Hacker News Reader

Comment by Kye | Hacker News Reader

The main difference is the DNC is mildly in favor of progressive reform, but not at the cost of their piece of the capitalist pie. They will happily take credit for anything grassroots organizers bring to the point that even the corporate donors will pretend to care. Remember that, for example, the DNC's support for marriage equality started with Biden's gaffe as VP. It was already so popular that it didn't matter whether they supported it or not, so the gaffe became platform when polls didn't shift against them.

I'll take that over the GOP wanting me, at best, crushed under a boot and subservient, but I'll still vote for just about any candidate the DSA puts up locally if they ever do. I recognize the barrier function of voting for whatever barely animate ghoul the DNC triangulates on in the primary, so I'll do that until someone figures out how to get > 50% at that level with someone I'll vote for rather than a lineholder.

View on HN

I hate to say it, but that's the "with us elected" half of "everything the same but...".

The DNC's marriage track record as far as I know was the same as the RNC, the only difference is who was celebrating when the supreme court made the decision.

> Remember that, for example, the DNC's support for marriage equality started with Biden's gaffe as VP.

That's a good example of why people who think the Democratic Party is a vehicle for progressivism are wrong. In 2008, Black people--without whom Democrats would not be a viable national party--said homosexuality was morally unacceptable by more than 2:1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/112807/blacks-conservative-repu.... They were as conservative on that issue as Republicans. (Even as of 2019, 45% of Black Democrats think legalizing same-sex marriage was a bad thing, compared to just 11% of white Democrats. That puts them closer to Republicans (57%) than to the white members of their party. Hispanic Democrats are also twice as likely as white Democrats to say it was a bad thing, while Hispanics overall are three times as likely. See: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/12/17/5-gender-fam...)

The Democratic Party is a coalition of white social liberals, who are either moderate or progressive economically, along with people of color who vary significantly in political ideology. A significant chunk of the voters who put the party over the top in places like Georgia and Arizona are the old Reagan coalition: upwardly mobile suburbanites of all races.

The DNC's support for marriage equality-- or lack thereof-- was ultimately irrelevant. The U.S. got marriage equality because the Supreme Court ruled that, no matter what you may personally think about marriage between a man and a woman, same-sex marriage is a perfectly cromulent legal fiction that people have the right to avail themselves of, if they feel like it. There's nothing wrong with that, it was a perfectly fine way to skirt the controversy about what marriage "ought" to be by pointing out that law doesn't always work that way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com