How the Democrats wandered away from America’s workers
How the Democrats wandered away from America’s workers
A pro-labour Democrat’s career traces the party’s erratic path
Not signing up. But I’ll take a guess. “Democrats chose to embrace trans people” (even though they remained closed-lipped), “didn’t court conservative voters” (even though they did), “didn’t tout their achievements with kitchen-table economic issues” (even though they did relentlessly), “didn’t embrace labor” (even though the Rs were actively hostile). The “centrists” got exactly the campaign they wanted but still want to say the left was too left.
I think the original sin was that democrats after Reagan felt they needed to court big business and so Bill Clinton passed NAFTA. NAFTA basically gutted the middle class and accelerated the erosion of union power, which had been the base of democratic power as well. So, the Republican Party now has both the ultra wealthy and the white working poor. This is pretty remarkable given that their interests do not align at all.
After Reagan broke the unions. The funding had to come from somewhere. That's why Clinton courted the oligarchs. Before Reagan did that, Democrats were heavily funded by, and campaigned for by unions. As Unions and their funds dried up. Democrats weren't going to pay for media space with fairy dust and farts. But it was still necessary to reach the average disengaged insulated American. Which is most of us.
People really have no idea what the situation is. Pointing to record amounts gathered from small donors in election years. Thinking that should be enough. Without realizing that Republicans/conservatives/oligarchs spend multiples of that amount A YEAR. EVERY YEAR!
People wonder how others can vote for someone so obviously bad. Their mistake is thinking its obvious. There's a reason conservatives spent the last 40 years creating purposefully partisan outlets and allowing media consolidation. He who controls the media, controls perception.
The article opens up talking about NAFTA, so at least it's starting from the right angle: policy and international forces.
Well, Republicans are more likely to identify as working class than Democrats.
So you admit to not reading the article, but still proceed to critique what you assume it contains. And get up voted!
Nobody read the article and he said what people want to hear.
Buncha crap.
RepubliQans built an entire Potemkin media landscape and scraped their viewer’s minds clean on a daily basis. DNC cannot grok this. They depend on corporate news sewers to portray them, and as always they get stabbed in the back by both-sidesing republiQan-owned shit factories. That world of The West Wing where honest media affected voters has been gone for decades, it would sure be a good idea for the DNC to wake up to that fact.
This “Better Jobs” view was always a corporatist Dem position that was doomed to fail, and often did.
Sigh. Paywall
Free trade’s just a dandy concept/Advertisers tell us so/Don’t you question, don’t you doubt it/You’re so stupid. You don’t know.” So goes a song Sherrod Brown composed on his guitar back in 1993
Democrats' messaging remains consistent to this day.
Democrats’ leftward lurch on economic policy
Consisted of telling people who were suffering to be happy that billionaires were doing so well.
Even in 2024, Mr Brown felt he weathered attacks over transgender athletes and illegal immigration. “The ad that beat us,” Mr Brown says, was one that declared a vote for Mr Brown to be a vote against Mr Trump. “There was no really good answer for that,” he says.
The answer Democrats settled on has been to abandon trans people rather than embrace workers.
It was Sharrod Brown losing that made me realize I didn't belong in Ohio anymore.
"wandered"
More like shit in their faces and then sprinted away at top speed.
“The ad that beat us,” Mr Brown says, was one that declared a vote for Mr Brown to be a vote against Mr Trump. “There was no really good answer for that,” he says.
It basically comes down to race for those voters.