this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
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"I'm a fascist and a right-libertarian and pro-union." The only positive takeaway I have from this is that some people are so uninformed (or overinformed but with no ability to think critically) that they make these choices – and thus education and outreach may still yet save us.
I hate to say it but dismissing these people like that is how the Dems got here.
This is someone who wants things to be better. They're pro-union because they want someone to fight for their rights. And they're pro-Trump because all four years of the Dems has done for them is make prices higher. The Dems have been crowing about how the economy is doing better than ever, but for people like this it's not. GDP and the Fortune 500 being up is great for investors, but it's not great for an average worker. For an average worker, things are worse than ever.
They don't know that much about what Trump stands for, but they know he stands for "something other than this." And for these people - for the vast majority of people today - "this" isn't working.
The Dems need to reach voters like this, and they absolutely can. These people aren't for fascism, they just don't believe that that's what they're voting for. They believe they're voting for change, and Trump is the only person offering them change. What the Dems offered them was "more of the same", and that's not an appealing offer to people who are drowning.
My dude you are not wrong - but how do you talk to these people about policy nuances and compromise to get things done if THEY'RE the ones being dismissive about things and rejecting objective reality? I get that they're not doing well. That doesn't mean that anyone (including Trump) can wave a magic wand and make things better. It seems to me the only way to win these voters over is to play the Republican game - get your own propaganda arm for your political party and yell and lie louder than the Republicans.
You're skipping right past the really simple thing that so few of the Dems; tell them that they're right.
These people are hurting, and both Harris and Biden simply told them "No you're not, look how high the NASDAQ is."
That's a bullshit way to treat someone when they're struggling and asking for help. The simplest thing to do is just to say "Yes, you're right, shit fucking sucks and we need to make it better."
That's why people love Bernie. That's why there's such a huge crossover in people who voted for Trump and people who voted for AOC. Cortez doesn't bullshit people. She knows they're hurting, she knows they're poorer now than they were four years ago and she says it.
This is what Bernie means when he says the Dems have abandoned the working class. The crazy part is, Biden was actually great for unions. The NLRB under his tenure oversaw one of the largest expansions in union membership in US history. But instead of talking about that they talked about how great people's fucking investment portfolios are doing. That doesn't mean shit to people who can't afford a fucking investment portfolio.
Before they worry about selling people on the details of the plan, the Dems could start by just addressing their problems, instead of telling them they don't have any problems.
Nothing counter indicative with libertarian and union. Unions allow more equal negotiating power with business/capital when government is limited in scope. People should be allowed to decide if they want to unionize for themselves though, without coercion from capital and with protections to be allowed to do so.
Libertarians should also be requesting government do it's job and crush monopolies and enforce the regulations that keep the "free market" both free and level for all participants, and the right-libertarians are mostly actually theocratic feudalists masquerading as libertarian these days.
That's why I specified right-libertarian. I think basically all left-libertarians recognize the need for workers' unions. The problem with right-libertarians here is that they see the union itself and the kinds of government regulation that lets those unions be effective as the entities "treading on" them.
In complete agreement, but would point out that for some (maybe many) center- and right-libertarians they see the graft and waste that the post-labor rights boom era as analogous to tyrannical government due to many nuggets of truth. Labor isn't immune to corruption any more than capital is, and capital took massive advantage in demonizing unions because of actual flaws to exaggerate.
Police unions getting bad cops rehired and back on the streets has similar analogs in the biggest labor unions. Public sector unions probably shouldn't exist, and police unions definitely shouldn't, and some people continue that line of thinking into private sector labor unions.
Any organization of a sufficient size will suffer inefficiencies and exploitation, so any union large enough to bargain with a monopoly will end up just as bloated and corruptible. The obvious solution (as I see it) is to break the monopolies into reasonable sizes so the unions are also manageable and accountable, so capital can't use such effective whataboutisms.