The big one is being beholden to the insurance companies and denying us universal health care. Employer tied healthcare is a huge stumbling block for worker mobility.
Anyone who actually does their homework knows Democrats are far and away the party of the working class compared to Republicans. A quick look at their voting history proves that.
If you hear otherwise it's either coming from liars, fools who have been deceived, or by liberals who whine about Democrats not doing enough and then abstain from voting or vote 3rd party to protest and help to elect an anti-worker president and party, which is what just happened.
It's not that they're against the working class, it's that they don't do enough to fight for the working class. How can they when they all take money from billionaires and invest in their companies?
Not having any real plans to solve the problem of shrinking wages and an ever growing wealth gap makes Democrats stay home. And only when enough Democrats stay home do Republicans win.
ive been waiting 30 years for them to end the 'war on drugs'. or enact 'universal health care'.
notice they let the post office get brutalized with irrational fiscal policies and have done nothing to stop it. hell, biden still hasnt removed the guy that was put in place to fuck it all up.
college costs an arm and a leg because the let student be victimized by student loans. they arent trying to stop that loan process. just clear out some old debts. half-assed at that.
theyve done almost nothing to simplify the tax paying process despite every other modern taxing country having it be automatic.
so many little bits they just dont give 2 shits about because money. because corporate interests.
biden still hasnt removed the guy that was put in place to fuck it all up.
And this right here is a large part of why Trump was just re-elected. People whining about how Biden and Democrats haven't done enough, so they don't vote or vote 3rd party, when in reality, they have no clue what they're talking about.
People saying things they know nothing about, then other people reading it and thinking it's true and getting upset about it, then making irrational decisions based on fallacies.
In regards to Bernie, his premise is that wealth inequality is the core problem, which means tax the rich until they can't have an outsized influence on our politics.
We can keep telling ourselves Mark Cuban's "opportunity economy" was good enough but objectively it was a flop with working class voters. Either it was a messaging failure or it wasn't populist enough, Bernie is saying it is the latter. If it was a messaging failure, then we're likely to conclude it is because our media landscape is toxic. Bernie would agree and say that is why we need a populist message to cut through.
I think there’s a misconception about elected officials. Many people believe they work to improve the lives of American citizens, but they don’t. Most of their time is spent fundraising and catering to wealthy donors. The majority of them don’t care about you at all.
300 years of screwing poor people. Support for the 2008 bailout for Wall Street. Donations from tech companies. They claim to support Medicare for everyone but haven't done anything about it. Democrats tend to disregard working class and rural populations. In fact they denigrate them and think of them as uneducated hicks. Remember the basket of deplorables? Obama deported more immigrants than any other president.
I think there’s a misconception about elected officials. Many people believe they work to improve the lives of American citizens, but they don’t.
This. They want votes. They do what they think will get them votes. And yet, often -- and in the last election -- the democrats that help the people (like by walking a union picket line, supporting LGBTQ+ and basic human rights, legalizing cannabis, reducing penalties petty crimes, etc.) don't get the votes that are part of the bargain.
They vote for and enact legislation that helps the people, and the people don't re-elect them. The incentive shifts to satisfying wealthy donors.
Yes, the Democratic party is against the working class. Yes, the Republican party is much, much, much worse. Yes, you have been out of the loop if you need examples.
Democrats used to be the conservative party before Nixon (my timing might be off) said "Hold my beer" and turned the Republicans into the regressive Christian theocracy it is today.
So, the civil war thing doesn't really count because it was a different party with different ideals under the same name.
Ignoring Bernie for the moment, "against the working class" is usually a dogwhistle for "poor whites have racial nervousness and i want to exacerbate that for political gain.". You wont find real examples because, generally, professional democrats arent against anyone. (even nazis, apparently.)
Bernie's specific crtique was a slightly tone-deaf critique that the dems were largely silent on the economic nervousness of the working class, and instead spend political capital fighting for racial and gender equality. Since the white male working class is not oppressed by race or gender, or in a position to really oppress anyone, they often feel unrepresented.
Class is also an Identity. One that most have in common.
Regardless of race, religion, sex, or gender; nearly all of us are working class.
So policies that help the working class, will help everyone. And those subclasses that are disproportionately held back, will be disproportionately helped by universal pro-worker policies.
This is extremely reductive identity politics. The point of the 2024 election results is that Trump made gains with all racial groups. You can't just boil it all down to identity. Beyond that practical lesson, identity politics is bad for any country because it is a zero-sum game. If we don't look past identity politics to a common set of ideals, we will end up with people at each other's throats.
Democrats in the past 10 ish years have been absolutely horrendous at marketing, allowing Republicans to take up all of the media talking space, traditional or otherwise. TV, news, podcasts, social media influencers, YouTube, etc. are all generally Republican leaning.
Republicans control the talking points and co-opt anything that the Democrats say. Meanwhile, Democrats are either unable or unwilling to do the same.
Republicans' control of the media allows them to get away with way more things than the Democrats. It allows them to essentially claim that they're for the working class while simultaneously working against working class interests, especially when heard by people who don't generally follow political news. Meanwhile, Democrats get called out for relatively smaller issues, and that makes them seem elitist and uncaring of working class issues.
One major facet of the Democrats being unable to control their marketing is their unwillingness to use populist rhetoric, even though by policy stances they should be (comparatively) more closely associated with populism than the Republicans. I've heard several takes on why Harris lost the election and the one that I most agree with is that she failed to use populist rhetoric and was unable to differentiate herself from Biden. People wanted change, and Harris offered the status quo.
Remember that the vast majority of Americans don't pay attention to politics, and so voter impressions are decided by tone and messaging rather than specific policies
If you avoid politicized language, a large majority of the US is quite left leaning, and economically progressive.
One of the Republicans favorite things to hate is the ACA (Obama Care). But if you ask them about the individual policies in the ACA, they approve of each of them by at least 2/3rds. And nearly all agree that the government should prevent people from being forced into bankruptcy by medical expenses.