State of the Democratic Party

[treee]

(11-16-2016, 04:16 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: It's hard to talk about parties in this country because we aren't like others. The party itself is nothing more than the elites that work for it, since there is no real formal membership. Even elected officials don't truly belong to the party. But the identity, what the party stands for, is something that the party in the electorate (the people that identify with the party) and the party in the government (those elected officials with a D or an R next to their name) really shape.

I like progressive ideas. The ideas of FDR, the ideas that really changed our country. What I don't like is that progressive ideas have just become synonymous with social issues. This is where I agree a lot with Webb, and Bill Clinton from the sounds of it from another thread. Those issues are important. The civil rights of minority groups and women are important things to fight for. But the focus on them, the move to identity politics, has just gone too far.

The party of Hillary Clinton is the party of moderates with a focus on social issues to make you think they are actually progressive and liberal. But at the same time, those more liberal in the party focus on those things a lot more than they should as well. It's a tricky situation.

I agree wholeheartedly. I feel as if the Democrats have missed the forest for the trees lately. Of course we want equality for these marginalized groups. Of course we people to feel safe, loved, and accepted. But the reality is, is that there is a hierarchy. There is centuries of misogyny, racism, and homophobia enforced in such a way that could be defined as evil, cruel, and inhumane. There is an overarching group of very influential people who want the power structure to stay exactly how it is and change minimally. These people collectively own the fossil fuel industry. They own arms manufacturing industry. They own these facets of power that enable them to continue to rule over the common man, albeit indirectly. The Democrats used to be a union. A group decreeing that it would no longer be the victim of a sadistic mix of feudal age thinking and industrialism. They were based on the principal of the power of the common man through a universal understanding of what it means to be a person and how high of a cost it is to forfeit that substantially for 'economy', as we have been brainwashed to think. I truly hope that I'm not witnessing the erosion of those standards that were set 100 years ago. I hope that we can continue to build upon those standards reasonably, rather than stand by and watch Billionaires take office and enact the will of their class by deconstructing them.