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Green energy, EV investment, union empowerment (inb4), student debt forgiveness, marijuana pardons and likely rescheduling, infrastructure, drug price controls, Chips act, PACT act, etc etc etc. Non-competes banned (by FTC along 'party lines'). Pardoning people kicked out for being gay. Supporting Ukraine.
Biden delivered. And the left didn't show up.
Biden delivered. And the left didn’t show up.
I doubt it was the left which was the deciding factor here. On Lemmy, they're the loudest and most prominent - in the actual electorate, us progressives are the smallest of the Dem coalition demographics.
We all bear our fair share of blame, but I don't think the left was the key jenga block here.
Electric vehicles are peak neoliberalism though. It just outsources the energy production and moves the environmental costs to mines in the congo. The solution is mass transit, not giving tac incentives to people rich enough to own a Tesla.
In that same way, the chips act is there to shield Intel from foreign competitors and allow the USS yombuild up a military supply chain independent of TSMC. It's super naive to think the Dems passed those to benefit the working poor.
Also, public support for funding Ukraine has been falling and I'm old enough ti remember when the left was categorically against wars. My ass was getting beat by the department of Homeland security while Secretary of State Clinton handed out donuts to Maidan square Nazis.
This comment is not meant to absolve Putin or to say Ukraine's self defense is immoral--just that the media depictions of good vs evil are far more subtle and nuanced in real life and that Raytheon and Boeing benefit from this conflict more than the Ukrainian civilians who are dying daily. here's a really good interview with an actual leftist who participated in the 2014 Maidan square actions and discusses the inciting problems of ethno nationalism and neoliberalism in 2014.
If the voters felt that the Dems delivered, they would have been there to elect Kamala. Dems rarely ever deliver for their base—the everyday working person. OTOH, Republicans will go scorched Earth to enact their agenda.
People desperately want change and unfortunately the pace of change from the Dems is not good enough.
That's the whole point: the left will never show up, even when Biden did deliver.
I think you're misunderstanding why the Dems lost. "The left" that you're referring to doesn't exist in the way you're imagining it. Kamala didn't win enough swing voters. Swing voters don't view themselves as leftist or rightist. Swing voters (apparently) vote based on their feelings.
I think we agree on some of that. The left didn't come out for their own rights or democracy, so 1) they will literally never come out, or 2) they don't exist. Take your pick, but the Dems are going to go hard center for the swing voters. They're not going to cater to the left, they're going to cater to the center. They're going to go for Clinton's "it's the economy stupid"