"Voters in liberal strongholds across the country, from city centers to suburban stretches, failed to show up to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris at the levels they had for Joseph R. Biden Jr. four years earlier, contributing significantly to her defeat by Donald Trump,” the New York Times reports.
“Counties with the biggest Democratic victories in 2020 delivered 1.9 million fewer votes for Ms. Harris than they had for Mr. Biden. The nation’s most Republican-heavy counties turned out an additional 1.2 million votes for Mr. Trump this year, according to the analysis of the 47 states where the vote count is largely complete.”
“The drop-off spanned demographics and economics. It was clear in counties with the highest job growth rates, counties with the most job losses and counties with the highest percentage of college-educated voters. Turnout was down, too, across groups that are traditionally strong for Democrats — including areas with large numbers of Black Christians and Jewish voters.”
The one good thing that is coming from this is that this loss is motivating liberal voters to build a “Guillotine Party”, to do to Democratic leadership what the Tea Party did to the GOP.
Wait, what?
I don’t know if it will happen, but it absolutely should. We need to purge the corporate centrists from the Democratic leadership. They’ve delivered nothing but loss after loss after loss. Biden only barely managed to squeak out a win in 2020 because of Covid and by promising to run as a one-term caretaker president.
These tone-deaf idiots have the same fucking playbook every damn time. Their playbook is:
Prevent a primary if possible.
If a primary must occur, use any dirty trick necessary in the primary to make sure a corporate centrist whens the primary.
Once the centrist has the nomination, try to win by moving ever-more conservative and try to win over moderate Republicans.
In contrast, Republicans run with a platform that will actually energize their base, and they win.
Meanwhile, Democrats run candidates that their own polling shows will tank their chances of winning and will anger their base. Then they try to make up for the lost base voters by hoping that, maybe this time, Republicans will actually vote for a Democrat.
Exactly.
Our focus needs to be on class issues: Wealth disparity, healthcare, housing. We need big, systemic solutions, not bandaids.
Top tier income tax rate needs to return to the punitive levels it was at before Reagan: Ultra-high earners need to decide between spending a lot of money on tax deductible expenses (like labor), or giving the majority of that money to the IRS.
We need a wealth tax. Not on all wealth, just certain kinds of assets. Specifically, a tax on registered securities, such as stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments. Exempt the first $10 million held by natural persons, as we do need capital investment. However, that capital should be coming from (and owed back to) the working class. Pretty much every worker should be receiving shares of their company as part of their compensation.
Rent needs to die in a goddamn fire. Hardly anybody should be renting residential property. To that end, we need massive increases on property taxes that are exempted for owner-occupants. Raise the property taxes (and exemptions) and keep raising them, until the landlords figure out they can make more money as private lenders to their (former) tenants than as landlords to those same tenants. The few actual landlords remaining will be owners of duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes, who live in one of the units and rent out the remainder. Apartment complexes will be reconfigured as condominiums.
Universal Healthcare. True universal healthcare. Single payer. You show up at the doctor’s office, urgent care, ER, pharmacy, and you’ll never see a bill. We’ll pay for it with that securities tax. Employer-sponsored healthcare can remain a thing, but there should be no tax benefit or other public support for it.
We do need a minimum wage (around $15/hr today) but we need a “standard wage” that is substantially higher. (Around $22/hr today) A living wage. All businesses must pay at least a minimum wage. Large businesses (Or franchisees of large businesses) must start at that standard wage.
I’d eagerly vote for this platform. Are you running?
Are you looking for a VP?
Edit : also, cap political donations or even better, every candidate that gets a certain amount of signatures gets a set amount of campaign cash from the Fed, and they can’t spend any more than that.
The difference between the left and the right is that many Republican voters will vote for a candidate based on a single issue, while many Democrat voters will not vote for a candidate based on a single issue.
I’m genuinely not sure if there is a set of policies the left can offer which will adequately appeal to their entire base. I think the best case is another 2008 Obama who didn’t actually campaign on much hard policy other than just idealistic “hope”, which meant that a lot of voters could see what they wanted in him.
Meanwhile Republicans will continue to destroy the country while throwing out scraps like marginally lower taxes (but much lower for the rich).
“Eat the rich” might do it.
I don’t think that will happen. I think the dems are suffering from lack of leadership and direction. The party is too frayed to be effective at anything.