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this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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Clinton at the time was the furthest left that the US as a whole would elect. The third way stuck because it actually worked.
I'm not going to make a snarky comment about how others should've put in more work, because I honestly don't think it would've mattered (and it'd be rude). Leftism just wasn't going to win by any viable margin. You can't squeeze blood from a stone -- when the electorate won't go further, you have to meet them where they are. I'd love it if Sanders would've been elected in the 90s instead of Clinton, but that just wasn't possible.
The fact remains there has been no attempt on the nation's part in living memory to actually run the nation by left wing policies. It hasn't been attempted and yet it is treated in the zeitgeist as if it was repeatedly and was an utter failure. I Consider FDR to be the last remotely progressive President we have attempted.
So when people reduce acknowledging both of our major parties to be varying degrees of economically right wing, center-right(D) to fascist(R) these days as 'both parties are the same' it reeks of bad faith. We can acknowledge both of our parties work against their people economically while not being absolutely interchangeable. It's just an intential tactic to muddy the waters because some prefer to play team sports, which is exactly the distraction it's meant and pushed to be.
And you're right, our people currently have the government they deserve, because they won't entertain one that works for them and protects them from the capitalist's whims, that would be evil buzzwords they never bothered to understand or something.
I think there's still important differences economically even when considering them both to be center right. There's a strong push for higher taxes on the wealthy and a higher minimum wage among Democrats -- the only reason we didn't see a minimum wage increase is because 1 Democrat opposed it vs the 49 other senators. And while our system still needs work, it doesn't mean there haven't been significant changes.
There's a brilliant provision in the Inflation Reduction Act for instance that ends the corporate tax loophole for the largest corporations. A company above a certain size that makes very high revenue (>1 bil iirc) is required to pay at least 20% in taxes. They can't loophole their way to $0. The big corporations are going to have to pay actual taxes now.
I'm not going to pretend that Democrats are perfect, but I do think there's a messaging problem and a tendency to let good works speak for themselves -- which doesn't work. If you remember the rail worker strike that Congress and Biden stopped, that actually wasn't the end of it. Union leaders have said that the administration continued to work behind the scenes with the unions to pressure the rail companies, and because of that, they've gotten the sick days they were demanding.
I would need to do a lot of research to say more about if leftism ever had a serious shake in the US or not, I'll admit. My assumption is that it was rejected, given the progressivism of the New Deal era didn't persist. But I do need to do more reading.