Oh trust me, how pathetic the situation is wasn’t lost on me lmao

Honestly reading up on Von der Leyen apparently getting away with that, wtf. Hopefully New York Times lawsuit will follow with appropriate results this year. The very least they could do is replace her with what’s likely a dime a dozen.

The extreme right shouldn’t be the only platform that demands a change.

100%, it’s just about balancing that with also a stable EU that allows influence that’s pro citizens (or more ideally humanity)

I can only concede to needing structural improvements, tho I wanna stress that I think it was fair decision-making overall in the moment as the EP did get final say, (when we’re saying that Weber was EPs choice, which again misses the nuance that he managed to come out on-top but lacking more than 50% to even have a majority of votes (182/376 when EP has 751 seats), with nobody wanting to coalition, which is what matters, just like with coalitions needing a majority of seats to form government in parliamentary systems)

An army would definitely also need a clear “fuck no, im out” option for every decision anyway, or a lot less resources than I’m currently comfortable looking at them being gung-ho about. My understanding is that the cooperation means a lot less collective money spent due to each country’s specializations, but that is probably something where each nation need absolute “yes/no” power in regards to committing actual bodies to a cause.

The Spitzenkandidat system is not part of EU law, but more of a political agreement that was hyper new and with no obligation, and saying that the European Parliamanet through the spitzenkandidat should be the only voice ironically weakens the voice of national governments, particularly for smaller and less powerful countries that we want to account for. (You voiced something akin to that too)

Most people also probably couldn’t tell you the process of the EP or focused much on how your vote would affect EP voting, so it’s hard to on its own justify to have a democratic mandate (not that you can’t take it into account. I like the idea, though I think I’m stuck between it either requires more teaching voters about bureaucratic processes that are going on, or is too much logistical tactical voting to take account for when voting). It also wasn’t a real majority result in the EP, which both undermines its practical use, but also more importantly the European Council proposed a compromising team of candidates, and the EP still has to confirm the commission president and carried through with doing so. Compromise is a huge part of being in a democracy.

Yeah but it’d benefit the administration at least, I’m not saying it’d benefit anyone else!

That company stuff is weird, especially how she’s apparently not just paying the tax debt on it. She also says she’s contested it but for some reason there’s no public cases whatsoever to look at.

You do speak to something overall I can concede, when I’m retrospecting with the sentence that she punches left, I think I have to give you that she could’ve had a way way bigger progressive part of the tent if she wanted to, especially with the disregarding of Gaza.

🙌 fuck. that’s my bad

I think that’s a pretty fair question, especially as I am kinda globalist (or at least see majority EU cooperation and correcting itself as a net-good)

if we take aside potential hoping-to-weaken-EU Russian involvement, and a lot of its de-legitimizing language, my very first concern would be making it harder to enforce common standards for instance to prevent democratic backsliding, as I see European democracy as being the best tool currently for results that both allow experts to weigh in and for the nuance of public concerns that spontaneously emerge, even if we all can argue that it will always need improvement to a lot of people.

Heightened unanimity requirements hold a lot of the union hostage, when it in general would be nice to be on the same page, but I understand it also shouldn’t be so low as 60%, I would argue that current standard or maybe a tinge less is fair in that it tells you that most everyone is on-board with a decision (simplifying a lot of how the people making the final decision got in power of course, where there are maybe half of their citizens who could still oppose whatever they voted for)

So far this has helped a lot in human rights protection within the EU, collective bargaining power with the outside, enforcing a climate policy which pretty much requires everybody to step up, and like, other things that in the short-term can make for instance authoritarians be very popular at the cost of the long-term.

i realize my wording is a bit wonky, when i say “we’ll exempt any tariff that goes to it”, I meant the getting resources from elsewhere would be subsidized

also just lower the minimum wage to $2 :^)

Bernie and Warren were definitely contributers to making Biden move on minimum wage,

but everyone who actually remembers when the Democrats had the majority knows better than that

the democrats did not have the overwhelming majority (60) that can surpass a filibuster, and yeah, the big-tentism hurts to an extent with more conservative democrats, but the states they come from don’t have a lot of alternatives in terms of what type of politician is going to get voted.

Democrats have the power to stop Trump right now, which they’re failing to do

Trump is engaging in a lot of bypassing that the judicial branch should be taking care of, but the judicial branch is compromised. They could in theory prevent bills that require overwhelming majorities yes.

They can and should protest it, but a lot of it is on the judicial branch saying no and reversing demands by the executive branch

My personal recollection is that while she defended Israel as a victim, she still said that she would work to stop what was happening in Gaza and specifically didn’t want to provide further arms to Israel

You know what, fair enough, America is a little too cooked on the national level and the national issues that involves (and significantly overcooked internationally), though I never meant to communicate you should just say pwease and twank you democwats if thats what it comes off as as well,

The AOC thing though, it feels highly selective with its points,

Ted Kennedy co-wrote NCLB but there isn’t really malice you can imply in him, especially when he’d been pushing for UBI since the 60s, it more seems like naïve One Size Fits All ism and thinking that Bush would follow through with funds when he promised to. He was also a rare from-the-start Iraq War opposer, and was also hoping for Obama to be the change many others hoped, even pushing Obama to put universal health care as a top priority.

The article doesn’t really disprove her working-class status, and her work with the non-profits mentioned show a clear interest in working with her local communities to make both their stories known and education better.

She also didn’t come out of nowhere, she came from her mostly-working-class district, seeing that her district was taken by someone who did not reflect their constituents and worked that opportunity in her favor. At that point, everyone comes out of nowhere. Doesn’t it make more sense that the left being starved of strong political figures to represent our cause herald the young working-class woman for being loud against injustices?

She’s also a huge part of why Build Back Better, COVID relief, PACT act, actually pushes for a lot of the good things they do, even though she wanted more. It’s not like she afks for 2 or 4 years.

Also, where’s the part about mysterious funding? I don’t think I caught that in the article

I empathize a bit, but it’s not like democrats haven’t been getting more leftward either.

The truth is though that ultimately, politicians are gonna be malleable to those who are going to vote, both because of the very simple “if I focus here, I will be more likely to get the most votes while providing due change”, but also because the idea of democracy is based in the trust that publics will emerge to voice their concerns to the politicians.

Most politicians are just not online enough to gather the discourse that we would be experiencing, and also there’s the whole issue of not knowing how much of it is foreign interference in a trench-suit pretending to be the voices of the locals. That’s why direct calls to voicing these concerns to local politicians, and being willing to hear them out as much as they hear you out matters a lot. Some do forget over the years, but a lot join politics because they genuinely want to make life better.

if the last month has taught us anything, real 4D chess would be “make the Switch 2 here, we’ll exempt any tariff that goes to it, and lift the ones on you”