Spineless, unprincipled, constantly making excuses about why they're not doing anything, unwilling to do literally fucking ANYTHING to help the people they say they represent.
What are the underlying material conditions driving this?
Here in BC, Canada, the "social democratic" NDP government recently got a majority government, which means they can do literally anything they want. Pass any legislation they want. Pass any laws, any taxes, literally whatever the fuck they want.
And what have they done? FUCK ALL. Nothing. Not a single piece of legislation that I can think of. They're taking as long as they possibly can to implement $15 minimum wage, no paid sick days, no card check legislation, fucking NOTHING. Instead of using the pandemic as the obvious reason to pass this legislation they are hiding behind it as their excuse to avoid doing literally anything useful.
This seems to be the case all over the Western world.
WHY?
In the states, the Democrats had gone through a hellish decade or two, only holding the Presidency during Carter's single (arguably disastrous) term, not to mention the absolutely catastrophic campaigns of McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis, who together managed to carry a combined 12 states total across their 3 elections. Come the 1992 election, a significant portion of the Democratic Party adopt a "If you can't beat em, Join em" attitude, at economically/fiscally. Thus is born the "Third Wave" Democrats, who are socially the progressive party, but adopt many of the same neoliberal economic policies as the Republican party.
What does this have to do with the subject, Democrats were never remotely socdem.
not so sure about this take. I'm too lazy to do any research, but I'm skeptical of this notion that the democrats were ever pro-labor in the times of the Rosevelt and the new deal coalition. I see those times as being needed concessions in desperate times of crisis, or easy to make concessions in times of insane wealth post-ww2.
What did Truman, JFK and Johnson ever really do that leads you to believe that Clinton and Obama were deviations from them?
I feel like we've been on a steady trajectory to where we are now and the whole thing is a show. remember Kamala fist bumping Lindsey graham? that's how I see all of politics beyond a couple of exceptions.
for sure tho, there are parties in europe like the spd for who this take could better apply.
https://dailydish.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e201675ecf1529970b-550wi
I agree with @pepe_silvia96 here. I don't think this chart shows anything about the ideology of the state or to what extent the state has been pro-labor, the exact opposite - it correlates with the strength of the labor movement. The massive tax increase under FDR doesn't show that FDR was a lefty, or even really a social democrat - but rather that the socialist movement had been growing and it needed appeasement. <-- And this broadly answers OP's question as well. When labor in western democracies is strong, the ruling class has no choice but to pursue a policy of socialist appeasement, and when labor is weak, the ruling class is much more friendly to capital. I'm uninformed as fuck tbf so take me with a grain of salt
yes, I know I'm biased since you're supporting me, but the irony of calling yourself uninformed....
comrade, we are more informed than the dumbfuck liberals who gatekeep opinions by demanding you show them your credentials(sources, diplomas, whatever). we're free of the reddit analytic/nihilistic mindfuck. what we have is an ideological grounding in class conflict.
Scandinavia is only a labor strong hold because their labor movements were more powerful than ours. the liberal ideology will lead you to think it's a result of an interrelated set of factors. no, it's the proletarian class against the bourgeois class.
it's good to be free from getting lost in the weeds of these matters. intuition above facts; anyone can argue facts into becoming evidence for their particular interest, intuition and material self-interest on the hand isn't so malleable.
Lol I'm defensive as fuck when I argue online
Your point about Scandinavia is such an important one, and the saddest part is scandinavians themselves don't understand this at all anymore. Maybe even less than Americans do. That's my general feeling anyway. The class war is ignored and replaced by a bourgeoise political war. TBF It's also possible all the scandinavians I know are reactionaries lol but I have a theory that with decades of social democracy, a sense of nationalist pride develops - we have great healthcare and low poverty without communism or class war, it must be because we're just a great nation! Americans in the media wish they were us, we must be so great! Which obviously completely ignores how we got those things in the first place which was (spoiler alert) CLASS WAR.
But yeah re-reading the comment I responded to - it is explicitly anti-Marxist & anti-materialist and needs more thought.
on Scandinavia, I can only know it through the american lens. and that means I can only know it as a pig. If you're from Scandinavia, or have some connection to it, it is awesome to me that you have this take.
often, the bourgious American take is that they are a racially homogeneous state! that's legit one of the most common takes. from liberal nyt writers to libertarian/conservative types, that's the take!
I'm not going to beat around the bush, I used to be an american chud and for me Scandiniavian racial homogeneity was THE explanation for why Scandiniavia was so well run.
learning about the struggle in scandiniavia, of all the folks who laid their lives on the line, of all the struggles that still exist in politics and mass organiziation today, thats when I started reading Marx.
the selling point of liberal ideology is that 'we are beyond history.' it's a selling point which embraces complacency. we are going to mars, we are creating human computer robots blah blah blah. but we are sending people to mars as indentured servants, and using human computers for the benefit of private enterprises.
class conflict has yet to be overcome, and there will be conflicts after that. nobody alive has gone beyond history. that's the biggest lesson Marx has taught me.