I’m sorry this will be a long response, I don’t have time to write a short one.
"The woke policies are socialistic and not capitalistic."
The problem is I've been having too many conversations with conservatives: woke is socialism, abortion is socialism, gun control is socialism... It doesn't matter whether the topic is economics or not, everything in the world is either good (capitalism) or bad (socialism).
But that's how conservatives think. It's not how liberals think.
Whatever their flaws, liberals are earnest, good-hearted people who think the historically oppressed should be treated better. It is a matter of historical fact that persons of color and LGBTQ have all been treated horribly. Women somewhat better, but still unacceptably poorly. They are now being treated slightly less horribly. This is a trend liberals would like to continue. They are, however, shit at messaging, while conservatives are masters at it.
The right takes anything the left says, twists it into a pretzel, runs it through the rightwing media ecosystem, and spits bile out the other end. "Defund the police" is not about eliminating police. "Critical race theory" is not just trying to make white people feel bad. "Gun control" is not about eliminating guns. "You didn't build that" is a factual statement, in a society no one person does anything on their own. "Fake news" was born in describing the right, but it was appropriated and applied to anything the right doesn't like, true or not. "Woke" is not socialism, or dragging down America, or really anything else anybody on the right says. It's about equality and giving historically oppressed people a hand up.
Replay previous “liberals are shit at messaging” comment.
I think the biggest problem is that the right is the party of white conservative Christians, full stop. Which means the left is everybody else. The right is mind-bogglingly monolithic by comparison. Democrats can’t produce a unified message because there is no unity. There is no such thing as an organized left, they aren’t so much a party as a coalition.
The right is used to cohesiveness and assumes everybody is that way, and it just isn’t true. I’m always stunned by just how single-minded the American right is. It’s like watching a flock of birds all change direction at once:
“Donald Trump is a terrible person and will destroy the GOP…” (Which Republicans were right about in the beginning, 45 is objectively the single worst human being to occupy the Oval Office in modern history.)
“He won the primary.”
“Donald is a strong leader and God’s gift to America!”
Positively mind blowing. Beyond my comprehension.
So the right tries to apply its black and white, unified party model to the left and gets it completely wrong. Because of the lack of unity, there’s always some liberal somewhere saying something that can be twisted around, then fed back into the system as being the One True Message of the left. And of course the right buys it, because that’s how they think.
So the upshot is the right builds a cartoon opposition that doesn’t exist,
but the left can’t get their shit together enough to counter it.
What you need to explain to your European friend is that America is one of the world’s most diverse countries. European countries don’t have the level of diversity the US does. But one of our two parties is nearly monolithic. By their standard, the entire GOP is the equivalent of their rightwing party, the Democrats are everything else. Joe Manchin would be in their conservative party. Joe Biden would be center right. Bernie Sanders would be center-left.
In other words, more diverse than either of you can wrap your mind around. So naturally they can’t get their act together.
Yes, the GOP will probably do well in the next elections, but it will be through a campaign of dishonesty and distortion which the Democrats will be unable to counter.
And no, not everything is capitalism vs. socialism.
