#but perhaps even more worryingly is their slide into open complacency. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

michaelwaev · 4 months ago

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Just had a fascinating conversation with my dad about the general liberal opinion on Reagan back in the day-- he remembers some talking head saying something like ''gutting personal taxation could be catastrophic in another country, because over time it would result in an oligarchy. But we don't need to worry about that here, because the next democratic president we get will reverse Reagan's tax plan." And obviously that never happened and now we do in fact live in an oligarchy, but hearing that take on the democratic party was fascinating.

Even when I was a kid, during the Bush era, I remember hearing similar things. Like, get a democrat in to bring home the troops, get a democrat in to shut down Guantanamo. Whereas now, even from the democratic party itself, the argument is more like "get a democrat to stall for time." I think maybe that's why the democrats are failing so spectacularly with young voters. The battle of miserable inches doesn't hold up when we are only ever inching backwards.

#i think a big part of this new angle is bc of social media #particularly how easy it is to talk to people from other countries and get news from outside the US #it makes it harder to misrepresent us politics as a slow crawl forwards.#and to be clear #i'm not saying and never have said that the two parties are equivalent or that voting is useless.#what i am expressing is my deep concern for the change in democratic rhetoric over the years #the democrats have only slid farther into conservatism over my lifetime #but perhaps even more worryingly is their slide into open complacency.#presumably bc doing nothing and being nothing is attractive to centrist swing voters #and democrat strategy always seems to revolve around appeasing the center right to diminishing returns.

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