The Dem party becoming more economically conservative is solely the fault of the people choosing to do what donors want over what Dem voters want…

Do not make the mistake of thinking nerds on the Internet represent the Democratic Party rank and file. They like neoliberal economics.

the point is there would be more of a political mandate for economic change if our demographics looked more like this today. that map is never going to happen today no matter how progressive dems go on the economy, because of the work republicans have done to divide us over the last 50 years.

Fortunately both Biden and Harris support an unrealized capital gains tax, which would be an absolutely huge move. If we can acquire both houses of Congress and thus the ability to pass laws, we may actually achieve it.

Also, have dems cut taxes or regulation on the wealthy at any point that you can remember?

instead she keeps moving to the right economically

It’s not all “Move to the right.” Just this week she suggested expanding Medicare for in-home care.

Sure.

But man no one taxed the rich and built stuff like Teddy did.

That’s a nice thought, but it won’t happen because the ratcheting effect of primarying out moderates only works in one direction, rightward. This is because corporate donors are just as happy to fund fascists as they are moderates.

In contrast, progressive candidates often don’t stand a chance because corporate donors fucking hate them and will spend effectively unlimited amounts of money to destroy their chances, especially if they make regulation and oversight of corporations a big part of their platform. Ditto for the police “union[sic]” and police reform, or AIPAC and opposing genocide, for that matter.

No thanks. Ranked Choice voting or bust. Yall choosing bust? Sall good with me, I had a vasectomy so I don’t have kids. Rest well kids, you won’t ever have to suffer these fools (me too, thanks).

But conversely, the “spoiler” factor of even a fuly realized Green campaign is nil if the Democrats tack left. Pull the plug on Bibi and Jill Stein has very little to talk about.

It’s like they know the party will never bother to win those voters, and assumes they’ll capture them as good-enough/lesser-evil.

Sounds like the democrats should do something about First Past The Post voting!

Not at all, I am just not falling for the two sides of the same coin bullshit invented by the conservatives to further denigrate our government.

There is a serious problem and it is not with the liberal/left/Democratic party. The reason we are in this situation is because the conservatives are garbage people dragging this country down.

You’re assuming everyone stuck in rural America in a shit job with grievances is a shit person who did it to themselves. A lot of them are, especially the die hard republicans, but plenty had hard choices, or any number of other decent reasons beyond just not being smart or something.

And yeah their mascot is a filthy rich asshole, and a lot of them do suck ass. But also I spend enough time with those people to know plenty of them aren’t terrible but they are sick and tired of being treated like inherently morons for being rural

Well, A) I didn’t say the Democrats had lost the working class. I said that their policies were not targeting the working class. Even this election, Kamala Harris’ stump speeches repeatedly focus on the middle class but make no mention of the working class.

And B) those overall numbers don’t factor in race or geography. The Democrats still do very strongly amongst black Americans because of the legacy of Civil Rights Act and the Republicans’ Southern Strategy, and they are much more likely to live below the poverty line, but the black population is also unevenly distributed throughout the south and in northern urban population centers. Because of the Senate’s structure and the Electoral College, winning white working class voters can be a successful path to power in the Midwest and most of the South, where blue-collar whites can deliver GOP victories. In fact, the Republicans have won white working class voters in 8 of the last 11 elections, and that support handed them the presidency in 6 of them.

That’s why the Republicans have the reputation of being for the working class, and the Democrats don’t. The Republicans are actively working to win working-class whites (and there’s some evidence that Trump is gaining ground with working class black and Latino men), while the Democrats are actively trying to win moderate white-collar voters and assuming their base of working class minority voters will turn out

there is not and never has been any historical evidence of a red-brown alliance.

He’s not saying there’s a red-brown alliance. He’s saying all these supposed reds are actually browns, or useful idiots.

Apologies for the long post that largely agrees with what you had to say :p To give some background to the uniniated, the theory of ‘Social Facism’ as described gives a historical perspective into so-called ‘red-brown unity’ leading up until WW2.

(anti communist parties described Stalinists as fascist) […] led to mutual hostility between social democrats and communists, which were additionally intensified in 1929 when Berlin’s police, then under control of the SPD (socdem) government, shot down communist workers demonstrating on May Day in what became called Blutmai (Bloody May). That and the repressive legislation against the communists that followed served as further evidence to communists that social democrats were indeed “social fascists”.

The idea of social fascism, that social democrats are “objectively the moderate wing of fascism” as Stalin put it, intensified by SocDem authoritarian anti-left policies, lead to even greater hostility from the Communists against the Liberals than the Nazi’s themselves at the time.

In 1929, the KPD’s paramilitary organisation, the Roter Frontkämpferbund (“Alliance of Red Front-Fighters”), was banned as extremist by the governing social democrats. A KPD resolution described the “social fascists” [social democrats] as the “main pillar of the dictatorship of Capital”. In 1930, Kurt Schumacher of the SPD accused Communists of being “red-lacquered doppelgangers of the Nazis”. In Prussia, the largest state of Germany, the KPD united with the Nazis in unsuccessful attempt to bring down the state government of SPD by means of a Landtag referendum.

So technically, there was a red-brown (Communist-Nazi) alliance within Prussia in order to take down the SocDems, the Comms were obviously more ideologically aligned with socdems but felt they were the main thing preventing progress and thus wanted to speed up their demise.

We all know how collaborating with the Nazi’s turned out:

After Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party came to power in Germany, the KPD was outlawed and thousands of its members were arrested, including Thälmann. Those events made the Comintern do a complete turn on the question of alliance with social democrats and the theory of social fascism was abandoned. At the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in 1935, Georgi Dimitrov outlined the new policy of the popular front in his address “For the Unity of the Working Class Against Fascism”. This popular front […] The American historian Theodore Draper argued that “the so-called theory of social fascism and the practice based on it constituted one of the chief factors contributing to the victory of German fascism in January 1933”.

It turns out that by the communists temporarily aligning against liberals with the fascists in what today would probably be known as ‘accelerationism’, we headed from social democracy to concentration camps in 10 years.

And as you say, fascism is typically more obvious:

Leon Trotsky argued against the accusations of “social fascism”. In the March 1932 Bulletin of the Opposition, he declared: “Should fascism come to power, it will ride over your skulls and spines like a terrific tank. […] And only a fighting unity with the Social Democratic workers can bring victory”.

And while there are elements of logic to such a conclusion of ‘social fascism’ especially when today you have every ‘social democrat’ or ‘liberal’ capitaluting heavily rightwards and forming alliances with the far-right (France etc.) BUT As you say, and as history has shown, muddying the waters about the true nature of fascism pulls wool over the eyes of those with potential to affect change and prevent the rise true fascism. Which is growing every day.

Karl Popper argued that some radical parties of the era welcomed or turned a blind eye to the weakening of democracy, or saw a dictatorship as a temporary stepping stone to a revolution. quote from Popper “[Communists] even hoped that a totalitarian dictatorship in Central Europe would speed up matters […] Accordingly, the Communists did not fight when the fascists seized power. (Nobody expected the Social Democrats to fight). For the Communists were sure that the proletarian revolution was overdue and that the fascist interlude, necessary for its speeding up, could not last longer than a few months.”

And finally, it reeks of the unfortunate leftist ‘purity test’ behaviour which weakens unity and divides potential allies.

In 1969, the ex-communist historian Theodore Draper argued that the Communists who proposed the theory of social fascism, “were chiefly concerned with drawing a line of blood between themselves and all others to the ‘right’ of them, including the most ‘left-wing’ of the Social-Democrats.”

Anyway, when I read this theory it opened my eyes a tonne to the folly of refusing to collaborate with liberals. While I still believe liberal and center right policy, along with intense anti-left propaganda, are the reason for the rise of fascism today (overton window, ratcheting effect, disillusionment with electoral politics due to ineffective and oppressive governance that only benefits the wealthy).

Despite this by ostracising and refusing to collaborate with liberals we shoot ourselves in the foot by being so obsessed with purity that we reject reality. Perfect is the enemy of good. All progress is good provided it takes us along the right path and does not cut off the path to something greater.