It’s important to acknowledge the reasons why working class people are voting Republican. It’s not productive to just assume they’re stupid. The Democratic party has increasingly moved away from being the party of the middle class, and they have built their messaging around academic social ideologies that a lot of working Americans don’t like, don’t agree with, or don’t understand. We (as in we liberals) understand that the Republican party is fully committed to the benefit of the wealthy, but they’ve done an outstanding job with messaging for the middle class. The Democrats are realizing pretty late in the game that you can’t just assume unlimited support from the middle class because their policies might benefit them. The Democrats need to tell the people why voting Democrat is good for the middle class, and they’ve completely ignored that necessity for years now. Trump only lost to razor thin margins in 2020 because the Democrats were too busy pushing an agenda that doesn’t resonate with a lot of middle class citizens.
It’s not productive to just assume they’re stupid.
Stupid, no. But they are ignorant, sometimes willfully, but many times life gave them little opportunity to be educated. A lack of education is ultimately the reason for their beliefs, and their ideology now mistrusts the very tools they could use to educate themselves. In its place is religion, gut feelings, and tradition.
An uneducated human is, tragically, very easy to manipulate.
The Democratic party has increasingly moved away from being the party of the middle class, and they have built their messaging around academic social ideologies that a lot of working Americans don’t like, don’t agree with, or don’t understand.
Realize that the goalposts (or overton window) here will always shift. No matter how much or how little the Democratic Party partakes in ‘academic idealogies’, the Republicans will always demonize them to the extreme, and try their very best to rile up their voting base into a fervor. This all started when the religious right began to take over the Republican Party in the Reagan years, and we are now experiencing the outcome of that.
And at this point, no amount of pandering will make them abandon the very literal cult of Trump. They currently suffer from the same cognitive dissonance that genuine prophecy cults do.
Saying all that, Democrats have lost the trust of so many people because they, in general, are still very corporate-friendly and easily bought by lobbiests, preventing truly meaningful and radically positive change from happening. For every DSA Democrat like Bernie and AOC, there’s a hoard of neo-liberal Democrats that sow mistrust amongst the middle and lower classes.
Even Sanders and OC continue to disappoint. I can’t think of a single Democrat actually on our side.
Bernie has disappointed me slightly in some areas, but overall he’s been pretty solid.
AOC has me slightly worried that she’s starting to vote along her party lines to create political alliances (She voted No on allowing the rail workers to strike, while Bernie voted Yes) but overall, she’s been okay too. I liked her green new deal.
And at this point, no amount of pandering will make them abandon the very literal cult of Trump.
You made a lot of good points that I completely agree with, but I wasn’t talking about the Qult. I’m referring to the disaffected Democrats across 206 counties that had supported Obama in 2008 and 2012, which were heavily concentrated in the Midwestern states that propelled him to an Electoral College victory. Trump flipped those 206 counties. That’s a lot of loss for a single party, and given their prior support of Obama, I think it’s fair to assume they’re not drinking the Kool aid. They’re dissatisfied with the Democratic party and voicing that dissatisfaction through the only meaningful method available to them, voting for the other guy. I personally don’t understand how anyone, anywhere, could ever support trump, but here we are. It’s dangerous to ignore these events.
You make excellent and important points throughout. It’s important for people to understand that criticizing the Democrats or their policy does not mean you support Republicans. Too many people see something critical said about Dems and just jump onto assuming that they are pro Republican.
Republicans are beyond saving, but that doesn’t mean Democrats don’t have to fight for votes and lean back into issues that matter to the middle class.
Didn’t we get polls from a lot of those areas, where they admitted voting because they were afraid of illegal immigrants getting their jobs and because Hillary’s job plan involved change and they just wanted to keep doing what they were doing?
I’m sorry, but I really can’t fault Hillary for saying she wanted to take coal miners out of the mines and give them safe and better-paying jobs. But she lost votes for it.
The Democratic party has increasingly moved away from being the party of the middle class, and they have built their messaging around academic social ideologies that a lot of working Americans don’t like
Damn straight, the Democrats keep moving to the right. The American left doesn’t have a party anymore, and they’re pissed. But you didn’t explain why that would result in people voting for Trump, who is part of the problem.
It’s not productive to just assume they’re stupid.
It’s a useful enough shorthand when discussing them as a group.
Democratic party has increasingly moved away from being the party of the middle class, and they have built their messaging around academic social ideologies that a lot of working Americans don’t like, don’t agree with, or don’t understand.
Neoliberals have created managed democracies the world over and these ideologies are the crumbs we get in exchange for making rich people richer.
What good is a Democratic party that doesn’t even offer that? Their entire platform would be functionally “better to have corporations writing laws than fascist bigots writing laws”, all to gain 12 votes from boomers who don’t went to acknowledge their grandchilds pronouns.
The Democrats need to tell the people why voting Democrat is good for the middle class, and they’ve completely ignored that necessity for years now.
Even assuming they wanted to, where are they going to do that? On a multi-million dollar, for-profit news network that has sworn themselves to their shareholders? Chinese owned TikTok? Elon’s revolutionary new social network that’s just Twitter with slurs?
America is in a very very deep hole politically and “Republicans vs Republicans Lite” isn’t remotely close to good enough.
Republicans vs Republicans Lite" isn’t remotely close to good enough.
Can you explain what you mean by this?
Republicians are neoliberals and push neoliberalism because when it fails, it makes rich people even richer.
They pursue this with a psychopathic greed, showing open contempt for anyone crushed by their machine, because those people are either poor, middle-class or born too late to ever hold them accountable.
This is why they’re happy to share their bed with neo-nazis and idiots – it gives them the votes, power and distractions they need to keep their snouts in the trough.
The only thing they won’t tolerate is a threat to profits.
The Democrats are also neoliberals and push neoliberalism because when it fails, it makes rich people even richer.
They pursue neoliberlism with a vague air of guilt. When it comes to rewarding rich people for being rich, they’ll just do the same things with a practised frown.
Rather than pandering to fascists, they pander to progressives. This is where we get our crumbs. The healthcare system is still dogshit, but Obamacare forces slightly fewer people to eat it. Gay people can get married because it doesn’t impact the profits of anyone. Their climate policy is still going to kill us all, but it will do it a few years later.
The only thing they won’t tolerate is also a threat to profits. They’re fine with all their “progress” being watered down, repealed or simply never implemented.
But someone like Bernie Sanders having a shot at president? Just watch the left-wing politicians and media outlets effortlessly slip into bipartisanship they just can’t seem to find when citizens desperately need it.
So what are we left with if we say “Oh it’s okay, I don’t need crumbs if it’s going to make a reactionary upset, a state they’re always in”?
Coal labor went Trump in 2016 because Hillary said “I’ll pay to retrain you in something that won’t kill you” and Trump said “I’ll put you back in the coal mine”. They wanted the latter.
Unfortunately, it’s actually important to understand (not assume, but actually accept) that they are stupid and find a way to win their vote anyway. They want to work a Black Lung job because they’re afraid to get free education to do another job they’re not sure they can handle. So how do you win their vote without actually promising to put them right back where they came? Extra points - they are “too proud” for direct government assistance as well.
I think someone who’s in a union or interested in the idea of unions could be convinced why Trump isnt gonna help. Unless this sign is in California.
Pretending democrats are better when they have been working overtime to crush unions is just disgusting. The crushing of unions is a bi-partisan issue. This is only the “latest” example; https://www.cbsnews.com/news/railroad-strike-house-vote-bill-congress-senate/
Idk why this comment is downvoted.
Both parties suck very bad when it comes to unions, and while Republicans suck a little bit more, this shouldn’t take attention away from Democrats doing same thing, but softer ™
The very system is designed to make you choose between shit and manure.
Reminder that Jews for Hitler & the Log Cabin Republicans are things that exist or have existed.
I think I heard about the first one.
Were they the ones that thought he was joking and voted for him because they thought it would be funny?
I don’t think that’s true. From my understanding Von Naumann was motivated by a sense of nationalism, not privilege.
"A possible reason why some German Jews supported Hitler may have been that they thought that his antisemitism was only for “stirring up the masses”.
The seemingly ironic fact that a Jewish association advocated loyalty to the Nazi programme gave rise to a contemporary joke about Naumann and his followers ending their meeting by giving the Nazi salute and shouting “Down With Us!”
It must of been that part that I was thinking about.