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?
ive been waiting 30 years for them to end the ‘war on drugs’. or enact ‘universal health care’.
notice they let the post office get brutalized with irrational fiscal policies and have done nothing to stop it. hell, biden still hasnt removed the guy that was put in place to fuck it all up.
college costs an arm and a leg because the let student be victimized by student loans. they arent trying to stop that loan process. just clear out some old debts. half-assed at that.
theyve done almost nothing to simplify the tax paying process despite every other modern taxing country having it be automatic.
so many little bits they just dont give 2 shits about because money. because corporate interests.
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 they can’t have an outsized influence on our politics.
Taxing the upper class was part of their platform though…so…still unsure as to where there against the “working class”.
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.
Their platform aint worth shit since they never actually deliver anything.
Its like my Christmas wish list when I was a poor child… Mostly just a cope
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.
Example?
Can’t you check their calendars on Congress website?
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.
We have a two party regime where Democrats plays the good cop…
But make no mistake these regime whores are colluding to extract value from working class and pass to the owner class, while they get their cut.
Millions for billions
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Support for slavery before the Civil War
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Carter’s airline deregulation
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Clinton’s welfare “reform” and NAFTA
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Obama’s finance sector bailout
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Biden blocking a national rail strike
Obama student loan reforms.
Isn’t that when student loans became bankruptcy proof and death or payoff became the only legal ways to be rid of them?
That was Bush I think, maybe Clinton.
But Obama followed similar anti peasant practices.
My gripe is that his loosey policy was essentially charity for schools since now they were able to charge whatever they wanted and they did.
Millenials bags are super heavy. Many are unlikely to pay it off and will face a tax bill once the loans are forgiven once they turn 50🤡
So much life wasted for no reason but tonfund boomers lifestyle
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?
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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.
