>And yet despite three Democratic presidential terms since 1992, the average American is way poorer and sicker than they were 30 years ago.

I'm not advocating the neoliberalism on the 1990s, I'm talking about the modern day Democratic party but lets be real about we are talking about. since 1992, A Democrat has been President 17 of those years. They've had control of Congress and the Presidency maybe four or six of those years. Of the last 30 year, the GOP has had control of the house for twenty of those years and they had control of the Senate 16 of those years. The POTUS is part of the executive branch, the legislative branch. The GOP has had control of the legislative branch for the majority of the last 30 years and done absolutely nothing.

Obama, for all his flaws was able to get the ACA passed, which is probably the most important, best piece of legislation to come from the US government since the Carter administration.

>Frankly I don't care about proposals for bills. The Democrats deserve some praise for the infrastructure bill, but in the end that was a massively stripped down bill that only accomplished a fraction of its proposed aims. For a party in total power over government that's a whole long list of proposals without much to show for it.

Who do you think stripped out all the good stuff? It wasn't progressive Democrats. The Democrats are not in 'total power' and never have been. Like I said in my original comment, the US government is extremely biased towards minority rule. republicans hold 50 Senate seats but the states they represent only make up 43% of the country. That in itself isn't terrible because the Senate was always intended to represent states, not people. What is actually terrible is the House of Representatives. The House, also known as The Peoples House is supposed to represent the people and give more representation to states with more population. Because the House is capped, smaller states are over represented in the House. Brookings estimated that the GOP got an extra 21 seats in the 2016 election due to conservative over representation

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/02/22/misrepresen...

It's really hard to get enough of a majority when every elected part of the government is biased to benefit the minority of Americans. Democrats are at the mercy of their most conservative members and always will be because West Virginia and Alabama get far more say in America than California.

Remember, all 50 republicans opposed a massively popular infrastructure bill. Only 2 Democrats opposed it. That doesn't sound like 'both-sides' to me. It sounds like our broken system of government is failing us.

>I don't even claim that the Republicans are much better, but at least Trump's rhetoric over cleaning house in Congress and draining the swamp is admitting that there is a problem in the government, and not claiming oh-so-righteously that the Democrats would solve all our problems were they just given all the electoral tools needed to do so. They've had those tools at multiple times the last 30 years and utterly failed in their aims.

trump is the swamp though. I don't think Democrats pretend that everything is okay in Washington and if you have some primary sources indicating that they do, I'd love to see it. I've also never seen Democrats claiming they "would solve all our problems". I usually see Democrats pushing specific legislation and talking about the benefits of that legislation. They've had control of both the Presidency and congress for what, 4 years in the last 30. And in that time they passed a landmark health care bill that has saved thousands of lives. What have republicans done? The republicans only do well in opposition because they have no ideas. We can see this today. We have a President who is working on legislation that is both popular and sound and we 50 republicans who vote no in lock stop because they don't want Biden to succeed. The GOP is more than willing to hurt Americans if they think it'll help them in the next election and we are seeing that right now.

>It's incredible that you claim urban Americans don't hate rural Americans and then condescendingly dismiss Alabama as a religious back-water and that they need to stop dragging the glory of the coasts down with them.

Firstly, I didn't claim they were religious backwater, I said if they want to be one, they should do it without dragging down the coasts. Secondly, I feel you have a deep misunderstanding of what the word "hate" means.

Hate is "intense or passionate dislike". I don't hate Alabamans. I think they are as a group politically foolish. I think they have, as an aggregate, a terrible value system. I think they make terrible electoral choices over and over again that hurt them. There are good people in Alabama, they are just greatly outvoted by people who love hate mongers like trump.

>The people who live in "religious back-waters" like Alabama are some of the most disadvantaged people in the country who've grown steadily and steadily poorer as the wealth of the nation flows in one direction (or two) towards the coasts.

I agree! That's why it's in their best interest to vote for people who want to help them because its the modern economy that caused the wealth to flow to the coasts, not a political decision. trump did well because he lied to them and told them what they wanted to hear. He sold the lie that they could live their whole life in a tiny town with no economy and make a living wage. These small towns can survive but only if they modernize their economies. They need real leaders, not ones who spend their time fear mongering about Critical Race Theory in schools where it isn't taught in the first place.

>Maybe that's not hate, maybe that's more indifference, but to the people at the losing end of an economic rebalancing I'm not sure that's all that different. No wonder they're all so angry if this many people outright dismiss the struggle half this country seems to be going through.

The Democrat infrastructure would have been an economic boom for rural parts of the country. All 50 GOP Senators opposed it. A lot of working class people who would have benefitted from the infrastructure projects that the country overwhelming supports voted for the people who killed the project. They will vote for them again because they will be afraid of whatever boogyman the GOP uses for the mid-terms. That seems foolish to me.