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Your entire post is about AOC, who has spent less than two years in office. My statement was about the (non-)events in the democratic party 25-30 and 10-15 year

Your entire post is about AOC, who has spent less than two years in office. My statement was about the (non-)events in the democratic party 25-30 and 10-15 years ago. The "AOC as a bogeyman" talking points are a transparent attempt to derail the discussion along the lines the GOP wants. I agree we've seen a shift in the democratic party - not yet in its leadership - in the past 2-4 years (beginning with Sanders, its first major electoral effects in the 2018 midterms). What does that have to do with what happened 10-15 years ago? What did happen 10-15 years ago is Obama's election. Obama's politics do not place him in the left of the democratic party, and in some areas he's firmly in the right part. So what's the objection to what happened 10-15 years ago, but not 30 years ago? To put it more bluntly - What's the biggest difference between Obama and Bill Clinton? One hint: it's not any political policy. And why, if the objection is supposed to be about support for the working class, is what's happening in the past 2-4 not good? The return to labor rights as a central plank of the party should be drawing people back if that's the reason they left, but apparently it's not.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
True, the topic of AOC runs through my post, but that's not what it's about. It's about the change in the position of the average/median Democratic politician. And I'd say the change has happened at least somewhat in the Democratic leadership - in many of the presidential candidates, even if not in the House and Senate leadership. And I'd argue that this change was going on before, but you didn't see it, because of Obama. He, in one person, was the face of the Democratic party, and that hid what was going on underneath. As you say, Obama was not on the left, and because he was the public symbol of the party, it was easy to not see the left growing. Was Obama to the left of Clinton? I could accept "no" as the answer. But was the median Democratic politician during Obama to the left of the median Democratic politician during Clinton? To me, it appears that the answer is "yes". I don't think that abandoning the working class is something that just happened in the last 2-4 years. I could even argue that it happened under Clinton, but he had the political savvy to hide it. It was probably there, and growing, under Obama. It became glaringly apparent under Hillary, when she had no interest in even talking about the working class, and Trump did. That's what changed in the last 2-4 (let's call it 3) years - Trump stole what the Democrats thought was "their" issue, so solidly "theirs" that it didn't even need to be mentioned.
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AnimalMuppet 7y ago

True, the topic of AOC runs through my post, but that's not what it's about. It's about the change in the position of the average/median Democratic politician. And I'd say the change has happened at least somewhat in the Democratic leadership - in many of the presidential candidates, even if not in the House and Senate leadership. And I'd argue that this change was going on before, but you didn't see it, because of Obama. He, in one person, was the face of the Democratic party, and that hid what was going on underneath. As you say, Obama was not on the left, and because he was the public symbol of the party, it was easy to not see the left growing. Was Obama to the left of Clinton? I could accept "no" as the answer. But was the median Democratic politician during Obama to the left of the median Democratic politician during Clinton? To me, it appears that the answer is "yes". I don't think that abandoning the working class is something that just happened in the last 2-4 years. I could even argue that it happened under Clinton, but he had the political savvy to hide it. It was probably there, and growing, under Obama. It became glaringly apparent under Hillary, when she had no interest in even talking about the working class, and Trump did. That's what changed in the last 2-4 (let's call it 3) years - Trump stole what the Democrats thought was "their" issue, so solidly "theirs" that it didn't even need to be mentioned.

deleted 7y ago
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