You can trust Lemmy for serious and well informed political analysis!
But seriously though,I agree with you. Lemmy doesn’t seem to have heard of SALT treaties and act as though there is no precedence. While not perfect, it is better than nothing.
They are not closeted Republicans, these NIMBY/centrist liberals are liberals in the original definition of the word. Socially progressive but economically conservative. If you put the Democrats and these centrists in Europe, they are a lot more closer to the German conservative CDU and neoliberal French president Macron. Their policies are not friendly to the broader working and middle class.
So with all that said, why would people vote for Democrats who only give breadcrumbs, instead of doubling down on building affordable housing; raising minimum wage; and implementing Medicare-for-all? In the midst of growing wealth inequality, all the Democrats could say is: “I am not my opponent”.
The American people are going right, only because there is no actual effective left wing progressives in power, because they are being sidelined by centrist/NIMBY liberals and the Democratic Party itself, who are beholden to the all mighty dollar.
To be fair, ever since Hillary Clinton paid off DNC debt, the Democratic party turned right and deliberately sidelined more popular left leaning politicians like Sanders and AOC.
The voters are as much to blame but in the way you think. Who are the ones who keep voting down building more affordable housing in solid blue states like California and New York? The same self-proclaimed “progressives” who claim to feel bad for the homeless, are the same ones who will object to building more affordable housing because it will bring down their property value. At the end of the day, it is about the bottomline for many people. If you have watched Squid Game, that is the point the show makes. If given enough financial incentive, a good person could turn bad.
The working class used to be the Democrat voter base and those on the rust belt voted Obama. Think about it.
I am not going to explain this to an American for the umpteenth time, the truth of the matter is that, outside of American sensibilities, the Democrats are not leftists. The rest of the world see Democrats as centre right by virtue of their policies. If you put the Democratic Party in Europe, they will have more in common with the conservative German CDU and centrist neoliberal French president Macron.
The Vatican criticised the Nazis as well, but it didn’t stop Hitler. The problem is that the cat is out of the bag when it comes to far-right in America. The only way to stop the movement is to counter it politically. But the Democratic Party is either too spineless or simply does not care, or both. They would rather lose to Trump than to move further left.
If you learn more about the effects of alcohol, it is arguably as bad as, if not worse than, cigarettes or marijuana. Ethanol is literally poison that damages liver, and it impedes with the electrical signals between brain cells. The Temperance movement had a point to ban alcohol.
The only reason we are not going to ban alcohol again, is because banning it had proven to have more dire consequences. Gangsters took monopoly of the black market. And tainting black market alcohol to deter people from drinking alcohol is dangerous, just as bootleggers also made their own alcohol but the process is unregulated.