I Warned You, Bro
Maybe I got so high, I saw the future
Before I started publishing on Substack, I was putting the occasional long-form piece up on my Facebook account. This is the first of what I suspect will be a few “reprints” regarding the 2024 presidential race. It’s an example of how to apply a social class based analysis to political culture.
From May 21, 2024:
Since the early 2010's Americans have been expressing discontent with the outcomes of neoliberalist policies put into place in the 1980’s under Reagan, and 1990’s under Clinton. The working class were the first to take it on the chin, then the middle class had to be proletarianized effectively, but they have followed.
The problem we are having—in so much that we are looking at a presidential election that itself has become a constitutional crisis—is that the People want change, and the candidate that has promised to bring it, Trump, showed us that he could.
So this election has become a question of, “Is this change close enough to what appeals to you that you will opt for it, rather than more of the same?”
The DNC has been running candidates on "Not Trump" platforms for three cycles, because they decided in 2015 that the changes Bernie Sanders was talking about were a step too far for them, regardless of being far more appealing to more voters than what the opposition has had to offer for ... 12 years.
Recall when the Republicans promised a “better plan” than Obamacare, and then, when they won the White House, Congress, and the Senate, they had bupkis?
The Democrats have had twelve years to come up with something to alleviate the stressors on working people, and now they are trying to sell us on half-measures—one-time forgiveness of portions of educational debt (helping the middle class), and pardons for marijuana possession (but not for the person who grew it, or the one who sold it). Neither addresses the root problems of insufficient support and excessive disciplining of the People that stem from Neoliberal priorities.
The incumbent party should NEVER run on, “We're not the alternative,” because it leaves open challenges from every alternative, and it tells everyone who is dissatisfied that NOTHING WILL CHANGE.
And to think, if the Biden administration had merely treated the attempted overthrow of the federal government as seriously as they take students camping on college quads, the coup leadership would have already been put on trial, and we would have moved on.
But that would have meant the Republican party would have had time to correct itself, and the downfall of the American system is one political franchise is very interested in the failure of the other, regardless of the ultimate outcome.
The Democrats offer nothing to those who want substantive change. Instead, they offer us the THIRD CONSECUTIVE presidential matchup of the LEAST POPULAR CANDIDATES on the ballot since the mid-1800’s. And they have the nerve to threaten that it is up to us to save the country from Trump, while THEY have made not one substantive proposal to tax Capital effectively. They applaud unions, but have no proposal to raise the federal minimum wage. They refuse to accept responsibility for losing the 2016 election and all the fallout that came from that. Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused to resign while Obama was in office, preferring to save the nomination of her replacement for President Hillary Clinton. That hubris cost at least a generation of American women their bodily autonomy.
Where's the in-writing proposal to add Justices to the USSC, to balance out the Injustices? Where are the Articles of Impeachment for Clarence Thomas—whose acceptance of tens of millions of dollars in secret, is now indubitable?
Instead, we get a daily diet of how there are more jobs than ever and the stock market is booming. Gig work and a monied class that is bullish on future exploitation. That's the selling point? The people who are smart enough not to fall for Trump's gaslighting are also smart enough to realize that all the jobs in the world and a soaring stock market does not make food and rent affordable.
When the undoing happens, it will not be due to Trump's popularity, which was never very high. It goes right back to the DNC fighting like hell to keep a status quo that the People do not want.