this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't think that was a party-line thing for AOC. It was an incredibly complex issue because many of the Rail Unions were locked in strike from inter-union agreements. Sure they were wililng to continue, but it had become a giant morass of red tape.
In fact, if you read the bill, it did not ban striking, despite Congress having the express power to do so if they choose in this situation. The Unions retained the ability to strike, and the bill expressly allowed them to come to a superceding agreement should they do so. All it did was bind terms that were largely acceptable and had already been agreed upon by many of the unions. Did it take ammo away from unions? YES, because several unions perfectly happy with the agreed-upon terms were no longer willing to strike.
I have absolutely come to understand the folks who felt the government should stay out of business and Union negotations. I continue to see them a lot like Republicans, but I understand the nuances of it all. As a Demsoc myself, however, I feel there is sufficient justification for someone like AOC to believe that a Yes vote on the bill (not quite a "No on allowing the rail workers to strike) was the right choice.
Sometimes our congressmen will vote differently than we wish. Sometimes it doesn't make them sellouts to do so.
EDIT: To be clear, I understand that there were very specific issues that some unions wanted resolution on, related to Overwork and "no PTO" being used to avoid hiring more people. There should be regulations to handle that, and I do wish the "enforced agreement' Had provided more than it did.
I appreciate you taking the time to explain that in detail. I think you make a good point, and I wasn't aware that the unions were still allowed to strike even with a No vote. In that case, my fears for AOC 'selling out' have lessened.
Honestly, I've gone back and forth at least 5 times on my opinion of that vote. Each time, I find myself feeling strongly about the side I agree with, only to find some details that shift me to the other side.
The ultimate outcome for me is to realize that both sides have potentially compelling reasons that are not "sellout".
It's actually weird. By my breed of Democratic Socialism, I see Labor Unions as a band-aid for underregulated capitalism. It was a struggle for me for a while to see why other Demsocs have put so much weight into the "let the labor unions have freedom to strike without intervention" side. Some demsocs and other progressive types were doubling down that even if Democrats agreed to force ALL the demands of the unions it was a failure... but isn't it what most of us want for the government to guarantee wages and work quality to protect workers?
I mean, isn't the one thing we don't wanna do just embracing Neoliberalism and being "pro-regulation" about it?
But then I flip-flopped because I wes convinced for a while there was a threat of force against labor. Only after reading the bill a few times and reading some legal analyses did I come to my current position.
I think that Sanders is the only politician that I actually like. He also seems to genuinely want to help the American people. He has been pushing the same messages for 50+ years, and has been arrested before for marching with the people, so I feel like he's legit. He's also not crazy wealthy like a lot of his colleagues, which tells me that he's more focused on his duties than he is on getting rich.
I think he truly does have a good heart, and I would absolutely vote for him over anyone else.
There was recently a story running around that he used some of his campaign funds to fund his step son through the Sanders Foundation, but it's hard to find non-right wing sources on it, besides maybe this one from the Atlantic. It's not a huge amount of money in the grand theme of things, but it's potentially a small tarnish on his otherwise fairly spotless record.