Originally Posted by chunkstyle
No. I'm not.
What I'm saying is when you get people saying F#ck it! and leave the top line blank in larger numbers than what the candidate lost by in what was a formally reliable blue state, as many other reliably blue states were and you lost as well, you might have a problem? You might want to reflect on why?

Or not.

Russia didn't de-industrialize the upper midwest. Saying it was a long game by the Russians is so much Lib deflection. Libs are good at passing the buck. They've had decades of practice.

What deindustrialized the US? It damn sure wasn't a couple of politicians because lawmakers cannot legislate whether or not a greedy multinational corporation decides to manufacture here or not.
True, they can reward them for doing so, and even erect tax penalties for not doing so.

But in the end, trade agreements get decided by both Republicans and Democrats and the fact is, Republicans were better at being "on message" than the Democrats were.
And there is no binary political answer as to why greed is more powerful. It just is, to the point where it transcends politics.
Had Democrats opposed trade agreements with every fiber of their being, another "trade agreement" with an exploding cigar factor baked in would have gotten the job done anyway.

I do not argue that Democrats stayed loyal to the blue collar community. They didn't. They tossed the blue collar community overboard in favor of Wall Street elites and wealthy elites.
They did embrace neoliberalism.
And to a certain extent, evidenced by Joe Biden, they still do.

The Tea Party moved a lot of traditional Republicans into the unemployment line. I support whatever faction in my party can manage to push neoliberal Democrats into the same line. But in order for that to happen, my vote is needed. There is where we differ.

What deindustrialized the US? An idea did it, an idea first voiced in The Powell Memo, which was authored by a Nixon pick for the SCOTUS. Lewis Powell, a tobacco industry attorney and corporate free speech champion, authored "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System", an anti New Deal essay which put corporate America on notice that it had better begin fighting back against labor unions, consumer protection, even higher education itself.

It is a fool's errand to minimize the effect of The Powell Memo.
It provided fertile ground for an explosion of right wing think tanks. It was buttressed in numerous SCOTUS decisions like First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti and it energized the lobbyist industry at a level several orders of magnitude greater than The Declaration of Independence itself.
Indeed, The Powell Memo was a kind of "declaration of war" against the entire Left and the Left had nothing to counter it.

Blaming the Democratic Party for this sea change is like blaming Ford Motor Co exclusively for air pollution.

Moving the goalposts to suggest that Democrats blame Russia for our deindustrialization is a wild blunder which no one, even you, cannot back up. If there is a single Democratic politician suggesting such a thing, I'd like to see you drag them to the peanut gallery.

And like I said repeatedly, you offer no alternative except to stick with another four years of Trump.
No sale, buddy.

"The Best of the Leon Russell Festivals" DVD
deepfreezefilms.com