There’s no debate, it’s very clearly right wing Republicans. There is a neat campaign on lemmy to conflate the American “liberal” with the European “liberal” and the term “neoliberal”. It’s absolutely obvious to anyone who’s ever paid attention to American politics before, but these propagandists always deny it and there’s a lot of kids whose only experience of politics is via TikTok starting last year, who get fooled.
The term neoliberalism has become more prevalent in recent decades. A prominent factor in the rise of conservative and right-libertarian organizations, political parties, and think tanks, and predominantly advocated by them, neoliberalism is often associated with policies of economic liberalization, including privatization, deregulation, consumer choice, globalization, free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society. The neoliberal project is also focused on designing institutions and is political in character rather than only economic.
That’s Republicans. Just Republicans.
And before you start saying “Democrats are right wing”, fuck you that’s some bothsides propaganda too. The Democratic presidential nominee supports raising taxes on billionaires. They are NOT neolibs.
There’s no debate
You’re right, but for the wrong reasons.
During Nancy Pelosi’s first terms in Congress in the late 1980s and early 90s, few Democratic leaders questioned the need to tack to the center to win over the prized white middle-class voters who could, they believed, make them the majority party once again. After the debacle of the 1994 midterm, Bill Clinton adopted that strategy—to win reelection and nudge the party toward embracing the business-friendly outlook of the Democratic Leadership Council—but without alienating his base among urbane liberals.
In his 1995 State of the Union Address, the president seemed to embrace the conventional Beltway wisdom that the conservatives who had just taken command in Congress had also won the battle to shape public opinion. “The era of big government is over,” Clinton declared. He called for “balancing the budget in a way that is fair to all Americans,” a goal he said enjoyed “broad bipartisan agreement.” Democrats, it appeared, would no longer abide by the Keynesian theory that budget deficits were fine as long as spending created jobs and lifted Americans out of poverty. The next year, Clinton signed a “welfare reform” bill that cut back payments to single mothers in need. By 1998, tax receipts from an economic boom had indeed made it possible for the government to balance the budget for the first time in almost three decades.
Before the president left office, he also signed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, passed during the Great Depression, which had prohibited commercial banks from investing the money of their depositors on stock speculation and other risky financial ventures. The party once known for fighting for the interests of wage earners and small farmers against big business now seemed intent on rolling back nearly any regulations that made CEOs unhappy.
And before you start saying “Democrats are right wing”, fuck you that’s some bothsides propaganda too.
As usual, the question is “to the left of what” and “to the right of what”.
If you stack the Democratic Party leadership against the average Senator or Congressman, you’ll find a left wing candidate. If you stack them up against a mean voter, they’re solidly centrist. If you put an American Democrat on a global stage, they’re solidly to the right of the mean.
But modern Democrats are definitely a corporate party. They get their money from big business. They draw the bulk of their candidates, appointees, and administrators from big business. And they have their policies dictated to them by powerful corporate lobbying firms of various stripes. The populist democratic movement of the FDR era is thoroughly eviscerated. This is decidedly a party by, of, and for business management.
This may come as a shock to you, but Bill Clinton is not the President. Or even in office.
Democrats went through a period of trying to court right wing and centrist voters. That was thirty years ago. Let it go.
Democrats went through a period of trying to court right wing and centrist voters. That was thirty years ago.
Not even six months ago.
I find it funny you claim there is clearly no debate while having a debate about this. The reason the person linked that article because of a different section:
Unrelated to the economic philosophy described in this article, the term “neoliberalism” is also used to describe a centrist political movement from modern American liberalism in the 1970s. According to political commentator David Brooks, prominent neoliberal politicians included Al Gore and Bill Clinton of the Democratic Party of the United States.[48]
Aha! You might say, it clearly says it is unrelated to the economic philosophy, but the point is that the word can often refer to different things, including Democrats.
Here is another quote from that link:
Neoliberalism is distinct from liberalism insofar as it does not advocate laissez-faire economic policy, but instead is highly constructivist and advocates a strong state to bring about market-like reforms in every aspect of society.
Sounds a lot like the Democrats to me.
As for your talk of comparing European liberals to American liberals being “propaganda” I disagree. I don’t know if this specific movement in lemmy that you speak, but I don’t think it is propaganda to show that one could want to shrink a gigantic government to medium one (European liberal) and they would be the same as someone who wants to expand a small government to medium one (American liberals). Healthcare being an obvious example here: the United Kingdom wanting to privatize NHS could be considered similar to Democrats who want to just regulate an already privatized system. The end state is the similarity not the action taken to get there.
I think this is an interesting discussion and am not trying to prove that European libs are the same as American libs, just proving that there is clearly debate here.
Ok, let me step back a bit.
Most things are debatable by honest parties. The world is complicated and yes, there have been occasional times when the term “neoliberal” has been used by different groups. And I’d be happy to have a discussion about that.
Lemmy is NOT the forum for that discussion. The majority of posters here are NOT debating in good faith. They weaponize nuance to try and shift goalposts.
This applies to almost any topic.
Bringing up a brief, limited, temporary usage of the term from 40 years ago is just ammunition that they’ll use to push their “Democrats bad” agenda. And undecided Lemmy readers in general cannot psychologically handle nuance.
So for things which are generally true, or mostly true, you have to discuss them in absolute terms. It’s like teaching a 5 year old that the world is round, and then teaching a 12 year old that it’s actually a bit squished. Lemmy users are 5 years old, and there are people out there trying to convince them that the world is flat. They’ll use terms like “there is some debate” or “the science is not settled” to introduce doubt.
If we were in a venue where I could trust participants to have a rational and reasoned discussion, sure, we could talk about different permutations of the term and different ideologies attached to it. For our purposes, here, the answer must be “No. Democrats are not neoliberal.”
I see no evidence to suggest that the majority of posters here are not debating in good faith, most posters here seem to me just normal humans who have biases and emotions - but I’d hardly call that bad faith. If you think this low of lemmy and its users I don’t really understand why you are spending time here.
Even if your assumptions of lemmy users where true I don’t see how that affords you the opportunity to discuss without nuance. Discussing in absolutes and without nuance would categorize you in the “weaponize nuance to try and shift goalposts” crowd I’d say.
But you do you
Its been a while since I’ve seen someone be so confidently incorrect. Thanks for being a novelty.
Accuses Wikipedia of being confidently incorrect
Refuses to elaborate
You people are hilarious
That’s republicans who are supporting consumer choice, globalization, and free trade? Are you sure about that?
