I'm saying Americans white's are quite racist yes.
And the geopolitical layout of the country gives white people a disproportionate say in American politics. The dems are still left; the EC/Senate means we can't realistically go super left.
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AOC: "The Democratic Party is not a left party. They're a center, or center-right party." [READ OP]
- Thread starter Poodlestrike
- Start date
And the geopolitical layout of the country gives white people a disproportionate say in American politics. The dems are still left; the EC/Senate means we can't realistically go super left.
It's not that Dems don't want those same things, they do, it's that it's very difficult for them to get them passed congress because conservatives have enormous control on politics. The rest of the developed world don't have the GOP blocking everything so we can't have nice things. Much easier to get that made into law in New Zealand than the US. It's astonishing how many people underestimate the influence Republicans have on the country.
There are 47 million African American's in the US.
European countries don't have the diversity issues like the US does.
so you're saying that racist white people will vote or won't vote for dems depending on how left their policies skew and thus further proving the point that dems at large, probably not that left of a party, yes?
Here is the breakdown for the last years.
Anyone saying that Sweden is ALL white is wrong.
I'm with you on your arguments but what I'm saying is hard to say without actual ethnic data on EU countries.
If we only look by nationality, US is about 13% non-US versus 10% on some EU countries. Sweden has a high percentage because of what you are saying and these can be French or German but on Spain for example the top immigrant nationality is Morocco, followed by Romania.
No I'm saying because they are racists it doesn't matter how left the dems go, they won't vote for us. The dems are still left but most make up ground by being socially left and less socialist.
Hence why I've said to be left doesn't mean be socialist.
European countries don't have that problem and thus can get more people on board for the leftist stuff. It's easier to argue for solidarity because the population is homogeneous.
Oh no not all white.
But you're definitely more homogeneous than the US.
Name me another country in the 1st world west that one of the major parties that consistently wins is made up of a coalition of minorities.
In the US, social issues come first. Economic second.
no, we definitely do have that problem (thanks american imperialism!) and our leftist parties are further left to the democrats. you can't simultaneously argue that the dems can't get people on board with leftist stuff while at the same time claiming dems are leftists.
so you can either argue that "dems are leftists" or you can argue "dems aren't leftists because of racism", but not both as you're doing right now.
for example: even the most right wing parties in europe wouldn't dare touch our single payer system. the overton window in the US is inherently far more to the right than ours is.
lol no you don't.
I'm arguing the reason why you have so much left economic movement in Europe is because the population was largely white and homogeneous. And now Europe is sputtering towards racist/fascist policies with the quickness because a few 100,000 brown folk showed up at your doors.
We have millions of immigrants that come into our country and the dems fight that racist nonsense as best as they can. They are left, they are not leftists.
The UK is literally setting themselves on fire just to scare the black and brown folk out!
but it's not their only option, of course it isn't. it's just that it's the only option they're willing to consider and the alternatives are seen as being too risky.
by this logic, new political parties must never and can never be formed in countries with two party systems. but history shows us that's not true. if the socialist movement in Britain followed this argument, the Labour party would never have been formed and the Liberals would still be the alternative to the Conservatives. the death and replacement of the Democratic party is just as realistic (and almost seems more realistic, to be honest) as the entryist strategy of infiltrating and transforming a right wing party into a left wing party. but it's not really the point I was making, and it's not really the thread to have this argument in. also, I totally dispute that decades of die-hard infighting to transform a party into something completely different is the normal flow of events in a big tent party. socialism and liberalism aren't two wings of thought that fit within a big-tent party. they are fundamentally different and irreconcilable.
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but see, just because voters are racist, that doesn't mean that democrats have to, do an imperialism, bail out banks, cut social security and not enact single payer legislation. the democrats are a feckless center party that have allowed the republicans to run the overton window so far to the right that you perceive them as left at this point.
the fact that you openly see the corruption at this point with dems taking money from banks, insurance companies and what have you should make it fairly obvious where they lie ideologically.
You are ignorant of the cuts the right wingers have done to social programs here tho.
It does have some racism in the mix but it's not the only component.
We aren't really fans of the imperialisms anymore.
If you argue this, you lose in the dem party.
We are pushing for this. We almost had public option in 2008!
Do you have basically 60% of your white population so strongly tied to racism they'd blow off their own arm just to get some blood on black folk?
Have you seen the war and foreign interventionism support in the dem party?
It's not very high.
dems had a supermajority in 2008 and the best they could do is ACA. Come on man, that's literally Romneycare.
As far as the imperialism goes, Obama was still fairly bad in this regard and yet he's extremely popular, so I have to see it to believe it, especially given how much of an uphill battle the most anti-war candidates face.
We were one vote away!
Do this again but with 2016 dems we pass Public option easy. Joe Manchin said he'd vote for it!
i don't exactly get why acknowledging that the us has more diversity and thus more problems makes Obama, Biden or Clinton somehow leftist. I do agree that a proper left wing party has no chance in the US but that doesn't change the fact that their policies would largely be considered right wing anywhere else.
There's literally only one primary candidate against imperialism and he's not even a democrat. How do you argue this shit with a straight face?
I'm brown, and this is just insanely dedicated allyship to us minorities coming from a white dude. Bravo.
We have the same issues seen in many other western countries.
The rise of far right parties in the wake of vast austerity cuts.
I'm not arguing they're leftists.
I said the dems party as whole right now is center left.
I'd argue Tulsi is also anti regime change and even she's getting smeared left and right (not everything is unfounded but you know what I mean)
Did I offend?
I can't tell what's sarcasm these days. I stand by what I said. White folk can be absolute shit. I say this as a white person.
You mean among voters are among those that hold positions in the party?
if you directly ask someone "do you support war and foreign intervention," they are very unlikely to say yes. ask them if they support candidates who support these things, they often say yes.
you're right, Joe Manchin can be relied upon to keep his word
besides, the "public option" isn't even a remotely acceptable solution for the provision of health care
i'd disagree. i would say that thanks to the 2 party system you have center left and center right politicians in the democratic party but the party as a whole is mostly center right.
in the grand scheme of things, a public option is a centrist position at best.
also the dems lack any sort of meaningful labor movement.
also the dems lack any sort of meaningful labor movement.
I'm not sure how when the progressive caucus is bigger than the blue dog problem solver(fucking lol) caucus.
The Dem voter base is left for gods sake.
Or alternatively you can look at how Europe reacted to the financial crisis in 2008 vs the U.S.'s stimulus bomb and see that this entire argument is facile and the comparison kinda missing a lot of datapoints to make a point. Like, if the dems were the same as european center-right parties, why didn't they react the same to the same event, but instead did the opposite thing?
How about we go with overall refugees rather than regional specific:
Trump obviously had an effect on that.
For sweden(this is applicants only, not people allowed in):
While in actuality the number of Syrian residents are:
Those aren't even Swedish citizens, but rather just residents, but putting that aside:
Alright, let's add in Iraqis, the second largest minority group in Sweden(the first are Finnish, who make up 5.1% of the population by themselves):
As of 2016 there were 135k Iraqis in Sweden.
Let's add in Iran too, since that was also listed as a top minority in Sweden:
Let's add that all up. 116k Syrians. Then 135k Iraqis. Then 63k Iranians. In a nation with ten million people. So that's a total of 3.1% for the three biggest non-european ethicnities in sweden.
Also, relevant to this topic:
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this is such a dumb thread I don't know why you felt you need to share this. Yes, the whole problem with the dems is that their "leftism" is basically just tepid IDpol.
the fact that the US still doesn't have a proper social safety net, single payer healthcare etc. is the whole point why people are saying the dems are a centrist party at best.
There's probably a good reason why the alternatives are being seen as unacceptably risky.
In a country with a parliamentary system where parties form coalitions, additional parties could form because the parties that didn't get the highest amounts of votes can still be included in a governing coalition. In systems of that kind, if 40% of the country supported a far-right party, 31% of the country supported a center-left party and 29% of the country supported a left-wing party, the far-right party would "win" the election, fail to assemble a majority coalition and the second-in-place party would then get an opportunity to try and form a coalition, which they'd then do with the party that at least shared some of its commitments.
In the US, with its first-past-the-post/winner-take-all system, the far-right party would consistently win the election since votes that went to the parties that didn't get the majority are simply discarded. That's why breaking off into smaller parties would make no sense in that kind of system since neither faction of the center-left/left-wing coalition that's the current Democratic Party has the numbers to beat a unified GOP and they know it, so they stick with people who may not share all of their commitments but with whom they can at least have a working relationship.
What's the point and benefit of making this statement?
The Democratic Party is the big tent party/coalition in a two party system. It needs to be in order to have power. If AOC plans to someday pass her green new deal, or any meaningful legislation, she will need the votes from what she is calling center or center right.
The Democratic Party is the big tent party/coalition in a two party system. It needs to be in order to have power. If AOC plans to someday pass her green new deal, or any meaningful legislation, she will need the votes from what she is calling center or center right.
I'm sure this question was asked in good faith and wasn't a weird straw-manny attempt at a gotcha.
I agree with you on most of what you said, but you have to realize what you and others here want done would be considered big sweeping changes that will only garuntee a republican president come next election.
"So we shouldn't even try, fuck that"
Nah...I didn't say you shouldn't try, I just want you to be realistic. The Republicans are where they are at right now (normalized, public racism) due to...imo..a life time (my 40 years, probaby longer) of incremental changes that brought us here. If they went full racist / concentration camps/ Muslim ban from the start, it would never had worked.
Progressives want immediate change, but it just doesn't work that way. Baby steps, the slow but steady replacement of the Democratic party being taken over by progressives is a start. You can't whiplash Americans with sweeping immediate changes, it just won't work long term with out empowering the right. Democrats being where Republicans once where will help to drag the more reasonable ones back to center. The idea then is to gradually keep moving them left.
The first term of a democratic president is going to be bringing us back to an Americsn center, not a Europeon one. Shut down the camps and Trump laws first, then you can start thinking about doing other things.
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"The problem with Dems is their "leftism" is basically [POC fighting for their rights]"
What a shitty way to dismiss that tweet.
I'm not an incredibly smart person and a lot of the discussion going on in this thread is, quite frankly, over my damn head... but I guess I've always held the view that the "two party system" is a lie and that America only really has one party (the capitalist party) with two diverging branches that focus on social issues.
Noone is saying the second part, of course, that was sarcasm. The first part tho, yes, I've seen it written on pretty much every thread that has to do with centrism on Era. Granted people might not know the difference between centrism in Europe (which still depends on country, but I digress) and granted someone usually steps up and points it out, I still feel it is a common feeling in all those discussions even after people point out the difference
I'll quote some replies from the first thread I came up with the Search function:
Either "I don't know what's going on" or "Centrist is actually just a cover for what I actually believe".
A privileged, milquetoast and insignificant existence.
Being privileged enough to be ok with status quo of white supremacy without being a full on kkk member
racial equality is definitely a part of leftism, but if that stands in the way of enacting other leftist legislation, then, by definition, dems aren't leftists except in this one specific thing.
it's not for me to say if that is bad or good but then to go on and pretend that the dems arent a centrist party is just a bit weird to me.
still don't understand why "don't be racist" and "not enacting single payer" have to go hand in hand it's almost like dems are hiding their shitty corporate agenda with their Identity Politics. hmmmm.