Are the democrats learning without actually admitting they're learning? A shift I've noticed from Hillary supporters over the past few days

I've noticed a strange approach among some democrats and Hillary supporters over the past few days, which actually seems to be an attempt to make a bridge between Clinton supporters and Sanders supporters. It goes something like this." Hillary IS for the working class. The democrats ARE for the working class. We didn't abandon the working class, we're very much for them. What your concerns are over is different messaging, lack of focus, etc." I've even seen some Hillary supporters attempt to push the words "social democracy" in Hillary's way of thinking. I think that's a load of crap considering Clinton's comments about "not being Denmark, but the United States of America" as an excuse to run to the right and throw out actual social democratic ideas. Regardless, I must say, I approve of the approach. If the democrats are interested in fixing our economic system for the working class and others at the bottom, that's fine. And I approve of it. And like the article I posted above, I'm not even against trying to raise up standards for racial minorities and the like too. I just don't think that their concerns should be pursued at the exclusion of my own.

But the democrats needs to do more. They need to shift direction from the centrist "pragmatic" approach to a progressive one, and recognize, constantly, that progress is an ever changing goal, constantly moving to the left, not a stagnant one in which we stop after a president accomplishes his or her mission and that future presidents should continue that direction. Our economy is far more broken than the democrats realize it is, and we need bold solutions that rise to the times.

Clinton was a bad messenger. She wasn't the candidate of "yes we can", but "no we can't." She and the democrats dismissed the concerns of the Bernie wing of the party, ran to the center, and told us to settle for less and that we weren't being reasonable. Well, when you're buried under tens of thousands of student loan debt with no good economic prospects, don't tell me to be reasonable and suck it up and that I'm privileged. When your future looks grim and looks like it's wage slavery for the rest of your life, don't tell me to be reasonable. Don't call me privileged. Things are screwed up, white working class people have problems too, and the democrats had a serious disconnect this time around, to put it lightly, with many of their prospective voters. We told you what we wanted, and we were ignored. It's great to tell us now we're all on the same side and want the same things despite having different approaches of how to get there, but it's a little late at this point.

I appreciate the democrats' change in messaging here. It's very disarming, and it's much more likely to lead to a pleasant conversation from me about how to solve our problems than a confrontational one. But the democrats' "lack of messaging" has caused some serious rifts. It actually has pushed me to the left and made me less compromising. We do need systemic solutions to our problems. We do need to consider things like universal healthcare, and free education, and stronger labor laws, and more unions, and basic income, and workplace democracy. The democrats need to stop running to the right and selling out the left. They need to stop being apologetic for half heartedly embracing liberal values, they need to full throatedly say "this is what we stand for, and we're not sorry for doing so." The democrats need to walk the walk on top of talking the talk. They need to be receptive to their base. Not cast them aside and act like they don't give a crap what we think.

Perhaps Clinton was merely a bad messenger, and the DNC made a huge miscalculation in shoving her down our throats. Regardless, I think doing so caused a lot of damage, and I'm not sure if I can even trust them to care about my concerns at this point. I'm deeply skeptical of this organization, and believe this election has done a lot of damage to my trust in it. I don't think it's impossible to win me back, but they need to change their message, and their policies to better reflect these ideals they claim to be for.

For starters, I'll address the article I posted above to explain what I mean. here, they talk about how the democrats are for the working class, but that means that they need to pay special attention to people of color because they face special issues. They point out Newt Gingrich, and how he branded welfare as something that goes to other people and not the white working class and blah blah blah and how this poisoned the well.

Look, I totally get you here. I'm a former conservative. I grew up with this kind of messaging in my formative years. But now, I'm more educated, intelligent, and I've rejected that approach to politics. But, at the same time, the democrats did a POOR job expressing their perspective in messaging. When you use identity politics to push your ideas, the white working class doesn't hear that you care about THEM. Especially when you scream that they're bigoted and privileged when they try to tell you this. It really does set up an us vs them, and while yes, Gingrich is appealing to dog whistle politics, Clinton was appealing to the other side of the coin of that. I have nothing against policies that disproportionately help the underprivileged. But they should be inclusive and help everyone, including whites. This is why we need system wide overhauls. As long as the welfare system is a complex mess, working class whites will see themselves as paying into a system where the "others" scam the system and get crap for free. And the identity politics messaging doesn't help that. It actually hurts. What does help? Well, if we had a simplified welfare system like a basic income or equivalent negative income tax, it would be as simple as money in, money out. Even many conservative Americans like social security and medicare in my experience. Because it benefits THEM. If you have a system without labyrinthine requirements to get into it, where everyone can readily see the benefits in a check coming to them every month, or a refund when they file a tax return (in the case of an NIT), then guess what, you'll win over the white working class too. So you do need to change your message, you do need to change your policies. As long as you have a convoluted welfare system that many Americans don't see any benefit from, they will oppose it, because they see their money as going to other people and away from them. If you want a policy most will get behind, it has to be framed in universal terms, aka, the Sanders school of progressivism that requires overhauling the entire system. I'm a former conservative, I know how they think. I know most of them aren't ideologues and just vote in how they perceive their best interests. This is why Trump beat 16 other conservative purist candidates. They weren't interested in ideological purity, but problem solving. That's why they voted for the guy who wanted to "make America great again." If you can convince them that left wing politics are in their interest, and they will benefit from it, which is where the Clinton school of incrementalism fails miserably, then people will be on board with it. This is why I changed my ideology around 2012. I realized in the midst of the recession, holy crap, the government isn't taking tax dollars to give to others with no benefit to me, it actually helps people like me! And I want more of that in our society. We can engineer away poverty if we really really wanted to. We just choose not to. And the Clinton approach of incremental change is in part responsible for that.

Beyond that, another thing I want to emphasize in this article:

"But here is the troubling reality for civically minded liberals looking to justify their preferred strategies: Hillary Clinton talked about the working class, middle class jobs, and the dignity of work constantly. And she still lost." (emphasis mine)

 Okay, this is one area I CAN'T speak for the rest of Americans, since I know my views are unpopular, but look at what I highlighted and bolded. Particularly the "dignity of work" part. To me, I find this whole obsession with the dignity of work creepy. It reads to me like "arbeit macht frei", you know, what they had on the entrances of the concentration camps (means "work makes you free."). This is the kind of packaging I expect from conservative purists like Paul Ryan. Look. Creating jobs in and of itself isn't a bad thing. But look at my post on the labor market I wrote as one of my first posts ever. Jobs will NEVER EVER be enough, nor should they be. To me, at least, in my more anti-work left approach to politics, this kind of phrasing if offputting, and it's a reason why I tend to dislike the democrat's messaging. Admittedly, even Sanders' policies are work oriented, and I admit I'm jumping the gun before we even get to the point we can adequately debate this openly in society before committing political suicide, but honestly, we will never ever ever fix the problems of our society through work. Creating work for the purpose of making paychecks is asinine to me, and honestly, considering how our economy works, there will never ever be enough jobs, that pay highly enough, and give people a sense of meaning or transcendent purpose that makes them LIKE doing them or WANT to do thing. Our system, at its core structure, will always ensure poverty, exploitation, and unemployment, unless we try to fix these problems directly through other means. We're merely talking about creating opportunities to people to slave their lives away so we can justify paying them and not letting them starve to death. It's a stupid and asinine idea. Jobs should exist because people want work done, we shouldn't talk about creating them for the sake of justifying the idea of giving people a paycheck. This is stupid. I was listening to Jimmy Dore recently and he pointed out about how some people don't want to cut the military industrial complex so we stop bombing brown people because it will kill jobs. Really?! That's your argument (for the record he was on the same page as me here)? I mean, the emperor made unemployment on the death star zero percent, that doesn't mean it's a good thing. The fact is, make work is stupid, and dignifying it is even stupider. This is another aspect in which the democratic message fails to grip me, although honestly I can compromise on this given the reality of politics in 2016. Still. I would like to see adequate progress made where we can message the kinds of ideals I hold in the future without being laughed out of politics for it. Because considering future technological employment, and just how stupid the concept is when you think about it, I think eventually liberating people from work is a good thing. We shouldn't be creating jobs for the sake of giving people checks and talking about how dignified it is. This is a bad message for me. A necessary evil of the times perhaps, but still not something that gets me enthused. I understand I may be thinking several decades ahead of my time though here.

But yeah, conclusion. My conclusion is this. I approve of this subtle shift in messaging to try to convince people that the dems really are for the working class and blah blah blah. But honestly, they need to do more. They need to walk the walk. They need to push policies and change their messaging to actually fulfill our actual needs of the people. And this requires systemic change and an overhaul of our institutions, not mere incremental change and pragmatism. We need to fully embrace progressive values, not act apologetic for doing it. And we need the democrats constantly out there trying to connect with people, not telling them screw you like they did this year. Even if we can't pass all of our ideas given a conservative congress, we should still be raising awareness of these ideas among the American public and trying to build support so we CAN pass them. The democrats lose because they fail to do this and as such, end up in a death spiral. They lack morale, they don't do anything because of lack of morale, they lack morale because they don't do anything to build morale, and then they lose because they lack morale. This is why the democrats self destructed in 2014 and 2016. You have to look like you're trying to do something. Just like FDR did. Otherwise people will lose their will to vote for you, and then you'll lose. So yeah, a messaging overhaul is necessary, but so is a change in direction in policy. I like the fact that the democrats seem slightly more receptive now, even if they won't admit they did wrong, but a lot of work must still be done. Hopefully, they'll "get it" by the 2018 mid terms and the 2020 presidential election (the big year we NEED to win).