"The task for the Democrats is what it should have been all along: remaking the party into the party of the bottom 90 percent — the party of people who don’t live off stocks and bonds, of people who are not CEOs or billionaires like Mark Cuban, the par...

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

"The task for the Democrats is what it should have been all along: remaking the party into the party of the bottom 90 percent — the party of people who don’t live off stocks and bonds, of people who are not CEOs or billionaires like Mark Cuban, the party that rejects Elon Musk and the entire American oligarchy."

~ Robert Reich

#Democrats #EconomicElites #SuperRich
/1

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/there-was-no-red-shift-there-was

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

"Donald Trump’s election is a triumph for the politics of the doomsday bunker, which is bad news for the world’s environment.

This is the idea that in an age of climate disruption, nature extinction and ever wider social inequality, the best chance of survival for those who can afford it is to construct a personal shelter, where they can keep the desperate masses at bay. It is survival of the richest."

~ Jonathan Watts

#Trump #EconomicElites #SuperRich
/2

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/14/survival-of-the-richest-trump-climate-and-the-logic-of-the-doomsday-bunker

[junesim63@mstdn.social]

@wdlindsy They had that chance in 2016 but rejected it.

[unclecharliea@mastodon.social]

@wdlindsy It is most critical to build a majority coalition to take back Congress in 2026, at any cost. From there find and build a campaign to counter MAGA candidates in 2028...IF USA survives that long. People need to be vocally and visably opposed to any shenanigans like "Recess Appointments" to cabinet posts!

[bytebro@mastodonapp.uk]

@wdlindsy But as many have pointed out, it all goes wrong for them when their Head of Security realises that given that he has all the guns, it's actually HIS shelter.

Maybe this is why Elmo is so obsessed with the neuralink thing - perhaps he thinks he can 'compel' loyalty in his subordinates...

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@bytebro Exactly. You're right on all points, I think.

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@UncleCharlieA Yes, I agree. I think to accomplish that, there's going to be a need to address some serious cultural challenges, too, including first and foremost the undereducation of many Americans.

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@junesim63 And yet, Biden did really remarkable things to rebuild an economy that the Republicans crashed, with the pandemic assissting them. I also have never fully bought either Bernie Sanders or Reich's analysis that working-class voters choose the Republican party for economic reasons. I agree that the economic system needs to be reconfigured entirely. I also think that culture-war hostilities move working-class voters voting GOP much more than either Reich or Sanders wants to see.

[missgayle@urbanists.social]

@wdlindsy

Except they have to have ventilation somewhere, so, they're not invulnerable to filling their bunker with car exhaust or molotov cocktails. Also, eventually the hired goons will figure out there will be more resources for *them* if the pesky obnoxious asshat and his family are gone. Oligarchs can't imagine a time when people won't obey them, you know. They're sociopaths, so they can't understand actual people's motivations.

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@MissGayle Yes, oligarchs inevitably miscalculate, since hubris blinds them, and they bring about their own dowfall as a result.

[dougiec3@libretooth.gr]

@wdlindsy
Back around the turn of the century I read an article about the Democrats turn toward the super rich during the Clinton administration. It went into the Clintons being instrumental in that shift away from the working class.

[lolonurse@ohai.social]

@wdlindsy @UncleCharlieA
Yes! Not meaning that everyone needs a college education, but that every child should have a solid & well-rounded foundation of reading, writing, math, science, American & world history, social studies, civics, culture (art, music, literature, performing arts...) and hopefully at least a year or 2 of a foreign language. (and some PE or exercise/wiggle time, with shop, home ec - now called FCS or family & consumer science, also available. IMO

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@lolonurse @UncleCharlieA I couldn't agree more.

[wdlindsy@toad.social]

@dougiec3 Bill Clinton certainly scripted an influential neoliberal playbook for the Democratic party, which continued to be powerful when Democrats took office through Obama's first term, when he made some disastrous neoliberal cabinet choices. I see Biden as, in some essential ways, especially with economic policy, having broken with that playbook.