• hypelightfly@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    This article is about progressives changing the Democratic parties objectives/policies and does give examples.

    Between 2009 and 2020, many left-wing Democrats agitated for their party to embrace a “full employment” macroeconomic policy. AOC was among them. Then, when the COVID crisis hit, Democrats did as these progressives advised.

    In 2020, congressional Democrats insisted on increasing unemployment benefits to a level that left many laid-off workers with more income than they’d previously earned at their jobs. Under Biden, meanwhile, Democrats enacted a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill on a party-line vote. The party’s decision to pursue stimulus on this scale — after Congress had already appropriated trillions of dollars in relief spending — was explicitly motivated by the left’s critique of Obama. As New York Times reported in 2021:

    Since Occupy Wall Street, the American left has made student debt forgiveness one of its core policy demands. The Biden administration has taken extraordinary measures to answer that call. The president has successfully canceled a record $116.6 billion in forgiveness for 3.4 million borrowers. He has also attempted to unilaterally cancel at least $10,000 of student debt for virtually every U.S. borrower.

    TLDR; The Democratic party is becoming more progressive despite some people on the left thinking it’s not happening fast enough is a betrayal of progressive ideals.

    • Harrier_Du_Bois@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      “The left has won a lot more than “nothing” from engaging with the Democratic Party.”

      That’s straight from the article. Progressives are democrats. Leftists are not democrats and don’t work with liberals.

      • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well, using your terminology, progressives have sure gotten a hell of a lot more left wing policy implemented than leftists, so…

        • Harrier_Du_Bois@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          Could that be because the left has been suppressed for the last 100 years and their leaders were jailed or killed by the state? And now here come the pro-corporation pro-war liberals telling us how left they are.

          • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            How do you intend to come back from those 100 years if you just insult and attack your closest left wing allies?

            Edit: Okay Lemmy’s working again, it cut me off earlier.

            I think strikes are ineffective and we need nationalization of some industries instead. I’m no bootlicker. I’m just someone who likes to see and get results. By constantly eschewing your natural allies and rejecting them with purity tests, all you’ve done is extend 10 years since Eugene Debs was imprisoned to 100 years since. And all the while, left wing ideas have been implemented by others.

            The others may not be left enough to your taste, nor the policies adequately left enough, but if we’re measuring actual progress, they’ve done more for left wing causes. There may be good reasons why, but it doesn’t change that fact.

            Working solo has not been remotely successful for leftists at all. Unless they want to make it 150 years where they’ve done nothing, they need to work with allies.

            • Harrier_Du_Bois@lemmygrad.ml
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              1 year ago

              Liberals are not and have never been allied with leftists. In what world are you living? They’re fundamentally opposed to one another. You should read some books. Books written by leftists, not liberals.

              • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I was moreso thinking progressives and leftists. At the end of the day, a US liberal is still much closer politically to a leftist than they are to a US conservative. That’s doubly true for the leftist.

                The leftist wing isn’t strong politically in the US. They’ve gone down their path on their own, and it hasn’t been successful. I’m a progressive, and I’d like to see an alliance that strengthens the left and progressives and mainstream Democrats. We’re natural cousins compared to what Republicans have become. We’ll do a lot better sticking together, and if we do, there’s the possibility we diminish Republicans enough that we could split ourselves, and have the two major parties be Democrats/Progressives and Progressives/Leftists. This is the path that gets the most left wing policies implemented.

                • Harrier_Du_Bois@lemmygrad.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  Again, I urge you to read leftist literature. Leftists will NEVER achieve anything under a neoliberal capitalist society through voting. It is not possible. That’s why leftists don’t vote. And until “progressives” or whomever understand fundamentally what leftists want and how it can be achieved, there’s not really any point having a dialogue with them. You want us to shut up and get in line to vote dem. And then what happens? The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the bombs keep dropping. Harm is not reduced, it just shifts somewhere else.