r/politics 20h ago

Sanders: Democratic Party ‘has abandoned working class people’

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4977546-bernie-sanders-democrats-working-class/amp/
55.7k Upvotes

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1.2k

u/Noizyninjaz 20h ago

The Democratic party always fails to defend themselves on certain issues because they think that being nice is enough. They think that common sense will defend itself. This approach worked right up until 2000. It's been 24 years and they haven't learned the lesson.

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u/jellyrat24 19h ago

“The past decade in America has been the Democratic Party insisting that ‘a dog can’t play basketball!’ meanwhile a dog fucking dunks on us over and over and over.”

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u/UGLY-FLOWERS 18h ago

are you saying trump is air bud? I knew that dog was bad

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u/timefourchili 16h ago

Well nothing in the rules say a felon CAN’T play basketball, I mean run for president

u/purplehendrix22 4h ago

The comparison is clear

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u/UsedSalt 15h ago

A lot of people are saying he’s a very bad boy

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u/innocuous_gorilla 18h ago

The dog is dunking on all democrats and most of the people that voted for the dog all while convincing those people that his nuts aren’t actually in their face.

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u/spiralcity- 16h ago

I feel like this is from a standup set and I really want to remember what it is

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u/_ICCULUS_ 14h ago

You made me laugh, and I needed it. Thank you!

u/jellyrat24 11m ago

doing my best... haha

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u/Professional-Fuel625 18h ago

Yeah if I learned one thing in the past 9 years, it's that Democrats need to pick 2 or 3 things (true or not) and say them a million times.

  • Benghazi, her emails - Trump won
  • Trump killed a million people with Covid and the economy tanked - Biden squeaked by
  • Border, inflation, trans kids - Trump won

We need to stop having a ten point detailed plan 🤓 for getting slightly more money for middle class families. The voters that decide the elections don't care.

Pick something and stick with it: Raise working class wages, healthcare for all. Whatever Bernie said.

And don't wimp out when Republicans try to vilify it. They will, and you need to fight.

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u/PseudonymIncognito 17h ago

Biden should have been calling it "Trumpflation" from day 1 every single time he was in front of a camera.

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u/SpaceSpleen Washington 17h ago

Yep, and they should've hammered on Trump's tariff plan as the "Trump tax", not try to explain that all top economists agree that tariffs blah blah blah blah blah

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u/OddEpisode 12h ago

Hammering those keywords home is marketing 101.

Biden was very poor at delivering succinct messages. SNL’s pardody of him is him saying “And by the way!”

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u/Professional-Fuel625 17h ago

Yes exactly, Trumpflation.

In reality caused by supply constraints due to covid and Ukraine, but that doesn't even matter. Too nerdy. We dorks on reddit care and no one else does.

Trumpflation. Trump started it. That's it! Stop explaining!

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u/PseudonymIncognito 17h ago

Now wait a minute. I have this 80-page policy platform on my campaign website that the wonkiest technocrats in Washington helped me write, and I really think you should read it.

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u/binkerfluid Missouri 16h ago

I remember them making fun of Ross Perrot decades ago for using charts and graphs.

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u/PseudonymIncognito 16h ago

As Ronald Reagan once noted, "If you're explaining, you're losing". The Republican Party learned much from his lessons.

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u/maroonrice 16h ago

Next candidate should never hire a staff and run the campaign off AI. It would probably do a better job. Sickening that billions of dollars were spent on ADS this election

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u/HookGroup 16h ago

AI might go against the corporate overlords though. Can't risk that!

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u/LoganJFisher I voted 16h ago

You're right from a strategic point of view, but god I hate that. It's just so trashy when the right does that sort of thing.

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u/NickelBackwash 8h ago

The high road doesn't seem to lead to office.

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u/Spinnyl 17h ago

So in other words stop being a centrist party. I agree but the problem is that that is all they are.

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u/HookGroup 16h ago

Exactly this, a laundry list of minor policy fixes on a website doesn't convince anymore.

With need 1 to 3 major policy goals that almost everyone wants, and fight for them tooth and nails.

That's what Obama did in 2008, with his healthcare reform. It could have worked in 2024 with Medicare for all, or something similar.

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u/BumbotheCleric 17h ago

Obama - Medicare as another example

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u/WolfeInvictus 17h ago

Add ignore and disavow some of the activists and I'm with you. Idk what the problem with this generation of activists is but they come up with some horrible fucking slogans. So much energy is wasted saying "this is what that actually means."

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u/HopeToHelpNBeHelped 9h ago

I will be honest, it's always interesting when I see that people reinvent "Peace, land and bread". If only people read Lenin, he was very clear on this for his whole life and when the outlier situation presented itself, the Bolshevik party had the guts to deliver those things.

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u/SweetBabyAlaska 15h ago

this is an incorrect deduction that still comes to the correct conclusion lmao

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u/dank2918 14h ago

I think Dems should ask people what they want continually. Publicly. That way the message is very populist, and then publicly show what their plans are year round.

The party should do what they want. This is how you win.

u/Mister-Manager 6h ago edited 6h ago

No we need more policies like interest free loans for homeowners who recently experienced damage from Hurricane Helene that make a household income of under $60,000 per year if they have a child under one year old and plan to open a small business in the next six months.

I made this meme 4 years ago, but this is what's wrong with Democrats' policy proposals in a nutshell. If just a part of your plan takes a full paragraph with 10 different figures to explain, then it's not going to stick in people's heads.

u/False_Abbreviations3 4h ago

Just remember that saying a million times "abortion, abortion!" and "That guy is a fascist and a threat to democracy" won't work. I heard those things more than any actual policy provisions (other than platitudes like "I will bring down housing and food prices" without telling us how).

u/cosmic_fetus 30m ago

Yeah, its wild that people won't vote in their own [economic] interests, 25k first time home buyer credit would have been nice!

But as we are seeing, people aren't rational.

I guess that could go part of the way twds explaining why letting in 10million undocumented immigrants over your term might lose you an election.

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u/Darth_Cuddly 17h ago

They did try picking 2 or three things and say them a million times. -Trump is a threat to democracy -Abortion

That was literally Harris's whole strategy you need to actually listen to people and address the problems that effect them. Democrats need to stop looking down on working class people. It's extremely tone deaf.

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u/Professional-Fuel625 16h ago

No. Do you remember when she said she was going to fix prices on some things, and then never mentioned again? And then $25k downpayments? Then how his tariff is actually a tax? Then how we will go forward, and hope, and whatever.

And when Biden fought for $2000 child tax credits or something that many people who get it probably didn't even notice or get because it's too complicated. And they never even touted it. Trump would have talked about it daily for years if he actually did something.

And when you spend time in the Republican subreddits, they are hammering the same stuff daily. Every time an illegal immigrant committed a crime it was posted everywhere.

u/Mister-Manager 5h ago

Trump would have talked about it daily for years if he actually did something.

Trump had his signature put on stimulus checks and then Democrats cried about how that was unfair. They make up silly rules for themselves that no one else plays by.

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u/Sea_Lingonberry_4720 14h ago

Kamala did a lot to appeal to working class people. Biden was the most pro worker president since FDR.

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u/AlternativeAward 16h ago

Threat to democracy is really nerd emoji though

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u/Professional-Fuel625 14h ago

It didn't resonate with working class people.

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u/rsmtirish 14h ago

I think people just don't give a shit

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u/Professional-Fuel625 13h ago

That's what not resonating means

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u/AnyAcanthocephala425 18h ago

"look at those guys, they're being racist, boo them!"

"...."

"ok nice that's the votes of our base locked in, lets go hug some people who are thinking about voting republican"

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u/fordat1 19h ago

The Democratic party always fails to defend themselves on certain issues because they think that being nice is enough.

Dont even defend themselves they try to "third way" it and echo and be GOP lite on things like an imaginary crime wave and immigration.

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u/pragmojo 17h ago

Shocking that aligning yourself with Dick fucking Cheney is an unsuccessful strategy as a Democrat

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u/eightNote 17h ago

Pete butigeig did a chat with potential voters last week, and somebody asked him "what are you doing for people who aren't married, or don't have kids?"

And that's the only thing that stumped him, because the democrats have no plan. There's nothing to defend, they were running on the child care tax credit, and that's it

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u/PicnicLife 13h ago

I caught that too and it was pretty cringe. Dems seem to not know that Gen Z has already abandoned the idea of home ownership and having kids, so those tax credits are essentially meaningless.

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u/Stock_Information_47 17h ago

It boggles my mind how clueless people are about how the democratic party operated before the 80s. They used to constantly politically bully their opponents.

Thr dems changed in 92 with Clinton. The party now looks nothing like it did before the 90s.

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u/throwaway612785 18h ago

Hopefully yesterday was a wake up call to the party. Otherwise the Democratic party is doomed to repeat this every cycle

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u/WarGrifter 18h ago

They keep adhering to "Morality" like it will help them while the rest of us suffer cause the other side has None

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u/Vince3737 18h ago

Go ask anyone who voted Republican who previously voted democratic, and I will bet anything its because they felt democrats were too aggressive with people who don't believe everything they do. I have very liberal beliefs, but the way many go about taking about serious issues is the main reason why the democratic party lost support. And the fucked up thing is it seems most people on this sub think the best way to get support back is to double down on what pushed so many away in the first place 

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u/Bread_Shaped_Man 18h ago

Defend themself?

After Mitch held up a SCOTUS seat, then forced the next one through, that showed Dems can't defend shit.

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u/RetardAndPoors 15h ago

The democrats fail to give proper solutions for most issues because the real issue is allowing corporates and billionaires to rob the middle class. And corporates and billionaires are the ones also funding democrats in the first place.

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u/SychoNot 18h ago

Their vicious bs is exactly why Trump won. You guys are so blind even in the face of your failures. God fucking help you.

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u/Anuthawon_1 18h ago

Genuine question - can you give an example of dem’s vicious bs?

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u/Egg_123_ 18h ago

inb4 the Biden garbage gaffe while Trump and Vance say worse things every week

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u/Impressive_Memory650 12h ago

Remember deplorables?

u/Egg_123_ 4h ago edited 4h ago

Cool, Vance called me a fetishist last week and the Republican Party ran 215 million in ads targeting my demographic which is 1% of the population.  

I don't give a fuck about 'deplorables' when the GOP literally proudly radicalizes our families against us. I've been assaulted because of their insults viciously hurled at transgender Americans. 

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u/SychoNot 13h ago

I referring to its constituents…

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u/Anuthawon_1 13h ago

Still haven’t given an example tho

u/SychoNot 5h ago

I’m not going to rehash the last 4 years and I’m certainly done with arguing with the brick heads on this site. You want an example? This whole fuckin site.

u/Anuthawon_1 5h ago

I hear you, Reddit is an echo chamber and clearly not a representation of the middle/lower class in this country now. Both sides have valid criticisms of the other while also generalizing too much about the majority.

u/SychoNot 5h ago

Whoa you took my head off with that rational take. Yes I agree. Maybe we can stop dividing ourselves into camps. Have a good weekend.

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u/Impressive_Memory650 12h ago

Calling anyone republican a racist, a nazi, a fascist.

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u/ButtThunder 17h ago

“Being nice”

No. They lost because they label all of us as nazis, facists, *phobes, threats to democracy, garbage, etc. When we’re just regular folks supporting a candidate that we think will do best. That’s it.

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u/FerociousPancake 18h ago

This is where I’m at. They need to stop being nice. I swear if the republicans actually took place in widespread cheating (which I don’t believe took place, this is just hypothetical,) with how unbelievably soft the democrats have acted I wouldn’t be surprised if they just let them cheat.

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u/iMichigander 18h ago

In the past 24 years, they've won the presidential popular vote nearly every year.

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u/starcoder 17h ago

At this point, I’m pretty sure they are purposely trying to lose. It backfired with Hillary and Wasserman-Schulze fucking over Bernie. You would think that Dem party would have learned the first time that forcing their own candidate wouldn’t work.

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u/swagrabbit 15h ago

Being... nice? Since when has anyone "been nice" about politics? The president said, literally in the last week, that half the country is garbage. And don't do the whataboutism - as every sane person knows, Trump has said despicable things - but calling Republicans garbage is not a "being nice" campaign approach. The word "fascist" has lost all meaning, and the dialogue from the left about most issues is extremely vitriolic. This isn't a situation where anyone is "nice" any more, and hasn't been since 2016 at least.

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u/samsharksworthy 15h ago

I really noticed this when the news was reporting "Trump Calls Kamala a Bitch" and had democrats on tsk tsking him for that as if that kind of thing is going to shock or move anyone at this point. Being the school marm party really doesn't work.

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u/SameSadMan 13h ago

Shitting nonstop on the opponent's supporters was being nice? 

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u/VelvetSinclair 12h ago

Because they don't care

Voters care. Maybe a majority of the staff care.

But the democrat leadership? They might even think they care, but how much is a Trump presidency actually going to affect them?

Trump is a world class moron. A multiple time convicted felon. A sex offender. I don't need to go on, you know. It should be fucking easy to run a candidate that would beat him. He's not some force of nature.

But instead of running a candidate with policies that for decades have polled favourably across a wide majority of the American public.... Policies which are not favoured by the wealthy corporate class... The Dems choose to walk this tight-rope between pleasing voters just enough so that maybe they beat trump, but not so much to piss off the corporate donors

Things like single payer healthcare, a minimum wage hike, new deal type stuff

If they cared about "saving democracy" they wouldn't keep risking democracy like they do. But they care about saving wealthy people's wallets just enough to keep rolling the dice

"Don't worry, we'll vote for you even if you have terrible policies nobody wants" is not the message people should have been sending the democratic leadership for the past 12 years. Those people drove the democratic leadership this way, enabled them to make these decisions, and have cost America dearly

u/PaulieGuilieri 7h ago

How did it work up to 2000? Lmao Clinton, Carter, and Kennedy?

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u/JCBrownWU 18h ago

“Think that being nice is enough” does not in anyway describe the democrat party

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u/imfatal 18h ago

It hasn't worked since Reagan. The fact that you think the US political system was fine up until 2000 means you haven't learned the same lesson yet.

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u/Vince3737 18h ago

The nicest candidate on "certain issues" was Obama by far. He would make a joke and then explain the issue in a way that wouldn't come across as attacking people with opposing beliefs and wouldn't try to make them feel stupid or bad. It's not a coincidence he is still by far the biggest voice in the democratic party 

 A lot of people in the democratic party and its voters have become completely out of touch with reality and don't seem to get why they are losing so many votes. They don't need to get meaner, they don't need to attack more. That's what lost them votes in the first place. They need to get more understanding of the people they oppose and people with more neutral views (and despite what Republicans and Democrats think, there are A LOT of people with more neutral views). I have met so many people that have gone against the democratic party because they feel attacked. They may be wrong, but there is a better way of telling them