Two historians have said that the Democratic Party was wrong to overlook Bernie Sanders' policies for working class people.

Summary

Historians suggest Democrats might have fared better against Donald Trump by embracing the economic issues championed by Senator Bernie Sanders, who has long pushed for a focus on “bread-and-butter” concerns for working-class voters.

Despite Kamala Harris’s progressive policies, polls showed Trump was favored on economic issues, particularly among working-class and Hispanic voters.

Historian Leah Wright Rigueur argued that Sanders’ messaging on economic struggles could be key for future Democratic strategies.

Sanders himself criticized the party for “abandoning” the working class, which he said has led to a loss of support across racial lines.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    581·
    6 days ago

    I don’t really know how the Democratic Party is expected to steer out of the center-right ditch, though. With all the dark money calling the shots, I mean. Bernie is the exception that proves the rule.

    The electorate is actually far more progressive on the issues than the corporate media lets on. But the minute the Democratic Party were to embrace Bernie-style positions? You can bet that not only the “liberal media” would declare this sO vErY eXtReMe, but all the big money would be spending against them, and spending against them hard. Think it’s bad now where crypto, Elon, and the Washington Post are tilting against the Democrats? Imagine they actually embraced progressives…

    Not saying I love it, I just don’t know what the answer is.

    • wellheh@lemmy.sdf.org
      37·
      6 days ago

      At this point maybe the democrats just need to embrace these hard positions and normalize them. The gop doesn’t appear to care how radical their stances are and they get votes regardless of the racism. Trump’s whole shtick has been normalizing bad behavior and gaslighting the other party into thinking any wrong they do is a gotcha- they’re operating on two very different rulesets.

      • DiagnosedADHD@lemmy.world
        14·
        6 days ago

        Democrats (DNC and donors) don’t want to win with a progressive. They’d rather have Trump. They’ll never embrace anyone like Bernie.

        • wellheh@lemmy.sdf.org
          1·
          5 days ago

          Hooked on election funding despite it not really doing anything for her despite the huge advantage? Yeah that’s a good strategy.

    • Kichae@lemmy.caEnglish
      151·
      6 days ago

      The thing is, we’ve seen what the working class wants: Not concrete policy that will help them, but to have their feelings of struggle, outrage, and anger acknowledged and reflected back to them.

      The Democrats could have radical pro-worker, pro-working-class reforms in their policy platform, but if what they’re broadcasting is “things are great” energy, or “there are bigger fish to fry” energy, then they’re going to get ignored.

      The Democrat’s talking points have focused on the health of American institutions. That’s the thing they’ve repeatedly signalled is most important to them.

      It’s not what’s most important to most households. It’s actually pretty far removed from the top of their lists of concerns.

    • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      152·
      6 days ago

      The electorate is actually far more progressive on the issues than the corporate media lets on. But the minute the Democratic Party were to embrace Bernie-style positions? You can bet that not only the “liberal media” would declare this sO vErY eXtReMe, but all the big money would be spending against them, and spending against them hard. Think it’s bad now where crypto, Elon, and the Washington Post are tilting against the Democrats? Imagine they actually embraced progressives…

      It would be worse than you imagine. Wouldn’t need the liberal media or the big money to move against it. People don’t translate policy positions into support for candidates. They vote on vibes, and any candidate espousing consistently left-wing positions sounds like a dangerous socialist to a good 2/3s of the country.

      Not saying I love it, I just don’t know what the answer is.

      Education. We just signed over the official apparatus to the fascists, though. So, uh, it’s gonna be much harder than it should have been.

      • Saleh@feddit.org
        12·
        6 days ago

        The “vibes” campaign by the Dems just failed hard.

        And why is it that only the right should get to move “vibes” by sticking with extreme positions? Especially as things like universal health care, public housing, strong unions or debt free education are just normal in other western countries.

        • jmf@lemm.ee
          7·
          6 days ago

          Because selfish vibes driven by greed and fear come easy when education is lacking.

        • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          6 days ago

          The “vibes” campaign by the Dems just failed hard.

          Turns out the “Please don’t vote for fascism” vibe isn’t very appealing to the country.

          And why is it that only the right should get to move “vibes” by sticking with extreme positions? Especially as things like universal health care, public housing, strong unions or debt free education are just normal in other western countries.

          I didn’t say we should give up any of those positions. I was saying policy positions do not consistently translate into votes, and the US electorate is easily spooked by anything they’re told resembles ‘socialism’.

          • hraegsvelmir@lemm.eeEnglish
            6·
            6 days ago

            Turns out the “Please don’t vote for fascism” vibe isn’t very appealing to the country.

            That was one vibe. Unfortunately, the rest of the vibe from the Democrats have been, “Well, things are actually pretty good, just look at our charts. Economy is doing great!”. I think that’s where they really failed the vibe check, telling people not that they will improve things in a major way, but that the status quo is mostly acceptable and they’ll keep things from getting worse.

            Change was the order of the day, and they ran a campaign on stability instead.

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
        81·
        6 days ago

        and any candidate espousing consistently left-wing positions sounds like a dangerous socialist to a good 2/3s of the country.

        Harris just demonstrated that running to the right is no longer a winning proposition.

      • aStonedSanta@lemm.ee
        31·
        6 days ago

        Even education doesn’t work friend. We’ve seen people reject logic time and time again. They even did a study on numeracy and political affiliations and the responses were not surprising…. https://youtu.be/zB_OApdxcno

        • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          81·
          6 days ago

          Not education in the sense of teaching basic literacy and such, political education. Class consciousness, if one prefers such terms.

          • aStonedSanta@lemm.ee
            41·
            6 days ago

            The essential outcome of the study. The better you are at understanding numbers and math. The worse you are at interpreting data that counters your beliefs. Like laughably bad. 40%+ish bad.

          • aStonedSanta@lemm.ee
            2·
            6 days ago

            Ah not sure if you watched the video. But agreed. I’m not sure it will work but we better damn try our best in our personal lives. Can’t trust society to help guide anymore :/

            • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
              21·
              6 days ago

              Ah, no, I didn’t. I generally don’t watch videos. I just read what you said about numeracy and moved on to the point about other forms of education being my concern.

              • aStonedSanta@lemm.ee
                2·
                6 days ago

                Haha that’s totally fair. I generally don’t either. But that one surprised me a bit. Friend at work shared it to show the context of how confused we all are due to what we are objectively told to feel. Rather than HOW we feel.

        • Gorillazrule@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          4·
          6 days ago

          I watched this video when it came out and I disagree with the findings in it, because to me it seems less to indicate that people reject logic because of political affiliations, and more people are critical of studies that contradict prior knowledge.

          People interpreting results on the skin cream have absolutely no frame of reference. There isn’t a brand name associated with the skin cream that might have some kind of recognition for people to have prior knowledge. The study that they are presented with is the first time they are seeing anything about this skin cream.

          People weighing in on gun control, have a lot of prior knowledge on the topic. Now whether all this knowledge is based on facts or data is obviously questionable. But regardless they have prior experience with the topic. So naturally you are going to be critical of a study showing you results that directly contradict your prior knowledge. Also from the video it doesn’t seem clear that they are asking them to specifically treat it like math problem and make judgements based on the study alone. They are asked whether they think gun control is effective. And while obviously they have the infographic right in front of them, most people are not going to base their judgements solely on that data alone.

          To put it another way, what if the study was based on something non-political, like say whether smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day improves or worsened lung capacity over the course of a decade? I think most people would be heavily critical of the study that shows smoking improved lung capacity even if the data they are presented reflects that. And I don’t think it would be because they are simply rejecting logic and numeracy based on affiliations. It’s because they have prior information and knowledge that directly contradicts the singular study that is presented to them.

          And this is ignoring the fact that while the statistic they use to measure the effectiveness for the cream is very tangible and direct. Either the rash improves or it worsens. And you can make direct comparisons with the control groups. In the gun control study you are comparing different sets of cities, ones that have gun control laws and ones that don’t. You aren’t comparing the same set of cities before and after gun control. So already this is a poor study. Then to make matters worse the statistic they use to measure the effectiveness is “crime worsened” and “crime improved”. Not crime committed with firearms. Or even just violent crimes. Just crimes. And in cities where gun control laws have been implemented, crime is naturally going to go up because there is a new law for people to break. Anybody who isn’t following the gun control laws in that city are committing a crime whereas people in the cities without those laws are doing the exact same thing, but it’s just not counted towards “crime” because it hasn’t been outlawed.