The “both sides” attitude just helps the worst people. I don’t get the impression Harris or Biden was actively out to hurt people like Trump is. To argue both are actively hostile towards us seems facile and actively harmful if you want to keep people like Trump out of office.
I’m not making a “both sides are the same” argument. I am making a “both sides are telling me that they won’t represent me.” Personally, I voted for Harris, and Clinton before her, but not with enthusiasm like I voted for Obama.
You’re scolding, the same as the article said Booker was. It’s not a way to get people to do what you want.
The Democrats do not care about people like me. They take people like me for granted. That’s not a great way to motivate people to go to the polls. At least show you’ve *heard * us.
As long as the populace thinks America (whether or not they realize they do not actually agree) was founded as a capitalist Christian nation and to suggest that a secular nation that reins in capitalism is heresy expect no politician that wants to make a career of it to speak out otherwise.
I’m no accelerationist but it took the Great Depression and the dust-bowl to make Americans see that capitalism was not the solution to their problems but the cause. Even with that, the “New Deal” and unionization were uphill battles.
When “Your problem is capitalism!” polls better than Cheeto Jesus we might be at the point where actual change can happen.
If that is desired, then letting into power people hostile to democracy is the opposite of a solution. The people who sat the election out or made “protest votes” because they thought the Democrats weren’t left wing or sympathetic enough to the Palestinians destroyed any chance they’d ever get anything they wanted. And helped ensure the Palestinians would be killed to the last person with the active aid and approval of the US.
Most likely the future will hold nothing but rigged elections if any, with a handful of varieties of fascists as the “choices” if there are any at all. And the people complaining about the Democrats not representing them will be lucky if they are just deported instead of imprisoned or executed.
They won’t ever be given anything to “vote for”, if they are allowed votes at all. Not after allowing the fascists into power. They condemned themselves and everyone else to fascism just as much as the Trump voters did.
Some care, some don’t. There’s a reason the people polled liked AOC.
I opposed Bernie because i didn’t think the American people would vote for a socialist Jew. But i now think i was wrong, and the American people desperately wanted a populist, and he might have won the election. I also thought he was too old, but he’s still around, and still with it. So i was wrong about that, too.
I don’t. IMHO the United States on a national basis will vote for a loud, nominally Christian, white, celebrity, plutocrat populist. They will not vote for a softer-spoken, socialist, white, Jewish populist. The difference comes down to a national lean in attitudes. I think the U.S. is fundamentally too center-right overall to ever lean that far left for a president. At least in my probable life-span. House member Bernie Sanders? Sure. Senator Bernie Sanders? Maybe. Governor Bernie Sanders? Maybe. President Bernie Sanders? Never, ever, ever.
Sanders never got a chance to get hammered relentlessly by a Republican national opponent about being a filthy socialist. You were right the first time. He would have lost at a near Walter Mondale-level scale.
Yeah. I think we’ve discovered that Americans will choose an unqualified man over a qualified woman, as well.
I don’t think American culture will allow most of the things I want. I know that. I just find it really hard to be motivated to choose right of center over far right every damn time, while being told that if I don’t vote this way, it’s my fault that bad things happen.
Any real solution involves years of really hard work trying to shift the entire culture in a more responsible direction. No way are today’s Americans going to do that.
It sure does! And scolding people for feeling that way, without actually improving things for them, ALSO helps the worst people, it turns out.
Improving things how? The center and left of the Democratic party has never held a majority in congress and the Presidency at the same time in the past 45 years and even when it was close, and the court struck down a lot of the parts that survived the Republicans and the Democrat’s own right wing.
Unless people propose that the change be done by executive order and ignoring the courts, in which case Trump may or may not have happened, but then the people who desperately want an excuse to hate both sides would instead be saying “see, I told you so! Neither side actually cares about the rule of law!”
To be clear, the Democrats are not “right of center”.
I have sympathy for this argument. It’s hard to help people in our current system. The system isn’t really working for regular people. I think just acknowledging that could go a long way.
The other thing is, if you can’t help people, you had probably better resist the impulse to scold them for being upset about it. The least you can do is not make life even more miserable.
From an international perspective, they absolutely are. But my statement was simplistic. There’s a different answer for financial policies and social policies; there’s a different answer for their words (left of center, for sure) and their actions—and for their actions, their actions when in power (President & majority in both houses of Congress, say) vs. now.
My own representative in speeches and on paper is actually pretty left-wing, but in terms of votes is much more center-right. She is more left-wing on social policy than on fiscal policy for sure. So, as with everything, it’s complicated.
This article argues they are center left.
Not far enough left. It bothered me before the 24 election and stills ticks in my craw, that Harris engaged with Liz Cheney. OK, Great big tent party and all. However, she snubbed the leftists and anti genocide part of the party, and defanged Walz. The tent leaned too far right, and zipped shut inthe faces of the progressives.
I voted for her enthusiastically, but I was disillusioned by the attitude the campaign took. If we vote again I will always vote for Democrats, assuming the candidate isn’t dirty, nuts, or stupid, but I would like to see change in a big way. Not holding my breath.
They are socially moderate plutocrats; right of center at best.
No, they aren’t. That’s a meme far left people like to repeat because it makes them feel like they aren’t as extreme as they are, but it doesn’t make it true. It’s how you end up with idoicy like Bernie claiming that Denmark does socialism right only to be corrected by the Prime Minister of Denmark about whether or not Denmark is a socialist country.
No; far left people call the Democrats fascists, not center right.
Yeah, I feel the same way. I’ve spent decades voting for Democrats. They’ve never been far enough to the left for me, but I always thought it was my duty to wield my vote for pragmatic results.
I am focusing on trying to get out. As long as I’m here, I will do what I can, even though it feels hopeless, but I don’t think either Democrats or Republicans want people like me in this country. The Republicans stole my livelihood, and I can’t even get Democrats to answer their phones or return my calls. I understand that I am being told to fuck off, and I will try my best to do so.
The money needs to get the hell out of politics. It will never get better otherwise.
I agree, but the people who benefit from the money in politics are the only people who have the power to change the status quo. I am not hopeful.