Laurie
david robertsI will keep repeating this until I die: the Democrats had the opportunity to put their entire agenda into a legislative proposal & the result was the original Build Back Better act. If you want to know what the real Democratic agenda is, no need to speculate -- it's on paper.
Nothing "woke," nothing about CRT in schools or drag shows, just a long series of proposals to improve child & elder care, improve wages & working conditions, improve health care, & accelerate the growth of domestic clean-energy industries. Meat & potatoes.
And yet! The phantom "Democrat agenda" that RW media ascribes to Democrats gets *more discussion* in media than the real one. Average news consumers, if asked to describe that agenda, will think vaguely of trans people in HS sports or cancelling offensive comedians.
This is a failure of the MSM, especially cable news. It's a failure of the Democratic Party to build an effective communications machine. But above all it's a triumph of RW propaganda -- perhaps its most important triumph. They really don't want voters to know what Dems will do.
Oh, and it's also a failure of "centrist" pundits, who passively let RW propagandists tell them what the Dem agenda is. They then turn around & lecture Dems that Dems ought to be doing more of the stuff *that was in Dems' signature legislative proposal*.
Anyway, you wanna know what Dems will do with power, look at the original BBB: health care & drug costs, child & elder care, unions & working conditions, wages & vacation/sick leave, more clean energy. That may not get as many clicks as culture war shit, but it's the real thing.
Tom Bellin 
@drvolts "Democrats say they want to make life better for all Americans. Republicans say they want to install Donald Trump as a fascists dictator in the model of Hitler. But when in power both parties show a similar lack of cohesion when it comes to implementing their stated priorities."
Lizrdeb@drvolts Rupert Murdoch and his enablers in the senate
Runner@drvolts Since the midterms I’d love to see Stacy Abrahms and Beto O’roarke go to work for the DCCC.
Rep. Steven Woodrow@drvolts even local news doesn’t like talking about D accomplishments or plans. It’s all crime tsunami! Inflation!
Imagine if the last 20 years of war were covered like the final 20 hours.
MarlaHK@drvolts It is mostly the latter. When I think about the recent $1 billion gift to Leonard Leo, on top of the $ already sloshing around RW orgs, I shudder. Dems don't have that kind of centralized messaging org and $ to back that up. We've got our work cut out for us.
Disillusioned techno-optimist@drvolts absolutely, but that isn't scary to the politically unengaged. hearing about Ds wanting to do what a vocal minority within the party push is a way better way to drive engagement from the uninformed.
@@drvolts I think that's kind of beside the point. The reality is the culture is changing rapidly, and the right wingers see the Dems as complicit. The right wing wants to use state power to fight the change, even though the change is not happening due to any sort of government action. In the places where the Dems oppose action to restrict the rights of marginalized people, they can be painted as extremists.
This works so well because things *are* changing quickly, and a lot of folks feel unmoored.
So it doesn't matter how much you tout the policy victories. They seem small compared to people feeling kind their social reality is being upended. I think we have to understand what we're up against in order to create effective strategies.
christianbobakThe Democrats also had the opportunity to institute universal healthcare in California, but purposely didn't:
"Democrats needed 41 votes for that to happen, a threshold that did not seem impossible given that they control 56 of the 80 seats in the state Assembly and universal health care has long been a priority for the party.
But intense lobbying from business groups put pressure on more moderate Democrats ... "
Universal health care bill fails to pass in California
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A bill that would have created the nation's only government-funded universal health care system died in the California Assembly on Monday as Democrats could not gather enough support to bring it for a vote ahead of a legislative deadline.
Tofu Golem@drvolts
I don't think you get how this works. The job of Democrats is to make it sound like they're going to do liberal things, while constantly pushing things further to the right.
I don't vote for Democrats because I think they're going to make anything better, I vote for Democrats because they are less fascist than the Republicans.
Eric Roston@drvolts Great now I have to keep reading this until I die.