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sc94597 2 days ago
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sundin13 said:
sc94597 said:

Just want to point out that neither party is representing the majority of American people and any claim of "mandate" is over-blown here (or any recent election really.)  

If either of the major parties appealed to the majority of voting-eligible American adults who didn't vote, enough to get a sizeable minority of their votes, they would be a dominant party in the same way the Democratic-Republicans were in the Era of Good Feelings, the Republicans were for decades after reconstruction, and the Democrats were in the New Deal era. 

This should be what the Democrats focus on solving in the next few years. How can one capture this large, majority, disaffected population? What are the issues they care about? I can guarantee it is not the things either major parties focus on. 

The government is broken, and it can't be fixed with Republicans in power because that was their goal. The Republican goal is to shift responsibilities from the government to the private sector, so they do not want to allow government to be used as a tool to solve the problems that Americans face because that would undermine their goals. 

Public education is bad? Well that is the point. It makes it easier for them to say "Maybe we should get rid of the Department of Education and funnel kids into for-profit private schools". 

So, when the Democrats get some degree of power, they have enormous systemic forces preventing them from making those huge changes that would be needed to really capture that disaffected vote. They are forced to make small changes because it is much easier to break the Department of Education and stand in the way of progress than it is to fix these problems. And that disaffected population is too detached from politics to see what is happening, both in terms of the smaller improvement that the Dems are making and the obstacles that the Reps are creating. 

The problem with using this assessment as the whole explanation (even if it is generally true) is that Democrats are failing to live up to promises or even to promise in the first place equitable policies in states where they do have strong and diffuse control for decades now. 

For example, California and New York are losing (relative) population despite these being places where many people want to live when queried about it. Why? 

Because Democrats are not supporting pro-growth "YIMBY" policies in the local and state governments that they have majority control in. Or if they do support them, they allow them to get railroaded by special interest groups. There is no reason why California, as an example, should be losing (relative) population other than the fact that it isn't building enough housing and transportation in the cities people want to live in and therefore nobody can live there affordably. 

Same thing with things that they actually did get passed at the federal level. Consider, for example, the funding toward high-speed rail that Obama and the Democratic Congress got through in 2010. What has this amounted to? California is still not done with its project, again, because of special interests slowing down the progress and contractors siphoning off resources. 

There is no reason why any of the blue states in the map above shouldn't be the most equitable (measured by Gini Index or some other indicator), pro-labor states in the U.S, other than the Democratic Parties in those states don't truly want it to be. 

Why are Utah and Alaska the most equitable states? And yes, the difference between >.5 and <.41 is very significant. It's not just a matter of urbanization either. Utah has an urban population of 90% and New York one of 87.4%. Also even if we control for these other variables New York state had a Gini Index of .5142 between 2015-2019 and one of .5102 in 2024. A drop of .004 despite the average state's Gini-index dropping by .009 in the same period. One would think a Democratic controlled state, if it were interested in equitable results, and especially when it is starting at a much more unequal level (meaning there are lower hanging fruit) would become more equal more quickly than the nation as a whole. 

There are many places where Democrats control the government where they can show competent governance and their ability to solve problems. The places where that actually happens aren't dispersed enough that Americans are convinced. Basically New England and Colorado really. Both of which, have increasingly shifted blue over the last few decades. 

The failure of Democrats to do left-wing things in the states and cities they control (with some exceptions) is the primary reason why I am a left-wing Independent despite voting Democratic across the ballot since 2018. The party needs to revive the left-populist, social democratic faction that still somewhat exists in some purple states, but which no longer exists in the urban cores of the party. You can't win on social liberalism alone. The party needs to revive its appeal to farmer-labor, populist factions, of course modernized for the 21st century. 

Last edited by sc94597 - 2 days ago