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People always say the Democrats are out of touch. While that is certainly true, that's not the real issue here. The Democrats know perfectly well what they would have to do to defeat Trump. It's blindingly obvious, after all. The point is they don't want to do any of those things.
It's partly that, but it's also that doing what Democrats want never seems to get the turnout that it should.
Biden did student loan forgiveness, which should have given him all the college votes, yet people shurg and go "Well yea! About time!"
He puts money into infrastructures and unions and again, people go "I guess, it's a bit better than Republicans!"
Democratic voters suck ass at rallying behind any cause, because the base is filled with "well actually...!" people, that demand 100% problem completion on day one, otherwise they are not impressed.
And even if he solved every problem ever, they'd say, "Well yea, he should fix them... He caused most of them!"
Meanwhile, Republican voters will literarily vote for a rapist because they see the bigger picture. For as stupid as they are, they understand you have to be IN POWER to do anything.
Twirling your thumb in your asshole pining about raising taxes and fist past the post and equality for all and protecting minorities is a colossal waste of time if you don't VOTE.
Eh. I get what you’re saying, but so much of the disillusionment from the potential dem base is coming from their constant promises and constantly arriving at the obvious conclusion decades late and then acting like they’re the most progressive politician in human history. While in reality it’s a half step toward the policies we should’ve enacted forty years ago.
It’s not that people are like “so what.” It’s the deep seeded knowledge in all of us that the party will try to throw us crumbs and claim like they’ve always been on our side and are the most righteous policy makers that are saving us, when in reality they’re walking hand in hand with people that are pushing us to absolute limit of barely acceptable and then dangling what they’ve known they should’ve done forever ago in front of us when we’re finally at our breaking point.
They don’t care about us. They’re not beholden to us, and it shows. They’re beholden to money and are performatively throwing us scraps when they have an opponent so far right that it’s literally the threat of fascism. And they are very much responsible for the continued rightward march of the entire country.
Please, talk to some ordinary Americans sometime. Some of the real, salt-of-the-earth types who regularly and reliably vote, and who make up the majority of the country.
You know, morons.
"The Dems aren't going left enough fast enough!" is not generally the refrain, even from those who do vote Dem.
Of course not, that's some commie shit.
The refrain is more like, "the dems don't actually want to help us, they're just distracting us with performative outrage"
And when you ask them what performative outrage that is, their answer is generally less "They made minor economic concessions to the working class!" and more "They acknowledged that BROWN people and TRANS people have RIGHTS"
It's actually, "the economic changes they made have no impact on me and instead seem targeted at minorities"
Chalk it up to a half-century of reactionary "welfare queen" propaganda, the truth is that democrats aren't addressing the grievances of the working class and the Republicans are. Those grievances dont just go away if you stop talking about brown and trans people. Even if you're willing to throw them under the bus - those voters will just vote for the person actually running them over.
Either democrats become as fascist as the Republicans, or they break through to those reactionary voters by proving that they're willing to break some billionare kneecaps and make life better for everyone, not just the most visibly impoverished.
Democrats won't, though. They'll fight tooth and nail against the popular energy in their own base in order to keep their tenuous relationship with donors like Ackmann, and that will guarantee their loss.
Deep-seated.
You're just proving what the guy you responded to said.
Under democrats we got gay marriage, the repeal of don't ask don't tell, the affordable care act, net neutrality, other stuff I can't think of at the moment, and instead of accepting slow progress the response is "you should have done that 40 years ago, I'm going to stay home because you're not moving fast enough for me."
On the other hand, republicans kept voting every fucking chance they had and after 50 years they got Roe overturned because those scraps add up eventually.
No gay marriage was the courts, and now may end up being removed like Roe v Wade.
By actually doing a long term plan and doing absolutely anything needed to get it done.
With dems we get half solutions, like ACA.
And who was it that appointed those judges?
So steps towards a goal from republicans are part of a long term plan to what they need, but from Democrats they're half assed? Come on man. We were never going to get socialized medicine in one step.
The point here is that under Democrats there is progress. Would it be nice if it happened faster? Hell yes. But right now we're racing backwards, and that sure as hell isn't going to get us anywhere good unless you're an accelerationist.
GOP after dems thought they'd play nice or by the rules.
No the point is the dems refuse to long term plan or plan at all for when in power. That's the issue.
Republican voters say the exact same things about Republican politicians.
They constantly talk about how conservative shitbags that waffled on this one thing are RINOs.
They make up conspiracies where Democrats are stopping their preferred solution even when Republicans control every branch of government.
They just have the votes.
It's not understanding, it's blind faith.
He dithered and only reluctantly did this. And then when he did, he did it in a way that a corrupt SCOTUS could overrule. There were other paths he could have taken, but he chose the least-confrontational approach and ultimately the court negated most of his efforts. His fault or not, very few people actually ended up getting their loans forgiven. If he failed to consider a hostile SCOTUS in his plans, then that is a strategic failure on his part.
His infrastructure bills are currently being torn to pieces as they were slow to actually spend their money. They were mired in everything bagel liberalism. A thousand requirements for dollar spent meant to solve every social ill under the Sun. But regardless, these bills didn't directly help individuals. They may be necessary to curb the rise of China, but that's not something that affects people's lives directly. Unionization? Biden was unable to stem the decline in union numbers, and he himself chose to be a strikebreaker.
I'm gonna gut check this, because I remember him trying couple of times to work out student debt relief. Also, what other steps would you have taken to get student debt relief/forgiveness pushed though? The only step I can think of is after the "president is a king" SCOTUS ruling he could have just canceled them and told everyone to fuck off, but using those powers was clearly something that he didn't morally agree with.
He picked the weakest method to start with, added many delays and means testing, then after being told no by Supreme Court just changed to going through the backlog of those who should have already been forgiven and called it him fulfilling his campaign promises.
Then on top of that allowed gop to force them to restart.
Exactly. And ultimately, voters don't want to hear excuses. They don't expect perfection, but they do expect some results. Republicans, even with limited majorities, always manage to achieve at least some of what they would call progress. Democrats OTOH just fine endless excuses. At some point, you're either incompetent or admitting to your voters that you were lying to them - promising them something you would never be able to deliver.
They left a lot of options on the table and then let the clock run out on them.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2024/12/20/biden-student-loan-forgiveness-relief-plan-scrapped/77105533007/
Is it? From a party whose voters want to go rightwards, now, wherein independents are already more right-leaning than that, and the only other major political coalition being even further right than that?
"Just go left, we'll totally win 😊" is the same line that got people fired up for Corbyn, who proceeded to make no headway in a country already much less right-wing than the US.
Going left being better for the country does not equate to it being the path to electoral victory.
"Want to go rightwards" - are you fucking high?
People want common sense approaches to social problems. The party stabbed Bernie Sanders twice in a row after shitting themselves because he was going to win the Democratic primary.
More people I know who voted for Trump like and respect Sanders more than any other Dem candidate in the last decade because he's authentic and true to himself and his beliefs. They don't think his proposed solutions are going to work, but they're willing to have a conversation and meet in the middle. The all or nothing ideologues running the Dems right now have no fucking idea what they're doing, they're trashing the joint - whether by malice or idiocy is moot at this point. Get these people OUT
No, I just have the misfortune of preferring unpleasant data over feel-good circlejerks about how we're TOTALLY the silent majority, despite all evidence to the contrary.
You do realize this is the exact line that right-wingers say amongst themselves about why people REALLY want a far-right corporatocrat theocracy, right?
Unfortunately, that transfers approximately not-at-fucking-all to electoral success in swaying them to vote for anyone but the fascist ghouls, in the same way that Nazi voters always knew one "good Jew" or modern American right-wing voters always know one person who "deserves" public services or is a "good" member of the LGBT community who deserves their identity.
They'll vote for the Holocaust all the same, but at least you'll get an asspat out of it, right?
"The REAL problem is that the current Dems aren't willing to compromise and meet in the middle with the fascists!"
Lord.
And you say this is a LESS far-right solution?
Jesus Christ.
I mean, here's a poll published 2 months later stating that Democrats want the party to be more progressive. Couple that with the fact that the 62% of Democrats want to throw the centrist leadership out on its ass and I'm not sure, "people want moderates, actually," is a reasonable conclusion anymore.
Well ACKSHULLY wanting common sense solutions is right wing coded!
Another 10 years of losses for you friend, gl. The vibe has been altered, these dipshit takes are going to deliver conservative rule for the next generation.
Have you ever had a discussion with conservatives about what they think is 'common sense'?
Have you ever paid attention to how often conservatives discuss 'common sense' solutions that appeal to people who want to think that their deeply politicized views aren't political at all?
Do you know what 'common sense' is to fucking begin with?
Fuck's sake. It's like talking to someone who's voted GOP for the past 50 years of their fucking life but insists that they're a 'moderate'.
Suppose you're not going to answer about how Dems being 'ideologues' right now who won't compromise, and how 'meeting in the middle' with fascist voters will totally be a less right-wing solution.
Or about the data explicitly proving you wrong. But I guess I must be high.
Just going to post another reply to you in this thread to let you know I agree with everything you're saying.
The vibe of these people is the exact same vibes I get from right wing people elsewhere in the internet. They literally blame the same people for the similar reasons.
It's eerie until I remember all the stats on American education. Anyone who talks with these levels of certainty are fools. Every time. Every one.
ChatGPT ass reply bro touch grass
Lord.
Corbyn made no headway?
Yeah you can say that to suit your narrative, but it’s complete BS. In fact Corbyn had significantly more votes in 2017 and 2019 than Starmer in 2024.
The left has to convince voters, not follow them, wtf
Which governments did Labour form at the time, again?
Electoral success and convincing people are not mutually exclusive options; the former is an immensely powerful tool for the latter. Unless your plan is "Hand the gun over to the fascists, put it to your head, and hope that when they pull the trigger it will inspire the masses to spontaneously learn the words to the Internationale in their hearts and rise up against fascism", it involves some amount of concessions to the majority of voters.
But sure, run on gay marriage in 1940 until you win, I'm sure the Black folk who are being lynched won't mind waiting another few decades, nor will the unions seeking better conditions, nor the folks trying to stop social security from being repealed etc etc etc etc.
Yeah, but first you were talking about how the general populace was going right. Corbyn clearly disproves that. This idea that success (which maybe doesn’t require to form the next government) translates to a higher share in votes might be a statistical thing, but it’s not constructive, it just leads to opportunism.
Since the majority of voters are workers it shouldn’t be that hard for the left to offer them something, right?
I don’t think your last paragraph makes much sense.
They subsequently elected Starmer, of all people, didn't they?
I'm sorry, if Corbyn didn't form a government, as majority or coalition partner, didn't move politics in the UK left, nor politics in his own party left, nor moved demographics in the UK left... what kind of success are we looking at, here?
For the record, I'm not blaming Corbyn for this loss. Far from it. I'm only saying that going left is not enough
-Put conditions on any aid going to Israel.
-Arrest trump and his sycophants in Congress for their litany of heinous crimes against the American people.
-Force Biden not to run in 2024, have an actual primary and don't put their thumb on the scale to nominate a corporate-owned bipartisan centrist.
I'm pretty pro-democrat, but they could have done all that shit in a day and locked in the next 8 years of federal elections.
Protip: the editor includes a link to help & a nice button to convert highlighted text to lists.