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What does the democratic party stand for?

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Tolpuddle Martyr:
Fair enough, do the Democrats vote for spending
equal amounts of money on Americans in their target demographics who were hurt by the Democrats unwavering support of neoliberal economics to the same extent? What about ones imprisoned under laws brought in by Bill Clinton to crack down on "superpredators?"

Askold:
I'm just going to point out that the GOP hardly lost any voters as they went from "further in the right than the other party" to "racists, religious fanatics, pedophiles, Libertarians and agents of foreign power." It's only recently that they began to shed voters.

There's really no chance for the Democrats to take those voters by going right AND avoid angering the rest of their voting base.

The Two-party system caused by the FPTP voting really fucking sucks but it's not like changing the system would get support from either party since they are the ones who benefit from it.

Skybison:
One thing I've read is that the reason it's harder to pin down what democrats stand for and why they tend to be centrists is the fundamental difference between who they are aimed at.

Republicans aim themselves at two main demographics: 1) Rich people who don't want to share their money with the poor and 2) uneducated rural white men who want to maintain the social/cultural dominance of Christian White Men.  Their are some smaller groups like Mormons and some subdivisions (ie fundies vs more secular anti-PC types) but that's mostly it.  So all a republican needs to do is say he'll cut taxes, ban abortions and hurt the immigrants and he's golden.  To advance himself what he must do is declare he'll cut taxes even more then the other repubs, ban abortions even faster and hurt immigrants even worse.

Democrats meanwhile represent everyone else:  Every non-white ethnic group, every non-christian religious group (except Mormons), Gays and Trans folk, educated whites in the cities etc.  And these groups have very different priorities and beliefs.  So a democrat needs to be able to appeal to a much more diverse audience.  So he or she advances himself or herself by being someone who can find common ground and be acceptable to everyone, even if not what any one group would want most.

Also no offense Tol, but can you define what Neoliberalism is?  It's just I kind of think the word is in the same category as fascist, Communist, Neoconservative etc of labels few people put on themselves but are frequently thrown around at anyone the thrower doesn't like.

Id82:
Neoliberalism has been around a long time. It usually stands for being economically liberal, but more socially conservative.

Tolpuddle Martyr:
Laissez faire economic liberalism, attendant policies including shrinking the welfare state, privatising public assets and promoting policies which aid the concentration as opposed to the redistribution of wealth. Also dissuading regulation of private enterprise in favor of self regulation.

It's also no secret that the American version of this outlook is more extreme than our antipodean version. We still have socialized medicine which has broad bipartisan support despite conservatives privately not liking it very much. Same could be said of the UK.

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