What do the Democrats stand for?
The working man? Hardly. The middle class? Uh-uh. Families? Nope.
Today’s Democrat party stands for one thing, and one thing alone: personal and institutional power. Democrats want to rule — over the people, over their opposition, over global affairs, and most pertinently over the billions (trillions) of dollars confiscated from the American people.
Their challenge following the 2024 election is, without an affirmative message to convince the people that they are better suited to rule, how can they re-ascend to power?
The answer (seemingly): envy.
“Y’all are being held down because of the Republicans and the oligarchs.” Disregard that their oligarchs outnumber ours by 2:1; they, with their media propagandists, are going to rub raw the sores of discontent (Alinsky).
To paraphrase Oprah, “you’re a victim, and you’re a victim, and you’re a victim.” Everyone’s a victim, except presumably white Republicans and, most recently, white South Africans.
Envy is a strong draw. Almost everyone wishes his circumstances were better in some way or another. Whereas some will work to create better circumstances, others are easily convinced (seemingly) that they can’t get ahead because the man is holding them down. Couple this with “institutional” structures in state and federal aid programs, and the fact is, that the man is holding them down — if by “the man” we mean Democrat governors, congressmen, and senators.
Cast as a “safety net,” many of these programs, which rose in popularity with LBJ’s Great Society legislation, have expanded in breadth and scope on their trajectory toward full blown socialism. Labeling them “progressivism,” Democrats have slowly instituted and expanded more and more social programs that have covered (entrapped) a rapidly expanded segment of the populace. Once covered, no one wants to give up his “free stuff.” If anyone did want to break free, perverse incentives make breaking free almost impossible.
Income requirements for many programs like Medicaid discourage one from breaking out of their poverty wage at the risk of losing medical coverage. Their poverty wage, plus transfer payments (Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, TANF, Section 8, etc.) make the prospect of breaking out of poverty almost impossible. Why would one work, or work harder, if by doing so he will lose out on health care and other government benefits?
As the GOP releases its first pass of its “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill, the Democrats are naturally apoplectic. Gutting Medicaid to give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.
As best one can tell, the reconciliation bill does make some cuts to Medicaid, but more along the lines of cutting waste, fraud, and abuse — as RFK Jr. said in testimony yesterday, in response to accusations by Josh Harder (D-Calif.).
I don’t know if you understand this, or whether you’re just mouthing Democratic talking points. The cuts to Medicaid are for fraud, waste and abuse. ... One million people were claiming Medicaid from multiple states and another one million were collecting from both Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. DOGE helped find another one million undocumented immigrants were enrolled in the program.
As to the extension of the Trump tax cuts, whereas Democrats argued that the 2017 tax cuts would primarily benefit the rich, the reality, as reported in The Hill, was that the tax cuts increased federal revenue and primarily benefited the middle class.
Again, when one can’t argue with reason, pound the table and proclaim that evil Republicans are taking away your health care and giving that money to millionaires and billionaires. Facts be damned when one can stoke envy.
Image via Pixabay.