What does blue/urban America see in the Democrats?

Politics & Elections
41

The thing that appeals to me about the Democratic/progressive platform is that it doesn’t rest on idealistic “shoulds” as much as the conservative approach does. Progressives have ideals, don’t get me wrong, but they tend to be aimed at society as a whole rather than at individuals. Progressives accept that individuals will always come up short somehow. But they believe that a strong society lessens the cumulative impact of those individual shortcomings.

For instance, I think most reasonable people can agree that no one should have kids if they can’t afford to take care of them. Progressives don’t assume that beating people over the head with this message is enough to stop them from fucking, though. They assume there will always been some segment of the population that has babies regardless of their financial situation, and thus they advocate for strong social welfare programs that can help pick up the slack when these individuals mess up. There’s certainly a place for codes of conduct directed at individuals, as well as preaching and lecturing. I think most progressives would agree with this. But they don’t think that sanctimony alone is sufficient to help society run optimally.

42

I have a different perspective here, which comes from a misspent youth supporting and voting for Libertarian candidates. I’m sure opinions are diverse, but a lot of the folks I interacted with both believed that the “good guy with the gun” could help allay gun violence, but even if he couldn’t, it is worth the societal risks to keep the rights. This perspective doesn’t mean, “We want more gun ownership because we love those Sandy Hooks, those Las Vegas, we want more Columbines.” But it does mean, “I’d rather live in a society with those Sandy Hooks, Las Vegases, and Columbines” than in one where our rights are abrogated.

43

I think it’s a combination of things.

One is “what is the most important goal”?

For liberals it’s “How do we create the best overall outcomes while infringing as little as possible the rights that are most important to us.”

Under that rubric, the concepts of “punishing those who deserve to be punished” and “rewarding those who are deserving of reward” are not among our most important goals.

So, for example, if creating a program that gives people who need it income, housing, education, and health care benefits some number of “undeserving” people, then so be it, so long as overall society is better and a significant proportion of people are benefiting.

This is an interesting contrast with Do Not Taunt’s observation that some gun rights supporters would prefer to live in a world with occasional massacres of innocents rather than infringe gun ownership rights in any way.

Forced busing as attempted in the late 1960s and early 1970s to desegregate public schools was working. In fact, it’s the only thing that has actually improved the problem of segregated schools and failing schools in “inner city” neighborhoods. But politicians backed off from that because of the backlash. White people’s fear of forced busing trumped the greater good.

UltraVires’s description of benefit programs as “treating people like cattle” is from a liberal’s point of view entirely self-serving, without any empirical support. The fact is that giving money to people who need money and giving housing to people who need housing and giving education to people who need education does benefit those people, and to the extent that it doesn’t benefit them enough, it’s because they haven’t been given enough.

Yes, maybe there is some small percentage of people who will never be lifted over the hump. So what? First, it’s worth it to help everyone who can be permanently lifted up, or their children or grandchildren.

Second, helping a person is helping that person, period. That analogy to domestic animals is a baffling, inhumane, and immoral viewpoint. If you’ve made someone’s life 10 percent better, you’ve made it 10 percent better, which is better than 0 percent, even if you never achieve 100 percent.

Third, conservatives are content to make these decisions without ever trying to live in the shoes of the people who need help. They will wax on like UltraVires without ever trying to look at the comprehensive picture of why there is an underclass and all the factors that put them in that position and keep them in that position.

44

I think there’s a certain element of… not sour grapes, and not quite envy, but something similar present in the conservative mindset. It’s the feeling that you’ve scrimped, saved and done your dead-level damnedest to do things right, and it’s been a hard road, but you’re finally successful. And now you see some other people not doing that, or doing it in parts, and having the government bail them out. It’s frustration and annoyance that you’re expected to take the hard road, and someone else doesn’t, and they get bailed out… out of your own tax money.

Using the birth control example- if you’re the kind of person who didn’t fuck around, always used birth control, even when it meant not getting laid, and you provide for your kids, even when it’s tough to do so and make ends meet while paying your taxes, wouldn’t it be frustrating to see someone else fuck around, not use birth control, get knocked up/have multiple baby mamas, and then see the government foot the bill for all that, out of YOUR tax money?

Some of us are more pragmatic about it and figure that as offensive as the parents’ lack of responsibility may be, the child doesn’t deserve that life of poverty, and that it’s better for society in the long run if we foot that bill. But I can see how others might feel that the parents deserve a huge dose of condemnation and maybe even judicial punishment for such irresponsibility.

45

Christians will know it as the parable of the prodigal son. The elder son is miffed when his father spends extravagantly on the younger son, who has wasted his life and treasure. The elder wants “fairness”, which is a common human desire, but the lesson is love is most important.

46

Also the parable of the workers (Matthew 20:1-16), where a landowner went at sunup to hire workers for his field, and then again multiple times during the day to hire more workers, until the last ones worked for only an hour before quitting time… and then paid them all a standard day’s wages. The ones who worked all day complained about the unfairness, even though they got a day’s wages for a day’s work.

47

FWIW, I’m not saying I agree with what I said above, but that it’s the mindset of a lot of the conservatives I know. And it’s compounded by the fact that a lot of the time, the people on one side or the other of that line seem to have different skin colors. It makes for labeling one group or the other as the out-group easier when they can be painted with a broad behavioral brush, even if it’s not intentionally or hatefully racist.

48

Democrats would side with the ones who worked all day, and tell them they need to form a union and/or sue their employer.

Regards,
Shodan

49

I know the thread title is “What does blue/urban America see in the Democrats?” But the OP cited a superb and empathetic insight from a liberal into the mindset of conservatives and asked for this:

**
Why no conservative takers? Ultravires? Shodan**?

50

I’d usually be willing to take on a devil’s advocate sort of position but, from a practical standpoint, I can’t see any particularly logic behind the breakout of beliefs of either party and that renders the task impossible, unless you feel like writing a few hundred pages of text.

Let’s take “small government” as an example.

I want to convince a Republican that Democratic policy is a better fit for them on small government, so I bring up privacy rights and how the Democrats are more suspicious of the FBI, police, government access to personal data, etc. Definitely, the Democrats are more small government on that one.

And then I talk about abortion. Democrats are small government, they think that you should have personal responsibility and the government shouldn’t be managing you; I bring up the “bomb them from afar” military policy of Democrats versus the “boots on the ground” military policy of Republicans. Democrats are small government, they just take the cheap and easy mode of telling people to fuck off rather than going and occupying and owning territory abroad; And so on.

I go through the full policy of all the Democratic platform and make a thorough and convincing argument for all of them that Democrats are more small government than Republicans.

What will I have actually achieved in the end, now that I have written 200 pages and thoroughly analyzed each policy? Firstly, I’ll have spent a lot of time writing something that no one will read. But if someone does actually read it, the odds are that the result is that they become a centrist/indepedent, decide that “small government” isn’t actually what they mean when they say that they’re a “small government” theorist, or come out saying that “small government” just isn’t the thing they care about most and so none of that matters.

I mean, I could sit down and explain to you why Republican policy exactly fits all the ideals and dreams of Democratic philosophy. Would you really be convinced? Probably not. And that’s always going to be true when philosophy was never a component of how you got to where you are and when it isn’t how the party got to where it is.

51

Sage Rat, not sure why such a post would have to focus on small government vs. big government.

Maybe because the OP hid the Ann Hedonia post he refers to, most people didn’t read it? I agree with the OP that AH, a self-described liberal, did an excellent job of getting into a conservative mindset and explaining it without stereotypes, snarks, or insults.

I can’t volunteer myself for the job because I skew liberal. I’m wondering if a conservative can mirror what Ann Hedonia did. Maybe they can’t.

Here’s the post:

52

No you don’t.

You care about yourself, people close to you, and people like you.

We can read your posts. You are incapable of caring about or even understanding people who aren’t like you. Furthermore, you project that onto us.

It simply isn’t true.

e.g.

53

Eh, I’ll give it a shot, being conservative, despite also being the OP myself:
*

You’re a liberal living in San Francisco (or Seattle, or NYC, or Boston, or Chicago…)

You grew up in a conservative Christian family, actually, but never felt the religion. On the contrary, it was rammed down your throat by your parents, who forced you to go to church whether you liked it or not, and gave scolding or dismissive replies any time you brought up tough questions like why God’s existence seem to have such weak evidence, or isn’t it excessively severe for people to burn in Hell for trillions and trillions of years, or why so many Christians live a hypocritical life. When you asked pastors or other Christians these same questions, you got no satisfactory responses either, only a stream of cliches and trite platitudes with no substance behind them. To top it off, these same Christians spread all kinds of fake-news and conspiracy theories on Facebook, along with chain emails, while at the same time making strident posts about evidence for Jesus’ resurrection - and also false prophets or others who make utterly unfounded prophecies or “declarations” in the name of faith.

You are deeply anxious about climate change and the heating of the planet, knowing it’s a ticking clock, yet conservatives dismiss it as a hoax. You consider it essential for a woman to have access to abortion (since the financial, emotional and social costs of an unwanted pregnancy are immense,) but Republicans want to ban the practice as much as they can. You know firsthand how bosses and companies can exploit workers, but Republicans oppose labor unionizing. You lived for a while in Canada and shake your head over how the U.S. healthcare system charges $40,000 for an appendectomy when Canadians get something much better. You are appalled at the Columbines, Sandy Hooks, Orlando, Virginia Techs, Las Vegas shootings, but the response of the 2nd-Amendment crowd is “more guns.” You see the U.S. defense budget of $700 billion a year - more than the rest of the world spends on their militaries *combined *- and keep thinking, “why can’t we take a big chunk of that and spent it on much more urgent needs like teacher pay, hospitals, the homeless, scholarships, etc. instead?”

All of this was bad enough for you before 2016. You were already a reliably blue voter; you voted Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and Obama. But now you watch as Donald Trump rises to the top of the Republican primaries. Is this a…joke?? At first Trump’s success is actually cause for liberal relief and some schadenfreude; he should be the weakest of all GOP candidates, makes him easiest for Hillary to defeat. But then Trump consistently remains within only 2-5% behind Hillary (why isn’t she beating him by 40%?!), and any relief is replaced by deep-seated worry. And then Election Night 2016 happens, and the worst fears are confirmed. Nor has it escaped your attention that the party that blasted Bill Clinton for his affairs in the 1990s has now elected Trump to the White House.

You aren’t exactly a fan of the Democratic Party - the big tent with all its infighting, constant mind-changing, factions going at each other - but they are much better in your opinion than the Republicans. You find that Bernie lines up most closely with your views, but since the DNC would never let Bernie win, you had to reluctantly go along with Hillary in 2016 and Biden this time around.