So, a crappy liberal subreddit that shall not be named asked this question and quite frankly, they didnt get the answer right. Because most of them are just bad faith blue no matter whoers who wont even seriously consider the opinions of those of us who dared defy the party tht year. Most of the responses were some version of "I'm an idiot" with any serious responses downvoted, so I wanted to give my take on this sitution.
For me, the purpose about not voting for Hillary was to send a message, and that message was this: that democrats can't take left wing voters for granted, and have to actually appeal to them if they actually want to win over such voters. The democrats were arrogant, they went into 2016 wanting to coronate hillary, with the media manufacturing consent around her. The 2016 primary season consisted primarily of privilege shaming and telling us "bernie bros" that we couldnt have nice things and had to settle for less. That was the entire pitch, that hillary was gonna be the nominee, you cant have nice things, screw you, and you better vote for us or else. That's the message that was sent to us, so my message back was a middle finger, telling them to do better.
Again, keep in mind my own opinion. Only the federal government has the ability to move resources meaningfully to solve poverty and fix the problems with american capitalism. And if the republican party is the party of being anti government doing things, then the democrats should be the party of them doing things.
But that legacy is gone. They've abandoned the new deal paradigm decades ago, shifting toward upper class suburbanites and minorities they appeal to through obnoxious use of identity politics. They are literally not interested in these major changes. Hillary's whole pitch was incrementalism and pragmatism and the government not doing things either and running to the center. Not much of a surprise given her husband's presidency represented such a shift.
So, I felt satisfied to vote for a third party who did support such an ideological shift, even if I didn't fully align with them, in order to put a fire under the democrats.
As for whether the democrats heard us? Well...no, but also kind of yes.
The fact is, my theory is that the democrats arent stupid. They know what voters like me want. They dont care. And the political insider class is against it. They moved heaven and earth to stop a bernie presidency, both in 2016 and 2020, and in 2020, when it looked like they were on the precipice of losing the party after Nevada went to Bernie, they organized to stop it.
I also consider the response to Hillary's 2016 defeat to be based primarily on misdirection. They could have acknowledged that they didnt properly appeal to lefties like me. They explicitly chose not to. They'd rather ignore us. They'd rather ignore the fact that they lost states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, as well as states like Iowa, Ohio, and Florida, largely because of the rust belt not being okay and them ignoring the concerns of the region, than appeal to us. I honestly believe in the long term the democrats dont care if they just concede the rust belt to Trump. They're trading Ohio, Iowa, and states like that trying to win over southern states that are urbanizing like Georgia and Arizona (they also covet Texas and North Carolina, not to mentioning getting florida back). And their politics isn't intended to win over people in Pennsylvania (at least those outside of the philly region), or Michigan, or Wisconsin. Like the whole idea of "flyover country" is real with the democrats. They DONT CARE. That's where all the uncultured racist rednecks live, yeehaw, screw them, we got yuppies from phoenix arizona and atlanta georgia and charlotte NC and houston texas who will vote for us. We got African Americans in North Carolina and Georgia, and hispanic Americans in the southwest to vote for us. We dont NEED those states up north that are predominantly white and concerned with a loss of their living standards. Let's just write them off as racist and call them privileged.
That's basically...what they're doing. Our protests fall on deaf ears and they've shown me that they'll happily concede voters like me demographically back to the GOP. "Let trump have them" is their attitude. We dont fit in their little idea of what the democratic party should be. And that's why they treat us like garbage.
So what did they do instead? They leaned into the russia narrative. They blamed third party voters by telling us our protests are useless. Like when these stuffy centrist libs talk about how protest votes are useless, they're internalizing DNC propaganda designed to us tell us that they plan to ignore us. They dont care. They didn't hear us because their entire job depends on NOT hearing us. They'd rather tell us that our protests are useless and we better support them or else.
Still...they did hear us. Because look at what they did after Biden won. Biden made some significant shifts left. Build back better was based on Bernie's green new deal and after analyzing both I can see bernie's footprints all over it. He advocated for free college and some student debt forgiveness. He did several pro labor actions I've discussed recently. He had the child tax credit expansion which was like a UBI. So the democrats did learn that they have to do some things in order to win over voters.
This is actually one of the reasons I'm leaning toward supporting him in 2024 assuming he is the general election candidate.
However, I do want to warn the dems not to get complacent. It's quite clear that the dems are doing the minimum possible in order to appease voters like us while keeping the groups they intend to primarily help happy. We progressives are not the primary demographic they care about. Of the three main demographics of the democratic party, we're actually the least important to them. They primarily want to appease the centrist neolib types and the identity voters. Progressives come last.
Still, even if they tend to ignore us, it's quite clear in order to avoid a full on defection in 2020, they did make token changes to appeal to us. Whether it's enough is debatable. Biden's coalition is fragile, and I honestly believe that most voters in the progressive camp support them for anti trump reasons, not for pro biden reasons. The democratic party's coalition is literally held together by them bullying progressives into line and as long as progressives keep it up, they arent going to change.
Even if progressives left en masse I still dont know if the dems will "hear" us. Because much like in 2016, they dont really want to. And push comes to shove, if they can pivot more toward centrists and win over more people fleeing from the right, they'd rather do that than appeal to the left.
So yeah, that's my honest answer to this question, as someone who is actually one of those "send the dems a message" voters and I'd rather people hear it from the horse's mouth than from some smarmy neolib who wants to strawman and insult us.
As for the future. As I said, I'm leaning toward supporting the dems/biden in the general this time around, but primarily because 1) i dont think biden did a terrible job, 2) those left of biden arent enthusing me much, and 3) i believe trump is a unique threat to democracy and needs to be stopped.
This is a contextual decision that comes down to the conditions of this election cycle. In 2028 I suspect I may be going blue no matter who again. Because heres the thing. If the dems are gonna ignore me and the GOP is gonna be evil, then I'm not really interested in supporting either. When the dems treat me like garbage im fine with ignoring them. I dont care about the dems winning if they're not fighting for something worth winning on. I'm not a tribalistic party line voter. Parties are to represent ideals, if they dont, then they dont deserve a vote. And id rather punish the dems for trying their "ignore the rust belt" strategy than reward them for it. Let them keep tryiing to win texas if they really dare. I don't care.
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