Democrats Want Change

[treee]

(07-17-2017, 12:18 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: It's actually very difficult to. The reason is because even the Democrat platform is meaningless. Elected officials with the party's letter attached to their name do not have to adhere to the platform. Both parties are gigantic tents that encompass a wide range of ideologies (and ad hoc opinions on policy, which is what most people have). Specifically on the concept of social programs the Democrats and Republicans aren't that far off in the mainstream thinking. This is a result of what I talk about a good bit, neoliberal tendencies that have been existent in both parties since about the Reagan era.

Now, there are more liberal camps in the Democratic party that would like to remove the bipartisan welfare reforms from the Clinton-era and provide a stronger social safety net. They are more liberal than the "mainstream" ideologies of the party, though. They have had a stronger voice as of late thanks to Bernie Sanders, but even so they aren't all that united. Sanders calls himself a Democratic Socialist, but just right of that are Social Democrats. They are right of the Sanders crowd, but left of the mainstream Democrat platform. And those are just two ideological positions that on the global scale are considered slightly left and center left, but they both have different ideas on the social safety net from each other, and from what the majority of Democrats and what the part establishment calls for.

But, and this is important to note, there is no ideology that just calls for giving people the money to live without working for it. None. Pure socialism requires those able to work, to work. Most social program reforms pushed for by more liberal ideologies than this country is used to calls for stronger job training programs established by the government to get people into the work force. The problem is that the way things are approached is more about scoring political points than crafting effective policy. This has only gotten worse over the past few decades as we have seen a negative attitude towards the bureaucracy that has resulted in lobbyists doing most of the drafting of legislation in Washington.

I'm just tired of many Democrats avoiding the elephant in the room: That their party is also tarnished by corporate influence (read:more than lobbying). This is coming from someone who identifies with many progressive policies. Or maybe CTR is still going in full force and I need to talk to more dems than just on the internet instead of being a shut-in.