What's the future for Democrats?

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Could someone tell me please if the phrase "social democracy" is stigmatised in the USA? What is its usage, is it considered to be the same thing as socialism in the sense the USA people seem to use the word? What do USA people consider socialism to mean, and social democracy to mean?

"Social Democracy" is not used much and "Socialism" has the stigmas of government bureaucrats telling you how to run your life.

Thank you. Social democracy has a different meaning in New Zealand I think, and its modern versions stem from the efforts of a handful of "activists" in the 19th century, who laid a foundation for greater equity in the 20th century. From the 1930s to the 1980s, New Zealand was proud of its justified reputation as a social democracy. This was undone by the free marketeers, who have wrought havoc for the past 30 years. We are now on the brink of returning to the notion of equity and a fairer deal.

The Free Marketeers told many forked tongued lies in their quest for political power. "There is no alternative" "Trickle down will make everyone better off" "there is no need for unions in these modern times" and so on. None of this was true, no trickle down happened, but poverty skyrocketed, inequity increased exponentially, and the very rich became very much richer. Corruption entered political life, and the homelessness - which New Zealand had never had for 50 years of social democracy - became commonplace. Tens of thousands are homeless now. Finally kiwis have had enough of the neoliberal Friedmanites, their "greed is good" selfishness and self serving policies, and they are gone at last.

It is Labour weekend here, and we have a public holiday to celebrate what a man named Samuel Parnell achieved as an "activist" in the mid 19th century, when long working hours for poor pay stuck in his craw. So he devised a slogan: eight hours work, eight hours play, eight hours sleep, and eight bob a day. He prevailed, and the 40 hour week became the norm from then. The free marketeers have wrecked this, and now people have long working hours, are expected to be on call at all hours, or have zero hour contracts - this is the "progress" that the free marketeers imposed. People are not free, and the market is not the determiner of equity. They tried to charge people to get treatment in public hospitals, even though it is paid for out of taxation which everyone pays - and I mean everyone; even state beneficiaries pay tax. Children delivering newspapers after school are taxed. All goods and services are taxed at 15%. No-one is a free rider here.

New Zealand is not a socialist state, in the USA sense. It has a tradition though of a social democracy that includes everyone, so no-one is marginalised and left behind. It is my earnest hope that I live long enough to see our social democracy fully restored, and the complete death of cronyism that the Friedmanites turned into an art form. I want my grandchildren to have the benefits of a social democracy that I grew up with, a fairer society that regarded people as human beings with basic rights to dignity of being, to basic security, not as capitalist fodder for crony monopolies to use to increase the profits to be taken by crony (cronies of the free market government) shareholders. The corruption can be rooted out and it begins this week.

New Zealand - the 8 hour day and how it began.

Promoted by Samuel Duncan Parnell as early as 1840, when carpenter Samuel Parnell refused to work more than eight hours a day when erecting a store for merchant George Hunter. He successfully negotiated this working condition and campaigned for its extension in the infant Wellington community. A meeting of Wellington carpenters in October 1840 pledged "to maintain the eight-hour working day, and that anyone offending should be ducked into the harbour". New Zealand is reputed to be the first country in the world to have adopted the eight-hour working day.

Parnell is reported to have said: "There are twenty-four hours per day given us; eight of these should be for work, eight for sleep, and the remaining eight for recreation and in which for men to do what little things they want for themselves." With tradesmen in short supply the employer was forced to accept Parnell's terms. Parnell later wrote, "the first strike for eight hours a day the world has ever seen, was settled on the spot".

Now that last part evokes some pretty dark and hilarious imagery!

I see it on wikipedia...


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day

I think the always on call disaster is the result of technology.

Unions are a much less then what they were. The reasons the right dislikes them are obvious but a lot of the left has done a 180-degree turn on them in the last half-century. The lower middle class is thought of as ignorant, racist and uncouth and generally obstacles to progressive ideas. With unions disliked by both sides, the perception is of greedy union bosses and slovenly, lazy workers who get away with too much. The Democrats association with public employee unions does hurt them significantly. At the peak of union power, there was a large middle class whose lifestyle was the envy of the world and American products were the benchmark. I do think the decrease in union power has a lot to do which the shrunken middle class. I do not see this changing as the younger generation does relate to what happened in the 1950's.

Frankly, both parties are bankrupt in more ways than one. I hope they both self-destruct at the same time. The explosions would be glorious.

Give up and turn it over to Bernie Sanders...or fade into death. That is what us liberals wanted was Bernie and the democratic party betrayed us with Hillary.

That is what liberals are pissed about, none of the other stuff you right wingers make up.

Youd think there could be common ground because right wingrs and left wingers dislike hillary,

Just gotta say again I really hate the assumption that if I don't like Trump I must 'love' hillary, f**k her, f**k the establishment f**k you Hillary Clinton the reason Bernie lost this election, f**k you, f**k you and f**k you again hillary for ruining that.....is that enough for conservatives to consider that not every liberal agrees with clinton ownership of the whitehouse. We just want healthcare and government getting out of the bedroom is that really so bad?

Sanders supporters aren't liberals, they are social democrats. Clinton was a liberal.

She seems to be neoconservative in foreign policy behavior, neoliberal in public rhetoric, and out there with the Open Society Foundation in where her charities send money.

The thing I still don't understand is why she and Obama thought that the war in Libya was a good thing to green-light. It seems like it was a pointless war that had a worse than pointless outcome, ie. it showed despots and rogue states around the world that if they gave up their WMD's or nuclear programs that they could enjoy the same fate as Gaddafi.

Had a longer thing written out but crappy chrome froze so it’s lost.

Summary. The party needs to go away from liberals and become more centered t gain you know the majority of the population that’s neither liberal nor r conservative. They need to drop gun control, it’s a policy of lies that has no benefits similar to republicans being anti gay marriage. Democrats openly admit non of their policies would stop a single death. It’s about power and control not saving lives. They also admit it’s a a slippery slope and they want total gun ban. This pushes millions and millions of democrats to vote republicans in even though it could possible hurt other issues we agree with. The bill f rights is that important to us. Once guns are banned there’s no going back. But we can overturn stuff against gays, or welfare,or education. So loses in that are temporary but no gun law or gun policy has ever been overturned. We still can’t get guns from China despite them not being a active threat anymore and them being our major trading partner. So some president policy from the 1990s is permanent as despite the reason for its existence not being around anymore it’s not been overturned.
Say Bernie ran and he stood up for gun rights, say he supported universal conceal carry he’d gotten millions f more votes, lots of gun owners voted for trump solely cause he was the least anti gun candidate

Don't see any need for a postmortem of them anymore than the losing party in any other election. They will be back in 2020 and will stand a good chance of winning.

Neoconservatism and neoliberalism are both basically branches of liberalism. In the post-Soviet environment, neocons are basically liberals who like liberal military interventions enough that they are prepared to ally with conservatives to get them done. Similarly, practically everyone to the right of Bernie gets described as a neoliberal, which includes nearly every liberal. Amongst people who positively self-identify as neoliberal, Clinton's capitulation to Sanders on issues like healthcare, trade, and college funding often marks her as a dirty leftist. And the Open Society Foundation is basically liberal principles in action, at least as far as I know. Go through the policies that Clinton stood on and they're basically textbook liberalism.

I think your interpretation of the Libya conflict is well off-base. It was absolutely moral and the sands of time have clearly shown that (to my embarrassment I was strongly against it at the time due to my post-Iraq teenage pacifism). Gadaffi was a monster who was massacring his people like Assad.

Obviously we can't run the thing again and see how many more people would have died if we'd just left him to it, but we do have a good natural experiment. We chose to intervene in Libya but not Syria, which experienced a similar uprising against a similarly brutal dictator at the same time. In Libya, high end estimates suggest that 20,000 people died in the 2011 Civil War, 4,000 went missing, and a further 7,000 have died in the ongoing civil war (rounding up). So that's 31,000 dead. The low estimate for casualties in the Syrian Civil War is 331,000, of whom around 100,000 are civilians. Plus that war has caused a huge refugee crisis and helped Daesh grow and run wild. Libya isn't in very good shape, but it is much, much better off than Syria.

The real weakness was not following through on the threats made to Assad. Allowing him to get away with using his chemical weapons made a mockery of NATO posturing. The other mistake, of course, is threatening to tear up the nuclear deal with Iran. That presents a clear route for rogue states to come back into the international community, but we've basically told them that all it takes is for one Western country to accidentally elect an idiot and any deal will get torn up.

[quote="Sweetleaf"] : Just gotta say again I really hate the assumption that if I don't like Trump I must 'love' hillary..

It's a cheapshot unattached to analytical thought, and it will be a great day when we no longer see it here - if that day ever comes.

You want your standard of living to rise.

However, the "neo-liberal" Democrats appear to have embraced the "free market", and mostly abandoned the working class, because they think that "globalization" cannot be stopped (or they aren't willing to stop it).

The trick will be harnessing globalization for the good of all workers. Despite what Steve Bannon tells you, globalization is here to stay, and no amount of isolationism is going to keep the rest of the world out.