How can people who would vote Dem, but don’t really like Biden go TRUMP? That make no sense. But then again 'Merica
They don’t vote trump, they just don’t vote. The Democrats continue to push candidates who are so old and out of touch that younger voters don’t see them as in any way preferable to literal Nazis. Think about that for a minute, there is a group of voters who see the level of disconnect the Democratic party has with its voters as an equal evil to actual Nazis. Given that our left wing is actually a right wing central sort of party, and both parties are suckling at the teet of big business, giving tax breaks to billionaires while younger generations can’t afford apartments… I see how they have gotten to this conclusion.
Think about that for a minute, there is a group of voters who see the level of disconnect the Democratic party has with its voters as an equal evil to actual Nazis.
I honestly can’t see how this is an indictment on Democrats. If someone believes the disconnect that Democrats have with young people is an evil equivalent to Nazis, that’s very telling of that person. There is no misunderstanding or poor communication in history that could be on the same level of evil as Nazis.
I agree, but Republicans aren’t literal Nazis. Stop overusing the term, just adds confusion when real Nazis come up.
Republicans are openly cheering for eradicating vulnerable minorities.
Really? Who?
Michael Knowles said it at CPAC. His conservative audience cheered.
And before you go there, you know better than to expect anyone here to buy the “he didn’t call for the eradication of trans people, Just trans ideology” shit. Either proposition requires trans people to not exist in public, and the latter requires eradication of the mere idea that trans people exist at all. That’s not an improvement. That’s nazi shit.
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Thank you for the illustration of how monstrous bigotry can be expressed using only civil language. reddit demonstrated that an overemphasis on civil language often resulted in an environment where “be civil” meant “don’t sass the nazis.” I hope lemmy remains better than reddit in this aspect.
Please move to exploding heads with the rest of the fuckwits and apologists so you’re easier to block.
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They’re getting pretty fucking close to literally being Nazis. They condem social welfare, call opponents pedophiles, lie and cheat, are actively trying to disenfranchise voters and dismantle democracy. The GOP has put business interests above human interests at every turn, they use antisemitic dog whistles, use physical violence to attack political opponents, they’re anti intellectual on every level, anti immigration, anti ethnic minority. I really don’t know where you come off thinking they’re not Fascists, but maybe you’d care to elaborate?
I remember the GOP used to be the party of family values and fiscal responsibility. Now they’re just obstructionist. What meaningful legislation has GOP introduced that would benefit anyone but their own business interests?
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Care to elaborate?
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God is real. Jesus was a socialist hippy. He preached love, forgiveness, and tolerance. Jesus condemned money traders in the court of the temple. He would be chase by a Lynch mob, called an Arabic terrorists, and probably shot by contemporary Christian conservatives.
What’s your point? Please elaborate as to what ‘reality’ you are referring to. Sounds like you aren’t a Christian as much as you are a cult member.
call opponents pedophiles
Isn’t that just Elon Musk, and he’s not GOP, afaik
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“If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of four 8-year-old children,” wrote Ron DeSantis’s press secretary Christina Pushaw on Twitter.
US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene proclaimed “the Democrats are the party of pedophiles,” adding that "either you are pro-pedophile and pro-transgender biological men or you defend children and women.”
Greene’s comments might be dismissed as the ravings of a crank if the rightwing weren’t united behind her. The moral panic over child porn extends from the lowliest 8chan poster to the halls of the United States Senate. The GOP is tapping into the energy of the QAnon base by repackaging their entire domestic agenda, from education policy to Supreme Court confirmations, as a crusade against pedophilia.
Source: https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/republicans-enemies-pedophiles-stochastic-terrorism
I mean if your against an anti-pedo bill, you’re probably pro-pedo.
Funny because GOP notoriously vote AGAINST banning child marriage.
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If I write a bill that says conservatives are pedophiles and then Republicans vote against it, are Republicans pro pedophile?
More children have been sexually abused in a church than by gay people, but I don’t see the GOP lining up to make bills on that.
https://dailycaller.com/2022/11/07/elon-musk-vote-republican-congress-midterms-twitter-independents/
Shithead’s sure stumping for GQP…
I will when they stop trying to systematically erase minorities and LGBT people
Who wants to do that? The people who are trying to pass laws to disarm poor people?
What the? How did you whataboutism this about guns?
The GOP has been on the warpath against the LGBT for a while now. This is a fact that stands independent of the gun debate.
Oh and i am a liberal that fully supports the LGBT and every minority in this country having a weapon. They need a means to protect themselves since the government has decided to not defend them and “conservatives” have decided to murder them.
Yeah, because the second amendment is exactly what impoverished people need right now
/s
If I was poor I’d focus on having enough money to pay the bills instead of buying a Deagle every 6 months or whatever. Their argument is baseless and they have no point. It also has cero to do with LGBT anyways. I dislike these republitards immensely.
That might have been a valid concern in the early 1940s, but nowadays I think people can understand that “Nazi” is just a generic term for fascist scumbags
Hi. Your side literally shared a meme of a stolen cartoon frog wearing Trump’s hair and dressed in a Nazi SS Uniform, lining up politicians on our side to be sent to a very obvious gas chamber.
Piss off with that nonsense. Any Republican who isn’t a literal Nazi is no longer a Republican at this point.
very fine people on both sides
That’s the neat part, they don’t most of the time. But people get this idea that “well if they are not voting Biden then they are voting trump” then go shock pikachu when the numbers of those who don’t vote come out. We ignore it or blame it on the youth for being stupid and then we repeat the mistakes. Because that’s easier then dealing with the cognitive dissonance
And even if not voting and making it easier for the greater evil to win IS stupid, that’s not an excuse! Stupid people are a core Republican constituency, but they do the work to trigger them to go vote.
So sure, let’s say young people are stupid. What are you going to do about it? Because complaining about how they didn’t be not-stupid isn’t getting any more votes.
Yeah I don’t buy it. I might get angry enough to just stay home (might not likely) but that is a bridge too far.
Because they figure if the fan the flames they firefighters might come sooner.
Honeslty that is what drives a considerable amount of the Trump base, they want ‘the end’ to come sooner than later and they know voting in Trump will make it happen. A consider amount of people seriously fantasize about society collapsing because it makes them feel like they are empowered/especial/superior to the ‘sheep’. Like preppers.
I myself felt this urge during 2016. I was so pissed off at the Democrats I seriously considered voting for Trump as an F you to the democrats for their shitty status quo policy making and their inability to have a charismatic leader who actually gets shit done instead of making excuses like Obama did for 8 years.
Say what you want about Republicans being evil or whatever, but they get shit done. They get their legislation passed, and their judges appointed.
Which is a weird sentiment because the only natural outcome for the accelerationist views is either a fascist takeover or a popular revolution. We can all imagine how and what happens with the former. With a revolution you have groups of people with at least 2 very different ideas of what the country should be post-revolution. You have the far right Trump supporters who hate government and want a collapse; who will all almost certainly die or as Huffman put it “become slaves”. Then you have the far left who want to reform government to be actually democratic and fair (some of those probably want actual communism as well, which is it’s own schism).
So unsure how accelerationists who want a revolution figure this out. Even if a popular revolution worked, it would immediately break down into partisan fighting.
Accelerationists are like Huffman in that they think they’ll personally be fine and able to lead a political revolution from the ashes. They think they’re flameproof.
Say what you want about Republicans being evil or whatever, but they get shit done. They get their legislation passed, and their judges appointed.
Trump and McConnell had a house supermajority and yet couldn’t even abolish Obamacare. The fact that you believe that they get things done is actually you believing carefully crafted propaganda.
They get their legislation passed, and their judges appointed.
And they have to keep changing the rules at the last minute to do it.
How could anyone vote for either of these pricks?
ITT bunch of bots and dishonest kids trying to convince you to vote independent and third party if you don’t vote rep which means throwing away votes in american voting system
Yep. I get the desire to want something different, I do. But it’s essentially impossible until the system changes. And the only way the system changes is through the Democratic party while Republicans are voted out.
Anyone pushing to not vote or vote third party is either politically ignorant or intentionally trying to do this to give Rs an edge.
That’s why even Bernie ran only as a Democrat for president.
The longest serving third party senator in history refusing to run third party for presidency says a lot about third-party politics.
Heh, how naive. Why would “democrats” do it? They’re quite happy with how it works, especially now that republicans’ voters are dying of old age. Everyone should vote a 3rd party, until then you guys are fucked. You basically have two right-wing parties.
republicans’ voters are dying of old age.
That’s not completely true…
True, but realistically they have no chance even with those, once their old voters die.
This has been proven wrong in the past. The Dems don’t have any intention to have anything else than a 2 party system, and they wouldn’t touch legislation that would enable it.
Dems aren’t going to fix it and reps want to destroy it and aren’t going to vote for someone who isn’t a rep so let’s just kill the democratic party in the name of “something new” - oh look we’re a full on fascist nation now because dipshits like you convinced stupid people that going full fasc is better than small incremental progress.
Like I get it, Dems suck they really do. But if you think destroying that party before republicans is going to result in improvment? Well let me make sure I stay far away from whatever you’re smoking cause it’s got you fucked up. Now go on, call me a centrist for being practical and not wanting to throw the country away, I you know you want to.
I agree with you, and can’t understand how it is so hard for people to grasp. It is a popularity contest, a numbers game. If you give votes to a candidate who has less than 1% chance of winning the election, you’re basically not voting at all. Our election system does not allow for third parties to ever realistically win.
It does, once all of you “would love to, but…” people actually do vote.
Did the person you’re replying to at any point suggest voting for Republicans or for a third party?
Lawrence O’Donnell:
If you don’t show them you’re capable of not voting for them they don’t have to listen to you. I promise you that. I worked within the Democratic Party. I didn’t listen or have to listen to anything on the left while I was working in the Democratic Party - because the left had nowhere to go.
What is the flaw in that reasoning? If I want Medicare for All and a neolib like Mayo Pete or Joe Brandon is the candidate and they don’t want Medicare for All, how does guaranteeing them my vote anyway get me Medicare for All? How do I punish them or otherwise push them my way other than refusing to vote for them?
Maybe the “moderate” Democrats that are indifferent or opposed to Medicare for All (I’m just using it as an example issue) should keep in mind that if they don’t support a progressive candidate progressives aren’t going to show up to vote and they’ll lose?
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Unfortunately I feel like we’re reduced to harm-reduction for many votes. Liberal voters may take your hypothetical approach of “if the Democratic presidential candidate doesn’t support Medicare for All then I won’t vote for them”, but that just helps a Republican candidate that will push for much worse policies ON TOP OF not supporting Medicare for All.
Republican voters (seem to) vote on single issues: guns, God, and/or abortion. Liberal voters seem to expect a much wider array of policy positions from their candidate and such candidates rarely exist.
2016 - “eh, Hillary doesn’t support Medicare for All so I won’t vote”. So we instead got the shit show we have today.
Well, I think O Donnell is an idiot. How much longer does he plan on not voting for them to get them to listen to him?
Which of these sounds more threatening to you – a consistent voter threatening to withhold their vote from a candidate in a primary, or a never voter threatening to withhold their vote in the general election?
It’s not the second person. I mean, I’d love their vote, but I’ve never gotten their vote before, and they’re threatening that I won’t get their vote again. There’s no change. If the first person changes though, I’m down a vote. In the primary especially, I want dedicated voters to support me. You have no leverage if you’ve never bothered getting leverage.
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If voting was done once and never again, you would be correct. However, there is voting every two years, if people voted in a blocked and the Dems lost, they would be forced to change their policy to attract back lost voters. They have no incentive to change if you openly admit you will always vote blue.
Of course, this also requires that the messaging is clear, last time the Dems lost they blamed it on Russians and deplorables rather than the fact that they have totally sold out the working class.
It’s difficult to pull off no doubt, but it would actually work at reforming the system.
Worked out so well in getting us a conservative dominated SC and has had consequences that will last a generation but sure, why not do it again
This doesn’t work when the party you allow to win will take away your vote and weaponize the justice department to a never before seen level. Just like how respect and norms don’t work at restraining fascists, neither does withholding your vote when fascists are so popular. If history has shown us anything, the dems are more likely to slide further right if better policies don’t win them more votes. Rich educated neolibs who want poor people to die, but not the gays, are a more consistent voting base then young people. If dems think they can steal more of those assholes from Republicans than bring out left wing dems, they’ll slide to the right.
Voting blocks are very successful at getting what they want, but they can only do that if their threat to not vote for the party in question is taken seriously. The NRA doesn’t get what it wants because it commits to always vote Republican no matter what.
I get your point of view, and my argument is overly idealized and difficult to implement, but I genuinely don’t see it working without the ability to use your vote to negotiate. Besides money, it is the only thing they care about. I’m not American, but from Canada, and I can tell you from an outsider’s perspective your two-party system looks completely dysfunctional. We basically have a three/four-party system for our federal gov and I’d take that any day over a two-party system. Granted America controls the reserve currency and the world army, so it was bound to consume itself at some point, maybe it doesn’t matter how it is set up.
I agree. Our system is terrible. We can form internal coalitions and vote for slightly better options in primaries, but because the enemy will actually kill us, we have to go with the shitty option in the end. The bigger issue is still the culture and propaganda, but the two party system kind of needs to exist because of the winner take all presidency.
Option 1. The party eating horse dewormer
Option 2. The party that if it fixes anything in under a decade it felt like it was being too radical.
It physically hurts me how true this is.
'Merica!
You forgot Option 1’s injection of bleach in order to annihilate covid that 100% was a hoax but a threat because China :)
If it comes down to Trump vs Biden again, I will begrudgingly but without hesitation choose Biden.
Biden has done absolutely nothing to improve my QOL. Still terrified of a medical issue. Friends still can’t afford homes. All of the major societal problems from the last 40 years are still here and there’s no one that will do anything about it.
This is not an endorsement of the GOP.
Is that really the fault of Biden though? His first two years were held hostage by Manchin and Sinema and now he no longer has a majority in the house. The president can only sign bills into law not make them out of thin air. I am not a huge Biden fan as I think he is too old to lead but I think he has done ok under the conditions he has.
It’s not his fault, but it explains why people don’t think voting will help.
That attitude is why Rowe v. Wade is gone now. The Parties are NOT the same!!!
Agreed that the bOtH sIdEs argument is utter bullshit.
However, Roe was never actually codified into law because it was a reliable rallying cry for Democratic politicians. Put another way: Democrats never seriously pushed to make Roe an actual law because it was politically beneficial to the party in elections.
Democratic politicians have bleated about protecting abortion rights for decades, but simultaneously completely ignored actually protecting abortion rights with laws.
Democrats never push to do anything that upsets the status quo. They are cowards. And any democrat who does push that agenda, is labeled some sort of extremist socialist nutjob.
This is why so many of us are outraged.
The DNC is almost exclusively just neoliberals at this point.
To be clear, they’re better than the GOP, but that’s also like saying Mussolini was better than Hitler because Mussolini didn’t execute as many people.
Exactly. The DNC only cares about the top 10% (their donor base).The RNC only care about the top 1% (their donor base).
Everyone else is basically voting for people who hate them and have zero interest in making this country better for the majority. If you don’t make like 200k+ a year, our political system basically thinks you should fuck off and die because you’re a waste of human flesh.
Channel your outrage in a way other than voting for a party making things worse. I get you want progress but the options are very very slow progress or regression…don’t vote for regression.
People are outraged because laws and public opinion have a statistical correlation of 0, unless you sample exclusively from the very top of the socioeconomic strata. That’s a very reasonable thing to be irate about in a country that’s ostensibly a democracy.
there is no productive way to channel it politically. everyone who is in office and running for office is 100% about maintaining the status quo because it benefits the top 10% to the detriment of everyone else in USA society.
all i can do is fix up my house. lol
I get you want progress but the options are very very slow progress or regression…don’t vote for regression.
If the best we can do is very slow progress it’s no wonder people don’t think voting is effective
There have never been 60 Senate votes to enshrine abortion. The last time Democrats had 60 Senate votes at all was for 2 months early in Obama’s first term – and many of those senators were Manchin style conservative Democrats.
If there were 50 votes in favor of ending the filibuster, then we might actually have enough. But we don’t have that either.
If not like voters were unaware of this either. The pro lifers made abortion a constant topic of discussion. If the electorate wanted Roe enshrined, they would’ve voted for more Democrats, and Democrats who won primaries would be pro choice.
The unfortunate reality is there’s never been enough votes to do so.
I completely agree that both parties aren’t the same, but the data shows that people don’t believe elections are a way to effectively create change. If people don’t think voting will help, they’re less likely to vote. It’s not that people like Republicans more than Democrats, it’s that they don’t like government.
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I know several people like this. It’s so hard to explain to them that a vote for the status quo is better than letting things get even worse. If we don’t halt the degeneration we can’t ever turn things around. You can’t push something up without first stopping its fall.
I think the hardest part is that the feedback loop for voting is too slow for people to see its effects. It took decades of consistent voting by conservative Christians to get Roe v. Wade repealed. The urgency of the messaging around voting during election season makes it seem - to a politically-uninterested observer - like each election is an end unto itself.
What really matters with voting is doing it consistently. It should feel like doing your taxes, not like an epic struggle for the future of the country. The idea that a single election will produce the kind of systemic change I think most people want to see is just wrong.
Well, decades of semi-consistent voting (wasn’t so consistent in 2006 or 08, just to grab two elections off the top of my head), and a couple billion dollars in dark money thrown at judges and law schools and think tanks to launder all their extremist garbage, which is something the left doesn’t really have
conservatives are more far-sighted than the democracts, yes. that is why they have been so much more successful.
they are also far more willing to lie, cheat, and steal. The democrats won’t.
Elected conservatives consistently work towards what they run on. Elected Democrats have this nasty habit of showing extremely public contempt for progressives, and then if they try to do anything at all toward fixing what they just showed contempt for, doing so quietly, all the while demanding fawning praise from progressives.
Progressives see what voting gets them. Republicans didn’t keep the public option from coming to the floor for a vote. Republicans didn’t give a cutesy thumbs down to increasing minimum wage. Republicans didn’t systematically rip BBB apart over the course of months. Progressives see Democrats have the means to improve things and find enough no votes to prevent that improvement, in some cases being gleeful about it. Every time they have a medical expense that their garbage insurance denies, they remember giving Democrats a supermajority and watching them find the votes to kill the public option. Every time they can’t make ends meet, they remember giving Democrats a majority and then watching Sinema’s thumbs down. Every time they spend too much for daycare, or can’t afford to put their child in pre-k, or can’t take medical leave, or afford community college, they remember giving Democrats a majority and watching Democrats dismantle BBB without any help at all from Republicans, extremely publicly over the course of months. And those scars reopen.
Democrats wonder why they don’t get immediate enthusiastic lockstep voting from the electorate. They never expect it from the elected.
Instead of spending 4 years saying we can’t do anything, maybe he should have taken a page out of trumps book and churned out so many executive orders the Republicans couldn’t keep up with trying to fight them all.
Maybe he could have used his influence to empower local political efforts where impact can be more powerful.
There’s plenty of things that could be done, but we excuse inaction.
You realize Biden broke Trump’s record for executive orders and appointments, right?
He did a ton of work, most of which was reversing Trump’s damage to Federal agencies like the EPA.
He also gave out stimulus. Student loan forgiveness was struck down by the Court, but they are putting together a secondary option. They’ve started to look into re-scheduling marijuana.
I don’t love everything he’s done. I could point to the railworker strike or foreign policy in the middle east as things I don’t like. But he has far exceeded my expectations for both accomplishing goals and for those goals being further left than I expected. He’s only done “nothing” if you decide to conveniently ignore all that he’s done.
You are fighting the battle of the informed. The attitudes in these comments are assumptions of the uninformed. Regardless of sides, thank you for your work.
So going back to ops comment - What has he done to improve your quality of life?
Normal people don’t give a shit about appointing judges or making their electricity more expensive through EPA regulations. They want something that increases the money in their pocket or makes their lives easier.
The overwhelming majority of people aren’t buying new EVs and getting a $7,500 credit.
Trump wanted to do the stimulus check too.
If we had Build Back Better (that is such a stupid fucking name) he would have actual tangible accomplishments. Like he could say do you remember when you were paying $300 a week for child care and now you’re paying $100 a week? How about those $300 a month checks were sending because you have a kid? How about that parental and family leave?
Unfortunately, even with his extreme deal making acumen, he couldn’t get his “friend” and member of his own party to vote for it so he has nothing to run on.
Normal people 100% care about appointing judges, because that has a huge impact on everyday life. We just saw the Supreme Court overturn Roe V Wade last year (filling the country with thousands of unborn children every year is going to effect everyone). This year they overturned affirmative action and student loan forgiveness. The reason Miranda Rights and gay marriage exists is because of Supreme Court decisions. Tons of state courts have had huge impacts on the drawing of districts over the last decade, either supporting or trying to eliminate gerrymandering. If you don’t think appointing judges impacts you, you need to go back to your 3rd grade social studies course.
The EPA helps to protect the air we breath, the water we drink, and the soil we grow our food in. If your electricity gets more expensive, blame your local provider for not seeing the writing on the wall in the last 40 years and switching to renewable and cleaner energy sources. Or blame yourself for not investing in solar. I don’t want to breath pollution just so you can get a few dollars off your electric bill.
Also you’re ignoring how Biden literally sent out stimulus checks. That is the single most direct thing a president can do.
There was the management of the oil reserves at the start of the Ukraine war, and the pressure he put on gas companies to stop price gouging. Even if you don’t drive, the price of gas effects everything you buy.
What are you looking for from the president? Head pats? Magicka tricks? Do you want him to fix your municipality’s terrible zoning laws? Do you want him to tell you it’s okay to be racist or bigoted?
Things Biden shoulda/coulda done
- Medicare for All (or at least substantially improving the ACA or some other mechanism of making health care cheaper)
- Card check (or how about just not fucking over the rail workers?)
- Paid paternal/family/sick leave
- Guaranteed vacation time
- $15/hr min wage
- Student loan forgiveness
- Free/reduced price college
- Free/reduced price childcare
- Child tax credit
- Expanding the earned income tax credit
- Medicare being able to negotiate drug prices (all drug prices now, not five different drugs a couple years from now)
- Marijuana legalization
- Universal Pre-K
Some sort of substantive action on climate change - for example: “We’re going to build 20 new nuclear plants in the next 10 years.” - “ICE vehicle sales will be mostly banned after 2035.” - “We’re going to build 15 new 1000 megawatt or bigger offshore wind farms and we’ve bypassed the normal red tape so they’re starting to be built right now.”
Some sort of substantive action on housing being expensive - maybe withhold federal funds from states/municipalities that don’t relax their zoning for more and multi unit building. Maybe have the federal government directly start building stuff.
Etc…
We did get that tax credit that brings down the cost of an EV to a price most Americans still can’t afford, so that’s good. (Sarcasm)
Marijuana legalization polls at like 70%+ including a majority of Republican voters and still zero movement there for some reason. Among Democrats it’s like 80%.
You just listed a ton of things that the Exexutivr Branch does not have the power to do. That applies to Medicare for All, Paid Leave, Vacation Time, Minimum Wage, Free/Reduced College/Childcare, the Child Tax Credit, expanding the EET Credit, universal pre-K, marijuana legalization, and allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug manufactures. You need to blame Congress, not Biden.
Biden has taken some measures on a lot of those fronts. He sponsored the bill you referenced that allows Medicare to start negotiating some drug prices. He directed the FDA to start reviewing Marijuana for rescheduling, which is as much as the Executive branch can do without further input from Congress. That’s pretty far from the “0 movement” you claim. The DoE tried Student Loan forgiveness and that just got shut down by the Judicial branch, and they have started the process to try again with a different law. The US President is not a dictator and can’t just implement these policies unilaterally.
I agree that I didn’t like the handling of the rail workers strike, but the unions ended up getting what they asked for.
On climate change, Biden has done a ton. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/04/20/fact-sheet-president-biden-to-catalyze-global-climate-action-through-the-major-economies-forum-on-energy-and-climate/. Is it enough? Hell no - to be honest it’s probably too late to actually do “enough”. But even some of what he has done has already been undone by the Judicial branch: he stopped leasing federal land to oil companies, but the judicial branch has been starting and stopping that through appeals.
Housing affordability is typically a local zoning and supply issue, though there are bills pending in Congress to address corporate investment in the housing market. I don’t know what you expect from the Federal Executive branch there. The federal government can’t just start building stuff on the whim of the president. They can build on federal land (within limits defined by Congress). Even Congress would probably struggle to do much with local building because that’s not their jurisdiction.
I’m going to assume you’re not American because you clearly don’t understand how the US government works. You’re just blaming everything on the President.
Trump honestly barely got anything done during his presidency, most of his executive orders were struck down. What he did get done (Supreme Court justices and tax cuts) was just what literally any Republican with a majority in Congress would have done. Biden has gotten more actual legislation passed than Trump did, and his attempt to legislate by executive order (student loan forgiveness) was as ineffective as Trump’s attempts.
A lot of trump’s executive orders got headlines for being struck down once, and then way less coverage when they tweaked them slightly and got them approved
You are so right. So let’s vote for the party that treats women as an incubator instead of a person.
It’s okay to criticize your party. You can vote for the lesser evil while still calling out the “evil” in the party you voted for. Hell I’d say it’s pretty important to be willing to hold ones leaders feet to the fire.
But it doesn’t mean everyone who is critical is voting Republican.
Yep.
Never criticizing your own party is how the republican party became what they are today.
We might not be able to change that, but we can try to prevent it from happening to the only other option in general elections.
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Similar to the other comment, “fault” doesn’t have a ton to do with it. Things needed to get done, and didn’t, so they still need to be done, and they (Biden and the Dems) aren’t capable of making it happen. That doesn’t really leave any good options but it’s not going to stop people from looking for one. This one is going to be the bad kind of exciting again.
Voting for the GOP will make things happen but in the wrong direction. Driving off a cliff while still moving is not very desirable in my book.
The issue is turnout.
I always vote, because I’m lucky enough to get paid time off work for it and little to no wait time.
Some people have to take a day off work and wait 4-8 hours in line.
We could sit around and complain about nonvoters, or we can try to increase voter engagement. But the party needs to make that choice too, and they’re not really great at the second option.
…but what’s the root cause of low turnout?
I’ll tell you: it’s because the vast majority of politicians that
we electour system railroads us into choosing between and electing are essentially useless grifter assholes, and are, with a few exceptions, either deeply uninspiring or straight up never follow through on things they campaign on. And our entrenched two-party system only makes it worse. And then there’s lobbying.Or, the shorter version: public opinion and the passage or rejection of laws in America have a statistical correlation of 0, unless you sample from the very top end of the socioeconomic scale
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Good bot
That’s the rub though. Trump makes people feel like they are doing something. That is far more motivating and powerful of a reason to vote for him than voting for Biden, who is the equivalent of sitting in traffic.
People want the country to fucking do something. Even if it is driving off a cliff.
People don’t have to vote for trump if they are disillusioned, they just don’t vote. If someone has to take a day off of work when they are already struggling for people who dont do shit for them in either direction, then why go vote? And i know what you are going to say, but maybe you should blame the system and fight it (cause you need more then just voting anyway) then the people who are being beaten by the system trying to survive. It honestly it amazing to me that people like you cannot fathom the apathy and lack of energy as the real issue. For some people it is a big issue to vote because of the systematic issues put before them, because Republicans and Establishment Dems alike know that if they vote they loose. Do you think i want trump to win? Im a Nonbinary autistic living with my trans wife. But you better fucking believe im going to call out the dems for this bullshit. If they fought just as hard against anyone slightly progressive from getting on ballots as they did for people to vote more easily then things would be different, but they enjoy their money just as much as the Republicans, their grift is just nicer in comparison to literal nazis. And they use that against us over and over but in 2016 they miscalculated (of course they did they are more out of touch each year). I hope a Republican doesn’t win but im not going to be shocked if they do and the dems are more to blame for this then voters who can’t vote for a variety of reasons.
2024 is going to age me 15 years, the shit that scares me is if the economy takes a serious hit from financial fuckery like in 2008. Im afeared that would make those who voted Biden in 2020 out of disgust to want give Trump another try
His first two years were held hostage by Manchin and Sinema
Yeah, but during the Georgia runoffs, Biden and party leaders kept encouraging people across the country to donate by saying “50 is enough to pass the party platform”.
So either they had no idea Sinema or Manchin would obstruct, or they knew it and lied to voters.
So trying to blame those two now makes the party look inept at best
they knew it and lied to voters
This is just called “being a politician”
I’m pretty sure blaming Manchin must be electoral strategy. He’s much more conservative than the average Democrat, but he’s still by far the most liberal senator that’s ever going to get elected in West Virginia, and the blame lets him campaign in a deep red state about how he owned the libs.
So…
You think the national party decided to lie about Manchin so that he could obstruct them…
And the goal was to make sure Manchin gets elected again, so he can continue not supporting the party?
I don’t think they’re lying, but them blaming him does help Manchin, and Manchin is the only chance Democrats have in West Virginia. For example, Manchin is to blame for concessions in the infrastructure bill, but Trump won West Virginia with 69% of the vote. The alternative to Manchin wouldn’t be a liberal who would pass an infrastructure bill with a greater commitment to green energy, it would be a far right senator who wouldn’t pass an infrastructure bill at all. Manchin is an net positive at the moment for Biden’s agenda, and progressives being so angry at him means he can campaign on not bowing to the far left agenda or whatever. Ideally there would be enough Democratic senators that Manchin wouldn’t matter, but anyone saying he should be primaried is honestly just delusional about who can get elected in West Virginia.
Do you support what he did to remove the railroad unions right to negotiate?
Yes. Unequivocally.
A lot of us (on both sides of the political spectrum) would prefer a president who prioritizes individuals over corporations. But I guess you’re free to have a different opinion, even if it makes you a bootlicker.
This decision literally prioritized individuals. If trains stop moving, people die.
I know you straight up don’t believe this, but cities run out of food within 48-72 hours. Hospitals run out of resources faster. Every single union member knew way their job entailed day 1.
This is personal to me, too, since my friend and neighbor works for that union. They got sick days, within weeks of the deadlock being broken by the gov.
Biden campaigned as the guy who can reach across the aisle to get things done. He can’t even get his own party on his side.
The down votes don’t make it less true guys.
It’s not mine. I’m not a union buster.
If he gets supermajority in senate and majority in house pretty sure you’ll get student loan relief, increased taxes for wealthy, expansion of ACA/Medicaid, and increased minimum wage. Otherwise, nothing will happen due to filibuster.
Most of the country is pretty strongly brainwashed against anything that helps reduce wealth inequality as socialism/communism/librul. If you want to improve your QOL your generation will have to vote as a uniform block and take what you deserve.
Let’s say they get a super majority and those policies still aren’t pushed through. What would you say we all do then?
You just got student loan relief again FYI.
Your personal desire for QOL improvements is not on the top of my priority list. Until United v Citizens is overturned and we get ranked voting, nothing will ever change. Even then, the US is the only country in the world that had to have a Civil War to decide if slavery was bad. And 30% of the country still refers to that conflict as a “lost cause” and the “war of northern aggression”. There are plenty of societies elsewhere that have more empathy for fellow citizens. If you’re looking for personal QOL improvements without having to take them for yourself, I don’t think this is the best environment for you.
Thankfully you aren’t the final say in prioritization of legislation. You think you’ve got it alllll figured out, yet here you are thinking dems are actually going to overturn citizens united, a move that would eliminate their stranglehold on us politics and end their days of being able to legally accept bribes while pointing at Republicans for their inability to do anything. Ranked choice voting is something each state will have to address on their own. There are many states that prohibit voter initiatives from getting ballot access through signatures. There are multiple states that have passed legislation banning ranked choice voting. Focus your efforts on things you can actually have an impact in driving.
Where did I say Democrats will overturn Citizens v United? And I understand how ranked choice voting works, I’m the one that brought it up. Do you even vote? Or do you spend all day complaining about a capitalist system that doesn’t satisfy your QOL enough?
And yet Republicans have never ever held a supermajority in the past 106 years since cloture was added to Senate rules.
Republicans win when they do nothing. They just need to obstruct.
You’re implying that the worst thing that Republicans have done in over a century is to obstruct. Seems to me that they’ve done much worse.
Dems had a super majority and did nothing with it during Obama.
Nice try Mitt Romney. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/debunking-the-myth-obamas_b_1929869
Obama had a supermajority and didn’t do those things because of Senators like Manchin and Lieberman.
If he gets supermajority in senate and majority in house pretty sure you’ll get student loan relief, increased taxes for wealthy, expansion of ACA/Medicaid, and increased minimum wage. Otherwise, nothing will happen due to filibuster.
Lol no he won’t. Democrats will do what they always do and find just enough no votes. They could have abolished the filibuster and accomplished everything they wanted last session. But that would require them to vote as a uniform bloc, and that’s just what Democrats demand of their voters, not their elected.
He’s done a few things that have helped a lot of people and tried to do more but Republicans and their pet SCOTUS have prevented some.
But a bigger question when voting has always been “who will hurt me less?”. And I know a LOT of people who suffered under Trump and who are currently suffering under DeSantis and many of his like-minded bigoted cronies in other states. So for me, there’s no consideration for not voting. I know what happens if the worse party/person wins so even voting for someone that sucks is better than helping an intolerable choice succeed by apathy.
Exactly. There’s basically two parties right now: the one running around setting things on fire, and the one beholden to corporate interests that won’t let them use a fire extinguisher or a water hose.
Is starting fires worse than letting an already started fire continue to burn? Yes. Are the currently burning fires going to be extinguished either way? No.
And the fires aren’t even metaphorical sometimes.
Eventually they’ll run out of fuel. Which is only reassuring if you’re not the fuel.
Very well summed up
It’s not very well summed up lol. It’s totally ignorant of how the American government functions, at a basic constitutional level.
How exactly are democrats supposed to pass these sweeping reforms?
I think people are getting to the point where they want the president to just do whatever, the courts be damned.
Like maybe if the court says that you can’t do your DACA or Clean Power Plan or student loan forgiveness you just tell the court to go fuck itself.
Or maybe if members of your own party sabotage your signature legislation you punish them.
Or maybe if you run as a guy that can get things done because you’re a deal maker that’s been in DC for a hundred years and everybody in the Senate is your friend… then actually get something done.
This is a really dangerous thing for people to want since we will most assuredly have a Republican president at some point again.
Biden has proven that he is a deal-maker by getting a LOT of shit done that frankly should not have been possible. He basically single-handedly brokered every deal made so far.
Exactly! Biden gets stuff done.™ That’s why we have free community college and no student loan debt today.
Biden got you a day in court for Student Loan debt, which is as far as he, personally could take you.
To go any further on either option requires Congress. Biden has gotten numerous things through Congress that are mind-boggling considering the hostile environment.
I understand you’re sad about not achieving policy victories but it would behoove you to learn how the US government actually functions, and maybe even to participate in it.
At the current moment, not a lot. What they needed to do was a whole lot of prevention of what we all saw that was coming and stop the republicans from changing and breaking the rules. A good analogy I read once was that you can build a fortress or a wall very strong, but given enough time without maintenance and active defense it will always be overcome. Our government is that fortress, and everyone has just assumed the power inherent in it is enough to stop bad actors and that everyone is acting in good faith, abandoning the wall and letting it be sabotaged. We need(ed) active defense of our democracy and the DNC refuses to.
How, exactly, were they supposed to do these things without control of the government?
They weren’t. My other main criticism of the democrats is how bad they are about publicizing when they do good things, but mostly their almost complete lack of pointing out where the republicans are being awful and fucking over the working class. There is so much material to go after the republicans on, and they do nothing with it. The republicans on the other hand will hammer on Dems all day long om shit that isn’t even real, get their base all riled up and angry to vote. If the Dems used people’s anger and upsettedness at the republicans to drive people to vote we wouldn’t be in the place we are today, they would have been able to have control of the government.
I do agree that whoever writes talking points for Dems should have been fired and the land salted behind them like 20 years ago
At the current moment, not a lot. What they needed to do was a whole lot of prevention of what we all saw that was coming and stop the republicans from changing and breaking the rules. A good analogy I read once was that you can build a fortress or a wall very strong, but given enough time without maintenance and active defense it will always be overcome. Our government is that fortress, and everyone has just assumed the power inherent in it is enough to stop bad actors and that everyone is acting in good faith, abandoning the wall and letting it be sabotaged. We need(ed) active defense of our democracy and the DNC refuses to.
Running electable candidates who actually want change would be a good start.
You need to change the minds of a lot of Americans to accomplish that.
Just the ones at the top.
That is absolutely false. The average American does not vote for candidates you want, which is why the candidates you want generally get blown out in elections.
If he’s the DNC nominee, I’ll still vote for him in the general election, but holy fuck am I tired of voting for the candidate that I hate less.
This, so much this. Fuck, it should have been Bernie.
Primary voting makes me feel a bit better. But that just changes it to fuck am I tired of my candidate losing the primary election. But unless you like somebody in the top two the most strategic option is always going to be voting for the candidate you hate the least. First past the post is just a garbage voting system that discourages voting because the most effective voting strategies feel bad.
fuck am I tired of my candidate losing the primary election
sad Massachusetts noises
It’s especially infuriating because the Dems don’t have to do anything to earn votes. All they have to do is be slightly less crazy and anyone who doesn’t want outright facism has no choice but to vote for them, whether they accomplish anything or not.
ETA: ok, “slightly” in this context is doing a lot of heavy lifting lol, Dems are a lot less crazy!
The bar for quality may as well be a speed bump, tbh
All they have to do is be slightly less crazy and anyone who doesn’t want outright facism has no choice but to vote for them, whether they accomplish anything or not.
And what’s worse, they know it. What’s even worse than that is they only have to lose once and are still playing the “well, the other guy is worse you have to vote for us” game. It’s unconscionably dangerous.
Ribbit
I support this. While the GOP base continues to shrink and die off, the Dems are doing no favors but continuing to make a vast swath of voters feel unrepresented. I was 18 when Obama came around in his first run and I felt represented then. I don’t think I’ve felt represented personally since then.
This is not an endorsement of the GOP. Just an echoing of the general feeling of invisibility.
I voted for him twice, but I have come to believe Obama did far more damage than good. And, his shameless narcissism and unwillingness to do anything of consequence, except kneecap the left, in his post-presidency have really turned me off.
I don’t know why any millennial would have any faith in the Democratic Party to substantively improve their futures, after having been bamboozled by Obama.
Because we don’t have any other choice in a first past the post system
I mean, I still don’t have any faith in the current Democratic party as a whole, but I think our best hope is primarying as much corruption out as we can and just using the party as a vehicle for decent leaders
The party leadership is corrupt. It regularly works against the interests of its voters in favor of its donors and its prerogatives. It is almost impossible to primary against the DNC’s backroom choices.
The party is a vehicle for donors and the entrenched class of managers and consultants who rely on it to ensure their own continued paychecks and influence.
Glad you know added that last sentence, but I know manny young liberals who tell me they will vote for Trump or DeSantis because Biden hasn’t gotten enough done. Republican obstructionism works and it’s scary.
I question how liberal they truly are
You know a lot of young republicans who say their liberal so they don’t get ostracized by their friends, who are looking for any and every excuse to vote how they really want.
Let’s be honest here.
Why did you @ me?
It’s a kbin thing.
I don’t think I like that paint color so I am going to repaint it with Diesel and light a match.
Yeah I’ve been called GOP stooge too many times. It’s fucking infuriating.
The GOP are a terrorist organization and the Dems are a neoliberal capitalist status-quo do-nothing party.
I wish we had a real left.
Too busy given money to Israel
But he passed an infrastructure bill that will fix roads that should have been fixed already.
You think Biden can unilaterally lower housing prices in two years??
Yes. All he has to do is tie federal aid to states and cities/towns to density/zoning requirements.
My state passed a law two years ago that citys/towns that have public transit stops must have minimum density requirements around those transit stops… or they get zero state aid for their budgets anymore. The law was pushed by the governor primarily.
Guess what happened? every city/town that has those stops (except like two super wealthy ones who are suing the state over the law, because they don’t want the horrible ‘poors’ who only make 100k/yr moving there) is building 100s to 1000s of new units of housing.
It is really that simple.
The sad thing is the USA is full of brilliant people who can fix our country and make it great. We know what the policy solutions are and that they work. We simply lack the political will make those changes because our politicians are lazy, stupid, and cowardly, and so our most of our voters.
All he has to do is tie federal aid to states and cities/towns to density/zoning requirements
lol, what a joke, you think he even has the authority to do that? and do you realize the absolute shitshow of a right wing wave we’d have if he tried?
it’s his fucking job to do that.
everyone lost their shit in my state when the govt pushed it. then he campaigned and he convinced the legislators and he got the votes. It took years. it was controversial, it’s still controversial. lots of old shithead people regularly protest the new housing, but guess what? state money talks a lot louder to cities/towns than a bunch of angry old people.
The role of the president is to coerce and push congress to codify his agenda. If he can’t do that he’s not doing his job.
But you’d rather make excuses for him than hold him accountable.
Yeah, votes, so he can’t do it
I’m sorry but you’re being very disingenuous if you think any number of Republicans would go for what you are asking, and you blame Biden because of it
I kind of feel like a lot of folks here might be focusing on the wrong thing. If you’re upset with the DNC leadership, etc, then it’s not even a question of turnout for the presidential election. The only way to change the party is voting at a local level. That’s the long-term view. Vote on the people you want to see as leaders locally, and support them as they move up the chain.
Is this easy/fast? Hell no. A major frustration I have at all levels — local, state, and federal — is how Democrats seem to refuse to build a bench and stick to incumbents because of a multitude of reasons people have already expressed here. But that’s the only way to start, and it’s a hell of a better reason than “stop the GOP.”
100% this.
The Republicans have made it a point that there will be NO ticket where a democrat runs unopposed. They knew local laws would help. Hell, right now you can’t get a head of a library fight going without the republicans turning it into an outright vicious fight. They want to control all levels of government and are willing to do it. I was pissed during the election on Hillary on “Well, she’s not good enough” while not paying attention that they were aiming at the Supreme Court.
When it’s said “Go out and vote” it isn’t meant every 4 years when the presidential fight is up. It’s that daily grind over stupid petty laws that they chip away on in the cities, counties, etc that you need to be able to show up. The Republicans, and if you consider them separate the far right absolutely get this. I am shocked by the lefts inability to comprehend it.
“Just vote local” I’m from the Rio Grande Valley and saw firsthand that the national party will openly support an anti-choice pro-gun candidate if the alternative is a progressive. They would rather women lose rights and children be murdered in school than the nightmare scenario of a candidate who might one day consider voting to raise the minimum wage. When the party quits pulling shit like that, I’ll quit pointing it out.
Point it out. Fight to support candidates who represent you. That is literally what primary season is for.
But when it is time to vote against republicans:? It is time to pick the lesser of two evils. Or else we lose even more basic human rights.
I have every right to be mad as hell when my party opposes progressives harder than it opposes republicans. I already vote for democrats. I’m a good little hostage to the lesser evil. You don’t have to gloat that I’ll never have a real choice in the matter.
EDIT: I needed to bold that because centrists kept missing it their rush to be condescending.
Where is anyone saying you don’t have the right to be mad when the Major Party that represents you squashes Progressives. I sure don’t see that anywhere in this thread.
All I see is that people are telling you that you have every right to fight for Progressive candidates, but when push comes to shove and the choice is between the Red tyrant, and the Blue spineless creature, don’t be distracted by the Green and Yellow ‘protest’ votes because you didn’t get the progressive you wanted. The cost of doing that may well see our Republic replaced by a Republican Dictatorship.
Imma about to drop some history on you. The United States has only seen three instances of a Minor Party becoming a Major Party in its history, and all three changes corresponded with the first three ‘Party Systems’ in the United States. The Zeroth Party System (my own term) was that idealistic time when Washington publicly advocated for no parties, while aligning himself with what would arise as the First Party System in 1789. This put Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans against the Adams’ and Hamilton-led Federalists. Both parties had a bit of a breakdown in the early 1820s, with Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans breaking off into a more Jacksonian Democratic Party as Jeffersonian principles got left behind, and the Federalists outright replaced by the Whigs, as the Second Party System got started. Then, as Slavery became a big issue, the Whigs got left behind by events as the Republicans emerged to oppose the Democrats in the Third Party System.
The Whigs being replaced by the Republicans was the last time a Minor Party rose to prominence in US politics, despite there being between 3 and 4 more party systems. The Fourth Party System saw the Republicans grow out of their anti-Slavery roots as they became the party of Industrialisation, while the Democrats continued their historical role as Voice of the South and everything that represented. The Democrats started evolving away from their role of being the party of Southern Landowners to more speaking for the common man as Northern Democrats embraced FDR’s New Deal. And the Sixth System saw the Republicans embrace the dissatisfied Southern (Conservative) Democrats when the Democrats embraced minorities after the 1960s. Not once after 1856 has any party come anywhere close to upsetting the Democrats and Republicans, with MAYBE the closest being Ross Perot in the 1990s.
There’s a new realignment going on now. Civil Rights has been absorbed into a much larger question. The Republicans and their core Southern Dixiecrat constituency has decided that the work of winning elections should be dispensed with, and they given dictatorial powers in the United States. Let me make this clear to you, Ensign. You grumble about how mean the Dems are to Progressives. We just want to remind you that Republican voters are gleefully sharing pictures of a stolen cartoon character wearing Trump’s hair and a Nazi SS officer’s uniform, forcing people ranging from Hillary and Obama, through people like you, down to Minorities and Jews and Gays, into very clear cartoon reproductions of gas chambers and ovens. We’re saying that the OTHER side will be following the rules of “Vote for our guy in the closest Major Party primary, and the Major Party candidate closest to our ideology in the General.” Either we do that as well, or we go down like the Left did in Iran in 1980 when the Ayatollah in Iran outlawed the very same Anarchists, Intellectuals, Artists, and Leftists that worked with him to overthrow the Shah.
Let me make this clear to you, Ensign. You grumble about how mean the Dems are to Progressives. We just want to remind you that Republican voters are gleefully sharing pictures of a stolen cartoon character wearing Trump’s hair and a Nazi SS officer’s uniform, forcing people ranging from Hillary and Obama, through people like you, down to Minorities and Jews and Gays, into very clear cartoon reproductions of gas chambers and ovens.
I don’t need reminding. It’s already clear. It’s why I already vote for Democrats. It’s why I said I vote for Democrats in the comment you’re replying to. Thanks for the condescension and the history I already know.
All I see is that people are telling you that you have every right to fight for Progressive candidates, but when push comes to shove and the choice is between the Red tyrant, and the Blue spineless creature, don’t be distracted by the Green and Yellow ‘protest’ votes because you didn’t get the progressive you wanted. The cost of doing that may well see our Republic replaced by a Republican Dictatorship.
The question isn’t whether or not we are going to be turned into a dictatorship, it’s how soon. The “spineless blue creatures” you mention are allowing things to slowly move in that direction. If nothing major changes, we will be there eventually. The blue creatures need to wake the hell up, stop taking the corporate money, and save the country if that is truly their objective.
Honestly? Grow up. This crap is too important not to.
You didn’t get what you wanted. Neither did I (I was ready to vote for fricking Yang if it meant moving a few notches toward UBI).
You know who else didn’t get what they wanted? Roughly half the population of the united states who lost a basic human right because people couldn’t get off their asses and vote for Hilary.
So rather than sit there and say “woe is me” and act like you are the greatest victim: Maybe consider who the actual victims are when people throw hissies?
Honestly? Grow up. This crap is too important not to.
Honestly? I vote like you want already. You don’t get to order me to be happy about it.
You know who else didn’t get what they wanted? Roughly half the population of the united states who lost a basic human right because people couldn’t get off their asses and vote for Hilary.
I voted for Clinton in 2016. I’ve been blamed for her loss ever since by people like you because evidently I should have faked an orgasm when I did.
You will never make the corpocrat supporters happy until you kneel and pledge lifetime fealty to the DNC. Best to stop trying to appease them.
I’ve seen more hostility directed at progressives on this thread alone than I’ve seen directed at fascists on all of this instance. It’s greatly discouraging, because I thought I left reddit.
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That was tried with Bernie. And they put their thumb on the scale.
What a shame that an 81 year old man (who used to be the “nobody cares about cspan” meme) is the last hope of all of humanity
Bernie failed. Why doesn’t matter. What matters is that you dust yourself off, and continue fighting the good fight. POTUS matters for the supreme court, but not for “change”. For that, you need local politicians and state representatives. Because then? The party will “put their thumb on the scale” in your favor because the party is you. The Squad might be a bit stupid at times, but they are 100% what we need to be pushing for.
The DNC of today is a LOT farther left than the DNC of even Bill Clinton. It is far from perfect and needs a LOT of work, but even Joe “I wish I was a cop” Biden has been pushing some really good stuff as his big efforts (and dicking over unions but… Liberals).
Same in Pittsburgh. The DNC backed the incumbent who was so conservative he ran on the Republican ticket when he was successfully primaried off the Democratic ticket by a progressive. The progressive won the general election too, but the DNC sure want happy about it.
The DNC doesn’t have any involvement in local candidates, they’re only concerned about the presidency. You probably mean the DCCC if you’re talking about a house rep. DNC is not short for the Democratic party, it’s a specific committee.
I’m kind of at the opposite end of the experience. We usually have one guy in each of the blue column items, totally unopposed locally.
That district is somewhat rural in West Texas right?
Yeah, even fighting locally can be really frustrating, and I live in a supposedly extremely progressive area. It can be even more frustrating when people will be all, “I’m not conservative, I voted for Obama/Clinton/Biden!” as if that means anything. Still, it heartens me to find like-minded people out there fighting the endless fight, because they are out there.
I don’t blame people for moving to a different party, since they almost always vote for the Democrat anyway if there’s even a chance that that seat is in danger. I personally believe in making change from inside the party, but to be entirely honest I’m pretty burnt out and am taking an indefinite break. :\
Problem with local level stuff is that being a politician is a full time job for part-time pay. So who could possibly take off all that time from work and take the financial hit? Two groups: Retired people and Rich people. The two groups that are out of touch with the common working person.
Retired oldsters are the worst. My Father in law has been planning this big thing for his 50th wedding anniversary and only on monday did he come to the realization that having it on a thursday (today) instead of saturday would mean people needed to take a day off to attend a 9 am breakfast followed by more.
Oh and he asked if I’d had a chance to check the tie rods on his motorhome yet, he asked last night after dark, and seemed upset that I hadn’t instantly put his whims to the top of my list of shit to do.
I’m picking on him here but all that retired generation are like this in my experience. To call them out of touch with with the common working person is a MASSIVE understatement.
Biden is a status quo guy and I didn’t expect him to do much other than try to fix all the shit Trump destroyed from Obama. He probably could’ve done more but oh well. All we can do is make sure Republicans don’t win again. But it’s tough when they change laws to benefit them while they’re in power.
I remember reading Obama deported more people than Trump.
And I remember reading that they changed the definition of deport to include people refused entry.
Also it still wouldn’t be apples to apples since the overall decline in the US economy has meant less people trying to get in.
I’m sorry, cause us to “stay home”? Trust me, NBC. We are not “staying home”. We’re fucking voting the shit out of this cesspool
Gee. When both the GOP and RNC are pushing shitty candidates no one wants is it any surprise that populists like Trump and DeSantis pop up?
It’s not just young voters who are upset, it’s everyone who isn’t over the age of 70.
If young people were more active in politics, we wouldn’t be running “moderates” in their 70s…
So Dem party leaders try to walk a fine line between motivating the youth vote enough to beat republicans in the general, but not enough that they vote in the primary.
It’s why we still get republican presidents some times.
Lol its amazing people can say shit like this with a straight face after Bernie. The democratic party said “no fuck you, its us or trump take your slightly socialist dude and fuck off” and a lot of young people did. Thankfully a lot of them took their work in politics and moved it to labor organizing, but please miss me with the “young people just need to get involved” shit when it has proven that any time they do, they get slapped down by said establishment dems. Systematic problems need systematic solutions. If “go vote blue no matter what” spent just as much energy fighting against systematic barriers to voting like gerrymandering, days off, mail in ballots, etc as they did finger wagging and yelling at younger people (cause you know, that’ll help) we might be somewhere different.
Don’t even get me started on the fact that we need more then voting.
IMO labor action is more effective and important than electoral action
Let me preface this by saying I’m 28 – I’m in the “young person” category. Young people have no one to blame but themselves.
Let’s first agree that if 60-80% of young people voted, it wouldn’t matter what other Democrats thought. What the young voters wanted would overwhelmingly win, no matter what attempts there were or weren’t to hamper Bernie.
Bernie’s campaign had a clear goal and argument for victory – turn out young people and disaffected blue collar workers in numbers never seen before. This group would easily win against any candidate, Democrat or Republican.
But that didn’t happen. Bernie offered student loan forgiveness, free college, free weed, universal and free healthcare, and drastic climate actions. And that still wasn’t enough to turn out the youth vote. I don’t know what else he could possibly offer to get more young people voting. Don’t believe me? Take it from Bernie himself: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/powerup/2020/03/05/powerup-young-voters-are-turning-out-in-lower-numbers-than-bernie-sanders-expected/5e6018d6602ff10d49ac2c83/
“Have we been as successful as I would hope in bringing young people in?” Sanders remarked at a news conference in Burlington, Vt., after his disappointing Super Tuesday performance. “And the answer is no, we’re making some progress.” “It is not easy,” he added about mobilizing young voters.
Do you know what the takeaway is from this? “It doesn’t matter if you offer young people everything they want. They will won’t get out and vote.” Young people have no one else they can blame for this.
I want to see progressive progress, and I’m guessing you do too. We can’t do that by pointing to the DNC as the culprit if all of our issues. There were mistakes that we need to correct and we need to reengage with the public to see why messages didn’t land. Otherwise you’re just going to say in another 4 years that the DNC rigged it against progressives again, because you changed nothing but expected a different outcome.
I can’t tell if you didn’t read my whole comment, or just didn’t understand it…
Short of a constitutional convention that probably results in the balkanization of the United States I don’t see how individuals manage to overthrow their corporate overlords and their bought government in the US.
Condolences to all of the people held hostage to vote for democrats on a harm-reduction line.
It’s probably the correct play, but man do I feel for all of you.
Electoral college results for 2020 election.
Biden 306 Trump 232
when I get to the ballot box, I vote for the candidates that most closely align with my policy positions. others are free to criticize, complain, and vote however they like. I don’t owe anyone my vote, except maybe the future generations that stand to benefit from the policies I support. I find telling others how and who they should vote for to be detrimental to increasing the turnout that’s desperately needed. #pleasejustvote
Hell, I’m a Gen X’er and I’m not happy with either party. I literally cringe knowing it’s going to be Trump vs Biden in the next election. And no matter what either party says, it’s all fucking lip service. Dems had control for 2 years and couldn’t pass shit. They’re supposed to be pro union, but we all saw how that played out. And Conservatives are more worried about transgenders and Hunter Biden than fixing the fucking economy. We’re so screwed for the next 5 years
Democrats had a wildly successful 2 years and unions are booming.
Yeah go tell that to the railroad workers that dont get any sick days cuz Biden fucked them over
Unions in general maybe doing good but the one major union thing he had direct control over he sided with the corporations in the name of protecting the economy because they are too big to fail
The railworkers got their sick days: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/01/railroad-workers-union-win-sick-leave
Maybe try talking about things you’re informed about instead of spreading lies?
I’m glad it ended up well. I understood why they needed to prevent a strike back then. I didn’t like it. But I understood it was the least shitty option.
I expected that to be the end of it, and I’m glad it wasn’t. It seems the Biden administration went right back to antagonizing the rail companies until they finally gave. It isn’t good politics, but it is good governance, and I’ll take that any day.
I expected that to be the end of it, and I’m glad it wasn’t.
Same here. I wish Democrats had made a huge deal about it.
Everyone saw Biden the strikebreaker. Everyone saw him promise to keep working for rail workers, but we’ve seen Democrats say they were going to keep working for the public option and raising the minimum wage. There are still plenty of people who don’t know about the sick days because Democrats are garbage at messaging, ashamed of their accomplishments, or both.
Unionization is pitifully low in the US. To suggest they are booming is like someone saying they got a massive raise this year because their boss almost matched it to inflation.
Honestly I’m just so fucking thankful Biden just got the fuck out of the way of science and medical experts in addressing covid instead of fanning bullshit conspiracy theories like drinking bleach and ivermectin shit. It was so cringe that Trump would hijack expert panels on covid. He sounded like the obnoxious freshman in college who thought he’d stump the professor.
Also thank fuck the Putin bootlicker Trump didn’t get a second term. Pretty clear Putin was banking on that for a more fragmented West.
Worth noting that, no, Democrats did not have complete control for 2 years. If you believe this, then you do not understand how the Senate works as of late.
Reconciliation is literally the only way anything gets passed unless it’s something both parties have no choice to support.
Well to be fair the filibuster guarantees almost nothing gets done while Congress is not at a 2/3rds majority
Do you want cancer or do you want covid? I know which one I’d take.
Yeah, they are sooooo pissed off that they couldn’t be bothered to show up at the polls in the last election.
6 years ago Bernie Sanders, one of the most left-leaning candidates in our modern history, ran on a platform that depended on the youth vote. He was utterly destroyed in the primaries because the youth vote never materialized. And this type of thing has happened time and time again.
In the last election, it should have been especially important for the youth what with an endless stream of school shootings, anger toward inaction on climate change and the whole student loan debacle. These are all massively important topics for the youth - or at least they should be - and they couldn’t be bothered to go out and vote in full force. Something like 75% of the youth of this country sat this election out. 75%. That’s pathetic.
But now all of a sudden they are going to act pissed off?
Yeah, I don’t really buy it either. Gen Z and younger seem significantly more pissed off at Republicans, if anything. At least, they ought to be.
Our oldest (tuned 18 in Dec) wanted to register to vote right away and was voting in midterm elections this spring. Our youngest is 17 and he’s already looking forward to being able to vote in the presidential election next year. It seems like them and their friends are absolutely wanting to get out and vote and they’re all very much liberal and we’re in a county in PA that was Trump +16 in 2020.
@CafecitoHippo Very nice.
Yeah, they SHOULD be.
And yet they take out their frustrations by posting funny memes on Reddit or snarky comments on Twitter… in other words - gestures that mean nothing. Dumb memes don’t change policies. Voting in numbers does. My generation never had the size of people to ever go up against the Boomers, and yet this younger generation does and time and time again, they prove to be utterly useless. They can go bury their heads in their phone and think watching TikTok all day will solve anything.
@Hazdaz Mostly agree, though they do seem to be mobilizing - at least far better than we (I’m a Millennial) ever did. Long term engagement will probably remain a problem, but we’ll see.
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Sure thing Boris, whatever you say.
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Did he just sit around twiddling his thumbs for 4 years?
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I love how young people are simultaneously nonvoters who can be ignored and a vital constituency who must vote in every election even though they’ve been ignored.
In fairness, 6 years ago plenty of Gen Z were not of voting age yet. The oldest portion of that generation is 26 this year. Also, back then there was a level of apathy to politics that really allowed plenty of shenanigans. Until COVID, that was the general consensus that politics were for their parents or for their grandparents. The last 6 years have shown otherwise, and recent voting turn outs in red states show a swing of younger activism.
I do think dragging millennials into this conversation does weaken that argument though as that generation has been majority voting age for over a decade. They’ve been shown to have an intense outrage culture but the lack of commitment to do anything about it, which thankfully the activism and general “fuck the establishment” attitude the tide pod kids have might actually make a difference this time around.
Also, Bernie dropped off the ballet before anyone could vote for him when the Democratic party didn’t consider him their primary pick. I like the guy and did write him in myself (and most likely he would’ve won had he remained on the ballet), but the removal of him as a “default” candidate in our system is why so few voted for him, thinking their votes would either ultimately not make a difference, or that they would allow the opposition (whichever side) to win by not voting within the lines.
Add in that many younger voters and many of us who are independent aren’t allowed to vote in the Democratic primaries at all. Not to mention that the media have also been actively lowering visibility of any Democratic presidential candidate who hasn’t been a decade+ dedicated fall-in-line Democrat.
Clinton was basically sold as the only candidate running for months before the primaries started and presented as much to fight Bernie’s popularity through most of the primary season. Marianne Williamson, who is supported by a large percentage of younger folks for the 2024 elections, isn’t even mentioned while Biden is listed essentially as having no competition. Just like the gerrymandering propping up Republicans in many locations, the deck is stacked against anyone who isn’t already backed by the established parties. Trump broke through, though using a combination of what nearly helped Bernie break through but also fully supporting the angry activists that didn’t think the Republican party was ddoing enough at the time.
Seriously, unless you have open primaries in your state don’t do the dumbass thing that my contemporaries did back in the day and play the “I’m edgy, I’m an independent” act.
You know you aren’t going to be voting Republican, just register Democrat and vote in the damn primaries and help the rest of us get these crappy moderates out.
Being registered doesn’t tag you with a scarlet letter, you just get some annoying texts every once in a while, nothing like being a registered Republican which is both a blessing and a curse, and mailers your get anyways. So please do the rest of us a huge favor and get your and your friends to register and participate in the primaries so we can push back on the narrative that moderates are the only ones that can win.
Marianne Williamson
She’s also a horrible person. She promoted woo woo alternative medicine and said diseases were just a “psychic scream” from our body because we didn’t love it enough. Gay men dying of AIDS stopped taking their medicine because they thought taking it meant that they didn’t trust their body. They died thinking they just didn’t love themselves enough.
And when she was asked about this, she became super defensive and abrasive. A normal person who finds out their words have inadvertently caused suffering would be horrified by it. Instead, she claims she didn’t say what she directly wrote in her book.
Fair point, but she is getting a lot of notice and support from the younger crowd and the fact that she doesn’t even get listed in the mainstream media (while Trump and RFK Jr get publicity), which adds to why the younger generations are just completely disillusioned by the media and both parties. Remember how Hilary’s mocking of Sanders’ supporters was normalized by the media and even publicity since then, which makes many think that we dodged a bullet with Hilary losing, even though Trump was far far worse because both look like narcissistic jerks that gave us no real options in 2016 to anyone under 50 (and quite a few older than 50 at this point, I suspect). Having one side seem so far right that they make them look like part of the Nazi party doesn’t help the Democratic party get away from clearly being to the right of Reagan Republicans of the 1980s in most cases. We just have a much slower descent to corporate rule instead of at least trying to reverse it.
On the one hand, that’s just how primaries work. The field winnows down to 2-3 candidates, and then the others drop when it becomes mathematically impossible. Democrats also have a system that tries to award delegates based on performance, not winner takes all. There typically can’t be an insurgent candidate unless they are the clear favorite.
But on the other hand, and more importantly, why do primaries have to work this way? It makes no sense to me that we space out primaries like this, and let the results influence votes. Bernie probably would’ve done better in '20 and worse in '16 if we had all the votes the same day. Trump wouldn’t have been a thing. There is some value in having drawn out races, because it lets you learn about candidates you didn’t know beforehand and they grow a base of supporters.
I think the best path is to have multiple rounds of voting, over time, for each state. Hold a debate week 2, over multiple nights if the field is large, and then every state votes on week 6. Candidates below X% total are removed from the race. Have another debate with those who remain, and then another vote, and drop the lowest candidate(s). This should capture the best of everything.
Maybe we can get kids to get out and vote if democrats actually start doing something for the people instead of coddling corporations and sitting on their asses while republicans strip away our civil rights.
But instead, the Republican party is full of nazis and the Democrats are collaborators who use the outrage of younger generations for fundraising.
This is the type of arrogant attitude that drives away young voters. The democrats have had 15 years to get ANYTHING done on guns, climate change, health care, and student loans and they didn’t do jack shit. It’s not they’re “all of the sudden” pissed off, they’ve been pissed off.
The first democratic primary I voted in one of the main issues was a single-payer health care system supported by Hilary Clinton and single-payer public option supported by Obama. With a super majority in the senate and a majority in the house they still couldn’t get shit done. Now they can’t even endorse medicare for all as a party.
Obama was the candidate of tackling climate change, was in office for 8 years, still didn’t get shit done.
Biden campaigned on student loan forgiveness, still didn’t get shit done.
So what did 15 years of voting for democrats get me? A party that moved further to the right. Guess I just need to vote harder?
At some point, if you’re Charlie Brown and Lucy keeps yanking the football away you have to be an idiot to keep trying to kick it.
Youth will begrudgingly vote for democrats because it’s the least shit option they have, but don’t pretend like they’re actually voting for any meaningful change.
The democrats have had 15 years to get ANYTHING done on guns, climate change, health care, and student loans and they didn’t do jack shit.
If you ignore everything the Democrats have in fact done on those topics, then sure, they haven’t gotten ANYTHING done.
Honest questions, I would love to be wrong on all these.
What did they get done on guns? Mass shootings are almost double what they were in 2016, gun violence is still out of control.
Climate change? The Paris climate accord? The one that was non-binding and Trump just walked away from? Are you talking about tax credits and carbon taxes? We’re still on a freight train to climate disaster. There isn’t a lot of time for slow progress on this one.
Health care? Are you talking about Obamacare? I was actually ecstatic when this passed, I have pre-existing conditions that meant that I couldn’t even get health care, so at least I could get a plan now. What ended up actually happening is I was forced to pay monthly for a plan that didn’t actually cover anything short of getting hit by a bus, and that the insurance could deny any treatment my doctor suggested. I guess that’s something?
Student loans? That just got struck down by the supreme court, which other democrats like AOC were sounding the alarm about happening when it was first announced.
I consider getting something done when the problem is solved, not half-measures that make little to no meaningful progress.
I say this as someone who actively organizes for democratic causes, I canvas, I phone bank, I give any time I can afford to this stuff. It’s really hard to get people motivated when you can’t point to any meaningful progress on these issues, and it’s even harder to enact change when people who agree with you can’t even see that meaningful change hasn’t occurred.
I’m pretty deep on energy so I can speak to some of this.
There’s record investments going on right now in research on energy efficiency, thermal energy storage (duck curve), and renewable energy sources. Heat pumps are almost too trendy. It’s been nuts seeing the number of projects getting funded for research that never had a chance in the last administration. This research isn’t just theoretical, there is heavy interest in feasibility studies and impacts on implementation. This is especially true in engagement with smaller and medium sized businesses. We’re talking discounts of 50-70% (sometimes free).
There’s actually quite a few programs that exist federally for decreasing energy use and/or energy intensity (which in most cases means less carbon emissions) for industrial energy users. With the Biden admin, the outreach game has fundamentally changed and there has quite possibly never been this level of excitement before in the space. There is so much money in play here for businesses (we’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars per qualifying business per year) that professionals will recommend free federal programs before doing their own professional energy audits. Even with professional services, the government is still putting out major incentives.
The feds are even focused on giving experience in energy efficiency work that it could be done with an associate’s degree with job experience included instead of a traditional four year college. In some states, this is a free education.
There are tax incentives for buying electric cars, government fleets are moving to electric, revisions to CAFE standards and attempts to mitigate the loopholes that SUVs thrive in within it.
For larger businesses, tax incentives are not slow. They can be the deal breaker on whether the project happens at all. Discussing tax incentives, incredibly good loan programs, and grants can fundamentally change the tone of conversations. All of these topics are not theoretical, I am speaking from experience in conversations I have personally led. Shifts from “this is way too expensive” to “ok, we would be stupid not do this project.”
If you want further reading, concentrated solar power, combined heat and power, and hydrogen based energy are all popular and growing fields right now due to government investment in research and implementation. And again, I’m not talking pure theory here, these projects are actively being implemented in real scenarios right now. Heall, filtering biogas to produce methane is ridiculously profitable and reduces overall greenhouse gas emissions. Natural gas companies will literally pay waste water treatment plants to hook into their lines.
Drives me nuts when people talk about lack of climate progress. Sure, we haven’t become carbon neutral in two years, and there hasn’t been a fancy international agreement lately, but saying progress is slow or not getting done is a hot take. There is a lot happening right now and it isn’t always advertised. The energy efficiency industry, as far as I am aware and experienced, has never been this excited. We used to make arguments to businesses that energy efficiency was important, would save money, increase resiliency and so on. Now, they actively reach out.
Drives me nuts when people talk about lack of climate progress. Sure, we haven’t become carbon neutral in two years
Drives me nuts when people mischaracterize anger fostered by decades of inaction as impatience.
I do not see this as impatience, I understand people are upset. It is difficult to see decades of work (many of these programs first started in the 70’s) on something I am very passionate about disregarded as inaction. That is the source of my comment. Slow? Yes. Underfunded? Historically yes. Inaction? No.
Believe me, if we could get carbon pricing started tomorrow, I would be exhilarated. Let’s kick up nuclear again.
Thanks for your well researched and thoughtful response, I really do appreciate it.
What I hear from most young people on the ground is global emissions are still rising, and climate catastrophe is already happening.
People won’t care about industrial energy efficiency when they don’t have a place to live because a wildfire destroyed their house. A tax break for an electric vehicle means nothing to a young person who can’t even afford a car loan. I can tell you of people I tried talking into getting their heating/ac/gas stove replaced with a heat pump/electric oven and tax-credit and were told they simply can’t afford the up front cost of replacing their HVAC or gas stove.
Climate change is here and it’s going to take a massive unified effort, democrats have to think bigger than tax breaks and loans.
Thanks for your well researched and thoughtful response, I really do appreciate it.
Of course :)
they simply can’t afford the up front cost of replacing their HVAC or gas stove.
I’m not as knowledgeable about residential, but there is some work here as well. There are some recent programs focused on weatherization, for example programs to reinsulate homes at no cost or to install new doors, but these are smaller and I believe means tested. Residential is hard because there just isn’t that much work to do that makes sense financially. For carbon, it is probably easier to enroll in a local utility’s green power programs and reduce/eliminate beef consumption than replace windows that aren’t broken. This is one of the biggest reasons why industrial energy is the focus because a home’s energy use (say, 200 kWh based on some of my apartment bills) is negligible compared to modestly sized businesses that consume millions of kWh annually. This is part of where progress in energy efficiency disappears.
I do have a colleague working on getting combined heat and power systems into homes, but we haven’t talked enough for me to comment much on it other than there is interest.
democrats have to think bigger than tax breaks and loans.
This is where alternative energy systems and investments in energy infrastructure come into play. Investments in research, feasibility, implementation.
People won’t care about industrial energy efficiency when they don’t have a place to live because a wildfire destroyed their house.
To be fair, in my experience most people don’t care already :). I have family members who call my job a joke, unfortunately. But yes, the inescapable results of our actions or lack thereof over the last two centuries of industrialization will continue to catch up. Every year another community burns up in my state and every year someone is ready to blame it on anything but climate change.
Compromise often results in a half-measure. I mean do you want to live in a democracy where unfortunately you have a lot of people who “want” (lots of misinformed/idiots imo) to ignore climate change or private insurance, etc, or do you want a dictator to take over and “fix” it all? Why are we pointing the finger at the Democrats not fully fixing any of those issues when the GOP is the exactly the reason for the half-measures.
That said, I think without the pressure from progressives on Biden and central Dems, you don’t even get an attempt at student loan forgiveness. Or whatever he’s going to do to try and workaround the BS scotus ruling. So I’m not against holding the democratic party accountable, just that no one ever holds the fucking GOP accountable and it gets a bit tiring to see people shit on Biden or dems in general for not being able to be as progressive as they want. There is another half of the US that unfortunately does not agree with you (or me).
People point the finger at democrats because they campaign on getting these things done, republicans don’t.
They have had real opportunities to get these things done, like I noted about single-payer healthcare in 2008. There was a clear mandate from the voting populous, a filibuster-proof super majority in the senate and a 31 seat majority in the house and compromise was made because the house caucus of Blue Dog Coalition of democrats didn’t want it, not republicans.
Biden just had a majority in the senate and house for two years and a mandate to act on student loans through filibuster-proof reconciliation. He was stopped by two democrats, not republicans.
They didn’t even repeal the Trump tax cuts that he campaigned on, which also could have been passed through reconciliation. Again, stopped by two democrats.
Child tax care credits were taken away in the budget , not by republicans, but by a single democrat.
You can say “Well, NO republicans voted for any of those things” but that’s exactly what the republicans were voted in to do.
So because 1-2 Democrats held up progress you’re going to support the party that had all 49-50 members opposed to your goals?
I empathize with your frustration with the Democratic party but voting 3rd party only puts the Republicans in power. The most useful thing to do within the current voting structure is to use the Primary Elections to try to nominate a more radical senator or representative that thinks like you.
So because 1-2 Democrats held up progress you’re going to support the party that had all 49-50 members opposed to your goals?
Jesus Christ, centrists need to stop this. Not everyone who is mad at Democrats for a decades long pattern of “ooooops! Just enough Democrats killed that progressive thing! lol vote harder!” supports Republicans.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t support republicans and won’t vote for a third party. But I completely empathize with disaffected youth voters and see where they’re coming from.
I do vote in local elections, in fact my local party just won a special election to get one of those like-minded candidates to city council!
Republicans fucked up every one of those things.
I guess?
Like, there’s been a Democratic president for 11 of the past 20 years, and of those 11 years half of them democrats had unified executive and legislative control. And with that, gun violence has gotten worse, climate change has gotten worse, Roe was still overturned, the voting rights act was gutted and not fixed and any number of other issues. The democratic party message is always “vote for us, we’ll make things better!” and we’re just sitting over here like Charlie Brown. We’re pissed off because we have voted for Democrats and things aren’t better.
Problem is we haven’t voted in enough Democrats. We either need 60 senators or 50 senators who will kill the filibuster. Without either, we’re stuck. We can only do things with budget reconciliation.
Democrats did have 60 Senate votes, for about 2 months because of runoffs and deaths. In that time, they passed Obamacare. And it would’ve had single payer too, if not for Lieberman’s vote being required.
If we give Democrats 60 senators or 50 who will kill the filibuster, and things still don’t get better, I’ll agree with you completely.
“Vote for the party that isn’t willing to change the broken system” isn’t the hard sell you think it is.
Well yeah, because most understand the broken system takes a lot of time to fix and it can’t be done if you have a deadlocked Senate. People who want to fix the system focus on getting us 50+ senators willing to end the filibuster or 60+ in general. People who just want to bitch and moan say no one is trying to fix the system.
And if they don’t vote because I’m not inspiring them to, they are quite literally sitting on their asses bitching and moaning.
The democrats have had outright control of the senate for six of the past twenty years, they had caucus control (for lack of a better term) of the senate since January 2021. If they wanted to end the filibuster, they could have.
For the record, I’ve voted in every presidentialand midterm election - and most primary and local elections too - since 2003, voting almost straight democratic every single time. So I’ve toed the party line for damn near 20 hears.
Wasn’t the House and Senate controlled by Republicans during most of Obama’s years? You voted for a Democratic president, cool, but that doesn’t mean jack shit if Congress is controlled by the majority Republican vote.
His first two years he had a filibuster-proof super majority in the senate and a 31 seat majority in the house.
That’s not really true.
Al Franken was dealing with a runoff and legal challenges and wasn’t seated until July 7th 2009, bringing the roster of the Senate to 58 Dems and 2 independens who voted with them. They finally had the supermajority a year and a half into Obama’s first term - but not really even then.
Ted Kennedy was on medical absence from the Senate from June 9th 2009 until his death in August, so they didn’t have the votes to kill a fillibuster. It wasn’t until September 24th that an temporary appointee filled the seat until the special election won by the Tea Party on January 10th.
The Senate met on a total of 65 days in which Obama had a supermajority.
That’s not exactly right either
Now the Democrats had a safe majority in the House and a filibuster-proof supermajority of 60 in the Senate. That scenario lasted only four months before fate intervened. Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts died on August 25, 2009, leaving the Democrats, once again, with 59 seats (counting the two Independents). Exactly one month later, on September 25, Democrat Paul Kirk was appointed interim senator from Massachusetts to serve until the special election set for January 19, 2010 – once again giving the Democrats that 60th vote. But the intrigue was just beginning.
With the supermajority vote safely intact once again, the Senate moved rather quickly to pass the ACA – or ObamaCare – on Christmas Eve 2009 in a 60 – 39 vote (Kentucky Republican Senator Jim Bunning chose not to vote since he was not running for reelection). The House had previously passed a similar, although not identical bill on November 7, 2009, on a 220 – 215 vote. One Republican voted “aye,” and 39 Democrats were against.
So even starting with a republican inspired corporate funding healthcare bill, scrapping single payer and still not getting a single republican vote, and only passing on a tenuous super majority.
I will grant you that they tried, and many probably had good intentions, but I think it’s important to realize that the democrats had very little opportunity and in that window couldn’t succeed in getting us even close to other industrialized nations healthcare outcomes. They seem to have an apparent unwillingness to actual contend with the issues they are legislating, and fail to utilize political power and strategy in ways that will actually solve problems.
We see this today with the supreme court. The Heroes act allows for complete waving of student loan debt, without application by the debtor, completely within the authority of secretary of education. Rather than swiftly, and decidedly removing debt, they build a means tested website that came online months after they announced it, was forced to pause because of predictable court cases brought against it, waited as it was push through a blatantly packed court system, and ultimately died to a disgustingly corrupt supreme court that allowed a state to claim standing for a company without their knowledge, and claimed that ‘modify’ doesn’t mean to reduce by 10k.
I vote democrat because might as well, but I really wish people wouldn’t come on here pretending they just have had to struggle their whole way through the system when it is their own incompetence, arrogance, passivity, and failure that leads to the constant roadblocks to their effectiveness.
One of the problems with inexperienced folks is they don’t viscerally understand these sorts of issues. To them they voted a dem into the presidency and everything is just supposed to happen while they fuck off and do nothing until the next presidential election. Later they start to realize that they have to vote every couple of years, maybe, but it takes even more time and attention before they see the nuances of slim majorities and fillibusters and all that.
Democrats have only had 60 Senate seats for 2-3 months in that entire 15 year timespan. And in that time, they passed Obamacare – which would’ve had single payer, if not for the 60th vote they needed.
I’m a young voter too, but I’m frustrated with my compatriots. Bernie had the perfect platform for young people. You couldn’t ask for better. And young people still didn’t turn out in massive numbers. Why should any politician cater to them if they aren’t going to come out for a platform they has everything they want, championed by a genuine candidate?
EDIT: Significantly rewrote the comment. I was stressed by irl events and took it out here to be far more rude than I should’ve been.
Don’t worry about it, everyone in this thread is getting heated. Rightfully so, these things are important.
I’m glad that the prevailing opinion seems to be that both parties aren’t the same, and even though Democrats are imperfect they’re our best chance right now.
There’s nothing wrong with people bemoaning that or criticizing them to be better. What raises my eyebrow is when I see people who use that to defend their lack of voting.
What raises my eyebrow is when I see people who use that to defend their lack of voting.
What bothers me is the people who take any and all criticism as advocacy for not voting, voting third party, or voting republican in cases where it’s not happening at all.
It’s all over this thread, and people who are just dissatisfied with Democrats’ anti-progressive fuckery are being routinely greeted with greater vitriol than the guy who was spreading anti-trans bigotry. Which says a lot about how centrists view progressives versus how they view fascists, and which ones they’re actually interested in opposing.
What raises my eyebrow is when I see people who use that to defend their lack of voting.
What bothers me is the people who take any and all criticism as advocacy for not voting, voting third party, or voting republican in cases where it’s not happening at all.
I mean this is the flip side isn’t it? Overly critical, not critical at all, they’re just two sides of the same coin. Both are bad. And you have bad actors who are purposely trying to promote one or the other.
The fact of the matter is that we’re scared. None of us want to see Republicans win. We’re afraid of what’ll happen if they do. That fear makes us all enemies of each other over the slightest difference, worrying that it means the other person will permit Republicans to win.
Let’s step back, and recognize that most people in this thread want the same thing. Hell, they pretty much want the same political outcomes as well.
Let’s step back, and recognize that most people in this thread want the same thing. Hell, they pretty much want the same political outcomes as well.
I’m starting to doubt that.
You don’t miss the bus just because it doesn’t go directly to your location. You take the bus that gets you closest to where you want to go. Biden is that bus right now.
One bus is accelerating downhill with the pedal floored. The other is facing uphill but coasting downhill in neutral.
That’s a nice way of putting things, quite honestly. Unfortunately this younger generation can’t even get on the bus without their emotional support animals, it seems.
Because emotional support animals are such a bad thing…
A huge problem is lack of accessibility and education regarding the process. It’s even worse in primaries and although democrats benefit from greater voter participation in the general, they wouldn’t during primaries as they have no interest in helping candidates like Bernie by improving that aspect.
Younger generation has more knowledge that they can pull up within seconds than any generation in the history of mankind. And when it comes to voting, there has never been more states that allow early as well as mail-in voting.
But please tell me again how there is a lack of accessibility and education.
This has nothing to do with education and everything to do with apathy and a generation that has grown up with everything being handed to them. Now that they are old enough and society has asked them to step up and actually DO something, they completely and spectacularly fall apart.
We were talking about Bernie Sanders. Please tell me again how there is mail-in voting for party primaries.
Especially if you are not a declared Democrat.
The democrat strat is to not be nazis i.e. the lowest of the low bars to clear. What a great system we have where our only two choices are nazis or this decrepit, out-of-touch, and barely-coherent fuck. Maybe he can challenge everyone to push-ups to win their hearts over like in 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbEJpr4A9mQ
Love the “you’re too old to vote for me” in a room filled with old people, as if young people were tripping over themselves to vote for him, but hey, he got their vote because of his amazing ability to run against a literal nazi. It shouldn’t be understated how hard the media carried this clown during the primaries.
Let’s also not forget how Biden feels about young people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23kFNbh8d3w
Democrats are banking on republicans continuing being an even bigger dumpster fire, but if the republican party can nominate someone with competent PR, it’s over. Tulsi Gabbard is an opportunistic hack, but if she was the republican nomination, she’d tick so many boxes, including ones that democrats emphasized (being a young woman who is a person of color… well, these were boxes that democrats emphasized before they decided Biden was their best hope) and on top of that she’s a veteran. Even though I’d vote against her because she’d still be a republican, I have a strong feeling that she’d win the election if running against Biden in 2024.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=fbEJpr4A9mQ
https://piped.video/watch?v=23kFNbh8d3w
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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I have a strong feeling that she’d win the election if running against Biden in 2024.
Here’s the question. Is that an indictment on the electorate, the candidates, or both? I think both. If people are truly fooled by her that says more about them than it does anyone else.
