The message to Democrats is clear: you must dump neoliberal economics
The party must return to its progressive roots. A new economy is needed with new rules and new roles
My message to the dnc
Fuck you we elected Bernie and you ran Hillary and then we elected Bernie and you gave us Biden. Fuck you.
They knew Bernie might actually improve the lives of Americans and our rich overlords shudder at the thought of that.
Who elected Bernie in 2020? Biden wiped the floor with him. Maybe more people should've voted for Bernie in the primary then.
I mean, the commenter is overstating what happened in 2016 and 2020, but Biden did not, "wipe the floor," with him. Obama and the DNC convinced every centrist to drop out, consolidating the moderate vote around Biden, while Warren stayed in, splitting the progressive vote, and Bloomberg used his personal wealth to run anti-Bernie ads. Then Biden had to ask Bernie to help him craft a platform just so he could be electable. It's less that, "Biden wiped the floor with him," and more that, "the entire Democratic party lined up to block Bernie so Biden could limp over the finish line."
that comment confused me as well. with hilary. yeah but 2020 honestly people wanted more of a conservative sure thing because some yahoos thought they would shake things up in 2016 by letting trump win. hmmm. I wonder what type of canidate will be in 2024 and whos fault it will be that its not a liberal enough canidate.
Bernie lost the popular vote in the primaries twice. It's mostly white guys that want him, honestly, which isn't a popular sentiment but it's true.
He doesn't speak to the problems of marginalized communities who make up a large portion of the Democratic base.
Democrats: "Understood. We must try harder to win over the center-right."
Honestly, we should have seen it coming with all the "nostalgia" for the Good Old Days of GWB.
"center right":
I've been called center right but I wouldn't describe myself so. I'm right and left. It balances in the center but most centrist positions are corporatist and authoritative, and I hate both. Man did this election ever suck. I'm always stoked for the primaries and hoping to get a free thinker in the mix but this year we didn't even get primaries.
One of the biggest unforced failures of the Biden administration is the reported complaint of Joe Biden that people weren’t acknowledging the economic turnaround.
Biden did a lot of good for the economy! Massive stimulus via the infrastructure bill, a sensible approach to recovery from Covid, acknowledging that recovery from an inflationary period would be necessarily painful, etc. He was a steady hand at a time when America needed one.
But what sends me into apoplexy, what really grinds my gears, is that this motherfucker was so out of touch to believe that this was a messaging problem. He felt that Americans had not yet heard of his accomplishments in turning around the tide of economic misfortune, how badly the republicans would have bungled it, and how the next four years would have been a period of huge growth based on the previous four.
All of these points were absolutely true.
But there is no housing supply. The economic pressures are so hard on young people that their biological impulses are changing.
Young empiricists have taken a look at the climate and have correctly deduced that their future is full of pain in the absence of truly radical action.
And Kamala’s strategy for relieving pressure on the housing market was a $25,000 credit for first time home buyers? In an environment where housing prices have doubled and tripled in fifteen years?
I am one of the very few members of the public that attended Feinstein’s funeral at San Francisco City Hall. And the only one there that day wearing sneakers. I attended her lying in state, paid my respects to a committed civil servant, and in the book, cautioned Pelosi against a similar, “ignominious” end. Then I hear that Pelosi has filed to run again in 2026. As an 86 year old.
At some point the Democratic leadership looks less out of touch and more actively malicious considering the serious and existential crises of the young and near-young in the United States.
The country is in decline because of its extreme individualism, its lack of compassion, and its ruthless “politics is the art of the possible” approach by leaders who could not possibly inspire with bold leadership.
The party is chasing local maxima.
Harris' solution to the housing problem really annoyed me. There are so many other more effective ways to go about making housing more affordable but she just ignored them. This, in my uneducated opinion, would have also motivated more voters.
In a more general sense, the mainstream Democrats have always had a difficult time with messaging which is nothing new but really showed itself in this past election.
Democrats think that if you just spend time educating the voting population on all the good their policies will do then the voter will make a rational decision in the voting booth. And in the exit polling that is exactly who voted for Harris, highly educated people that like that kind of lecture type of politicking. But most people don't vote like that - they don't want a professor in the oval office they want a cheerleader.
Disagree on only one point: the time for a cheerleader has passed.
The people now want a Teddy Roosevelt progressive. A person who physically kicks asses and legally enforces regulations on the Corporates who are undermining the country's well-being to pad their pockets. A leader who is tough, speaks plainly, and has grit and vision for the conservation of natural resources.
None of these qualities describe any current members of the Democratic party.
Very well said. I hated Harris' "economic plan." It wasn't going to make a dent. It might get some people in rural passover states afford a home, which is great for them, but would do nothing but maybe raise costs of entry level tiny condos in any city.
But I do think they accomplished a lot in Biden's term. If you compare the US' inflation to other 1st world countries, we recovered far better. We were moving in the right direction. It would have been far worse with Republicans.
And they accomplished all that with a festering rot of DINO obstructionists in the senate, and a republican controlled House. They did an amazing job with the limitations they had.
But they didn't adequately lay the blame in the right hands. They didn't address greedy corporate Housing speculation. They tried and failed to reign in "shrinkflation". And they failed to bring some sanity to the immigrant blaming, and instead somewhat joined in on it.
And Kamala’s strategy for relieving pressure on the housing market was a $25,000 credit for first time home buyers?
This was also going to be coupled with a large tax credit to construction companies for building single-family homes and another tax credit for selling them to first-time homeowners.
Taken together, that all sounds pretty good. But I think what really needs to change is zoning laws. The problem is that the federal government has no control over the zoning ordinances of local communities. Hell, state governments barely have control over that. Usually whenever a rezoning of a neighborhood is brought up, it causes a firestorm at city council meetings.
Why is every Democratic policy a tax credit?
"Nothing will fundamentally change" + "there is not a thing that comes to mind."
Two killer statements.
To be fair Biden's "nothing will fundamentally change" is a lot better with context. "There's not a thing that comes to mind" is fucking inexcusable though.
To be fair Biden’s “nothing will fundamentally change” is a lot better with context.
To be fair, it became clear over the course of 4 years that it was correct at face value.
But who will pay for our campaigns if we don't lick the boot of oligarchs?
Before the 1980s that used to be the unions paying and funding campaigns. The reason Democrats started chasing and boot-licking oligarchs. Is because the unions stopped funding elections and campaigns at the rate they had been before the 1980s. If you can figure out why that was. There were two solid hints given. Then we could probably understand why they're seeking funding from oligarchs. And how we should probably go about changing that.
People love to complain about Democrats begging for oligarchs money without understanding why. Which helps the oligarchs. And gives them even more control over the DNC than they would have otherwise. I'm not saying we should accept the oligarch funding and ownership. But until we come to terms with why that came to be and address it appropriately. It won't end anytime soon.
I think the campaigns at this point can be funded with regular donations. I don't think corporate donations are even needed at this point.
The key thing to realize is that in a presidential race, you reach advertising saturation. Hillary and Kamala both massively outspent Trump in their campaigns, but they still lost. Their financial advantage didn't help because ads reach saturation. At some point, everyone already knows about the candidates, and additional money spent really doesn't help you.
The Democratic party could get by just fine with the amount of donations they can raise from individual donors. They don't do this because the consultants that run the DNC ad buying get paid a percentage of all ad buys. And the DNC itself simply benefits from having larger budgets in general. So the push is always to have as much ad spend as possible, even if having that large ad spend requires cozying up to oligarchs.
A campaign for someone people wants will pay for itself. Everything will be provided and the press will be free if it wishes to remain clicked and watched
This billion dollar campaign frenzy every 4 years is an industrial complex that needs to die
Democrats:
Simpson's Skinner meme, "no, it's the voters that are wrong"
Both can be true.
But only one lets the party keep ignoring the voters and moving to the right. So that's the one the party will go with.
"The DNC hears ya. The DNC don't care."
This is BS. People saying Kamala was too liberal, or too centrist, she was riding too much on Biden achievements or not enough etc etc.
The real reason for this is that majority of people no longer get their news from MSM, they get their news from social media which are hevily slanted for trump. Not only GOP understands how influential those are, but they are helped with foreign entities who are free to use these media as well.
This also isn't just happening to US but also to Europe.
The fucking solution is to get your family off of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok etc. it is a cancer and essentially hacks their brain.
You might think that social media is great, because everyone can have a voice. This might be true for sites like Lemmy, but in other places what you post is irrelevant, because their algorithm controls what others see. It is very clever, because they can hide behind freedom of speech to not restrict the sites, while essentially still having full control of what it is shown and zero consequences.
With AI they don't even need people anymore they can generate content themselves and say it is a real user.
Why do you think companies involved in social media are also heavily invested with generative AI?
The fucking solution is to get your family off of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok etc. it is a cancer and essentially hacks their brain.
What you're implying here is that people aren't smart enough to navigate social media intelligently, without being duped by propaganda and group think, yet you are.
Protecting dumb people by hiding them from social media, is a bad fix for a symptom of other major problems. Fixing symptoms like this is never a good solution.
What we need is education massively overhauled, to the point it would be unrecognizable to what we have today. People should have the critical thinking skills and educational background to laugh there ass off and shrug off right wing propaganda, and never let it take hold.
This is a much bigger problem, and we're losing significantly, but it's what should be discussed instead of just hiding social media from people.
The social media sites are known to collect vast information about us. The explanation is that it is meant for targeted ads, but the same information can be also used to know which buttons to press.
You scroll between funny videos and once in a while you get something that maybe will anger you, or maybe scare and in any way impact what you will do.
Just taking a recent example. To pro Palestinian people they received messages that Harris is bad for Palestine and we can show her and protest by not voting.
Meanwhile the same social media was telling pro Israeli people that they should not vote for Harris, because she is pro Palestine.
This is how they are getting desired outcome. And unlike MSM they can fine tune the message to specific category of people.
Most people in the US do not have the requisite media understanding to navigate social media, or even media, for that matter, without being duped.
This is evident in the growth of the flat earth movement, and other literally idiotic movements.
Being influenced / tricked / conned has surprisingly little to do with being 'smart' or 'educated'. Smart people can still be tricked.
A way to manipulate people is to give them plausible (mis)information. What counts as 'plausible' depends on a person's education and interests; but there is always an area of vulnerability at the edges of a person's understanding. That's why there are so many different layers to misinformation campaigns. They are targeting different groups of people. And it is highly dangerous to start believing you can see through them all - because in reality, you only see through the ones that don't target you.
One of the propaganda powers of algorithmically controlled social media is that it is if a user gives up enough of their person info, it makes it possible to automatically target that person with misinformation that is specially suited to their interests, circles of trust, and level of understanding.
... anyway, my point is that although education is always good; it doesn't defeat propaganda outright.
Follow up question: how would this hypothetical educational reform even work? I fully understand that education funding in the US is very much at risk with darth cheeto coming back, but say you managed to creat this curiculum. How would it be different from what we currently have, and do you see a path of reaching it from our current system? (Would it require starting small with charter schools or is it something we could realisticly change with a large bill + funding)
Not trying to be a bother bear, but you proposed a solution so I want to see where the collective would take it.
There's been a right wing media since the 1970's, Xitter has always been an also ran social media site and while Facebook is the largest social media site it's long past it's heyday and is filled primarily with bots and boomers.
You're getting everything backwards. The only reason why Democrats won in the past 50 years is because they have been riding on the their past actual progressive achievements like Social Security, Medicare, Good Stamps, The Civil Rights Act, etc.
Now that they're done nothing but take turns with the GOP destroying those government safety nets there's no goddamn reason for voters to vote for Democrats.
Oh and the whole reason why the right has a strangle hold on media is because of Democratic deregulation of media and telecommunications.
Yeah! People need to go back to trusting good ol cable news! They've never steered us wrong
Wait, so apparently Americans don't want neoliberal economic policies so they didn't vote for Kamala, but instead voted for Trump and his neoliberal economic policies?
This shit is stupid and old already. It reeks of people using unhealthy coping mechanism to deal with the idea that the average American shifted even further right.
The average american doesn't know what neoliberal economic policies are, but the average american can feel the impact of neoliberalism on a daily basis. Convincing people you have a solution to what everyone knows is wrong (even if your solution is even more neoliberalism and blaming minorities, the old reliable) is what get people in booths.
Conversely, saying things are fine the way they are is the easiest way to lose an election.
1/3 of voting age Americans voted for Trump (that 3rd wants fascism)... 1/3 for Kamala, and 1/3 stayed home... A lot of the 1/3 that stayed home did so because they don't want neolib policy, and probably a lot of the 1/3 that voted for her also don't want neolib policy. There's very little to support the idea that anyone "shifted right"... They shifted home when they weren't given an option to vote against genocide and other neolib bullshit
No there is not 1/3rd that wants Fascism. There is a small percentage that want a Christian Nationalist government, but most Trump voters just seriously think he did a better job with the economy. They don't have an economic education and they know it was easier to feed their families when he was president.
Don't other people who should be your allies. Division of the working class works in the favor of the elites and extremists.
Trump’s economic policies aren’t neoliberal so much as mercantilist. He wants tariffs and trade wars. (There’s obviously also a dash of fascist policies where he wants companies to serve him.)
Fascism was the rebranding of mercantilism. State supported industry with a blurry line between state and private actors and owners, all ultimately supported by imperial conquest and colonialism.
Trump verbally promised to change the system. Harris said the system is doing great, you're doing great, anyone who says they aren't doing great doesn't understand the economic genius that is Biden's economy.
The predictable happened. Democrats were warned when Biden tried to take a victory lap on the economy in 2023. They ignored that warning and didn't attempt to pass legislation they knew was required. Even if they failed they could have been seen fighting for the people. We know they knew what the required legislation is because Biden suddenly promised national rent controls right before being forced to step aside. Then Harris silently kept them in her campaign but didn't highlight them again until a week before the election. When she was desperate.
Until Democrats actually show, in their actions, that they're fighting for the working class, the beatings will continue. And no shutting down strikes and one vote on minimum wage isn't going to cut it. They need to be in the news every week on some aspect of the financial pain the working class feels, and repeats are not only okay, but necessary. A term has 208 weeks in it, that's enough to press several issues. They can also do a quarterly podcast, this entire idea of silently governing was proven inferior by FDR. Even Obama had the petition system which generated national conversations. People do not expect that a quiet government is doing something. In fact they are suspicious of it.
The people that like trump like that shit. The people that vote dem, at most, tolerate it but the harder they lean in that direction the less enthusiastic their base is about voting for them
Kamala just got the 3rd most votes in American history. Wtf are you talking about?
DNC:
"Progressive roots"?
For some people FDR is the closest thing they can imagine to be progressive politics. The progressive-conservative switch in the Republican and Democratic Parties always makes for weird statements. You've got neo-nazis and neo-confederates controlling the Republican Party and Republicans say they are the party of Lincoln.
I wouldn't be surprised if Tankies unironically liked Democrats better when they were the KKK.
Hahaha, good one. I'm sure that's exactly what's going to happen.
The message to
Democratsneo-libs and neo-cons, is clear: you must dumpneoliberal economicscorporatism.
They shouldn't have existed ever. Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. My spelling may be off.
The message to Democrats is clear: (insert your agenda here)
Boring
Based on the assumption that it was some economic issue, that lost them the votes, this article is pretty good.
The message is that they did absolutely nothing wrong and are in fact incapable of doing anything wrong. They cannot fail, only be failed by the stupid voters.
You're right, what about all those educated working class liberals who want to willingly vote against their own self interests?
The Democrats need to work harder to attract those people
It goes beyond just that. I think a Democratic presidential candidate could do well addressing elitist thinking in general. I think they could do quite well with a pledge not to appoint anyone to their cabinet or to a court that graduated from an Ivy League school. One of the reasons we keep seeing the same shitty approaches is that both parties recruit heavily from the same handful of schools. This they're recruited from the same social circles. I would suggest that candidates just flat out state that they'll be filling all their major spots with people who got their education at state schools.
So we’re discriminating against possibly qualified personnel because they graduated from an Ivy League school (like JD Vance).
But not against the billionaires and millionaires trump is appointing?
Yes. Because social context and group think matter. The Democratic Party is indeed stuck in a coastal elite mindset. When I say school, it's not even specifically about the kind of instruction the schools teach. It's more about the social networks that have developed around these elite institutions. It encouragesc group think and narrow minded approaches. It's why every Dem policy proposal is the same collection of wonkish tax credits. It's why nationalizing the banks wasn't one the table during the 2008 recession. It's why they don't know how to reach regular people. They just don't know how to think any differently. Hell, look up the figures on federal judge nominations by law school attendance. It's insane how much narrow minded we allow our institutions to be simply by primarily recruiting from a handful of elite schools and their alumni networks.
As an outsider it seemed more like they had an image problem than an issue with their concrete policies. Obviously it could be both but I got a sense people believed the dems were out of touch.
That is because the democrats have abandoned.the working class and use guilt and loyalty to effectively fool the middle class into policies favoring the wealthy.
Neither party is responsive to the working class because hourly wages are too low vs prices to allow for significant political donations.
So until actrue 3rd party catches the working class and moves american politics leftward, its just fewer and fewer with more and more.
Hence, keep people stupid so they dont figure it out.
There were plenty of problems with the concrete policies on offer.
'most lethal military', tough on crime, secure the border.. it was ridiculous to see how far right the supposed left went in search of votes. Harris's platform looked more like Trump's from 2016 than it did Hilary's.
"Look! Dick Cheney likes us!"
A cracked brick wall is more visible than a sinking foundation.
Nice metaphor
We're gonna just continue to blame the Dems while ignoring that a massive online propaganda campaign brainwashed enough morons into voting again for a convicted felon who tried to steal the last election, and already had a dogshit first term? Even if you "fix" the dems, the propaganda will still paint whoever is representing them as worse than the fascist puppets on the other side, and the masses of dimwits will swallow it while thinking they're enlightened centrists.
There can be more than one lesson to learn from an election cycle. We need to learn all of the lessons. Accelerationism was a problem this election cycle. The right-wing information sphere continues to be a problem in the US.
The Democrats are not blameless either. Democratic consultants ran the Harris campaign into the ground and they are refusing to learn the lessons. As one of the two viable political parties, the Democrats are still our most useful tool out of those two political parties, but we have to recognize that they are neoliberals. edit: clarification
Propaganda doesn't work if people are happy with their current situation.
BS, there were polls showing the massive disparity between how people responded to "how would you rate the current economy?" and "how would you rate your own financial situation?", about 70% had said their own situation was good or very good yet a similar amount said that the countries situation was either bad or very bad. Absolutely brainwashed
If the electorate consisted of 9 people who were doing fine, and one person that wasn't, we would have 9 no votes and one person that voted to destroy the system that allowed the 9 to be doing fine.
Sadly this is true, but that’s the price for not participating in democracy
Look, this chap has all fair points and your favourite deity knows I’d be the first to “put an end to” neoliberalism, but again, it’s all opinion. I haven’t seen anything telling us:
Best we got are some anecdotes about some Latino voters discovering that Trump considers them brown people too, but I’d be far more interested in actual hard numbers. Anyone who knows some?
Next time there should be a populist movement to write in a progressive candidate. Why couldn’t a populist candidate overrun the DNC like Trump did with the RNC?
Because it's hard for actually intelligent people to worship a moron.
Edit: actually you're right.. we could have had Bernie.
Because Trump does represent a lot of the policies that Republican party support. Christian nationalism, low taxes for the rich, white supremacy.
It was apparent when the Alaskan governor ran for VP. (I forgot her name.) It consolidated behind Trump because he was a buffoon who could be manipulated to get their main aims to be fulfilled.
None in the DNC would want anyone other than a establishment candidate to be theirs. This was true when Hillary was nominated, when Biden was nominated and also when Harris was nominated.
Biden would have lost too if not for the previous 4 years of Trump. With Harris promising to continue putting finger in her ears and walking the same path which might have given respite if people could have let it continue 4-8 years. But who knows if they would have lived to see those days.
Whenever a populist candidate pops up, the dnc does everything it can to crush them.
Perhaps what is needed is a "progressive caucus pre-primary." Have a party within a party. The progressives hold an unofficial primary in 2027 between anyone who wants to run under the banner. They hold debates, have some way of getting people to vote, etc. The progressive caucus holds debates and selects a single candidate to endorse. Then, going into the actual primary, the progressive voting base is entirely united around one candidate from the beginning. That candidate would also have a hell of a lot of momentum going into the primary as they would already have one wing of the party entirely behind them.
My state didnt even have spot where I could write someone in.
It would be relatively easy to take over the DNC (and the state and local parties), but very few people outside the establishment know how politics within the party works
They should stay in their current path and fade off into obscurity
Who do you think would occupy that power vacuum? Because, just like spreading open your butthole in outer space while in orbit, shit will blow out.
Doesnt matter, continuing to feed the monster only gets a larger monster. Let it die
Thanks to idiot non voters there will not be a chance to dump these policies since there wont be another election
Man, you really need to touch grass. 4 years will pass, another election will be held, and you will be just wasting time dwelling into that thought.
Better prepare for the future
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/vote-four-years/
You're a damned fool if you believe someone, who orchestrated an insurrection against the US Government and is (on record) stating they will remain in power after their term, will not attempt to hold onto that power.
Honestly regardless of whether or not orange Lucifer tries to cling to power post-2028, it benefits everyone involved to just assume that he won't and prepare accordingly.
Biden spent four years massively pro-union, the Inflation Reduction Act was massive and not marginal with the job creation all over, and his administration remembered that the Sherman and Clayton Acts exist and used them. They have been everything a good leftist could want.
We live in a post-truth world, and the massive media oligarchy is in full effect, driven by the editorial desires of the hyper-rich. Dems could run Jesus and lose, at this point.
Biden delivered on incremental changes typical of a neoliberal. These accomplishments did not fundamentally change our institutions. We need systemic change to our institutions because the problems with our institutions are systemic in nature. This is progressivism in a nutshell which Biden has wholeheartedly rejected.
The Democrats are not the left. They are a leaning-right of center political party. Their most recent campaign was sunk in large part because of consultants who are payed millions of dollars to ensure the Democratic Party does not stray far from the status quo. They are some of the people who need to learn abandon neoliberalism, but of course they are effectively payed not to.
Even if the Democrats won't listen, the rest of still need to learn the lessons. One of those lessons is learned by an evidence based analysis of what the Democrats delivered actually changed. Over the last four years, the Democrats have changed who is control of our institutions, but they have not fundamentally changed the institutions themselves. In short, we need to acknowledge that the Democrats aren't progressives, but neoliberals. They have been since Bill Clinton.
America should get rid of that two party nonsense and start forming a proper government.
Those founding fathers would be ashamed.
Those founding fathers discovered they had a two party system immediately and did nothing to prevent it from being cemented in place.
Oh. The message I got was that many people today are so immature that they would rather join a collective psychosis than accept their own part in humanity
To be fair, there are multiple lessons to learn from this election cycle.
Pfft. This is a dumb interpretation. They just want clear leadership that is outspoken. Kamala is too composed and not owning the conservatives enough.
As much as I like the high road, she didn't tip any new voters in her direction.
People want a populist narrative that promises to deliver meaningful change. Harris refused to do this, in large part because of Democratic consultants. A populist narrative is why Bernie is so popular and why Trump has maintained a base of supporters in the form of the MAGA movement.
The only thing the Democrats could do is seize power from an official act of a standing president.
Otherwise the Democratic Party is vestigial at best and a label for Fascists to terrorize and kill at worst.
People going around claiming the Democrats are neoliberal immediately after they leaned super hard into unions is some serious gaslighting horseapples.
they leaned super hard into unions
Biden supported unions before and after the railway workers strike, but Biden still felt the need to kill the strike. Supporting unions enough so that they get incrementally better deals is pro-union, but it does not a progressive make. We need radical systemic change to our institutions and Biden is ideologically incapable of delivering on that for the economy, the Ukraine War, Israel's genocide, climate change, or immigration to name a few.
You never paid attention to the follow up on this one did you?
the reason the strike was killed was because it was "thousands of working people vs millions of working people". The Democrats voted to insert the contested item (sick leave) and the republicans blocked that vote (Which had to be separate because stupid legislative rules).
However the Biden administration kept fighting in the background for the unions to get their sick leave, and eventually won. The unions even posted articles celebrating Biden getting them their sick leave.
that situation was a complex one and a reminder to not view the world in black and white.
Harris and Biden aren't even neoliberal lol. The message was also not clear because the margins of victory were small. We know Trump is going to tank the economy like last time. It's a fact. All of his idiot supporters will keep claiming some sort of perceived benefit because of all the other horrible shit he's going to do that don't affect in the positive whatsoever, but they will PERCEIVE a win.
The message was also not clear because the margins of victory were small.
Yes, but remember: Their opponent was Trump. They should've cinched this election.
You can always rely on Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The post mortem is still on-going but there are two conclusions that ring true for me (so far anyway):
Trump is the first Republican president to win a plurality of votes what 20 years? Trump ran a campaign of "ImMiGrAnTs ArE tHe PrObLeM!1!1!1". He was so unhinged that voters should have voted against him. The numbers so far show that he won a similar number of votes as he did in 2020 so it's looking like his base came out to vote but Democrats didn't.
Republicans fall in line.
Democrats fall in love.
We need better candidates.
It certainly is possible to manipulate people into becoming socialists, as it has historically been done several times in many places. But to think that the current american people at this point in time are friendly to far leftist ideals is 100% absurd.
If this is done without aforementioned manipulation, dumping neoliberal ideals will mean that Democrats will not be enjoying higher than 30% election results.
But Americans actually do like more socialist policies. There is a reason why Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare is known as the third rail of politics.
They won't. Middle class americans are the one benefiting from neoliberal order. Why would they vote against their own interest? They're ready to support genocide abroad but they get to posture as enlightened because they support trans rights at home.
Everyone is in agreement: the takeaway for Democrats this election is to adopt my specific political views and eliminate any positions that I personally dislike.
I mean, I think were more arguing there's clearly not a huge difference between the two parties and we need farther left representation instead of chasing centrist votes. I thought that was pretty clear.
The party must return to its progressive roots. A new economy is needed with new rules and new roles
As in slavery is a great way to bring culture to those black slaves?
You are a strong contender to clinch the gold medal if the Olympics had mental gymnastics.
They're referring to the roots of the Democratic party, as the more conservative and slave supporting party. The Democratic party is old, and until relatively recently was the further right party in the US. Which also helps explain why the Republicans are red, traditionally a left color, and Dems are blue, traditionally a right color. While it's not really relevant to modern politics, and bringing it up like they just did is more of a historical bit of trivia, it's not really mental gymnastics, it's more of an "akshually" moment. The Democratic party does not have progressive roots, its roots are deeply, deeply conservative and right wing, and should be acknowledged.
