i mean this with no malice against republicans, but they've done a masterful job at convincing union voters and union states to vote against their interest. part of it is democrats essentially abandoned unions as a primary focus of their policies and allowed corporations to run fleeing to third world countries for cheap labor without any consequences. no tariffs, no tax increases, nothing.
so why wouldn't a corporation do that? morality and business ethics has zero relevancy when corporations make these decisions. they'll happily do anything to increase profit margins. and we watched all this happen for decades and did nothing. so now people feel broken and alone, and republicans saw this vulnerability. they filled that "explain this for me why my life is shit and there's no work" void with pointing at illegal immigrants (who have absolutely nothing to do with the state of their job issues). but when people are angry, distraught and desperate, yea, they don't always make rational decisions.
but the republican goal is to dismantle unions. already, the supreme court started that snowball with the janus v. afscme case where you can't be compelled to pay union dues for free speech reservations. with time, they'll be completely dismantled or weakened to such a point that they are no longer relevant in modern day politics, and that's going to reshape the entire political landscape.
no unions means lower wages, less benefits. it means more job insecurity and less savings. it means newer generations of people will be worse off than their parents generation. and somehow, republicans convinced people in union states that despite all these outcomes, they are the ones they should vote for. so yea, we are heading towards a more dystopian future where the rich rule everything and the poor grovel to get by. which, in actuality, has been the norm of human existence. a rich and vibrant middle class is an anomaly that results when bargaining power shifts tremendously, like post ww2 or after the bubonic plague.
that's where we are heading. to avoid it, you need a progressive candidate like bernie who may or may not correct that path. but it requires government intervention and regulation, which has many issues and problems itself. because it's not as though bureaucracy is some magical and efficient creature. but it's the only tools available to artificially maintain a middle class. a free market approach simply doesn't, it naturally gravitates and shifts wealth and power to the top. it's why we have bad education, bad health care, bad consumer products, high rent, everything. greed is king, and greed is unsustainable and pretty morally repugnant when society revolves around it. but it's a system where the wealthy can maintain power and control because it's that inherently unfair of a system.
so if unions matter to you, and the health and overall well being of lower and middle class people matter to you, you simply have no choice but to vote democrat. even that won't guarantee you good results, but it is better than a republican. but if you want a free for all society and people are eating at each other, republicans will be happy to gift you that world. it'll be a brutal one, but obviously some people who post here salivate at the thought of that opportunity.
