this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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The greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing people he didn't exist. The greatest trick the Republican party pulled was convincing people that its most unpopular ideas are entirely Democrats' fault.
NAFTA was championed by, majority supported, and voted in by mostly Republicans. It was ultimately bipartisan, but Democrats were significantly more opposed to it than Republicans (of Republican Congress members, only 10 in the Senate and 43 in the House voted against it; of Democrats, 28 in the Senate and 156 in the House voted against it).
This isn't to say that NAFTA is objectively bad policy; most economists argue that it ultimately benefited the whole country. However it did expose US manufacturing to significant competition, reduced bargaining power for manufacturing workers, and shocked communities which were solely reliant on the sector to support them. Larger cities were mostly unaffected due to their more diverse economies, and in many cases thrived off increased trade and lower prices for goods. As a reminder, urbanites trend Democrat, rural folk trend Republican.
The trope that urban liberals successfully screwed over rural conservatives just isn't true. Instead it seems that, at screwing themselves over, urban liberals failed and rural conservatives succeeded.
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1031/vote_103_1_00395.htm https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/1993575
That's called being politically savvy and out playing your competition which is why the Democratic party is always in free fall.
All this back and forth leads to this point: The Democrats are not equipped to handle a full assault of our democracy and thinking Gavin Newsom is the guy with some funny parrot tweets is not a real answer.
Oh, I'm not saying anything about Newsom, just trying to dispel some sadly common misinformation about NAFTA. I've yet to form a solid opinion of the guy, but I'm not without cynical biases, so he's got an uphill battle to win in my mind.
When you don’t have a choice that didn’t back NAFTA then you vote for the ones who are currently saying it sucks. Not the ones pointing to obscure economic indicators and saying everything is fine.
Sure. But let's set the record straight: blue collar jobs in the States didn't suffer because "Democrat bad and hate workers!" That's a myth perpetuated by politicians who would manipulate us for their own gain, Republican and Democrat alike.
In meantime we gotta figure out what to do with a ball of shit filled with rat poison.
It's also relevant that Biden did more for blue collar jobs in the States than anyone since Lyndon Johnson. Along with climate change, it's something he actually took seriously and fought for, and achieved some success with, which made him a massive outlier in the party of Clinton and Chuck Schumer and all those assholes. How he got that through our current congress, I have absolutely no idea.
And, of course, no one really noticed, because our media is awful and people on social media have no idea what they're talking about. Even the "sophisticated" left has still been talking about it as if none of that or the climate action had happened.
For fear of reminiscing "the good old days" ... Yes, I did like a lot of his policies, especially regarding linking (ever-so-slightly progressive) climate policy with blue collar jobs. The theory was that red states would see enough of the benefits (or the hope of benefits) to soften on the Left. That clearly didn't work out in the short-run. The Biden administration's biggest weakness is Trump's unfortunate strength: capturing media attention and driving a narrative, regardless of truth (i.e. bullshitting).
Yeah, the branding of the whole thing was pure amateur-hour. But he spent about a trillion dollars on climate change and blue-collar jobs, which he raised by big corporate tax increases. It's wild that no one knows that, and I'd call it a little bit more than ever-so-slightly.
When choosing between more worse and less worse, it makes sense to vote for less worse.
What’s infuriating is that we can’t vote for better because it doesn’t exist.