Has the Democratic Party moved to the left over the last 30 years & if so, do you see this development in a favorable or unfavorable light?

@CedricH view the forums more. That will force the algorithm to include more people in your own feed. Because you have reacted in some way. With likes comments replies as well as how the reactions are to those same things.

@Roundandroundwego Excuse me?

@Roundandroundwego And, that is why we should all be thankful for NATO and appreciate that it has now expanded to Sweden and Finland.

@BohemianBabe sorry, but that‘s a misleading definition of centrism. You can be a centrist such as Clinton and pass a lot of genuinely centrist reforms. He did more than just preserve the status quo. He actually pushed for certain policies himself. So what I want to know is if you agree that back in the day, centrists actually could see their own ideas being realized (as part of the Democratic coalition) and now they can only moderate the ideas of the progressive wing. Do you think that‘s accurate or not? I understand that you only favor left-leaning reforms but that doesn’t mean there aren’t also neoliberal reforms that centrists might want to get done.

@CedricH Clinton enacted laws that created as little change as possible. Like earlier I mentioned that he did "don't ask, don't tell" which I guess was fine for the time, but it's also basically how the military already was. Call it a compromise, but it was essentially the status quo.


Well back in the day, there was no progressive wing. The closest we had was what the voters wanted, which was usually to the Left of the Democratic Party. If I had to take a guess, I'd say the Democrats listened to the public, but then moderated what the people wanted based on what their donors were willing to put up with. And of course there were external forces that sometimes shifted what was possible, like with the rise of talk radio pushing Clinton to the Right on economics.

@BohemianBabe You seem pretty confident that „the people“ want left-leaning policy ideas. I wouldn’t be so sure and swing voters which are critical to the Democratic Party are even more fiscally conservative than the average Democratic voter.
In any case, you‘re validating my point, correct? Nowadays, centrist Democrats don’t get their own ideas through Congress or implemented by the executive. They merely moderate the ideas of the progressive wing? You‘ve dodged my question a little bit.

A few examples of ideas coming from the right-wing (centrist wing) of the Democratic coalition during the Clinton period would be spending cuts, agricultural subsidy reductions, trade liberalization, sectoral deregulation, a decrease in capital gains taxes, deficit reduction without massive tax increases, work requirements and stricter rules for welfare recipients.

I sure haven’t heard about any of that lately. So as someone who supports these policies, it‘s hard to say that the Democratic Party has anything to offer policy-wise on economic issues anymore.

@ron122 Hamas terrorists are angels compared to the Zionists.

@ron122 lmao, the pro-Hamas folks are telling everyone to stay home or vote for Stein, and calling Biden "genocide Joe". Idk what reality you live in

@ElwoodBlues My God, have you even heard of the „Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010“ and the „American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA)“?

https://manhattan.institute/article/obamas-fiscal-legacy-a-comprehensive-overview-of-spending-taxes-and-deficits

@CedricH CBO says ARRA spent $114 billion in fiscal year 2009. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/42682 Sorry, but the $600 billion increase in 2009 spending is all down to Bush's TARP.

Your citation of a 2010 act is an attempt to divert the discussion away from 2009, the final year of the Bush budget. And your Manhattan Institute paper is comparing Obama's budget with earlier CBO predictions that turned out to be overly rosy. It's an effort to blame the prediction errors on Obama. Sorry, but reality has a way of interfering with all kinds of predictions.

@ElwoodBlues The reality of Obama wanting to spend more. That‘s what was interfering with the predictions.

Since when were we only talking about 2009? I was talking about the elevated level of spending over the course of 8 years under Obama. In 2009, Democrats who were in control of Congress passed most of the spending belatedly so that Obama could sign off on it, rather than Bush. Bush himself wanted a smaller budget increase of merely 3% in the end Democrats passed an increase of over 20%.

Also, and this should be made quite clear. TARP wasn’t ordinary public spending or a stimulus that‘s just funnelled into the economy through the government, but an asset purchase program that took in more than it invested at the end of the program‘s expiration date. So it can hardly explain the elevated spending over the entirety of the Obama years, even more so since it was reduced in size to about $450 billion (down from the $700 billion you referred to).

The same can‘t be said for the two legislations I‘ve mentioned that both amounted to a monetary value of $800 billion each.

One last time. Obama helped grow the proportion of public spending to GDP and then didn’t return to the pre-crisis level.

@MarkPaul

Don’t get me wrong, I‘m not insinuating that Democrats today have turned to the level of state interventionism and welfarism that were the norm in the pre-Reagan and post-depression era.

I‘d argue the following and bear with me. In the 1990s Clinton was by no means a libertarian. He raised taxes progressively to address the debt, his administration and Congress introduced and implemented child healthcare insurance and family leave from work. The economic data on poverty alleviation, employment and growth in median disposable household income was impressive.

However, on many issues his administration was much more economically moderate, centrist or neoliberal than today‘s Democratic Party. Which is what makes that iteration of the Democratic Party fairly appealing to me now.
So the level of total public spending, deficit spending and market interventions has grown gradually starting with the Obama administration and then suddenly with the Biden administration. Meanwhile, structural reforms and adjustments that would be part of Clinton‘s agenda have fallen off the wagon entirely when it comes the current Democratic program.

You see, it‘s not difficult to vote against a proto-fascist party like the GOP, it‘s more difficult, though, to vote for a Democratic Party that has substantively moved away from it‘s 1990 fiscal and economic policy positions.

@CedricH Sadly, but objectively, both parties have moved away fiscal responsibility and centrist economic policy positions. The Republican Party stood by and voted for huge tax cuts that they knew would increase the deficit while repeating the scripted words prepared for them that everything would work out. They now stand proud to support an unsolvable crazy-ass position of a puzzle that calls for mass deportation "like the world has never seen" (massive expense) + more tax cuts (decrease in revenue) + tariffs (trade war) + elimination of inflation (insanity).

So, from an economic perspective it's not a vote for the lesser evil, it's who has a saner economic policy. Neither party is going to treat or cure the social behaviour of spending more than can be covered with incoming revenue. Keep in mind, the Democrats didn't achieve that level of fiscal responsibility alone in the 1990's. Republicans controlled Congress at the time and worked with the Democrat president to achieve a common objective that both parties saw as politically advantageous in doing so and both claimed as a success (and rightly so, for both). It was a successful collaborative event that satisfied selfish motives on both sides.

It's not clear to me the public really wants fiscal responsibility right now or sees a reason for it. When neighbours speak up for it, that 1990's style of collaboration will be resurrected. In the meantime, which party is promoting the saner economic policy? Republicans no longer can legitimately raise their hand. Based on empirical evidence, Democrats can.

@MarkPaul Yep. In one word, yep. Comparatively, Harris does offer a saner economic policy if the alternative consists of unfunded (and unnecessary) tax cuts, an end to independent monetary policy, protectionism and nativism.

I just wanted to be sure that I‘m not the only one who sees that both parties became more populist on economics since the 1990s and early 2000s.

@hippyjoe1955 well digging is an extremely good example of where governance should be stepping in. I'll agree that pipe size maybe a petty regulation to deal with. But knowing that you are putting in a well and how big of a well is the business of everyone who lives in that area. Imagine if you and a hundred other people all had wells dug to get your water and then a water bottling plant comes in and digs their well. And then suddenly you and your neighbors' wells are dry. Or, what if studies have been done to show how quickly the water table recharges in an area and there are concerns that too many people are drawing from the water table in a way that will cause a water crisis in 10 or 20 years?

Some of this stuff is actually preventative to avoid much, much bigger issues down the road. Things that one person believes is petty might be sourced in facts that they do not have or do not understand.

Can you always trust the government's word? Hell no. It's important to get educated on anything you think seems off so that you can call it out from a place of knowledge.

@ViciDraco Only in your dreams. The problem is the government is not infallible. It can only guess and usually guesses wrong. When you have a very remote bureaucracy determining what shall or shall not happen you have a recipe for disaster. I was at a gold mine that was explaining the hoops it had to jump through just to dig a bit of gold out of the ground. The permits required filled ten feet of shelving and it took over 12 years to get it all done. It wasn't enough to make sure their tailings didn't get into a nearby stream but they had to do a monthly count of the number of fish in the stream. Another company was fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for disturbing a nesting site of a non endangered species of bird. The birds had built a nest in part of a road collapse. The company went to fix the road and disturbed the nest. As someone who grew up on a farm I can't begin to tell you how many bird's nests I disturbed simply by working the land. Many birds nest on the ground and as I cultivated the fields I would keep an eye open for them but I know I didn't see them all.

@ViciDraco economy, border, sexual deviancy do you want me to continue?

@hippyjoe1955 JFK was alleged to have all kinds of affairs. Specify border and economic policy that made him more right than today? He cut taxes, yes. To 70%. And he embraced deficit spending.

@ViciDraco If you think post was in favour of JFK you are sadly mistaken. I was simply pointing out that the Democrats were not what they are today. I grew up in the 50s 60s and 70s I remember well the social norms and how much money you kept from your pay cheques. I paid my first year of university with cash from a summer job that paid $1.25 an hour. The small town I grew up going to school in had a town pervert and everyone knew who he was and no kid would go near him. Very different times and norms.

@fanuc2013 could you name the proposals of the Harris campaign or the policies of the Biden administration that best represent this recent leftward trend, from your point of view?

@CedricH At most they remained the same, at least in the scope of international politics I wouldn't say they've moved any left.

It's not that the choice was between that program or no program at all. A better program could've been implemented, that wasn't randomly giving "loans" to billionaires, corporations et al, and then "forgiving" it.

@Elessar Yes, the choice could’ve been no ARPA at all. And increased government deficit spending through loans, subsidies or direct transfers to both individuals and companies is a clear market intervention and will have to be paid back through progressively collected tax revenue. I think it‘s pretty clearly a shift to the left compared to a much smaller stimulus package passed by the Obama administration during the Great Recession.

Democratic administrations have since 2001 overseen the first withdrawal from Iraq in 2010, the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2001, have not been actively engaged in Libya after Gaddafi fell or enforced the red line in Syria under Obama, they‘ve been more willing to accommodate Iran than they‘ve been in the 1990s. They have arguably become more hawkish on Russia and on China which has more to do with these countries’ trajectories than with the foreign policy doctrine of the Democratic Party.

@CedricH Hmm no, I wouldn't define that anywhere left. If they had truly turned left, those companies that were deemed too critical to be left to their natural destiny would've been nationalized, instead of being given "loans" that didn't have to be repaid. The only recipients of the relief funds would've been the workers, and those who lost the job as a consequence of the pandemic. Handing out money to for-profit entities for the sake of keeping them alive and autonomous, while also creating a massive inflation, is purely a rightwing policy; neither left nor even neo/liberal.

Even Republicans have become increasingly isolationist, I wouldn't say any of those withdrawals have anything to do with the Democrat party going anywhere left or right.

@Roundandroundwego This poll and debate are about political opinions and personal perceptions. Of course that is subjective.

@CedricH but not just personal. It makes no sense without the political context.

@Roundandroundwego Well, the comment sections gives you an opportunity to describe the context the way you see it. But a political context can itself be subjective. It‘s open to different, rivalling interpretations.

@ViciDraco So you think Obama continued, rather than reversed the trend despite the recession stimulus, tax increases, PPACA (Obamacare), Dodd-Frank, the attempted Clean Energy Act and a plethora of executive orders being issued to regulate the economy especially on net neutrality, energy or safety standards?

@CedricH I do.

Obamacare is a right wing solution designed to empower markets. It literally supported the insurance industry by ensuring they have more healthy people than sick people in their pools. A left wing solution would have been single payer and the elimination of for profit health insurance.

Clean energy act is social policy. Dirty energy harms people and property but since energy is a public necessity you can't throw companies in jail or make them stop outright.

Dodd-Frank was pretty toothless and so much of the stimulus went to supporting businesses rather than people. If anything, the financial institutions are now larger and more powerful than ever.

Let's not forget the original stimulus package was designed under bush and concluded by Obama. Obama also made Bush era tax cuts permanent and kept pressure up to keep the fed rate down way too long.

I don't think Obama went left of Clinton at all on economics, really.

@ViciDraco Ah… okay. Well, I‘d say all these policies were to the left of the ones Clinton pursued. Irrespective of whether you think they went far enough.