9mo ago

Democrats are trying to work out what went wrong. On the left a consensus is forming

www.independent.co.uk

Summary

Following Kamala Harris’s unexpected defeat, Democratic leaders are scrutinizing their party’s failures, particularly with working-class voters.

Figures like Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy, and Ro Khanna argue the party lacks a strong economic message, especially for those frustrated with stagnant mobility and neoliberal policies.

Sanders emphasized Democrats’ disconnect from working-class concerns, while Murphy criticized the party’s unwillingness to challenge wealthy interests.

DNC Chair Jaime Harrison announced he won’t seek re-election, leaving the party’s leadership in flux as Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries prepare to assume top roles amid a Republican resurgence.

100 comments

Democrats are basically a conservative party, a depressing wet blanket to the people's spirits, and Republicans are illegitimate, unhinged extremists.
Democrats are objectively superior in every way and they still suck ass.
Sure would be nice if there was a party that actually represented Americans instead of company profits.
- They have got to stop talking down to voters, gaslighting voters, and they need to give people something to vote FOR instead of against. I find Kamala to be a good speaker and easy to understand but people saying she's using word salad...at first I didn't get what that was all about, especially when Trump makes absolutely no sense whatsoever but I think I might get it now. She's talking to well educated people but a huge swath of this country is not well educated, uses social media extensively, and maybe it actually does sound like word salad to them when democrats start using words that normal people never use and probably don't understand. If you never went to college and only graduated high school because standards have been reduced, maybe she kind of sounds like an alien sometimes. They need an economic message that speaks to people who have been getting crushed more and more since the 80s and they need to say it in terms we can all understand. And when voters tell them "this is how I feel" for the love of God they need to stop saying "no you don't".
  
  So national health care, workers rights, shifting the tax burden to the richest and most fortunate of us, eliminating monopolies and enforcing anti-trust, eliminating corruption among politicians and judges aren't something to vote FOR? That's a lot of what Harris's platform was.
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(sociolinguistics)#Register_as_formality_scale
  I'm not sure about the specifics, but the core I can agree with, that is: 'people speaking the same language, but with vastly different backgrounds, will have difficulty communicating effectively.'
- Mmmmmmmmhmmmmmm. I know that's right. Preach on!!!
The Dems kept making big proclamations about how the economy has rebounded under the Biden administration. But no one except the wealthy has benefited from that. It felt genuinely insulting every single time. Average folks in the US keep seeing bills, grocery prices, subscription services, and especially housing costs rise steadily. People are so worried about paying for these core things.
But the party never listened to Bernie and just kept saying "look, we fixed it" when they clearly didn't, and I believe that drove away voters.
- The Dems kept making big proclamations about how the economy has rebounded under the Biden administration. But no one except the wealthy has benefited from that.
  And that's just a microcosm of Dem policy for the last ~35y. We get it, Democrats are better at government, we all fucking know it. What everyone has been waiting for is a Democrat who'll come along and say "the top 15% of the country has taken 90% of the wealth over the last 35y, it's time for everyone to share in the prosperity."
  People are sick of neoliberal business as usual, this is why Hillary lost, this is why Kamala lost. This is why every single Dem candidate from here on out is going to be viewed with skepticism and voters will continue to stay home. People would rather hand the country to a narcissistic kleptocrat and hope for the best than accept four more years of neoliberal business as usual while they try to eke out a meagre existence with ever increasing costs of rent, food, healthcare, energy, insurance and corporate profits.
  
  The Democrats funnel literally hundreds of billions of dollars to things like student loan relief, school lunches, and safety net infrastructure in general. The Republicans actively prevent hundreds of billions more that would have been spent to help the lower and middle class, sabotage any hope for universal Healthcare, and actively sabotage things we all rely on (USPS, PBS, the pandemic response program a year before covid). And the voters have the audacity to blame the Dems for not fixing everything. It's a joke.
- If you say so. I went shopping this weekend and every store was crowded with people. Seems like the economy rebounded to me.
  
  Your anecdote is only the surface level. People may be spending more at shops because they expect inflation will keep going up and the things they need will just get more expensive. And they don't expect they can save for larger purchases like housing or renovations so they're buying lower level items while they can afford them. These sort of shallow effects might look like a prospering economy on the outside but they can mask an uglier core.
If we get a consensus on the Left it will be the first time ever.
"I can't support Bernie! He's not a real Socialist, he's a Social Democrat!!"
- If you ask 10 Democrats what they want for lunch, they'll give you 12 different answers
  
  If you ask 10 Republicans what they want for lunch, they'll give you 1 answer. And it's racist.
  
  Marx never wrote about lunch, so we shouldn't eat anything!
- Well he is a social democrat and more centrist then left wing. However, a Bernie presidency would be absolutely incredible (even as a leftist).
  
  How about we drop all the distinctions and just say "good for regular people"?
- Bernie is a democratic socialist
  
  Ever seen 'The Addams Family' movie? Remember the scene where the villainess says she killed her parents because they got her the wrong Barbie doll for Christmas?
- Hey, I’m pretty sure we had a consensus from March to November of 1917. And why there was a solid half of the Spanish civil war we were in agreement
  
  The good old days, right?
They didn't show the entire tweet chain. Murphy starts off saying we should abandon neoliberalism which is good. But then finished by uncritically supporting men's rights, abandoning social issues, and abandoning action on climate change.
He's calling for Democrats to move to the right. The big tent he's pitching is fascism. A true populist movement that champions socialism and progressive causes can bring people together while also championing these issues.
- You mean this?
  https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1855616243039916152.html
  That doesn't fit your description.
  
  Murphy starts off saying we should abandon neoliberalism which is good.
  The left has never fully grappled with the wreckage of fifty years of neoliberalism, which has left legions of Americans adrift as local places are hollowed out, rapacious profit seeking cannibalizes the common good, and unchecked new technology separates and isolates us.
  But then finished by uncritically supporting men’s rights, abandoning social issues, and abandoning action on climate change.
  But here's the thing - then you need to let people into the tent who aren't 100% on board with us on every social and cultural issue, or issues like guns or climate.
  Listen to poor and rural people, men in crisis. Don't decide for them.
  It fits the description to a T. We don't have time for 50% or 0% action on climate change. The window to avert key tipping points that will have catastrophic consequences for the Earth's climate is now.
  As a trans person, I am not interested in 50% or 0% of my rights. I would like my right to exist, 100% of the time.
  We should push back on some of the more fringe men's rights groups. No one is entitled to a state mandated girlfriend. But it is probably worth understanding how patriarchy harms men because inequality harms us all.
I hope Schumer steps back. He’s part of the old guard that got us here, and I don’t think he should be involved in party leadership anymore. Less sure about Jeffries - but frankly, despite his obvious skills, I’m deeply sketched by his refusal to play hardball with Johnson specifically, when he threw him a lifeline to get some stuff done instead of stepping back and letting his party and the situation they and Johnson created eat themselves alive. I think that alone indicates an excellent argument for Jeffries NOT being in leadership. This is not an era for compromise and half measures that perpetuate the status quo, which he inarguably has done.
TL;DR: at this point, it’s my firm opinion that NOBODY who was involved in party leadership up to this point should be let within a country mile of leadership going forward - up to and including “fuck you, the DNC is dead, we’re making a new party”.
- It's rumored Jeffries was instrumental in the congestion pricing delay (that may now be a permanent delay).
- Jefferies was one of the many democrats extremely unfavorable to using the 14th amendment. They all said they were going to beat Trump at the ballot box. They should be washed away from any relevant position in the party.
  
  Well fuck me, I didn’t realize that. That changes my opinion to “keep him the fuck away from leadership”. Another one of those “let’s bring a deck of cards to a gunfight” imbeciles.
“The left has never fully grappled with the wreckage of fifty years of neoliberalism, which has left legions of Americans adrift as local places are hollowed out, rapacious profit seeking cannibalizes the common good, and unchecked new technology separates and isolates us,” wrote Murphy, who represents the northeastern blue bastion of Connecticut.
The problems, he continued, were obvious: stagnant economic mobility for many Americans and an erosion of social life.
But he went on to argue that the only way to shake up that dynamic was with real solutions that challenged the rich donors who support Democrats — wealthy interests who he said Democrats lacked the stomach to really challenge.
“[W]hen progressives like Bernie aggressively go after the elites that hold people down, they are shunned as dangerous populists,” wrote Murphy. “We cannot be afraid of fights - especially with the economic elites who have profited off neoliberalism...Those are hard things for the left. A firm break with neoliberalism. Listen to poor and rural people, men in crisis. Don't decide for them. Pick fights. Embrace populism. Build a big tent. Be less judgmental. But we are beyond small fixes.”
"Figures like Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy, and Ro Khanna argue the party lacks a strong economic message, especially for those frustrated with stagnant mobility and neoliberal policies."
"Meanwhile the ~~Corpo shills~~ remainder of the Democratic party insist they didn't go conservative enough. "We had Dick Cheney on our side! We shouted at them that their lives are better now! They no longer can afford homes and found everything to be more expensive, but the stock market! The people just don't understand how when my investments go up that means everything is working as intended." Audible groans were heard from within the room and within seconds security was escorting people away from reporters. "We will definitely win next time, we just need to lie harder about their lives being better. I hear workers hate unions so we'll work on killing those too."
There's a cognitive dissonance on Lemmy. I keep seeing people post the electorate is stupid for electing trump or staying home while also seeing posts like this acknowledging that the democratic party isn't listening to the constituency. I realize it's likely very different audiences but this is very much a bubble among liberals which unfortunately make up a large part of the party voting base. They were fine with everything continuing to suck a tiny bit more because the alternative was Trump. I think people are just squeezed and exhausted. They're tired of being given the narrative that this is the election that will end all elections while things continue to get worse around the margins. And I think the people that would vote for systemic change don't see Democrats capable of delivering on anything substantive.
Note: This is not an endorsement of Trump or not voting at all as a result. But people really need to reckon with how broken shit is before blaming voters. Democrats have no incentives to fix anything.
- Both can be true. A large swath of the electorate is stupid for electing Trump, but the Democratic party failed to reach them. This is a lesson that Republicans have known for decades but Democrats still don't get. Voter's are not rational; being better than your opponent does not win elections. People can be annoyed at the voters for making this reality, and at the Democrats for still not getting it.
  In fairness to the Dems though, the incumbent party lost ground in almost every Democracy, and Harris underperformed less in swing states where both parties campaigned.
  
  I don’t know about "large" swath... it's hard to tell since the media is going to focus on them and make them look larger than they are. It would be really interedting to see a poll of voters that also asked if the things trump did were fake news. Then compare how many trump voters answered yes. That might give us an approximation of the % that did so because they were just dumb enough to buy that hogwash.
Liz
Cheney
The Dems need to implement the Nordic Model of economic and social policies in the U.S., it’s not that hard outside of removing oversized lobbying influence on U.S. politics
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model
- They tried with the green new deal
  
  I think the focus on “green” is distracting, and they should focus on working class woes first
- "This is Socialism and Communism! These countries are dysfunctional hellholes...right...wait a minute..." - Republicans
Maybe they shouldnt have couped bernie then run a candidate that has never won a primary. Maybe they should try running on policy for the working class people instead of identity politics. But what do i know im just some aussie cunt on lemmy.
It's the working class economy, stupid
- If that was the case then the dems would have won. Biden ramped down inflation brought wages up and supported unions.
  The dems lost because people love to cut their nose off to spite their face.
Losing didn’t reveal anything wrong with the DNC. The problem is with Americans. It’s going to be up to everyday people to reprogram those in the cult. You can’t do that systemically. You have to do it on a personal level. And it takes a lot of time, energy, and compassion. Only then can the underclass have the unity needed to for positive change.
- Losing didn’t reveal anything wrong with the DNC. The problem is with Americans.
  Behold, centrism.
  
  The DNC is a centrist party. The people are the power, not the parties.
- That’s a lot of words you’re putting in my mouth.
- Apparently, everyday people can't be trusted to wipe their own ass.
- You can’t deprogram these people. They love their racism and authority figures. It’s a lost cause. As Carl Sagan once said, there’s a “celebration of ignorance” in the US.
  https://www.upworthy.com/carl-sagans-1995-predictions-of-ignorance-and-pseudoscience-were-spookily-accurate
Maybe some of those politicians should just start their own party? That’s what would happen in a healthier democracy
I'm still trying to understand why you only get to choose between two candidates. I get how it works. But so many countries elect their president in 1-2 turns.
Also also, Switzerland's way of electing it's executive power is much better.
- Because other countries made better or updated their Democracies since the US was formed. US never got an update.
  
  I had a friend in the Navy back around 2015 that wholeheartedly believed that this is why America would fail.
  The US government is the longest, unchanged Democracy in the world. We've had the same documents, modified slightly but not enough, as the rule of land for almost 250 years now.
  He equated it to a white board that, over 250 years, kept having stuff added to it, but nothing was "removed," just crossed out and something written next to it, or over it.
  And now 250 years later, we've essentially resorted to trying to fill the spaces between lines and letters and around the margins, but they've already been filled, so we're just writing over what's already written.
  
  It's about to get a firmware downgrade unfortunately
- Https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo
  I've been spamming the shit out of this video because it is exactly the answer to that question. Ranked choice voting (or maybe a few others) are the answer.
  
  There are organizations working to get ranked preference voting systems adopted, I donate to them. Fairvote.org is one of them. If the participation of Conservadems and GOPers with fair vote.org bothers you, there are other organizations.
At what point do we learn that voting for progress is an illusion, a fable, taught and told to us to prevent us from organizing socially to effect real change?
Yep.

100 comments