Beyond the direct contributions such as the pied piper stuff it’s important to understand the actual political landscape.
The reality is that Democrats do not provide an alternative. Democrats have consistently been behind the biggest pushes to “depoliticize” (in reality de-democratize) issues and shroud them in technocracy. Obama is directly responsible for so much of this such as:
mechanizing imperialism via drone warfare
mechanizing deportations
creating the new era surveillance capitalism where the dynamic between entities such as Google and the government isn’t based in annoying money losing legalistic demands, but a customer / vendor relationship
On these alone the power of the President has been expanded greatly to cater to right wing political governance. These are really “core” tactics and functions that present the fact that there is no alternative.
We had 4 years of Biden as the ‘alternative’ and what happened?:
They adopted Trumps immigration policy
They bragged about how well they deported people
They backed a genocide
CHIPS / sanctions based economic warfare (compared to tariff based)
Promised cash that they then didn’t give out
Democrats aren’t even “anti-corruption”, they couldn’t get STOCK Act with teeth, and their biggest stars are all guilty of insider trading. The country is too stupid to understand it, but they’re not even trying anymore such as when Hochul said “I talked to some guy at a diner and that’s why we must stop congestion pricing”. She literally did the “Everyone at the Barbershop is talking about Warren” as an excuse for rich people whispering in her ear.
Democrats put a friendly capable face on the same kinds of policies that Trump champions. We’ve also seen that most of the centrist technocrats are more than willing to throw the vulnerable constituencies under the bus and claim that they have the right to adjudicate their lives and views:
Biden’s comments about how you must vote for him otherwise you’re not black
Newsom’s explicit backpedaling on LGBT+ rights
The Party’s reported backpedaling on LGBT+ rights
Schumer’s comments about his job being to keep “the left” pro-Israel.
One of the most interesting things is DEI itself. Instead of actually pushing for a welfare state, or any kind of material benefits. They created this corpo cultural affect that resulted in makework jobs for the richest BIPOC and GSM people, while ignoring the rest of them because it’s “too hard”. They created this gigantic target that the right wing can point to and say “look at what they’re getting”. Ultimately this type ratchet effect is always based on Democrats pretending that politics isn’t a resource allocation system and that under capitalism it devolves into a winner talk all strategy that snowballs. Why? Well only because it’s an aesthetic foil to the Republicans correct interpretation of the political economy and their political strategy.
It’s a new stanza but a the same rhyme scheme for a lot of the big problem issues, homelessness, free trade, jobs, drug decriminalization, prison/judicial system reform, election reform, etc.
The Democrat vibe under Obamna was that there would never be another Republican again. That’s how cocky they were going into 2016. They were relishing the end of history, again.
I think one of the things that is going to rewrite Obama’s history among liberals is they truly believed that Obama was the apotheosis. They were finally done, they found the point of maximal compromise in the modern age, electing the first Black Moderate Republican President, and for their trouble they were gonna reap only rewards from here on in.
I want to add onto the technocratic style of leadership thing and how that can lead to being bad long-term even when they do good things short-term. The two major examples I can think of are the piecemeal means-tested student loan forgiveness with the overly technocratic way they tried to do a mass forgiveness (with Covid emergency powers or something dumb like that), and the way Biden and the Dems handled the train workers strikes. I’ll focus on the latter as I remember it, because it was harder to explain to people why I didn’t like it, but your post is a good lead-in.
For the strike, Biden, with the aid of sucky Dems in Congress and the always evil Republicans, shut down the strike without giving them any of their demands by splitting the bill into two parts, one that shut down the strike and one that gave them what they want. Of course only the first one passed.
Later, liberals would bring up the fact that Biden helped some of the unions by later doing backroom deals with the companies to try to give them some of the sick days and stuff they were asking for. This succeed, but I would argue is still an extremely anti-working class and terrible way to do this. Long-term, it continues the Reagan precedent of destroying union power, sucks up that energy and transfers it to technocratic Dem politicians. It removes negotiations from the public sphere, where all the workers can participate, and puts it in smoke-filled back rooms and golf courses where only politicians, business owners, and corrupt union leaders can participate. It continues the feeling of “we, the elite, give you things because we are kind, not because you demanded anything”, which is terrible mindset to keep the populace in when you’re trying to organize popular resistance to things. If that strike had gone into the holiday season like it looked like it was going to do, people would have realized how much they needed the workers, and it would’ve helped the workers themselves a realize their own importance and power. But instead, it was cut short and everything resolved itself quietly in the background. Overall, it just sets an awful precedent future fascistic leaders can build to on.
It was so hard to explain this to liberals as well. Ya, I guess he did a couple good stuff for some of the major train unions, but yes I’m also still annoyed as hell. A few sick days does not override destroying popular energy, because guess what, we’re going to need that to ask for more stuff in the future. Godamn I’m making myself mad just remembering all these arguments again lol.
Beyond the direct contributions such as the pied piper stuff it’s important to understand the actual political landscape.
The reality is that Democrats do not provide an alternative. Democrats have consistently been behind the biggest pushes to “depoliticize” (in reality de-democratize) issues and shroud them in technocracy. Obama is directly responsible for so much of this such as:
On these alone the power of the President has been expanded greatly to cater to right wing political governance. These are really “core” tactics and functions that present the fact that there is no alternative.
We had 4 years of Biden as the ‘alternative’ and what happened?:
Democrats aren’t even “anti-corruption”, they couldn’t get STOCK Act with teeth, and their biggest stars are all guilty of insider trading. The country is too stupid to understand it, but they’re not even trying anymore such as when Hochul said “I talked to some guy at a diner and that’s why we must stop congestion pricing”. She literally did the “Everyone at the Barbershop is talking about Warren” as an excuse for rich people whispering in her ear.
Democrats put a friendly capable face on the same kinds of policies that Trump champions. We’ve also seen that most of the centrist technocrats are more than willing to throw the vulnerable constituencies under the bus and claim that they have the right to adjudicate their lives and views:
One of the most interesting things is DEI itself. Instead of actually pushing for a welfare state, or any kind of material benefits. They created this corpo cultural affect that resulted in makework jobs for the richest BIPOC and GSM people, while ignoring the rest of them because it’s “too hard”. They created this gigantic target that the right wing can point to and say “look at what they’re getting”. Ultimately this type ratchet effect is always based on Democrats pretending that politics isn’t a resource allocation system and that under capitalism it devolves into a winner talk all strategy that snowballs. Why? Well only because it’s an aesthetic foil to the Republicans correct interpretation of the political economy and their political strategy.
It’s a new stanza but a the same rhyme scheme for a lot of the big problem issues, homelessness, free trade, jobs, drug decriminalization, prison/judicial system reform, election reform, etc.
The Democrat vibe under Obamna was that there would never be another Republican again. That’s how cocky they were going into 2016. They were relishing the end of history, again.
I think one of the things that is going to rewrite Obama’s history among liberals is they truly believed that Obama was the apotheosis. They were finally done, they found the point of maximal compromise in the modern age, electing the first Black Moderate Republican President, and for their trouble they were gonna reap only rewards from here on in.
I want to add onto the technocratic style of leadership thing and how that can lead to being bad long-term even when they do good things short-term. The two major examples I can think of are the piecemeal means-tested student loan forgiveness with the overly technocratic way they tried to do a mass forgiveness (with Covid emergency powers or something dumb like that), and the way Biden and the Dems handled the train workers strikes. I’ll focus on the latter as I remember it, because it was harder to explain to people why I didn’t like it, but your post is a good lead-in.
For the strike, Biden, with the aid of sucky Dems in Congress and the always evil Republicans, shut down the strike without giving them any of their demands by splitting the bill into two parts, one that shut down the strike and one that gave them what they want. Of course only the first one passed.
Later, liberals would bring up the fact that Biden helped some of the unions by later doing backroom deals with the companies to try to give them some of the sick days and stuff they were asking for. This succeed, but I would argue is still an extremely anti-working class and terrible way to do this. Long-term, it continues the Reagan precedent of destroying union power, sucks up that energy and transfers it to technocratic Dem politicians. It removes negotiations from the public sphere, where all the workers can participate, and puts it in smoke-filled back rooms and golf courses where only politicians, business owners, and corrupt union leaders can participate. It continues the feeling of “we, the elite, give you things because we are kind, not because you demanded anything”, which is terrible mindset to keep the populace in when you’re trying to organize popular resistance to things. If that strike had gone into the holiday season like it looked like it was going to do, people would have realized how much they needed the workers, and it would’ve helped the workers themselves a realize their own importance and power. But instead, it was cut short and everything resolved itself quietly in the background. Overall, it just sets an awful precedent future fascistic leaders can build to on.
It was so hard to explain this to liberals as well. Ya, I guess he did a couple good stuff for some of the major train unions, but yes I’m also still annoyed as hell. A few sick days does not override destroying popular energy, because guess what, we’re going to need that to ask for more stuff in the future. Godamn I’m making myself mad just remembering all these arguments again lol.