Millions of Americans who can barely make it will go out of their way to vote if they know this person is on their side.

They hate unions more than they like not starving.

I really believe that, at least they will until that last moment when they are actually starving.

You know who will argue with you the loudest and angriest about how terrible unions are?

Not the CEO who stands to triple his profits if he can underpay and overwork ALL of his employees, no, the loudest defender of that CEO will be one of his workers who has to take a night job to survive because the CEO he is defending is purposely underpaying him.

WE did NOT have these problems 50 years ago, Americans were NOT this stupid.

What happened? propaganda

personal interests so hard that they seek to deny the interests of others.

They are in a permanent state of survival/hate/fear. It's from the propaganda. From which they are fed their sense of victimhood and righteousness as their reward. In the 1980s as Reagan went after PATCO, his corporate supporters made the rounds of every company to teach the psychological techniques to divide and conquer.

Those of us who tried to educate our fellow workers could not get past the ego driven propaganda used. The workers wanted to be part of the 'winning team' even if they ended up by getting screwed. After all, they could still blame the women and blacks for it. Their bogeyman list has kept on growing.

and they will continue to do so until there's nothing left. "Home of the brave," ha, what a joke. I'll never forget working, union Democrats looking me right in the eye and telling me they were voting for Reagan.

they were actually voting against, just not to my face, so my arguments were not given a fair trial.

As management was starting to contract out our jobs, I resisted in meetings. The guys readily went along with the pats on the back they were being given by the bosses, who they'd seen previously as adversaries. He said they'd get a cut, but it was at the expense of the whole.

In one of the meetings, the big boss looked at me with respect as our eyes met and treated me with much more respect as time went on. Although he was going to do what he was paid to do, he knew I knew the game he was playing on them and respected that we were on opposite sides. The guys, however, took the bait, hook, line and sinker.

When the union busting happened after Reagan got in, the guys were in a state of shock. I didn't say, 'I told you so,' but the more loud mouthed ones in management told us while people were aruging about voting for Reagan against Carter, that they were going to 'put us in our place.'

They were talking about breaking our union. But the white guys remembered an earlier context for putting people 'in their places' and out of what they saw as the places that belong to them alone. Their failure to recognize that it might apply them, cost a lot. It always does in the long run, that is why equality for all is a winning strategy even for the most selfish people.

The company divided us by appealing to pack mentality and setting us all against each other. Many of the workers were veterans and saw Carter as weak, didn't know about Reagan's history, either. But he was white and they really had had enough of 'quotas' and 'affirmative action.' So any excuse to not vote for him they used in arguments. Carter's EEOC was seen as too aggressive in protecting women and minorities, as they thought women and minorities were degrading their job. They supported OSHA and the NLRB to protect their health, safety and rights, but they lost both in the same deal.

No one else seemed to be cognizant of the technique used as it was happening. For me it was like watching an impending car wreck in slow motion. You know what is going to happen, you know why and how, you go on through the stages of denial, then anger and grief, yet you cannot stop it happening.

Perhaps I should have given up on being a progressive, liberal and believer in human and worker rights then, but I just couldn't. I think so often of all the people voters have put in office, the true believers like Obama, and others who get smeared or dismissed, and how fickle and abusive people are to them.

I know Democrats who have literally been terrorized by reichwingers in every sense of the word, and people call them weak although they are putting their health, wealth and lives on the line. This does not make the news. It makes me sick the way they are denigrated by 'liberals' who have not walked a mile in their shoes. Many of these people like the little girl gunned down with Guifford, believed from an early age that public service was an honor and a privilege. They have arranged their lives on this idea, but no one respects them for it anymore. It's no wonder the elders are now retiring from office with no one to take their place.

After a while, who wants to stand up to get all that abuse, when with their votes, or lack of them, the people have repudiated their ideals by staying home? When the people who have listened to their voters and tried to meet their needs, refuse to listen to them explain the challenges they have found, who stick a knife in their back everytime?

We're the ones who pick the leaders of this nation. Or we let the other side decide how we are going to live.

take another 100 years to have a decade like the 60's when it seemed there was no end to proudly liberal candidates. Turns out there was an end. The solutions for conservatives; assassinations and ALEC, both designed to kill the liberal movement.
I'll bet even the richest barons of business underestimated how gullible American voters could be.
Americans who buy into the bullshit do so because they want to. They're comfortable with the current level of racism, where some folks can succeed, but most can't. They're comfortable with the current level of inequality in the courts, in employment, and in daily life. They're conservatives and do not want progress. Too bad they're going backwards and don't see it.

My right wing nephew posted this on FB: "Democrats want an economy that works for everyone. I want an economy where everyone works." He thinks this is a conservative idea. I remarked that they were the same thing, in an economy that works for everyone, everyone works. I'm sure he still doesn't get it, but it's because he doesn't want to. It doesn't fit with his belief that Democrats want to crush his freedoms.

This guy might be the most obnoxiously blatant, but I'm sure what he does is a lucrative career path for many others.

Proof that there really are monsters out to get us.