Democrats are just as bad as Republicans (BobLibDem & Inigo Montoya standoff 😊 )

Politics & Elections
1

Background: From this thread: “Will the next Democratic President have the guts to tear down the Ballroom”

Discussion drifted a bit, as they often do. My post #112, and the offending text:
“…as if the parties aren’t just different masks on the same hateful head. A good beginning for national recovery would be to treat both parties as equally and eagerly complicit in what has happened here in the past 26 years.”

@BobLibDem responded, quite civilly I thought, with:
“I reject the bothsidesism. Only one party has decided that fascism isn’t so bad if their guy is in charge. Only one party has happily given up its role in Congress and enabled authoritarianism. Only one party stopped the impeachment of someone extorting a foreign nation and attempting to overthrow the government. Are Democrats perfect? No, but at least they care about governing.”

I took particular exception to the bit about Democrats caring about governing, said as much, and did my part to thwart a thread hijack by suggesting there was a debate to be had in a different thread. @SunUp tried to oblige but got his toes chopped off prompted for more details by the Mod.

So. Let’s have some thoughts, supportive or unsupportive, or even another angle if you’ve got one. Just two requests:
Keep it civil: BobLibDem believes what he believes, and I believe what I believe. Neither of us are fools and seem to have come to differing opinions anyway. Go figure.
Keep it serious(ish): Like, please don’t insist they are fundamentally different because one is an interstellar reptillian species and the other is composed of 40 otters in a suit masquerading as individuals.

I am of the belief that the US government (and likely many others) wields little real power. Government exists as a theater to keep the rest of us from feeling completely disenfranchised and restless. The government does what the ruling class demands, and how a politician speaks about or reacts to such things is dictated by whether they have a (R) or (D) following their name. Think Good Cop & Bad Cop who both serve the prosecution—neither has your interests in mind, they both just play a part to get you to do or say what they want. Republicans play to those of us who are enslaved to our baser desires and intellectual laziness, and the Democrats wring their hands, clutch their pearls, and make excuses for their impotence as if being Civilized means never fighting. Mine is not a documented and carefully reasoned position. It is a gut feeling and assumed truth based on nearly six decades of living in this country, and supported by observing the increasing, slow boiling, enslavement of the population.

2

I wouldn’t say Democrats are just as bad as Republicans, but I do believe most Democratic politicians are too rich and comfortable to be in touch with the lower working-class folks or average America. And it’s not because they’re morally evil, it’s just because rich (D)s, like any other rich people, can’t grasp what it’s like to be poor. Someone in a 9-bedroom mansion in Santa Monica isn’t going to understand what a fast-food worker in Missouri is thinking. This is why many rich Democrats often lose elections: What they think motivates the average voter is actually quite different than what motivates the average voter.

I also tend to be cynical of claims that “voters only think the way they do because the ruling class or media or (some other entity) tells them to.” Sure, media can fan the flames, but maybe 80% of our own views are organic and self-derived. MAGA voters didn’t need FOX News to tell them what to think, they already thought it, just like a foodie doesn’t need restaurants to tell them what they want to eat, they already know what they want.

3

It’s a big club, and we ain’t in it. Democrats screw everything up, and Republicans make sure it stays that way. Or is it the other way around? Have fun trying to pick the fly shit out of the pepper.

4

A handy flowchart:

The fact is that no, Democrats and Republicans are not in any way, shape, or form “the same”, but it is very convenient for Republicans, right wing extremists, and left wing extremists to amplify the narrative that they are.

5

The “both sides” perspective feels intellectually lazy to me: it’s devoid of evidence and specific cites, and it’s an easy way to avoid taking responsibility for evaluating candidates and their positions.

Let’s be specific. Look at Dubya, Obama, Trump, Biden, and Trump. What were their biggest legislative successes?

Dubya: started the War on Terror and two major wars. Signed No Child Left Behind. Patriot Act, Department of Homeland Security. Major tax cuts. Deregulation, followed by TARP, a bailout of big business. Led us into the Great Recession.

Obama: Obamacare. Reformed student loans to make them less crippling. Pulled us out of the Great Recession with a recovery act. Consumer Protection via the Dodd Frank act. Joined the International Climate Treaty and funded clean energy. Repealed DADT in the military, and passed the Lily Led better act to deter sexist pay discrimination. Drew down overseas military, killed Bin Laden, signed a deal with Iran.

Trump: Massive violent deportation regime, with deliberately horrible conditions for immigrant families including children. Economically ruinous tariffs. Tax cuts for the wealthy. More nonrenewable energy, slashing renewables. Withdraw from Paris agreement. Ending agreement with Iran. Start a war with Iran. Slashing the federal government. Diarrhea lettuce. Inject bleach to stop COVID–mismanage epidemic. Send DOJ against political opponents. Bribe Ukraine to interfere in election.

Biden: Pull us out of the COVID recession. Bipartisan infrastructure development. Fund clean energy. Rejoin Paris Agreement. Gun control. Student loan forgiveness.

Do these lists look unfair? Do these lists look the same?

That said, I do think we have some common ground:

Agreed! :slight_smile:

6

I agree with Velocity. Democrats, as far as I can tell, believe that everything is basically fine. They do seem to be interested in helping people, in governing well, and in improving things, but they don’t really have an empathetic understanding of the problems of the poor, and they don’t seem to perceive quite how bad their Republican colleagues are.

Republicans aren’t the same, but the net effect is the same for voters: neither party is representing us, and neither party understands / cares about the issues that really affect us.

7

Subtle. Thanks for keeping it civil. Looking to your examples, the Democrats’ best move is showing up to a knife fight with bandaids. Useless and they know it, yet they occupy seats actual progressives (or just plain old constitutionalists) might be occupying if they had the decency to step out of a position they are unfit for.

8

The Democrats push for higher minimum wage, strengthening unions, universal healthcare, public education, help with child care, reducing or forgiving student loans.

9

Even were I to accept that analogy–which, again, is not based on facts, but on gut feelings–it would lead to the conclusion that when someone goes into a crowd and starts stabbing civilians, and then the doctors show up, “Medics are just as bad as mass murderers.” Which is not a conclusion I’d draw.

I am curious whether the Affordable Care Act, or the student loan forgiveness program, affected you? Do you live in Iran? Do you live in an area that might experience climate-related disasters? “Useless” does not seem to be supported by evidence.

10

They are not the same, but I think there is a tendency here to not acknowledge legitimate complaints the any Democratic party and blame it all on conservative spin, media bias, or poor messaging, or just say it doesn’t matter because the Republicans are worse.

11

Thanks to @Inigo_Montoya for this thread, I had considered starting one myself but dislike starting threads.

Here’s why I don’t believe in bothsidesism: both sides are not the same. First of all, how do the different parties treat problematic candidates? Democrats ousted Al Franken for striking a comedic pose, pretending to be about to grope a colleague. John Edwards was exposed as a louse and became a pariah. Platner was ousted for a Nazi tattoo and credible allegations of sexual assault. Compare that to Republicans, who nominate and support crooks like DJT and Paxton. Look at Max Miller being accused of domestic abuse but that does not seem to bother Republicans. I believe that the Republican electorate has the attitude “I don’t care if you do terrible things as long as you make life a living hell for those I don’t like”.

It didn’t use to be that way. Presidents of both parties gave us good and bad.
FDR gave us Social Security and victory in WWII but he also imprisoned Japanese-Americans because of their ethnicity.

JFK gave us the Peace Corps and the space race but also was responsible for the Bay of Pigs debacle.

LBJ gave us the Civil Rights Act and Medicare but also prolonged the Vietnam quagmire

Nixon gave us the EPA but committed obstruction of justice

In recent years, GHWB did a masterful job in building a coalition to get Iraq out of Kuwait and in limiting the war to that country. His son led us into Iraq on false pretenses, though Cheney likely had undue influence over him.
Obama gave us the Affordable Care Act, forcing insurers to cover pre-existing conditions and allowing minors up to 26 to remain on their parents’ policy. In the words of Biden, that was a big fucking deal.

Biden gave us an infrastructure bill which Republicans are now claiming credit for despite fighting it tooth and nail.

But what have Republicans done right since GHWB? Certainly not the “Big Beautiful Bill”. Certainly not the destruction of USAid resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Certainly not the gutting of environmental regulations or the appointment of the worst Supreme Court justices (after stealing one from Biden).

I think we have one party that is good at winning elections but terrible at governing and one that would like to govern responsibly but is terrible at winning elections.

Show me a Democrat who is half as corrupt or as greedy or as incompetent or as evil or as stupid as DJT and I’ll say that bothsidesism has a point. Get rid of MAGA and we’ll have two functioning honorable parties again that disagree without being disagreeable. As long as MAGA exists, I cannot believe in bothsidesism.

12

The issue there is your word “push.” When Democrats had control of government, they did not advance these agendas very far. I agree that their platform says more or less the right things, but my student loans were never reduced nor forgiven, I don’t have universal healthcare in the US, education is still woefully underfunded. I don’t have children or an American job, so I can’t speak to the other issues.

13

It’s hard to debate this without knowing what the specific allegation is.

Is the allegation that Democrats and Republicans would do the same things if we flipped the times tgey were in charge? I.e. if Kamala Harris was president right now she would also have gone to war with Iran enacted unconstitutional tariffs, cut medicaid and cut taxes on the rich?

Or is it that when the ruling class wants to do something one party deliberately throws an election to the other (i.e. when the rich decide it’s time for a tax cut the dems nake sure to lose)

Or is it that the Republicans push policy more towards the ruling class when they’re in power, and thenwhen the dems are in power they maintain status quo so the result if you zoom out is that Republicans set the real agenda?

14

Democrats are always going to be vulnerable to the “both sides are equally bad” charge because:

  1. Democracy is (among other things) a process of figuring out what everyone can live with in order to move forward. This will always carry a whiff of lifeboat ethics. Something or someone valuable always gets thrown overboard to get something else done. Many trans people currently see themselves as victimized by this, and they are Not Happy. You can imagine how it feels if it’s your ox being gored and everyone else seems to be casually moving along, or promising it will be your turn next.
  2. Part of a politician’s job is to create a vision for the public to follow. They may not follow it, but if you don’t try, you’re not really leading. And it’s too easy for a rep to tell themselves that their job is just to monitor their inbox and represent whatever their constituents tell them to do, which is usually going to be about jobs and prices. This is a heavily contested middle ground where Republicans have their own answers, and focusing here can look llike surrender and a lack of leadership.

So there are certainly fair criticisms of Democrats, but a lot of them are structural features of the Democratic mandate (perhaps an over-read mandate) to listen to constituents and do whatever they want. The people making the most hay about this are ones who will never need to compromise, because they aren’t building a big tent, which is because they have no real intent to ever win an election. They can sit cozily on the sidelines and claim they’d fix everything for everyone if they were in power, secure in the knowledge that there’s basically no risk of this ever being tested.

15

Start a thread on legitimate complaints about the Democratic party, and I’ll a shit-ton to say, from Obama’s drone strikes to Bill Clinton’s welfare obnoxiousness to Biden’s unwillingness to act unilaterally to Harris’s unwillingness to admit to faults in her campaign to Hillary Clinton’s flip dismissal of concerns about her server to the party’s general unwillingness to take bold policy proposals a la Sanders and AOC. Democrats could be WAY better IMO.

But tell me they’re the same as Republicans, because one side is stabbing people and the other side is bandaging people? Forget that.

16

“After all, that surgeon is cutting into that person, just like the perp did!”

17

Well, no, the Dems really did pass the ACA. Biden issued executive orders to cancel student loan debt, but the Republican-controlled SCOTUS made up a new test, the “major issues test” so they could overturn it. The minimum wage in blue states like NY and NJ is higher than in red states like Indiana and Idaho. Take a look at this page with all the minimum wages and tell me that Dems and Republicans don’t care about the little people equally:

18

Let’s focus on this specific example. Do you know why not?

19

The ACA is not universal health care. The key is the first A: “affordable,” not “free at the point of service.”

And yes, I know why. It doesn’t change the outcome. Other countries have managed since WWII.

20

Re: student loans: one of the deals was that loans would be forgiven after ten years’ work in the public sector. But “public sector” didn’t include adjunct teaching at state colleges. That felt like a bait and switch: part-time gig work for the government is private sector?