• BlitzoTheOisSilent@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    What would that be?

    Biden adopted policies from Bernie’s platform in 2020. Bernie runs on a solidly progressive (at least for the US) platform with actual goals and steps to reach them.

    His campaign has admitted that, they know progressive policies will win.

    The liberals at least have specifics, they have a system.

    The liberals have the status quo, which Americans repeatedly poll they don’t feel is working for them anymore and they want change, and “we’re not the Republicans.”

    I wouldn’t call that specifics or a system, it’s just “We’re not the other guys.” There’s nothing in their messaging to give people hope.

    And, just to add: these are supposed to be people who were elected to work on behalf of their constituents, many touting ivy league degrees and law careers.

    They know what policies are popular, and they’re supposed to be so smart, so why can’t they figure out how to make it happen? Like, is their job supposed to be showing up to cast a vote a few times a year? They’re supposed to be hearing our problems and finding solutions to them.

    It’s not enough the electorate has to give them money and support them regardless of their unpopular policies, they need us to draft their legislation too?

    What would those be?

    Bernie’s 2016 and 2020 platforms, to use at the bare minimum as a framework to build off of.

    A minimum wage increase that actually reflects what the American worker should be earning, with it tied to inflation.

    Student loan forgiveness, that seems to be a big one. I’d argue they’d win a lot of people over if they ran on a platform to forgive credit card debt accrued during the insanity that was the Pandemic.

    Stronger workers rights and stronger unions.

    The end to price gouging and corporate greed. Making stock buybacks illegal or heavily fined, mandating money be put back into the company, taxing corporations and the wealthy via the appropriate means, ending tax loopholes for the wealthy. >

    Ending Citizen’s United, enshrining abortion/bodily autonomy/LGBTQ+ rights into law, enshrining voting rights, automatic voter registration at the age of 18, making voting day a federal holiday, or even making voting mandatory to ensure larger turnout.

    Getting rid of the electoral college, changing FPTP, age limits or reform for elected officials, ending lifetime appointments for SCOTUS, SCOTUS ethics laws with actual teeth, expanding the SCOTUS.

    I came up with those based on conversations with friends and coworkers and by just casually paying attention to the news. I have an associates degree from a community college, why am I being expected to brainstorm and come up with ideas for a liberal elite with ivy league training and access to national polls and research, and millions of dollars to further test which ideas would resound with voters.

    Or go ask the Dems who won reelection on progressive platforms despite those states going to Trump. Or ask the electorate like they’re supposed to during the primaries, but the DNC robbed us of those again because their hubris said “We’re not fascism, regardless of candidate” would be enough to win.

    And before you start “But Biden did those things/Harris campaigned on those things,” did she? A significant chunk of Americans didn’t know Biden dropped out on election day, do you really think they care about the minutiae of campaign policy? And do you really expect them to be inspired when they’re being told “We’re just gonna maintain the course”?

    I don’t.

    Then why keep defending it? The left and progressives keep asking for anything progressive, and the liberals ask us to meet them in the middle. We do, they take a step back, and ask us to meet them in the middle again.

    They either run on progressive ideas, and put in the work I would expect of a mulimillion dollar national political organization to figure out what those policies are. From working class Americans, not their corporate masters deciding everything for us.

    Or they keep losing. Americans want change, and they’re tired of the excuses from the Dems while Repubs actually get things done. And make their constituents feel heard. Unlike the dem liberals, who seem to think they’re enlightened and entitled to condescend to the rest of us because they know better. Their facts and data and evidence says so.

    Yes, it did. It lost conclusively. But it’s not liberalism. My ideology is democratic socialism, and, yeah, it lost. It was a massacre.

    So you’re either a troll, or completely out of touch with reality.

    A Democratic socialist is asking me for popular, progressive policies that would reflect what the average person would want, while defending liberalism as a “necessary evil” because we don’t know if any other system would be popular?

    So let’s just try nothing, got it.

    I’m done with this conversation, at best your eyes wide shut, and at worst you’re a troll. Any further information I have to convey, or any further questions you have that you think will be so profound, will be searchable via Google.

    I’d recommend you start there, maybe with Bernie’s website, since you claim to be a Democratic Socialist but don’t seem to be familiar with the progressive platform of probably the most open and self-identified Democratic Socialist in American politics: Bernie Sanders.

    • TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      You’re confused. It’s my fault. I said:

      Maybe the problem isn’t so much liberalism specifically

      And you took that to mean I was defending liberalism. I’m not. I was positing that maybe the problem was deeper than liberalism. I never said that liberalism was a “necessary evil,” but I get why you thought that. In the US, liberalism is the status quo, and American experts will tell you that facts and evidence support liberalism. But, contrary to what liberals think, they don’t have a monopoly on facts and evidence. Some economic experts who have analyzed the facts and evidence and have to come to different conclusions than the liberal experts would be the economists Ha-Joon Chang and Yanis Varoufakis. Even here in the US there are experts who are critical liberalism, like the economist Richard Wolff. Wolff is a democratic socialist economist. Even the economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, while not a socialist, is critical of neoliberalism.

      • BlitzoTheOisSilent@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        Fair enough. I would work on how you phrase your argument, cause I don’t think I’m the only one who thought you were defending neoliberalism and liberalism.

        But the Dems need to use the data and facts or non-corporate economists then, and message it so the average American understands this will mean more money for them, better benefits, protections, and comfort.

        They’re not going to research the positions and research of economists they’ve never heard of. They don’t have the time, and many don’t care, they just want to know if the end result will actually benefit them or not.

        Not saying that’s how it should be, but that it is how it is. Hence why I was saying a political machine with decades of ivy league education between them and millions of dollars at their disposal need to figure out how to get the 60% of Americans who don’t vote, to vote.

        And ignoring the human factor of politics while doubling down on data and facts that the average American couldn’t relate to was a huge contributing factor for Harris losing.