QUICK! DONT VOTE AND LET THE REGRESSIVE PARTY KEEP POWER! 🤣👍
Look at you talking as if there is no regressive party in the US
Literally the opposite of what I said, but cool. 👍
The next step wouldn’t be abandoning democrats, it would be getting democrats in power, getting rid of the republicans (because they’ve provably turned into an enemy of the United States of America), and then creating an actual left party, and having the democrats become the new right wing.
For at least 5 minutes, I’d bet, we’d have a sane right wing.
This. We need to move the country to working for the people. The way you do this is by consistently voting for the best representative of the people. You don’t need to start by having the perfect option. If the most progressive candidate is a Democrat, even if they aren’t progressive, you vote them in. When the fascist consistently lose, then that democrat is the right wing which frees space for a more progressive candidate.
Leaping to a perfect candidate would be amazing. Taking steps in the right direction is still good and worth our energy.
Americans are fucked either way, and that’s the crux of it. Both highly corrupt parties blowing smoke up their ass and they’ve all been socialized to regard third options as jokes, meanwhile the establishment is the real joke. There is no good solution, only shades of shit.
Or we’ll get another Kyrsten Sinema, who talked progressive talk then cashed out on billionaire lobbyist payouts.
I still say that POS needs to be sued into the ground as a lesson to the rest of them not to pull that kind of shady bullshit.
Only in amurica would they sell people on the right to be fired for no reason and call it “right to work”
“Right to work” means you can’t be required to join the union, but the union is still required to bargain for you without you contributing to it. Its designed to defund and kneecap organized labor. It has nothing to do with firing.
At will employment is what lets the employer fire at any time, and that is the law in 49 of the states.
Getting fired is right to work. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
They call trusting your ignorance “faith” and its something you absolutely need lol
Welcome to the age of bad faith laws! Because if they were honest, they couldn’t lifestyle market conservatism to “people who like tradition”.
The termination for any reason is at-will employment, aka “will to work”. With that being said your point still stands because “right to work” is an anti union law that guarantees an employees right to refrain from being part of a union (lol). Both terms are dumb.
At-will employment and “right-to-work” are distinct ideas. The first has some real benefits, while the other is just union-busting bullshit.
At-Will Employment means that the relationship of employee to employer is technically voluntary. Your employer can fire you or lay you off for almost any reason or no reason, but you are likewise free to just walk away without even finishing your shift and get another job. (Non-discrimination laws and professional continuity-of-care rules are common exceptions.)
Right to work doesn’t affect whether or not your employement relationship is voluntary. Instead, it means only and exclusively that you can freeload off the union, getting all of their benefits and leaving them with all of the expenses of negotiating your salary and work rules.
In the USA most (but not all) states are “at-will employment”, and most red states have the same sort of bullshit anti-worker “right to work” laws that MLK was campaigning against when he was murdered. And, unfortunately, thanks to SCOTUS fuckery all of the USA is essentially “right to work” since the same assholes behind “corporations are people” and “money is speech” decided that payroll deductions for union dues are terrible in way that payroll deductions for taxes or insurance aren’t.
The problem with at-will is the unequal relationship corporations and employees have. If I, as an employee, simply walk off the job, that hurts my chances of employment at other corporations. A company, however, will never see any consequence no matter how badly they treat employees.
Exactly. You can walk away and get evicted and starve vs. they can make you walk away and get evicted and starve… This is what constitutes fairness by modern democratic standards, apparently.
Understand that the precursor to at-will employment was that you walk away from your job and get arrested for breaking contract, and your family gets evicted without you able to earn money to pay for their food or shelter.
Like the other commenter says, it’s extremely flawed but serves a purpose.
“There used to be something worse” is not the same as “the current thing is good”
Absolutely not, I agree.
But it’s also kinda like Republicans saying they’ll “repeal then replace” the ACA. You need the plan for the replacement beforehand, otherwise you just return to the old problems.
That’s still the law under at will employment, if you sign a contract, you can’t just quit anymore. We lost the protection of one year contracts, like you really think it’s better for employers to be able to fire you with no warning than having one year contracts?? This all happened centuries ago of course
No one is saying that at-will isn’t also bad for workers, but it’s less bad than what came before it.
deleted by creator
Spoiler: Democratic politicians wanted 80% of what Trump did. The 20% they didn’t want was all him going after his democratic enemies … but they take the bad with the “good”.
Then why are the republicans spending all their time undoing democratic initiatives.
Because the orange kid-diddler got his feeling hurt by the black president and has been actively undoing anything possible
Because that’s the game they play.
That is how the ratchet works. Republicans go insane when they take office and make cuts to everything except military spending, then dems get in and cut military spending … then feel like a bit of a calm after the storm. Dems dont reverse anything Republicans did … eventually Republicans get back in and around we go again.
This is part of what just erodes the hope out of me. We all know there are periods of regression and periods of progress, but whatever damage is caused by the regression period is
1- Caused much more quickly than any progress.
2- Is usually beneficial to the ruling class, thus they have less of an incentive to fix it.
3- Might just become normalized, at which point you’re just starting from square one all over again.
Like, age/identity verification. We are in a period of mass and widespread regression right now and age verification is making progress, eroding freedom and privacy on the internet. Do you think that when we enter the period of progress, the age verification systems of today will just be reverted? Fuck no. They’ll stay. They’ll become normal. And the fight against them will need to start from scratch, with an ever bigger amount of opposition.
I’m really jealous of the people who can maintain hope.
On the hopeful side, socialism hasn’t had this many proponents since the 1910s-1940s. We’re making huge strides in overturning McCarthyist propaganda, and growing exponentially.
The Republicans have demonstrated that no, these things do not take time.
I asked for a gender inclusive restroom, was gaslighted those things take time. I then emailed CEO cc’ed chair of board of directors. It was converted in 2 days.
It was never about time, it’s about agency
Yep, it takes time for us peons but the dictators can do anything they please.
I wish that the Democrats had anybody who was willing to fight for Medicare For All the same way Republicans fought to overturn Roe v. Wade.
I would like to think that Bernie Sanders is one of those people.
Republicans have a propaganda network back then to fight against Obamacare (which isn’t even Medicare for all). It was really surprising how much the Republicans fought back given the zeitgeist was going the other way with Michael Moore and all that. The whole “death panel” stuff took the air out of the room and Republicans were going on non-stop about how it was the greatest injustice to all of America. It was wild.
Also, if you look at those that benefit from Obamacare and the fact that they’re losing it. They still hate that it’s associated at all with the Dems. It’s weird.
Bernie isn’t a Democrat, though.
Ah you’re right, he caucuses with them and stuff but he’s an independent, you’re right.
Calling him a democrat gives democrats credit for his activism. Activism they fought against instead of fighting against fascism.
Add long as you brazenly break rules and laws, and your controlling party willingly does nothing about it
Let’s break some laws to make everyone better off.
The only law democrats are willing to break is the Leahy law.
No that would be terrorism put the bread down Mr valjean
but . . . but . . .but THE PARLIMENTARIAN said we need to keep slavery!
If America was a school we’d have one party full of bullies smoking in the bathroom who don’t give a shit if one of their ranks breaks the rules so long as it’s not messing with them personally, and we’ve got another party full of brown nosers who will run and tell the teacher any time someone even thinks about using the wrong kind of pencil. Neither is good for the student body as a whole, but in very different ways.
Lisa Simpson ass fucking “opposition”.
And she’s dating Nelson.
The teacher? John Roberts & co.
Why would they need to be in the bathroom?
The school is bought and paid for.
Gotta keep up the aesthetics.
Breaking things is a lot faster than fixing them…
Particularly when you’re not interested in fixing them.
Have you ever broken an arm? A window? A car? A heart?
Fixing things takes time.
That doesn’t excuse not starting when given a chance. The focus should be on establishment Dems’ failures to start fixing things, not on setting some unrealistic expectation that all it would take is a snap of the fingers and bippity boppity boo.
That doesn’t excuse not starting when given a chance. The focus should be on establishment Dems’ failures to start fixing things
And until they start fixing things, “fixing things takes time” holds within it the implicit lie that they’re trying.
not on setting some unrealistic expectation that all it would take is a snap of the fingers and bippity boppity boo.
You’re right. That’s only for netanyahu’s every whim.
Netanyahu’s whim isn’t about fixing things, more like breaking everything in Gaza, Iran, and southern Lebanon.
If you really think Gaza can be rebuilt as fast as it’s been destroyed, you’re going to have some unpleasant surprises whenever the world can pull itself out of this death spiral and start caring about humanity again…
You’re telling me that democrats break things and have no interest in fixing them.
What?
In the words of James Baldwin, how much time do you want for your progress?
Democrats tell you that fixing things takes time so that you eventually give up waiting. Incrementalism is a tool of fascism to prevent progress.
How much time? Ideally none. But the real world isn’t idealistic, and breaking more shit because you can’t have what you want right now is what petulant children do.
I’m not defending the establishment Dems’ inaction, but I am cautioning against setting unrealistic expectations. Even if you vote out all the republicans and replace all the democrats with progressives, it will still take time to fix things.
And people’s ignorance about this fact is a key part of the republican strategy that keeps getting them reelected every other election cycle. They always break shit on their way out, leaving a mess for their successors to clean up, and they blame it all on the democrats in office after them.
So promoting this idea that you can fix everything overnight is only helping the republicans.
Incrementalism is a tool of fascism to prevent progress.
No, incrementalism is a necessary reality. The reason it doesn’t work is partly because the right people aren’t in office to implement it, and partly because when the right people are in office they don’t have enough time in office to implement it fully.
Get someone with the right intentions in office (a progressive), and give them enough time (at least two terms), with a congress that supports their agenda, and you’ll see incrementalism work as it’s intended.
Or you can complain that you can’t have everything you want immediately, and attack anyone who doesn’t give you everything you want right now, and when they never get into office for long enough with enough congressional support because nobody can pass your purity test, you’ll have plenty to complain about when literally nothing good gets done because you categorically rejected the idea of incrementalism.
California has a bulletproof Democrat supermajority and does not have livable wages, universal healthcare, affordable housing, affordable COL. So the argument that Democrats need more time Is verifiably false
Did I ever claim establishment Dems are willing to put in the necessary changes to move progress forward? Because California Dems are about as establishment/corporatist as you can freaking get.
I never said “give establishment Dems another chance.” I said “fixing things takes time,” and that will still apply even if you oust all the establishment Dems and replace them with progressives.
Please take your strawman argument somewhere else if you’re not going to actually read what I wrote and respond to that.
Removed by mod
When Democrats do absolutely nothing to counter anything that Republicans do, they are complicit and are to blame for everything Republicans do.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Oh, please explain how it all works for us
Burning things down is easy, building them up takes time
Then start burning what the republicans built or fuck off.
Burn down systems of oppression, then. Oh wait. That also magically takes time because this stupid platitude is just the latest in a long line of excuses from the pawl of the ratchet.
Excuses excuses.
Yes, Democrats like to whine that they only got 60 votes in the Senate for a short period during Obama’s term. You want to know the last time Republicans had 60 votes in the Senate? 1911.
It’s been over a century since Republicans had that kind of majority, and I think back then the filibuster had a larger threshold to overrule, so they probably didn’t even have a filibuster-proof majority even then. You probably have to go back to Reconstruction to find Republicans with that kind of majority.
Do you know how Republicans dismantle programs without a filibuster-proof majority? They do it by cutting funding. They cut funding to programs and zero out their budgets. The program still exists in legislation; it just isn’t funded.
To fix that damage does not require breaking a filibuster. It just requires properly funding those programs again. And funding can be passed with just a simple majority.
And of course, much of what Republicans do is done by executive order, and that can easily be reversed by the next Democratic president.
Republicans are a monolith and vote in lockstep. Democrats are an un-unified big tent party encompassing every ideology from identical to republicans to social democrats. If everybody that doesn’t vote would vote for progressive candidates in every democratic primary and general we’d have a unified left of center party that could accomplish things. But instead of doing literally the only thing that can walk back the fascism all y’all keep working to get republicans elected.
What does that have to do with the conversation at hand?
Removed by mod
If they truly get a majority to override the president, or in the future can then make the tri fecta again, it’s easy to fix shit. Just make it what it was before, blast it through committees like the Republicans do with hardly a word from someone else. The question then is are Democrats incompetent or complicit.
Everyone knows they are complicit.
Didn’t Biden undo a lot of shit that Trump has done during his first term?
Performatively he did, then reinstated most of what he dropped. Did nothing with his tax cuts for the rich, which checks out, as VP he worked directly with McConnel to muster votes to make the bush tax cuts for the rich permanent. He kept his border policies, war policies, etc. Continued to lie about the condition of the economy. Blue Fascism is a close relative of the red version
The one that sticks out to me as an example was Cuba. In the very last days of Trump’s first term, he put Cuba on the official list of “state sponsors of terrorism”. This is patently absurd claim that has no evidence to support it. At the time, it was largely seen just as a move to make things just a little bit difficult for Biden. There was no reason to do it other than make life harder for the people of Cuba.
When asked about whether Biden was going to take Cuba off the list, Jen Psaki basically said Biden has more important issues to get to. He never removed Cuba off the list like he could have with just a stroke of a pen. Instead of meaningfully engaging with Cuba to foster better relations - something Obama valued and pursued in his foreign policy - Biden just kept them on the list as well as all the other ways in which Trump tried to crank up the temperature on the people of Cuba. Now here we are on the verge of a potential invasion of Cuba.
The only reason that Obama tried any type of foreign relations with Cuba was to get ahold of their proven treatment for lung cancer. Once Cuba revealed that they were not giving that to the US, things fell apart.
His repeated platform was to raise the minimum wage.
So… here we are. Ds couldn’t be bothered.
BoTh of our parties should be dismantled, our “labor party” is shit, just like our “limited government” party.
They’ll give Trump a golden parachute, wish him the best, then continue the ratchet effect. Neo-liberals are as much enemies of democracy as the reactionaries.
we must move forward and heal which is why we won’t push for charges or do any investigations
Just like they did with the bushes and Nixon and Reagan
If you cannot blame racism you can blame Reagan.
until they rehabilitate him in 10 years as the reasonable example, compared to Emperor Bloodvein Crusader.
See George W Bush . . .
Worse I’d say, they’re less upfront about it
He already has his golden parachute. He’s been appointed the chair of “The Board of Peace” for the rest of his life.
Assume that Democrats win the next presidential election and enough seats in both the House and Senate to take meaningful actions.
Assume that there will be a peaceful transfer of power.
Assume that Trump doesn’t die in office.
If all of the above come to pass, and Trump doesn’t face real legal consequences for his actions, then it’s another in the long line of flashing neon signs telling would-be dictators that America is up for grabs for whoever strikes first.
Of course there are two parties. They create the illusion of choice necessary for the political ratchet - one party to drive things to the right, the other as controlled opposition to obstruct movement back to the left.
What’s next, getting americans to believe their wrestling shows aren’t real?
I have concluded that the Established Democrats would rather that Trump or somebody like him is POTUS than to concede to the Left on anything, even on a morally highly charged subject like the mass murdering of tens of thousand of children (in Gaza) which at least for some people would make the Democrat candidate so repugnant that they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for her even “to stop Trump”
Had Kamala genuinelly conceded to the Left on some things and not latched on to none other than the Cheney familly (honestly, I don’t thing the Israeli subject was by itself enough to cause that loss), she could very well have won, but that faction of the Democrats would rather loose than stop cozing with the hard-right, so they lost to none other than Trump.
If what the Democrat tribalists were parroting back them about how Trump was so horrible and the Democrats needed to win to stop his policies was indeed how the Established Democrats felt, they would NEVER had risked a Trump victory by adopting a Reject The Left strategy at all levels.
All this to say that these people will never undo what Trump did to the broader society (though the parts that make them less electable - i.e. that affect their own personal upsides - I’m sure they’ll undo) because they’re totally fine with it, as shown by how in the last election they would rather risk a second Trump presidency to keep on going Right politically than to pivot Left in the slightest of ways.
Without a Revolution inside the Democrat Party, the US will keep on going in the same direction as these Democrats will do nothing but talkie-talkie on reversing Trump’s policies and then in a few years another Trump character (or, worse, a genuinelly intelligent one) get in power again.
I remember having this same conversation 20 years ago, except instead of Harris and Trump it was Kerry and Bush, and instead of Gaza it was Iraq. We didn’t get somebody smarter than Bush, though, we got Trump.
Here’s the thing. You don’t need to be a smart president to do a lot of damage. You can have smart people in your cabinet. You also don’t have to be very smart to break a ton of shit.
Then it’s too bad that we have one party that loves that shit and one party that’s willing to tolerate that shit as long as the minimum wage never rises again.
I’ll give you that.
The “smarter” part is just something I threw in but which I did not really pondered on all that much.
In all fairness “nastiness” is the only thing which seem to have moved (upwards) consistently.
Republicans turn the wheel counter-clockwise while the Democrats don’t turn it.
The Ratchet Effect.
Can you make this into a trolley problem or horseshoe diagram for us? Many people here can only think with that model.
The last time Democrats had a filibuster -proof legislative trifecta it was for 3 months and they passed Obamacare. When they don’t have Republicans blocking them every step of the way, they actually do work to improve things. They aren’t perfect by a long shot, but Democrats are the best of two options by far.
You’re making the point for us. Obamacare is a 90s conservative proposal, it also completely killed the possibility of single payer healthcare for a generation. Republicans ratchet things right and then Democrats lock it in, great example you provided thank you.
Not only a 90s conservative proposal, it was written by the Heritage Foundation. Democrats have never found legislation written by them that they didn’t love.
So keep Republicans in power and ratchet that shit down from your couch? Put a clamp on your own balls, it’s the smart thing to do.
Either way you get Republican legislation
So logically take the speed run? Ok I guess.
Yeah i guess two parties is a law of nature so we have to deal with it like we deal with thermodynamics
Yup. And they did a switch to remove the public option, since they had an obvious ability with 60 votes. They had Lieberman play the rotating villain, and removed the public option so they could supposedly get GOP votes.
When they got no GOP votes, they passed it anyways, through reconciliation - but didn’t put the public option back in. They literally chose to leave it out.
Obamacare was a compromise because single payer didn’t have the votes. If you think single payer was happening at any point in the last generation, I have a bridge to sell you.
Obamacare was a compromise between sucking the insurance companies dicks and fondling their balls while you suck their dicks.
Hate it all you want, but millions of people have gotten healthcare they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. That’s just an objective fact.
Those people always could have purchased health insurance. The difference after Obamacare was they would be penalized if they didn’t. That’s just an objective fact.
Obamacare subsidizes healthcare specifically for people who couldn’t afford it before. The only people it penalized were rich people who refused to get healthcare. The fee was waived for most.
Compromising with Republicans/right leaning dems on anything is a clear sign of failure, not success.
Democracy is based on compromise. You can’t always get exactly what you want. Sometimes getting a small improvement is better than stagnation.
Why do Democrats have to compromise with Republicans but Republicans never have to compromise with Democrats?
Why must they work with the party that has shifted towards fascism? Why must they compromise on half baked laws that don’t do the things people wanted, but corporations got what they demanded?
Why do the Democrats work with fascists while refusing to stand up for the good of the country?
And then their sycophants will tell you that it’s a normal thing to give the people who want to bring back American laws from the 1950s what they want, and you’re a idealist fool if you think we should advocate for good laws.
The best to all of that is Democrats generally operate on good faith and Republicans don’t. It is easy to hold your ground if you don’t care who it hurts.
Funny that right wing policies never require compromise, something you state is essential.
If they didn’t compromise, being gay or trans would be illegal, abortion would be banned nationally, and only white Christian men would vote.
Of course, the compromise is the republican solution from a decade earlier. What other choice did we have?
Romney may have signed it, but keep in mind Massachusetts is a blue state and the state Senate at that time had 35 Dem seats and only 5 Republican. It was a bipartisan bill, but mostly Democrat.
Continuing with the status quo would have left millions without health insurance, including many with pre-existing conditions who desperately needed it. It wasn’t perfect, but it was an improvement.
It was written by the heritage foundation, it was the best way to maximize profits for the health insurance industry.
Yeah my life is so much better now that i have to pay a copay on top of my premiums instead of not having insurance and just having a regular old pay at the end of a visit. And Oh wow, I get a free flu shot and checkup once a year for my $5,000 a year in premiums. Oh and if i have a major health emergency i van declare bankruptcy on the $15000 deductible instead of declaring bankruptcy on the full cost of the surgery. Neat!
There’s a reason republicans never repealed obamacare, because it makes the health insurance companies too much money.
It’s really amazing how those people who only use ACA/Obamacare as a shinying accomplishment know absolutely nothing about it
The idea that Romneycare was written by the Heritage Foundation is a myth repeated based on the Michael Moore documentary Sicko. It’s not true.
https://prospect.org/2014/01/03/no-obamacare-republican-proposal/
Let’s say you didn’t have insurance and were just counting on paying out of pocket. You are just living your life and BAM, you have a massive heart attack. Turns out you had an undiagnosed heart defect and there is nothing that could have prevented it or predicted it. You’re taken by ambulance to the hospital where you have open heart surgery and where you stay for weeks to recover. You get a huge bill that you can’t pay. What happens?
The doctors and nurses did a lot of work to keep you alive and they deserve to get paid. The hospital has to keep the lights on. You filing for bankruptcy doesn’t change this. That is why everyone needs to have insurance. This kind of thing can happen to anyone at any time. As a society we can’t just let people die if they can’t afford treatment. Even if you take for-profit companies out of the equation, the whole system collapses with millions of people unable to pay.
That is why everyone has to pay premiums. Part of that payment is for vaccinations and check ups, but part of it is coverage in case catastrophic shit happens. Healthy people get the least back out of the system, but nobody knows if they will still be healthy tomorrow. The bigger the pool of healthy people paying into the system, the less each person needs to pay to cover the people whose luck ran out.
Which is why it’s not an accomplishment for dems. Even with that brief super majority the best they could do is copy republicans plans. Which is also why the GOP can’t make any legislation to replace it as it’s already their plan.
Which then gets back to the point of the post
Edit, because people still don’t understand they based it on Romneycare
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/romneycare-vs-obamacare-key-similarities-differences/
That is so wrong it is astounding. If the ACA is the GOP plan, why did they try and repeal it over 70 times?
The Republican plan is for the poor to die because they believe in social eugenics.
It’s literally Romneycare with a few minor tweaks.
If the ACA is the GOP plan, why did they try and repeal it over 70 times?
The Republican plan is for the poor to die because they believe in social eugenics.
They keep trying because they want to break the government and kill people.
And Romneycare was basically put together by Massachusetts Democrats. Romney just signed it.
The ACA would have passed much faster if they didn’t try “working across the aisle” with the Republicans. If I remember, the original plan was to expand medicare to encompass more people who need it but negotiated to what Mitt Romney passed in his state while governor. Then the Republicans all voted against what they wanted. So the Democrats are either a paid opposition party or so absolutely naive to the dealings of Republicans and keep stepping on that rake. As well instead of making it a stepping stone they don’t really talk about improving it either. Also in that time they could have enshrined abortion rights into law that is harder to overthrow than a supreme court ruling.
No matter how your parse things, the Democrats aren’t good.
I agree, the Democrats aren’t good, but they aren’t actively evil like the Republicans. They are naive, idealistic, and out of touch, but they are the only party that (for the most part) practices democracy.
“Not good” isn’t better than “actively evil” if it consistently shows it does nothing to put itself between the evil and it’s victims, nor does anything to break down the systems of evil when it has the advantage. The modern Democrat politicians are not some newcomer on the political scene, they’ve had their ups and downs over the decades but even when the balance of power is in their favor they mete out “progress” at a minimum only when they have to, tell their constituents “that’s the best we can do”, then applaud themselves like they’ve changed the world. They are absolutely out of touch, not just with their voters, but with the fact MAGA is not the Republican Party of Reagan and Bush that was going to play political pendulum and trade power back and forth every couple of election cycles while having a gentleman’s agreement that bureaucracy and preservation of the system for the benefit of the elite is the goal.
If you don’t think Democrats haven’t been standing in the way of Republicans, you haven’t been paying attention. Democrats blocked the SAVE act which would disenfranchise millions of American citizens, they just successfully blocked DHS funding over ICE, they just blocked $1 billion for Trump’s stupid ballroom, they are blocking the Fair Tax act which would eliminate income tax and the IRS, HR 899 which would eliminate the Department of Education, HR722 which would define life at conception, HR28 which is an anti-trans sports bill, HR129 which would abolish the ATF, and on and on and on.
Why didn’t Biden prosecute Trump for insurrection from Jan. 6th? He still believes you need a Republican party at all, like we need people further right than the Democrats. They could have prevented this entire situation by going after the organizers, of Trump stealing documents alone. But they slow walked us into this.
The Pandora box. Once an American president is truly held accountable. Every president can be held accountable.
Because the executive branch doesn’t have the power to prosecute anyone. The legislature tried to impeach Trump over Jan6 but that was blocked by Republicans. The classified documents case was slow-walked by a Trump loyalist judge until he was reelected and became immune from prosecution. The law did go after the organizers and many were hauled only to be pardoned by Trump. Democrats did all the law allowed.
You and them are so out of touch with reality that you both think playing the old political game represents “standing in the way”. Blocking the SAVE act doesn’t do shit when your opponent is gerrymandering the maps in their favor. People will still be able to vote, they’ve just rigged the system so that who votes where will reliably favor them. And in places democrats control they’re playing the same game in their favor instead of fighting to eliminate the concept altogether. Blocking funding for the ballroom isn’t going to stop him from building it, it’s just going to force him to do it illegally, as he done with so many other projects, at which point they resort to grandstanding condemnation and strongly worded letters. They might have prevented abolishing the Department of Education but they have spent decades allowing it to become a tool in the dumbing down of America’s youth to the point it’s now run by a WWE exec, and frankly I’m not sure allowing it to exist in that condition is the better option. Blocking legislation that codifies anti-trans and life at conception beliefs is showmanship when you do nothing to stop the illegal enforcement of those beliefs by jackboots who deny access to healthcare. MAGA is running on action first, normalizing the violence and denial of rights illegally, then trying to make it the legal standard after and Democrats are acting like blocking the legislation somehow prevents what is currently happening from occurring.
Blocking ICE funding doesn’t block ICE. The goon squads weren’t pushed out of communities by press conferences and letters to the president. They were blocked and pushed out by citizens who put their safety and lives on the line, sometimes making the ultimate sacrifice, in defense of strangers. Meanwhile Democratic leaders postured for their next campaign run and took to trolling the regime on social media with witty memes. Your leaders have risked nothing and therefore achieve empty victories while the people they supposedly serve are arrested, beaten, disenfranchised, denied rights, dehumanized, raped, molested, and murdered by a regime that doesn’t give a fuck that what they’re doing is illegal because the legal system is in their hands and standing up to them requires more than saying “no” because they don’t respect personal boundaries. You literally have to block them with force equal to or greater than what they’re coming at you with, just ask Alex Periti.
Like I said, this isn’t the Regan or Bush regime that nominally had some sort of respect for the game of power trades, this is fascism. It’s going to walk over us all whether it has the legal justification and funding to do so or not.
So there is literally nothing that the Democrats could do that would satisfy you short of lining up Republicans and shooting them?
Following the law isn’t “playing a political game”. Giving Republicans an excuse to remove Democrats from power wouldn’t help anyone. Did you even know that there are no more US deportees in Salvadoran prisons? That is because Democrats fought for their freedom. Those people were helped and that’s not nothing. Real resistance isn’t charging in guns blazing. It is showing up every day and saving who you can. Martyrs don’t save anyone.
Obamacare was the implementation of a 1989 Heritage Foundation plan to implement an individual mandated health care system.
Also by no available metric did Obamacare “improve things”. Healthcare costs rose significantly above the pre-ACA trend, bankruptcy increased, and health outcomes plummeted across nearly all metrics.
Didn’t the ACA get rid of insurers denying coverage based on “pre-existing conditions”?
Yes but that was also a part of Romneycare, ie the heritage version implemented in MA under Romney being Governor
now they just deny coverage with AI generated reasons and force you to nag and beg for them to pay what they’re obligated to. much better! and before that they just paid some corrupt physician to sit on staff and make up bullshit reasons to deny coverage.
Hey, they were already doing that as their policy well before AI started helping them reject covering things their policy holders need
Yeah I edited in the old method after I posted. Don’t want them trying to blame this all on AI.
Sure, but you’re assuming that “coverage” leads to better outcomes. I remember diabetes being one of the big ones at the time and is avery maneagble disease.
So, what was the hospitalization rate before and after? Did it decrease as was promised? Is diabetes unique or does this trend hold for the majority of those “pre-existing conditions”?
Also by no available metric did Obamacare “improve things”
Wrong. The number of insured people went up. The uninsured rate dropped to a historic low of 7.7% by 2023. That is a tangible improvement in the lives of millions of Americans.
What good is insurance with a deductible I cannot afford to pay? Mandating people buy shitty insurance is not the win you think it is.
Just because you don’t have insurance doesn’t mean more people don’t have insurance. Obamacare didn’t create high insurance prices. That was happening no matter what. Also remember that Republicans tried to repeal the ACA more than 70 times and stripped several elements from the plan, so of course it isn’t working as well as we would want.
I didn’t question whether more had insurance. I questioned the quality and utility of the insurance they were forced to purchase by penalty of fine. One of the elements the republicans stripped was that fine, which existed entirely as a handout to insurance companies who swore up and down that having to cover preexisting conditions would bankrupt them unless you forced everyone to buy their “product”. (Not that the republicans did it out of any altruism or anything, they just wanted to use that as part of a ploy to repeal the ACA entirely, which failed)
Republicans stripped the fine because that hurt the ACA. Insurance depends on healthy people paying in to cover the sick. The bigger the pool of insured, the lower the costs for everyone. This all falls apart if young, healthy people just chance it and skip having insurance. If you make people pay a fine even if they don’t have insurance, this removes the incentive to skip getting insurance (which keeps prices down).
You are assuming that having insurance is correlated to physical or financial health and is therefore an improvement.
Rationally that makes sense, that’s what it’s supposed to do. Empirically the data shows an overall negative correlation between private healthcare rates and general healthcare outcomes.
It’s true that the uninsured rate went from 17% pre-ACA(2010 when it was signed) to 10%(2016 2 years after it was implemented at an uninsured local minima) which is ~18 million people. However in that same timespan average annual health expenditures, for the entire US population, doubled from $1600 per person per year to $3200. Pre-ACA trend would’ve resulted in ~$2200.
That’s a difference of ~4.87 trillion dollars stolen by “healthcare” corporations from individuals over the last 14 years.
Obamacare forced every American to purchase private health insurance. It wasn’t a victory for anyone but United and Aetna.
It’s funny because that is basically the same argument people used when Social Security was established. A functional society can’t have people just dying in the street. It costs money to fix this, so it is not unreasonable to ask people to pay for it. Everyone needs healthcare eventually whether or not they are insured. People without insurance still get care which raises the prices for everyone who does have insurance. The more people who pay in, the cheaper coverage is for everyone. Making everyone be covered is simply making people pay for what they use. It’s simple economics.
Yeah, I agree private insurance companies suck, but that’s an entirely different problem, i.e.capitslism as a whole.
It’s funny because that is basically the same argument people used when Social Security was established.
Social security doesn’t force people to purchase a product from an independent, for profit company.
It’s simple economics.
It’s a simple gift to the insurance industry.
So then argue against a for-profit healthcare system. Don’t get pissed at the government for trying to fix a problem.
I will always get pissed at a government that pretends to be fixing a problem by forcing me to buy a product from a for-profit company.
You can just pay the fee for not having insurance (which hasn’t existed in 7 years) so you aren’t forced to buy from a for-profit company anyway.
Then its time for a third option.
There is no third option until both a better option arises and one of the two existing parties is weakened enough to be supplanted. We aren’t anywhere close on either front.
We do have a better option: it’s called the Green Party. I do agree that the Democrats are nowhere near weak enough to be replaced, but that could change very rapidly depending upon how the next few years turn out.
The Green Party is not a realistic option. The best they have ever done is 2.7% of the popular vote for president and they have never held a single Senate or House seat. I think the more likely event is that the right splits into MAGA and America First parties, allowing a left supermajority that then splits into Progressive and a traditional Democrat parties.
The Green Party is not a realistic option. The best they have ever done is 2.7% of the popular vote for president and they have never held a single Senate or House seat.
…which is a lot more than any other leftist political party is doing. This is due to how difficult it is to get a party up and running, and then keep it running. Which we Greens have done for decades.
Plenty of people have thought they could do better, and where are those parties now?
It makes a lot more sense to join a party which has already done that hard work, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
There is a fly ramming against my window right now. That doesn’t mean it is doing more than the other flies to knock my house down. No leftist party has come anywhere close to challenging Democrat power. All the third parties combined wouldn’t even come close. Throwing a penny into a well and wishing for another party option would be just as effective as supporting the Greens.
When was the last time Republicans had a 60-vote majority in the Senate? Why do you need 60 votes to fix that which didn’t take 60 votes to break?
The answer to that is literally 1925. That’s how much the Democrats suck.
I don’t know that Republicans have ever had a 60 vote majority in the Senate. You need 60 votes to make fundamental changes to the system that the opposition will not support. Things like constitutional amendments.
If you don’t even know the vote threshold required for a constitutional amendment, maybe don’t speculate on paths to political change…
I know you need 2/3. 60 votes isn’t the cap. It still allows wide systemic change, but 2/3 makes it more durable.
Sure. But we need to come back to the original question. Why do Democrats need 60 votes to fix something that Republicans didn’t need 60 votes to destroy?
Because it’s always easier to destroy than to build. It takes months to build a house, but one can be torn down in a day. That’s just life.
Removed by mod
Must feel weird without the bot network that would upvote your kind of ignorant takes and overall shitty attitude that existed on reddit.
Your “debate style” is very reminiscent of a MAGAts. Maybe start listening and using that brain of yours to gain a wrinkle instead of constantly sticking to your dogma that has helped create the current situation in the U.S.
Removed by mod
Democrats are fascists. Nazis did5 think they were the bad guys either
Thank you for proving my point :D
Removed by mod
lol
Democrats are fascist
They bought into fascist propaganda hook, line, and sinker. The fascist playbook has always been to divide the left with infighting so they can’t provide a unified resistance. It has happened over and over again throughout history, but they can’t put aside minor disagreements to fight a literal existential threat.
Removed by mod
Power is never given, it is taken.
I see a lot of discourse around this theory that when Democrats are in power they’ll reverse everything this regime has done. Yes this is a comforting thought but it’s way too much to expect from the Democratic Party as we know it now.
The Executive branch has been given (and has taken) an extreme amount of power to the point where the balance we once knew is now nonexistent. Does anyone think for one second the next president will just forfeit those gains? What incentive is there? And as we’ve seen and continue to see, who will hold them to account?
My bet is that we’ll see a few easy ‘gimme’ reversals that are enough to enable our slide back into the complacency we so desperately crave.
I fear Dems will see just how easily we’ve bent over for the current administration, and realize they can get away with it too. I’ve said it ad nauseam – when did we decide to start trusting the government? Any government? I’m right in the middle of my expected lifespan, and I never once trusted my government. Why would I? They’ve done nothing positive for my generation, and every slight success is quickly dismissed or disqualified by the next dipshit with deep enough pockets to rule the land. This isn’t democracy, and it never has been. The “people’s vote” has never mattered. It’s just another smoke surrounded mirror providing the illusion that democracy exists. Hell, the only reason the word democracy probably exists in our history is to make us believe that such an impossibility is reality. Mark my words and those of others, the only difference between the two parties? One is full of fascist, pedophile, sex offenders and the other is full of fascist, pedophile, sex offenders. The female leaders in both parties are just enablers, otherwise they wouldn’t put up with the shit and take to the streets. Same for our more diverse leaders. If they rock the boat too hard, they’re out a paycheck and some sweet, sweet insider trading. The whole system is dead, and I fear revolution is the only answer to the madness. But we’ve become too complacent and docile to fight. We’re too busy trying to make ends meet to have the necessary reserve energy to fight for rights which probably never truly mattered in the first place. Just stuff written down that **we’re **advised to follow or face penalties. None of the people in power ever follow their own rules or the rules commanded by the people. When I say we are doomed to the point of extinction, I mean we are DOOMED. There’s just no way for even the lamest human to find any reliability, accountability, or faith in governments that have outwardly shouted that they’re not to be trusted and could give a shit about your life.
love the righteous anger but you gotta try to stay positive my bru
Sounds positive to me!
