9 ms·

Highly relevant: Matt Stoller in The Atlantic: "How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul In the 1970s, a new wave of post-Watergate liberals stopped fighting m

• jessaustin 10y ago
  This really opened my eye: a long time ago, there was actually a meaningful difference between voting D and voting R. I can't really imagine voting in such a context, but it sounds nice...
  • aaronbrethorst 10y ago
    How can you call LGBT rights, women's rights, police consent decrees, environmental issues, and health care, just off the top of my head, meaningless?
    • rndmize 10y ago
      Not the GP, but these are social issues largely, and while I care about them, I consider them less important than economic issues (for a multitude of reasons). And on economic/business issues, the two parties seems to have minimal differences.
      • skadamat 10y ago
        This is a somewhat relevant read - https://medium.com/@jamesallworth/the-slow-decay-of-americas-entrepreneurial-society-f9aeb6145891 https://medium.com/@jamesallworth/the-slow-decay-of-americas... Basically discussed shift from discussion in politics about democracy to economics.
      • whopa 10y ago
        Health care is squarely an economic/business issue that affects nearly everybody, and there are clear, meaningful differences between the two parties here.
        • bluejekyll 10y ago
          AHCA, Obamacare is definitely better than before, it guarantees open access to many who didn't have it before. A good thing. But it didn't go far enough. It played in to the corporate healthcare system demands by not offering a competitive public option. The so called Blue Dog democrats blocked that, which is such a shame. Far better than anything the Republicans have put on the table. The problem is that we basically have one sane party which is backed by corporate interests, and another party backed by the same or similar corporate interests which plays off fear for support. I believe the only fix to this is to weaken party entrenchment, and have ranked choice voting in place; but who in these two parties would actually support that? [Edit: typo]
          • whopa 10y ago
            I completely agree. I was just pointing out to the poster I was replying to that with regards to one of the most important economic issues the US currently faces, there are meaningful differences between the two parties, despite the fact that they are both backed by mostly the same corporate interests. I'm tired of the "both parties are the same" trope. Current events clearly contradict that.
            • burntsushi 10y ago
              Isn't it obvious that it's a matter of perspective? Ask two non-programmers the difference between Python and Haskell, and they'll say, "They look the same to me." Ask two programmers the difference between Python and Haskell, and it's a fair bet that they'd be able to list off a laundry list of differences. Both perspectives are actually right, and neither one is a "trope" as you put it. What you think of as meaningful differences someone else might think of as nominal differences.
      • s73ver 10y ago
        It's easy for those who aren't affected by those social issues to consider them less important.
    • jessaustin 10y ago
      Ds talk a better game, but they rarely walk that talk. Take just your first example. W's first year in office, he wanted to standardize "civil unions" that would have entailed all the same rights as "traditional marriages". Of course, lots of "conservatives" were against that, so W reached across the aisle. Crickets. Ds decided they wanted to preserve that issue's political value, so it was more than a decade before gay and lesbian couples in conservative states had access to these rights.
      • mozumder 10y ago
        What's your point in your false equivalency? Are you implying that the 20 million people that now have medical coverage because of Democrats pushing for Obamacare isn't worth it? Was that all "talk"? I'm seriously trying to understand your "equivalency" position. Let me know what the Republicans would have done for health care? Right now it seems that the only thing they've done is to actually limit universal health care, so we have less than 100% coverage. Are the two parties the same on health care? Right now I don't trust anybody that says the two parties are the same, since they are clearly very, very different. In fact, it seems the only people that say that are Republicans that don't have a better argument? Are you a Republican? Or maybe you fall under the auspices of a white-male demographic that bias towards conservatism?
        • beemanners 10y ago
          20M on Obamacare != 20M who have health insurance because of Obamacare. Stop parroting CNN talking points and do your own research.
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          • mozumder 10y ago
            Since you are a researcher, where is your research published? I would like to see your peer-reviewed research that you did to come up with your data.
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    • jtedward 10y ago
      He can't false equivalency is a common tactic used by conservatives to gaslight non-conservatives. You're not crazy, they just lie and don't feel bad about it.
    • pjc50 10y ago
      Am I right in thinking that the first three were achieved through litigation rather than legislation?
    • Pica_soO 10y ago
      Because they are, in the big picture? If everyone starves and we get a 50 sexes bathroom- nobod(he/she/it) gives a shit.
  • tetha 10y ago
    Similar things are happening in germany. Most people I talk to feel like the 2 major parties have lost their grit, their profile, and they have become mostly the same. However, in germany, this just gives new parties chances to rise. I think that's a sign of a healthy democray - if the old parties stop representing the people, voters will replace them.
    • Clubber 10y ago
      In the US, the two primary parties collude to ensure that a third party will never gain control. An example is they both have contracts with the news organizations that televise the debates excluding a third party without a significant (millions) of supporters.
    • sanderjd 10y ago
      That happens in the US too, but instead of new parties, we just end up with the existing parties shifting what they stand for over time. The Republican party may be going through such a shift right now (though it remains to be seen what their platform will be next year), and both parties shifted in fundamental ways in the middle of the 20th century.
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  • wsxcde 10y ago
    That is simply not true. You don't even have to look too far in the past to see examples of meaningful differences even if you restrict yourself to economic/financial/business issues. The most recent example is the internet privacy repeal bill. But even Obama's term alone saw Dodd-Frank, the auto bailout, the stimulus package following the great recession all supported by Democrats and opposed by Republicans. The two parties are nowhere near the same on economic issues. Yes, they are both largely in favour of free trade. But there are very significant differences in terms of philosophies the two parties take towards regulatory behaviour.
• douche 10y ago
  How does that work? In the 1970s, the democrats were realigning, after the civil rights movement had fractured their tradional coalition and cast the Jim Crow Democrats into the Republican party with Nixon's Southern Strategy.
• jgalt212 10y ago
  Amen. Matt Stoller is basically the playbook and on how the democrats can regain the common man. My family are multi-generational democrats and it would literally blow the mind of my lost past immigrant grandfather if knew that his party's nominee was taking bigly money from Deutsche Bank and Goldman and soliciting donations from commodities oligarchs from lawless countries. And on top of that, not seemingly giving a sh1t that median real wages had not budge in 15 years.
  • branchless 10y ago
    Agreed, I follow Stoller on twitter and I've found him very thought provoking.
  • sangnoir 10y ago
    > Matt Stoller is basically the playbook and on how the democrats can regain the common man. <sarcasm>I'm a common man and that there sounds a bit socialistic. Real Americans(TM) pull themselves up by their bootstraps through grit, determination and hard work - they don't need big-government meddling.</sarcasm> My feeling is that a negative view of regulation/government action has been unchallenged for decades in red America. In those areas, the democrats will never gain the common man that way because the negativity has been internalized.
    • jgalt212 10y ago
      I'm not sure it's socialistic, I think it's more anti-cronyism and anti-regulatory capture. but hey, I could be projecting my hopes/dreams like so many disappointed Obama cheerleaders before me. In any event, the party/candidate that comes up and can execute a plan to aid the middle class (or least keep them getting pushed around), should rule the roost. If Trump/Brexit/France showed us anything, it's that big money in politics has hit the point of diminishing returns and one-man, one-vote may not be completely dead.
• ScottBurson 10y ago
  This is an excellent piece that explains a lot about how we got into the situation we're in. Another quote: By the late 1970s, the populist Brandeisian anti-monopoly tradition—protecting communities by breaking up concentrations of power—had been air-brushed out of the debate. And in doing so, America’s fundamental political vision transformed: from protecting citizen sovereignty to maximizing consumer welfare.