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Comment by doctorwho42 | Hacker News Reader

Because the modern Democrats are primarily a corporate dominated party. They haven't really had any hard hitting legislation nor legal regulation/rulings on corporations in easily the last 30 years.

I doubt that is going to change anytime soon. They are a private entity, so they can manage and change their primary system any way they want.

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A few things I can remember them doing are net neutrality, banning non-compete agreements for employees, a DMCA exception for allowing 3rd party repairs to McDonald's ice cream machines, and blocking the Albertsons/Kroger merger.

Nothing that is really landmark legislation. Dem legislators also didn't do anything about net neutrality. They deferred entirely to the FCC (which is largely why the rules were subsequently struck down).

Multiple attempts at net neutrality legislation have made by democrats, in the meantime the FCC pushed for neutrality under Democrats while republican administrations have a much worse track record of support

You write like the senate and its filibuster doesn't exist. They can't pass legislation without GOP votes. Of course they use the FCC given that fact.

The filibuster exists as a convenient excuse to not do anything without offending constituents

It's not as if democrats are using the existence of the filibuster as an excuse to not even try. Putting forward legislation they believe in, even when the odds of it being passed are slim, demonstrates intent and if the filibuster is used to stop a law that would benefit the people, that means that someone was actively doing something, it's on record, and the people should hold the obstructionists accountable for what they prevented.

Being incapable of compromise for votes does not make good legislation. “You’re gonna need congressional approval and you don’t have the votes.”

What compromise? The GOP are ideologically opposed to these sorts of things and immovable.

What do you suggest, trading away people's healthcare or something for net neutrality?

> the modern Democrats are primarily a corporate dominated party

I suspect this is changing. The DSA branch especially wants all contracts with Palantir eliminated.

The DSA branch has almost zero political power. Yes, Mamdani was elected. No, it was not because of DSA.

DSA has very limited understanding of the politics of power. Agree or disagree with their policy and advocacy, but they lack a unified, coherent policy platform. They take stances from (imo) good places and suggest proposals that are politically untenable (to say the least) and realistically ridiculous.

Mamdani is a unique politician. He is generationally charismatic, articulates the pragmatism behind solutions, and taps into the everyday struggles of citizens. When he talks about ideologically, it's soaring rhetoric about who we can be. His critiques, however, are often strongly tethered to tangible concerns (rent, food, education) vs. the DSA-type far left.

Source: worked in democratic politics, on a presidential campaign, with a wide range of people on the left (and "left") including DSA die hards.

Can't there be more politicians that talk about the pragmatic aspects too? Didn't El-Sayed win the Michigan nomination? I don't understand how this is hard for politicians to grasp, it happened with the Roosevelts and the New Deal, not sure why it can't happen now, even despite money in politics, as Mamdani and El-Sayed winning shows, who both had much fewer dollars spent on them than the competition.

>> the modern Democrats are primarily a corporate dominated party

> I suspect this is changing.

Nope. The democrats have been on the cusp of becoming serious for as long as I've been following politics. It's a con to get your hopes up. Don't.

"Because the modern Democrats are primarily a corporate dominated party"

And Republicans did it because.... They're anticorporation?

No, because they are anti-“corporate ethics”.

> Democrats are primarily a corporate dominated party. They haven't really had any hard hitting legislation nor legal regulation/rulings on corporations in easily the last 30 years.

Sarbanes-Oxley? Dodd-Frank? ACA? Now I'm sure you (like, every other living human) has a ton of nitpicks and criticism of bills like that. But they're real and they passed and they're largely-to-wholely partisan creations of the Democratic policy apparatus (SOX looked very bipartisan and was passed under Bush, but the actual bill was written mostly by democratic staffers).

I mean, fine, you'd like different regulation. But they're responsible for basically all the corporate regulation active in the US regime.

Bothsidesism is a very poor tool for this particular argument. Work with your allies, please.

> ACA?

How’s ACA hard-hitting on corporations?

The 15/20 rules is what resulted in recorder profits in health insurance business, how’s this anti-corporate?

Then why do the 7 publicly listed health insurers have shitty shareholder returns?

If their profits are so good, their shares would be worth owning.

Could it be because their profit margins are actually terrible (3% if lucky), and they have to get the price of their product approved by 50 different state government employees, and the federal government constantly changes their customer’s subsidies making revenue and expenses extremely volatile and difficult to forecast?

If you bought shares of those 7 companies in 2010 when the ACA passed, how much would you have today? More or less than if you bought the S&P 500?

If you're looking for policies to blame for insurance companies having a rough 2025-2026, look to the Republican-led efforts cap Medicare fees and alter eligibility requirements.

You would have about the same or less. Maybe UNH gets you a couple extra percentage points per year, but that's because they have an enormous healthcare provider business instead of just being an insurer. But it's still nowhere near a positive risk adjusted return when comparing to a relatively risk-less investment in SP500.

https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/

https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/

Since Jan 1, 2010, 18% for UNH, 15% for MOH/CNC, 14% for CI/ELV/HUM/SP500, 8.5% for CVS.

Also, these businesses are competing to sell a completely fungible commodity good with tons of non profits like Kaiser Permanente, HCSC, Cambia, Independence Blue Cross, and many others. It makes no sense to expect those businesses to be able to earn any decent profit margin when their competition only needs 0%.

> Then why do the 7 publicly listed health insurers have shitty shareholder returns?

CNC is up 90% YoY. That's far more than any of the largest tech companies. Alphabet is the highest of the tech stocks, and it's up 38% in the same period. When we look at the performance of the seven large U.S. publicly traded health insurers, their returns were extraordinary in the decade following the ACA.

> How’s ACA hard-hitting on corporations?

"You must sell insurance to sick people!", "I don't wanna!", "I don't care, the law now says you must."

I mean, the whole insurance industry had spent the better part of a century (basically its whole existence) denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, and the ACA fixed it via fiat.

Not only is it clearly "hard-hitting", I'd argue it's probably the single most "hard-hitting" invasive change to corporate regulation of the post-war era. Certainly it is in terms of the amount of money involved in the affected market.

> how’s this anti-corporate?

And this is where the rub is. You're not saying that your desired regulatory structure is something different than existing proposals, you're demanding that your government engage in behavior that is expressly "anti" whatever you perceive "corporate" interests to be.

That's not democracy, that's just warfare. You have enemies and you want to win. And the problem there is that the structure of our government requires compromise.

ACA literally forced every person in the US to become a customer of health insurance companies.

No, it didn't. If you didn't want to buy health insurance, you just had to pay a couple extra thousand in federal income tax:

https://landline.media/affordable-care-act-tax-penalties-end...

>The penalty for not having an ACA-compliant plan or forgoing coverage in 2018 is the greater of $695 per adult and $347.50 per child for a maximum of $2,085 or 2.5 percent of adjusted household income. The percentage penalty is capped at an amount equal to the national average premium for a bronze plan, the minimum coverage available by law

Ah yes, the very hard hitting anti-business rule that says if you don't become a customer of my friend's company, you must give me money. I'm sure the businesses were quivering in their boots when every citizen either became a customer, paid a fine, or became a felon.

It "literally" did not. What enforcement exists is financial (a tax penalty) and not compulsory. And obviously most people are covered via employer plans or Medicare, as has always been the case. A quick Google says that 19.2M Americans are enrolled in ACA plans. I don't have statistics, but I'd bet that the overwhelming majority of those are willing purchasers. Most people view health care as desirable.

The "everyone has access to the ER" has to be paid somehow, which is through tax dollars. The USA has a for-profit health system but typical neo-liberalism has a safety net where corporates get to dip into a different bottom-less pot. So it makes sense that we make this visible by taxing everybody who isn't paying their own insurance, since they still expect access to ER.

Seeing Dodd-frank in the list is pretty hilarious, because it was put in place for the issues that arose from repealing Glass-Steagall by Clinton. Which arguably was one of the biggest causes of allowing the activities that lead to the Great financial crisis in 08.

This is why this kind of stuff is so difficult to argue about. G-S was repealed primarily by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act in 1999. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bl...

And it is true, that it was signed by Clinton. But it was otherwise an entirely partisan bill passed with exclusively republican votes. All 44 democrats voted nay.

Now, given that, do you really feel that that's a supporting argument to the upthread contention that Democrats are a corporate-dominated party and not interested in regulation?

Please point to the hard-hitting ones, almost all the big co's at the time thought they got off too easy and were expecting a lot worse. At the end of the day, Sarbox and Dodd-frank basically just required those businesses to increase headcount 10%.

The comparison should be compared to the Republican party, the Democrats have done more and that's all that matters when you are making a choice between the two.

You're creating a fake choice. Other people are commenting on how ineffective the party that claims to be the heroes actually are. Calling out BS here is right IMO.

Dodd-Frank? CFPB?

I thought the Democrats were the party of big government and regulations whereas the Republicans were for reducing regulations?

More like the opposite in practice

Compared to the Republican party you believe they create less regulations?

MAGA hates capitalism and free trade. MAGA loves government abuse.

That has never been true, it’s just a Republican slogan.

What about the ACA or Dobb-Frank?

What about them?

I would argue the democrats are more a process oriented party. They wouldn’t pull this shit because they care about process - so much so that they wouldn’t even consider half the stuff that’s going on now as it circumvents process.

Democrats are the same side of the coin as the Republicans.

We, the people, are on the other side.

"Both sides"

This is such a tired argument that over simplifies an entire group of people on both sides into a single entity that happens to be the same.

Making it a 0/1 situation is really reductive.

What a load of bullshit. There are better candidates and parties and worse ones, they are not all the same. This sort of attitude just feeds voter apathy and resignation.

Democracy is an imperfect system, but its much better than the alternatives. If more people paid attention and participated, we would have much better outcomes.

"the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron."

https://x.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?lang=en

https://xxcancel.com/dril/status/473265809079693312?lang=en

> democrats are more a process oriented party

Oh? Thats why Biden tried to run in 2024? Because democrats procedurally try to elect obviously incapable presidents?

Exactly. Their process prioritizes seniority generally, and this is another case. The process is, if the president wants another go, he gets another go; and he sure as heck wanted another go.

So one man's desires become the rule for everyone else? That doesn't sound very democratic.

There's no reason picking someone every 4 years is democratic but every 8 years isn't...

That's not responsive to OP or coherent at all really, even if rhetorically structured like a gotcha.

Incumbent Presidents in the US almost always run for reelection to a second term, that's the normal expected outcome with vanishingly few exceptions in the last century.

> That's not responsive to OP or coherent

The claim was Ds are more procedural than Rs. Asking what process the Ds followed to attempt to run, and then back out of running, biden (who again, was very obviously and publicly mentally incompetent) is clearly a rebuttal to a presented point.

> who again, was very obviously and publicly mentally incompetent

You can repeat that as often as you want, but it doesn't seem well grounded. He's always had a stutter, and since he left office he has given speeches which suggest his mental faculties remain intact. Is he slowing down? Yeah. He's got quite a long ways to go before he's in McConnell territory.

In any case, what does his choosing to run have to do with process? Did he violate the process? Seems to me he was following it to a tee.

Don't forget how Harris wasn't even nominated.

And all the shenanigans around 2016 when Bernie Sanders was shut out by the DNC. Even Elizabeth Warren said outright that the DNC rigged the 2016 nomination. I think the outcome would have been very, very different if the DNC didn't fuck with the timeline and forced Hillary as the Dem nominee.

In recent history:

* removed filibuster for lower-court nominations ("nuclear option")

* impeached the president twice in a term

* tried that former president in the Senate after his term ended

* expanded mail-in voting en masse

* repeatedly attempted to eliminate 60-vote rule for legislation

I'm not claiming these were illegal, I'm just saying the process adapts to the needs.

You got that exactly backward. Modern republicans are the ones that get the most in corporate PAC money, at the high end it's like 60/40% split... the majority to the GOP. Also, the fact that modern republicans brought Citizens United and just earlier this year NRSC v. FEC.

You really can't make a valid case to say the dems are the corporate dominated party. ffs, they are the only ones even attempting to put common sense regulations on the financial industry, something Trump called "bad for business" when he undid antitrust legislature that got passed under Biden.

He didn’t say they were _the_ corporate party, just that they’re dominated by corporations. It’s notable because it’s an accusation that they pitch at Republicans often (not that R is doing any better there, but it’s part of their platform more or less).

The dems haven’t done anything notably anti-corporate in ages. There are rumbles about doing it (anti trust, supporting unions, climate change), but it never _quite_ seems to actually materialize into anything.

Cynically, that’s why both sides lean so hard into the culture wars. The men in suits would rather we argue about how to interpret history than whether a wealth tax makes sense.

> There are rumbles about doing it (anti trust, supporting unions, climate change), but it never _quite_ seems to actually materialize into anything.

There's only so much they can do when dealing with obstructionism, but the party is still putting forward legislation. For recent examples see The American Homeownership Act (https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/minority/senate-demo...) and the Stop Corporate Takeovers of Physicians Act (https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren...)

He actually did say dems were the corporate party. He contrasted the democrats not do something that the Republicans did because Dems were dominated by corporations.

The contrast implies that Republicans are in your words "anti-corporate"

> climate change

Trump just removed Obama era greenhouse gas finding.

"President Trump and Administrator Zeldin Deliver Single Largest Deregulatory Action in U.S. History"

https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/president-trump-and-adminis...

Democrats also had massive number of anti-trust regulations during Biden and Obama.

You're claiming they've done nothing on anti-trust?

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