I'm damn tired of people who claim to be the left

[alarimer]

289. I agree with this

They are not in conflict, but I think a lot of elected Democrats have problems because they get tons of money from corporations for their reelections.

And plenty of corporations are socially liberal within their workplace culture (they want good employees and they want them happy so they offer benefits to same-sex partners, for instance, or various other things) but they do not want regulations that might affect their bottom line.

Being socially liberal for Democrats is a whole lot easier than being economically liberal. Most of the hard work has already been done. Laws have been passed, Supreme Court decisions have come down supporting this. (Of course this is partly why we have Trump, a last ditch protest against all of it). But ask a Democrat to be a progressive economically (i.e- supporting higher taxation on the wealthy) and you get a lot more hemming and hawing. It's easy to march in a gay pride parade NOW (everybody does it) but how many elected Democrats do you see on picket lines these days? Almost none. And that is the bare minimum I ask for: yes, absolutely, they should support all manner of civil rights, even when it's hard, but they also have to come out strongly in favor of economic issues that help everyone.

I used the word progressive above in talking about economics, because classically, an economic liberal is one who favors lower regulations and freer markets. I am not of the opinion that those things actually help the most people.