Memes

Pandering only works if you're delivering more of what your audience wants than your opponent. It yields no votes from right wingers when they can choose fascists and get more of what they want.

But it does alienate people who would otherwise be your natural allies.

About 40% of it is.

It really isn't that right-wing, especially economically, but there's a lot of factors that make it seem that way. First is that it did go through a large, neoliberal shift int he 80s during the Regan years. When the economy crashed in the early 90s, the Democrats decided that, instead of returning to their New Deal roots, they would also run on neoliberal policies. The Republicans moved further right because of that, especially on social issues, and then the Rachet Effect described in the meme really started to ramp up.

Couple this with a lot of political illiteracy among the public in general, and you get a lot of people who actually don't know what they believe and default to partisanship. If you poll people if they support gun control, you will get a very negative response, but if you break gun control into individual measures (longer waiting periods, mandatory background checks, magazine capacity limits, etc.) you get much more support. It's the same on almost every issue; people don't support a, "big government takeover," of the healthcare system, but they broadly support Medicare for all. There's a somewhat famous picture of a guy holding a sign that says something like, "Get Your Government Hands Off My Social Security," that I think sums up this ignorance pretty well.

This attitude isn't limited to the right, either. If you asked a Democrat "Who deregulated Wall Street?" they'd probably tell you Regan, Bush, or the other Bush. In actuality, the most significant deregulation, which lead directly to the 2008 financial collapse, was Clinton's repeal of Glass-Steagal. Liberals think that Obama made a significant progress on regulated Wall Street, but what he put in place was nothing compared to the deregulation that proceeded it.

Citizens United and the rise of mega donors also plays a pretty significant role in moving the parties away from policies that the general population want and towards the goals of a few oligarchs, but this reply is already way too long, so TL;DR: the country got pretty right-wing under Regan, both parties became more right-wing as a result, the population has become much more left-leaning since income inequality/cost of living went way up, but the parties are still both right-wing and most people are too ignorant to understand that.

If you're getting your perspective from billionaire-owned news, (which no fault to you, is most major news-sources) it's no wonder that you'd think that. By the way, that's the exact same narrative the "billionaire-bullypulpit" push here in the States, even though it isn't so.

These politicians and the media have the same lock step lie. They say they're moving to the right "because their voters are", but they're just gaslighting folks as cover for what they were doing anyway; whatever their rich donors tell them.

Where do you get your opinion of Americans? The answer doesn't' matter because every media outlet, including social media, is owned by billionaires. Lemmy being the possible exception, but don't tell me you get the impression that Americans are right wing from here.

Doesn't it seem weird how many think pieces about Trump voters there have been in the past decade? I've never seen an article about an Anarchist. Not a single article about someone who didn't vote. Meanwhile, every algorithm takes you to the furthest right content you'll accept.

Nope, when you poll on individual policies, they're way to the left of the democrats.

The democrats showcase healthcare bill wasn't "subsidies for employer-based health insurance, that you have no idea what it's going to cost and have to buy at a specific time of year by going to one of 50 sites provided by your state at a specific time of year and filling out a bunch of forms or face a tax penalty, with a sliding scale based on income, marriage status, and other factors" because that's more popular than "free healthcare".

Same if you ask americans about Biden (and Harris's) policies of "loan forgiveness for PELL grant recipients up to X dollars depending on age, loan repayment status, income, parent's income, and whether you were born on a prime-numbered date" vs "free college"

The democrats compromise their bills, not because there's a bunch of "moderates" who are exactly between democrat and republican who will vote for democrats if they promote garbage versions of progressive bills that don't actually help anyone, but because they know those versions are less likely to pass and be easier to chip away at, and therefore won't piss off their billionaire patrons.

Stay outside and stop talking