The failure of Democrats is way deeper than imagined

[widdershins]

I was talking to my father-in-law last night (he needed a TV connected and while he could figure out the power cord himself, the second cord was a mystery to him).  At the end of the night as the wife and kids are loading into the car we are talking politics and he tells me that he voted for Trump.  This is the man who, as the first presidential election I was qualified to vote in approached, told me how to vote.  "Just pull the 'Democrat' lever" he had told me.  "Vote straight Democrat".

I expressed my shock that he would then vote for Trump all these years later and he explained it.  "That was for the unions because the Democrats backed the unions, but it doesn't matter any more."

My father-in-law retired from his union railroad job after 40 years.  He explained that he had worked hard and made some good investments but, "You can't do that any more."  The first time he told me how the labor market was he said to me, "You just go in there and you say, 'I want to work!'"  That's how you did it (granted, not at the time he told me that).  Now, 25 years later, he no longer believes that.

The Democrats aren't just failing on their message or their candidate, they're failing at their core values.  The unions have become big and corrupt, willing to let a factory close rather than accept a pay cut, willing to let Chrysler lose $1,500 on every car they sold or Hostess file bankruptcy rather than work out an amicable deal for employee and employer.  While unions used to be champions of workers, fighting for better working conditions and a living wage, they're now champions of only themselves.  They are no longer the shining example of the Democratic party at work.  They're the worm in the apple.

Yes, part of that is Republicans doing everything they can to gut unions, but a big part of that is the unions themselves.  My wife worked briefly at a place with a union doing a tough and moderately dangerous job, all while making nearly 30% less than she did doing the same thing in a smaller town with no union.  I had a friend who had a "good union job" where he would meet his quota in half a day and sit around playing chess and reading the paper for the other half, where he would stand at his machine and wait for an hour and a half for the proper guy to bring him a pallet from a stack not 20 feet from him or risk being fired for getting it himself.  Chrysler spent years losing $1,500 on every car they sold.  How can you not realize that to an employer "union" means "shitty workers and vastly lowered production at 3-4x the cost"?

Unions today are failing everyone, including themselves.  They are, after all, run by people, and people always want "more".  When the plant my friend worked at closed union leaders negotiated a crappy severance package for employees (6 months of health insurance) figuring that if they screwed the employees the company would be happy to grease their palms at the end when they all left too.  Much to my friend's amusement, the company lawyer said to them, "You set a precedence" for the severance package and they got the same.  But they tried to negotiate a different severance for themselves than they did for the employees.

Because of this, Republicans have real things to point at when they're telling people how bad unions are and unions are losing their power and influence, even among their hard-line supporters like my father-in-law.  Democrats literally have nothing left to point to other than current policy of the day.  Abortion rights and LGTB rights, both divisive issues which will get some votes, alienate others and don't matter on a personal level to a lot of people.

Democrats always had one vote that they could count on and this year that vote vanished.  Yes, a big part of that was that Hillary is "crooked".  She IS "big business".  She was a dumb pick.  People weren't excited about her.  They weren't looking forward to her as president.  Even many ardent Democrats didn't like her.  But it's not all about the candidate.  If it weren't for the corruption and failure of unions she would have had my father-in-law's vote anyway, even though he didn't like her, because Democrats support unions.  But now the "American dream" is dead, as far as he's concerned.  A man who took himself from nothing to being a multimillionaire through hard work doesn't see a path to financial independence in America any more.  To me, that is scary as fuck.  If that man has lost hope in the American dream then it really is dead and buried.  The man who told me that you just get in an employer's face and say forcefully, "I want to work!" to get a good job like it was 1953 changed his outlook.  His advice was 40 years too late to be useful when he gave it.  That is a man who doesn't see the world how it is, but how it was.  And even he no longer believes the American dream is achievable, not because "young people are lazy", but because the unions "don't matter any more", because the rich take it all.  If it's bad enough to change his mind at 80+ years old then it is fucking bad.  This man literally used to think that if you weren't making it, you were lazy.  There was no other possible reason.  He doesn't think that any more.

We get so focused on a single election that I think we sometimes fail to see the bigger picture.  In this case an 80+ year old man who has been a guaranteed Democrat vote for as long as I've known him voted for Trump.  We can't just look at the last year, we have to look at the last 80 years to understand that.  He was a staunch Democrat for the unions, but he no longer sees them as relevant AND he had no faith in the Democrat nominee, which means Democrats also need to stop ignoring the Republican propaganda machine simply because what they say isn't true.  The media figured out years ago that the people don't want truth, they want sensational.  Truth informs, but sensational sells.  Another one of his complaints was that he believed the media really wanted to get Hillary elected.  Not sure why that was.  I don't question the man much.  I think that might have something to do with the time my wife left me along with him while we were dating.  He was very drunk and proceeded to tell me what might theoretically happen should someone knock up his daughter and then leave her.  Guns were mentioned in large numbers.  I was in love, so it wasn't as scary as he had hoped, but the discomfort level of that drunken conversation was off the charts.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Strange that you mention the unions. My dad, now 88 has always voted democrats his entire life, but many years ago he worked for a newspaper that is no longer in business. He worked in management and had to fight the unions at every turn. Although he was in upper management, the managing editor and so on he was the lowest paid person in the entire shop. The union at the time was absolutely dead set against letting anyone take a paycut even though the company couldn't afford to invest in new machinery and technology. They were still using lead type and the great unions refused to see that the rest of the publishing world had long moved on from lead. Even the janitorial people were paid more than the managing editor.. Well dad got out before they went under, but the legacy of those unions lives on.
Fast forward to about 20 years ago my ex worked for Rite-aid pharmacy and it too was a union shop. The wages were all minimum wage and on top of that they all had to pay union dues. Can someone tell me what the fuck anyone working for then about $4 an hour needs a union steward for?  It's fine if the company you work for is a multi-million dollar enterprise and the union is dedicated to getting you a fair slice of the pie, but quite another when the company is barely holding on and the only thing that the union does is to take a large percentage of your paycheck to offer absolutely nothing in return.
I love the idea of unions, but they were infiltrated long ago with people who wanted nothing more than to make them irrelevant. The rich fucks figured out long ago that they could put their own people in positions of power within the unions to work against the very people they were supposed to support. Union employees never bothered to check out the people representing them and so union bosses all worked for the people who wanted them to go away. 

[Baruch]

"Union employees never bothered to check out the people representing them and so union bosses all worked for the people who wanted them to go away." ... that is how general citizenship works too.  You keep voting for your murderers.

[reasonist]

"Union employees never bothered to check out the people representing them and so union bosses all worked for the people who wanted them to go away." ... that is how general citizenship works too.  You keep voting for your murderers.

Jimmy Hoffa paid the ultimate price. He went away...

[Baruch]

Jimmy Hoffa paid the ultimate price. He went away...

That is like saying ... the Sans-cullotes have guillotined the Versailles janitor ... so no need for further revolution.  I suspect Hoffa died for something other than being un-PC ... unpaid Mob debts perhaps?  If we executed every human being, we still wouldn't have gotten rid of corruption.

[reasonist]

That is like saying ... the Sans-cullotes have guillotined the Versailles janitor ... so no need for further revolution.  I suspect Hoffa died for something other than being un-PC ... unpaid Mob debts perhaps?  If we executed every human being, we still wouldn't have gotten rid of corruption.

Corruption is driven by greed. It's innate in all of us, some more, some less.
I am not a conspiracy theorist, but there is a lot more to the death of Hoffa than unions. We will probably never find out.

[doorknob]

I think there's a lot more than unions at work. And I think we are all fucked no matter who leads us now. Leaders aren't really that any more. They are now business men and women who only have their own bottom line in mind. But in the long run they are shooting them selves in the foot. Because if you don't have workers to do the jobs for you, you have no business.
Also if you have no customers once again you have no business.

I think that Americans are about to  experience what china experiences. Very destitute workers so desperate they are willing to work for less than livable wages. There will be no middle class. Middle class is a dinosaur dying out with the old. As a young person with a disability I can tell you before I became disabled I wasn't doing well in life any how. Getting a head isn't easy with out references and connections. The old don't know this because their times are gone and they fail to realize how things have changed since then.

[reasonist]

I think there's a lot more than unions at work. And I think we are all fucked no matter who leads us now. Leaders aren't really that any more. They are now business men and women who only have their own bottom line in mind. But in the long run they are shooting them selves in the foot. Because if you don't have workers to do the jobs for you, you have no business.
Also if you have no customers once again you have no business.

I think that Americans are about to  experience what china experiences. Very destitute workers so desperate they are willing to work for less than livable wages. There will be no middle class. Middle class is a dinosaur dying out with the old. As a young person with a disability I can tell you before I became disabled I wasn't doing well in life any how. Getting a head isn't easy with out references and connections. The old don't know this because their times are gone and they fail to realize how things have changed since then.

That will be accelerated by deporting millions of workers and with it cheap labor. It'll be interesting to see how California fruit and vegetable farmers cope with that. Prices will most likely go up substantially.
And yet so much brain power still flocking to the US. For example, of the 10 US Nobel Prize winners of last year, 8 were born outside the US. American technology is copied world wide, many times illegally through industrial espionage. Military technology is decades ahead of everybody else. The space program is second to none. Silicon Valley is the envy of the world.
The other side of the coin is the prevailing poverty rates, the frustration of many drowned in drugs, booze and guns, the cynicism combined with a sense of entitlement and the filth of racism, all contributed to the election of the orange groper.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Good luck eating fresh fruit and vegetables in the coming years unless you grow your own and even then you may have to hire private security to protect it from your neighbors. Those who do grow enough to sell will likely be forced to either work around the clock to not only plant, but keep down weeds and pests and then work twice that hard come harvest time. The good news for those folks is with the EPA out of the way they can begin using DDT again till all the wildlife is poisoned and gone, but where to find people willing to pick crops.. Grapes of Wrath anyone?  How many of you are willing to take jobs picking crops for what may amount to about 12 cents an hour?  I don't know how many of you have ever worked in fields, but it's hard, dirty work and there are no city buses to take you out to the fields and once you get there very few places to live unless it's what you've been doing for a living all your life and already have your own RV..  Oh wait..inmate labor. Wanna guess how many things are about to become suddenly illegal in order to have enough inmate laborers to go around once all the immigrants are gone? 

[widdershins]

More than that, though, I think people are simply failing to see a difference between the candidates, or increasingly even the sides.  What does the Democrat party stand for these days?  Reproductive and sexual rights, entitlements and the environment.  While all of those are very important issues, none of them really resonate with the average person, allowing Republicans to frame them as "special interest".  And, indeed, sometimes they actually are.  Allowing transgender people to use the restroom they are most comfortable with by law, while a compassionate thing to do, IS giving rights to a small subset of the population that the rest of the population does not have, the very definition of "special interest".  Much as the Republicans have worked so hard to get the fringe votes from all the crazies out there, the Democrats have also worked very hard to get the votes of specialized groups, leaving both utterly disconnected from the general populous.

People laugh when they hear that the white man is feeling neglected.  They make jokes about it and think it's funny and that is the dumbest fucking thing.  That man votes, you fucking morons!  Who, exactly, do you think he's going to vote for if you're making fun of him?  I'll give you a hint.  It's "not who YOU want"!  If you trivialize his concerns because he isn't black and doesn't have a vagina what the fuck do you think is going to happen next time?  You'll get your ass handed to you again by another fuck in clown makeup!

While this is a huge problem for both sides, it's a much bigger problem for Democrats.  Gerrymandering already has them at a disadvantage across the country.  TWO out of FIVE presidents to be elected to office without winning the popular vote have been elected within 16 years and BOTH were Republican.  I don't think people realize just how big that is.  It almost never happened in US history, happening only 3 times in over 200 years, then suddenly it's happening TWICE in just five elections and both times it favored Republicans.  And you know what Democrats?  Your facts and figures are no match for their wild, unfounded hysteria.  They just aren't.  Do you even HAVE a TV?  Turn it on once in a while.  Americans aren't interested in how we got to the moon.  Hell, many of them don't even BELIEVE we got to the moon.  They want to see people fucking dumb enough to call themselves "The Situation".  That is right the fuck out of Idiocracy!  You aren't going to sway these people with measurements of ice they've never seen or temperatures in places they've never been.  Not when there's a clown two channels up screaming about building a wall to keep the dirty Mexicans from stealing all our jobs and raping all our...drugs.  Whatever, I wasn't paying attention.  Look at the clown!  He's an angry clown!

[Duncle]

The Democrats abandoned the working class during Bill Clinton's administration. Look at some of the stuff Clinton did: NAFTA passed, welfare 'reform' (= massive cuts), scrapped Glass-Steagall etc. The Democrats became (and are) the party that represents the socially liberal section of the financial elite. Poor and middle=class Americans have no party that supports their interests; unsurprisingly many voted for Trump.

[GSOgymrat]

Read this today and thought of this thread. Not agreeing with this article, just sharing another perspective.

The dark rigidity of fundamentalist rural America: a view from the inside

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/the-dark-rigidity-of-fundamentalist-rural-america-a-view-from-the-inside/

As the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump is being sorted out, a common theme keeps cropping up from all sides: “Democrats failed to understand white, working-class, fly-over America.”
Trump supporters are saying this. Progressive pundits are saying this. Talking heads across all forms of the media are saying this. Even some Democratic leaders are saying this. It doesn’t matter how many people say it, it is complete bullshit. It is an intellectual/linguistic sleight of hand meant to throw attention away from the real problem. The real problem isn’t east coast elites who don’t understand or care about rural America. The real problem is rural America doesn’t understand the causes of their own situations and fears and they have shown no interest in finding out. They don’t want to know why they feel the way they do or why they are struggling because they don’t want to admit it is in large part because of choices they’ve made and horrible things they’ve allowed themselves to believe.

I grew up in rural, Christian, white America. You’d be hard-pressed to find an area in the country that has a higher percentage of Christians or whites. I spent most of the first 24 years of my life deeply embedded in this culture. I religiously (pun intended) attended their Christian services. I worked off and on, on their rural farms. I dated their calico skirted daughters. I camped, hunted, and fished with their sons. I listened to their political rants at the local diner and truck stop. I winced at their racist/bigoted jokes and epithets that were said more out of ignorance than animosity. I have also watched the town I grew up in go from a robust economy with well-kept homes and infrastructure turn into a struggling economy with shuttered businesses, dilapidated homes, and a broken down infrastructure over the past 30 years. The problem isn’t that I don’t understand these people. The problem is they don’t understand themselves, the reasons for their anger/frustrations, and don’t seem to care to know why.

In deep-red white America, the white Christian God is king, figuratively and literally. Religious fundamentalism is what has shaped most of their belief systems. Systems built on a fundamentalist framework are not conducive to introspection, questioning, learning, change. When you have a belief system that is built on fundamentalism, it isn’t open to outside criticism, especially by anyone not a member of your tribe and in a position of power. The problem isn’t “coastal elites don’t understand rural Americans.” The problem is rural America doesn’t understand itself and will NEVER listen to anyone outside their bubble. It doesn’t matter how “understanding” you are, how well you listen, what language you use…if you are viewed as an outsider, your views are automatically discounted. I’ve had hundreds of discussions with rural white Americans and whenever I present them any information that contradicts their entrenched beliefs, no matter how sound, how unquestionable, how obvious, they WILL NOT even entertain the possibility it might be true. Their refusal is a result of the nature of their fundamentalist belief system and the fact I’m the enemy because I’m an educated liberal. ...

The honest truths that rural, Christian, white Americans don’t want to accept and until they do nothing is going to change, are:
-Their economic situation is largely the result of voting for supply-side economic policies that have been the largest redistribution of wealth from the bottom/middle to the top in U.S. history.
-Immigrants haven’t taken their jobs. If all immigrants, legal or otherwise, were removed from the U.S., our economy would come to a screeching halt and prices on food would soar.
-Immigrants are not responsible for companies moving their plants overseas. Almost exclusively white business owners are the ones responsible because they care more about their share holders who are also mostly white than they do American workers.
-No one is coming for their guns. All that has been proposed during the entire Obama administration is having better background checks.
-Gay people getting married is not a threat to their freedom to believe in whatever white God you want to. No one is going to make their church marry gays, make gays your pastor, accept gays for membership.
-Women having access to birth control doesn’t affect their life either, especially women who they complain about being teenage, single mothers.
-Blacks are not “lazy moochers living off their hard earned tax dollars” anymore than many of your fellow rural neighbors. People in need are people in need. People who can’t find jobs because of their circumstances, a changing economy, outsourcing overseas, etc. belong to all races.
-They get a tremendous amount of help from the government they complain does nothing for them. From the roads and utility grids they use to the farm subsidies, crop insurance, commodities protections…they benefit greatly from government assistance. The Farm Bill is one of the largest financial expenditures by the U.S. government. Without government assistance, their lives would be considerably worse.
-They get the largest share of Food Stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
-They complain about globalization but line up like everyone else to get the latest Apple product. They have no problem buying foreign-made guns, scopes, and hunting equipment. They don’t think twice about driving trucks whose engine was made in Canada, tires made in Japan, radio made in Korea, computer parts made in Malaysia.
-They use illicit drugs as much as any other group. But, when other people do it is a “moral failing” and they should be severely punished, legally. When they do it, it is a “health crisis” that needs sympathy and attention.
-When jobs dry up for whatever reasons, they refuse to relocate but lecture the poor in places like Flint for staying in towns that are failing.
-They are quick to judge minorities for being “welfare moochers” but don’t think twice about cashing their welfare check every month.
-They complain about coastal liberals, but the taxes from California and New York are what covers their farm subsidies, helps maintain their highways, and keeps their hospitals in their sparsely populated areas open for business.
-They complain about “the little man being run out of business” then turn around and shop at big box stores.
-They make sure outsiders are not welcome, deny businesses permits to build, then complain about businesses, plants opening up in less rural areas.
-Government has not done enough to help them in many cases but their local and state governments are almost completely Republican and so too are their representatives and senators. Instead of holding them accountable, they vote them in over and over and over again.
-All the economic policies and ideas that could help rural America belong to the Democratic Party: raising the minimum wage, strengthening unions, infrastructure spending, reusable energy growth, slowing down the damage done by climate change, healthcare reform…all of these and more would really help a lot of rural Americans. ...

[Baruch]

Things would turn around, but Americans don't believe in unions or the general strike or boycotting.  They are too selfish.

[widdershins]

The Democrats abandoned the working class during Bill Clinton's administration. Look at some of the stuff Clinton did: NAFTA passed, welfare 'reform' (= massive cuts), scrapped Glass-Steagall etc. The Democrats became (and are) the party that represents the socially liberal section of the financial elite. Poor and middle=class Americans have no party that supports their interests; unsurprisingly many voted for Trump.

I think that's the biggest problem with the money in politics.  If you don't have cash to fund the campaign then you're really a waste of their time.  They can't afford to utterly piss off the people with money to help the little guy because if they even hint that they're going to do that they won't ever get the money they need to get elected.

[The Skeletal Atheist]

I mean, there is an option to trade unionists bosses working for the bosses, it just isn't quite as popular these days...