Summary
Democrats must reclaim their identity as the party of the working class to regain electoral strength.
Despite pro-labor policies under Biden, working-class voters feel disconnected, seeing Democrats as defenders of a failing system.
The party’s decline traces back to NAFTA and neoliberal economic policies that favored corporations over workers.
A generational effort to prioritize labor rights, fair wages, and economic security while addressing working-class frustrations are needed.
Without serious reform, Democrats will continue losing ground to populist alternatives.
They can’t. Middle class oil workers, workers in the gasoline auto-sector will not vote for Democrats. The same goes for many who are contractors; plumbers, electricians, HVAC.
Those working for Amazon might be able to unionize, same with Walmart. Hopefully they can get better pay, and hours. But they are not fighting the same fight as climate activists.
Trump might break teacher unions soon with school vouchers.
Democrats need to start with hyper-local issues, and organize around those.
Why do people act like the only real workers are oil workers, coal miners, and building contractors? This is a tiny sliver of the workforce.
Because it simultaneously gives them an excuse to do noting for both unions and the environment.
Can we stop this working class bullshit? You people are so damn disingenuous with this. Just say what it is. Culture War Bullshit!
Organizing along class lines is literally the farthest thing from “culture war bullshit” there is.
Go organize with the right wingers then, and see how far you get.
There needs to be a worker’s party. It doesn’t have to be the Democrats.
That there are only going to be two viable parties in this country is a mathematical inevitability of how our voting system works, but there’s no reason why the Democrats have to remain one of those parties. If what they’re doing right now is the best they’ve got then they shouldn’t be difficult to replace. A damp sandwich could do a better job.
Its a first past the post 2 party system. It’s gonna have to be the Democrats.
Democrats have no intention of being pro-labor. They need to go away and be replaced by a better party.
Check out the Working Families Party. It’s not in every state, but they aren’t delusional about running their own candidates as third parties. The strategy is generally to find candidates that align to their values and get them into Democratic primaries.
Now, at the end of the day, I don’t think any political party can save us. The best case scenario is to make sure the state isn’t too repressive, but that’s useful in itself.
DAMP SANDWICH 2028
No shit. Now convince the democratic party leadership that winning elections is more important that kissing donor ass.
Convince the voters to stop falling for culture war bullshit then
Don’t convince national Democratic leadership of anything. They’re too disconnected and don’t care about any state they don’t live in. Run for, and take control of state Democratic parties. Start telling national leadership your terms for your state supporting or working with them.
If enough people do that. They will change or become irrelevant.
What state do you live in?
Missouri. Not sure why you’re being downvoted for asking that. We generally even in larger metropolitan areas have a ton of offices that no one other than Republicans run for. Which is part of why this is a red state. National Democrats don’t even try to field candidates for anything but the biggest offices. Which often backfires denying them even those.
All states need to take back their leadership and a lot of the funding from the national party. The National Party should be nothing more than a body that coordinates the state parties. Not the actual leadership itself. That’s part of the reason they seem so disconnected. Because they are
People downvote you for anything other than agreeing with their echo chamber message. Not that I even disagree with what this thread is saying. That’s just how it is
Where can I sign up? Fuck it. I’ll run for something.
What state are you in? I will absolutely find you the info.
AZ
The state party has some resources here on volunteering and when the state committee meets for elections and whatnot.
You can go here and look at your county party website as well, they’ll have more info on how to get involved/run there. I looked at a few, most of them had a way of singing up to be a committee person.
Best of luck!
Should spread the word. I’ll help. We should have been doing this 20 years ago.
The only ones that get any level of power or influence within the party are ones that will defend the status quo. A system that’s operating as designed cannot be reformed from within.
It’s actually a pretty low bar to clear. You can even claim a decent annual wage off campaign donations if its your only income source, so a literal unemployed homeless person could run if he got the party endorsement.
The only concern is if the state has active politicians on the ticket that you would be competing against, such as career politicians, long time staffers, and volunteers who would be seen as more preferable. You could still fill one of those staffer, intern, and/or volunteer positions to make your voice heard as well.
most of them dont want to ruffle the feathers of the same donors that gets the GOP elected, theres one too many DINOS in the dnc, just need to rout out those first, which is a first step
Losing is more expensive
Their goal is never to win elections. Their only goal is to prevent leftist movements and organization from gaining positions of power. To defend these status quo.
Yes they will gladly surrender to fascists to prevent socialists from getting a voice. This is the core issue
Why are you using the future tense?
Wouldn’t be surprised if you are in a situation where it needs to get worse before it can get better. Vote 3rd party so heavily that it kills one of the major parties. All the people that didn’t turn up vote for someone else?
The best way is to bring single payer health care.
Every other G7 nation has it
They tried to do that the moment they had senate supermajority with caucusing ind over a decade ago, but caucusing ind Joe Lieberman voted against it and the GOP filibustered it in 2010.
They haven’t even had more than 50 since like 2013, they only had bare minimum to select majority leader in 2021 because of caucusing independents and VP tiebreaker.
If you want single payer then the only way to get that is not to change the DNC, it’s to convince millions more people to vote for them or to remove Republicans.
ACA was never going to be single payer. Lieberman played the bad guy to kill the public option, but it was pretty obvious it was only there to be bargained out in the first place.
Single payer, on the other hand, was never even considered to be an option.
They voted on singlepayer and it lost by Independent Joe Liebermans vote.
You cannot blame that on the DNC.
They have never once voted on single payer.
Then I guess Barrack Obama and thousands of protestors all halucinated it back in December 2009
Even Nancy Pelosi, who passed the bill in the house with 218 votes, has multiple comments about it being removed in the Senate.
That’s not single payer.
Now convince the democratic party leadership that serving their constituents is more important that kissing donor ass.
Convince them of that, and the winning elections thing will solve itself.
lol no it won’t. If I’m a Republican candidate, I can literally just say some culture war bullshit and still beat you in an election. Especially if you’re a woman or a minority.
The problem is “kissing donor ass” is a euphemism for serving themselves.
The problem is they see large donors as the only path to victory as campaigns are expensive
The problem is that they see donations as the end goal and no longer give a shit if they lose.
They don’t have to be. Present the people with policies that they want and the public will do all the work themselves.
The problem is getting the word out is expensive. Advertisement buys aren’t cheap.
They do get the word out. The problem is that we don’t believe them.
And guess what the innovation in advertising this last cycle was? Cheap, to voters, text messages asking for funding. Sounds like a great time to dump the dead-weight corpos and win some elections
And what was the turnover on those buys? The fact that texts aren’t expensive doesn’t mean that is effective.
A motivated voter seriously engaging with their social network is worth a lot more than an ad buy. The whole ad world is trying to smuggle their advertising as the genuine thoughts of a real person and politics is acting like it’s still the age of Must See TV.
True but is there any indication of that currently working on the same level in terms of the return on the ad buy that a TV ad can produce? Ads are passive and they work.
Do they? We’ve outspent Trump in three elections now and still lost two of them. Is there any actual measure of the value of an ad for political purposes? It’s not like business where you could note an increase in sales after you run an ad campaign, there’s one single opportunity to “buy” and it’s a secret. Anything you learn in that one campaign you just have to hope still applies years later in a different environment with a different candidate.
I’m sure they have some benefit, but the only time I’ve ever seen someone talk about political advertising was either when they were sick of seeing them or when an ad was going viral because regular people were using their social networks to share it.
Yes, they do work. Anyone who thinks marketing and advertising are ineffective on them ate just ignorant of how ads work on them.
If you study advertising or marketing you’ll inevitable learn about Charmin toilet paper in the USA. They ran a campaign that was irritating regarding people squeezing toilet paper rolls because they were so soft. “Don’t squeeze the Charmin” was their slogan. People hated the ad. They complained about the ad to stations but Charmin also sold a shitload of toilet paper based on this ad campaign so even irritating ads can work.
Here I thought “providing the better option in a binary race” would be enough; but snowflake voters need individual attention?
“Here. We’ll keep a traitorous felon out of office because that’s the choice” and people still preferred the felon.
I think we need to start by apologizing to the Democrats for being stupid. Not just “oops I voted wrong” stupid, but “oops I voted for the Russian agent who’s raped everything he touches and sold every secret he probably touched too, and is now oddly hellbent on destroying a country as a favour to Russia” stupid.
That’s a lotta stupid.
Winning elections by checks notes demanding voters apologize for not voting for you.
Brilliant.
They’re downvoting you, but you’re right. One day they’ll grow out of this communist shit
“We’re second worst and you will be voting for us no matter what we do” was going to fail eventually, and you were fools to keep doing it.
I feel like I have to cook so many times on this app.
Your hostage situation electioneering is the past, electoral reform is the future.
We will not be abused by people like you any longer. We will be free to vote how we wish. The people will have many options to choose from, and the democrats will have to represent people to earn their votes or be tossed into the garbage can alongside the republicans.
More democracy is the way forward, not this domestic assault you try to pass off as representation.
Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
Ok, keep voting for stupid things, win stupid prizes.
You will NEVER get electoral reform from republicans. You will get electoral dismantling.
The hostage situation is ongoing and you’re asking for every hostage to die.
A two party system isn’t it and this can be the best time to start a new party, one that focuses on the worker’s not to say this party would completely destroy help for the wealthy but make them do what’s fair for living and operating in this country.
That’ll be the day.
The Democrat party is not a democratic party, they are a neoliberal, technocratic party. They don’t want the people to rule, they want neoliberal technocrats to rule. I don’t see that changing, anytime soon.
A workers’ party would have to be a majoritarian, democratic party, because the workers are the vast majority of the population.
MAGA took over the GOP in just a few years. I think the same thing can happen to the DNC. Just need a little propaganda, some charismatic leadership, and people willing to slander the establishment.
MAGA voted for Republicans.
If you’re suggesting the left change the DNC by starting to vote for them, then I’m in.
MAGA had a lot of money pushed at it. The Koch Bros independently funded the Tea Party movement until Trump was created, then Russian money began to flow.
There is no such money faucet for leftist groups. In fact, a massive lack of funding has been one of the chief struggles these groups have had for decades.
This took decades. They started in the 1970s. If you think this happened over a few years you are either young or paying attention to the wrong things
Eh, this particular movement started in the 1990s. Then they got focused in the 2010s.
There’s a lot of stuff that also started in the 70s, but the MAGA stuff is way more recent and beyond what they had dreamed would be possible in the 70s. They really, really didnt count on their voters largely giving up on any semblence - claimed or real - of principles. Which was a huge win for them.
The current maga we see today was started by the John Birch Society.
The Christian nationalism starts with Roe debatably even with the Civil Rights movement. The Christian nationalists are the driving force behind this movement. Remember when Iran revolted the religious elements didn’t take over immediately.
It won’t happen because Anyone left of center is too fucking worried about supporting a candidate that isn’t completely perfect in their eyes than they are about making actual progress.
Edit- and just like that, like moths to a flame, people come by to prove me right.
I dont think asking for “not in support of wildly illegal war crimes” was a big ask. But evidently the centrists were willing to throw the entire country to permanent fascism to stand on their principle that AIPAC money needed to continue to flow to DNC bank accounts. But yes, the voters are to blame here, clearly.
Leftists would never support a centrist candidate because we are not centrists.
Theres a massive problem with propaganda in this country to the point where Unions, public school Educators, Farmers, Poor folk just barely managing to survive until their next paycheck would all rather vote for the guy who wants to make unionizing Illegal, who wants to dismantle the Department of Education and public schools, who wants to take away farmer subsidies so that small time farmers collapse in on themselves, and who wants to take away the very federal programs that help poor Americans survive. As opposed to a candidate who wanted to support more unionization across the country and support workers right to strike, who wanted the department of Education to remain in existence and had a teacher as her VP who talked about how teachers needed raises, who talked about going after big time corporations who also happen to be massive farmers and force the small time farmers to sell to them so that the small timers now make no or actually lose money while the corporation gets their subsidy, and who talked about raising the minimum wage to 15 an hour “at least” and supported legislation that would allow for said poor folk to get more benefits and be lifted out of poverty.
Democrats are and were pro worker, even if not perfect. But the workers abandoned them because at least the Republicans say they’ll fix everything right away. And hey if they don’t, these things take time. But if a Democrat is elected and says they’ll fix everything right away, that they’ll change the country and they don’t do it immediately, well that’s just because Democrats are incompetent.
Many many workers are voting for Republicans knowing it’s against their interests because of hatred and bigotry. The Democrats need to do better, the need to be reshaped into a more progressive party, and they need better messaging and marketing, but to say they aren’t already the pro worker party is fucking disingenuous at best and outright spreading far right propaganda at worst.
Democrats never lifted a finger for me. Every time I hear them doing something it’s somehow not helping me again. My wages have stagnated while their donors got richer. Obama bailed out companies that closed production anyway. Dems handled this election so poorly it’s barely believable. I genuinely don’t know if they’re actually opposition. They seem like they’re on the same team as the other guys from where I’m sitting.
Where I live, it has looked the same for the last 18 years of my life. Most of the changes are from state laws, even then it’s hard to get the companies to respect them without threat of a legal action I can’t do from being broke.
Dems handled this election so poorly it’s barely believable. I genuinely don’t know if they’re actually opposition. They seem like they’re on the same team as the other guys from where I’m sitting.
Have been since at least 2016.
biden was the most pro labor president in my lifetime.
And even he fucked over railroad workers when they striked.
No he didn’t.
You’re leaving out half of the story.
He ended the railroad strike, but worked and got all their demands met. He was very effective handling that.
Nope, they didn’t get sick leave: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-signs-bill-block-us-railroad-strike-2022-12-02/
And the gains they did receive they credited to
Drumroll
Bernie “Not A Democrat and Not A Liberal Because He’s Literally A Socialist” Sanders.
Hey look at this other article from the same source a few months later: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/most-unionized-us-rail-workers-now-have-new-sick-leave-2023-06-05/
And also this one from the guv’ment: https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/biden-harris-administration-calls-class-i-freight-railroads-guarantee-paid-sick-leave
ive apparently blocked whoever youre replying to so they’re probably arguing in bad faith.
Why does this keep getting repeated? It’s not true.
Here’s a fun game: go look it up and bring back sources. You’ll be surprised what you find.
Edit: Y’all need to learn to not stop your research in 2022.
Is Wikipedia lying too?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_railroad_labor_dispute
In September 2022, U.S. Senators Richard Burr and Roger Wicker introduced a bill that would have required labor unions to agree to the terms proposed by the Presidential Emergency Board, to prevent a strike.[18] It was blocked by Senator Bernie Sanders, who noted that freight rail workers receive a “grand total of zero sick days” while railroad companies made significant profits.[19] In the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “We’d rather see negotiations prevail so there’s no need for any actions from Congress.”[16]
In late November, after some unions had rejected the agreement, Biden asked Congress to pass the agreement into law. On November 30, the House of Representatives passed the existing tentative agreement along with an amended version that would require railroad employers to ensure 7 days paid sick leave.[20] On December 1, the Senate passed the tentative agreement with only 1 day of sick leave.[21] President Joe Biden signed the legislation into law on December 2.[4] Writing for Jacobin, Barry Eidlin, associate professor of sociology at McGill University, said the message sent to the rail workers by the president and Congress was “shut up and get back to work.”[22] The Biden administration’s intervention in the dispute was condemned by over 500 labor historians in an open letter to Joe Biden and Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh.[23]
No. But a lot happened after 2022. This is not the slam dunk you think it is.
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Rail union presidents praise worker solidarity and Team Biden for historic tentative agreement
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IBEW Thanks President Biden for Intervention on Behalf of Railroad Workers
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You also need to look at stuff after 2022 because your info is dated: “We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.”.
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And here’s one from 2024: Rail unions hail Biden’s two-person crew mandate
Man look at all that screwing over eh?
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Apparently your use of Google is very selective.
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Rail union presidents praise worker solidarity and Team Biden for historic tentative agreement
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IBEW Thanks President Biden for Intervention on Behalf of Railroad Workers
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You also need to look at stuff after 2022 because your info is dated: “We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.”.
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And here’s one from 2024: Rail unions hail Biden’s two-person crew mandate
Doesn’t look like “fucked over” to me
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Ain’t saying much.
Claiming to be pro labor starts at livable wages.
Can’t be the party of wall st and the party of workers, at best you can pay lip service to one or the other, its no wonder which they would choose
As a non American, I’ve been told by an American colleagues that the Republicans are traditionally the worker’s party. Could someone please clarify?
Additionally, my opinion is that the entire system needs to be abolished to allow representation from more than two parties to represent how diverse America is.
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This is absolutely true.
It’s like pro wrestling. Their gimmick is that they are working class that busts their assess working hard labor jobs to feed their families. The democratic gimmick is that of well meaning and educated individuals seeking a bright future.
But in reality is that they are both moronic abusive assholes and one is a nazi.
Tldr: Democrats were the party of the South until the 90s
Alabama, for example, didn’t elect a Republican governor until 1986. Mississippi didn’t elect one until 1991. Georgia didn’t elect one until 2002.
Claims Nixon was the Republican who came up with the idea of pandering to racists
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_United_States_presidential_election
See Jimmy Carter’s support in the South
So a long time ago, you could argue the Republicans were the worker’s party. Abolionist-focused, was comfortable with immigrants more than other parties at the time, and Lincoln even exchanged letters with Karl Marx, but indrectly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_of_the_International_Working_Men’s_Association_to_Abraham_Lincoln
Republicans in the 1800s stood for minimum wage, pushed for suffrage of women, and other generally good ideas like “Maybe we should listen to the unionists who are willing to die for an 8 hour work week.”
But over the centuries since, the lines blurred. In the 1930s a Democrat pushed for expansions of the social net due to the great depression. In the 1950s, a Republican advocated for billions to spent on the interstate highway system, that has never once made a dime back over the last decades.
Then the southern strategy happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy Republicans marketed themselves towards the white South as a way to say “Hey we back what you stand for, whatever it is” and that’s when South started to vote for Republicans, and Nixon took advantage of this.
But the Republicans today don’t even care about the white workers, they don’t about any workers, they only care about the rich. Have been since at least the 1980s from Ronald Reagan. Democrats lately tend to protect the workers more, but it varies from state to federal, but generally wages are up with Democrats, and we’ve had more expansions of workers rights with them.
How far back are they talking “traditionally”? You can make an argument that they were a century ago. Not a particularly strong argument, but there’s an argument. Go back even further, and Karl Marx himself was congratulating Abraham Lincoln. After all, slaves are the most exploited workers.
The last 50 years, though? Absolutely not, but their bleating about “coastal elites” hoodwinks a lot of people to think otherwise.
Yes! My colleagues were talking about the elites in California when they mentioned that.
Because they’re jealous of a state that isn’t a shit hole
Source: Californian with family in a red state: if you’re close enough to them they’ll admit it unknowingly
I think that all makes sense. A state government that wants to improve the working class will generally be more rich, and a state that doesn’t will have more poor.
Nice. When another debate comes up in the office, I’ll have some ammo
Non americans here. None of their parties will be a worker party. If they do I cut my left ball.
I would really like to know why your American colleagues think that.
Their words were something to the effect of Democrats always campaigning with celebrities and supported by rich people, while Republicans are supported by the poor and don’t campaign with rich people (I did point out Musk to them and they replied that Musk is a hard worker etc.).
Thanks for the follow up. The notion is totally at odds with their actions and efforts, and it’s kind of disheartening to hear their reasoning. I shouldn’t be surprised though.
Probably briefly remembering high school talking about Republicans doing good things, and then thinking Fox News is accurate reporting.
But then the corporations are not going to pay them.
The same neoliberal policies republicans supported yet aren’t held accountable for because 🤷♂️
Because Democrats are holding the bag
Because no one expects anything but terrible policy, like those neoliberal ones, from the GOP. People think the dems will be for the people and workers not just the wealthy
So why do people vote for republicans? Come on, just admit it.
The hate, years of am radio/fox News and anti abortion
They kinda were. People hate “RINOs,” ofc Trump is in reality just more of the same, but like the author said he represents a “wrecking ball,” and only thing resembling a deviation from the mainstream Washington consensus.
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I don’t know why these articles keep coming up, because the party at large already was. One or two turds in the punchbowl do kind of ruin ones appetite I suppose, but when you’re up against a fascist ideology completely based on lies and bullshit social posturing as issues, you can’t rely on something like being the “worker party” to combat.
Democrats need to fucking smarter and more nimble at turning the tables on lies and misinformation. That’s what we need. They’re fucking failing at that right now.
Unfortunately, the GOP has enemy nations helping them with their campaigns/propaganda.
Are you so blind to the fact that a bipartisan system cannot possibly represent the people. The Democrats haven’t driven politics for the working man for a long fucking while…
The problem with the DNCs version of being the “worker’s party” is that the left leaning policies they do pass tend to be things that feel intangible to most workers. They pass infrastructure bills that in theory create jobs, but in reality usually take way too long to actually implement and are killed or watered down by the opposition. Even before they are watered down, they tend to largely be hand outs to large corporations who capitalize the lions share of the funding before anything trickles down to actual workers.
Workers want to see a political party that aren’t afraid of taking direct action, they want to see tangible benefits.
A agree with this in general, but when you’re talking about an entire party, you have dig deeper into local affiliated reps, not the national reps. They aren’t paying much attention to incra crews scamming the system and taking twice as long to patch roads and whatnot.
you have dig deeper into local affiliated reps, not the national reps
The problem with that is that the national party is the one who funds/endorses a lot of the campaigns for local elections, especially in battleground districts. In a lot of cases the local DNC chapters are even more entrenched in centre-right/Third-way politics than the national leadership.
That’s how you get something like New York City who votes overwhelmingly DNC get Mayor like Eric Adams. Oftentimes it’s even easier for local institutions to be captured by organizations with capital.
So long as they have corporate donors and insider trading, they will never be the workers’ party.
