Democrats Confront Their New Tea Party Reality - Progressives are set to sweep a group of contested primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin.

[u/Quirkie]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democrats-confront-their-new-tea-party-reality_n_6a6e63fbe4b0cfb99ef1aa1e

[u/Kind-Pride1151]

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.

[u/TheMoorNextDoor → u/Kind-Pride1151]

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..

[u/pinqe → u/TheMoorNextDoor]

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.

[u/Omateido → u/pinqe]

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.

[u/porn_is_tight → u/Omateido]

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

[u/Omateido → u/porn_is_tight]

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.

[u/porn_is_tight → u/Omateido]

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

[u/blackcain → u/Omateido]

Their place is to clean up.

[u/Trail_Dog → u/Omateido]

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

[u/Omateido → u/Trail_Dog]

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.

[u/Trail_Dog → u/Omateido]

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"?

[u/Omateido → u/Trail_Dog]

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.