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?
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.
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 that they’re seen as corporate stooges.
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.
This is very much on point I have always seen America as as really having four parties masquerading as two. Progressives , corporate Left , Corporate Right, and zealots and bigots. The problem is the Corporate Left and corporate Right have been edging Progressives and the zealots and bigots on single issues but never following through as they wouldn’t have anything to campaign on. Trump was too stupid to realize this but when he killed roe. Not to be crass but he finely let the zealots and bigots cum and they fell in love. With Progressives that happened with Obama but he just kept edging us never truly giving what we need other than it could be worse. Instead of single-payer Health we got a Republican idea for healthcare. Every Progressive will tell you that the electoral system is broken but do we ever get running on election reform. No because both Corporate Left and Corporate Right don’t want that. The country is divided up like cable companies Charter gets the northern states and Comcast gets the southern states. But they didn’t see musk going over their heads with StarLink fucking up the arrangement.
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.
Maybe so, but if it’s guaranteed shittiness vs. possible improvement, obviously people will make their own decisions about gambling.
I think it’s a bad gamble, but I understand it. And also, one major point is that many people think “it’s going to suck either way, fuck it, I’m staying home”.