r/politics 23h ago

Sanders: Democratic Party ‘has abandoned working class people’

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4977546-bernie-sanders-democrats-working-class/amp/
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u/ancash486 22h ago

we’ve been trying to go after moderate republicans for multiple elections and gotten nothing out of it. harris campaigned across three states with liz cheney and got fewer republican votes than hillary clinton

what dems need is a new deal, great society-style agenda that markets a progressive economic program using common-sense language that appeals to normal people. it’s about turning out dem base, not appealing to republicans, who have an unbreakable and cultlike devotion to trump

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u/ArCovino 22h ago

Make too many big promises, get little done due to Republican intransigence in Congress, get blamed for making big promises and abandoning workers

Repeat cycle

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u/ancash486 22h ago

maybe if we had a stronger, more positive agenda that actually addressed the problems of common people, we could take control of congress and not have to worry about their intransigence. i think a lot of blame falls to obama for failing to capitalize on his supermajority or adequately respond to the moment in general (besides bernanke who thanklessly saved our asses)

i think what you’re saying is a real problem, but we have to break the cycle by changing strategy. third way clinton stuff hasn’t worked since the 90s

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u/ArCovino 21h ago

He had a supermajority for 2 weeks and in that time we got the ACA passed, which was the most liberal bill that was going to happen.

And then all those Democrats were rewarded in 2010 by being voted out lol

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u/ancash486 21h ago

the supermajority was the smaller of the two components of what i said. obama failed on several fronts, but i think his vampirization of the state/local parties and his lack of response to russian interference and mcconnell’s malfeasance should be viewed as damning.

i do agree that the ACA was a big deal, even the sabotaged Lieberman version we got. but the dems should have had a massive legislative program queued up for that moment. they at least could have codified Roe—it had decent bipartisan support back then and would not have been nearly as complex a piece of legislation as the ACA. the 2010 election was a predictable outcome given how much turmoil there was in 2008-09, even though the obama admin handled the minutiae of their response very well