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 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.”
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.
I don’t think he needs to convince you of that. The results of your election are plain for all to see.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 Democrats 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”.
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. I love and admire those guys, don’t get me wrong, but there’s no question that people at the low end of the economy feel pinched from both ends, and one side of that pinch is the commodification of unskilled labor due in part to an unbounded supply of immigrants.
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.
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.
Isn’t the unemployment rate close to record low? I mean, a lot of people work 2 and more full-time jobs to make ends meet, but that seems like a different issue.
Unemployment is typically measured by people seeking unemployment benefits, not by volume of people out of work.
Similarly job creation is usually measured by job offerings and not positions filled.
As a result you can get what has been happening: low unemployment and high job creation where people aren’t getting jobs and jobs aren’t being filled.
They have different lists for different things. Real unemployment is closer to 30% than 3.
Where do you get that number from?
Good reply. I’d also note that the working class sadly tends to have less education, which is very useful because it has made common people easier to control and lie to since the dawn of time.
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.
Excellent write up, I donated to Feed the Children in your name.
Democrats didn’t campaign on their economic plans. They dove deep into MURICAN PRIDE, fighting against dictators and drug cartels, and continuing the work of the Biden Administration. They played advertisements like THIS on TV in September. They campaigned in states that they lost in by trying to appeal to Republicans.
Less democrats total voted this year than 2020.
But yes, you’re right to think that Republicans are worse for the economy in every way.
In their defense you would think just being against fascism might be enough. Turns out it isn’t.
That’s been the case since '16. Things need to change at the DNC because maga sure as shit aren’t going away.
I lived in a small town that literally didn’t believe COVID was real. During the pandemic, rarely anyone was masked up and then they got extra racist to a poor Chinese family and their restaurant.
These simple motherfuckers don’t see or understand fascism. They didn’t even see what they did to the restaurant as racist. These dumb hicks vote on gas prices and how much toilet paper cost.
“We are against the big bad fsscist guy! But we still like to do fascism abroad, do not worry guys!” It’s not a particularly powerful statement to the antifascist, nor to the fascists
And the rightwards pivot chasing the “regretful Trump voter” and that stellar Cheney endorsement.
Republicans voted GOP just like they always did. People who wanted anything resembling change stayed home. Unfortunately they’re going to get that change…
I voted Harris, but the Democrats need to abandon neo liberalism and embrace economic populism. People need affordable housing, healthcare, affordable healthy food, and a plan for the climate that doesn’t involve mass extinction.
That being said, these people won’t live long enough to see the worst of it. I hope that I don’t. I don’t have children, but I imagine that if you’re under 35 right now, you’re going to live long enough to see the water wars.
I voted Harris, but the Democrats need to abandon neo liberalism and embrace economic populism. People need affordable housing, healthcare, affordable healthy food, and a plan for the climate that doesn’t involve mass extinction.
She did do this. It didn’t resonate. Who knows what will get through in 4 years. Because who knows where this train is going. They need the house and congress to make real moves.
There won’t be another real election.
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.
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.
It’s not hard to explain. It’s not about vibes. The DNC is pro-corporate, which means they’re anti-worker. They push few policies that benefit the average person.
Take the housing plan, for example. Raise the limit on the tax break for first-time home owners. Is that good? Sure it’s better than nothing, but if a home that used to cost $200K now costs $800K, an extra $30K won’t make it affordable. But more money might help the banks a little bit. Or take the federal minimum wage. It should be $25, but it’s not, because the DNC just doesn’t care, and they never will.
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.
What is the incentive for the democratic party to ever chase votes rather than money?
If you get voted into power, lobbyists give you even more money.
You only get money if you do what the lobbyists (not the voters) want.
They’ve taken the side of corporations over unions and dangle popular policies like Medicare for all until the general election where they abandon it.
But mostly it’s vibes. The Dems don’t say “it’s hard we’ll fix it” they say “it’s actually going really well we already fixed it”
Absolutely this.
This is going to sound awful coming from a person who voted for Kamala. But when Trump wanted something, he pushed forward and gave zero fucks who he burned. Trump wanted a wall, and then there’s a wall. Granted, it’s shitty, it’s expensive and an eyesore, and it does absolutely nothing and no Democrats voted for it (that I’m aware of). But to the stupids, they see it as a win.
Democrats fight for a policy, and then carve it over and over to appease corporations, billionaires, conservatives, and anybody who might feel threatened by it. And to those who could really benefit, they suffer. So yeah, I can see why people would shrug at giving a vote for Kamala.
Again, I voted for her. But in reality, I want a candidate who will go, “Listen motherfuckers. All kids in America will get fed. Suck my dick if you hate it. Every single kid will get a sandwich and if you speak again, will destroy you.”
LBJ was a monster. He sexually harassed and assaulted everyone. He killed so many people in Vietnam. He was pretty fucking racist. And I swear to shit we need more democrats who act like him in leadership (outside those aspects). He’d say slurs against people if it got them more civil rights. The Buck stopped there and he’d make shit happen. I swear, I’d kill for a democrat who could get republicans to vote for queer rights even if that requires them to call us every slur in the book. We need a great society. A country that can stand up for us working folks and for us minorities. An America of higher ideals forged by those attempting to live up to them.
We need that or an FDR, someone who can offer up a new deal, a fairer and kinder America paid for by the prosperity it creates. Instead we’re getting a whole lot of Andrew Johnson at best and Hindenburg at worst.
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.
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?
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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.
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.
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.
Ah, but didn’t Biden throw the train union under the bus? I think he did. And neither Biden nor Obama pushed to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, and also to key it to the cost of living.
Even though Biden’s regulators did take some positive action, a lot of that was this calendar year. Why did he wait so long? A cynic would say he didn’t believe in what he was doing, but even a non-cynic would say that it was a bad way to campaign, because you can’t erase 3 years of incompetence with 1 year of regulation.
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.
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?
How is this true?
No, it’s not true. The liberals never had the working class’ backs.
Liberalism fetishizes capitalism, remember?
I don’t doubt Bernie Sanders though - he seems like a straight truth teller.
He’s not consciously lying - Bernie, like all liberals, actually believes you can (somehow) represent both the interests of the working class while also representing the interests of the capitalist class that is parasitizing off their labor. As any leftist will tell you, this is pure delusion.
I’m very intrigued by your definition of Liberalism. It doesn’t correlate with liberalism across the world.
It doesn’t correlate with liberalism across the world.
Really? Find me an anti-capitalist liberal. that should be very easy if this…
It doesn’t correlate with liberalism across the world.
…was the truth.
I’m an anti-capitalist liberal.
No, Clyde. You’re not.
You are just politically incoherent, like people who call themselves “fiscally conservative and economically progressive” (or whatever claptrap so-called “centrists” tell themselves).
Liberalism fetishizes capitalism. If you’re anti-capitalist, you have abandoned liberalism.
This is not complicated.
Next you’ll be telling me you’re an anarcho-fascist.
u mad bro?
This makes you less of a capitalist bootlicker… how, exactly?
I don’t have to prove myself to you because there’s nothing to prove.
It’s a pissing contest, and I refuse to get piss on me.
But if that’s your thing, I won’t kink shame.
Of course you didn’t provide your own. That’s typical, sadly enough. We all know there are varying definitions, and if you’re going to undercut someone else’s, which may be a reasonable thing to do, why not bring yours to the table? … But only if you care to continue the conversation.
