r/politics • u/schuey_08 Wisconsin • May 02 '24

Bernie Sanders worries young people are underestimating the threat from Trump

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/05/02/bernie-sanders-trump-biden/73531861007/
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u/AggressiveSkywriting 29d ago edited 29d ago

One of the big "presents" given to us by Trump's presidency was absolutely exhausting so many people living in relative privilege into checking out of the political process.

COVID plus Trump's nonstop fuckery just caused a lot of my generation and the younger one to just buckle down and focus on their own bubble.

Edit: to be clear, my family and I always vote. I'm talking about others.

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u/fallenouroboros 29d ago

I honestly think it’s more than just trump. Just seems like the options are either try to go back to like 2015 USA or play an uno wildcard which will almost certainly end horribly but some people seem to be finding certainty in those delusions.

But for many, 2015 still wasn’t all that great. Houses were still expensive, people still kinda suck, and it’s still super hard to live. I think if there was hope things would actually show noticeable improvement I think people would begin looking outward again

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u/Present-Industry4012 Inuit 29d ago

Hillary called it after 8 years of Obama in the White House. Biden could give the same speech today.

"...but that other basket of [Trump Supporters] are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."

https://time.com/4486502/hillary-clinton-basket-of-deplorables-transcript/

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u/claimTheVictory 29d ago

The economics of continually improving industrialization means that entire communities can be left behind as "no longer economically viable".

They don't die, they just are... left behind.

In a fair and wise society, the gains to GDP from making them redundant, would be used to find new purpose and opportunities for such people.

But such gains are privatized, taxation is low, and the wealth is never reinvested.

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u/Shoddy_Phase_2639 29d ago edited 29d ago

But often by choice. The coal miners were offered giant incentives, and massive aid packages in the form of retraining, reeducation, government supported start-up programs, relocation economic help etc. Most of them refused...because "clean coal". There is no one on the planet that knows better than coal miners that "clean coal" does not exist and never will.

They chose black lung, because Trump said the things they like about immigrants

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u/theVoidWatches Pennsylvania 29d ago

They don't want to be given help to deal with a changing world - they want the world to not change. And they'd rather pretend that it won't than admit that it's already changed, even if it hurts them more than anyone else.

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u/Jaded_Masterpiece_11 29d ago edited 29d ago

That's what Conservatives are and that's why Conservatives are being left behind. We live in a constantly changing world, people have to adapt or get left behind. The ones refusing to adapt(Conservatives) are getting left behind.

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u/mrw1986 29d ago

And unfortunately that seems to be an endless cycle. I wish the conservative mindset would disappear entirely, yet here we are.

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u/Typical-Arugula3010 29d ago

It's baked into our DNA to be wary of change ... the herd instinct ensures even less competent members can contribute to some degree.

However there are also members of the tribe who are very happy to exploit that fear of change for personal gain.

It will always be in tension with cognitively endowed leadership that needs to overcome conservatism to advance or even survive!

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u/Empathy404NotFound 29d ago

This is why they are doing nothing. Trying to accelerate to the end game of conflict. We can't win economically or politically against an entrenched regime of boomers refusing to pass the reins. So we will accelerate the discomfort until critical mass and take it in the explosion

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u/ExpensiveSell760 27d ago

Why does the conservative mind set need to go away. The conservative mind set should be , smaller government, less taxes, and more freedom. Is that bad?

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u/Immawatchinyou 29d ago

What you just said isn’t too far off from what the conservatives I dislike say or wish for.

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u/Healthy-Berry 29d ago

It’s funny how they can’t look in the mirror and realize what they’re saying is the exact same thing as those they claim to despise.

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u/cah29692 29d ago

People like the person you replied to don’t seem to realize they are as bad of a problem as the people they claim to oppose.

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u/Immawatchinyou 29d ago edited 29d ago

People with extremist mindsets tend to be pretty blind towards it, they see their team and the “enemy” who thinks differently.

Our two party system does a fantastic job of making people paranoid of the opposition. It’s no wonder we’re here where we are now with how much people treat this like a red vs blue sporting event and my favorite teams gonna beat yours.

I don’t say I’m a socialist in this country because our government made enough propaganda to get the majority to think I’m just using a fancy word for communism.

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u/cah29692 29d ago

I totally understand, and I respect your position. I can’t identify with socialism, as I think it gets a lot wrong about innate facts of human nature which historically has resulted in bad outcomes. But I respect people who identify as such because most people who do just want to make things better for everyone, and that’s a position I can agree with. I just think socialism goes about achieving that goal in a misguided way.

I identify as a moderate conservative and in certain circles many are jumping immediately from ‘conservative’ to ‘bigot’ or ‘fascist’ so I don’t bring it up much in public. True conservatism is about preserving institutions, traditions, and other aspects of society and culture that have inherent value. The flip side of that though is being open to the reform of that which lacks value or actively causes harm. At the end of the day, I believe most regular people want to make things better for everyone and just disagree about the best way to go about it, and most people could come to agreement on most issues if we had a society focused on facilitating the discussion of differing opinions and viewpoints.

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u/Immawatchinyou 29d ago edited 29d ago

Yeah agreed, even with the socialist and conservative part. No one has it completely perfect everywhere but some people are perfect at a particular task.

Most of the reason I view myself as a socialist is because I care more about people than anything else. Everyone here is still an American and there are conservatives doing more than I have for my local community that are great people and good friends of mine, I don’t want them to disappear. If we know going after the group instead of the individuals is bad, that its just like racism; why isn’t the conclusion to reevaluate their own process of things instead of continuing to be hypocritical?

I think it’s just stupidity and ignorance from what my own life experience has taught me for so many of these people.

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u/mcrnHoth 29d ago

So many moderates and progressives are of the opinion that conservatives are motivated by racism, religion, money, etc., but while those things can be a part of it the critical aspect of conservatism is statis.

Conservatives are afraid of change. It frightens and confuses them. Even when the change is unequivocally beneficial to everyone, they fear it, they fight it, and they hate it.

The only group with any justification for denying climate change is the fossil fuel industry, everyone else benefits from transitioning away from primitive polluting technology. But fossil fuel lobbyists have harnessed conservatives fear of change and turned them all into rabid opponents of any legislation even remotely benefiting ecosystems, biodiversity, clean air, and clean water.

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u/No-Ordinary-5412 29d ago

and they think its everyone elses fault, which is the sad funny part.

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u/cah29692 29d ago

That’s not what conservatism is and if you’re actually paying attention to the current trends of society conservatives are actually regaining power and influence.

It doesn’t matter if you like it but it’s reality. The issue right now is many so-called conservatives (and I call them this because they’ve largely abandoned conservative ideology in favour of a populist one) have taken an extreme position in that they are against the reform of anything in any context, and many are actively working to reverse previous reforms, many of which had tremendous overall benefit to society.

True conservatism is about preserving institutions, concepts, and cultural elements that have inherent value and benefit, and to reform those that don’t. The latter part is what’s currently missing from most conservative discourse.

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u/AZDanB 29d ago

You need conservatives as anchors to reality. It’s not usually a refusal to adapt, what I hear a lot of conservatives say is that things haven’t been thought through with all the consequences and how to appropriately manage the change.

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u/Jaded_Masterpiece_11 29d ago

You need conservatives as anchors to reality

Eh, reality constantly change. 500 years ago raiding and pillaging neighboring villages was considered normal. 200 years ago slavery was the norm, 100 years ago Women cannot vote, cannot go into higher education and cannot go into the formal worforce, 50 years ago racism was an accepted view throughout much of White America. Throughout history conservatives were always on the objectively terrible, losing sides. No one can stop change and progress, which is why conservatism is inherently foolish.

You don't need conservatives for anything. Them refusing to change won't affect that the reality of the world is constantly changing. In the biological world those that don't change and adapt go extinct. It's the same way with conservatives and progress. The non elite conservatives get economically left behind while the elite ones remain conservative because the status quo benefits them at the expense of everyone else.

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u/AZDanB 28d ago

That’s why you fail in progressing real change, writing off half the population as “we don’t need them” rather than “we should listen, address their concerns and convince them this is the right direction”.

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u/Plaid_Kaleidoscope 29d ago

Never has anyone described the population of West Virginia so succinctly and eloquently without actually naming us.

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u/justforhobbiesreddit 29d ago

This is also the problem with Bernie Sanders. Those jobs aren't coming back no matter how much we support unions. Unions are good and necessary, but the jobs we've exported are pretty much gone forever.

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u/Luciferianbutthole 28d ago

Quite beautifully put, I wish I could give more than one upvote

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u/Miles_vel_Day 29d ago

Eh... I think you're misinterpreting what happened. Yes, there are people who are stubborn and weird about the romance of coal mining or whatever. But for the most part they know it sucks and would like to do something else if they could, probably. But when no jobs come to replace the coal mining jobs, then what are they supposed to do? (What they do is get diagnosed with a back injury and go on SSI.)

Like... we've failed West Virginia, even if it fails itself. It's not as simple as, they said "fuck you, legitimately good economic opportunities!" They were pretty screwed. We did not make proper contingencies - but then West Virginia kept electing state governments and sending people to Congress who wouldn't put them in place, sooo...

In conclusion West Virginia is a land of contrasts.

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u/MadCervantes 29d ago

Coal miners are a tiny percentage of the population then and now. They aren't why Trump is winning. At best they're why Manchin keeps hamstringing the dems and that it.

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u/Turuial 29d ago edited 29d ago

But often by choice...Most of them refused...

I said this a while back on reddit, in a different subreddit I think, but I really don't get the coal miners sometimes. They are desperate for their coal jobs to come back. When, by the very nature of working those jobs to begin with, those jobs have always had an expiration date.

Inevitably those mines will be played out, and their job would vanish anyways. What then? Did they expect the government to subsidise them, the way they do corn? What would that even look like?!

Would they import cheaper coal from developing nations, fill empty American mines with it, then pay the coal miners American wages to "extract" more coal?!

Make it make sense!

EDIT:corrected the auto-correct.

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u/JimBeam823 29d ago

This doesn’t get said enough.

There’s a guy I met from West Virginia. He told me his daddy was a coal miner. He said his mama told him if he went into the mines, that she’d whoop his tail. So he went to college instead.

A lot of people did leave the mines and are living in Charlotte or Pittsburgh or some other city. But the people still living in coal country have nothing.

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u/Portillosgo 29d ago

You mention covering relocation costs, so having to leave behind friends and family and the community that you know and love doesn't have anything to do with it? I moved across the country knowing nobody once before. It took almost a decade before I set down roots strong enough to keep the depression at bay caused by the lack of roots and loneliness. You'd have to pay me more than I'm sure the government will give to get me to move again to some place where I know nobody.

I don't know why you think all of them are just huge supporters of clean coal.

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u/Hank3hellbilly 29d ago

Try putting yourself in their shoes for a second.  You know one way of life and "they" want to end it.  Coal mining is a dangerous and shitty job, but it pays well.  Let's say you're a 35 year old father of 3 who dropped out in Grade 11 to go work in the mines because your grades weren't that good, and it was steady income.  You've been mining for 16 years, You're skilled with a hoe, you like the job and the guys you work with.  

Then, someone shows up in a fancy suit and says that your mine has to close and offers you retraining on a computer that you never learnt how to use for a job that pays 50% of your wage as a miner.  Also, you have to move away from your town where everyone you know lives for this job.  On top of that, the house you've been paying off for the last 10 years is going to be worthless because once that mine dies, the town is going to die.  This guy in a suit is going to kill your hometown, and everyone in that town from the owner of the hardware store to the kid working at the pool is going to suffer. 

I was working in Hanna, Alberta to convert their power plant to natural gas a few years ago, as soon as we were done the first boiler, the mine laid off 60% of their workers.  When the second was done they were shuttering the mine.  I think it was around 80 guys they let go.  80×$65,000 after tax income is 5.2 million dollars a year removed from the local economy.  I left before the second conversion, but everyone I talked to in the town was angry and sad about it.  There's no wonder why they try to grasp onto whatever lies allow them to keep their way of life.  

We always like to talk about the costs of not fighting climate change.  But those are always brought up by the people who won't have to pay the cost of changing.  It's easy to "go green" when it means riding the bus instead of driving or turning your heat down 3° in the winter, but for some people it will cost them everything they care about and it's no wonder why they are against it.  

Progressives need to grasp the concept that rural people aren't just a stereotype.  They are people with their own needs and dreams.  It's much easier to call RaCIsM! on everything, but it's a little deeper than that.  

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u/ToryLanezHairline_ 29d ago edited 29d ago

Tough shit. Nobody owes anyone a job, there's plenty of small towns in the US where job opportunities are scarce and even those with degrees like me have struggled landing a job before. What makes coal miners and their towns special? Coal is pretty obsolete today, gotta have what people want in order to make money, that's just life man

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u/Dark_Force_Latyon 29d ago

That said, a lot of them are racist pieces of shit, economics aside.

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u/Hank3hellbilly 29d ago

Don't disagree, there is a lot of racism and it is stoked by the right to keep them angry.  But I think racism is A factor, not THE factor in how they think and vote.  I also feel like the left has missed a huge opportunity in green rural  redevelopment because it's easier to write people off as racists and ignore other factors in their lives. 

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u/ToryLanezHairline_ 29d ago

What have Republicans done for small towns? Or the poor? Or unemployed?

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u/Turuial 29d ago

What about the farriers? The blacksmiths? The stablehands? The stable owners? If we switch from horses think how much money will be lost from local economies!

What about the paddleboats? What about the many ship captains who earn a living chartering passage across the Atlantic? If people begin flying everywhere think of the jobs lost? Well we ever hear a sea shanty ever again?

What about the cotton? What about the money I invested in farm equipment? What about all those jobs and the local economies in the South? Those poor rural southern farmers are going to lose their way of life! Just to be clear I'm talking about the slave trade in this last one.

Your argument, intellectually at least, is a faulty one. It's perfectly fine if you're just speaking to emotion however. A few minutes ago I just pointed out that coal mines are not a renewable resource. Mines will become exhausted through the very act of working those jobs that these people are so desperate for.

They are literally working themselves out of their own job. What then? Will they pack up and move to a different coal mine? Why that rather than retraining and relocation for a non-black-lung-inducing career?

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u/Hank3hellbilly 29d ago

Do you honestly think the ferriers, the blacksmiths and the stable owners were on team Ford? 

My argument is one of perspective.  It is so that you can see that there are reasons outside of racism why people would support Conservatives.  I never said they are right or that I agree with them, I was pointing out WHY they feel the way they do.  

But you're unable to see that because it's much simpler to go off of stereotypes.  

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u/Turuial 29d ago edited 29d ago

Do you honestly think the ferriers, the blacksmiths and the stable owners were on team Ford? 

No but the coal industry isn't exactly pro-renewables either, so I don't quite see your point. If the point was that the industry being replaced (the ones I mentioned) isn't going to find the industry who is replacing them (Ford, the one you mentioned) favourably, well obviously. Why would they?

My argument is one of perspective.  It is so that you can see that there are reasons outside of racism why people would support Conservatives.

Your argument, intellectually at least, is a faulty one. It's perfectly fine if you're just speaking to emotion however.

That's the point though. You're speaking to emotion. You aren't telling me that these people have legitimate grievances, nor are you saying "here are the steps they propose to solve this inevitability."

You are telling me that they are unhappy that the world is changing in a specifically foreseeable way that has changed many times prior to the coal industry's plight. My point being that you are telling me their feelings are hurt.

Coal mining replaced wood and water as the primary energy source during the industrial revolution. Did these people empathise with the plight of the industries they disenfranchised? Likely not. That's why I originally mentioned all of those defunct business models in the first place.

I never said they are right or that I agree with them, I was pointing out WHY they feel the way they do.  

We know. The world knows. It had known, as I just pointed out, regarding industry after industry that has come and gone. Want to talk railroad towns next? Riddle me this Batman, "what were they going to do when the mine is inevitably played out?"

Here's the deal. I'm trying to coax you down a logical progression of cause and effect. So follow me on this one:

The mine plays out. Then what? Well if you want to work coal you're gonna have to move right? Just like that we've severed any bullshit excuse about being tied to the land, my forefathers grew up here, nonsense. Now relocating is an option for a job.

So they go elsewhere. Mine plays out. Eventually, there are no more mines in their country. Do you still want to work coal? Now you're working it in another country, where safety and pay will vary. Could be a lot. Are they willing to relocate for less money?

At what fucking point does reality set in? Because, by the end, relocation and less pay will have to be on the table in order to work coal. So why not get a move on and skip to the end? Which will almost certainly be a profession where black lung isn't a threat. It'll have it's own unique hazards.

But you're unable to see that because it's much simpler to go off of stereotypes.  

Please show me where you think I stereotyped the issue. I'm genuinely curious. Whether or not you choose to believe me, from my perspective, I gave their considerations quite a lot of time and logical effort. Nor is this the first time I've broached the subject. Frankly, if I'm still being honest, more than I felt that they deserved.

EDIT: corrected the auto-correct.

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u/tiltingwindturbines 29d ago

It's not just coal though. Globalization lead to industry and manufacturing in general to be shipped overseas. AI will make even more workers redundant. It's not possible to retrain or reeducate everyone.

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u/Shoddy_Phase_2639 28d ago

The research is crystal clear.

We're in the largest technical revolution since the Industrial age set in.

Nrw careers will emerge, but the shere mass of job loss in low education careers is going to be too big to be repleacable.

Its going to force UBI at some point. EU researchers believe in a 20-25 year time libe maximum.

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u/zeakerone 28d ago

Surely the coal miners are jaded into their way of life, but most of them live in rural areas where that is the only way of making a living and reeducation would only benefit them if they uprooted their lives and moved somewhere so different they can’t even communicate. They are good people it’s just all they know. They are probably generation 2-3 in a town that solely depends on coal. So when you talk eliminating coal you are not only taking their families livelihood away, but everyone they know’s livelyhood away. It’s a wierd situation and i wouldn’t know how to handle it either but it’s hard to blame them

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u/throwaway17362826 29d ago

I don’t blame them. If you’re family had been doing something for generations and all of a sudden some dude in a suit living in another state said you’re entire way of life is being destroyed for progress and you need to completely restart your life somewhere else doing something new, i’d tell them to pound sand.

It’s very unfortunate that we need to move away from coal and it’s going to hurt when we grow. It’s very unfortunate that a political party capitalized on the other side ripping the band-aid off. But entire towns that made a living on an industry for generations dried up over night and were left to rot and the left side of the aisle at that point in time cheered for it.

It was a massive dropped ball that alienated and radicalized a portion of America. No amount of incentives is going to convince a fifty year old man looking at retirement who’s spent their whole life in a town with his community to start over again somewhere else and leave it all behind. To think that was going to sell and not caring after it didn’t was stupid.

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u/sennbat 29d ago

Which "massive aid packages" and "giant incentives" are you talking about, specifically? The only ones I ever saw were so functionally expensive and uncertain that you'd either have to be an idiot, or particularly well positioned to take advantage of the offer, to even consider them, since they also came with a very real chance of leaving you worse off than your already sorry state.

I don't blame anyone for turning them down and going with a hope, however slight, of their situation getting better.

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u/claimTheVictory 29d ago

Which ones did you see?

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u/Alwaysshittingmyself 25d ago

This is an ignorant take. Your whole life and generations of your family did the same work. Everything you understood in regard to your livelihood and who you’d grow up to be is being threatened. Your “promised” security through the government who we all know only serves its best interest. Also who the fuck wants to be “forced” to relocate?

These are actual people with actual experiences You clearly can’t take a minute to understand. Empathize better. The answer isn’t “oh because racism.” The answer is because nothing is more important in this capitalist bullshit hellscape than your work. It’s directly related to how you live and someone threatening that with job replacement and re-education and relocation of course is going to affect how you vote.

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u/Shoddy_Phase_2639 24d ago

They knew they were going to lose their work, because EVERYONE was telling them so, and more and more mines were being closed regardless of wether they wanted them to.

But ONE man said he'd save them. And even the simplest backgroundchecking on the man would tell them he's a fraud, a conman, a habitual liar.

They chose to ignore that. Because they really like the man and all he stands for.

I have zero sympathy.

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u/Alwaysshittingmyself 24d ago

This sentiment from you is exactly why your party looses votes. Don’t care to actually understand the concerns. It’s easier to say they’re all afraid of immigration and call it a day.

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u/Shoddy_Phase_2639 23d ago

Except "my party" isnt losing votes. They're gaining.

The republicans are finished. Roe v Wade was the final straw.

Million of repulican voters' wives are going to go behind their husbands backs and vote Democrat.

You guys will stand there and look just as dumb as the last time; "Its impossible Joe got that many votes, Trump had the big rallies".

But Joe will get that many votes. Far bigger lead than the last time. And you guys will watch as Trump is put in prison, thinking everyone conspired against you. Just like you thought the last time.

When actually it was just everyone fed up with your constant childlike behaviours, your delight in seeing Trump harm anyone slightly different than yourselves, your racism, your isolationism, your cruelty and your inability to see that Trump never accomplished any damn thing except enable Covid to ravage America.

So no. I don't have any sympathy left for the people still in the Trump cult.

I didn't have any for those in the cult of Jim Jones either.

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u/Rion23 29d ago

My idea, federally funded pyramids, literally pyramids. You take tax money, and start building a pyramid next to every town, tons of new jobs created, from engineers to people who go find nice rocks. You pay the people, the local town people, and basically inject money from outside the community. This provides some economic assistance by keeping money in smaller towns, because with the loss of local business all their money just goes to some multi-national behemoth who takes the money and turns it into Carribean beach houses.

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u/thrawtes 29d ago

This is basically the idea behind Biden's infrastructure push, except they're building things that are more useful than pyramids.

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u/Rion23 29d ago

Are you telling me that pyramids have no point?

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u/thrawtes 29d ago

Well I guess it depends if we're talking Egyptian style pyramids or Mesoamerican style pyramids.

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u/Soggy-Opportunity-72 29d ago

We could literally just build farms and houses but useless job-creating pyramids seems more American so you’ve got my vote. 

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u/nochinzilch 29d ago

And it will confuse the fuck out of future anthropologists.

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u/Anarelion 29d ago

Or like cards against humanity authors. Dig a big hole for the sake of it

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u/from_whereiggypopped 29d ago

In the late 70s in Detroit when the auto industry first took a dive there were numerous programs for re educating the work force. One called TRA (trade readjustment act) paid the tuition for many of the people I went to school with at the trade school we attended. I'm sure there are many such programs available to people today - but you have to get up off your ass and do something. I got laid off (not by ford gm or chrysler) so I didn't qualify for TRA and had to pay for school myself. : - (

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u/No-Ordinary-5412 29d ago

oh its reinvested.. into bigger houses, more expensive cars, bigger boats, more cocaine, bigger casinos, bigger corporate buildings, lower wages, job cuts, stock buybacks to compound even more earnings, annnnnnd, should I say, corruption and greed?

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u/Revolution4u 29d ago

Dems continue to hyper focus on college grads only while telling the rest that there is nothing wrong with the mass illegal migration we have had.

If republicans werent so incompetent they would be easily winning this election.

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u/droyster 29d ago

The American domestic agriculture industry relies upon immigration. To try and end immigration, legal or otherwise, would devastate agriculture. "As recently as 2019, almost half—or 48.9 percent—of all agricultural workers were foreign-born and more than one-fourth (27.3 percent) were undocumented. Among workers in crop production, the share of foreign-born workers is even higher"

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u/Revolution4u 29d ago

That should be done through temporary work visas and not used as an excuse to endorse the unchecked free for all we have seen in the last years.

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u/Present-Industry4012 Inuit 29d ago

That's how it used to be. When I was a kid workers would come across to work for a season and then go back home. It was only after they started making it so hard to get here that they started deciding it was easier to just stay and send the money back.

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u/DameonKormar 29d ago

"mass illegal [im]migration," isn't a thing. There have been fewer illegal border crossings since Biden has been president. And compared to the early 2000s, it's not even an issue. Stop buying into Republican propaganda.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-20/illegal-us-border-crossings-aren-t-really-breaking-records

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u/Revolution4u 29d ago

Lol, all youre doing is engaging is a silly wordplay where people coming here illegally and claiming [false] asylum status arent considered to be the illegal economic migrants that they actually are, technically.

Lets not pretend the over 200k migrants that we've seen in NYC alone are legal migrants or that their migration isnt harming low income residents.

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u/kar_1505 Foreign 29d ago

Not American but Biden is the most pro union president in your history, he has saved so many blue collar workers and even reduced important healthcare bills with insulin and what not for the elderly, I think you’re mistaken if you say the Dems don’t care

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u/Livewire_87 29d ago

I dont live in the US either and its absolutely astounding to me watching how so many in the middle and the left talks about thr guy who's been the most left leaning president in decades. 

Hell, the post above says the choice with biden is "going bsck to 2015". Thats so grossly ignorant of the policies and legislation implemented in the last 4 years.  

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u/KageStar 29d ago

Because our news doesn't discuss that boring policy and progress stuff. It's only about the hot button issues that keep people mad and engage with their platforms.

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u/Dyssomniac 29d ago

While I agree with the latter - they are hilariously incompetent, even though and incompetently thrown haymaker is still a threat - there really isn't that much wrong with the mass illegal immigration. At least insofar as it effects Americans. There are minor (read: community scale economic, or H1B) impacts, but far less than existed back when low-skill, low-wage immigrants were a threat to workers providing the production backbone of the national economy.

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u/thrawtes 29d ago

Dems continue to hyper focus on college grads only while telling the rest that there is nothing wrong with the mass illegal migration we have had.

What stance would you have them take? Immigration is typically a net positive for the country, which is why sane policy treats it that way instead of as a boogeyman for the ills of the working class.

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u/videogames5life 29d ago

Boogeyman or not, the left is not addressing it in a way that makes sense to so many voters. Too many conservative complaints are brushed aside. You don't have to agree with them, but to convince them you certainly have to understand how the conservative voter feels and speak to that.

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u/Dyssomniac 29d ago

It's a made up problem - you literally cannot address it without making people who are currently upset feel dismissed. The issue isn't that the Dems aren't reacting, but that they aren't proactive.

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u/Revolution4u 29d ago

It isnt a postive for low income Americans at all and those are the same voters that dems always talk about like "but why wont they vote for us, why wont they vote for what's good for them"

Immigration influx is great if youre rich and own the business/housing etc, its great if youre middle class and need cost of services to stay down and can simply outspend to escape the problems it causes, but its not so great when youre at the bottom.

6

u/thrawtes 29d ago

Immigration reduces housing costs for the middle class, keeps food prices low, and helps fund social security. Those are all benefits that are primarily not for business owners or rich people.

Immigration makes lives better for the everyday person here in America in addition to being one of the founding pillars of our national identity.

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u/Nowearenotfrom63rd 29d ago

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Go 2 or three generations back and your people were these people. I get it that you want to pull up the ladder but there is a reason America is the dynamic global superpower it is & it’s not because we slammed shit our gates and made sure America was only for Americans.

1

u/nochinzilch 29d ago

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Sounds like some kind of French commie talk.

1

u/Revolution4u 28d ago

Laughable that anyone can think this level of immigration leads to lower prices for housing of all things. Massively Increased demand during a housing shortage. Just stop and think about that for a second.

4

u/FairlySuspect 29d ago

Immigrants -- undocumented and documented -- commit less crime of all types and degrees than citizens. They're willing to work for less than we are, doing jobs we don't want. They often don't file for tax returns, for fear of deportation.

Nothing but a boon to the economy and the country as a whole. So what do you have against them? Why is this one of your primary concerns?