Democrats took America from gays are illegal, to full gay rights with marriage. Environmental laws have been all Democrats. If Democrats did nothing, Trump wouldn’t have signed 76 executive orders reversing Biden orders on his very first day.
Democrats didn’t flip on gay rights until Obama, and the Supreme Court did marriage equality. (Yes better than Republicans) Democratic leadership is already trying to send trans people under the bus to try to save face with the Republicans. Both sides are bad! We need to demand more from the democrats and force them to support the working class and to never back down when talking about human rights. Right now. The Democratic party is nothing more than an enabler of our abusive and coercive government/economic systems that allows lessor evils to even exist.
And Obama didn’t flip on gay marriage until the end of his first term. Biden came out in favor of it, which forced Obama’s hand, but it wound up being the right move; it energized the base when enthusiasm was starting to wane. Then, under Obama’s leadership, they continued to do nothing to establish gay marriage at the federal level.
that was a very different party than current dnc.
today’s dnc is controlled two faced lobbyists pimps like schumer and pelosi, who will have trump win again and again than see aoc being a possibility.
in today’s dnc someone like al gore or obama will be suffocated out of primaries like bernie. heck schumer would probably have obama killed to keep dnc pro-israeli.
i will be surprised if aoc is not pushed out of the party by 28.
Of course there was some good legislation along the way. Nobody is denying that. But the crisis we face now is there because the Democrats decided to ignore the danger. It really is that simple…
You can start with Citizens United. You can talk about the Dems after 9/11, the illegal drone strikes, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, how the Dems celebrated the human rights violations then, which leads us to El Salvador today. You can talk about stacking the courts, which was a plan publicly announced in the 90s, that the Dems never seriously tried to stop, leading to the current Supreme Court…
If you want to say, “Well, the Dems are less evil,” then great, many people partly agree. But that’s not good enough. They fucked us all over by not stopping the Republicans from doing really horrible shit, even though we all knew what was coming. Maybe in a few years we can write on Biden’s tombstone “Not quite as evil as Trump.” Would that make anyone happy? Is that something to be proud of?
Democrats took America from gays are illegal, to full gay rights with marriage.
Gay marriage was legalized at the federal level by a conservative-leaning Supreme Court. The only time a Democrat acted on same-sex marriage nationally was when Bill Clinton banned it by signing DOMA in 1996.
Environmental laws have been all Democrats.
Nixon created the EPA.
If Democrats did nothing, Trump wouldn’t have signed 76 executive orders reversing Biden orders on his very first day.
If Democrats passed legislation, Biden’s achievements couldn’t be undone through executive order.
The parties are not the same, especially now that one of them is openly fascist, but you’re giving Democrats credit for things they did not do. Also, the meme doesn’t say they’re the same, it describes the rachet effect, which is an accurate representation of how Democrats behaved on multiple issues. Look at how their economic policies have changed over the last 30 years, or how their views on immigration policies have changed since Trump was elected.
Is there a political community you found on lemmy that understands how this works, like you do. I see way too many Democrat apologists on these popular communities.
Well, .world has a lot of users who understand this, but the loudest voices (who are often times moderators) are definitely Democrat apologists. Then again, some of the other instances, like .ml, have the opposite problem, and are full-blown tankie/authoritarian apologists, so it’s kind of a, “pick your poison, damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” situation.
That is absolutely not what I’m saying. I’m correcting objectively false statements you’re making; environmental laws were not all Democrats, the Democrats did not do anything at the federal level to pass, “full gay rights with marriage,” and the meme and OP did not say, “both sides bad.” Those points are a statement of fact, not an argument.
Your list supporting Republicans means you must support Trump. right?
I mean you can’t have it both ways. Nixon created the EPA, Nixon was Republican, therefore Republican policy is to put the environment first. That’s what you are arguing.
That is absolutely not what I’m saying. I’m correcting objectively false claims you’re making; environmental laws were not all Democrats, the Democrats did not do anything at the federal level to pass, “full gay rights with marriage,” and the meme and OP did not say, “both sides bad.” Those points are a statement of fact, not an argument.
First reply: “Giving Nixon credit for the EPA means you support Republicans and therefore Trump.”
Second reply: “NIxon was so long ago he doesn’t count.”
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim pointing out a good thing Nixon did means I support modern Republicans while also claiming Nixon happened so long ago that he’s not connected to modern Republicans.
It’s also just factually wrong to say, “it was so long ago, its like saying they’re the anti-slavery party.” Nixon represents the turning point for the Republican party, where they abandoned their support for Civil Rights and embraced the Southern Strategy. He’s basically the turning point for where the Republicans became the party we know today. He’s the reason it’s bullshit to point out Republicans are the party of Lincoln.
It’s also just factually wrong to say, “it was so long ago, its like saying they’re the anti-slavery party.” Nixon represents the turning point for the Republican party, where they abandoned their support for Civil Rights and embraced the Southern Strategy.
Those two sentences are in exact conflict with each other. You say “it’s too long ago when Republicans were different” isn’t a valid argument." Then in the very next sentence you say, “it was long ago when Republicans were completely different.”
No, dude…just…no. You tried to claim that saying, “a Republican founded the EPA,” and, “Republicans ended slavery,” were the same, even though there was a century of history between those events. More importantly, Nixon is exactly the person you don’t want to make that argument about, since Nixon is the very person who pivoted the party towards its modern strategy of using the politics of racial aggrievement to get working-class whites to vote against their self-interests. Going back to the Civil War, or even the early Civil Rights era, things get ideologically murky, but you can draw a straight line between Trump and Nixon.
For the past 50 years, Democrats have been supporting environmental protection laws and Republicans have been against them.
It is equivalent to compare “But Nixon started the EPA” to “Lincoln ended slavery.” That Nixon started the EPA 50 years ago is irrelevant to all the following decades where Republicans have been consistently against the environment. It’s no different than when Magas say they aren’t racist because of Lincoln.
If it’s a straight line from Nixon to Trump as you say, then why claim Republicans are environmentalists with Nixon as your example?
If you’re talking about the Respect for Marriage Act, that was passed a decade after the Supreme Court established gay marriage as the law of the land. The overturning of Roe made Democrats decide that they should codify gay marriage, since they saw how badly failing to codify abortion rights turned out. It also reopens the door for Civil Unions and passed with large Republican support, so I wouldn’t exactly call it a huge win for Democrats.
As for the EPA, I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but you are absolutely incorrect. Nixon proposed the EPA and NOAA through executive order, and it was later ratified by Congress. It’s possible you’re referencing some sort of dispute Nixon had with Congress on how they intended to create the EPA, but he absolutely supported it; it was his idea.
No “vote blue no matter who” and not demanding actual representation is how we got Trump. People got duped by a con becuase they have never seen the real thing, so anything different can look appealing to the uncritical.
No it does not. It means do something to move the needle instead of sitting on the sidelines bitching about everything while doing fuck all. I know you guys are great at mental gymnastics but that’s a stretch even by the standard on .ml
Obama wasn’t perfect at all, but his platform was at least change and progress. While he was originally against gay marriage he did listen to the public and change for re-election. If the DNC listened to the public instead of fighting against progress that would be great. But like… Biden was the throw away to conservatives for Obama’s VP to “balance out” Obama being progressive….And now he was their best idea on what to do for a better future? It’s pathetic, and demonstrates the above.
No one is trying to say Biden was worse than trump. They’re saying the DNC is what even allowed trump to exist, by being greedy fucks who care more about their handlers than the American people and running the worst candidates they can. “Nothing will fundamentally change” is the dumbest, most “fuck you don’t bother to vote for me” fucking campaign I’ve ever heard.
Its fine let them keep losing. I honestly don’t care anymore. At some point progressives like Bernie, AOC, etc. will finally wake up & realize they don’t need Democrats to win. You want to see people passionate about voting again then it is time to leave the establishment behind. Anyone remember Bernie’s crowds in 2016? It was obvious he was may more popular than Clinton having to pay Beyonce & Jay Z for people to show up at her events.
Bernie and AOC are sheepdogs for the Dems. They are all-in on the party. When people become disillusioned with Dems, they pop in to spread false hope and convince people to come back and believe in the Dems.
It is true that the welfare state is popular and thar is basically what they are selling. The public wants healthcare, not the cruelty and expense of the capitalist extraction insurance industry. So Medicare for All sounds great in comparison. It’s very popular when actually explained to people.
But it will never become policy without turmoil. The health insurance industry is a huge leech excreting profits for the owner class. Dems want to dangle it in front of voters but will never suppory it when in power, they will enginerr a Lieberman or parliamentarian because the party is completely beholden to capital, including insurance capital.
I’m sure you agree with a lot of what I have said. I just want to emphasize that Bernie and AOC are not really outsiders, they are ineffectual refornists whose only current function - one that they embrace - is to keep people that hate the crimes of the Democratic Party, up to and including genocide, to keep voting for them.
They absolutely, 1000% need Democrats to win. Maybe not their respective districts, but if they want to get anything done on a national level, they need about half the country on their side, and that includes Democrats.
Now, they can certainly eat the party whole, the way the tea party and MAGA ate the GOP. That involves being more specific than “Democrats bad”. In fact, how did they do it? Did you ever see them telling people to abandon the Republican party?
I understand where you’re coming from, but Democrats need progressives to win. If they leave Democrats, it will be Democrats that will follow them, not the other way around. I don’t think trying to emulate MAGA is such a great idea. I know there are lessons that can be learned there, but I am still confident that a new party with popular progressives & populist policies would do more than trying to change a broken party from within.
No one is trying to say Biden was worse than trump.
The meme isn’t that Biden was worse but that he did nothing. It’s proveably false. Trump himself proved it by criticizing Biden at inauguration and immediately undoing Biden’s orders.
Much of what Trump has “undone” wasn’t undone legally. Many of the things he did requires congress to rollback and other things are caught up in courts. But in the mean time they happened so it will be potentially unable to be put back even if it is ordered so.
So, again, practically meaningless distinction. Until democrats are willing to use the same tools they leave available to republicans, the democrats are ineffective.
Thing is, they don’t have the same opportunities. The one reason why trump has been able to push things through in this shitty manner, is because the Republicans have stacked the Supreme Court (because the holes from people dying got filled while Republicans were in power) and they have majority control of Congress.
When judges die while democrats have power, they nominate milquetoast compromise judges while republicans just go full far-right crazy. Democrats don’t fight to block the crazy republican judges nor do they even fight to get their own judges in. A great example is when Obama nominated Merrick Garland, an already lame pick, as a “compromise”. The republicans insisted on waiting until the 2016 election concluded and the next president was sworn in and the democrats didn’t fight back at all. Then as some dumb form of symbolism, they make Merrick Garland the Attorney General during Biden’s term and Garland proceeds to not prosecute Trump for four years. That should tell you how great he would’ve been as a supreme court judge.
So even if democrats do get a judge in, it’s a compromised “centrist”. How do you think the court will end up when one side packs in far-right wackos and the other side puts in moderate right-wing losers? Seems pretty clear what the direction would be even if democrats won every election until the end of time.
actually, your candidate running a dogshit campaign and telling everyone to the left of them to fuck off is why we have trump. we warned this would happen, too. anyone with a memory span longer than a pet goldfish remembers all of this.
LOL no it isn’t, Trump or someone like him was an inevitability because US elections are fixed and the people who have actual power in your society, Corporate board members, want fascism.
Truth there. I’m from a dark blue area yet city government here couldn’t act any different than if I lived in a dark red state. In some ways I actually think they are worse. All they have to do is put D next to their name & the voters will support them regardless of their actions.
Case in point: the consequences of Dems co-opting the George Floyd protests was tp increase cops at the expense of public services ans to then spend even more on cops because Biden gave them federal funding. They did the “tough on crime” right wing thing and this was forced into the mainstream position.
You have Trump because you have capitalism and the reactionary political class serves a purpose in it. Liberalism tells you to only think of politics in a vacuum: whatever the last election was and what the next election is. In this vacuum they limit the world of politics down to what the two capitalist parties promise for capital, which varies and triangulates over time. The GOP was originally a party of free states and slavery abolition and the Democrats slavers and Southern white racists. Look at how they shift over time, both parties existing now for over 120 years. If you only ever look at the previous and next 4 years of what the capitalist political duopoly gives you, you will never understand the currents or why your “good guys” are increasingly xenophobic and transphobic or how political choices are actually made, because it is not just every four years at a ballot box proxied through some weirdos in the electoral college.
Anyways, both sides are bad. Have you already forgotten Biden’s genocide in Gaza? Dems’ “tough on the border” pivot? Breaking the rail strike? Being competent stewards of imperialism? I think liberals like to forget Blue Crimes, they are basically told to do so by mass media and it doesn’t comport with parasocially liking the sunglasses ice cream guy if you acknowledge he’s a genocidal racist. It isn’t really your fault to be in that bubble, but it is on you if you don’t seriously listen to others taking the time to explain its problems.
Democrats took America from gays are illegal, to full gay rights with marriage.
Absolutely wrong. Gay rights were popularized by left struggle, not struggle from Dems. Dems were dragged there by younger people that were radicalized by the people actually fighting for gay rights. Pride was a riot. The liberal assent and cooption was lagging, not leading. And in the US, gay marriage at the federal level was created by fiat of unelected lords (the Supreme Court) and not Democratic policy, despite Dems having full control of Congress and the Presidency in the neighboring period. Finally, gay rights are not full. I don’t understand why you think they would be. Gay people still face all kinds of oppressions in the US and the law only rarely protects them.
Environmental laws have been all Democrats.
This is simply factually incorrect. Early “environmental” laws were largely implemented by Republicans, including Teddy Roosevelt, also a racist genocidal war criminal. This was in many ways responding to muckrakers and organized labor who saw the environment, living conditions, and working conditions as inextricable.
Nixon signed the EPA into existence.
If Democrats did nothing, Trump wouldn’t have signed 76 executive orders reversing Biden orders on his very first day.
Democrats don’t do nothing, they just avoid doing the vast majority of things good for humanity in general and even just the US citizen working class. Even when they promise to do so, they have an excuse and whipping boy ready to go. Oh, Ovama and the national platform said single-payer? Sorry there’s Lieberman and we can’t kill the filibuster and oh man no discipline at all. Cancel student debt? Oh sorry there’s a parliamentarian that we can just override and fire and okay we will issue a conspicuously legally weak executive order and then fold at the earliest opportunity.
But Democrats do implement policies, they just do so in the interest of capital. Their platform represents certain formations of capital, the GOP’s some others, and they share many donors. The different formations undo each others’ work when in power. Or at least they don’t flex their muscles until something is intolerable to them.
Accepting gays is definitely the same as funding sex change for prisoners and sending them to a female prison, which was one of the most successful ads in history.
Correct. Not to mention the midterm congressional elections that only see ~20% turnout, and even less in the congressional primaries. The overwhelming majority are retirees, who will almost always pick the most conservative option in their party. People love to complain about term limits and appeasement centrists, but they don’t show up when they actually have a say in who represents them.
Capitalists will never let you vote them out of power. The field in which politicians can operate electorally is already heavily restricted and biased by donors and a donor-focused campaign machine that is further entrenched by ever-changing thresholds for candidacy and redistricting. I encourage you to run as a principled person as a third party and see how it goes. I would encourage you to run as a Dem but the time when a politician learns they are also enemies is after they’ve already helped entrench the party. If you ran as a Dem with principles they would not help your campaign and might fight it. Once in office they’ll stymy most of what you attempt.
Voting for every general election is just picking which of two capitalist parties will dictate policy. And the “good guys” are actually detrimental enough that they make their potential voters apathetic or opposed to thrm, as they cannot resonate with their experiences or needs. You know what folks actually need? Rent cut by 90%. Real estate is a financial legalized crime to create “passive income” for the wealthy. That would be incredibly popular. It would also be impossible for a capitalist party in the US, it is their antithesis.
So the serious, adult question is to state what the existential problems are and then ask what solutions could be sufficient to solve them. And there is at least one thing we know well in US electoralism: just voting for Dems will never be close to enough, abd even believing it is particularly important will just keep you ans others from spending the time to work together and do enough.
“Both sides bad” is why we have Trump.
Democrats took America from gays are illegal, to full gay rights with marriage. Environmental laws have been all Democrats. If Democrats did nothing, Trump wouldn’t have signed 76 executive orders reversing Biden orders on his very first day.
id like to remind you biden was a conservative running concentration camps for latinos at the border.
Democrats didn’t flip on gay rights until Obama, and the Supreme Court did marriage equality. (Yes better than Republicans) Democratic leadership is already trying to send trans people under the bus to try to save face with the Republicans. Both sides are bad! We need to demand more from the democrats and force them to support the working class and to never back down when talking about human rights. Right now. The Democratic party is nothing more than an enabler of our abusive and coercive government/economic systems that allows lessor evils to even exist.
And Obama didn’t flip on gay marriage until the end of his first term. Biden came out in favor of it, which forced Obama’s hand, but it wound up being the right move; it energized the base when enthusiasm was starting to wane. Then, under Obama’s leadership, they continued to do nothing to establish gay marriage at the federal level.
“But he said something vaguely positive, that’s exactly like legal enforcement of their rights!”
The Democrats didn’t do shit for gay marriage. That was the Supreme Court.
Also, Nixon created the EPA.
that was a very different party than current dnc. today’s dnc is controlled two faced lobbyists pimps like schumer and pelosi, who will have trump win again and again than see aoc being a possibility.
in today’s dnc someone like al gore or obama will be suffocated out of primaries like bernie. heck schumer would probably have obama killed to keep dnc pro-israeli.
i will be surprised if aoc is not pushed out of the party by 28.
Of course there was some good legislation along the way. Nobody is denying that. But the crisis we face now is there because the Democrats decided to ignore the danger. It really is that simple…
You can start with Citizens United. You can talk about the Dems after 9/11, the illegal drone strikes, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, how the Dems celebrated the human rights violations then, which leads us to El Salvador today. You can talk about stacking the courts, which was a plan publicly announced in the 90s, that the Dems never seriously tried to stop, leading to the current Supreme Court…
If you want to say, “Well, the Dems are less evil,” then great, many people partly agree. But that’s not good enough. They fucked us all over by not stopping the Republicans from doing really horrible shit, even though we all knew what was coming. Maybe in a few years we can write on Biden’s tombstone “Not quite as evil as Trump.” Would that make anyone happy? Is that something to be proud of?
Gay marriage was legalized at the federal level by a conservative-leaning Supreme Court. The only time a Democrat acted on same-sex marriage nationally was when Bill Clinton banned it by signing DOMA in 1996.
Nixon created the EPA.
If Democrats passed legislation, Biden’s achievements couldn’t be undone through executive order.
The parties are not the same, especially now that one of them is openly fascist, but you’re giving Democrats credit for things they did not do. Also, the meme doesn’t say they’re the same, it describes the rachet effect, which is an accurate representation of how Democrats behaved on multiple issues. Look at how their economic policies have changed over the last 30 years, or how their views on immigration policies have changed since Trump was elected.
Is there a political community you found on lemmy that understands how this works, like you do. I see way too many Democrat apologists on these popular communities.
Well, .world has a lot of users who understand this, but the loudest voices (who are often times moderators) are definitely Democrat apologists. Then again, some of the other instances, like .ml, have the opposite problem, and are full-blown tankie/authoritarian apologists, so it’s kind of a, “pick your poison, damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” situation.
That is absolutely not what I’m saying. I’m correcting objectively false statements you’re making; environmental laws were not all Democrats, the Democrats did not do anything at the federal level to pass, “full gay rights with marriage,” and the meme and OP did not say, “both sides bad.” Those points are a statement of fact, not an argument.
I miss Reddit. R. I. P.
Eh, I saw a lot of the same shit on Reddit. I think you’d have to go back at least 7 or 8 years to find a version of Reddit that wasn’t trash.
Nah. I had my feed highly curated to active and sane subs within my interests. It was too good to be true.
Your list supporting Republicans means you must support Trump. right?
I mean you can’t have it both ways. Nixon created the EPA, Nixon was Republican, therefore Republican policy is to put the environment first. That’s what you are arguing.
That is absolutely not what I’m saying. I’m correcting objectively false claims you’re making; environmental laws were not all Democrats, the Democrats did not do anything at the federal level to pass, “full gay rights with marriage,” and the meme and OP did not say, “both sides bad.” Those points are a statement of fact, not an argument.
If you have to go back 50 years to find an example of when Republicans were good for the environment, you proved my point.
It’s no different than, “Republicans are the party of Lincoln!”
First reply: “Giving Nixon credit for the EPA means you support Republicans and therefore Trump.”
Second reply: “NIxon was so long ago he doesn’t count.”
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim pointing out a good thing Nixon did means I support modern Republicans while also claiming Nixon happened so long ago that he’s not connected to modern Republicans.
It’s also just factually wrong to say, “it was so long ago, its like saying they’re the anti-slavery party.” Nixon represents the turning point for the Republican party, where they abandoned their support for Civil Rights and embraced the Southern Strategy. He’s basically the turning point for where the Republicans became the party we know today. He’s the reason it’s bullshit to point out Republicans are the party of Lincoln.
Those two sentences are in exact conflict with each other. You say “it’s too long ago when Republicans were different” isn’t a valid argument." Then in the very next sentence you say, “it was long ago when Republicans were completely different.”
WTF?
No, dude…just…no. You tried to claim that saying, “a Republican founded the EPA,” and, “Republicans ended slavery,” were the same, even though there was a century of history between those events. More importantly, Nixon is exactly the person you don’t want to make that argument about, since Nixon is the very person who pivoted the party towards its modern strategy of using the politics of racial aggrievement to get working-class whites to vote against their self-interests. Going back to the Civil War, or even the early Civil Rights era, things get ideologically murky, but you can draw a straight line between Trump and Nixon.
For the past 50 years, Democrats have been supporting environmental protection laws and Republicans have been against them.
It is equivalent to compare “But Nixon started the EPA” to “Lincoln ended slavery.” That Nixon started the EPA 50 years ago is irrelevant to all the following decades where Republicans have been consistently against the environment. It’s no different than when Magas say they aren’t racist because of Lincoln.
If it’s a straight line from Nixon to Trump as you say, then why claim Republicans are environmentalists with Nixon as your example?
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If you’re talking about the Respect for Marriage Act, that was passed a decade after the Supreme Court established gay marriage as the law of the land. The overturning of Roe made Democrats decide that they should codify gay marriage, since they saw how badly failing to codify abortion rights turned out. It also reopens the door for Civil Unions and passed with large Republican support, so I wouldn’t exactly call it a huge win for Democrats.
As for the EPA, I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but you are absolutely incorrect. Nixon proposed the EPA and NOAA through executive order, and it was later ratified by Congress. It’s possible you’re referencing some sort of dispute Nixon had with Congress on how they intended to create the EPA, but he absolutely supported it; it was his idea.
What a stupid comment
No “vote blue no matter who” and not demanding actual representation is how we got Trump. People got duped by a con becuase they have never seen the real thing, so anything different can look appealing to the uncritical.
Never let perfect be the enemy of good or some shit.
I love how liberals bleat this because it implies genocide is good.
No it does not. It means do something to move the needle instead of sitting on the sidelines bitching about everything while doing fuck all. I know you guys are great at mental gymnastics but that’s a stretch even by the standard on .ml
No, the DNC is why we have trump. It’s on them.
Obama wasn’t perfect at all, but his platform was at least change and progress. While he was originally against gay marriage he did listen to the public and change for re-election. If the DNC listened to the public instead of fighting against progress that would be great. But like… Biden was the throw away to conservatives for Obama’s VP to “balance out” Obama being progressive….And now he was their best idea on what to do for a better future? It’s pathetic, and demonstrates the above.
No one is trying to say Biden was worse than trump. They’re saying the DNC is what even allowed trump to exist, by being greedy fucks who care more about their handlers than the American people and running the worst candidates they can. “Nothing will fundamentally change” is the dumbest, most “fuck you don’t bother to vote for me” fucking campaign I’ve ever heard.
Its fine let them keep losing. I honestly don’t care anymore. At some point progressives like Bernie, AOC, etc. will finally wake up & realize they don’t need Democrats to win. You want to see people passionate about voting again then it is time to leave the establishment behind. Anyone remember Bernie’s crowds in 2016? It was obvious he was may more popular than Clinton having to pay Beyonce & Jay Z for people to show up at her events.
Bernie and AOC are sheepdogs for the Dems. They are all-in on the party. When people become disillusioned with Dems, they pop in to spread false hope and convince people to come back and believe in the Dems.
It is true that the welfare state is popular and thar is basically what they are selling. The public wants healthcare, not the cruelty and expense of the capitalist extraction insurance industry. So Medicare for All sounds great in comparison. It’s very popular when actually explained to people.
But it will never become policy without turmoil. The health insurance industry is a huge leech excreting profits for the owner class. Dems want to dangle it in front of voters but will never suppory it when in power, they will enginerr a Lieberman or parliamentarian because the party is completely beholden to capital, including insurance capital.
I’m sure you agree with a lot of what I have said. I just want to emphasize that Bernie and AOC are not really outsiders, they are ineffectual refornists whose only current function - one that they embrace - is to keep people that hate the crimes of the Democratic Party, up to and including genocide, to keep voting for them.
They absolutely, 1000% need Democrats to win. Maybe not their respective districts, but if they want to get anything done on a national level, they need about half the country on their side, and that includes Democrats.
Now, they can certainly eat the party whole, the way the tea party and MAGA ate the GOP. That involves being more specific than “Democrats bad”. In fact, how did they do it? Did you ever see them telling people to abandon the Republican party?
I understand where you’re coming from, but Democrats need progressives to win. If they leave Democrats, it will be Democrats that will follow them, not the other way around. I don’t think trying to emulate MAGA is such a great idea. I know there are lessons that can be learned there, but I am still confident that a new party with popular progressives & populist policies would do more than trying to change a broken party from within.
It’s always easier to completely rewrite code from scratch than to make small modifications to an existing project.
The meme isn’t that Biden was worse but that he did nothing. It’s proveably false. Trump himself proved it by criticizing Biden at inauguration and immediately undoing Biden’s orders.
If it was that easy to undo what biden did, then practically he did nothing.
Much of what Trump has “undone” wasn’t undone legally. Many of the things he did requires congress to rollback and other things are caught up in courts. But in the mean time they happened so it will be potentially unable to be put back even if it is ordered so.
So, again, practically meaningless distinction. Until democrats are willing to use the same tools they leave available to republicans, the democrats are ineffective.
Thing is, they don’t have the same opportunities. The one reason why trump has been able to push things through in this shitty manner, is because the Republicans have stacked the Supreme Court (because the holes from people dying got filled while Republicans were in power) and they have majority control of Congress.
When judges die while democrats have power, they nominate milquetoast compromise judges while republicans just go full far-right crazy. Democrats don’t fight to block the crazy republican judges nor do they even fight to get their own judges in. A great example is when Obama nominated Merrick Garland, an already lame pick, as a “compromise”. The republicans insisted on waiting until the 2016 election concluded and the next president was sworn in and the democrats didn’t fight back at all. Then as some dumb form of symbolism, they make Merrick Garland the Attorney General during Biden’s term and Garland proceeds to not prosecute Trump for four years. That should tell you how great he would’ve been as a supreme court judge.
So even if democrats do get a judge in, it’s a compromised “centrist”. How do you think the court will end up when one side packs in far-right wackos and the other side puts in moderate right-wing losers? Seems pretty clear what the direction would be even if democrats won every election until the end of time.
So why wasn’t Biden stacking SCOTUS?
Because no judges died during his reign… they’re lifetime appointments.
Socially left on some issues and economically right on all issues isn’t left.
actually, your candidate running a dogshit campaign and telling everyone to the left of them to fuck off is why we have trump. we warned this would happen, too. anyone with a memory span longer than a pet goldfish remembers all of this.
Decades of lesser evil voting is why you have Trump
LOL no it isn’t, Trump or someone like him was an inevitability because US elections are fixed and the people who have actual power in your society, Corporate board members, want fascism.
Truth there. I’m from a dark blue area yet city government here couldn’t act any different than if I lived in a dark red state. In some ways I actually think they are worse. All they have to do is put D next to their name & the voters will support them regardless of their actions.
Case in point: the consequences of Dems co-opting the George Floyd protests was tp increase cops at the expense of public services ans to then spend even more on cops because Biden gave them federal funding. They did the “tough on crime” right wing thing and this was forced into the mainstream position.
You have Trump because you have capitalism and the reactionary political class serves a purpose in it. Liberalism tells you to only think of politics in a vacuum: whatever the last election was and what the next election is. In this vacuum they limit the world of politics down to what the two capitalist parties promise for capital, which varies and triangulates over time. The GOP was originally a party of free states and slavery abolition and the Democrats slavers and Southern white racists. Look at how they shift over time, both parties existing now for over 120 years. If you only ever look at the previous and next 4 years of what the capitalist political duopoly gives you, you will never understand the currents or why your “good guys” are increasingly xenophobic and transphobic or how political choices are actually made, because it is not just every four years at a ballot box proxied through some weirdos in the electoral college.
Anyways, both sides are bad. Have you already forgotten Biden’s genocide in Gaza? Dems’ “tough on the border” pivot? Breaking the rail strike? Being competent stewards of imperialism? I think liberals like to forget Blue Crimes, they are basically told to do so by mass media and it doesn’t comport with parasocially liking the sunglasses ice cream guy if you acknowledge he’s a genocidal racist. It isn’t really your fault to be in that bubble, but it is on you if you don’t seriously listen to others taking the time to explain its problems.
Absolutely wrong. Gay rights were popularized by left struggle, not struggle from Dems. Dems were dragged there by younger people that were radicalized by the people actually fighting for gay rights. Pride was a riot. The liberal assent and cooption was lagging, not leading. And in the US, gay marriage at the federal level was created by fiat of unelected lords (the Supreme Court) and not Democratic policy, despite Dems having full control of Congress and the Presidency in the neighboring period. Finally, gay rights are not full. I don’t understand why you think they would be. Gay people still face all kinds of oppressions in the US and the law only rarely protects them.
This is simply factually incorrect. Early “environmental” laws were largely implemented by Republicans, including Teddy Roosevelt, also a racist genocidal war criminal. This was in many ways responding to muckrakers and organized labor who saw the environment, living conditions, and working conditions as inextricable.
Nixon signed the EPA into existence.
Democrats don’t do nothing, they just avoid doing the vast majority of things good for humanity in general and even just the US citizen working class. Even when they promise to do so, they have an excuse and whipping boy ready to go. Oh, Ovama and the national platform said single-payer? Sorry there’s Lieberman and we can’t kill the filibuster and oh man no discipline at all. Cancel student debt? Oh sorry there’s a parliamentarian that we can just override and fire and okay we will issue a conspicuously legally weak executive order and then fold at the earliest opportunity.
But Democrats do implement policies, they just do so in the interest of capital. Their platform represents certain formations of capital, the GOP’s some others, and they share many donors. The different formations undo each others’ work when in power. Or at least they don’t flex their muscles until something is intolerable to them.
Spoken like a Weimar
Accepting gays is definitely the same as funding sex change for prisoners and sending them to a female prison, which was one of the most successful ads in history.
Correct. Not to mention the midterm congressional elections that only see ~20% turnout, and even less in the congressional primaries. The overwhelming majority are retirees, who will almost always pick the most conservative option in their party. People love to complain about term limits and appeasement centrists, but they don’t show up when they actually have a say in who represents them.
Capitalists will never let you vote them out of power. The field in which politicians can operate electorally is already heavily restricted and biased by donors and a donor-focused campaign machine that is further entrenched by ever-changing thresholds for candidacy and redistricting. I encourage you to run as a principled person as a third party and see how it goes. I would encourage you to run as a Dem but the time when a politician learns they are also enemies is after they’ve already helped entrench the party. If you ran as a Dem with principles they would not help your campaign and might fight it. Once in office they’ll stymy most of what you attempt.
Voting for every general election is just picking which of two capitalist parties will dictate policy. And the “good guys” are actually detrimental enough that they make their potential voters apathetic or opposed to thrm, as they cannot resonate with their experiences or needs. You know what folks actually need? Rent cut by 90%. Real estate is a financial legalized crime to create “passive income” for the wealthy. That would be incredibly popular. It would also be impossible for a capitalist party in the US, it is their antithesis.
So the serious, adult question is to state what the existential problems are and then ask what solutions could be sufficient to solve them. And there is at least one thing we know well in US electoralism: just voting for Dems will never be close to enough, abd even believing it is particularly important will just keep you ans others from spending the time to work together and do enough.