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Alex Raver's avatar

This was absolutely spot on. Thank you for your work and collecting this information in a digestible format.

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doug s.'s avatar

in a nutshell:

ever since that right winger bill clinton infiltrated the democratic party, the smell of money infected it, the same way the republican party has been infected ever since i was knee-high to a grasshopper. (quite a few decades ago.) the republican party, its traditional turf being encroached upon, turned further to the right on social issues, because it could no longer use pseudo-economic disinformation alone, like “trickle-down economics” to woo the working class voters. the working class quickly understood that, since the democratic party no longer catered to their needs, they turned to the republican party’s anti-immigrant, racist, pro-christianity propaganda that it started to dish out as the reason for their ills, in ever-increasing amounts. this turned into a flood when a black man had the audacity to get elected president.

the democratic party had a chance, in 2016 & 2020, to rejuvenate itself with bernie sanders, who, although old, brought back ideas that the democratic party had long abandoned: healthcare, education, increased taxes on the wealthy who could easily afford it, and which, until ronnie in 1980, supported america and its infrastructure in half-way-decent, if not perfect fashion.

but no, the smell of money was too great, the greed too great. so the democratic party threw bernie under the bus not once but twice. even after the disaster of the 1st trump presidency, it risked it a 2nd time, ultimately deciding that the risk of trump winning again would be preferable to having bernie in the white-house. so, several “moderate democrats” withdrew from the primaries right before super tuesday, assuring biden the win, instead of what would have otherwise been a big tuesday win for bernie. the groundswell of support that would have occurred in the younger voters, and the non-voters who would now vote would have been enormous, not only would bernie have easily won the 2020 election, but likely the house would have been democratically controlled, and the senate would have had a larger majority.

then there’s the issue of israel – even tho the overwhelming majority of the population supports an end to arming israel w/o a complete cessation of its genocidal campaign, the democrats were too afraid of offending the wealthy donors who are a wee bit less supportive.

i’d hoped the democratic party learned its lesson after the 2016 debacle, but no such luck. it will be a long road back to sanity in this country, and it will never happen until the “old guard” wakes up and supports bernie, “the squad”, and people who can see a future that is not totally consumed by greed.

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