Democrats will reliably celebrate Republicans who vote against them 98% of the time while attacking leftists and progressives who agree with them at least 90% of the time and driving them out of the party altogether.
You can either conclude Democrats are just conservatives or that they have no moral or principled stances and politics is just a "pick me" game of craving white conservative approval.
I'm not sure there's a difference.
As I've said before, at the state level, there are some pretty decent Democrats who recognize whoa, Republicans are out of their fucking minds and should be stopped.
But that doesn't carry over to the national party, where Democrats like Biden will call Mitch McConnell a good friend and insist on the importance of having a strong Republican Party.
Yeah, they don't like Trump, but they're less about defending democracy than they are about preserving the status quo of "normal" politics.
Trump would have gotten away with even more in office if he pursued the exact same policies but acted "normal" about it in front of the cameras.
The Project 2025 guys figured this out. Instead of having Bannon as a weird Rasputin figure, just surround Trump with regular GOP operatives. They're all Heritage Foundation freaks but that doesn't matter to Democrats.
The main friction is the GOP base expect Trump to act like an anti-establishment strong man so he can't "play by the rules."
Democrats keep propping up Republican has-beens like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and Not Really Never Trumpers like Nikki Haley not so much because they're against Trump or even for democracy, per se, so much as for the preservation of the traditional, congenial two party duopoly in which Republicans and Democrats both hold the line on behalf of the interests of the ruling class.
Meanwhile, Republican voters view Democrats and increasingly the GOP establishment as the enemy.
This is a losing proposition for Democrats and obviously for the rest of us as Republicans have gamed the system such that someone like Trump can easily win anyway and the GOP courts and statehouses have incrementally seized more control over government and our lives.
It makes sense to fire up left and liberal voters and fight Republicans everywhere, on everything. Because Republicans really are a minority. It's not a centrist or center-right country at all, as opinion polls constantly tell us.
Democrats don't really believe it's a center-right country anyway; they just know that's where the money and the all-important white voter is and they would rather work for them.
And what we're seeing is a Democratic Party steadily moving rightward trying to capture the space "traditional" Republicans left behind even as the wealthy and white voters are veering farther right every day.
The rest of us don't really have a say.
But in the meantime, yeah, Democrats might be nicer to us.
In the long term, all this is doing is enabling Republicans, Trump, and fascists like Trump.
Without him, the GOP may recalibrate around "nice" Nazis like JD Vance who can smile and speak in complete sentences while lying through their teeth and planning to slit your throat.
Is that an improvement? Democrats would seem to think so.
It also means Democrats are increasingly the party of banal evil conservatism while Republicans are the fascist wing, and there isn't much room for anyone else.
@gwynnion I've really come to believe they absolutely understand this but choose not to pursue it because getting votes is a secondary concern next to bringing in checks from big donors
basically fundraising for the democrats has become an end unto itself
@waitworry Democrats are a "choose your own adventure" type of shitty: some of them are just lazy and want a cushy job for life, some are just corrupt but in a pathetic, ordinary way, some are just conservatives but do PR for appearance's sake, some are just corporate shills, etcetera, etcetera.
There seem to be very few actual liberals in the party anymore.
@waitworry @gwynnion Unfortunately, the way politics has worked all my life is that "bringing in checks from big donors" = “getting votes”
One thing I think that would change our politics considerably is compulsory voting. If everyone was mandated (and allowed) to vote, things would look very different
@peterbutler @waitworry @gwynnion provide a null option (which if that wins: re-roll the candidates): so mandatory voting has no ethical considerations… it’s 100% the right thing to do.
@altruios @waitworry @gwynnion Agree on the null option, but not sure about the feasibility of “re-rolling” …
But yes, if voting were mandatory, I think you should definitely be able to reject everything
@peterbutler @waitworry @gwynnion I agree about feasibility: but it would probably result in a healthier democracy.
The notion that Peter Thiel and his fascist ilk could soon be in control of the US, given President Vance would be completely beholden to them, should terrify us all
@gwynnion I’m pretty far left, and democrats are not nicer to me. But I’m white, disabled, & poor. I’m sure if I was a poc or lgbtq they’d pretend to be though.
@wilbr @gwynnion Yep! My daughter thought she was trans throughout puberty & lived that. They pretend as long as it doesn’t make them uncomfortable. The minute a dem feels uncomfortable, that tolerance & inclusivity goes out the window, for disabled & others too. Of course, not ALL dems, but enough.
Numbers of billionaires are increasing like never before but even then they are a miniscule percentage of voters.
Weirdly it happens everywhere that possession of media outlets more than compensates for being a very small minority.
Apart from special circumstances (UK after World War 2) "we are many they are few" has never really worked.
Politics is deliberately portrayed as too boring and complex for "the many" to bother to get interested and stir themselves into action.