It might sound silly but I honestly believe that the Democrats insistence on being civil with the right is the biggest thing holding them back to the point of self-sabotage.
Kamala, Biden, whatever could have got up on stage and mocked the shit out of them. "People can't even afford homes anymore and the right want you to care about what a cartoon M&M is wearing? You want to vote for that joke? You think those people are going to help you pay the bills? No, they're too busy tweeting about Potato Head dolls. 'I can't pay the bills but at least Elon turned the pistol emoji back into a real gun!' pathetic!"
Of course we know why they won't, because they believe half the dumb shit the right do, and because they aren't trying to win over the public, they're trying to win over rich donors, all of whom are economically right at the least.
So we get "I want to reach across the isles." civility towards the right and mild empty promises towards the public (barely do that anymore)
Anyway, fuck liberals for letting the GOP win time and time again. Their weakness towards the right proves that they have no interest protecting the marginalised groups that rely on them. They only people they have to blame when they lose are themselves.
Ah, shit. This is not a well-formed thought I’m having, but I don’t think I can sit on it until it’s been fully worked out.
The assumption in the U.S. is the Republican Party represents the interests of those who are politically conservative, and the assumption is that the Democratic Party represents the interests of those who are politically liberal, right? (At least, that’s the assumption I think I’m supposed to have.)
But the reality is that the Republican Party has been shifting rightward for decades in terms of its policies and messaging, and the Democratic Party has been following in terms of its policies, though not its messaging. It can’t move leftward - most of its funding comes from corporate donors. It messages that it considers centrists while ostensibly serving the political desires of liberals, and it serves the interests of centrists and wealthy donors while making repeated excuses to liberal folks for not actually serving their interests. I think that explains why a lot of politically informed liberals choose not to vote. The Democratic Party has liberals trapped under the two-party first past the poll system. They have one party representing them, and the democrats are, well, maybe not following republicans, but chasing them into an ever-smaller box? (Huh.) … which leaves liberal folks unrepresented.
The Republican Party has these panics, and while those are absolutely fucking nonsense, the party and the voters are both kind of in on the joke. It’s all a part of embracing the shifting Overton Window that the Democratic Party is allowing because they have no spine, or maybe a decades-long plan to become the pre-1960’s Democratic Party again. I’m now not sure.
The Democratic Party stands on really weak ground. They message about all sorts of things - health care, protecting people’s rights, voting/voting access. And these things are fine. They aren’t ridiculous ideas. But they never DO anything about it.
If the Democratic Party began to attack republicans about their moral panics, the Republican Party can say “Yeah, well we changed the nation’s moral fabric again by making that M&M not be such a slut. We got our pro-gun messaging out there by convincing Twitter to change their emoji back to a gun! You chucklefucks have had 50 years to enshrine abortion and you failed. You had a majority in congress and you still passed a compromised republican-created health care plan. You could have enshrined gay marriage into law, but you’re just waiting until our packed courts undo that, too, so you can tell your voters to vote for you so you can still not do anything to address the issue!”
(I know, it’s a straw man, or whatever the one is where you make an argument and counter-argue your specific scenario, but I sort of am just monologuing here.)
I guess my point with that line of reasoning is that there isn’t an angle of attack that doesn’t leave the charade wide open.
Pretending to be civil while leaving about half the electorate with minimal representation is the only way they can hold onto their financing and outsize ‘range’ of the political spectrum (which represents a lot of disengaged non-voters because they aren’t, you know, represented), all of which is enabled under the current legal and political landscape that neither party is willing to change, because the landscape favors their party, even if it is detrimental to the nation and the people within the nation.
Ugh. Now I want to go fling manure onto a political party’s headquarters. It all sucks.