Asking as someone from the other side of the planet.
From the things I saw about the US election, the Dems were the side with plans for the economy - minimum wage adjustments, unions, taxing the rich, etc. The Republicans didn’t seem to have any concrete plans. At least, this is what I saw.
I don’t doubt Bernie Sanders though - he seems like a straight truth teller. But what am I missing?
The democrats plans for the working class are tweaks. a little tax credit here, a little minimum wage bump there.
But the working class in America have been experiencing long term systemic structural changes that permanently disadvantage them, globalization being one of them.
Between shipping manufacturing jobs elsewhere, and allowing in immigrants who do menial work, people at the low end of the economy are pretty pinched for work. People will say “Americans don’t want to pick fruit” and there’s some truth to that. But there definitely are Americans who want to mow lawns for a living and they’re constantly undercut on price by guys from Mexico who sleep 10 to a room so they can send a few dollars back to family in the old country.
Trump voters see his policy on tariffs and they don’t think “hm economists say this could lead to a drop in GDP.” They see a structural policy shift aimed at bringing manufacturing back to the US. However ill-conceived it might be doesn’t matter. It’s big, it’s bold. It is a fundamental reordering. Economists flap their hands and Trump voters say “good - run scared, you Wall Street pimps.”
If I sound like I’m defending Trump voters, I’m not. But I absolutely believe that the Democrats have to offer more than tweaks and handouts to address the working class.
America spends huge amounts of money to project power abroad. We’re the richest nation by far. Why isn’t that benefitting the working class? These are real questions. Trump has all the wrong answers, but Democrats don’t have any answers. And frankly they are a bunch of moneyed elites, and I don’t throw that term around much. Look at the personal net worth and residential addresses of top Democrats and you’ll see rich people. They have a lot to lose in Bernie’s revolution and they don’t believe in it.
“good - run scared, you Wall Street
pimpssimps.”FTFY
We’re the richest nation by far. Why isn’t that benefitting the working class?
35 trillion dollar question. A discerning observer would note that 30t was incurred since Raygun admin ie during entire lives of millennials and before gen x. The money is gone thought and we have nothing to show for it. In fact, life has been progressively worse for each subsequent generation. I still remember “old guys” aka gen x bitching about how boomers were cock blocking them on getting aheadm these gen x now being boomers themselves but less since pie for working people is smaller for each younger gen.
Neither side will address this core issue. In fact, mainstream discourse won’t even acknowledge this is happening. Sure they will run “house and daycare is expensive but here is million reason why it is your fault” shit. And boomers larp it too…
Anyway, keep jerking the two party regime, keep getting progressively worse outcomes.
It’s not just the US, it’s been happening for years in other countries like the UK as well.
Traditionally there has been one party that is for working people and another for capital and the owner class.
The right has been getting further and further into far right authoritarianism. That posed a problem for the Dems going back to the Clinton Presidency: do they stick with being the party of working people or do they try to have their cake and eat it by tacking to the center and assuming that the working class will continue to vote for them no matter what?
It largely worked for a time and gave Obama two terms but ever since then they have been susceptible to criticism that they’re out of touch, elitists, entitled, and that they look down their nose at working people whilst still assuming that they will get their vote, which opened the door to Republicans.
You can’t serve two masters for very long, you can’t be the party of working people while being run by upper middle class graduates. You can’t claim to care about the people with the least while cozying up to CEOs and megadonors. Sooner or later it all falls apart, as it did with Hillary Clinton’s run, where working people disliked her elitism and she didn’t have enough support from elsewhere to make up the shortfall. That should’ve been a warning. Instead they doubled down.
The problem in the US is that there are only two viable parties. The Dems won’t go back to being the party of working people because they wouldn’t know how to do that even if they wanted to. What happens when the Trump Presidency turns out to be a disaster?
Doesn’t matter if it’s a disaster while I agree with what you are saying I truly believe I just voted in the last American Election. After 4 years the opposition party will be jailed just like in Russia. Fox News/TMTG will become state media. They’re going to run the country like a business alright the problem is that it’s private equity and they’re selling everything off for parts and Russia just bought all of it for cheap.
Think of this from his perspective: the Democrats put their faith in the idea that money wins elections, and if you can out-raise your opponent the votes will follow. Twice they conspired against Bernie in the primaries because of his platform: tackling wealth inequality, progressive tax reform, and overturning Citizens United v. FEC. They chose corporate interests over the working class because they valued money more than votes.
The dems gaslit the public on inflation. They abandoned the working class decades ago. The economy only got better for the out to brunch professional managerial class liberals while the rest of us suffered.
Most importantly, the democrats haven’t run a competitive primary since 2008, they anointed Harris as their candidate without a single vote being cast for her and then they’re shocked pikachu face when she lost. The fact that democrat operatives make so much money despite being so utterly incompetent that one wonders if it’s malicious it blows the mind.
Well, Controlled Opposition is a lucrative field, friend. You just won’t find it on Indeed.
If you are asked where you differ from a whildly unpopular president in a time where all normal Americans are hurting bad, and you answer “nowhere”.
And your points on the economy are essentially, the economy is booming…
You disqualify yourself, as we saw.
People did not want more of the same or small incremental change. And apparently the worry some have about fascism taking over is not believed by many… politicians say a lot… but they won’t do that.
Time will tell.
Identity politics, gun control, immigration, lagging economic recovery for labor, inflation and a distinct lack of ability to formulate a simple message. Sank Dems with the working class.
Policies are nice but most Americans don’t have a clue and don’t research anything.
Kamala spouted a bunch of policies and no message of hope. Trump had a bunch of headline grabbing antics and one liners. Guess which one wins with most Americans.
What you’re missing is that all those plans you mentioned, while correct, were (a) just ‘plans’ with no follow-through to back them up and (b) too little, too late even if they were implemented.
- The “fight for $15” (minimum wage increase) has been going on for so long with zero [Federal] success that, due to inflation, it ought to be renamed “fight for $30” by now.
- The lip service given in supporting unions was belied by how Biden fucked over the railroad workers.
- Inequality (the gap between the working class and the 1%) is continuing to spiral out of control and the Democrats had very little to say about stopping it. It’s important to remember that “tax the rich” was only supported by the progressive subset of the Democratic Party.
- We need zoning reform coupled with switching from property tax to land-value tax, to stop enabling the hoarding of underdeveloped property by protecting it from market forces (i.e. real reforms to make housing affordable again).
- We also need things like vigorous enforcement of anti-trust law and consumer protection laws, so that the public feels (and is) less exploited by corporations.
The “fight for $15” (minimum wage increase) has been going on for so long with zero [Federal] success that, due to inflation, it ought to be renamed “fight for $30” by now.
And the side that won has been fighting the minimum wage hike for “so long”. Who’s the enemy of the working class again?
The lip service given in supporting unions was belied by how Biden fucked over the railroad workers.
This is a lie that has been repeated time and time again. He fast followed the end of the strike with helping the workers get exactly what they wanted. He aided their negotiations AND got our supply lines back on line.
Inequality (the gap between the working class and the 1%) is continuing to spiral out of control and the Democrats had very little to say about stopping it. It’s important to remember that “tax the rich” was only supported by the progressive subset of the Democratic Party.
Again, which party is it giving the mega wealthy tax breaks? Who is appointing billionaires to run the government? Who controlled the House and prevented tax reform from going through?
We need zoning reform coupled with switching from property tax to land-value tax, to stop enabling the hoarding of underdeveloped property by protecting it from market forces (i.e. real reforms to make housing affordable again).
That is state level reform. Obviously.
We also need things like vigorous enforcement of anti-trust law and consumer protection laws, so that the public feels (and is) less exploited by corporations.
No argument there, but which party is constantly eroding our current regulations that protect consumers and workers?
Excellent write up, I donated to Feed the Children in your name.
I understood him to mean that Democrats were more interested in appealing to Liz Cheney as Republican lite, rather than advocating vigorously for the working class. They take money from corporate interests, and then pretend they don’t protect them. They didn’t do enough to address the problem of inflation, and American workers were angry.
I see this claim so much, and it’s bullshit. Harris didn’t make a single policy concession to get Cheney on board. And why would she? The entire point of having her endorse was to send the message of “Trump is so dangerous that even people who disagree with me are choosing to support me.”
She and Biden had four years to demonstrate policies that help the working class. They did so little that the working class supported trump.
That’s the concession: the built in support for corporate agendas, since that’s where Democratic money comes from. You don’t need to put it in your platform when it’s obvious from your actions that “the economy”, to you, means the board room.
Harris needed to get progressives and instead they put their efforts into winning over moderate conservatives. Even if she didn’t make concessions, putting time and effort into promoting that meant she didn’t have time or effort to put into the progressive voter base
Building a broad coalition without policy concessions was a waste of time? You’re going to have a tough time convincing me of that point.
What broad coalition?
There was no coalition. It was a campaign by and for white college educated professional women in the suburbs.
That’s not a coalition, that’s a book club.
I don’t think he needs to convince you of that. The results of your election are plain for all to see.
I think what Bernie is saying is that for decades Dems have paid lip service to working class concerns while not actually doing much. In reality Dems have been much more beholden to corporate interests.
By the time these plans came out, too many working class folk were already disenfranchised. They saw a party that was vocal about social issues that frankly were not high on the list of priorities for most of them. They were more concerned that inflation was out of control and they could not afford basic expenses. Sure Trump was racist but at least prices were lower when he was in office, or so they would conclude. If he could bring prices down, they would go with him.
Basically Dems were just out of touch with the most important part of their base until it was too late.
I can understand being frustrated and angry with the Democrats for essentially being a status quo party that favors their corporate benefactors.
What boggles my mind is thinking that voting Republican would make any of that better, when in fact it seems pretty clear that it is going to make everything much, much worse.
The DNC does not have the peoples’ best interests in mind. Not to say they aren’t the same as the GOP (not by a wide margin), but they are the political extension of their corporate donors. This is the reason why they don’t push forward with universal healthcare, why they’re cowards regarding Israel, and why not much meaningful legislation makes it through the gamut that puts the populace first. This is what conservative voters are done with, and many Democrats are fed up with as well. The GOP, for all their evil faults, actually do execute on the issues that their base cares about, though those action tend to be reprehensible.
Any mainstream Democrat candidate will NOT put forth or affirmatively vote for legislation or policy that goes against their donors’ wishes. The GOP are the same way, but at least they’re up front about it. But it hasn’t been just this election cycle, they’ve been this way for a long time. This is why many call them spineless, but it’s not about that; they aren’t paid to represent the people, they paid to pretend to care while preserving the status quo (their corporate “donations” far outweigh their salaries for the “right” politicians). Everyone and their mom has been screaming corporate greed for the last four years, yet not a single political committee has put forth an honest effort to go after corporations for price gouging, because they’d lose their campaign donations, similar to how any candidate that goes against Israel would get financially throttled.
Basically Dems were just out of touch with the most important part of their base until it was too late.
Which is their consistent problem every election when the prior Republican admin hasn’t made a catastrophic fuck-up.
You can’t run on the “we’re pro labor” platform and expect the working class to show up for you when your pro labor stance hasn’t put money directly into working class pockets since the 1970s or 1980s.
Where are the big public works programs? Where’s the massive government spending that employed millions? That’s why labor showed up for Democrats in the 1900s, when there were huge govt contracts that employed organized labor, and it’s no surprise at all that when Democrats abandoned those policies labor stopped being reliable supporters.
You want to run a successful campaign? Talk about the massive public spending that employed hundreds of thousands during your prior admin. Talk jobs. Talk improved standard of living. Talk taxing corporations to pay for those things and voters will hand you a landslide. Democrats are so afraid of taxing corporations to pay for social spending that directly recruits voters to their cause that they’re seen as corporate stooges. And honestly, they kinda are at this point.
It’s hard to explain. A lot of it is about vibes and focus over the last several years.
- There’s a popular suspicion that, rather than fixing issues, Dems allowed them to persist so they could campaign on them during an election year.
- Dems’ platform in 2016 was: Hillary’s more competent. In 2020: Trump’s a menace. In 2024: Trump’s a menace. Meanwhile, people cared more about putting food on the table, not dying of the plague, and war crimes. Sure, welfare was part of Dems plans and platform, but it weren’t the core message.
- Related to #2, people felt unheard, ignored, and taken for granted. We’ve been losing faith in a 2-party system, where neither side has to be good, they just have to threaten that the other side is worse. Well, wehn people feel they have nothing to lose, they put a bull in the china shop and hope they wind up on top when the dust settles.
Bernie’s being a bit harsh in saying Dems didn’t try. Republicans blocked their efforts. But there’s also a feeling that they didn’t care all that much. At the end of the day, they’re career politicians, padding their pockets with corporate donations while demanding starving citizens vote for them because the other guy would be somewhat less palatable. And I guess Trump’s honesty about being apathetic and money-grubbing is more appealing than Dems’ feigned innocence and solidarity.
Plans are not actions. Sanders is talking about what the Democratic party has done (or rather what they’ve failed to do) not what they promised to do. Words are worthless without action.
Neither side has been willing to change, or even talk about, the shift of wealth that has left most people barely able to get by. Working people get less and less reward for their efforts and the difference all goes to the owners. I think that is at least one aspect of Bernie’s complaint about the Democrats.
The short of it is that “things are going fine” messaging doesn’t work when things decidedly aren’t going fine. When asked about the economy she said she wouldn’t do much different from Biden. And yet she wouldn’t even confirm or deny when asked whether she would keep Lina Khan. The DNC’s messaging screamed "we’re dishonest corporate stooges who won’t give straight answers ", because they are and also incompetent. In the dismal state of the American economy today do you think that would get votes?
There are two components to this question. Did many in the working class feel that Democrats had abandoned them? And is Trump’s economic policy actually better for the working class than Harris’s? I think the answers are “yes” and “probably no”. However, voters don’t listen to economists. If they’re not happy with the status quo, they vote for disrupting the status quo even if experts tell them that that’s a bad idea.
I suppose Sanders thinks that the working class would have supported a Democratic candidate who proposed a leftward (as opposed to Trump’s rightward) disruption. My guess is that that isn’t true and socialism is still a dirty word in America, but who knows?
If you ask Americans about socialist policies without mentioning parties or ideology, then they overwhelmingly support them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
However, voters don’t listen to economists. If they’re not happy with the status quo, they vote for disrupting the status quo even if experts tell them that that’s a bad idea.
Also see: Brexit.
Sadly it does not stop them whining about the consequences of their poor decision-making.
As most of politics, it’s sadly less about actual plans than it is about messaging through catchy soundbites - something the Rs definitely do better. (none that they’d act on any of it) Ds have spent a whole lot of time appealing to constituencies that aren’t the working class, with messaging that doesn’t work for them.
But it’s not just that: Ds have materially failed the working class. They can screech all the want about “the economy” having gotten better under Biden, they’re talking about the stock market, which is entirely immaterial to people who can’t even save. What is material to them is “non-core” inflation (aka food and gas - it really takes an economist to come up with such a stupid label), which has gone up real bad. And many still remember Obama as having betrayed them by bailing out the banks on their backs, and working hard to save all that rot as status quo.
Yes, D policy would very obviously be better (long term), but a whole lot of working class voters don’t trust that to be the case.
