I disagree with your point about young people and unions. To the extent that there is negative propaganda floating around in young people’s heads about unions, I think it’s been through cultural osmosis.
We haven’t had a sustained effort, with the Democratic Party operating as part of the engine, to expand and engage the labor movement. Biden did some good stuff here, but just wasn’t enough of an effective messenger to break through. Harris largely ignored the manufacturing and union policies of the Biden admin while campaigning, which I think was a big mistake.
In terms of social safety net, I also strong disagree with that. There are tons of working poor who benefit from social safety programs and know their value. Blue collar men who make more money than the working poor are more so who you’re talking about, I think. You have to present the message in terms of universality. Would a working man see Medicare for All as something below him? Or would he see it as an opportunity to have decreased out of pocket costs? I’d say the latter.
1. Kamala fought hard for union endorsements. She was in the Rust Belt states talking industrial policy. She ran on Biden's union policies. And look, it's not as if the unions don't know where she stood. The union members don't fucking care because immigrants are invading.
2. Again, I think you should read more about Obamacare. Obamacare, after all, was universal. That was literally its whole point. And the working class folks turned out against it in 2010, 2014, and 2016. Remember, they came a single vote short of repealing Obamacare, and the only reason it was saved was that McCain was irritated that his committee had been sidelined.
You might be too young to remember the dystopia of pre-existing conditions. Getting rid of that hell should have been the easiest thing in the world -- even easier than decreasing out of pocket costs. Keeping that hell away should have been easy.
3. Again, the problem is that our political system does not give us any options. We get two and we don't get to choose a la carte. And that's why, for the past decade, Dems running on popular policy platforms do not win. Abortion did well in a midterm but it utterly bombed this year -- even though most Americans are pro-choice. On issue after issue, progressives point out, "look Americans love this" and then the GOP wins by running against all of those things. Just as they did with Obamacare.
Because at the end of the day, people vote for what interests them the most. This election could not be clearer as to what that is. Again, Trump's entire campaign, especially the last month, was racism and misogyny reduced to their very essence. I'm not sure how he could have run a more hate-filled campaign. And that's what people respond to, apparently.
In the end, "socialism" has always meant "racial equality" to the right. Remember that they used to call MLK a communist. So it becomes ingrained that socialism has to be bad, which is why no American politician outside of Vermont wins with socialism as the message. The word is verboten; the ideas are usually dangerous. When you describe policies to people, without labels attached, they like them. But then they hear the GOP politicians pounding the s-word and they get scared.
When Trump rails against Radical Left Socialists, what his voters hear is him standing up to uppity minorities and women. This is also the abortion debate. Something like 98% of federal judges who are pro-life are also the ones who try to scale back anti-discrimination laws as much as possible. That's not a coincidence, is it? Abortion was part of the Southern Strategy, after all.
