They're just a LOT better at convincing the poor that they're on their side by promising them a ton of shit that, ostensibly, others will pay for and they'll get for "free".
Some Slate writer is in a tizzy. Because Michael "the Demagogue's Demagogue" Bloomberg has cast his faux-independent brand behind Hillary Clinton. "Soda-bans for all the Country!" to shortly become the Democrat's battle cry.
Or will it be a tax on carbon? A tax that most corporations support, as opposed to Al Gore's self-enriching cap and trade scheme, because taxes of this type are the easiest to pass along to both the customer and private royalty owners.
How about "free" college education for those making under $125,000 per year? The Democrats are basically proposing we do for higher education what we've done for primary education. In short, making it all but worthless, prohibitively expensive and the quality version of such being priced out of the market except for the wealthy?
Think I'm wrong? Currently our primary education system is, by almost every measurable metric, failing spectacularly. Schools are underfunded, taxes are being raised prohibitively on the poor to make ends meet while teacher's unions continue to strike and hold-out for more and better freebies from the governments that run the thing.
Getting a diploma from a public high school is meaningless in the job market. It doesn't signify a base level of learning, or that one understands the concepts of basic math, reading or writing. (or, say, personal finance). What it means is that you were stubborn enough, or popular enough, to stick to it for 12 years before finally walking across a stage without spiking yourself on the staircase.
Even a college degree is diminished these days. Experience on the job is much more valuable than book learning. In fact, unless you're studying to become a teacher or college professor, I'm willing to bet that most, if not all, of the daily work you do has nothing to do with what you learned in school.
But businesses do value degrees from certain, private institutions, and they are going to be the only ones that matter if we make education "free".
And the primary people that gain acceptance to these private schools? The rich. Or the connected, or the handful of "diversity" students who are given what basically amounts to a pity pass. Sander's populist rhetoric notwithstanding, nothing is more perpetuating to a ruling class than convincing the rubes who are ruled to accept something with no inherent value as valuable. It's really the Democrat's greatest political success and they're building a winning coalition off of it.
"But the people aren't that stupid" you are saying right now.
Oh really? How else do you explain cities such as Baltimore continuing to elect Democrats into positions of municipal power despite the fact that almost 60 years of Democratic rule has morphed their communities into dysfunctional dystopias?
With the implosion of the Republican party, and an education system that's stopped valuing classical liberal thought, the Democrats are on the verge of making all of America into it's urban cores. A nation, much like Mexico FWIW, where the ruling class and their courtesans dine on peacock, baby seal and champagne while the poor eek out a living on their allowance of cheese and soylent.
Bread lines? Phaw. Peasant food of the future will be manufactured, from cockroaches.
Drink up fellow proles.
