes more democratic causing candidates to make a wider tent for an intra-party coalition resulting in the nomination of McGovern eho whose major focus was to get the US out of Vietnam. Major unions decide not to back him and, well, he gets his ass kicked.
More reflection and the Trilateral Commission conclude that “excessive democracy” had resulted in the erosion of economic and political stability. So unions are still important in America at this point, but there’s a growing shift from an industrial society to a professional services society starting to happen. The members of the Trilateral Commission see this and start to court this group. Meanwhile, colleges increase enrollment accepting non-traditional students to matriculate.
Jimmy Carter, a member of the Trilateral Commission, is elected and enacts several neo liberal policies such as deregulating the airlines and creating natural gas markets. He fails a bid for a second term, but the tenor of what is yet to come has been sounded. Atari-democrats, young ambitious tech savvy, step to the fore and represented by someone like Gary Hart. He fails to get the nomination mainly because he had an affair and Mondale gets the nod. Mondale was an old school dem who supported labor and Carter’s VP. He loses worse than McGovern in 1972.
In 1988, Dukakis runs trying to bridge the old Dems and the new Dems. Like riding two horses, he fails. That’s four out five election losses. 1992, a young whipper snapper from Arkansas steps to the plate and wins with an outstanding 43% of the popular vote. Wait! How could be, you ask? You see, Nader isn’t the only spoiler candidate. One free wheeling Texas business man named Ross Perot got about 20% of the popular vote. I still remember is slide presentation on network television.
But I digress. This administration, knowing they just barely won, does what anyone who hasn’t won in a whole and makes radical changes. Good bye old guard and welcome the new way of ruling. One notable survivor of the purge was Joe Biden. They deregulate more industries and open more trade with NAFTA, CAFTA, China and help rebuilding a newly democratized Russia. Not all of this happened in the first term, but these were all important events. W campaigned on an isolationist strategy in response to much of this. From 1993 to 2013, we lived in the Clinton era. Biden isn’t really aligned with it deeply. He’s been the middle ground man and probably is more closely aligned to Mondale or Dukakis.
The stock market takes off during the first tech boom, but the vast majority of the spoils go to the professional class and the rich. The working class is doing better because everyone is doing better, but not keeping up. Meanwhile factories are closing and we aren’t investing in infrastrcuture. Also, if you want your kids to have a future, send them to college. Can’t afford it? No worries, here are some loans. It’s for your children. Good luck!
It’s during this time that you see them not resisting neocon war mongering. War mongering guts the working class. You see Obama not helping out the working class after the 2008 financial crisis. But who cares? The stock market is soaring! What do mean you don’t have any extra cash to invest. Good luck!
2016 had primaries, but everyone knew they’d regret it if they got in the way of Hillary. It was her turn and we deserved a woman president. Biden regrets sitting this out. I don’t know if he would have had a chance, but being VP, it would have been a fight of two different visions. Throw in Bernie and there’s a real decision to be made.
Well damn… This was far too long. Hopefully it was an interesting read. Yeah, there’s five examples in here, but the damage is far more subtle over the course of several decades. The working class, when unionized, were powerful. And politics were fucked up. Then we gutted them and an industrial base and shit’s fucked up in a new way. No easy answers. Just grinding.
I appreciate the introspective read. Yeah I can see the conflicting interest now within the party in the modern era (post civil rights). But apart of me just feels like you gotta win elections now by being in the right place and right time. I honestly don’t think the electorate is smart enough to vote on policies anymore. It’s more or less slogans and sayings now.
The big one is being beholden to the insurance companies and denying us universal health care. Employer tied healthcare is a huge stumbling block for worker mobility.
Support for slavery before the Civil War
Carter’s airline deregulation
Clinton’s welfare “reform”
Obama’s finance sector bailout
Biden blocking a national rail strike
Clinton repealing glass steagall
Democrats used to be the conservative party before Nixon (my timing might be off) said “Hold my beer” and turned the Republicans into the regressive Christian theocracy it is today.
So, the civil war thing doesn’t really count because it was a different party with different ideals under the same name.
You think FDR was the conservative party?
Anyone who actually does their homework knows Democrats are far and away the party of the working class compared to Republicans. A quick look at their voting history proves that.
If you hear otherwise it’s either coming from liars, fools who have been deceived, or by liberals who whine about Democrats not doing enough and then abstain from voting or vote 3rd party to protest and help to elect an anti-worker president and party, which is what just happened.
Anyone who actually does their homework knows Democrats are far and away the party of the working class compared to Republicans.
“Compared to Republicans” is a pretty low bar, just sayin’ :).
Ignoring Bernie for the moment, “against the working class” is usually a dogwhistle for “poor whites have racial nervousness and i want to exacerbate that for political gain.”. You wont find real examples because, generally, professional democrats arent against anyone. (even nazis, apparently.)
Bernie’s specific crtique was a slightly tone-deaf critique that the dems were largely silent on the economic nervousness of the working class, and instead spend political capital fighting for racial and gender equality. Since the white male working class is not oppressed by race or gender, or in a position to really oppress anyone, they often feel unrepresented.
Class is also an Identity.
One that most have in common. Regardless of race, religion, sex, or gender; nearly all of us are working class.
So policies that help the working class, will help everyone. And those subclasses that are disproportionately held back, will be disproportionately helped by universal pro-worker policies.
This is extremely reductive identity politics. The point of the 2024 election results is that Trump made gains with all racial groups. You can’t just boil it all down to identity. Beyond that practical lesson, identity politics is bad for any country because it is a zero-sum game. If we don’t look past identity politics to a common set of ideals, we will end up with people at each other’s throats.
Democrats in the past 10 ish years have been absolutely horrendous at marketing, allowing Republicans to take up all of the media talking space, traditional or otherwise. TV, news, podcasts, social media influencers, YouTube, etc. are all generally Republican leaning.
Republicans control the talking points and co-opt anything that the Democrats say. Meanwhile, Democrats are either unable or unwilling to do the same.
Republicans’ control of the media allows them to get away with way more things than the Democrats. It allows them to essentially claim that they’re for the working class while simultaneously working against working class interests, especially when heard by people who don’t generally follow political news. Meanwhile, Democrats get called out for relatively smaller issues, and that makes them seem elitist and uncaring of working class issues.
One major facet of the Democrats being unable to control their marketing is their unwillingness to use populist rhetoric, even though by policy stances they should be (comparatively) more closely associated with populism than the Republicans. I’ve heard several takes on why Harris lost the election and the one that I most agree with is that she failed to use populist rhetoric and was unable to differentiate herself from Biden. People wanted change, and Harris offered the status quo.
Remember that the vast majority of Americans don’t pay attention to politics, and so voter impressions are decided by tone and messaging rather than specific policies
I think it’s a lot easier to spread right wing narratives than left wing. The country itself is inherently right wing.
It may be easier. But that’s not why.
If you avoid politicized language, a large majority of the US is quite left leaning, and economically progressive.
One of the Republicans favorite things to hate is the ACA (Obama Care). But if you ask them about the individual policies in the ACA, they approve of each of them by at least 2/3rds. And most agree that the government should prevent people from being forced into bankruptcy by medical expenses.
zbyte64@awful.systems 1 day ago
NAFTA and Wall Street bailouts come to mind.
In regards to Bernie, his premise is that wealth inequality is the core problem, which means tax the rich until there are no billionaires left.
Alteon@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Taxing the upper class was part of their platform though…so…still unsure as to where there against the “working class”.
zbyte64@awful.systems 1 day ago
We can keep telling ourselves Mark Cuban’s “opportunity economy” was good enough but objectively it was a flop with working class voters. Either it was a messaging failure or it wasn’t populist enough, Bernie is saying it is the latter. If it was a messaging failure, then we’re likely to conclude it is because our media landscape is toxic. Bernie would agree and say that is why we need a populist message to cut through.