People are fucking stupid, but to the previous point that doesn’t mean they can just be ignored. Their concerns are real and need to be addressed, they’re just gullible morons for believing the first snake oil salesman that comes along promising to solve all their problems.
The DNC fucked up and has been fucking up consistently for decades now by ignoring lower and middle class Americans to focus solely on the upper class. Talks of the stock market doing well and the GDP being good means fuck all when that’s all built on the backs of some of the most extreme income inequality and poverty in the history of the US. As the middle class eroded and wealth increasingly is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands it becomes critical to appeal not to the rich but to the poor who overwhelmingly outnumber them. Failure to do so has had the entirely predictable result that elections become impossible to win.
The GOP is fully aware of this, the big difference is they’re more than happy to peddle comforting lies to an increasingly ignorant and stupid populace, due in no small part to Republicans decades of attacking and destroying public education. If the DNC or any other non-GOP party ever wants to hold power again they need to convince the poor to vote for them, one way or another.
The problem here is that helping the working class hurts the people with lots of money to throw at attack ads. As you said, the people are gullible morons, they are not immune to propaganda.
If, hypothetically, the DNC were to fully shift to a pro-working class platform tomorrow, with the policies that implies, their capitalist donors would shift their donations to endless propaganda against them. Everything from half-truths and mischaracterizations to straight up lies.
Elections are not won by superior policy, they’re won by superior popularity. Even if that popularity is based on lies and misinformation. The DNC has no incentive to adopt popular policies if adopting popular policies causes them to lose voters due to gullible morons being convinced by propaganda to vote against their interests.
Frankly I think holding out for the DNC to step up as leftist saviors is silly and ignorant of reality. The Democrats have been, and likely always will be, the less bad capitalist establishment party, which only gets support from the left as strategic time-buying votes (and rightly so, I will continue to vote blue-no-matter-who so long as the probable alternative is fascism). They’re not likely to save us, and we can’t pragmatically expect them to go from less bad to actually good.
There needs to be some kind of solution or compromise though because as has been demonstrated this last election ignoring the working class is just handing their votes to the Republicans. Bernie Sanders demonstrated that it is possible to raise enough money from small donations to run a campaign. Yes the rich donors could out spend that by a significant margin, but I still believe someone with a good plan to address income inequality and out of control cost of living would do well enough to offset that.
The Democrats current policy of catering exclusively to rich donors is a losing strategy. If they ever want to win another election they’re going to have to find a solution to that.
The frustrating factor is that people seem intent on focusing on DNC performance like they’re a sports team, like the consequences are purely intellectual. At the end of the day, the seat is filled, and the people feel the consequences much more than DNC leadership ever will.
Yes, the DNC needs to reevaluate their strategy. But leftists on the Internet debating that strategy does not contribute to that goal. The right has a unified front, so long as the left insists on splintering, they’ll always lose to the unified right.
There doesn’t need to be a solution/compromise. The world is not a fair place with the perfect answer just waiting to be discovered. If there’s a solution, it will require serious coordinated effort. Blue-no-matter-who is a strategy to buy time while that effort is coordinated. The left needs its Heritage Foundation, which by its very leftist nature is going to have to be funded and coordinated through a massive grassroots movement; we’re not doing to attract any corporate donors.
So the solution is hard work, and a willingness to hold one’s nose and support imperfect incremental improvement. Based on the evidence, we may be waiting quite a while.
People are fucking stupid, but to the previous point that doesn’t mean they can just be ignored. Their concerns are real and need to be addressed, they’re just gullible morons for believing the first snake oil salesman that comes along promising to solve all their problems.
The DNC fucked up and has been fucking up consistently for decades now by ignoring lower and middle class Americans to focus solely on the upper class. Talks of the stock market doing well and the GDP being good means fuck all when that’s all built on the backs of some of the most extreme income inequality and poverty in the history of the US. As the middle class eroded and wealth increasingly is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands it becomes critical to appeal not to the rich but to the poor who overwhelmingly outnumber them. Failure to do so has had the entirely predictable result that elections become impossible to win.
The GOP is fully aware of this, the big difference is they’re more than happy to peddle comforting lies to an increasingly ignorant and stupid populace, due in no small part to Republicans decades of attacking and destroying public education. If the DNC or any other non-GOP party ever wants to hold power again they need to convince the poor to vote for them, one way or another.
The problem here is that helping the working class hurts the people with lots of money to throw at attack ads. As you said, the people are gullible morons, they are not immune to propaganda.
If, hypothetically, the DNC were to fully shift to a pro-working class platform tomorrow, with the policies that implies, their capitalist donors would shift their donations to endless propaganda against them. Everything from half-truths and mischaracterizations to straight up lies.
Elections are not won by superior policy, they’re won by superior popularity. Even if that popularity is based on lies and misinformation. The DNC has no incentive to adopt popular policies if adopting popular policies causes them to lose voters due to gullible morons being convinced by propaganda to vote against their interests.
Frankly I think holding out for the DNC to step up as leftist saviors is silly and ignorant of reality. The Democrats have been, and likely always will be, the less bad capitalist establishment party, which only gets support from the left as strategic time-buying votes (and rightly so, I will continue to vote blue-no-matter-who so long as the probable alternative is fascism). They’re not likely to save us, and we can’t pragmatically expect them to go from less bad to actually good.
There needs to be some kind of solution or compromise though because as has been demonstrated this last election ignoring the working class is just handing their votes to the Republicans. Bernie Sanders demonstrated that it is possible to raise enough money from small donations to run a campaign. Yes the rich donors could out spend that by a significant margin, but I still believe someone with a good plan to address income inequality and out of control cost of living would do well enough to offset that.
The Democrats current policy of catering exclusively to rich donors is a losing strategy. If they ever want to win another election they’re going to have to find a solution to that.
The frustrating factor is that people seem intent on focusing on DNC performance like they’re a sports team, like the consequences are purely intellectual. At the end of the day, the seat is filled, and the people feel the consequences much more than DNC leadership ever will.
Yes, the DNC needs to reevaluate their strategy. But leftists on the Internet debating that strategy does not contribute to that goal. The right has a unified front, so long as the left insists on splintering, they’ll always lose to the unified right.
There doesn’t need to be a solution/compromise. The world is not a fair place with the perfect answer just waiting to be discovered. If there’s a solution, it will require serious coordinated effort. Blue-no-matter-who is a strategy to buy time while that effort is coordinated. The left needs its Heritage Foundation, which by its very leftist nature is going to have to be funded and coordinated through a massive grassroots movement; we’re not doing to attract any corporate donors.
So the solution is hard work, and a willingness to hold one’s nose and support imperfect incremental improvement. Based on the evidence, we may be waiting quite a while.