Have I been out of the loop on politics?
Wasn’t it the Dems who voted to protect Union Pensions? Republicans voted against it.
Dems voted to extend the child tax credit this year. EVERY Republican voted against it.
And didn’t Kamala Harris run on helping with funding for first time home buyers?
When did the narrative of Dems being against the working class start? Was it just because Bernie said it recently?
Yes, the Democratic party is against the working class. Yes, the Republican party is much, much, much worse. Yes, you have been out of the loop if you need examples.
NAFTA and Wall Street bailouts come to mind.
In regards to Bernie, his premise is that wealth inequality is the core problem, which means tax the rich until they can’t have an outsized influence on our politics.
Taxing the upper class was part of their platform though…so…still unsure as to where there against the “working class”.
We can keep telling ourselves Mark Cuban’s “opportunity economy” was good enough but objectively it was a flop with working class voters. Either it was a messaging failure or it wasn’t populist enough, Bernie is saying it is the latter. If it was a messaging failure, then we’re likely to conclude it is because our media landscape is toxic. Bernie would agree and say that is why we need a populist message to cut through.
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Support for slavery before the Civil War
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Carter’s airline deregulation
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Clinton’s welfare “reform” and NAFTA
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Obama’s finance sector bailout
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Biden blocking a national rail strike
Democrats used to be the conservative party before Nixon (my timing might be off) said “Hold my beer” and turned the Republicans into the regressive Christian theocracy it is today.
So, the civil war thing doesn’t really count because it was a different party with different ideals under the same name.
I think there’s a misconception about elected officials. Many people believe they work to improve the lives of American citizens, but they don’t. Most of their time is spent fundraising and catering to wealthy donors. The majority of them don’t care about you at all.
300 years of screwing poor people. Support for the 2008 bailout for Wall Street. Donations from tech companies. They claim to support Medicare for everyone but haven’t done anything about it. Democrats tend to disregard working class and rural populations. In fact they denigrate them and think of them as uneducated hicks. Remember the basket of deplorables? Obama deported more immigrants than any other president.
I think there’s a misconception about elected officials. Many people believe they work to improve the lives of American citizens, but they don’t.
This. They want votes. They do what they think will get them votes. And yet, often – and in the last election – the democrats that help the people (like by walking a union picket line, supporting LGBTQ+ and basic human rights, legalizing cannabis, reducing penalties petty crimes, etc.) don’t get the votes that are part of the bargain.
They vote for and enact legislation that helps the people, and the people don’t re-elect them. The incentive shifts to satisfying wealthy donors.
Ignoring Bernie for the moment, “against the working class” is usually a dogwhistle for “poor whites have racial nervousness and i want to exacerbate that for political gain.”. You wont find real examples because, generally, professional democrats arent against anyone. (even nazis, apparently.)
Bernie’s specific crtique was a slightly tone-deaf critique that the dems were largely silent on the economic nervousness of the working class, and instead spend political capital fighting for racial and gender equality. Since the white male working class is not oppressed by race or gender, or in a position to really oppress anyone, they often feel unrepresented.
Class is also an Identity. One that most have in common.
Regardless of race, religion, sex, or gender; nearly all of us are working class.
So policies that help the working class, will help everyone. And those subclasses that are disproportionately held back, will be disproportionately helped by universal pro-worker policies.
This is extremely reductive identity politics. The point of the 2024 election results is that Trump made gains with all racial groups. You can’t just boil it all down to identity. Beyond that practical lesson, identity politics is bad for any country because it is a zero-sum game. If we don’t look past identity politics to a common set of ideals, we will end up with people at each other’s throats.
