I think it’s important for liberals to realize that the far-right is fully represented by and actively appealed to by the GOP, while the entirety of the left is forced to fall in line with a center-right candidate or a far-right candidate.
Obviously, the center-right candidate is better than the far-right candidate, but liberals have been doing an awful job of actively appealing to leftists. Fascists line up with glee to vote for their favorite demon, while leftists have to vote for someone that doesn’t represent their views at all, just not someone doing even more harm.
What would be better is if the democrat party actually threw a bone to leftists. Pass Medicare for all, for example. Instead, we are stuck with voting out of fear, rather than voting for something.
As someone on the left, explain to me what we’re supposed to be doing to appeal to folks on the right, earnestly. Seems like every time Dems want to throw Republicans a bone they torpedo it themselves - border deal much?
Have those on the left considered for a moment that their entire political party in America has been hijacked by people who are actually trying to take everyone’s rights away? Been told by the left “fuck your feelings” for quite some time, but no things aren’t perfect for their group, burn the whole thing down?
- Makes a massive legislative priority out of the ACA, aiming for genuine reform and then after extensively having the original pared back within our neoliberal hellscape, still manages to somehow pass a substantial reform which gets health insurance to a huge number of people, and defends it against multiple serious attempts to murder even that fairly corporate-friendly system which in DC politics is somehow akin to the Cultural Revolution
- “Waaaaaaa! I wanted medicare for all.”
- Makes comprehensive immigration reform a key priority, bringing the number of removals + returns down from about 1.2 million in 2008, to around 430,000 in 2016, i.e. a huge number more people are able to stay in the country. DACA provides key protections for one of the most important categories of “illegal” immigrant who we shouldn’t be kicking out. Also, the number in the “removals” column goes up.
- “WAAAAAAAA DEPORTER IN CHIEF DEPORTER IN CHIEF”
- Student loan forgiveness infrastructure act gun reform federal marijuana pardons, also no fascist dictatorship
- “Too old, do not want, not left enough.”
-liberal attempts at reform without radical change
-more liberal attempts at reform without radical change
-more liberal attempts at reform without radical change
Again, none of this is actually to the left, it’s still liberalism and still center-right. For people who believe the system itself is fucked and needs to be restructured, of course moderate reform isn’t going to be enough.
You’re proving my point. Biden is decent for a liberal, at being a liberal. That is not a leftist. Trump is great at being a fascist, and fascists love to vote for him. Leftists have to bite their tongues and fall in line with a moderate right winger that will never attempt to appeal to them.
Did you even read my comment?
I did. My point is that you’re recasting the real situation into a totally cockeyed reinterpretation. If a Democrat tries to do something left-wing, and it doesn’t work within the system, and they have to pare it back to something more establishment-friendly but that still helps a whole bunch of people when they get it passed, I don’t think it’s accurate to blame the Democrat for that situation. You can have a productive conversation about “yo that sucks how do we make this less corrupt,” and tons of ideas within or not-within the system can help get that done.
It’s like ten people standing around a burning building, and five people are trying to put out the fire while five are actively trying to stop them and light new fires, and you’re saying this whole organizational structure is fucked (accurate) we have to fix it (accurate) what the fuck you five guys who are trying seem like your firefighting efforts aren’t working (here’s where it breaks down for me).
You want to bring in better more qualified firefighters? Fuckin’ A, man, that sounds great. In the meantime, I think letting the ones who are trying continue to try is not somehow a bad thing, definitely better than helping the ones who are lighting new fires take control.
Also, “fall in line with” is a very weird phrasing. I’ve never in my life fallen in line with a Democratic politician. (“voting out of fear” is another). I just vote for the person I think will be better than the other person, because I want to have a better outcome instead of a worse one. Why are you searching for ways to cast that pretty sensible decision in some kind of negative emotionally charged light?
(Also, I have asked this of people of your ilk I have talked to on Lemmy before: What should I do, instead of voting, to support leftist change within the US? What is your activist organization, what is your movement to work for change? Because working for something better than the current establishment Democrats sounds great, yes. How can I do that?)
Leftists have been saying for literal decades how the modern measures of economic outlook -unemployment, total job numbers, stock market profitability, ect - are designed to misrepresent or ignore the actual economic outlook of working-class americans.
It’s crazy to me that now that a growing portion of the public are seeing the misalignment of those measures, it’s suddenly the fault of leftists that the democratic party is loosing support because ‘we’re being uncharitable to Biden’s achievements’.
Democrats are pointing the metrics republicans have been using for 50 years to advocate for their reactionary policy and saying to moderate republicans ‘look! we’re working toward the same goals!’, and yet somehow leftists are supposed to give democrats credit for working within the limits of those metrics that are designed to undermine working-class interests?
Cowbee had a more detailed reply, freeing me to simply point out that you don’t get it.
“Daunting?” How so? If you mean to say that you believe I think Biden secretly has dictatorial power he isn’t using, then you’ve misunderstood my point. I understand that the system is built to change as little as possible via the electoral process. However, that doesn’t mean leftists have to be happy with a complete and utter lack of motion or intent on moving towards Socialism.
No, I think they’ve pretty much got it right: If things aren’t set up the right way, we whine, and refuse to choose better outcomes over worse ones until Daddy comes and fixes the whole thing to be better. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.
(I’m being a little unkind. I’m actually talking with Cowbee and feel like there’s a potential of a pretty good conversation there, and I don’t think they’re wholly off base or talking in bad faith like a lot of people are on this topic.)
