Who's Voting Against Their Best Interest‽
This list is an empirical answer to anyone who says the party can be reformed or moved left. The evidence says otherwise. Unambiguously.
Al Gore, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, and Bernie Sanders were the four candidates I supported when I was a Democrat. Marianne Williamson and Cenk Uygur would have been my candidates in 2024 if I was still a vote blue no matter what cultist. The complete list of platform items the Democratic Party has never passed that those candidates proposed, of which the party is openly against or will only consider a heavily deflated and watered down corporate friendly version:
Healthcare
- Single payer universal healthcare/Medicare for All
- Universal healthcare access
- Mental health as public health priority
Economic
- Serious taxation of the wealthy
- Wealth tax
- Meaningful federal minimum wage/living wage
- Free public college/student debt cancellation
- Corporate accountability
- Addressing wealth inequality structurally
- Abolishing/renegotiating predatory trade deals
Foreign Policy/Military
- Immediate withdrawal from active wars
- Serious anti-war platform
- Cutting military budget
- Challenging military industrial complex
- Palestinian rights/ceasefire
- Anti-imperialism
Environment
- Serious binding climate legislation
- Renewable energy independence
- Green New Deal framework
- Environmental justice
Structural/Political
- Campaign finance reform
- Money out of politics
- Corporate lobbying restrictions
- Democracy reform
- Media accountability
- Department of Peace
- Impeachment accountability for executive war crimes
Social
- Reparations
- Racial justice structurally
- Mental health/healing framework
The brutal truth:
This list spans 2000 to 2024. Twenty five years. The party controlled the White House for 12 of those years. Had Senate majorities. Had House majorities. Had all three simultaneously multiple times.
Not one item on this list got passed.
Some got performatively championed during campaigns then quietly buried after elections. That is not failure. That is deliberate class function. The party exists to absorb and neutralize these demands, not fulfill them.
The ACA gets cited as healthcare progress but it was:
- Private insurance preservation
- Mandate to buy corporate products
- Explicitly designed to prevent single payer
- Romney's Massachusetts plan rebranded
The $15 minimum wage never passed federally. Some states did it independently. That $15 should now be between $22 and $26 adjusted for inflation. The federal minimum wage remains $7.25, unchanged since 2009, the longest stretch without an increase in the law's entire history.
The Paris Agreement was:
- Non-binding
- Voluntary
- Toothless
- Abandoned immediately anyway
Everything else, zero. Not watered down versions. Not partial victories. Zero.
That is across candidates spanning from the left edge of the party all the way to relatively moderate reformers like Richardson. The party could not even pass the moderate stuff.
This answers the map's question definitively. Progressive Dem voters are not voting for a party that is failing to deliver their agenda. They are voting for a party that has delivered exactly what it was designed to deliver, just not for them.
The gap between what those candidates ran on and what the party has ever passed in 25 years is empirical proof that the Democratic Party and its progressive voting base are not actually aligned. The voters just have not processed what that means yet.
This is a 25 year comprehensive record across six election cycles, multiple candidates ranging from moderate reformers to democratic socialists, and the Democratic Party passed zero of it. And not only have they passed zero of it, we have seen things overturned due to their inactions; the main thing being roe vs. Wade. It's like the party went out to brunch and decided the status quo was fine and as long as they held power, they didn't need to legislate; surely blue voters would never want the politicians to be out at brunch...
Instead of Democrat voters asking Republican voters why they constantly vote against their own interests, they need to first ask why they do it themselves by voting Democrat. In 2024, the Green Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the Libertarian Party gave Democrat voters the opportunity to finally support parties that between ballot access and write in ability had a path to 270. But like GOP voters who refuse to vote American Solidarity or Libertarian, Democrats chose defeatism, fulfilled a self fulfilling prophecy, and voted Democrat anyway, ignoring their own theorists like Eric Beerbohm.
Republicans are not the only voting base comprised of Identity Protective Cognition, Cognitive Dissonance, and diagnosable political pathology. They are not the only indoctrinated cult. And they are not the only variation of fascism running this country. Between American blue exceptionalism and red nationalism, Blue MAGA is Red MAGA. The rhetoric differs only to play good cop and bad cop. The class interests served are identical.
Al Gore, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, and Bernie Sanders were the four candidates I supported when I was a Democrat. Marianne Williamson and Cenk Uygur would have been my candidates in 2024 if I was still a vote blue no matter what cultist. The complete list of platform items the Democratic Party has never passed that those candidates proposed, of which the party is openly against or will only consider a heavily deflated and watered down corporate friendly version:
Healthcare
- Single payer universal healthcare/Medicare for All
- Universal healthcare access
- Mental health as public health priority
Economic
- Serious taxation of the wealthy
- Wealth tax
- Meaningful federal minimum wage/living wage
- Free public college/student debt cancellation
- Corporate accountability
- Addressing wealth inequality structurally
- Abolishing/renegotiating predatory trade deals
Foreign Policy/Military
- Immediate withdrawal from active wars
- Serious anti-war platform
- Cutting military budget
- Challenging military industrial complex
- Palestinian rights/ceasefire
- Anti-imperialism
Environment
- Serious binding climate legislation
- Renewable energy independence
- Green New Deal framework
- Environmental justice
Structural/Political
- Campaign finance reform
- Money out of politics
- Corporate lobbying restrictions
- Democracy reform
- Media accountability
- Department of Peace
- Impeachment accountability for executive war crimes
Social
- Reparations
- Racial justice structurally
- Mental health/healing framework
The brutal truth:
This list spans 2000 to 2024. Twenty five years. The party controlled the White House for 12 of those years. Had Senate majorities. Had House majorities. Had all three simultaneously multiple times.
Not one item on this list got passed.
Some got performatively championed during campaigns then quietly buried after elections. That is not failure. That is deliberate class function. The party exists to absorb and neutralize these demands, not fulfill them.
The ACA gets cited as healthcare progress but it was:
- Private insurance preservation
- Mandate to buy corporate products
- Explicitly designed to prevent single payer
- Romney's Massachusetts plan rebranded
The $15 minimum wage never passed federally. Some states did it independently. That $15 should now be between $22 and $26 adjusted for inflation. The federal minimum wage remains $7.25, unchanged since 2009, the longest stretch without an increase in the law's entire history.
The Paris Agreement was:
- Non-binding
- Voluntary
- Toothless
- Abandoned immediately anyway
Everything else, zero. Not watered down versions. Not partial victories. Zero.
That is across candidates spanning from the left edge of the party all the way to relatively moderate reformers like Richardson. The party could not even pass the moderate stuff.
This answers the map's question definitively. Progressive Dem voters are not voting for a party that is failing to deliver their agenda. They are voting for a party that has delivered exactly what it was designed to deliver, just not for them.
The gap between what those candidates ran on and what the party has ever passed in 25 years is empirical proof that the Democratic Party and its progressive voting base are not actually aligned. The voters just have not processed what that means yet.
This is a 25 year comprehensive record across six election cycles, multiple candidates ranging from moderate reformers to democratic socialists, and the Democratic Party passed zero of it. And not only have they passed zero of it, we have seen things overturned due to their inactions; the main thing being roe vs. Wade. It's like the party went out to brunch and decided the status quo was fine and as long as they held power, they didn't need to legislate; surely blue voters would never want the politicians to be out at brunch...
Instead of Democrat voters asking Republican voters why they constantly vote against their own interests, they need to first ask why they do it themselves by voting Democrat. In 2024, the Green Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the Libertarian Party gave Democrat voters the opportunity to finally support parties that between ballot access and write in ability had a path to 270. But like GOP voters who refuse to vote American Solidarity or Libertarian, Democrats chose defeatism, fulfilled a self fulfilling prophecy, and voted Democrat anyway, ignoring their own theorists like Eric Beerbohm.
Republicans are not the only voting base comprised of Identity Protective Cognition, Cognitive Dissonance, and diagnosable political pathology. They are not the only indoctrinated cult. And they are not the only variation of fascism running this country. Between American blue exceptionalism and red nationalism, Blue MAGA is Red MAGA. The rhetoric differs only to play good cop and bad cop. The class interests served are identical.
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