politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Yes, I can. Is that something that you would earnestly want me to do, or are you just curious if it’s something that I’m able to do?
I’m being sincere. I’m not aware of what he did to abandon working or middle class. I remember there was a big rail strike and after it was lost he went back in and piecemealed small victories together for the unions. I also remember him standing behind other unions during his tenure. That doesn’t sound like abandoning the working class.
Okay, cool. I'm glad I asked, instead of assuming it wasn't genuine!
I'm not pointing the finger specifically at Biden, but I know there's some debatable space even regarding him. I also think the rail strike is an example of bad publicity more than anything else. Biden actually intervened to stop the strike AND then pressed the rail companies to concede to the unions. It was actually a pretty big win, but it looked horrible to anyone who didn't do the work to pay attention to the whole thing (which is damn near everyone).
The things I'm thinking about are party-wide, and they aren't all recent. Some of it is clumsy communication, though that's bad because it's usually due to a big disconnect between policy-makers and regular folk. But, some of it is actual screw-ups that we never even tried to stop or reverse, or even admit was a mistake in the first place.
The Economy vs the economy (recent): Democrats are really proud of themselves for their stock market performance, and all signs point to them actually fixing up the capital-E Economy quite a lot from the devastation (and time bomb legislation) of Trump's term. But most of us are actually concerned with the lower-case-e economy, which sucks right now.
This and a bunch of other stuff collaborates to create an impression to folks that inflation is high and the economy sucks. But, technically, those cost of living setbacks aren't actually due to inflation, and technically they aren't "the economy". So the Democrat message of "the economy is great!" has a lot of people pretty angry and frustrated.
NAFTA, and the globalization trend (decades of bad policy, here): Huge swaths of legislation which directly resulted in the loss of domestic industry and handouts to megacorporate / Wall St. bodies can be directly traced to Democrat policies. Seriously. It's not like all policy can be predictably good or bad over a long period of time, but this specifically has never seemed good. Factories began to close domestically the instant NAFTA passed legislation, and we've never really recovered.
The problem here is that this is largely due to the Neoliberal / Third Way movement of Democrats. This is a pseudo-conservative corporation-friendly movement that led to Clinton's huge sweeps in the 90s, and because of that dramatic success, Democrats see corporate lobby/donors as a core pillar of the party now. In fact, the same folks that pushed Harris' incredibly disappointing play for "swing voter" Republicans are part of this pillar. They aren't "borderline" conservatives, they are literal conservatives.
Fundamentally, I'm not saying "Democrats are BAD!", I'm saying that these disconnects and pro-corporate stances are real. To look at the Democrats and feel like they aren't sticking up for workers isn't irrational. It makes a lot of sense.
To see what a pro-worker party might be like, think about Bernie (who seems real damn frustrated with the party right now) - as an independent, he establishes a firm coalition with Democrats in order to serve the purpose of mitigating Republican harm, but his entire slate of concerns are so completely different from Democrats writ large that they seem like totally different platforms. And, well, honestly, they are.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/10/business/economy/trump-biden-labor-unions.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Y04.ELr4.khs4-0zUiGZg
Yeah, this is a big problem as well. I don’t want to make it seem like Republicans are somehow good for workers. They’re way worse. They will devastate the working class in the coming years.
I’m saying that it doesn’t seem to workers like there IS a party that is pro worker. And to be honest, “isn’t as bad for workers” isn’t the same as “pro worker”. So I think that if workers don’t feel like Democrats or Republicans are on their side, that seems perfectly rational to me.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/biden-trump-presidency-accomplishments-rcna179235