I vote democrat, but then I'm a rich, educated, knowledge worker coastal urban elite so I'm supposed to right?
I think the hard answer is - the Dems need to actually do things that dissatisfy people like me if they want to actually win the masses - working class, blue collar, etc voter back.
Currently they are focussed on everything other than class. Identity politics. Race, gender, sexuality, immigration status, etc. None of this is particularly threatening to people like me and is a moral good, but it should be secondary to actually helping the poor regardless of how they identify.
Left wing parties elsewhere push for more redistributive policies than the Dems ever dream of here. Instead they do hand-outs to constituencies that aren't in dire need, and already vote Dem anyway. Student loan forgiveness, EV tax credits, etc.
Meanwhile in UK & EU, even the vaguely upper end of middle class pay marginal tax rates that would make $1M/year US earners cry. This is where the revenue comes for the depth & breadth of their social programs.
Should the US go that far? Absolutely not. It would stifle innovation, growth, and what makes the US far more successful than our rich peers. But Dems need to break free of the thinking that if we just tax a few billionaires, all our problems will be solved.
This is an interesting list that 100% reflects what Republicans in my state ran on and Democrats only mentioned them when on defense (except immigration, which they clearly took point on before trump torpedoed the bipartisan effort to work on it)
> EV tax credits
These were absolutely needed to kickstart the EV market, just like oil subsidies were needed to keep the American economy moving so people and goods could get from place to place.
Left wing parties elsewhere are losing too, mostly because of immigration. Meanwhile the welfare states are collapsing in the UK, Canada, France and Germany because the birthrates and lack of economic growth can't sustain it.
I think globally a lot of rich world left wing parties made similar rhetorical mistakes. Essentially leaning into identity stuff without acknowledging working class people’s challenges.
Also to be fair they’ve been in power globally for some time and so are seen as the status quo party, and largely ran as such. People are feeling economically squeezed and therefore voting incumbents out.
So it sounds as if the left are attempting to cater to issues further up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs than the majority of the voting populace think are important.
That's interesting, because it feels like "the right" (in my experience and whatever left and right mean these days) wouldn't recognise or consider catering to anything above the two basic levels (and to be honest, the 'brutal truth' part of my own personality tells me that anything above those two basic levels is 'cream').
People who worry about the price of groceries or basic car repairs to keep their older car on the road don’t want to hear how privileged they are due to their race (they might not be a minority but they aren’t rich) / how they are destroying the planet (they aren’t flying 10x year) / that kids who took out loans for expensive private college deserve free money (they didn’t even go to college or went to state school) / how democracy is at stake / etc.
It's more than messaging when the rank & file democrats and elite voters walk, talk and breathe this line of thinking. And there are policy choices made downstream of it as well.
