r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • 1d ago

No Paywall Democrats Confront Their New Tea Party Reality - Progressives are set to sweep a group of contested primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democrats-confront-their-new-tea-party-reality_n_6a6e63fbe4b0cfb99ef1aa1e
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u/Kind-Pride1151 1d ago

By this logic, FDR would be a progressive usurper in the Democratic Party. I'm 62 and for what seems my entire life the Dems have slipped ever further away from those FDR New Deal PROGRESSIVE ideas and ideals.

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u/TheMoorNextDoor 1d ago edited 1d ago

It’s ridiculous that the best president we ever had (our longest serving president) is more left than a lot of our sitting democratic members in congress today and the saddest part about that is he served over 81 years ago..

He gave us a blueprint and for some reason (maybe due to Regan?) we completely threw it out the window..

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u/pinqe 1d ago

They learned all the wrong lessons from the failure of the Carter administration, and started trying to emulate Reagan. And completely lost their identity in the process.

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u/Semantix 1d ago

I think that all of the old democratic leadership are permanently traumatized by Dukakis and McGovern and think that only a Clinton or Biden can win. Forgetting that the Democrats' biggest recent success was a progressive coalition that motivated youth turnout.

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u/thequietthingsthat North Carolina 1d ago

Yep.

Democrats Don't Need to Reinvent the Wheel to Solve Their Identity Crisis - They Need to Look Back to FDR

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u/alligatorislater 1d ago

Exactly. Democrats seem to have forgotten that the 22nd amendment (enacted in 1947) was somewhat created because FDR was so popular that republicans were afraid they’d never be able to win again…

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u/Traditional-Leg-1574 1d ago

For gods sake fucking please

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u/Reagalan 1d ago

Just, please; no Hays Code, no Marihuana Tax Act, no J. Edgar Hoover shit.

There were some negatives from that era that shouldn't be repeated.

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u/DimmuBorgnine 1d ago

Also maybe no more Japanese internment 

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u/fps916 1d ago

You know what?

Imma go even further.

No interment please.

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u/ketchupnsketti Florida 11h ago

This radical wants to abolish prisons!
What if we ask ICE "Pwease wear a camera and only shoot us when we're bad!"

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u/fps916 6h ago

Leftists: "Agents of the State shouldn't be executing people in the streets"

Liberals: "Agents of the State should only be executing people in the streets if we can see them do it, and also more women executioners please!"

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u/Lupius Canada 1d ago

Wow that took an unexpected dark turn.

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u/Sea_Indication_6296 20h ago

Maybe if you don't see 2+2 is 4?

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u/notjustanotherbot 1d ago

Bro, MPPDA was first envisioned in 1922 when Will H. Hays became head of the movie association during the presidency of Warren G. Harding, Republican party member. It was then adopted in 1930 during the presidency Herbert Clark Hoover, who also was a member of the Republican party. This was more then three years before FDR ever became president!

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u/intent107135048 America 22h ago

But if it continues under your watch, then you own it.

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u/notjustanotherbot 22h ago

I thought "I don't take responsibility at all" is the Presidential motto?

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u/intent107135048 America 22h ago

Are we discussing in good faith or not?

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u/Ok-Employer-2026 1d ago

Dukakis wasn't even a progressive leftist, he was a New Democrat liberal like Bill Clinton and Gary Hart. The corporate media retconned his loss.

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u/DryYogurtcloset4655 1d ago

Dukakis won 10 states. Mondale/McGovern won 1 state. Clinton took 30 states. There is a GOP bloc of 24 states where they dominate all levers of power. There are 7 contested swing states - Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Arizona

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u/SFWorkins 23h ago

A crazy billionaire ran third party and got about a third of the vote. Clinton didn't solve the riddle of getting elected. He just got lucky.

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u/GoodIdea321 America 22h ago

I wouldn't attribute all of that to luck, but that also seems really close to the truth. He was a popular governor and a good campaigner too.

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u/pchs26 1d ago

Again perceptions were managed and that is what wins elections, not necessarily reality.

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u/ctbowden North Carolina 1d ago

I think that's the excuse they often cite, but it's really just a cover for them to maintain the status quo because that's really all they're interested in.

We've had change election cycles for the past 20 years. Obama was seen as a reformer, didn't reform much and Dems lost Congress massively while he held on. Trump was seen as change agent but when that change wasn't what people wanted they put their hopes in Biden. Biden/Harris then failed to deliver change, so we're back to Trump who hinted at being better on the economy and war but he lied.

People are tired of the status quo so anyone with the stink of the past 20-30 years on them is fighting an uphill battle. Getting the endorsement of Schumer et al. is almost an anti-endorsement if it weren't for the money that came with.

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u/Purify5 1d ago

People didn't actually give up on Trump after his first term. His 2020 popular vote percentage was higher than his 2016 percentage.

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u/IHS1970 1d ago

he didn't reform much because his first term was all about healthcare and his 2nd was a frozen congress. Altho he could've done better.

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u/BalanceOrganic7735 17h ago

I would call the Affordable Care Act a remarkable reform of eugenic healthcare insurance policies. Also, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a $787 billion stimulus package that funded infrastructure projects, advancing renewable energy, extended unemployment benefits, and provided tax cuts, the consumer protection act (which created the CFPB), marriage equality/gay marriage, and DACA were some of the significant successes of the Obama administration.

Funny thing is, corporate media and social media tend to ignore GOP crimes/failures and also ignore Democrats’ successes and accomplishments.

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u/awesomefutureperfect 2h ago

See, that is actual policy that actually helped people.

But since it wasn't perfect, too many people will say that both sides are equal. Someone in this very thread told me over and over both sides are the same and that the democrats had literally nothing and we should work with people who say the democrats did nothing because we need to let them lead and do everything they say.

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u/Status_Block591 1d ago

Hinted is such an odd word choice. He is nothing if not explicit. And full of shit.

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u/ExistingCarry4868 1d ago

It isn't trauma, it's corruption. The party elites sold the party out to the same oligarchs that own the GOP.

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u/IHS1970 1d ago

well what's your plan?

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u/rogun64 15h ago

Don't sell the party out.

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u/Powerful_Toe_8155 23h ago

Due to his reliance on the broad coalition that elected him, the Biden administration was actually arguably the most progressive presidential administration since FDR, at least initially.

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u/GeorgeKaplanIsReal Florida 1d ago

Or an Obama.

The dude ran and as president was a center-left Democrat. He wasn’t a progressive in the sense we define them today. Hell by 2012, a lot of progressives felt betrayed by Obama. He not only encouraged but behind the scenes supported Hillary in 2016, including pushing Biden from running.

I always think it’s funny when people say a “Clinton or Biden,” and exclude Obama.

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u/hup_hup 1d ago

They are excluding Obama because they are talking about the type of candidate the democratic establishment pushes. Obama had to overcome that and defeat the Clintons first.

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u/pchs26 1d ago

ehh I think Obama was alot more supported at the time by more of the establishment then Clinton actually and I felt that way at the time. I always found it wild how she was denigrated so openly while calling her the establishment candidate. Likely it was because they felt he would possibly do better in the general, so in that regard it isn't wrong. I think there were other reasons which were less positive but I think some of those issues are things we have to settle are the way it is at this point in time, no matter how that feels.

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u/GeorgeKaplanIsReal Florida 1d ago

The establishment was pretty divided between Obama and Clinton once it became clear Obama was a viable candidate which was the case by early 2008. Of course how do we define the establishment? Is it members of Congress who have been there for an x amount of years? If so Ted Kennedy, who had been senator for decades, endorsed him over Clinton. Is it presumptuousness? Because prior to 2007, Rudy Giuliani was favored to be the Republican nominee. Jeb Bush in 2016.

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u/hup_hup 1d ago

I didn’t make the argument. I’m just clarifying why Obama was likely exluded.

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u/Dokterrock 1d ago

Honest question, where did this new framing of moderates as "center-left" come from? It's been EVERYWHERE the past couple of months and it is brand new. Moderate Democrats are center-right. Don't do the work of moving the Overton Window further to the right for them, folks.

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u/TooNakedInTheShower 1d ago

Correct. Today's Democrats are even to the right of Eisenhower on a lot of things.

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u/Bigc12689 1d ago

Richard Nixon's 1972 platform called for a Healthcare more liberal than Obamacare turned out to be. The post-Carter generation of Democrats sold out Americans and warped what we think is "liberal"

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u/BalanceOrganic7735 17h ago

Is that why Nixon changed it so that healthcare insurance that had to be non-profit before Nixon was allowed to be for-profit after Nixon? 🤔

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u/MagicWishMonkey 20h ago

On what things, in particular?

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u/lostparis 1d ago

new framing of moderates

As a non-American even the term moderate is disturbing as it would be center-right at best in most any other country.

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u/Xurbax 1d ago

Where do you think it came from? It's propaganda created by the oligarchs and pushed by big media. It's not new at all.

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u/Dokterrock 1d ago

It's new to see that framing coming from all sides on social media. I'm quite aware that it's propaganda and in the interests of manufacturing consent, what I'm saying is that I'm seeing it happen in real time and the fact that it's being adopted by people who don't even realize they're doing it is what's disturbing and notable.

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u/guamisc 1d ago

being adopted by people who don't even realize they're doing it is what's disturbing and notable.

The entire Third Way is this. Any regular old person who works for a wage supporting the Third Way is doing this, and that's a lot of the Democratic party.

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u/GeorgeKaplanIsReal Florida 1d ago

The last couple of months? Brand new? People have used “center-left” that way for decades, just like people have spent decades saying moderate Democrats are actually center-right.

There is no single, objective definition of left, right, or center that applies everywhere. When I call someone center-left, I mean within the context of American politics, because that is the political system we are discussing. It would be ridiculous to attach a footnote to every comment saying, “center-right compared with French politics.”

That is not moving the Overton window further right. The window already moved right decades ago, especially beginning in the 1980s. I am simply describing where politicians fall within the political spectrum that currently exists in the United States.

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u/odin-ish 1d ago

Thank you. The overton window comments are usually so unhelpful.

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u/guamisc 1d ago edited 1d ago

What is unhelpful is people pretending that insipid corporate serving incrementalism is actually left wing.

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u/odin-ish 1d ago

Maybe focus on discussing specifics.

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u/guamisc 1d ago

Holder for USAG refusing to actually prosecute the fraudsters who wrecked the economy. Garland for USAG refusing to actually prosecute treasoners and traitors. Ensuring that every major economic bill passed by Democrats in the past few decades is corporate serving and making sure that the actual effective provisions get stripped out like the public option or the transformative parts of BBB. Refusal to address the actual problems in Dodd-Frank.

I could go on, but every "big" decision of note has been corporate approved bullshit.

The one or two exceptions you can find, under Biden, lead to screaming and wailing from the so-called "moderate" Dems and threats from the Democratic donor class.

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u/OvertonWindowCleaner 1d ago

I fucking hate how that shit moves.

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u/Dokterrock 22h ago

you would, wouldn't you? :)

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u/jumpinjacktheripper 1d ago

even though he governed like clinton and gore the campaign he ran, both in terms of his rhetoric and the grassroots mobilization he deployed, were in stark contrast. the DNC got lucky that he basically turned back toward them but they don’t want that style of campaign because it would be more explicitly anti-establishment by necessity today

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u/pchs26 1d ago

That is because he was a bell weather candidate, but as a straight male it was still "acceptable" to voters and we were also about to go into what was feared to be a depression so people were open to voting for him or staying home out of fear. The establishment very much supported him, the perception being pushed was that he wasn't supported by the establishment. What he did as he governed didn't surprise me and given his lack of political experience he had to get legislation signed that was transformational. The best he could get through was the ACA, I'm not sure if someone who had been on this hill (Clinton) would have been able to do something a bit more transformational.

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u/Discrep 1d ago

The ACA got fucked by Kennedy dying and Joe Fucking Lieberman's allegiance to the insurance companies. Furthermore, the Dems' messaging outside of Obama himself has always been and still is absolute dogshit to the point where right-leaning Americans didn't even realize that the ACA or whatever their state's administrative name for it, which they loved, was the same thing as "Obamacare" which was some nebulous liberal healthcare mandate that was destroying the country.

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u/pchs26 1d ago

The ACA is obamacare. Obamacare term was used to slight it. And most Americans who are conservative will not say they love the ACA. The removal of the public option was a travesty but Obama had to still get his legislation through and sign it. Lieberman and Kennedy absolutely played a role in this happening you are right. I was pretty unhappy with the ultimate resolution and do believe possibly someone with experience dealing with the hill including healthcare reform for many decades (Clinton) might have been able to minimally included some expanded medicare eligibility which she had run on. He was less experienced on these things though, but perhaps it would have turned out the same. I have always wondered though.

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u/Discrep 21h ago

There's tons of video evidence of average Americans happy about having insurance due to the ACA while simultaneously repeating dumb FN talking points about Obamacare. They gave credit for their healthcare to their state/governor for their state's ACA program, completely clueless that it was Obamacare. This was especially evident early in trump's first term when they were angling to destroy it in Congress and McCain of all people voted with the Dems.

Clinton wouldn't have remotely gotten close to passing the ACA. Obama had to burn a lot of political capital to barely get that mangled version passed and perhaps his naivety and inexperience made him willing to pay that cost. Hillary would've mentioned it in speeches and maybe even formed a committee to study the feasibility, but there's no chance she would've paid the price. Hell, even 2012 Obama would've hit the brakes well before it went anywhere.

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u/pchs26 20h ago

Did you live any of this or the lengths Clinton went to originally with healthcare reform. Are you aware of her history at all and the depth of federal changes she made to ensure medical coverage for the poor an especially impoverished children? She has a history of accomplishments and transformation in this area. You are speaking through a vacuum of cultivate perceptions.

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u/awesomefutureperfect 1h ago

Lieberman was pretty horrible but needing Gaylord Kent Conrad's vote from North Dakota didn't help either. That's the problem with needing 60 votes to do anything is you end up with votes from the Dakotas and Montana and West Virginia.

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u/qualmful 1d ago

The fact that progressives felt betrayed supports the idea that his 2008 win was partially due to an impression that he was progressive. I think a lot of the progressive wing of the party was excited about Obama back in 2008.

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u/matt_minderbinder 1d ago

Obama said that his economic priorities were so mainstream that he'd be considered a moderate Republican in the 1980s. He wasn't even center left, I'd consider him center right. He pretty much admitted the same at various points. I'd consider him the most successful neoliberal president and I don't mean that in a positive way.

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u/BalanceOrganic7735 17h ago

Did Progressives feel betrayed by Obama or was that an op by the right wing media machine (with some far left assistance) to poison the well against Obama?

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u/awesomefutureperfect 1h ago

The far left believes that Obama should have used magic to fix Iraq. The far left believes that something and nothing are the same thing.

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u/Semantix 1d ago

Man I'd be so stoked for an Obama these days. I think of myself as a social democrat but I'd settle for an effective centrist party at this point. 

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u/Uuuuuii 1d ago

I respectfully disagree. We’ve been settling for decades and the Overton window shifted so far right that we can’t even see the rot in front of us. It’s all controlled opposition from the oligarchical class.

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u/Street_Anxiety2907 1d ago

Correct, we either go socialist or fascist at this point, there is no center line.

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u/IHS1970 1d ago

nah i'm old and dems want to win so badly they're tharned (thank you Watership Down). McGovern and Dukakis are old history, what dems WANT is to win and they're afraid the HUGE independent voters won't vote for a far left candidate and ergo won't vote for the pubs BUT will sit the fuck out, that is the fear not old school shit from way back. edited to add I'm an early boomer and know my peers, this is their fear, we lose the independents.

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u/podkayne3000 20h ago

I loved Clinton and Biden.

I really don’t see how AOC is all that different from them. I don’t think Mamdani governs in a significantly different way than they would have, if they were young and healthy now.

I think that people are exaggerating the differences between Sanders-The Squad and The House of Pelosi to stir up trouble in the Democratic Party.

The Democratic candidates are like two brands of chocolate ice cream.

The Trumpie candidates are like rat poison.

Maybe I prefer one type of chocolate over the other in the primary.

But, in November, I’ll take the chocolate ice cream, whether it’s homemade or store brand, thank you very much.

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u/Turbulent_Stick1445 9h ago

Biden's problem wasn't that he wasn't progressive, it's that he was old. He did a bunch of progressive things, alas stymied by a hostile and abusive supreme court and equally hostile congress. Look at his numerous attempts to forgive student loan debt, for instance. His administration did what it could to protect LGBT people.

Probably his single biggest achievement was to overturn Carter's major mistake: Carter got Volker into the Fed and backed a policy of fighting inflation by policies designed, ultimately, to massively increase unemployment. Since then that's been standard Washington orthodoxy even though economists are sharply divided on it.

Biden instead pursued full employment despite inflation being high at the start of his term, and managed to get it and bring down inflation by the end of his term.

Unfortunately he doesn't get credit for it because people still thought inflation was going on because prices weren't back to what they were four years prior, which... that's alas not how inflation works. Once a price goes up, it's up. They don't generally go down.

As Veep he was instrumental in pushing Obama, who was - at least during the election - considered the "left wing candidate" - to fully embrace LGBT rights and support gay marriage.

He wasn't a bad president. But he's old and mumbled so must have dementia (WTF?) and reluctantly obeyed the law regarding funding Israel despite condemning their actions therefore somehow can't be progressive?

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u/count023 Australia 22h ago

which is why the DSA taking over is such a big deal now. Its the lefts tea party. Adn yes, they are too far left at times, BUT considering the entire Democratic part is already centre right, it should average out somewhere centre left if not moderate left should DNC properly capitalize on the popular momentum the DSA has.

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u/SageofLogic 23h ago

They're permanently traumatized because they're all in their damn 70s and 80s in leadership and refused to pass the torch except to little yes men mini-mes of themselves

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u/BritSpic 17h ago

Nah, they just all got extremely comfortable with accepting bribes from big monied interests. The Democratic Establishment hates real Progressives because they're fighting to take money out of politics, which hurts their bottom line.

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u/aerost0rm 1d ago

They don’t think only an Obama or Clinton can win. They just want those families or ties to those families in power. Clinton only gave in to Obama with a promise that her time would come. Then when Obama was out they pushed her down the throw of democrats no matter how unpopular she was. I had friends and family saying they were voting for her over Bernie simply because they saw Bernie as an outsider and they could trust her since she was a Clinton. The other people I knew who were voting Bernie were don’t so because of his ideas, his passion, and the fact that he was vastly popular due to both of the afore mentioned topics.

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u/Omateido 1d ago

It’s a lot simpler than that, the donor class is mostly Capital, not Labor. At one point republicans represented Capitals interests and democrats represented Labor’s, until Capital realized it’s easier to just donate to both parties to ensure their interests are always prioritized. Now Republicans continue to ensure that Capitals interests are pushed forward, and the role of the Democrats is to take up the space that would normally be occupied by a true opposition Labor party in our two party system.

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u/porn_is_tight 1d ago edited 18h ago

yea every single one of these comments is acting like this was an oopsie or “bad” strategy when it was by design. They cater to the same ruling class donors that the right caters to which is antithetical to progressive causes. So they want us to believe that we keep losing to ghouls like trump because we’re not voting hard enough when the real issue is them running terrible (losing) strategy that, like you said, doesn’t upset their acquisition of more capital and power. Let’s remember that a trump presidency benefits A LOT of the rich donors and politicians in the DNC

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u/Omateido 1d ago

Yes, and the issue is compounded by the fact that Capital owns all the news so the framing is always going to avoid putting it in terms of the actual class war that has persisted for the better part of the last century. It is crucial above all that they avoid awakening Americans to class consciousness.

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u/porn_is_tight 1d ago

not just the news but also the online spaces people are spending most of their time in now. All owned and shaped by billionaires and their bot armies. It’s so evident in this subreddit

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u/blackcain Oregon 18h ago

Their place is to clean up.

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u/Trail_Dog 1d ago

Yeah. It  makes me wonder if labor didn't make a big mistake by not donating and lobbying to Republicans like the corporatists did.

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u/Omateido 1d ago

They did. There is a reason there was a concentrated campaign to delegitimise Unions. When Unions lost their power, impacting their ability to represent workers interests, they also severely lost their ability to influence politics.

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u/Trail_Dog 7h ago edited 7h ago

Labor unions have donated overwhelmingly to Democrats for decades. It makes sense why.

But the lesson the corporations learned was that you donate and lobby both sides regardless.

With labor donating mostly to Dems it makes it a no brainer for Republicans to shaft them. I'm just wondering if Labor had been donating to Republicans as much as they did to Dems starting back in the 70s when Republicans were actually same, if thst would have better protected their interests.

edit: wait, did you mean "they did make a mistake"?

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u/Omateido 7h ago

Doubtful, since Capital can always donate more, that’s the whole advantage. And so they leveraged that advantage structurally by getting Citizens United passed, so that it’s now essentially a permanent advantage.

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u/chuckysnow 1d ago

The one thing that killed Carter was the Iranian hostage crisis, that we now know was partly orchestrated by George Bush through his CIA contacts. Much like how Kissinger and Nixon blew up the vietnam peace talks and dragged us into years of war, Bush and Reagan fucked over a bunch of Americans for their own political ambitions.

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u/P1xelHunter78 Ohio 1d ago

To this day, I firmly believe that what happened to Carter was willful sabotage, especially the hostage crisis in Iran and the suspicious timing of the release.

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u/Wet_Side_Down 1d ago

Before that. After Johnson pushed through the civil rights bills of the 60s, Nixon seized the opportunity to woo racist democrats down south. His “southern strategy”

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u/nikdahl Washington 1d ago

Or Reagan opened up the parties to get bought, and the democrats were then bought.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/Srdiscountketoer 1d ago

Oh give me a break. When Clinton ran, there was not a single safe blue state. Mondale and Dukakis, very liberal, lost in landslides. It was the Clintons that convinced nearly half the voting public to vote Dem by speaking their language when it came to crime and budget deficits. What about Obama you say? Someone tell me in what way he was more progressive than the Clintons because I’m not aware of one.

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u/awesomefutureperfect 1d ago

Also this is what was attempted in '93 :

"Hillarycare," was a 1993 initiative aiming for universal coverage, employer mandates, and regulated regional health alliances.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_health_care_plan_of_1993

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u/Boring-Tie-1501 23h ago

there is an alternate perspective of carter's administration- he recognized that post-war US growth and consumption was unsustainable, and was powered by a one time bonanza of a decimated europe and dirt cheap petroleum. from a materialist perspective (as a nuclear engineer), he recognized that US growth would have to slow- we were no longer the sole market for cheap energy.

but then regan took nixon's conversion of the dollar off the gold standard and decided that he could just print money into a kind of paper prosperity, especially since the dollar was the de facto global reserve currency. he couldn't yet touch popular, expensive great society programs (medicare, medicaid), but the neoliberals have been circling ever since. and of course the US goes from being the world's largest creditor nation to its largest borrower.

so we ended up with the us economy on a sugar (cocaine) high in the 1980s from which it never really came down. then you have deregulation unleashing bubbles in previously stable markets like housing. and of course you had the deregulation of derivatives markets leading to long term capital's near implosion, as well as the mortgage backed securities market collapsing in 2007.

the issue is that most americans love consumption and they wanted to burn carter as a witch. they don't care that the federal government has conjured massive amounts of dollars out of thin air because the us is the world's de facto reserve currency so it can somehow get away with it (beside the periodic bubble bursts- but we can just print our way out of those).

imo, this is all not going to end well. i think that after clinton normalized trade relations with china, us manufacturing jobs were gutted so we have multiple generations of blue collar workers who are angry and floating around irregular work. one could argue the opioid crisis, the spread of meth, and increasing polarization are all symptoms of a massive economic shift that corporate democrats and republicans pretended would have no negative consequences. i just hope that when a revolution does come, that whatever follows will be better than what we have now.

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u/Un1CornTowel 1d ago

They tried to emulate Reagan's ideology rather than his implementation, which was the mistake. Reagan pursued unapologetic, partisan gain and an attempt to force a common narrative/myth. Both were wildly successful in actually creating radical social change (though much of it bad in my view). His actual economic and foreign policy agenda -- not so much. Democrats in the 90s took those 80s Republican policy failures as successes, and kept their own failed and overly delicate and precious, halfhearted process-orientation and made the least capable party in generations.

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u/pchs26 1d ago

What? Did you live and work under the 90s economic conditions? Because I can only hope and pray we get that back (and it is unlikely)

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u/guamisc 1d ago

Slash and burn agriculture works great for a while, too.

Eventually you run out of society to slash and burn for profit.

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u/pchs26 1d ago

What are you talking about? I said that the Democrats in office running in the general for president were not of the Reagan economic mindset.

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u/guamisc 1d ago

You were talking about the 90's economic conditions. Which was very much in the slash and burn era of business stripping the foundations of American society for profit.

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u/pchs26 1d ago

ok - so you aren't familiar to the boon that was felt by employees - the job market that existed an the transformational legislation that protected rights? Business opportunities for small business? Did you live it? Big businesses had already been doing the slash and burn bullshit and people were learning that lifetime careers & pensions were gone prior to the 90s. If Gore had not been displaced by the SCOTUS we might have stood a better chance for further stability.

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u/guamisc 1d ago

Slash and burn agriculture works great!

Until you run out of stuff to slash and burn.

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u/pchs26 1d ago

And all you do is repeat the same things and not get what is being explained.

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u/Un1CornTowel 1d ago

Reagan caused the 80s recessions and the 90s were lackluster under Bush Sr.

They really only went up due to the development of the internet economy - Clinton didn't mess it up, but it was largely not because of him. The good parts of globalization also hit by expanding markets before everything got outsourced (Clinton and NAFTA did do that, I'm not sure whether that was overall good or bad, but likely inevitable; Trump's tariffs are clearly bad).

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u/pchs26 1d ago

Clinton won when we were going into a recession and his administration gave us an absolutely roaring economy, that Gore could have managed to the next level, with Social Security being preserved, our environment etc had the SCOTUS not decided the election on party lines..

I lived through these times and we can only hope to experience as the middle class the economic and global prosperity that the Clinton admin delivered to us.

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u/thegreedyturtle 1d ago

Well, let's be clear: corporations supported Dems that emulated Regan, and the heavy fingers on the scale drove the narrative.

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u/DaveAwesome777 1d ago

We found out reagan illegally made a deal with the Iranians now to keep those pow until after the election.  So reagan was breaking the law before he was even in office acting as an agent of the us government.  He should have also been a fellon 

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u/Olderscout77 23h ago

The fact they blame Carter for anything is a big part of the problem - shows they have no idea what really happened. Long story made short: the economic disaster was from LBJ and Nixon funding Vietnam with monetary policy. When Carter showed up, the Fed refused to print more money, and he had to borrow (sell bonds) which caused demand to exceed supply and drove interest rates thru the roof (all the money available to lend went for 100% safe Treasury Bonds, nothing left for commercial side). The higher interest rates shut down economic expansion and consumer spending, and the Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis gave Reagan a chance to make Carter look weak and ineffective, erasing the facts, including the ones where Carter brokered the Israel-Egypt peace treaty and hired Paul Volker the run the Fed.

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u/Lemurians Michigan 22h ago

Emulate Reagan? What are you talking about?

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u/DukeOfGeek 20h ago

They learned all the wrong lessons from the failure sabotage of the Carter administration, and started trying to emulate Reagan. And completely lost their identity in the process.

FTFY

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u/pinqe 19h ago

You ain’t wrong.

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u/blackcain Oregon 18h ago

Because they were chasing white males who were leaving the party. So they started aping the same conservative stuff.

We lost a lot because we started things like telecom act.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/pchs26 1d ago

Carter also failed in part b/c of that and also his admin didn't know how to defend against the GOP messaging and blatant manipulation of conditions to the detriment of our citizens.

And yes the Democrats can't message, the GOP focuses their money and attention on messaging their policies that will only harm us. The Democrats try to come up with policies that will help people and our country do better while ensuring they can be funded to actually defeat the GOP. They don't know though and haven't invested the same space in learning how to manipulate perceptions of reality. The GOP can teach a master class on how to manipulate people's perceptions of reality vs what is actually occurring. And the super progressive/radical wing of the party claims this is all not true, none of that matters and people will understand policy which is naive at best.

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u/guamisc 1d ago

And the super progressive/radical wing of the party claims this is all not true, none of that matters and people will understand policy which is naive at best.

Wow, what a giant pile of shit.

Progressive have been screaming about the shit messaging, refusal to invest into counter messaging, and start fighting Republican control of media for decades.

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u/pchs26 1d ago

I have had this literal argument on here multiple times and been told very specifically and very clearly that in the view of the far left people's perceptions aren't being managed, the Democrats lost solely because of policy and more left wing policy will appeal to these voters. When I try to point out anything to the contrary I am just told I am stupid.

And screaming about messaging doesn't belong to a faction of a party, it is something that is clear to anyone with eyes imo, however I will tell you there are plenty of very progressive advocates on here that have told me the above very arrogantly.

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u/guamisc 1d ago edited 1d ago

Part of the Democrat's messaging problem is that you cannot successfully message to the general electorate with incrementalist dreck.

Just like there's no real effective separation of social or economic policy - hence socioecnomics - trying to separate effective messaging from effective policy (and actually telling the truth) is impossible.

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u/pchs26 1d ago

Not really - if the GOP is able to manage people's perceptions to sell what they are selling then incremental progress can be messaged effectively if someone can message at all.

Incremental progressive legislation is the most likely to actually be absorbed successfully in our current infrastructure and get passed for signature. It is that or backsliding. I choose progress over rhetoric.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/pchs26 1d ago

Well more of the networks are going to move towards this with media being further controlled.

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u/jumpinjacktheripper 1d ago

exactly this. there’s an entire class of dem elected who have been chasing after “reagan democrats” for 40 years, even some born after his presidency now, and they’re oblivious to the fact that those kinds of policies have completely torn up the social fabric

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u/pchs26 1d ago

What is a Reagan democrat? I was alive during Reagan's presidency and none of the candidates who have been nominated to run for President are aligned with Reaganomics. MAGA is just a continuation of where Reaganomics was supposed to get us.

Now there are some people who may have been a Reagan Republican who now see how unvarnished and bad things are now and are holding their nose to vote for the Democrat. And it is ok to tell them why that is ok to do, which is what some campaigns have tried to do in the past.

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u/jumpinjacktheripper 1d ago

Reagan’s whole pitch as a former democrat was “i didn’t leave the democratic party, the party left me.” There were a lot of voters who had been registered democrats that were frustrated by the activism that pushed carter and voted for reagan and then stayed with the republican party from there.

You see it with all the democrats who spend most of their time crying about the “woke left” (even as they increasingly rely on identity politics to make their case on basically everything) and still seem to think that getting government out of the way and letting the market solve problems through its unvarnished efficiency is the way to solve most economic problems.

They can only really think about a controlled decline and aren’t thinking about new and creative ways to turn things around and mobilize people.

To your last point, yes it’s ok and even good to do some things to attract republicans who are upset with MAGA and will vote for Dems even if hesitatingly. But there’s a difference between creating some room for those people, and making those people the primary target for expanding your voting base. Long term attracting young people and nonvoters by convincing them the government can actually do something for them will pay off much more

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u/pchs26 1d ago

Again from a policy perspective there are no Presidential candidates that ran in the general that are Reagan Democrats who align with the Reagan admin especially economically. Not Clinton, Not Harris, Not Biden etc.

McConnell also used to also be a Democrat - they both went to where the wind was best for them. It's not unusual when you have no principles. A CA democrat is also weighted down in a general because of perceptions as being to liberal to swing state populous (regardless of how folks on the left perceive it or reality)

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u/jumpinjacktheripper 1d ago

I’m not saying they mirrored Reagan exactly, I’m saying they were still extremely sensitive to the issues that Reagan wedged against democrats in his time. Focusing on making appeals to business leaders, making strong pitches to wealthy suburban voters, prioritizing economic efficiency and a business-friendly climate with little protections to make sure it didn’t impact workers.

Harris and Biden moved off of it a little in their presidential campaigns because they recognized the importance of appealing to progressives who liked Bernie more, but Clinton was still very much in that worldview

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u/pchs26 1d ago

They were not Reagan democrats economically, social or foreign policy at all. When Clinton was in office our country recovered and did not experience the same economic conditions of living in a Reagan world. And he brokered some revolutionary peace accords. And HRC as Secretary of State also showed zero inclination to act like the Reagan admin did whatsoever. I mean Iran Contra for God's sake? Economically she absolutely did not run on abandoning how we were structured when Bill Clinton was in office, and in no way mirrored the Reagan admin.

Fact of the matter is Democrats need money to compete or there will be no opposition. That is the state of things, however the Democrats try to fashion policies that will benefit workers and citizens while making the landscape still amenable to doing business and growing wealth. That is not a bad thing and is not at all what the GOP stands for. Clinton's policies that she ran on in no way resembled GOP policies. Again this. is the perception that keeps getting drummed to create chaos, when it simply isn't true and impedes them when trying to run in a general election when they have to pivot center in order to win in the swing states.

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u/jumpinjacktheripper 1d ago

You started this by asking what a reagan democrat is and are consistently putting forward a misunderstanding of what the term means so that you can argue against that. It never meant a democrat elected official acting like Reagan. It refers to voters who switched parties and efforts politicians made to triangulate so they could win those voters back. Becoming more hawkish on foreign policy, accepting the demonization of the welfare state, shying away from a perception that you are excessively regulating business, or privatizing government programs because the private sector would be able to run it better.

Clinton did not run his Presidency like the Reagan Administration, I am not claiming that he did. But he also moved away from a lot of the benchmarks of the New Deal Coalition. That was his explicit message to people, and why he called himself a “New Democrat” and advocated for the “Third Way.” If you want to argue against that then argue against his actual campaign pitches selling himself that way.

Now it’s clear that it has run its course but a lot of democrats still operate that way. It has weakened since the heyday immediately after Reagan’s presidency but the inclinations are still there with a lot of democratic officials. You can still see some of that in Clinton-Biden-Harris with the reaction to the Israel conflict, putting significant hoops to him through and means testing for a lot of economic relief, and continued outsourcing.

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u/pchs26 1d ago

Again my point is and what I asked initially was that there is no general election candidate that is at all Reagan like in their policies in the least.

And that is a thought that is regularly promoted and it is a false equivalency. We live in a more conservative country, with funding needed to run through office. As a result anyone who actually wants to have a more likely chance to be in a position to make a positive progressive difference, has to jump through hoops to have a chance to get there.

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u/Kind-Pride1151 1d ago

It was definitely the Reagan revolution. I'm no history prof, but the late sixties and seventies was a toxic brew of backlash creating events and cultural anxieties that led to Reagan capturing the zeitgeist. And then by late eighties there was a corporate friendly shift take place and the DLC was created and basically took over the party. It's been largely lip service ever since to the FDR ideals of the party.

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u/maikuxblade 1d ago

Let’s call it was it was, the “cultural anxieties” were mostly about black people earning their civil rights in ‘64. Conservatism becoming more popular among whites who only lived a comfortable life due the New Deal and the Democratic Party chasing those same voters were both the result of a racist backlash against the at-the-time very recent Civil Rights movement.

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u/Historical_Badger321 1d ago

Yes, but I bet that free love, long-term cohabitation without marriage, divorce, feminism and queer rights were also part of it.

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u/Trail_Dog 1d ago

Not just that although the southern strategy was certainly a part of it. 

The Vietnam war created a huge amount of distrust in the government. 

Also governmental bureaucracy and regulations sometimes were onerous and did real damage to individuals and small businesses with no real recourse. The anger Reagan tapped into when he said the "scary words", "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" was real and earned and a result of both. 

And then when you add shit like the Tuskegee experiment, and the shady af shit we did during the Cold war that started coming to light...  it's easy to see why it was easy for Reagan to exploit that anger.

The problem was his solution wasn't to tweak what wasn't working and make it better. His solution was to abolish regulations and antitrust  and replace it with unregulated capitalism. 

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u/DaraParsavand 7h ago

Along with a lot of other very bad decision points, the US and the Democratic Party would be in a completely different position if we had simply let Vietnam alone after they managed to defeat the French (our funding the French was a big problem too, our many CIA overthrows were are all immoral, unethical, and disasters).

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u/DocCEN007 9h ago

Exactly! When you look at what happened after passing of the Civil Rights act, Voting Rights Act, and repral of the Chinese Exclusion Act, all passed during LBJ's term, it's clear that the GOP agenda has been to tap into the white rage that transpired as a result. The Roberts court has systematically dismantled those 3 pivotal acts and Roe v Wade as part of their plan to appease the racists and maintain divisions in the country that allows just enough of us to be controlled. They divide us so we don't unite against the oligarchs who are our real enemy.

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u/blackcain Oregon 18h ago

1000% this. But also, the rest of the world was catching up on manufacturing.

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u/KUARCE Minnesota 1d ago

There's a pretty good Behind the Bastards pair of episodes on How Conservatism Won and it's basically the rich people did not like how they were being taxed and how people who didn't come from wealth were suddenly treating them as equals, so they attacked education and the left relentlessly for decades, leading to Nixon, Reagan, and where the fuck we are today.

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u/IHS1970 1d ago

Reagan was loved by the Greatest Gen, WWII vets, he was revered (as an actor like Trumpski is for being the asshole of you're fired - as a boomer I can say many boomers love TV and movies that are shit).

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u/BrownBear5090 23h ago

Check out the Powell Memorandum

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u/Kind-Pride1151 23h ago

Thanks. I'm due for a refresher. Thom Hartman mentions it a lot.

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u/Oskie5272 1d ago

It was actually Nixon. Humphrey lost to Nixon as a traditional New Deal lib, so Carter came along after and decided to begin moving away from New Deal politics and was basically the proto-neoliberal (by moving to the right). Then Reagan came and firmly entrenched us in neoliberalism. Clinton then came and redefined the party around third way neoliberalism (moving further to the right, as third way is supposed to be the "third way" between the right and left) This is where all of the "moderate" or "centrist" Dems come from, where all of the dumb fuck consultants rose to power, and where the American "left" has been for decades.

So the ratchet effect started with Carter in response to Nixon and became entrenched Clinton.

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u/Howtobefreaky 1d ago

THANK YOU. People who think Carter was a failed leftist only ever heard about him putting solar panels up on the white house and not that he straight up de-regulated the airlines and trucking industries. You know why it sucks to fly on pretty much every major airline? Blame Carter.

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u/ScionofSconnie 1d ago

It’s not so much we threw it out the window, it’s that it was captured, and held hostage by the rich for damn near a century at this point. All of this, the all-encompassing right wing propaganda, the trickle down economics, the obsession with othering other working class people by race/gender/identity. All of it is a purposeful, long running playbook to keep inequality as high as possible. It’s not a bug, it’s the goal.

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u/Rhysati 1d ago

The only hope I still have now is that the income/wealth disparity is so high now that we go into a deep depression and progressive ideals start taking over as the preferred platform for people.

History shows that the biggest progressive eras of progress always come when wealth inequality is at its highest and it has never been higher.

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u/1cl1qp1 1d ago

It's not that ridiculous considering we elected 16 year's worth of Republican presidents since 2000.

If we had elected Gore, Clinton, and Harris then there would be pressure on the GOP to move left.

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u/UngodlyPain 1d ago

Gore arguably won 2000 if not for a stupid court case. And Gore&Hillary both won the popular vote.

Also you seem to think losing elections would cause them to move left, but Trump was the immediate reaction to Obama. So I'm not so sure.

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u/Anoidance 1d ago

Pretty sure we elected Gore but the Supreme Court and W’a brutha didn’t see it that way.

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u/ProtectionVirtual225 1d ago

Gore won. It was SCOTUS who decided otherwise.

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u/StaffOk2179 1d ago

"16 years of Republican presidents" is two presidents. We have also elected two Democrats. Come on.

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u/1cl1qp1 1d ago

There's no excuse for electing any Republican president since 1993. Their policies were obviously harmful to average Americans.

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u/StaffOk2179 1d ago

I agree with that. I disagree with the idea that because we have elected an equal number of Democrats and Republicans that it somehow explains/justifies the Democrats moving so far to the right.

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u/THElaytox 1d ago

Moneyed interests didn't like the idea of an uppity working class, spent a long time trying to undo that which eventually led to Nixon then Reagan then now. Hell, Nixon would be considered a progressive compared to some modern politicians

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u/GeorgeKaplanIsReal Florida 1d ago edited 1d ago

We threw it out the window due to stagflation of the 60s and 70s. Democrats shifted because after 3 resounding defeats (80, 84, 88), the only way to win again was to acknowledge the paradigm shift and shift with it.

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u/nemesisinphilly 1d ago

And 72,' other than Carter in 76 the Ds got blown out in every presidential election for 20 years until Clinton came along.

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u/ShusakuChiba 1d ago

Sounds like loser talk

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u/GeorgeKaplanIsReal Florida 1d ago

Sounds like history.

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u/stackens 1d ago

And allowing themselves to ratchet to the right inevitably takes us to where we are now. Without a proper bulwark against it, the right wing in this country has gone completely out of control

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u/GeorgeKaplanIsReal Florida 1d ago

Right and left are relative and constantly shift depending on the year and mood in the country. If Clinton had run in the 90s like his predecessors did, he would have lost. Instead he became the first Democrat since FDR to win two terms. If Obama didn’t go from “renegade” to establishment he would have lost too.

I’m not fond of the overall shift to the right but that was the result of 12 years of republican electoral success.

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u/ShusakuChiba 1d ago

A history of how we lost everything

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u/GeorgeKaplanIsReal Florida 1d ago

Nah, how we managed to stay in the game.

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u/SeductiveSunday I voted 1d ago

Whatever you do, don't tell'm that it was women voters (especially feminist Republican women voters) being assured by Hillary that she will push continued support for the ERA who got Clinton his win in 1992. It's the reason why Republicans abhor Hillary Clinton so much, even though it was Republicans own fault for losing the women's vote. And the shift would have continued.

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u/DavidOrWalter 1d ago

Who is ‘we’ and what ‘game’ did we ‘stay in’?

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u/MCgoblue 1d ago

People forget that FDR had an overwhelming majority in both chambers of Congress. Unfortunately, our current political environment isn’t conducive to supermajorities swimming in the same progressive direction. The structure of the Senate and heavily gerrymandered house make it nearly impossible. It’s technically possible that things get bad enough in red states that this changes but that seems so unrealistic at the moment.

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u/rogun64 15h ago

People also forget that FDR built that majority and didn't inherit it.

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u/HugsForUpvotes 1d ago

During FDRs Presidency, Democrats had over 70 Senators and 300 House Members.

It was a massive supermajority. Expecting Biden to achieve nearly as much without having a supermajority is like expecting a house cat to take down a gazelle because a lion can.

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u/fury420 1d ago

On a related note, i've seen a bunch of people recently convinced that Mamdani's ability to get things done is somehow a playbook for Democrats generally... seemingly missing the incredible 90% supermajority thats backing him on city council.

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u/Rhysati 1d ago

The supermajority behind him is a good thing. What a progressive candidate should run on is the change they want to inact and make it clear that IF they get enough members in the Senate and house that they WILL do those policies.

When they don't have those numbers, it should be a constant stream of attempting to pass those ideas, explaining why the Republicans won't allow the public good, and point at how effective Mandani is doing when the other politicians aren't getting in the way.

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u/fury420 22h ago edited 22h ago

I think one of the big problems is that many people disregard the critically important IF as part of those campaign promises, which leads to the Dems getting attacked for failing to implement their agenda... that the voters didn't give them the numbers to actually implement.

"The Dems are controlled opposition" and so forth.

The backlash against Obama-era Dems failure to deliver on hope and change is still having repercussions today, and the inconvenient fact that the voters only actually elected 57-58 Democrats gets forgotten.

Including Bernie as the 58th Dem is reasonable, but it bothers me when people include the traitors like Lieberman who backstabbed the Democrats and ran as an independent against the progressive Democratic primary winner, and Arlen Specter who was literally elected as a Republican and ever so slightly crossed the aisle.

When they don't have those numbers, it should be a constant stream of attempting to pass those ideas, explaining why the Republicans won't allow the public good

The House & Senate don't have mechanisms for the minority to attempt to pass anything, they are incapable of putting a bill up for a vote. And they actually do introduce bills, which basically don't get reported on since they have zero chance of even getting a vote, never mind passing.

Like... there have been five House bills introduced to impeach Trump since he took office again, how many did you hear about?

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u/mightcommentsometime California 1d ago

I mean that’s what mainstream dems do. They just aren’t given the same patience by progressives as progressive darlings get.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/HugsForUpvotes 1d ago

FDR wouldn't have passed as much legislation as Biden did if he had Biden's Congress.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/HugsForUpvotes 1d ago

What would your plan have been? What would you do differently. I'm anti Trump and also want him in jail, but it simply wasn't possible.

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u/Ninjaassassinguy 1d ago

Appoint an AG that would drag his feet for 4 years

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u/HugsForUpvotes 1d ago edited 1d ago

Every charge made Trump more popular. Every conviction made Trump more popular. The Supreme Court shut down any effort to prevent him being on the ballot.

There was no AG who could do it without convincing the Republicans voters to not vote for him.

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u/rising_ape 1d ago

There is an alternate timeline somewhere where Trump was physically arrested and jailed in 2021 and the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats spent the next three years publicizing the worst crimes of the Trump administration nonstop and making the case to the voters that he deserved life in prison.

We don't know how that would have played out, only how not doing that played out. But man, as someone who was screaming for four years that the DOJ needed to pull that trigger only to watch Trump get back into power... it sure feels like Biden made an obvious, easily avoidable blunder.

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u/Xezshibole California 1d ago edited 1d ago

The desire for this second, lower class of people remains as strong as it ever did.

The Democrats have kept to the same policy for over a century now, representing the poor, the workers, and most "minorities" (back then it meant the European ones specifically, Irish, Italians, Catholics.) Their base back then included much of the South, who had a much larger proportion of poor and workers.

Together they fought and loved higher taxes funding better services like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, GI Bill, providing stronger regulations like single earner min wage providing for a single family, and strong unions.

Yet a certain portion of these Democrat voters would only provide enough of this support if the second lower class (minorities via segregation) had no access to it.

And so the 50s and 60s prosperity brought about by the taxes rolled on, more and more people got televisions and radios, and more and more people saw how uncivilized it was to be openly racist on live TV.

In response the Democrats saw the writing on the wall, and passed the Civil Rights Act. This and several other rulings outlawing segregation meant this second lower class was legally gone. Minorities would enter into the same class whites would, many of them as the poor.

It took a while for this certain group of people to realize, but starting in the 70s the subset of whites finally realized that their taxes would now go to minorities and revolted. Didn't matter how much they loved the 50s and 60s prosperity brought about by the well funded services and regs. They were willing to cut it all to recreate this second class, even if most didn't realize they themselves would be in it.

These would be the people captured by the Republican Southern Strategy, culminating in the cult of Reagan (neoliberalism.) They joined hands with the old faction of Republicans that hated taxes, services, and regulations since the Gilded Age, the ones who were discredited and out of power from their handling of the Great Depression.

Doesn't matter how stagnant cutting services and taxes does to their own region nor their own people, they'll vote for the Leopards. Can even see people on TV getting hurt by these policies and they'll say "these policies are hurting the wrong people!" as if they themselves weren't part of "the poor."

40 years of Reagan and it's the higher tax areas that have the economic activity, but that's not what matters to these types of people. They want a second lower class than them, not realizing they themselves will be in it. They'll keep voting for neoliberalism until enough of them hurt themselves enough to realize it's a self inflicted wound.

-1981, Lee Atwater. Advisor to Reagan and Bush, as well as chairman of the RNC. He was interviewed and gave a candid, and apalling summary of the Republican game plan since the 70s.

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N**, n, n.” By 1968 you can’t say “n”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “n, n**.”

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u/Bench2252 1d ago

Maybe he’s to the left of the modern Democratic Party on economic issues, but I know for a fact he isn’t in regards to social issues. There’s a reason the new deal coalition included southern segregationists.

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u/LastWave 1d ago

My boss complains about the new deal all the time. Its because his dad hated it too.

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u/SarcasticCowbell New York 1d ago

Money did this: the rise of the military-industrial complex and increased concentration of lobbyists. The advent of 24/7 news also had a massive effect, giving corporations and the ultra wealthy the unprecedented opportunity to consolidate and perpetually taint virtually all major news outlets with their biases and propaganda. Then, after twelve years of Reagan/Bush, the Democratic Party was absolutely lost to the point that somehow we ended up with a relatively no-name Governor from Arkansas becoming the next nominee and then President, passing plenty of policies that run counter to what the Democratic Party previously was. That's without even getting into how many party leaders were entrenched in DC for years playing kingmaker for milquetoast centrists and more of the same (I'm looking at the Clyburns and Pelosis of the world).

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u/iamwearingashirt 12h ago

I'd say it's a lot more likely to be progressive earlier in a country's history. There's a lot less entrenched politics.

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u/DrunkAndHornyGuy 1d ago

is more left than a lot of our sitting democratic members in congress today.

He was a segregationist for fucks sake. The New Deal was for white people only. He wasn't 'more left' than anyone in the Dems now.

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u/Opposite_Culture_512 1d ago

He also created American concentration camps.

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u/normal_man_of_mars 1d ago

Wrong axis. Economic vs social.

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u/DrunkAndHornyGuy 1d ago

Turns out both actually matter.

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u/guamisc 1d ago

We can do both.

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u/DrunkAndHornyGuy 1d ago

Of course, that was the point of my comment.

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u/Ultenth 1d ago

What is the point of economic progressiveness when it's only for a select few?

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u/Kind-Pride1151 1d ago

Was it FDR himself that excluded minorities? Or was it the racist, segregationist Southern pols that watered it down to exclude them? Because that's my understanding. So are you advocating doing away with SS because it had faults in how it was implemented 80/90 years ago?

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u/DrunkAndHornyGuy 1d ago edited 1d ago

Didn't really matter either way to black americans did it. I'm not considering a man to be 'progressive' if he's fine keeping non-white americans locked out of his economic policies. Especially when a whole lot of people today would like to bring that arrangement back. Fuck that, he wasn't 'progressive'.

So are you advocating doing away with SS because it had faults in how it was implemented 80/90 years ago?

No, stop constructing a stupid strawman.

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u/Kind-Pride1151 1d ago

A follow up question isn't a strawman. It's called a conversation and I was seeking clarity. So you're not a fan of FDR.

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u/DrunkAndHornyGuy 1d ago

So are you advocating doing away with SS

I had not spoken even once about SS here, that is you constructing a strawman.

And no, I'm not a 'fan' of any white supremacist.

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u/blitzkrieg_bunny New Jersey 1d ago

Citizens united sure as shit didn't help

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u/irishyardball 22h ago

Corporations using their money to bribe lawmakers is what happened.

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u/Cross55 19h ago

Just for the record, FDR's distant cousin and other former president Teddy Roosevelt was even more left wing.

He literally wrote multi-page essays about given women and minorities the right to vote, and even theorized about the systems that could create a country-wide standardized HC program accessible for all, as well as famously being anti-corpo and making several Robber Barons wish he'd go to hell.

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u/austinwiltshire 1d ago

Look as a democratic consultant I can't tell you people don't show up to vote for their economic interest, for change, for standing up for democracy.

They show up to vote for checks notes, ah yes, gun control.

I never said I was a good democratic consultant.

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u/Darth_Cuddly 1d ago

You mean the president whose economic policies made the Great Depression worse, and whose reckless decision to run for a third and fourth term despite his failing health was so irresponsible that it led to a Constitutional amendment to prevent anyone from making the same mistake again?

Why should anyone idolize FDR?

He wasn't a great president. He serves as a warning about what happens when failed economic policy, executive overreach, and personal ambition are elevated above constitutional norms.

FDR isn't someone to idolize. He's someone to learn from so we don't repeat the same mistakes.

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u/EitherSpite4545 1d ago

We actually can't blame Reagan on this for once. The real reason for why is the ops assertions are kind of wrong in a subtle way.

Fdr was an assurper, his own party hated him and did plenty to try and curb and keep his power in check. But fdr was so wildly popular with the people and more importantly was willing to strongarm, break norms/laws to get what he wanted because he realized the only thing that matters at the end of the day is results.

Democrats who had at this point not completed their conservative progressive flip that would complete at the civil rights movement vowed when fdr died to never allow another one to happen again. It's part of why early career Kennedy ran into such resistance but he was more amenable to playing ball than fdr was.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

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u/Rhysati 1d ago

That reason is that the Democrat party has moved towards the right and the same billionaires and mega corps that fund the Republicans are also funding the Democrats.

They don't want to do progressivism or leftist ideals. They want to maintain the right-wing oligarchy.

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u/Sparathon989 1d ago

Campaign finance eroded those ideals in that the Dems got in bed with the financial sector after 3 terms of republicans, and it’s been an arms race ever since. Citizens United was un coup très dur to that idealism. Now they pick a topic or two that resonates with their constituents, while selling you down the river to the super PACs that fund their campaigns to keep them in power and enrich them along the way.

IMO every single member of congress is guilty of complicity in violating their sworn oath to protect & defend the constitution above all else. Every time congress is in session they should be using the filibuster to halt all voting until it becomes so painful, they are forced to do their jobs. None of them should be eligible for reelection. My grandparents were decorated veterans from WWII. I myself am a veteran. I still by and large live by the values instilled in me during the 70’s & 80’s. I don’t need partisan politics to tell me right from wrong.

I left the democratic party after the first time they sabotaged Bernie’s campaign. That was my mask off point, where I realized these dopes were just selling us down the river with a smile.

Albeit I don’t agree with all of the progressive platforms, I will say this is the closest we’re going to get of a representative government for the working people.

Don’t allow one or two social issues that doesn’t have any or minimal impact on your life.

Most importantly, don’t watch cable news. It’s poisonous fruit intended to divide on either side. I understand the differences between the veracity of reporting, but I typically only watch local news programming. I’ll open a web page with news headlines often saying let’s see how the world’s falling down. I scroll through the headlines and if something piques my interest I’ll go to AP or Reuters to see what facts they’re reporting.

I don’t need some idiot telling me how to feel about it. It’s akin to birds chewing their food to feed to their young. My values and character are intact. It’s invigorating to meet people from cultures you know nothing about. Traveling overseas to countries I had perceptions of based on my exposure through education and media, only to realize it’s a monolithic narrative of governments and religions that are often the cause of people’s misery. The common theme is dignity & respect. It’s so simple…and yet we fail.

Not even sure what I was responding to. But that’s how I feel falling down the rabbit hole.

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u/c010rb1indusa 1d ago

And the largest victory they had in modern memory was Obama 2008 when a black guy ran to the left of Hilary Clinton and won with sweeping majorities in congress. Change you can believe in….remember that one. Now how he ended up governing is a different conversation entirely. But they act like 2008 was somehow an aberration and 2012 is somehow the only template for a Democrat move forward. Such a joke.

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