You're giving current democrats way to much credit. I'd like to believe Bernie is the real deal, and Warren has some common sense notions for the economy that are slightly old school (good) Democrat, but overall, your party has abandoned the American worker. Trump won via being the only one to directly talk about how bad all the outsourcing was for American workers; that was supposed to be democrats thing. It is really, really important that American companies that sell things to America, make things in America. It's like thee issue.
Step 1 for a healthy economy: At least minimum protections for workers that prevent those with leverage and undo influence from creating a third world work environment, and no real wealth redistribution through WORK. Better than minimum protections work better, as seen by what happened here when unions had some pull, and the middle class was created. Short sighted rich people pretended it was bad for them, but it wasn't.
Step 2: Wealth gets redistributed through jobs and production that benefits everybody.
Step 3: Manufacture and produce enough that you do not spend more than you make as a country. Have a trade surplus.
That is obviously over simplistic. But it's also true. China had so much trade surplus money floating around the last 25 years that their economy grew, as did an upper middle class, while still repressing the hell out of their workers. You that's not how it generally works, or would work here, but when you're making so much money, there is just going to be done that falls into the hands of people. It doesn't "trickle down," but yeah.
I went over this yesterday in the worker rights thread, so I'm not going to get too far into it, but, in short, the "Democrats have abandoned workers" line is right-wing propaganda and it's just not true at all. Every single Democratic president and congress has been better for workers than every single Republican president and congress. The Third Way Democrats were friendlier to big business (which they arguably had to be in order to regain power and continue advancing worker interests after the Republicans walloped them in the 1980s with their shameless anti-worker pro-business policy platform), which is why some 30% of Democrats signed onto NAFTA, which was enough to pass it with a strong Republican majority. However, even Bill Clinton, the face of the neoliberal Dems, was much,
much more "for" workers than any Republican before or since, and his administration promulgated labor laws and Board holdings that significantly expanded and reinforced worker rights and protections. The last real explicit move
against labor that the Democrats partially joined was the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, which was broadly supported by the public to curb union power.
That Democrats were pushed
slightly to the right, which was (arguably) electorally and financially necessary after Republicans busted unions and depleted their donor base in the 1980s, and now Republicans who are far, far, far right of them and awful for workers are using the "well, you abandoned workers" propaganda (I'm not saying you are doing this, and I'm not saying you are a Republicans....but others here have) is shameless. Democrats have reliably appointed pro-worker/pro-union officials, while Republicans have busted unions and, through right-to-work laws and now the conservative-held
Janus decision, pretty much killed them entirely.
Historically, if I were to assign a number to it, with 10 representing most pro-worker and 1 representing most anti-worker, it would play out something like this:
1935
Democrats - 10
Republicans - 2
1947
Democrats - 9
Republicans - 2
1965
Democrats - 8 (JFK era)
Republicans - 4
1980
Democrats - 9 (McGovern era)
Republicans - 2
1994-2008
Democrats - 7 (Clinton era)
Republicans - 2
2008-2016
Democrats - 8
Republicans - 1
2016-present
Democrats - 9
Republicans - 1
But, by the way just as an aside, I think the "wealth redistribution through work" is becoming an increasingly inefficient model. It's deeply ingrained in American ethos and in labor unions, but I think international results are proving pretty reliably that wealth redistribution/minimum living standards guarantees by the government, which can then open up the labor market, keep employers from holding workers hostage because the workers can't afford to look for other work, and allow workers to negotiate true fair wages and create a truly vibrant labor market, is the most optimal solution because it covers workers in non-unionized industries.
