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This is all you need to know, to understand the two party system and why we will never get any meaningful changes as long as it exists.
So how do you explain things like marriage equality and civil rights. I’m not going to claim it counters all the negative things economic liberals do. But it certainly makes the claim muddy and specious.
There is no 2 party system either. Implying the system relies on parties. Outlaw both Republicans and Democrats tomorrow and 2 other groups will fill the void. It’s a first passed the post voting system, weighted for bigots with the electoral college. The wealthy will buyout interest in whatever parties arise. Hell many of them fund 3rd party campaigns now to keep opposition divided. And they will keep doing it as long as we stay divided. Because that’s why there has been little to no change. Nothing to do with parties, everything to do with lack of solidarity.
The Civil Rights Act was pre-neoliberalism and more than fifty years ago so it just straight up does not matter to the discussion. That neoliberalism entered the national stage through Jimmy Carter is in fact proof that the Democratic Party immediately started sabotaging its own gains to appeal to the softly bigoted center.
Unless you’re speaking of gay (and disability) rights as a whole as that civil rights issue that is. It’s fair enough, but it’s also not the economic issues most leftists are concerned with, I think largely because they take support on those social issues for granted. As it should be, going by what ideological liberalism claims to stand for.
Neoliberalism for all of its faults does tend to promote human rights if only by stripping the power to oppress away with the power to regulate, while neoconservatives just wanted to get rid of the regulations, thus the divide on Obgerfell when the liberal Justices correctly pointed out that the 14th Amendment forgot to say “No Homos.”
That is also part of the problem though, right? The Democratic Party gets these narrow wins and never looks to solidify them. They trade away economic protections for narrow victories on civil rights, based mostly on judicial oversight instead of actual law, and then act surprised when economic uncertainty erodes their support further and further.
Or, after they lost the SC, have the nerve to act surprised that the Court will just undo gains by controversial decisions.
Uh, that’s been happening since Carter lost. Because of this Democrats thought they had to cater more to the center to get votes back. They’ve been doing ever since.
“Did Carter lose because neoliberalism itself alienates our base, or because we didn’t neoliberal hard enough???”
Correct. And we can complain about that after Kamala wins in a couple weeks, meanwhile let’s just make sure she DOES win.
Yeah no shit. Bernie was set to be president, and fucking Debbie Wasserman Schultz was like: “absolutely not”.
