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.
Why isn’t that benefitting the working class? These are real questions. Trump has all the wrong answers
The existance of people like Trump and Musk are the answer.
They are part of the problem, but not the answer. An answer would be how we can ensure that everyone supporting their enterprises shares in their wild wealth and success. There could be many answers to that. And Democrats need to pick one and drive it.
It should be said that Musk is manufacturing cars in the US, which is more than a lot of manufactured goods companies can say.
“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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Nope, I did my homework on that one before posting it. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_labor_dispute :
In September 2022, U.S. Senators Richard Burr and Roger Wicker introduced a bill that would have required labor unions to agree to the terms proposed by the Presidential Emergency Board, to prevent a strike. It was blocked by Senator Bernie Sanders, who noted that freight rail workers receive a “grand total of zero sick days” while railroad companies made significant profits. In the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “We’d rather see negotiations prevail so there’s no need for any actions from Congress.”
In late November, after some unions had rejected the agreement, Biden asked Congress to pass the agreement into law. On November 30, the House of Representatives passed the existing tentative agreement along with an amended version that would require railroad employers to ensure 7 days paid sick leave. On December 1, the Senate passed the tentative agreement with only 1 day of sick leave. President Joe Biden signed the legislation into law on December 2. The Biden administration’s intervention in the dispute was condemned by over 500 labor historians in an open letter to Joe Biden and Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh.
Biden may not have aggressively attacked and ruined the railroad workers the way Reagan did with the air traffic controllers, but he definitely forced them to take less than they would’ve gotten if they’d been allowed to strike.
I get what you are saying but it still isn’t the complete story. Yes he didn’t let them shut down a major pillar of our economy and at that time forced them to take an agreement that was basically everything they wanted except for off time. But his admin spent the months after getting those concessions from the railroads. The IBEW even thanked the admin for their work. He supported many other labor unions right to strike without interference.
https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
Excellent write up, I donated to Feed the Children in your name.
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.
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 dems are in power now, they didn’t do those things, so nobody believed they’d actually do it if they were elected again.
Additionally, parading around endorsements from Dick and Liz Cheney, and promising to build a border wall, tax breaks for small businesses, and other republican policies from 2016 didn’t help the perception that the dems weren’t going to help people.
That’s probably the perception. Democrats have been in power for 4 years, things didn’t get better for a lot of people and then they say to vote for them for more of the same. Surprisingly that doesn’t help with voter enthusiasm. They’ll have more chance next time with messaging things won’t get worse with them after Trump mishandled stuff.
look at how Biden talked about the economy.
After stabilizing from COVID, it took him 2 or 3 years to figure out and even acknowledge that inflation is killing people’s financial outlook.
The first mention of that at all was at the NATO thing right before he dropped out.
Sure, he was handed an absolute shit show by Trump; but the messaging was incredibly tone deaf about it.
Same tone deaf manner as the “we’re going to be okay” comment earlier. We don’t all have millions and 246k pension, free health care and 24/7 protection. We’re not okay now, and it’s not going to be fine.
I think of Sanders as like a well-meaning version of Trump. He tells people simple, good-sounding things they want to hear. I trust that he truly cares about the working class, but his ideas are probably too big and vague for there to be a path to actually implement them in any Congress of this era. He’s aware of his recent popularity and maybe a little bitter that he hasn’t gotten much out of it. He’s only a Democrat himself to the extent he can gain more from calling himself that than an independent, so with little to lose at this point in his career he’s lashing out while he can win points kicking the Democrats.
Simple, good-sounding things they want to hear is what wins elections these days.
Sadly, it only works if you’re selling hate and fear.
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.
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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.
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.
Look at the numbers please:
In 2020 Biden had 81,284,666 votes.
In 2024 Kamala had 69,218,912 votes.That is a difference of around 12 Million votes or nearly 15%. Trump at the same time gained only like 750k votes. I mean yes, he somehow GAINED votes, but still…
What is your supposed reason for those numbers?
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.
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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.
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.
