this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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I think they just got stuck in a rut. They have been dealing with an all-obstructionist Republican party for nearly 16 years now, ever since Obama was elected, if not before.
They stopped promising the moon because they became policy wonks and focused on what was realistically achievable, only making promises they thought they could turn into reality with an obstructionist party blocking them.
Hillary Clinton not-so-famously did a bunch of number crunching on a Basic Income and then said it wouldn't work, so that's why she didn't campaign on anything like that.
They stopped being dreamers, started being policy wonks, and were unwilling to make promises they didn't think they could keep. Think about the amount of messaging in the last few elections about how progressives were asking too much because we have to be realistic about what we can pass with only a sliver of a majority. People rightly view that as starting from a point of compromise and thus as weak.
Trump promised to smash norms and ignore laws to get his promises done, which people wrongly view as strong. When Republicans like Trump make promises, they are completely unburdened by whether they can accomplish them or not: make the promise, follow through be damned.
Nobody wants a policy wonk telling them they need to wait until their kids are middle aged for things to get better for their family, and the Democrats somehow failed to realize this in 16 years.
Obama was the last Democrat to run on change in the system. Everyone else has been Bush-era-style "Stay the course" status-quo enabling.
And, even then, he enacted a shockingly small amount of actual change.
He had the majority long enough that he could have codified Roe V. Wade, and increased the minimum wage, and done UHC and all sorts of shit, but he wanted to policy wonk both-sides across the aisle cooperation shit, and well, ended up passing the Republican version of UHC and bailing out billionaires, which really doesn't exactly reflect hope and/or change.
I'm not saying he didn't have problems, or that he had an endless mandate, or that he did nothing, but mostly that the "best" democratic president in damn near 30 years who had the biggest mandate you're probably going to find in modern politics still did a shockingly little amount of anything to improve or harden the government against clear nutters - the Tea Party was showing up, so it was or should have been blindingly obvious where that was going to end up eventually going.
I don't buy the (R) "do nothing democrats" line, but boy, they certainly make it hard to refute that claim in any form that's not a 1000 word essay which is why it plays so very well on TV/news/Twitter.
you’re right, they make an outlandish promise (build a wall, mexico to pay) and then blame the other side when it doesn’t happen. The agenda-setting aspect you’re mentioning is also something that caused everyone in the democratic party to snipe Bernie since his whole thing was talking about what must happen and not getting bogged down in the endless details (though I think he could have also done that at that level too).
Yeah, the presidential election is a circus and only a performer can be an effective candidate. Ever since 2016, the DNC just runs these duds who focus more on extending an olive branch to the GOP than championing solutions to anything voters actually care about, no matter how realistic. Whether the solutions can actually be achieved is irrelevant; what matters is that you’re willing to shoot for the moon on important issues and not weaken your position before you’ve even started negotiating. Without that, how can you possibly expect voters (particularly, typical low-information voters) to show up for you?
Honestly, Tim Walz would have been a better presidential candidate. At least he has a personality.
I assume, and many others will, that you're a millennial lawyer. You should change your name if you want to be taken seriously as a critic of the system. You ARE the system, just in a low tier role.
I’m not criticizing anything except for the DNC’s strategy for the past eight years. Love your handle btw
They are going to get change now. Especially if they are deported or jailed.
Right, they don't seem to understand the kind of change they've chosen here. If they were actually upset about corruption, they picked the wrong team.
It's over.