• pregnantwithrage@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I would say the citizens that experienced the fall out from NAFTA that gutted blue collar jobs and created the rust belt would say “the big lump of shit with rat poison” was the Democrats that threw the working class overboard years ago.

    Speaking of poison, it is the same reason residents of Michigan would rather vote Trump because the Democratic party and Obama would rather gaslight them about their water being safe to drink instead of charging the corporations that cut costs that polluted the water with federal charges. Obama also bailed out Wall Street and left hard working Americans with a shell of an American dream.

    The core of the issue is the Democrats use to be for the everyday man and they lost their way and eroded trust, that will never be gained back. What that leaves voters in fly over states with is a choice to vote their better interest or have a candidate that “tells it like it is” aka lie and get back at the party that screwed them over.

    It’s not as black and white when you’re in the thick of it, as difficult as it is to reason with that base.

    • ExFed@programming.dev
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      24 hours ago

      The greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing people he didn’t exist. The greatest trick the Republican party pulled was convincing people that its most unpopular ideas are entirely Democrats’ fault.

      NAFTA was championed by, majority supported, and voted in by mostly Republicans. It was ultimately bipartisan, but Democrats were significantly more opposed to it than Republicans (of Republican Congress members, only 10 in the Senate and 43 in the House voted against it; of Democrats, 28 in the Senate and 156 in the House voted against it).

      This isn’t to say that NAFTA is objectively bad policy; most economists argue that it ultimately benefited the whole country. However it did expose US manufacturing to significant competition, reduced bargaining power for manufacturing workers, and shocked communities which were solely reliant on the sector to support them. Larger cities were mostly unaffected due to their more diverse economies, and in many cases thrived off increased trade and lower prices for goods. As a reminder, urbanites trend Democrat, rural folk trend Republican.

      The trope that urban liberals successfully screwed over rural conservatives just isn’t true. Instead it seems that, at screwing themselves over, urban liberals failed and rural conservatives succeeded.

      https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1031/vote_103_1_00395.htm https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/1993575

      • pregnantwithrage@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        The greatest trick the Republican party pulled was convincing people that its most unpopular ideas are entirely Democrats’ fault.

        That’s called being politically savvy and out playing your competition which is why the Democratic party is always in free fall.

        All this back and forth leads to this point: The Democrats are not equipped to handle a full assault of our democracy and thinking Gavin Newsom is the guy with some funny parrot tweets is not a real answer.

        • ExFed@programming.dev
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          11 hours ago

          Oh, I’m not saying anything about Newsom, just trying to dispel some sadly common misinformation about NAFTA. I’ve yet to form a solid opinion of the guy, but I’m not without cynical biases, so he’s got an uphill battle to win in my mind.

      • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        When you don’t have a choice that didn’t back NAFTA then you vote for the ones who are currently saying it sucks. Not the ones pointing to obscure economic indicators and saying everything is fine.

        • ExFed@programming.dev
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          11 hours ago

          Sure. But let’s set the record straight: blue collar jobs in the States didn’t suffer because “Democrat bad and hate workers!” That’s a myth perpetuated by politicians who would manipulate us for their own gain, Republican and Democrat alike.

          In meantime we gotta figure out what to do with a ball of shit filled with rat poison.

          • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.world
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            10 hours ago

            When choosing between more worse and less worse, it makes sense to vote for less worse.

            What’s infuriating is that we can’t vote for better because it doesn’t exist.