- cross-posted to:
- libjerk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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I swear to God, people spend more time blaming Democrats for not fighting Republicans well enough than they do Republicans for doing things that need fighting.
Well I think there’s some validity to this, but not just because “democrats bad”
We are seeing across the western world a resurgence in far right parties that are largely running on a populist sentiment that “things are bad and we were great once and let’s go back”
Why does this messaging resonate with so many? Propaganda has its role to play, but propaganda works best when there is a truth to the underlying message.
We are at the tail end of over half a century of neoliberal policy. Now I don’t use neoliberal as so many do as a pejorative, but as a descriptor. As Nancy Pelosi so eloquently stated “We’re capitalists and that’s just the way it is.”
Now if you enjoy your life subscription under capitalism, especially our super fun late stage capitalism, there’s lots to dislike. The right has decided that while they will wholeheartedly support the capitalist machine, they are going to go out and stump like populists, telling people that they are getting screwed over and a vote for them is a vote to end the screwing, even better, it’s a vote to screw over people you don’t like, you get to do the screwing for once!
The Democratic Party can’t seem to find a coherent message because at the end of the day, the neoliberal project they are working on is going smoothly. The fact that your rent is going up, that private companies own the prisons and all the houses, that’s the free market free marketing baby.
I think the ire is misdirected, but it comes from this gnawing feeling that while the right is awful and doing awful things the democrats aren’t articulating any real alternative. And you don’t have to believe me, I think the trump - Biden - trump pattern shows you that to a lot of Americans things didn’t get better.
Now you and I might sit here secure in the knowledge that within the neoliberal world order as established, Biden did amazingly well. Our economy the envy of the world in how we tackled inflation and had one of the softest landings. But we exist in a system that has expected catastrophic failure roughly every 7 years and we see it happening more and more often. A system that doesn’t seem capable or willing to tackle the most pressing issues that people face. And so it is cold comfort when the Democratic Party goes “yes everything sucks and is getting worse, but believe us this is the best we can do with how the system works”
It’s not super surprising that if someone comes around and says “that system is bullshit” that people are excited. It sucks major ass that the guy saying it has no idea what the system is, how to build a better system, etc. But it also sucks that the democratic party’s response is basically, “put us back in charge and we will restore this system that is hurting a lot of people and really kinda sucks ass and only benefits a few super wealthy donors”
People want someone to stand up and articulate a compelling vision for the future and then deliver on it. For everything wrong with trump, he understands that first part, and he’s unmoored by any kind of morals or ethics so he’s willing to spend hours painting in great and baffling detail just how wonderful his future is going to be. He’s so good at it that his followers don’t even mind that it never happens.
The thing I object to is saying the Democrats don’t have a vision for the future.
Universal healthcare, free education, loan forgiveness, a green economy, a higher minimum wage, all manners of increased social spending, electoral reform, civil rights expansions. The Democratic Party has, as an institution, spent decades trying to accomplish this. It has failed, largely due to the Republicans and splitters within it’s own ranks. But the failure to accomplish it’s goals is not the same as not having them or not saying they have them.
That’s why all the criticism of the Democratic Party is so eye roll inducing. People accuse Democrats of just trying to maintain the status quo when they have a whole platform that would constitute major changes to our country.
Universal healthcare
What major figure in Democratic party has seriously fought for this?
electoral reform
No Democrat is seriously looking into real electoral reform that doesn’t benefit their party. First-past-the-post will never be changed under their leadership. This voting system allows them to shift blame to voters to the left of them (that they alienate) for voting Green/et. al. They engage in more voter suppression activities than they spend time arguing for serious electoral reform.
https://www.carolinajournal.com/nc-democrats-forced-to-pay-green-party-for-frivolous-intervention
https://arizonaglobe.com/legal/democrats-sue-to-block-green-candidate/
https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/nevada-democrats-sue-to-block-green-party-from-2024-ballot
It goes on and on and on and on if you look at lawsuits and complaints against other parties or look further into the past.
If Democrats had even 1% of the fight that they have against third parties and put that towards positive change and actual solutions, they would’ve been able to accomplish some of the things you listed.
I think a lot of the things on this list are not actually goals of the Democratic Party.
Here’s their platform https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTER-PLATFORM.pdf
The term “universal healthcare” is not in there. Instead they want to continue a market based approach to increase access to healthcare and health insurance. (Page 19)
“Free education” is also not part of their platform, instead they want affordable education. (Page 26)
There is a pretty lengthy chapter (chapter 4) on the climate crisis and how they want to tackle that, so I’ll give you a green economy.
Page 13 does include a paragraph about raising the minimum wage.
Page 50 includes a (to me at least) very underwhelming fig leaf towards some minor electoral reform.
Chapter six talks about expanding civil rights to more people but not really materially increasing the scope of civil rights.
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I would love for there to be a party aggressively pursuing the goals you are talking about, I think you and I would likely agree on the most important things for this country.
A couple real important ones you think the democrats are attempting to achieve don’t appear to be things the Democratic Party actually intends to do. Universal healthcare and free education being the big two that would really make a massive difference in the nation. And you don’t have to believe me, you can read their platform and see they don’t intend to deliver those things, not with any size majority.
Further, platforms are talk and talk is cheap. It’s one thing to say you want to raise the minimum wage, it’s another to do it. The minimum wage was last raised in 2009. That’s 16 years, and this isn’t even a cornerstone they run on because they know it would scare off their moneyed backers. This is why you see pictures of Bernie sanders or the squad fighting for $15 while the rank and file dem politician stays far away.
When representatives in democracy aren’t representing. You kinda lose democracy.
I mean, what’s the larger problem: the operator of the orphan crushing machine, or the guy that won’t try to stop them because there’s a ‘no trespassing’ sign on the lawn?
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You forgot to add the corporations raining down money on both sides to keep things this way.
imagine functioning as controlled opposition while not even being controlled opposition. those desk jobs are way too fucking nice
We all need to do what we can do to fight back including civil disobedience. One of the most powerful but unfortunately forgotten ways of fighting back is protesting. The powers at be don’t like it because they have no control of the information. Reddit perm banned me for being too outspoken. So here I am. Please people rise up and get loud!!!
Ever since Trump won I sloooooow walllllkkk everything at work. It’s been great for my mental health. I can’t give up my job because I have a family to feed. But I can slow down machinery at work and cause lots of inefficiencies. Fuck you, trump voting industry.
Yeah, this picture is part of the problem and not in the way you think. You absolutely do need to compromise to climb out of the shithole you’re in, but the one to compromise with is obviously not the guys on the left in this picture.
The failure to compromise is exactly the thing that grows the left side of this picture.
Who do democrats need to compromise with?
The senate democrats in particular have been outright and consistently compromising with the death cult fascists. So I think this image is pretty appropriate.
They don’t need to compromise with the fringe crazies / strawmen that don’t actually exist in any great capacity. They need to compromise with the majority in the center.
If you don’t have a center, you’re fucked though.
Unpopular opinion: The problem is the people, roughly 30%-40% of them but continuing to grow, and their inability to cope with modern propaganda herding techniques through big data, social networks, and now AI.
What we have today are governments, whether they be two party or more, being divided into the ideological parties, those willing to operate within the framing and intent of their constitutions, to those willing to game it. Those willing to game it and those attracted to oligarchs and easy lobby wealth only seem to have an ideological factor to them because they adopt the political ideologies of least resistance - which they will gladly go back on, and have done so as their attempts to game the system have led them to the sort of voter menagerie they have now.
People blaming the “democratic party”, in this context the US democratic party, are ignorant enough to not realize that a “party” in the US is just a donor list to finance candidate race’s for congress and that it is very easy for a corrupt candidate to run for the “party” in states where it is beneficial for them to do so - as long as they can cajole that list of donors long enough. This isn’t like some other countries where being part of a party actually means something. In the US, both parties have a significant degree of corruption, and it was already arguably an oligarchy.
But within the democratic party, due to the aforementioned biases, it has less members willing to outright game the government and more of those operating from an ideological basis. An ideological basis is basically the only thing a government can be built around, once parties start getting in that don’t operate from an ideological bases, you are just voting on who scams you. Yet nowadays the portion of those action from an ideological position within the US government is no longer the majority. There was even a rift in the Republican party a few years ago, and because it is inherently the party dominated by those most willing to game to government instead of serve it, it was MAGA that won out.
More to the point, an ideological basis limits what candidates do to working within the constitution and actual good faith.
So people blaming the democrats are people who have a deluded world view, blaming a governing minority party who by their very nature will operate in a handicapped ideological fashion versus a dominant authoritarian insurgency willing to do anything to game the system and make it that much more subservient. They are the sort of people who think they will still get fair elections for the midterms and subsequent elections, and they don’t realize their democracy is now over and that what they will need is either secession into a new governing entity (not going to happen any time soon, because today’s Americans can’t comprehend things like the UK being able to leave the EU and the EU and UK continuing to exist and having that be the normal way federal and state interactions could occur, never mind the shadow of debt being a chain to the central government) or a Civil War (and while Americans will virtue signal all the way to kingdom come, it is in their ignorance, those countries that were democracies but are today authoritarian states, that shows most of society will be quite willing to bend the knee - if US society were for some reason different than the rest Trump wouldn’t have gotten so far).
At a personal level, what people can do and will do is resistance, and be honest, let me ask you, supposing 1/3 of the US was doing the same effort, the same investment at resisting that you, personally are doing right now, given that 1/3 are inert “undecideds” more likely to get caught and the other 1/3 is MAGA, and keeping in mind that the authoritarian government is operating outside of society and is choosing to game it, what change would you really affect? How about we make it an even easier question? What if the authoritarian was a foreign monarch in Europe with an ocean of distance between them and you, if the most advanced form of travel was by ship and there was no AI, no big data, no social network herding, no instant communication, if your actions right now were representative of what the rest of society was doing, how much of a change would they be likely to make?
1/3 of people don’t vote. They are disenfranchised or politically apathetic. 2/3 of people are propagandized or coerced into voting for parties that don’t serve anything besides capital, greed, and their own lust for power.
We need a new system. The concept of “political parties” is harmful to human progress. We don’t need people on imaginary teams playing tug of war with each other while the world burns.
What we do need is strong and principled leadership, that is not poisoned by capital or team politics, that is motivated towards improving the planet and actually working to solving critical issues instead of worrying incessantly about “cost” at every single step.
There’s no need to play the blame game, but if we want a future that is not undesirable, it necessitates positive action and a willingness to identify what is blocking or stagnating us as a species.
So, no real solution, just more and even vaguer ideology versus an authoritarian regime. I’ll be sure to materialize this positive action out of my ass to help out.
When the shelves are empty because everything comes from China or relies on imports from China, when there is a food crisis and people are sent to the fields because Trump deported a significant chunk of our agricultural labor force (40% of US agricultural workers are undocumented immigrants), when people become unable to afford groceries and other essentials, and so forth - that is the moment that change will happen.
Trump et. al have already done so many things that are blatantly against the law. Contempt of court and not respecting his oath to uphold the constitution being the least of them. Where are the Democrats when you need them? Writing strongly-worded letters to Trump?
The obvious solution is to stop playing games, stop waiting for the Democrats to save us, and seize the moment. That includes creating a real American democracy.
Because food crisis are so reliable at taking down authoritarian regimes. The democrats are at the same place people are, working within the system and the designated ways to protest and expecting change to suddenly come out miraculously out of their virtuosity. The US hope is basically that the authoritarian in power is too incompetent to keep it when they’ve been preparing for this for several years now. It’s not a bad plan if it were only Trump, unfortunately it’s far bigger than him now.
If we are going to be vaguely idealistic, the obvious solution is for all things bad to stop so that all things that are good grow into things that are more good.
I wish the Democrats, and the people who trust them to save them, the best.
I’ve just been told too many lies and seen the American people been gaslit too much.
There have been too many atrocities that Democrats have directly enabled, there are crises in every area of the human experience, and what they are overall proposing to address those issues and the consequences of their past inaction and misbehavior is inadequate.
When Democrats start taking substantive legal action en-masse against this administration, like they do against third parties, I’ll be more open to the idea that they aren’t complicit or apathetic.
Vague protests about oligarchy aren’t sufficient to deal with oligarchy. We can’t even get them to back universal healthcare, how can they fight oligarchy?
Back to the US’ real problem, the democrats!
If they are the only vehicle for change, I guess it’s wrong of me to ask that they represent the people instead of capital. I am going to write apology letter to every Democrat for my criticisms.
I should just shut up, be more meek, stop asking for literally anything to be fixed, and watch as my country goes down in flames. I just need to vote harder.
I have a front-row seat watching everybody I know (and in my community) suffer. Nobody can afford health care, everybody is living with no savings, and very few are able to smile without coaxing.
I am imminently apologizing to the Democrats for wanting to see the people around me live with less struggle and that they are able to be happier and healthier.
They have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, they already have immense privilege and a higher standard of living than the child slaves in Africa that their economy relies on — who could ask for more?
How could I be so careless to the Democrats’ feelings?
Let’s talk it out!
The elephant in the room is that people are stupid and politics is about winning them over by any means. There are only winners and losers and nobody cares how you win when you get immunity and can start doling out lucrative government contracts.
The jackass in the room doesn’t realize that you have to really manipulate the dummies and do some serious showmanship so that you can get the real policies you want implemented that give more money and power to your side whilst simultaneously pulling the rug out from the other side, draining their capacity to resist by barraging them with stupid bullshit that consumes their money, power and influence for things that generally have no impact to 99% of people beyond a psychological one.
