Interpret improvements as you like. For me it’s any large scale reforms or legislative packages designed to improve the country for all or see to the material interests of the majority without overly benefiting the elite.
Any big consumer protection, environmental, infrastructure, or other legislation from Clinton onwards that materially improved the lives of all?
Obamacare and the medicaid expansion comes to my mind. It has obviously improved people’s lives but considering how broken the healthcare system remains, and that it was written by the insurance industry to undermine single-payer, it seems to me a mitigated win at best.
Gay marriage and marijuana legalisation but that was the courts and the states although i’m sure the federal government could’ve stood in the way had they chosen to.
I’ve only live here since the 2010s so that’s all I can think of.
Yeah but when you’re arguing with your conservative parents and you happen to have been dealt the “for the children” card, you play that one at every opportunity. I’ve had much more luck with the argument that punishing people they view as morally inferior often results in harming innocents which is absolutely true and the reason punitive justice is (imo) morally wrong. It’s the same reason I don’t believe in the death penalty; if you find out a guy is completely innocent of some terrible crime he’s in the middle of serving a life sentence for, you can give him his missing salary and let him go, but you can’t bring him back to life.