It's not hard when you have the will and work ethic.

> in the top few percent for income in the US, and live in California (one of the highest tax states), and I happily pay them.

Well, thats not surprising but at same time not default for most people. Universities have been leaning left since at least 60's and 70's . If all the people who attended university remained influenced by those ideas over the years. Most of the people with higher income and influential positions in society would be overwhelmingly left but that has not happened. It just shows a lot of people become conservative after leaving colleges.

Yeah, the sad fact is that people who received the fewest benefits and outside help are people more likely to reject a social safety network. What's sad is that these are the people who are most likely to benefit from this progressive change.

It's suggested that they fear that a (small) fraction of people are lazy and parasitical and will manipulate and abuse these systems. In some ways, I'm more cynical, and believe the cause is more deeply rooted: Since these people were hazed at some point in their lives (even if they're middle class, e.g. they took a job they hated beacuse gave them decent health insurance), they believe everyone should be hazed.

It's the old chestnut: "Do this shitty pointless thing, it builds character. (subtext: I was forced to do this shitty pointless thing, so why shouldn't you younger folks be too)."

You're an exception. Plenty of people are just fine with pulling up the ladder after them. Second generation immigrants don't like immigration, people that benefited from free tuition want to make schools paid and so on. It's really insane if you stop to think about it long enough: our whole society is based on the fact that we have each other, and yet, we can't spare a dime for our fellows because we're on a short leash ourselves and 'keeping up' is a big part of our satisfaction. All of this is programmed against you and anybody that wants to change the system is ostracized. And that's all before you get into the really big problems, this is just personal stuff.

I am a very dedicated Sanders supporter, and to say he "was nearly President" in 2016 is just not true. Yes, by the end of the primary he'd gained a lot of steam, but that was the end of the primary. Sanders was in a pretty hopeless situation delegate-wise by Super Tuesday, and only briefly polled within even ten points of Clinton.

He was closer in 2020. But in 2020, Democratic primary voters got a very simple choice: double down on moderate neoliberalism, or try progressivism. Democratic primary voters made a very, very clear choice, and Biden wiped the floor with Sanders from the day it became a two-man race. Biden won nearly two-to-one in vote share and in delegates and won numerous states that were Sanders' base of support in 2016.

Is there a progressive wing in the Democratic Party? Yes. Is it a lot bigger than it was ten years ago? Yes. Is the fact that we've been right all along becoming more obvious by the day? Yes. But are progressives the majority of the party? No. Are we competitive in national primaries right now? No. We have simply not convinced half of the half of the country that votes Democratic that we are in the right.

Part of that is our serious problem with the black vote - it's very hard to win a Democratic primary without it - but it goes well beyond that. Republicans have very successfully painted us as a bunch of frothing-at-the-mouth fools who want to waste all your money sending men to leer at your daughters in locker rooms, and we need strategies to convince people otherwise. We need to play politics. What that looks like, we can debate, but we have so far failed to win the game of rhetoric even though we are, objectively, right.