politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
But that seems to be the SOP for Lemmy users, any criticism of the DNC, Harris, or Biden is met with "bUt TrUmP fAsCiSm," or some variation of you being a racist or fascist or whatever.
AOC sat down with her voters and asked them why they voted for her and Trump, and they gave her their honest answers.
And y'all (not you, the people you're responding to and the majority of Lemmy) immediately insult them, their intelligence, and their understanding of the world because y'all know better then them.
There were plenty of articles showing despite a good economy, Americans felt more strapped for cash and felt like they were doing worse than four years ago. That's their lived reality, and the DNC just kept doubling down on "economy good, soft landing," and then threw out the $15/hr minimum wage from a decade ago as if it would mean anything to most Americans (my state already has a minimum wage of just under $16/hr, and it's $8/hr short of what our own university said someone would need to afford a one bedroom apartment). So no working class person would have benefitted from that in my state, but the DNC and liberals act like we should be gobbling their nuts because they were so progressive for even briefly mentioning it.
I said right after the election (and was repeatedly attacked and downvoted for it) that the American people want change. And if it's not going to be progress, they'll roll the dice on regress. But something has to change, and for better or worse, Trump promises that while the DNC can barely be bothered to maintain the status quo.
I think your point is well made, and this thread is demonstrative of the entire point I was making to PugJesus.
PugJesus is the definition of incurious when it comes to understanding why their rhetorical approach failed.
People are fucking stupid, but to the previous point that doesn't mean they can just be ignored. Their concerns are real and need to be addressed, they're just gullible morons for believing the first snake oil salesman that comes along promising to solve all their problems.
The DNC fucked up and has been fucking up consistently for decades now by ignoring lower and middle class Americans to focus solely on the upper class. Talks of the stock market doing well and the GDP being good means fuck all when that's all built on the backs of some of the most extreme income inequality and poverty in the history of the US. As the middle class eroded and wealth increasingly is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands it becomes critical to appeal not to the rich but to the poor who overwhelmingly outnumber them. Failure to do so has had the entirely predictable result that elections become impossible to win.
The GOP is fully aware of this, the big difference is they're more than happy to peddle comforting lies to an increasingly ignorant and stupid populace, due in no small part to Republicans decades of attacking and destroying public education. If the DNC or any other non-GOP party ever wants to hold power again they need to convince the poor to vote for them, one way or another.
The problem here is that helping the working class hurts the people with lots of money to throw at attack ads. As you said, the people are gullible morons, they are not immune to propaganda.
If, hypothetically, the DNC were to fully shift to a pro-working class platform tomorrow, with the policies that implies, their capitalist donors would shift their donations to endless propaganda against them. Everything from half-truths and mischaracterizations to straight up lies.
Elections are not won by superior policy, they're won by superior popularity. Even if that popularity is based on lies and misinformation. The DNC has no incentive to adopt popular policies if adopting popular policies causes them to lose voters due to gullible morons being convinced by propaganda to vote against their interests.
Frankly I think holding out for the DNC to step up as leftist saviors is silly and ignorant of reality. The Democrats have been, and likely always will be, the less bad capitalist establishment party, which only gets support from the left as strategic time-buying votes (and rightly so, I will continue to vote blue-no-matter-who so long as the probable alternative is fascism). They're not likely to save us, and we can't pragmatically expect them to go from less bad to actually good.
There needs to be some kind of solution or compromise though because as has been demonstrated this last election ignoring the working class is just handing their votes to the Republicans. Bernie Sanders demonstrated that it is possible to raise enough money from small donations to run a campaign. Yes the rich donors could out spend that by a significant margin, but I still believe someone with a good plan to address income inequality and out of control cost of living would do well enough to offset that.
The Democrats current policy of catering exclusively to rich donors is a losing strategy. If they ever want to win another election they're going to have to find a solution to that.