The way I see it, identity politics (LGBT/Women/Minority rights and cultural acceptance) are the only things we've moved left on, and they're the only things the Democrat Party will consistently get tough on. On any other issue, it's hard not to believe that they only pretend to be progressive but powerless, and take advantage of the threat of Republicans persecuting gays and banning abortion to expect a free pass on everything else.
Economically, yeah, we've definitely drifted right. But I don't think it's just taxes. As far as I'm aware, market regulation has been slipping my whole life, and this was responsible for the recession that has defined my generation. Practically nothing was done in response to that whole thing, and at the ground level, it has never ended. The official message is that we recovered, but the near entirety of that recovery went into the pockets of the 1%. Unemployment numbers are supposed to be better, but those numbers don't include people who have given up looking or been without a job for a certain amount of time.
Labor laws are a joke. It varies by state, but where I live at least, there are very few things an employer can do that the employee has any right to contest. And the exceptions are mostly related to identity politics. An employer in Indiana can literally fire somebody with the words "I'm not legally required to provide a reason for firing you. Bye." I know people who have shown up to work to unexpectedly find a box of their stuff waiting for them with those words, and that was it.
Working 60-70 hours a week at a decently paying job or holding down 2-3 low paying jobs is the norm. The minimum wage is atrocious, but it's the only legal recourse on issues of pay. Yet there are loopholes even to that, which employers keep finding ways to exploit more and more, such as what we're seeing now with the gig economy managing to in essence employ people for less than minimum wage. Or jiggering people's hours precisely to avoid benefits requirements.
Not that we technically had more legal recourse in the past that I can point out specifically, but in my parents and grandparent's time, people were less afraid of their employers firing them on a whim. And there was much more unionization. Collective bargaining was how fair pay was achieved. But unions have been all but eliminated. Not only that, but this has shifted so far to the right that pay negotiation on an individual basis at hiring is becoming increasingly the norm, and this is combined with a strict taboo on employees discussing pay with each other. Most employers in logistics have a strict policy of firing anyone, no matter how important, immediately if caught sharing information about how much they make. And instead of the cultural discourse on this being "how did we get from collective bargaining to being forbidden from talking to each other at all?", you're far more likely to read an article proposing that we should be allowed to talk about pay as if it's this daring novel idea that's gaining momentum for the first time in history. If that isn't what a center shift to the right looks like, I don't know what does.
On foreign policy, it's not even controversial among most of my generation that war for profit has been an ongoing norm for our entire adult lives, and that both parties have been involved in it. Establishment Democrats are near identical to Republicans on the issue of Israel, also, where human rights are being flagrantly disregarded. Just look to Clinton's statements on Israel and compare to the opinions of the progressive wing.
How about surveillance? Whistle-blowing? Police brutality? Protesting? All got worse under Obama. His administration was uncontroversially the worst in U.S. history for whistleblowers, and this coincided with an increase in the frivolous classification of information and weakening of government responsibility to freedom of information requests. Overbearing mass surveillance of course continues unabated, even after the revelations of Manning and Snowden and extensive public debate on the subject. And Occupy was violently shut down by coordinated action between federal and state law enforcement, often involving illegal methods and the oppression of journalism. It can be argued that these things may not have been the Democrat's fault, specifically... but it's hard to give them the benefit of the doubt when they're fucking silent through all of it. Obama was challenged in person on all of these subjects at various points, and all he ever did was acknowledge the question without giving an answer and quickly move on as whoever spoke up got forcefully removed from the scene. There is zero visible sign of action or message on these issues, even at a time when they held the position in government that is the most powerful for delivering messages and setting a tone, especially in response to current events.
On environmental issues, most people I know who consider themselves moderates also consider anyone who self-describes as an environmentalist to be radical. This is a drastic shift from 50-60 years ago, when even the classic republican poster child of corruption (Nixon) was also the man who established the EPA, among other things.
Today, Democrats seem schizophrenic on the subject. I know Obama did some things. But he also did some other things. Like he was angry at BP after Deepwater Horizon... but then afterwards, he still went ahead and authorized huge swaths of ocean off our southern coast to be opened up to drilling anyway. Democrats always say something about the environment in their platforms, but it's always vague and never spoken with anywhere near the urgency it deserves. The achievements I'm usually pointed to as "progress" on the subject are always intangibles, and meanwhile, global ecosystems continue to unravel at an increasing pace.
But there was a clear litmus test for Democrats on the environment a couple years ago -- Standing Rock. This was an unprecedented situation. This wasn't just a controversial pipeline. This was a case of the sovereignty of indigenous lands guaranteed by treaty being violated, and militarized STATE police forces being shipped in from thousands of miles around to enforce an occupation on land they had no jurisdiction over on behalf of moneyed interests (so also tied in with everything I wrote above). This was literally an offensive military action being carried out by state police. And their methods were brutal. Sending dogs in to maul protestors. Spraying them with water in the middle of freezing winter nights. Strip searching people and then locking them naked in dog kennels overnight. And the response was unprecedented too. Three hundred native american tribes were represented at this conflict. This was the greatest act of solidarity among native americans in history. This whole thing was a BIG DEAL, and it was right in the middle of a campaign season where we had an insurgent progressive candidate and an establishment candidate, so we could very clearly compare their responses to the issue. How do they compare?
Bernie: Was vocal on the subject throughout his campaign, and showed up in person to a protest at the White House, where he gave a speech imploring Obama to take action on it.
Hillary: Dead silent, except for a single statement which she couldn't even be bothered to make herself. It was released by a campaign official in response to DAPL protestors traveling thousands of miles to occupy her campaign office and demand she receive a letter begging her to address the issue. Here is the statement.
We received a letter today from representatives of the tribes protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. From the beginning of this campaign, Secretary Clinton has been clear that she thinks all voices should be heard and all views considered in federal infrastructure projects. Now, all of the parties involved—including the federal government, the pipeline company and contractors, the state of North Dakota, and the tribes—need to find a path forward that serves the broadest public interest. As that happens, it’s important that on the ground in North Dakota, everyone respects demonstrators’ rights to protest peacefully, and workers’ rights to do their jobs safely.
Such an inspiring statement that fills me with confidence in the Party's convictions on the subject. /s
And less than a year later, there's a 210,000 gallon spill (a number that has since been revised to 407,000 gallons) from the Dakota Pipeline, relatively close to the subject of these protests. Any comment by Democrats? Of course not.
You can tell me that Hillary's platforms were near-identical to Bernie's all you want, and she did say a lot of vague stuff about the environment being important and green jobs and such in debates. But I can't find any exceptions to the rule that when it comes down to tangible events and opportunites to take action, the party and its chosen ones suddenly can't be asked to acknowledge the issue exists. As long as this trend continues, platform is meaningless.
In light of all the above, I fully expect that voting for a traditional, moderate Democrat directly translates to losing on most of the political issues that matter to a progressive, and not even a radical one. Nothing I took issue with above is objectively radical, except when compared to a "center" that is generated from the perceptions of comparison between a D party whose behavior and speech on all of the above are incredibly weak vs an R party that speaks and behaves boldly. When this is the dynamic, of course the perception of what the center is will be skewed in a certain direction, and attempting appeal to that center will directly entail abandoning the side of politics that they claim to represent.
It's not a winning strategy, and I'm not being hyperbolic when I claim that they're abandoning their base.
Pew Research say 74% of Democrats oppose the Keystone XL pipeline, and 62% say that climate change should be a top priority. This is not a radical fringe. Again, the center they want to appeal to is based on perceptions of what feels like the middle ground between a weak D and a bold R. In many cases, it does not reflect on the actual political opinions of their voting base, because in our age of information and media, most people are motivated to take a stance on an issue. They are literally abandoning their voters, and then crying that people are so immature for not "strategically" voting for a party that does not represent them. They will find a way to make amends or they will continue to lose. So far going into the next couple elections, it looks like they'll stay the course, and continue to illusion themselves about the results. We're already seeing miserable messaging failures on the subject of healthcare, as word gets out that candidates are being strictly barred from using the words "single payer" in a political ad. I've done some reading on that and understand it's because they think "Medicare for all" is a better wording... but cynicism is flying everywhere on this point, and understandably so.
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Topic: AmeriPol thread (Read 3588985 times)