I consider mysellf relatively progressive and find much of what you propose pretty realistic. I don't wish to offend but my observation that a good deal of the labor/management relationship you articulate is only a small degree different than what Democratic Socialists have been advocating for some time now, i.e. there is enough common ground to produce meaningful discussions. As to the article, could there be fertile ground for a middle party as a realignment? Lastly, Senators Vance, Hawley and Rubio could gain more trust by shucking the blind allegence to Trump. Hawley and Rubio had an opportunity to take a stand for decency and didn't. So rebuking those of us who mistrust them is a bit unfair. They need to earn it. Liz Cheney had guts.
Seems like this comment thread has attracted a few left of center folks that are interested in the potential realignment, and I think it would be great if that continues on Oren's substack. But as a gentle comment, I think it's going to be very important for people to give a great deal of grace to folks on the "other side" if any kind of real left/right pro worker coalition can be built.
When it comes to Trump loyalty, I really liked Oren's response to Jon Stewart comparing that to team blue refusing to acknowledge reality about Biden's condition. It's all well and good to prefer that our political leaders are more independent, but that's not the situation we have now, and if you make that a deal-breaker it's going to be pretty hard to build a cross party coalition.
That being said, I'm fine with criticizing Vance's refusal to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election - I fundamentally don't get that from a strategic or practical perspective. Seems like there are pretty easy ways to answer that question in a way that lets you say that bias against Trump had an impact on the election without giving the Harris campaign an easy headline to run against.
So I'm happy to admit that situation is a negative for Vance, but to me it is dwarfed by the importance of pushing back against corporatism and the establishment, so I'm willing to give him grace. And honestly, your last comment about Liz Cheney scares me - I don't think she has an honorable bone in her body, and even if you agree with her criticisms of Trump, they're only driven by her own self interest and desire to protect the military-industrial complex. There are way better anti-Trump voices to elevate if we're serious about this realignment.
Liz Cheney continued to support Trump in 2016 even after the Access Hollywood tape came out and caused a lot of establishment Republicans to unendorse him. She supported him again in 2020. I don't think she would have done that if she just wanted to protect the military-industrial complex.
Just a quick reminder that Don and JD ARE the establishment. They dominate the R party. This is Don's third nomination, the former R establishment has either left the party or remains in a rump minority. As for corporatism, is that what Don meant with his $1 billion shakedown of the oil execs? More fundamentally, I can't "give him grace" for striking at the core of our republic. There is nothing more important to our system of government than faith in the electoral system, a faith that's a prerequisite to the peaceful transfer of power. Upholding one's oath comes first, it's far more important than debating trade policy or marginal tax rates. Don openly violated his oath by inciting an armed insurrection, leading to the first non-peaceful transfer of power in our nation's history. It's the worst act ever committed by a US president. JD parrots the lie even today. On video. JD also openly tells us, on video, that he would not have done what Mike Pence did-fulfill his constitutional duty to certify the election. Case closed. JD's gaslighting of the working class is just a little sweetener to drive home what a disgraceful human he is. It's hard to think of anything lower than gaslighting someone who literally just lost everything in a natural disaster. Until the "new" right exhibits some character and decency, educated voters will continue to flee.
“I can point to all the comments and proposals I want from JD Vance and Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley,” she said of her conversations with more progressive friends, “but they just say they don’t believe those guys mean it.”
Is it so hard to believe that being a "fist pumping insurrectionist" and promulgator of the Big Lie might make people not believe anything that comes out of Josh Hawley's mouth?
My rejoinder to progressives who are skeptical of Vance/Hawley/Rubio's sincerity is - let's assume you're right, and these guys are faking it to pander to populist elements of their base. But that also assumes that the base with these views is large enough to be worth pandering to. It's fine if the progressives think they offer a "better" solution to working class concerns, but the lesson they should take from this is that there is a large block of voters they could appeal to if they put in a real effort. And if they have any ability to self-reflect at all, they should acknowledge how much they've repelled this voting bloc on cultural issues, war, leadership, etc.
I thought this was very well illustrated with your conversation with Jon Stewart. I have so much respect for the way he frames the issues facing the country, and about 80% of his questions and comments were great. But he can't stop himself from letting his cynicism take over and bringing him back to bad faith questions and assumptions. It's really despairing to me to see him be very clear minded about how important these issues are, and he and his other guest know the intra-party debate is real, but then he wraps things up negatively because you haven't fixed all the problems with the Republican party yet. Oh, and all your talk about immigration is because your a racist.
I am a Midwest progressive with some conservative values. I reject your definition of your labels in such broad strokes. Real people are more nuanced. Forty-nine percent of Americans identify as independents. In my humble opinion, I believe that the realignment is not simply working class voters gravitating to the Republican party from the Democrats. These voters are splitting off and gravitating towards factions of each party that speak to their values. I don't believe that either R or D parties can be both the voice of unfettered-capitalism big business and of the working class.
The pervasiveness of money in politics, particularly post Citizen's United has created cynics of working class electorate and with good reason. Both parties serve the elite establishment, each with their own flavor of propaganda and dissident suppression. We are frustrated. It's up to those individual politicians to prove to the working class that they are genuine in wanting to respect and represent them. As we have seen with Trump, talk is cheap. His Administration was not as pro-worker as his rhetoric. The DNC sabotage of Bernie Sanders candidacy was shameful.
I am hoping that more politicians defend the actions of FTC Chair Lina Khan as a tool to correct the sins of the last 40 years of Neo-liberal policy. The Squad and the New Right have more in common than they think, if only they could compartmentalize their goals to work together on common issues.
Oren - I'll follow up on this comment and ask if there's any movement on the new right regarding campaign spending?
I'll admit that when Citizens United came out, I was sympathetic to the decision because our system should allow people to make a movie saying Hillary shouldn't be president and distribute it within 30 days of the election. And if I have a bunch of money and a cause that's important to me, it's really dangerous for the government to be able to stop me from promoting my cause.
But things have gotten so much worse since then that I'm willing to consider pretty aggressive actions. I'm not confident at all that I have a solution that will have an impact - I'm naturally skeptical of something like public financing of elections, but at this point I'm willing to consider it, and I feel like there should be a way to distinguish a truly independent PAC from a slush fund controlled by a campaign surrogate that is only nominally independent. But those kind of distinctions can only happen if the political class wants to make campaign spending an issue.
This seems like a good fit with the new right's distrust of corporate power, so I'd love to see more attention paid to the issue - and maybe working with someone like David Sirota on policy ideas that could appeal to dissidents on both sides? I really liked the series they recently put out on campaign finance called Master Plan.
I have a question. Oren's piece rightly points to the political realignment that's been underway for many years. Yet it only discusses one direction of the realignment. I never see much discussion of why the R party is hemorrhaging voters with college degrees. Anyone have an idea?
Hmm, blamin it on them thar uppity girls. They don’t count like ussin “real” Mericans:) Funny how the “new” right wants to return to a day long gone. Is it any wonder Rs have lost the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 elections? Time marches on, let’s all try to keep up.
I always find it amazing how smart people can somehow fall for such transparent flimflam men. How many times do JD, Little Marco, and Josh need to show you who they are before you believe them? They've all self-gelded. In public. On video, repeatedly. It's hard to pick a fave, JD saying Don actually won in 2020, JD admitting he's gaslighting poor hurricane victims with open lies about federal aid, or perhaps Josh sprinting down the hallway with insurrectionists in hot pursuit. They've sacrificed all personal dignity. Anyone who blatantly lies about Don's insurrection is disqualified. Period. Nearly as disgusting is how they gaslight the "working class" that y'all purport to represent. Nothing like lying to them, repeatedly, to show your respect:) It's so fitting that JD has fully flip flopped, and on top of finally uttering the election lie openly, now finds himself openly lying to poor hurricane victims who have lost everything. In case we need one more reminder of what kind of human being this creep is, he sure delivered it to us.
They can't stand up to Trump but at least some like Chaney and Kinzinger have the integrity to say that fascism is not acceptable. All this fine talk about being for the average American is bull if they must obey the all-mighty MAGA base.....
I read but don't subscribe to The Liberal Patriot so I will comment on them here. They have recanted their assertion from 20 years ago that demographic change will lead to a durable Democrat majority and are advocating a working class centric policy agenda. They are constantly invoking James Carville's notion that the Democrats have been captured by "faculty lounge politics", as recently as this morning. Their motto seems to be Make the Democratic Party Great Again. But they also note that it will be harder for the Democrats to jettison their baggage than it will be for the Republicans.
I keep wondering why they don't just defect like RFK2 and Tulsi and work on changing the balance of power within the Republican party. Trump is indeed a breaker of paradigms but the most important one he has broken is that the Republicans are the party of big business. If people were missing that message, his selection of JD Vance should make it completely clear to any non-blind observer.
Having supported American Compass from its beginning, I am certain that it did not intend to become the brain trust for a fascist political movement.
Unfortunately, immigrants have become the new Jews, being similarly blamed for the economic plight of the working class today, as the Jews were under Hitler. And, We have the same discussion of rounding them all up and getting rid of them.
We have a Republican presidential candidate who aspires to be a dictator, loves other dictators, and has American Compass’ favorite politician, JDV, comfortably stowed away in his hip pocket.
The assertion by American Compass that a shortage of workers would force capitalists via market mechanisms to equitably share the fruits of production is certainly well founded but nevertheless relies upon economic determinism for its execution.
The lack of any moral reasoning in this assertion will be exposed at precisely the point at which the policy begins to have real implications for those lacking a propensity for economic and social justice.
Your proposed conservative platform is entirely at odds with the actual Republican agenda. But the “proposed” progressive platform is virtually identical to what progressives actually want and advocate.
Your misrepresentations are so prevalent in your writing that I can’t bear to read any more. It’s become boring.
"Legal immigration and granting status to tax-paying undocumented migrants who are already in the country..."
I'm not sure what 'status' means. But, I think one possibility to solve the issue could be that granting status comes without a right to vote. Came here illegally? Ok. You can legally stay - but you do not get full status (citizenship?) and you lose the right to vote in any federal elections (I'm not sure state election status can be determined at the federal level). There must be a penalty for jumping the line or there's zero incentive not to for future immigrants. People that come here by following the rules should have something to show for doing that. Plus, it neutralizes the idea of 'importing' voters.
You totally miss the point. The problem is defining the problem as progressive vs conservative. That is not THE PROBLEM. Our situation is the result of three things: 1. The constitution (a work of genius) has not 'scaled' to a country of nearly 350 million with a GNP of nearly 30 trillion. 2. Our economy is controlled by a cartel that makes a soviet politburo look like a Quaker Friends meeting. The 'invisible hand of the market is an iron claw. 3. We have yet to deal with our original sin of slavery.
You seem to think we can put band aids on cancer. Progressive or conservative band aids will just fall off when the cancer spreads. I am deeply disappointed in you.
he Democratic Party is today like Wile E. Coyote suspended in midair just after he has run off the cliff and afraid to look down and accept his fate. Few in America are buying what they are selling anymore with their ridiculous open borders policies, their openly racist (against whites, Asians and men) identity politics, their acceptance of black criminal behavior, their coddling of the addicted and mentally unstable homeless, their crazy beliefs related to transgender issues such as allowing men into women’s sports, locker rooms and prisons, the mutilation of children in pursuit of the impossible and their increasing distrust of free speech. Oh look, they are already falling.
On the other hand there’s the Republican Party. The mere fact of their following of the probably mentality unstable Trump is one clue of their deranged condition. I would add that their failure to acknowledge the reality of climate change, their antipathy towards vaccines, their belief that a single cell ( . ) is the equivalent of a 👶, and their constant use of their right to free speech to spread obvious lies is clearly disqualifying to me. I can’t vote for either party.
I was a union activist 50-years ago including being the president of a local labour council. The unions could and did give their favoured political party money and they had their full-time staff work full time during the campaigns for their favoured candidates but they could not deliver their member's votes. Not at all. Nothing has changed.
Workers rely on their union to improve wages, benefits and working conditions. That's it. There is no contract between the union and the workers beyond that. I am always amused to hear a union leader claiming: "I represent 112,000 members when I say. blah, blah, blah.." It is all BS and the politicans know that. They just politely let the union boss shoot his mouth off. What's the joke is that the media broadcasts and prints that crap. By the way, do union leaders still talk like they are gangsters from a Jimmy Hoffa movie?
It’s really quite simple. Progressives believe that the ends are most important and justify any means.
They rarely have discussions about the means preferring to just wallow in their agreement. Like wearing ribbons…nothing to discuss. “We” agree. “We” are aware.
Their real issue is the “means” to their utopian ends!
They just won’t discuss those.
They either ignore, look the other way, or are blissfully blind to inconvenient facts which leads to failure to recognize irony.
How else to explain, say, LGBTQ+…members passionately supporting a cause that would exterminate them. Does not recognize their right to exist. See!
I consider mysellf relatively progressive and find much of what you propose pretty realistic. I don't wish to offend but my observation that a good deal of the labor/management relationship you articulate is only a small degree different than what Democratic Socialists have been advocating for some time now, i.e. there is enough common ground to produce meaningful discussions. As to the article, could there be fertile ground for a middle party as a realignment? Lastly, Senators Vance, Hawley and Rubio could gain more trust by shucking the blind allegence to Trump. Hawley and Rubio had an opportunity to take a stand for decency and didn't. So rebuking those of us who mistrust them is a bit unfair. They need to earn it. Liz Cheney had guts.
Seems like this comment thread has attracted a few left of center folks that are interested in the potential realignment, and I think it would be great if that continues on Oren's substack. But as a gentle comment, I think it's going to be very important for people to give a great deal of grace to folks on the "other side" if any kind of real left/right pro worker coalition can be built.
When it comes to Trump loyalty, I really liked Oren's response to Jon Stewart comparing that to team blue refusing to acknowledge reality about Biden's condition. It's all well and good to prefer that our political leaders are more independent, but that's not the situation we have now, and if you make that a deal-breaker it's going to be pretty hard to build a cross party coalition.
That being said, I'm fine with criticizing Vance's refusal to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election - I fundamentally don't get that from a strategic or practical perspective. Seems like there are pretty easy ways to answer that question in a way that lets you say that bias against Trump had an impact on the election without giving the Harris campaign an easy headline to run against.
So I'm happy to admit that situation is a negative for Vance, but to me it is dwarfed by the importance of pushing back against corporatism and the establishment, so I'm willing to give him grace. And honestly, your last comment about Liz Cheney scares me - I don't think she has an honorable bone in her body, and even if you agree with her criticisms of Trump, they're only driven by her own self interest and desire to protect the military-industrial complex. There are way better anti-Trump voices to elevate if we're serious about this realignment.
Liz Cheney continued to support Trump in 2016 even after the Access Hollywood tape came out and caused a lot of establishment Republicans to unendorse him. She supported him again in 2020. I don't think she would have done that if she just wanted to protect the military-industrial complex.
Just a quick reminder that Don and JD ARE the establishment. They dominate the R party. This is Don's third nomination, the former R establishment has either left the party or remains in a rump minority. As for corporatism, is that what Don meant with his $1 billion shakedown of the oil execs? More fundamentally, I can't "give him grace" for striking at the core of our republic. There is nothing more important to our system of government than faith in the electoral system, a faith that's a prerequisite to the peaceful transfer of power. Upholding one's oath comes first, it's far more important than debating trade policy or marginal tax rates. Don openly violated his oath by inciting an armed insurrection, leading to the first non-peaceful transfer of power in our nation's history. It's the worst act ever committed by a US president. JD parrots the lie even today. On video. JD also openly tells us, on video, that he would not have done what Mike Pence did-fulfill his constitutional duty to certify the election. Case closed. JD's gaslighting of the working class is just a little sweetener to drive home what a disgraceful human he is. It's hard to think of anything lower than gaslighting someone who literally just lost everything in a natural disaster. Until the "new" right exhibits some character and decency, educated voters will continue to flee.
“I can point to all the comments and proposals I want from JD Vance and Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley,” she said of her conversations with more progressive friends, “but they just say they don’t believe those guys mean it.”
Is it so hard to believe that being a "fist pumping insurrectionist" and promulgator of the Big Lie might make people not believe anything that comes out of Josh Hawley's mouth?
Exactly!!!!!
My rejoinder to progressives who are skeptical of Vance/Hawley/Rubio's sincerity is - let's assume you're right, and these guys are faking it to pander to populist elements of their base. But that also assumes that the base with these views is large enough to be worth pandering to. It's fine if the progressives think they offer a "better" solution to working class concerns, but the lesson they should take from this is that there is a large block of voters they could appeal to if they put in a real effort. And if they have any ability to self-reflect at all, they should acknowledge how much they've repelled this voting bloc on cultural issues, war, leadership, etc.
I thought this was very well illustrated with your conversation with Jon Stewart. I have so much respect for the way he frames the issues facing the country, and about 80% of his questions and comments were great. But he can't stop himself from letting his cynicism take over and bringing him back to bad faith questions and assumptions. It's really despairing to me to see him be very clear minded about how important these issues are, and he and his other guest know the intra-party debate is real, but then he wraps things up negatively because you haven't fixed all the problems with the Republican party yet. Oh, and all your talk about immigration is because your a racist.
Keep up the good fight!
I am a Midwest progressive with some conservative values. I reject your definition of your labels in such broad strokes. Real people are more nuanced. Forty-nine percent of Americans identify as independents. In my humble opinion, I believe that the realignment is not simply working class voters gravitating to the Republican party from the Democrats. These voters are splitting off and gravitating towards factions of each party that speak to their values. I don't believe that either R or D parties can be both the voice of unfettered-capitalism big business and of the working class.
The pervasiveness of money in politics, particularly post Citizen's United has created cynics of working class electorate and with good reason. Both parties serve the elite establishment, each with their own flavor of propaganda and dissident suppression. We are frustrated. It's up to those individual politicians to prove to the working class that they are genuine in wanting to respect and represent them. As we have seen with Trump, talk is cheap. His Administration was not as pro-worker as his rhetoric. The DNC sabotage of Bernie Sanders candidacy was shameful.
I am hoping that more politicians defend the actions of FTC Chair Lina Khan as a tool to correct the sins of the last 40 years of Neo-liberal policy. The Squad and the New Right have more in common than they think, if only they could compartmentalize their goals to work together on common issues.
Oren - I'll follow up on this comment and ask if there's any movement on the new right regarding campaign spending?
I'll admit that when Citizens United came out, I was sympathetic to the decision because our system should allow people to make a movie saying Hillary shouldn't be president and distribute it within 30 days of the election. And if I have a bunch of money and a cause that's important to me, it's really dangerous for the government to be able to stop me from promoting my cause.
But things have gotten so much worse since then that I'm willing to consider pretty aggressive actions. I'm not confident at all that I have a solution that will have an impact - I'm naturally skeptical of something like public financing of elections, but at this point I'm willing to consider it, and I feel like there should be a way to distinguish a truly independent PAC from a slush fund controlled by a campaign surrogate that is only nominally independent. But those kind of distinctions can only happen if the political class wants to make campaign spending an issue.
This seems like a good fit with the new right's distrust of corporate power, so I'd love to see more attention paid to the issue - and maybe working with someone like David Sirota on policy ideas that could appeal to dissidents on both sides? I really liked the series they recently put out on campaign finance called Master Plan.
Well said. Transparency is key to minimize corruption of any plan.
I have a question. Oren's piece rightly points to the political realignment that's been underway for many years. Yet it only discusses one direction of the realignment. I never see much discussion of why the R party is hemorrhaging voters with college degrees. Anyone have an idea?
AWFLs. They are a majority of degreed people.
Hmm, blamin it on them thar uppity girls. They don’t count like ussin “real” Mericans:) Funny how the “new” right wants to return to a day long gone. Is it any wonder Rs have lost the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 elections? Time marches on, let’s all try to keep up.
I always find it amazing how smart people can somehow fall for such transparent flimflam men. How many times do JD, Little Marco, and Josh need to show you who they are before you believe them? They've all self-gelded. In public. On video, repeatedly. It's hard to pick a fave, JD saying Don actually won in 2020, JD admitting he's gaslighting poor hurricane victims with open lies about federal aid, or perhaps Josh sprinting down the hallway with insurrectionists in hot pursuit. They've sacrificed all personal dignity. Anyone who blatantly lies about Don's insurrection is disqualified. Period. Nearly as disgusting is how they gaslight the "working class" that y'all purport to represent. Nothing like lying to them, repeatedly, to show your respect:) It's so fitting that JD has fully flip flopped, and on top of finally uttering the election lie openly, now finds himself openly lying to poor hurricane victims who have lost everything. In case we need one more reminder of what kind of human being this creep is, he sure delivered it to us.
They can't stand up to Trump but at least some like Chaney and Kinzinger have the integrity to say that fascism is not acceptable. All this fine talk about being for the average American is bull if they must obey the all-mighty MAGA base.....
Thanks Oren. Another great colum. A tip of the toque from a fan up north.
I read but don't subscribe to The Liberal Patriot so I will comment on them here. They have recanted their assertion from 20 years ago that demographic change will lead to a durable Democrat majority and are advocating a working class centric policy agenda. They are constantly invoking James Carville's notion that the Democrats have been captured by "faculty lounge politics", as recently as this morning. Their motto seems to be Make the Democratic Party Great Again. But they also note that it will be harder for the Democrats to jettison their baggage than it will be for the Republicans.
I keep wondering why they don't just defect like RFK2 and Tulsi and work on changing the balance of power within the Republican party. Trump is indeed a breaker of paradigms but the most important one he has broken is that the Republicans are the party of big business. If people were missing that message, his selection of JD Vance should make it completely clear to any non-blind observer.
Having supported American Compass from its beginning, I am certain that it did not intend to become the brain trust for a fascist political movement.
Unfortunately, immigrants have become the new Jews, being similarly blamed for the economic plight of the working class today, as the Jews were under Hitler. And, We have the same discussion of rounding them all up and getting rid of them.
We have a Republican presidential candidate who aspires to be a dictator, loves other dictators, and has American Compass’ favorite politician, JDV, comfortably stowed away in his hip pocket.
The assertion by American Compass that a shortage of workers would force capitalists via market mechanisms to equitably share the fruits of production is certainly well founded but nevertheless relies upon economic determinism for its execution.
The lack of any moral reasoning in this assertion will be exposed at precisely the point at which the policy begins to have real implications for those lacking a propensity for economic and social justice.
Your proposed conservative platform is entirely at odds with the actual Republican agenda. But the “proposed” progressive platform is virtually identical to what progressives actually want and advocate.
Your misrepresentations are so prevalent in your writing that I can’t bear to read any more. It’s become boring.
"Legal immigration and granting status to tax-paying undocumented migrants who are already in the country..."
I'm not sure what 'status' means. But, I think one possibility to solve the issue could be that granting status comes without a right to vote. Came here illegally? Ok. You can legally stay - but you do not get full status (citizenship?) and you lose the right to vote in any federal elections (I'm not sure state election status can be determined at the federal level). There must be a penalty for jumping the line or there's zero incentive not to for future immigrants. People that come here by following the rules should have something to show for doing that. Plus, it neutralizes the idea of 'importing' voters.
You totally miss the point. The problem is defining the problem as progressive vs conservative. That is not THE PROBLEM. Our situation is the result of three things: 1. The constitution (a work of genius) has not 'scaled' to a country of nearly 350 million with a GNP of nearly 30 trillion. 2. Our economy is controlled by a cartel that makes a soviet politburo look like a Quaker Friends meeting. The 'invisible hand of the market is an iron claw. 3. We have yet to deal with our original sin of slavery.
You seem to think we can put band aids on cancer. Progressive or conservative band aids will just fall off when the cancer spreads. I am deeply disappointed in you.
he Democratic Party is today like Wile E. Coyote suspended in midair just after he has run off the cliff and afraid to look down and accept his fate. Few in America are buying what they are selling anymore with their ridiculous open borders policies, their openly racist (against whites, Asians and men) identity politics, their acceptance of black criminal behavior, their coddling of the addicted and mentally unstable homeless, their crazy beliefs related to transgender issues such as allowing men into women’s sports, locker rooms and prisons, the mutilation of children in pursuit of the impossible and their increasing distrust of free speech. Oh look, they are already falling.
On the other hand there’s the Republican Party. The mere fact of their following of the probably mentality unstable Trump is one clue of their deranged condition. I would add that their failure to acknowledge the reality of climate change, their antipathy towards vaccines, their belief that a single cell ( . ) is the equivalent of a 👶, and their constant use of their right to free speech to spread obvious lies is clearly disqualifying to me. I can’t vote for either party.
I was a union activist 50-years ago including being the president of a local labour council. The unions could and did give their favoured political party money and they had their full-time staff work full time during the campaigns for their favoured candidates but they could not deliver their member's votes. Not at all. Nothing has changed.
Very true! Unions are not really “democratic” they have decision making elites and bunch or workers/citizens or members.
Workers rely on their union to improve wages, benefits and working conditions. That's it. There is no contract between the union and the workers beyond that. I am always amused to hear a union leader claiming: "I represent 112,000 members when I say. blah, blah, blah.." It is all BS and the politicans know that. They just politely let the union boss shoot his mouth off. What's the joke is that the media broadcasts and prints that crap. By the way, do union leaders still talk like they are gangsters from a Jimmy Hoffa movie?
It’s really quite simple. Progressives believe that the ends are most important and justify any means.
They rarely have discussions about the means preferring to just wallow in their agreement. Like wearing ribbons…nothing to discuss. “We” agree. “We” are aware.
Their real issue is the “means” to their utopian ends!
They just won’t discuss those.
They either ignore, look the other way, or are blissfully blind to inconvenient facts which leads to failure to recognize irony.
How else to explain, say, LGBTQ+…members passionately supporting a cause that would exterminate them. Does not recognize their right to exist. See!
Irony!