Zompist wrote:The reason you're getting pushback isn't because you're criticizing the Democrats, it's because a) you do so in apocalyptic terms that make it sound like you haven't done any research,
Well, sorry not sorry. One of the lessons that I take from the second world war (or even something as low stakes as the fascist takeover of the Croation wikipedia (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiHDo5bqNXw )) is that once fascists have taken power within a system, there's no way to remove them except by a superior external power defeating them. Therefore, preventing them from gaining power in the first place is vitally important.
and b) you use Republican talking points.
I gave specific, concrete examples, that lay the elitism of the Democrats out clearly. If you refuse to see it, because the Republicans sometimes say the same thing (cynically and opportunistically, and with no intent or plan to help, of course), then I don't know what to say to convince you.
Here, for an example, is a story about how Biden personally intervened in the auto strike last year, walking the picket line, a first for a US president. He pissed off business— one industry guy said “It’s not only anti-business, it kicks 90 years of impartial mediation by a president to the curb.” Probably related: the companies signed a better deal with the UAW a month later. Biden also supported the striking screenwriters and actors. Here's an article summarizing the many things the Democrats have done for labor.
I know, that's great! I love it! Yet so much more needs to be done!
Basically, my frustration is that despite all those things, my life has still worsened over the last decade. The price of basically everything has risen dramatically, to the point where even simply
eating at McDonalds is a luxury now. Sometimes, like at vending machines, prices double or triple overnight, yet wages haven't budged since I became an adult circa 15 years ago. Every new house built in my city is selling for half a million dollars and is located in an unwalkable neighborhood on the edge of town, and every new apartment building caters exclusively to rich yuppies. Healthcare, prescription medicine, and counselling are so egregiously expensive that I am forced to forgo them. I don't have kids, but my sister does, and she spends her entire paycheck paying for childcare.
Saying "Well, this is the best that liberalism can do." isn't good enough. I may be smart enough to realize that the Republicans are way worse, and refuse to vote for them, but other people aren't. If they vote for the Democrats and feel that nothing improves, next time they'll vote for the Republicans in a desperate attempt to change
something, in the same way that if you flick a light switch, and the light you meant to turn on doesn't turn on, you don't keep flicking the same switch over and over again, but you flick a different switch instead, or not vote at all, in the same way that you might conclude that there's no connection between the switches and the lights and stop flicking switches all together.
But according to you the Democrats are "beholden to capital" and have no bond with organized labor.
So, are Democrats going to undo NAFTA then?
It may be sad, but parties go after centrist voters because those people vote. The whole Sanders thing was a bet that new voters would show up and win elections... hey, it was worth trying, and I voted for Sanders, but it wasn't an uproarious success..
And
why don't many people vote? Because they feel that it does nothing, or there's no candidate worth voting for, or it's too inconvenient. So let's try to fix those things! Showing people that voting
can and will immediately tangibly improve their lives is a good first step to motivating them to vote more!
Other ideas to increase voting:
- Change the system of voting to something besides first-past-the-post.
- Change the system to some kind of proportional representation.
- Make voting less dependent on geography by getting rid of the electoral college and the senate.
- Make election day a paid holiday.
- Provide more voting locations.
- Create a system for online voting, like Estonia. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vUYq_Lfs54 )
- Or, if that's too unsafe, allow mail-in voting for all people and elections.
- Punish them for abstaining, like Australia.
- Or, if that's too distasteful, do the opposite: reward them for voting. (Give them 200$, or whatever.)
- Repeal felony disenfranchisement laws, so nobody mistakenly thinks they can't vote when they actually can. (If they're unsure whether they can vote, they may abstain in order to avoid getting arrested if in fact they can't.)
Of course, these things can and should be implemented at not only the federal level, but also at the state level.
I have complicated feelings about all this. I think you've diagnosed the problem well, but then that just raises more questions, like "why do middle-aged people become fuddy-duddies?" and "why don't they get equally upset over right-wing outrages?"
On the first, there was a very interesting data analysis, which I've tried to find again but couldn't, that says that people don't become more conservative as they age; in fact they become decidedly more liberal. But society becomes more liberal faster than they do. So by the time they're old, they fit into right-wing parties better than left-wing ones.
In the current US, the younger generation has more interest in socialism than people have had for a century. It was by no means evident in the 1990s that this might happen
These things are related. Most people become fuddy-duddies when they own enough wealth to feel like they have something to lose in a revolution (economic or social). Due to capitalism's current crisis of overproduction/unaffordability, the younger generations have accumulated less wealth, and therefore are more interested in reforming or overthrowing the system.
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