Because it’s convenient to have bad faith actors sowing discord before any election.
Tankies (sleeper conservatives that they are) can’t rely on logic, merit or hope for a better tomorrow, so they cause as much chaos as possible to their perceived ‘enemies’. This chaos includes the encouragement of unrealistic statements and general cognitive dissonance.
My true thoughts are that they went too far and started to believe their own drivel as generations of hexbears rose and fell and shit themselves into .ml
They aren’t. Republicans lie all the time and some people are stupid enough to believe them.
Democrats are elite in that they are smart
These billionaires are morons
Because the Democrats abandoned working class voters in the 80s and 90s to court the professional-managerial class in a pivot towards the center, and the Republicans were able to win over these disaffected blue-collar voters with resentment politics.
Some of them, but the Republicans still average higher income than Democrats.
The much bigger issue is that voters in general skew higher income than the general population, because working class voters are almost entirely disenfranchised.
In some categories, but overall Dem voters get more income. I think most wealthy donors skew Republican, which is reasonable and rational. Why shouldn’t they vote for self-preservation? No one justifies to these wealthy donors that no one wants a handout.
People, regardless of their socioeconomic status, should be taxed appropriately for the resources they use. If your business is generating billions in revenue, and your net worth is multi mill+, you got a lot of benefit from the civilized order of society. That’s basically what your taxes are for. Well, that and human potential is worth investing in as that’s how we got so far here. It would be great to go further instead of boiling to death in some war torn, poverty stricken wasteland, but I digress.
Here’s some data on income by party, I can’t speak to the quality of the source: https://www.thehivelaw.com/blog/average-income-republican-vs-democrat-by-political-party/
Probably for the same kind of reason that “everyone knows” that the corporate media is a “liberal media”.
“The media is liberal!”
“Who told you that?”
“The media.”
Because it was always about projection.
Accuse your enemies of that which you are guilty.
because US politics is center right vs far right
Because democrats value egalitarianism and education. Good education is expensive. The businesspersons that have expended the most effort to offshore our jobs to the serious detriment of working-class America have had some of the most expensive and exclusive educations of all, and they are some of the wealthiest people on the planet… (conservatives fullstop here and ignore the rest: …who are also likely voting conservative). Couple that with the fact that expert (educated) advice and direction is often in direct conflict with the myopic goals and views of the uneducated. Don’t dump shit everywhere (but it’s cheap, easy, and fun to roll coal and pour used motor oil on the ground!), don’t cut down all the trees (but mah lumber is more expensive!), and maybe wear a mask (grandma was gonna die eventually anyways, at least I can bring her Covid from the Applebees take out!)
So it’s really easy for the conservatives to paint education = evil, and then of course they couple that with feel-good bullshit like “common sense” and small-town American wisdom that is completely meaningless but makes the uneducated feel smart or like they have control of their situation.
Because the media continually accepts and perpetuates the right wing framing of everything.
Because the media is owned and operated by rich men who benefit from putting the blame on others and calling it “news.”
/thread
All threads starting with “Why” and ending in a question mark, can be answered: “Money corrupts people”
This is one of the greatest scams that conservatives get away with IMO, not just in the US but it happens in the UK and other places too. Conservatives get in, go hog wild cutting taxes, selling off public assets and throwing huge contracts to their friends, and then as soon as the other side gets back in they find that they have to now balance the books, the conservatives start complaining and saying they’re the fiscally responsible ones.
It’s literally happening right now in the UK - we just got rid of the Tories finally after about 15 years, and the new Labour government immediately found a £20 billion hole in the economy which they now have to make harsh cuts to sort out, and they’re the ones getting criticized for it by the media.
We need a government report card.
At the end of every administration, we need to compare the national debt and all important factors.
It’s one thing people missed in coming up with democratic systems. If different people take turns to steer the ship then you need to define what their goal is so you can evaluate each.
I’d half agree; they could raise taxes instead of making cuts.
Don’t say this around any conservative. They only believe in cutting taxes.
They always have these “household budget” analogies when it comes to the government, but even in a “household budget” situation one solution to overcoming debt is to find a way to raise your income so you can pay down the debt faster…
That generally also does not go over well in the media.
Conservatives make a mess to their advantage and win/win every time
Sure, because the media is generally profit oriented and therefore aligned with capitalist interests. We need more mutually supported and supportive media and journalism.
not just in the US but it happens in the UK and other places too
Damn. Can’t believe New Labour is getting tarred with accepting soccer tickets, fancy clothes, and vacation packages from British Peer Lord Alli. Seems so unfair. Wish people would stop accusing the Labour government of being corrupt, when they are very obviously following the rules of accepting gifts and definitely not operating on any quid pro quo.
the new Labour government immediately found a £20 billion hole in the economy
New Labour has a set of accounting rules that count investment in capital as an expense and insists on running daily budget surpluses for their operating expenses.
Popping open your household account, making cartoonish bug-eyes, and announcing “We owe $200k on our 30 year mortgage but we only make $80k/year! We’re bankrupt for the next three years until we pay this house off!” This is New Labour accounting. It’s laughable and only ever used as an excuse not to spend any money.
On the flip side, this is the same party that insists on privatizing everything. From Thames Water to British Gas to UK Rail, every once-public service has to be turned over and rented back from the private sector. The Brits pass out these privatization contracts as sinecures, guaranteeing their financial friends huge piles of free no-risk revenues at the expense of the British taxpayer. And then they complain that the country has no money.
That New Labour slid directly into the driver’s seat the Tories left and gunned it isn’t something you can ignore, simply because the party leadership has changed.
To be brief, it’s propaganda designed to keep rural voters red. Ie- “those big city folk don’t care about you.”
Partly…
But also that the Dem party today is significantly more “conservative” economically than we used to be, as the article points out:
In 1910, Teddy Roosevelt thundered his warning that “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power” could destroy US democracy. Roosevelt’s answer was to tax wealth. The estate tax was eventually enacted in 1916, and the capital gains tax in 1922.
In the 1912 presidential campaign, Woodrow Wilson promised “a crusade against powers that have governed us … that have limited our development … that have determined our lives … that have set us in a straitjacket to do as they please”. The struggle to break up the giant trusts would be, in Wilson’s words, a “second struggle for emancipation”.
Wilson signed into law the Clayton Antitrust Act, which strengthened antitrust laws and protected unions. He also established the Federal Trade Commission to root out “unfair acts and practices in commerce”, and created the first permanent national income tax.
Years later, Teddy Roosevelt’s fifth-cousin, Franklin D Roosevelt, attacked corporate and financial power by giving workers the right to unionize, the 40-hour workweek, unemployment insurance, and social security. FDR instituted a high marginal income tax on the wealthy – those making more than $5m a year were taxed up to 75% – and he regulated finance.
Plus, Teddy was the first presidential platform that used universal healthcare…
So part of it is that Republicans lie and propaganda
But if the modern Dem party didn’t think the Dem party platform from a fucking century ago wasnt “too extreme” the modern Dem party would be as popular as it was with FDR.
I think that’s more of a symptom than a root cause. republicans’ goal since the 70’s has been to pull the lower and middle classes to them with wedge identity issues like abortion. the whole “elitism” thing is a part of that too. So now the parties are competing on those wedge issues and identity more than economic progress, as they were in FDR’s time.
Like, you understand that if the Dem party wanted to, they could still be that economically progressive, right?
And that in doing so it mitigate Republicans lying?
The Dem party becoming more economically conservative is solely the fault of the people choosing to do what donors want over what Dem voters want…
Both parties focusing on the “wedge issues” is by design, that way the wealthy who donate to both parties always win…
The only people who control the Dem.platform is Dem party leadership, them choosing wealthy donors over voters is literally no one’s fault except the people running the party who keep repeatedly making that choice.
I get wanting to blame Republicans, but we can’t on this one.
It’s literally as easy as Kamala deciding to do so at this point, it’s a month from election and she’s the candidate. But she’s not, instead she keeps moving to the right economically the closer we get to the election.
The Dem party becoming more economically conservative is solely the fault of the people choosing to do what donors want over what Dem voters want…
Do not make the mistake of thinking nerds on the Internet represent the Democratic Party rank and file. They like neoliberal economics.
They like neoliberal economics
Then why did 08 Obama carry the party and flip red states when all those neo liberals voted R due to the PUMA movement?
The neo liberals are not a majority of voters, they just still have a death grip on party leadership positions at the DNC
Then why did 08 Obama carry the party
… because Obama was a moderate neoliberal.
instead she keeps moving to the right economically
It’s not all “Move to the right.” Just this week she suggested expanding Medicare for in-home care.
Just this week she suggested expanding Medicare for in-home care
Which is like the most widely abused part of Medicare…
Not by people, by predatory providers who max out benefits while going months without even calling their “patients”.
Jon Oliver just did an episode on it this season even, was just like a month ago I think.
As long as someone makes a profit on healthcare, it’s going to be absurd by overcharging and undeserving.
We need a nationalized system lol kentge VA where there’s no insurance middleman, Medicare gives us one middle man which just doesn’t solve the root problem.
It’s been 112 years since universal healthcare was part of a presidential platform, that being “too extreme” for today’s candidat is making my point, not disputing it.
You need to look at the longer timeframe.
Fortunately both Biden and Harris support an unrealized capital gains tax, which would be an absolutely huge move. If we can acquire both houses of Congress and thus the ability to pass laws, we may actually achieve it.
Also, have dems cut taxes or regulation on the wealthy at any point that you can remember?
the point is there would be more of a political mandate for economic change if our demographics looked more like this today. that map is never going to happen today no matter how progressive dems go on the economy, because of the work republicans have done to divide us over the last 50 years.
The point is there’s been a political mandate for economic change for over a century…
The reason the Dems don’t have the numbers to accomplish it, is them giving up on progressive economics.
Think of it like a restaurant. One that used to serve food people wanted and was always busy. Then the restaurant got kick backs from a differemt food supplier. One whose food was worse, and thus unpopular.
The restaurant loses business because the food gets worse, it takes a while because people only go out to eat every four years, and the only other restaurant serves shit sandwiches exclusively.
People won’t still go out to eat and pick the shit sandwich, they’ll just stop going out to eat. The patrons of the shit sandwich restaurant will eat anything, they’ll keep showing up.
In this analogy, that explains the decrease in Dem voters while Republicans stay steady.
We can bitch and moan when the shit sandwich restaurant is the most popular, but bullying people to still patronize the restaurant that’s a shadow of it’s former self isn’t going to work as well as that restaurant just serving the food customers want.
But they won’t do that, because they make more serving cheap shitty food even if they get less customers
It’s really as easy as running a Dem candidate that is as progressive as Dem voters.
Hell, Pennsylvania is an important battleground state where close to 60% of voters want to ban fracking…
If Kamala gave voters what they want on just that one single issue it would likely hand her the presidency. But she’s not.
For some reason we only hear “this is what voters want” from the Dem.party when it’s used to rationalize being more conservative. When the voters are more liberal than the party, the voters are told their views don’t matter, and that depresses turnout which is why we don’t have “the mandate” we used to.
I hope that makes sense.
People won’t still go out to eat and pick the shit sandwich, they’ll just stop going out to eat. The patrons of the shit sandwich restaurant will eat anything, they’ll keep showing up.
continuing with your analogy, people have NOT stopped going out to eat. a significant portion have absolutely gone over to the shit sandwich shop.
a greater percentage of voting-age people voted in 2020 compared to 1932. In 1932 they were much more unified under FDR, today we are more evenly split between R and D.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_presidential_elections
If the two restaurants both serve shitty food, there’s not as much judgement for eating a shit sandwich. Because everyone eating at a restaurant is eating ahitry food. It becomes normalized.
The “good” restaurant becoming ahittier doesn’t steal customers from Shit Sandwiches, it just makes people think that shit sandwiches isn’t as crazy as it seems because both restaurants serv shit.
Which still fits.
Dems moving to the right year after year and adopting things like fracking and a border wall when a decade ago we said only a racist idiot would want those things… Makes the average American question if other “conservative” ideas are really as bad as Dems say they are, or if 5 years both parties would want them.
It only hurts the left and helps the right
I also wish the Dems would promote more progressive policies. At the same time, the media does not celebrate the wins for Dems, such as the creation of the CFPB that Elizabeth Warren established. They don’t celebrate the response to oligopoly through review of mergers and acquisitions by the FTC under Lina Kahn. They don’t celebrate the reduced child poverty rate under the expanded child tax credit. Positive progress doesn’t make it to mass media even when it does happen, which isn’t often enough.
By the same token, they report everything trump says…
The report everything Vance says, but also Biden and Kamala too.
If Biden and Kamala talked about those things, then the media would too.
Kamala just went on an interview blitz, I watched some of it, didn’t see her being up anything you mentioned. Did she in any of the recent interviews you e seen?
She was just on Colbert, he’d have let her say anything she wanted to…
Do you remember what she choose to discuss?
Edit:
Walz just talked about ending the Electoral college, and the media reported on it.
But they also reported on Kamala distancing herself from it.
That’s an example from like today of what I’m talking about. All it takes for the media to report on something is a high ranking politician saying it. There’s so many and so desperate for ad revenue they will cover anything that comes out of someone’s mouth if they’re on the presidential ticket.
Death had to take him sleeping. For if Roosevelt had been awake, there would have been a fight.
Damn I miss Teddy. One of the last presidents to truly give a fuck and put the actions behind it.
He really wasn’t one of the last tho…
Not by a longshot, hell, Ike was the last good Republican and he was long after Teddy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States
Things were going pretty fucking great till the original “October surprise”
According to the allegation, on top of the Carter administration’s agreement to unfreeze Iranian assets in U.S. banks in exchange for the release of the embassy hostages, the Reagan administration’s practice of covertly supplying Iran with weapons via Israel likely originated as a further quid pro quo for having delayed the release until after Reagan’s inauguration, setting a precedent for covert U.S.-Iran arms deals that would feature heavily in the subsequent Iran–Contra affair.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_October_Surprise_theory
Which is why I’m so fucking nervous hearing right wingers start using that phrase lately.
They might not know where it comes from, but somewhere the person coming up with their talking points does. They just don’t spontaneously come up with shit, they parrot the phrases they’ve heard.
But anyways, on the timeline of our country things have only been getting worse since we stopped running progressives and started Bill Clinton and the neoliberals.
We had a brief respite with Obama, but when you compare Obama and Carter and remember there was 27 years between them…
Obama wasn’t anywhere near as progressive as we should have been.
“Moderate” democrats is not a successful strategy, we have all this freaking data and history to support it, but we just fucking ignore and keep letting the wealthy run shit cuz it’s easy.
Sure.
But man no one taxed the rich and built stuff like Teddy did.
Stop blaming the Dem leadership and look at the facts.
The voters heard Donald Trump say that he liked grabbing the pussy and that he didn’t like soldiers who got captured.
People are choosing garbage because they’d happily eat a ton of manure if it meant they could blow stink in a Libs face.
We need to bring back the Bull Moose Party (at the local level, not the Russian-backed spoiler effect garbage like the Green Party is debasing itself at).
A better idea is to do to the Democratic Party what the Tea Party and MAGA did to the Republicans.
Primary out corporate candidates and push for progressive ones at every level. President, congressional rep, school board trustee, dog-catcher: it doesn’t matter.
The problem progressive voters have is that they don’t show up, and the especially don’t show up during off years, in primaries and in down-ballot races. The polticial right, by comparison, has been getting people in place on small races for years.
Sanders did more for progressivism by enthusing Democratic members to vote in primaries and down-ballot races than Stein or any third party has ever done, and we’re seeing results. It needs to continue.
That’s a nice thought, but it won’t happen because the ratcheting effect of primarying out moderates only works in one direction, rightward. This is because corporate donors are just as happy to fund fascists as they are moderates.
In contrast, progressive candidates often don’t stand a chance because corporate donors fucking hate them and will spend effectively unlimited amounts of money to destroy their chances, especially if they make regulation and oversight of corporations a big part of their platform. Ditto for the police “union[sic]” and police reform, or AIPAC and opposing genocide, for that matter.
I can see the reasoning that the presidency is the biggest office and gets people talking about third parties the most…
But the reason the Green Party is obviously a grift is they focus on battleground states for those presidential runs.
If they were doing what they said they’re trying to do, they’d focus on states like Cali where they can get the media attention and votes while not handing the presidency to Republicans.
Like everything in American politics, it all depends on what state something is happening in
But conversely, the “spoiler” factor of even a fuly realized Green campaign is nil if the Democrats tack left. Pull the plug on Bibi and Jill Stein has very little to talk about.
It’s like they know the party will never bother to win those voters, and assumes they’ll capture them as good-enough/lesser-evil.
If she did this and raised taxes on corporate and individual wealthy, it would be a win of historical proportions.
Yep, if the easiest votes to get were between the two parties, Republicans wouldnt pull the shit they do with far left parties while embracing the far right.
They’d move to the center to fight for those mythical “moderates” or at least have the Green party positioned slightly to the right of the Dem party.
But they’re not. Because Dems just use those mythical moderates as an excuse to do what big money donors want. Moving to the right is effective at raising money from billionaires, but completely ineffective at increasing Dem votes.
The party and the voters don’t have the same goals.
Propaganda makes you believe that one of the two party is your fiend. Meanwhile for the past century both the red and blue party has served elites interests and fuck over everyone else (including the planet). The proof is that you are a peasants and it would take you a couple of minutes just to visualize how much a billion is.
The system is working as intended. A country created by the wealthy, for the wealthy, and controlled by the wealthy.
Having said that the two sides of the same coin is a bunch of bullshit when you see 60+ years of hate and fear propaganda conducted by conservatives.
Making every modern amenity a partisan issue and is also no mistake. It is very clear one side is keeping us from free education, free/cheap healthcare, equality, and a living wage. It is even clearer when they are pushing for more child labor, pollution, racism, and sexism.
You are contradicting yourself.
The system is working as intended. A country created by the wealthy, for the wealthy, and controlled by the wealthy.
It’s not hard to understand, in such a system you don’t make it to the top unless you belong to the wealthy
To Democrats, “elites” mean your in some top percentile of wealth and income. To Republicans, “elites” means having a college degree.
This is the correct answer to the question the Guardian poses. I’ve lived among them and can 100% confirm this is how they think.
Elites is all about having a college degree and being “book smart” vs their “street smart” or “wise in the ways of man” sort of bullshit charlatans throughout history have used to make up for a lack of critical thinking skills.
It really is the right answer. But I think we can sharpen it if we look at how the media around Democrats elevates and highlights elitism as a quality to be pursued, for example, in a candidate.
A great example of this was the treatment of Pete Buttigieg, and specific media outlets elevation of him to a nationally relevant political actor. Harvard, then Oxford Rhodes scholar then a decade long McKinseyite (that alone should have disbarred him from running for president), then intelligence officer US Navy. He was the definition of “qualified” to the CNN and NPR editorial boards.
But how well had only political bonafides were a failed run for treasurer in Indiana, and a mayoral victory where he garnered all of 10k votes. So the guy has never actually won any significant state or federal elections. Yet in 2020, suddenly this guys is gets treated like a serious contender in the Democratic primary. Why?
Democratically aligned corporate press is obsessed with credentials, and specifically, the kind that comes from “elite” schools and organizations. Partially because they themselves also come from these elite schools and organizations.
We really have become addicted to certifications and tags and qualifiers for everyone because it’s easier to “understand” them at a glance and that’s decided as all you need.
On paper is good enough for far to many, it’s just easier to categorize people and move on.
Being in your categories is the easiest way to automatically think of then as moral and good because they must be, you are. It’s fucked up both parties. Look at Eric Adams and Marco Rubio.
Very true. The Dems could really stand for more blue collar qualifications. Especially if we treated “local union president” half as well as “McKinsey employee”
So they basically turned anti elitism to anti intellectualism so they can fool their audience.
I mean, I thought we all knew that.
I wonder what kind of people ran on anti-intellectualism in the past? Maybe around the time of UdSSR, or some German leader? Maybe some famous leader in Cambodia as well?
Yep, my comment was more about how this is kind of a tail as old as time thing.
Basically mob mentality.
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To Republicans, “elites” means having a college degree.
Also depending on the context can mean “lives in a city” or “pays a mechanic to fix their car instead of gets their hands dirty” or “doesn’t go to church” or “makes fun of country folks / rural people” or “eats any food that isn’t fried or served in a disposable bag and eaten between 2 buns.”
…But they’re never consistent, b/c they think that Trump, a literal billionaire who lives in a big city, definitely never has gone to church or gotten his hands dirty fixing cars… is somehow not elite.
…I mean… he probably doesn’t eat anything that isn’t fried / between buns, but that’s about it.
It’s incomprehensible / inconsistent.
It’s also how we talk, how we walk, and that we often come from elsewhere and think differently.
It means the nerds you shoved in lockers who learned to read and now have successful lives while you scrape by trying to make alimony at a job that would pay a living wage if you didn’t live in a right to work state.
See that’s the elitism. Plenty of bullies made it out and plenty of their victims didn’t. Ruthlessness is profitable and you don’t have to be a good person to go to college.
How exactly is that elitism? You’re specifically arguing against the meritocracy that they consider elitism, all that fancy book-learnin.
Their mascot shits on a golden toilet in his own private country club ffs.
You’re assuming everyone stuck in rural America in a shit job with grievances is a shit person who did it to themselves. A lot of them are, especially the die hard republicans, but plenty had hard choices, or any number of other decent reasons beyond just not being smart or something.
And yeah their mascot is a filthy rich asshole, and a lot of them do suck ass. But also I spend enough time with those people to know plenty of them aren’t terrible but they are sick and tired of being treated like inherently morons for being rural
I get that, but I was that nerd shoved in lockers, and while the Midwest was decent, in the south it was far worse because I wasn’t white.
The south tolerated those assholes a lot, and they were extremely ignorant, and their ignorance was a source of pride for them.
I don’t want to demean the Midwestern red staters in any way, other than they clearly follow the wrong person, but the south is following moloch, their literal antichrist, out of hatred of others, and I’m fine holding them in contempt for that because it’s no better than I would expect for them.
Also, they scream and scream about a Bible they’ve never read, and I say that as someone who went to catholic school, they thought I was lying like I said I memorized the phone book.
That’s not what (((elites))) mean to Republicans.
A lot of times they amp up the dog whistle and say (((global elites))).
Because Republican voters never, ever seek evidence or utilize basic critical thinking when their hatred steeped biases are confirmed.
A sufficiently hatemongering, and therefore trusted conservative talking head could say “Kamala Harris is a secret Aids Virus in a skin suit made of harvested fetuses made human size by George Soros’ double secret reverse shrink ray!”
And you’d cue thunderous Republican voter applause with shrieks of “I FUCKING KNEW IT!”
Because rich Republicans also own the media.
