2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: There are two types of Bernie Sanders supporters [View all]Armstead
(47,803 posts)Stated simply the Democrats and Republicans fight over certain issues, but on the underlying issues related to Wealth and Power, they overlap far more than they disagree. Time and again, Democratic "centrist" politicians like the Clintons raise the hopes of liberals that the bad old GOP has been beaten back, and finally Democrats can bring back enlightened, progressive/liberal government.
But it always turns out that we fight over certain specific issues, such as abortion and gun control, while behind the scenes both parties are bought and paid for by Big Corporations, Wall St. and their lobbyists. So we have seen an unending tide of laws, policies and messages that drain money and political power to the Elites, at the expense of everyone else.
The fact that Comcast -- one of the most distrusted and monopolistic corporations in America -- is a major sponsor of the Democratic convention, tells you all you need to know.
After a while, one starts to believe the actions instead of the pretty words.
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Here's a link to an article you might want to read.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511954521
But all this provided only a patchwork solution to the Democratic partys crisis of legitimacy. Was it a pro-corporate (neoliberal) or pro-labor (New Deal) party? The actual tendency was for the party to move firmly in the former direction, while escalating rhetorical claims for the rights of cultural minorities, at the same time as the Republican party moved swiftly toward a neoconservative solution to its own crisis. Meanwhile, the Democrats never really addressed the popular roots of dissatisfaction: in a global economy with more dispersed power, both economic and political, how was the standard of living of the American middle-class to be maintained?......
The huge popularity of Bernie Sanders on the left today speaks to precisely this dilemma, fundamentally unaddressed through four decades of deceit and illusion to maintain elite power, as inequality continuously rose in that period of time, the middle class became ever more diminished, and real political power became confined to a vanishingly small elite group......
Had the elites chosen to be more democratic thirty or forty or twenty years ago, both parties would have naturally evolved and reshaped themselves in accord with shifting social and economic realities. Liberalism and conservatism, in their authentic manifestations, would have continued fighting the good fight, rather than the situation that has developed, where economic anxiety is continually suppressed and allowed to manifest only in twisted movements that have little chance of accomplishing any objectives given the present distribution of power.
It is noteworthy that a great many among Americas intellectual elite support Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, offering standard neoliberal justifications, whereas those outside elite intellectual circles are more likely to support Sanders; likewise with Trump and his antagonists and supporters. What the establishment will not do is take either of them seriously; meaning that they will not, as they havent for forty years, acknowledge the concerns of the constituencies they are supposed to represent, and direct the very real anxieties felt on all parts of the political spectrum toward positive resolutions good for the country and for the rest of the world.