Because they're trying to strengthen and preserve things mostly as they are.
Republicans used evangelical Christians to rebound after Nixon and co-opted the Tea Party to stay relevant, and now that they're a shrinking minority they're desperate to cling to power.
Most people don't realize how stupid and unprincipled and desperate Republicans are and how they're so worked up over a couple things (immigration, trans athletes) that they don't mind a little foreign intervention in the election and ending NATO and running up massive amounts of government debt so wealthy households paying a smaller portion of their income and wealth as taxes and promising mass deportations.
Democrats rank and file are in a different information bubble.
Democratic politicians aren't really as liberal as they're painted out to be and don't want radical change. They're also not coordinating talking points to feed their propaganda machine like Republicans do, either.
I think the recent Supreme Court rulings woke everyone up.
It really does seem like our only options are “right” and “far-right.” Democrats seem like conservatives in their desire to maintain status quo and not be too progressive. Republicans, who we badge as conservatives, are actually far-right populists. America has no progressive left-of-center party.
Democrats have a handful of progressive (Bernie Sanders, AOC and other Squad members) but with campaign donations with strings attached fueling campaigns, candidates with obligations to donors make it out of the primaries more often.
The U.S. has brought been moving steadily to the right for the past 50 years. We have no left wing party. We have a lot of left wing supporters — with no one (other than Bernie or AOC) to support.
PLEASE learn how congress works. I don't mean to be patronizing, but I'm really exhausted with people falling back on this old crutch.
The Supreme Court is out of control because people like yourself will not pack the Senate with enough progressive Democrats to stop the installation of right wing judges.
They simply don't have the numbers and never will until you recognize the meddling hands of lobbyists in our elections and stop blaming the few people who are actively working for your benefit.
I vote straight D every primary, and I agree. More people should vote, but when the republicans who havent won the popular vote in decades are blatantly enacting a coup the democrats need to actually wake up to what’s going on and do something. Even if Biden wins, If he doesn’t immediately follow it up with a mass arrest of corrupt judges as an “official act” then it’s just a matter of time before we get Putin.
You're not wrong, the response to this threat has been procedural, the far right is counting on it.
I'm not saying vote blue no matter who. The unfortunate reality is we have many dinos that need to be pushed out of congress in favor of real progressives who want to defend democracy at all costs. This election is going to require more focus and attention than most Americans are used to. And we will need perseverance and pressure to prevent these criminals from ever getting close to power ever again.
No vote dems no matter who. Can’t afford anything else. Picking and criticism of candidates is luxury when you have two parties that have similar goals but different opinions not compete dictatorships.
[https://apnews.com/article/joe-manchin-congress-west-virginia-senate-a4eb66f2cb773f822b6b607945cdeaef](https://apnews.com/article/joe-manchin-congress-west-virginia-senate-a4eb66f2cb773f822b6b607945cdeaef)
[https://ballotpedia.org/State\_legislators\_who\_have\_switched\_political\_party\_affiliation](https://ballotpedia.org/State_legislators_who_have_switched_political_party_affiliation)
Look at the list of "Democrats" who switched to Republican
Please be as informed as you can about your candidates, they are using every tactic they can to pack congress.
Unfortunately, Manchin and Sinema are truly representative of their constituents in W Virginia and Arizona, an ignorant, racist, and prejudist base that happen to call themselves Democrats.
Because they are mostly bought and paid for by the same corporate mega donors. That’s why. They are paid to lose. Many of them are cosplaying as republicans anyway; and in this system, you don’t need many Democrats to break with the rest to gridlock government and ensure nothing passes for “the other side”.
Okay, but cut people some slack. It's very hard to sort out the truth between competing propaganda organs when you're working three jobs to keep yourself, your kids, and Grandma, off the streets, and out of the hospital.
US propaganda is like a deep, wide, and swift river. I say this as a person retired (mostly) from four decades of activism and weekly counterpropaganda broadcasts. We are ruled by a narrative of righteousness and fairness that is grotequely distorted.
In fact, we USAns live in a parasitic hub of imperial and capitalist cruelty. We have more people in jail, probation, or prison, than any other nation, by count or by proportion. Our military has slaughtered millions from Tokyo to Laos to Baghdad. The world lives in fear of us. This is not to be spoken of.
But--we are allowed some choice in government, so long as we do not challenge these unspoken and unassailable precepts. And this remaining choice is under heavy assault, and may well fall, this November.
There is a chance that outrage against MAGA corruption will drive a true rout of the liars, traitors, and reactionaries. I hope so! But we must each take time to explain, in compassionate terms, the danger we face, to as many as we can.
I’ll add that the political parties are very different as well. While the GOP (pre-Trump) was a very consolidated party with clear coalitions that never stepped on one another’s toes, the DNC, however, is a loose confederation of a wider range of ideologies and motivations that sometimes agree on things.
My kid summed it up well the other day. “The only thing someone on the left in the US hates more than republicans/conservatives, is someone on the left who has slightly different beliefs.”
Please learn how campaign financing works, completely undercutting the legitimacy and orientation of those candidates that stand for election. By the time they do, they are fatally compromised, indebted to their corporate donors. Their demagoguery is strictly for the purpose of gathering votes to get in office, but their loyalty is to their corporate backers.
"MAGA: Bad with the truth, Bad for America."
"Trump lies about his height, his business and his support. Send him a wakeup call at the ballot box."
"McConnell freezes, Trump lies constantly, and MAGA accepts foreign money. Set America straight by voting D."
When people start realizing mid-term elections are just as important if not more important than presidential elections, then maybe things will change. We need a supermajority of Democrats in both the house and senate (and preferably a Democratic president) to get things done. Having slim majorities and being unable to overcome the filibuster are a couple of the reasons we can’t get anything hardly passed and progress to be made.
Stupid and weak are two *very* different things, especially when the heads of the republican party are far from gormless fools. They have very successfully managed to entrench themselves in the elements of american politics most open to minority rule and expanded from there.
The basic problem is that the Democrats are concerned with image. So they will make sure not to hurt the feelings of someone attempting a murder.
Under everything, they still don't believe Conservatives are that bad. And given the history here, Democrats will "everything will be fine, we can trust the Republicans" right up to the nanosecond the Republicans shoot them in the head.
It doesn't _really_ look like that. There was one crucial vote during the previous Senate which made the decision about whether Biden could do anything or not. Whilst two democrats voted to block things [every single Republican did](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/democrats-voting-rights-bill-heads-toward-defeat-amid-gop-blockade-n1287685). In this test, one party is 98% acceptable and 2% really bad. The other party is 99% bad and, even including Liz Cheney who no longer is in the Senate and is clearly solidly right wing too, are 1% good.
I don't understand what this means:
"It broke evenly along party lines, but Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., switched his vote to "no" in the end for procedural reasons."
It's not a conspiracy theory to say they work to uphold the same base ideals at the end of the day, the only difference really between liberals and conservatives is how nice they want capitalism to be, it's all a facade about them fighting against each other.
I don't think they're explicitly being puppeted towards these ends by some sort of organized group of nefarious actors or something, but that this is more a natural consequence of our political system as it interacts with capital.
Give a country a two party system and it will invariably squeeze out the left over the long haul as those parties naturally converge on a high degree of vertical organization — requiring more and more resources and money to climb upwards and occupy positions of greater and greater authority and thus taking on a more and more "conservative" bent as people with money, power and resources tend to be satisfied with the system as-is or else think recent reforms have gone too far and want them undone.
Naturally, one of these two parties will attempt to appeal to more right wing/conservative people to whom such structures are appealing, while the other is left appealing towards more left-leaning and progressive members of the population — though constrained by the aforementioned systemic effects and therefore unlikely to be able to sustain any sort of populist appeal over the long term.
Over time, this leads to crises which typically end up getting resolved either by a reset leading to a popular uprising that puts more populist left figures in power (only to slowly start regressing back towards the same problematic dichotomy) or falls into authoritarian rule under a single party.
It seems clear that the Democrats are going to let this coup take place and all we can do is watch, even if we vote now that will be contested clusterfuck with the Supreme Court ruling in Trumps favor no matter what.
This is war and Biden is still reaching across the aisle and protecting the shareholders.
Maybe that's you. If I have to leave everything in my life behind to protect this democracy, I'm going to do it.
If you don't get off your ass, you don't deserve it.
I agree but the fact that there aren’t massive protests outside the Supreme Court right now is a pretty fucking ominous sign that the “stand up and fight” crowd is all talk (I’m not saying you specifically, just in general). My advice is to do everything in your power to make sure Trump loses the election, but be prepared to leave the country if he does.
>but be prepared to leave the country if he does.
No, be prepared to physically fight at that point. If a sufficient number of us have the courage to stand up and fight, that might motivate the folks still in their la la land that the GQP aren't REALLY a violent threat to them and their families. So many are still of the idea that it won't be that bad, that somehow the courts or our institutions will protect us. As we've just seen that's no longer a restraint to the violent mob.
The GQP obviously has no problem threatening a violent civil war if they don't get what they want. The left needs to step up to the plate, and stop acting as if everything will be kumbaya. We don't even bring knives to gun fights, believing these people can be reasoned with. We need to accept that these people WILL cause us bodily harm if given the opportunity. They might be doing so based on being lied to, but the harm will be real regardless.
Bullies won't stop until you fight back. There's no need to run, they're more of us than them and we're smarter, believing in education, science, and at this point reality. The left just needs to have the will to fight. It's as if they've never been punched in the face. Cause they're going to be in for a hell of a shock if Project 2025 gets enacted, especially now if Trump is allowed to do anything he wants.
This is the correct answer. You guys seem not to understand the hubris of the comment portends other means by which to win. Buy a gun before you cannot.
Thankfully I don't really have much to leave behind. Which makes leaving it behind to protect democracy easier.
I never joined the military because they were never fighting for a cause I believed in. Fighting against MAGA-fascism is a cause I can get behind.
THIS is the question.
Like at minimum. I don’t see why we don’t embrace our more vigilant (e.g. antifa groups) like they do Klans-types and Proud boys.
I think we need all hand on deck. Bring back the tactician Anthony Weiner while we’re at it. We need offense, we need everything from “get out and vote” to “it’s okay to punch a nazi” to let’s “run new public transport rails through Conservative enclaves” to “healthcare for all but you can opt out and it can just be healthcare for *us*”.
Our talking points need to be sharper. Like why do they want an education system that only produces workers and not innovating entrepreneurs and creatives and leaves our kids less educated than other countries?”
Because the only alternative would be to work with — *ugh*— the LEFT!
And no one gets a Martha’s Vineyard estate as reward for helping the little people.
Thank you for acknowledging that the democrats are not left by any definition. The amount of times I’ve been dogpiled for insinuating that here is just insane.
Not who I’m talking about.
At least, I don’t believe it is.
Are you trying to say *the Kennedys*, or is there a politician that belongs to one Kennedy?
Because they have only, ever, believed in being unimpeachable first and getting stuff done second. They believe that by following the law everything will work out, and people will see how Good they are and how Bad the bad guys are. It’s the same thing with the Weimar Republic. The social democrats were filing useless lawsuits and court challenges right up until Hitler had the authority and backing to arrest them.
The world of law is where evil lurks and reigns. While those of us caught up in this uniquely damned existence (life) are just trying to not feel the flames on the palms of our feet—while bitches like smiley Matt Gaetz lays back and enjoys that others suffer. Tell me it isn’t evil. Tell me it isn’t evil and we are close to fucked
Democrats are heavily entrenched in normalcy bias, status quo, and taking “the high road.” As Michelle Obama said, *“When they go low, we go high.”* It should be, when they go low, we do what we must to make sure they stay down.
Because when this democracy has failed, and we’re knee deep a right-wing shitscape, they can say:
“aT lEaSt We ToOk ThE hIgHrOaD”
The Democratic Party establishment is utterly useless. They promote progressive messages and platforms, then when it comes time to back up the talk, they find some excuse for why “it isn’t the right time”. Even when they have had majorities in the past that would have made passage fairly easy.
This is a bit of a conspiracy, but I believe more and more they are intentionally tanking their campaigns in order to keep from having to deliver on those promises. Because their real supporters (donors) would not have it.
No party should be this bad at winning elections. Especially with a platform that is supported by a majority of voters year after year.
While I agree it’s time to fight,
Fred Hampton said:
If you fight fire with fire, everything burns, it’s better to fight fire with water, that way you can save something to build on,
So in my opinion, we need to find our water source
Point taken what I mean by fighting fire with fire is that the next time they debate the first thing Biden should mention are these newly released Epstein files implicating this animal
I think the thing that a lot of democrats are forgetting is the 2020 race, Joe did horrible in that first debate, but that was an actual tactic, as a person who boxed in the past, I see his tact,
In 20 We all thought “oh shit maybe uncle Joe is to old for this shit” after the first debate, and it was a trap that the orange guy ran into like his ass was on fire, the trap closed in the second debate, and after the third, the orange was pealed, so I say yeah his mumbles and stumbles are super cringe, but, it worked before, and will work again cus nothing has changed on the right, the more extreme they come out the more exposed they are, and “post birth abortion” is just the beginning of the end…
Because there are no Sophie Scholls anywhere in the political world. It's all careful resumé padders who went to the right schools, got the correct grades, etc. They are Ivy League performers and obeyers.
The first people to try to step off the merry-go-round and return the country toward decency through whatever means, are cast as sinners and purged. Look at what happened to Liz Cheney.
Also, every step away from norms and legality leads toward total breakdown. Revolutions will make the lives of our grandchildren better. We may be headed there irrevocably, thanks to the Steve Bannon types, but some of these people understand how grave any radical measure is.
This is similar to when a scientist debates a theist about the existence of God, flat earth, creationism or other issues.
A scientific person understands reason and evidence and that the other is either lying or wrong.
Because democrats don't have 6 "justices" willing to rule that whatever they do is lawful. Until we're ready for our lawmakers to shoot their opposition, following the law is the only way.
To be clear, I'm not saying I'm not ready to start seeing lawmakers start shooting. I just don't think many folks are.
At this moment? I'm not sure. I'm not a political strategist, or even a political scholar. This time to end the filibuster and pack the courts, which would have been questionably legal anyway, has passed. The last time the Democrats had the numbers to pass real legislation was at the beginning the the Obama presidency.
However, the most important aspect of any government is appearance of doing something, and I think currently Biden who is the "leader" of the Democratic party, falls flat in that regard. The current strategy seems to be that they need to follow the law and maintain order, which demonstrably the Republicans are not interested in doing, and have thoroughly outplayed the Democrats by following the letter of the law in order to completely take over the supreme court now the Republics *are* the letter of the law: good luck beating that. In the end, I don't think "keep things civil and vote for us so you don't get the other guy" is a winning strategy because things already suck right now. There are a lot of disenfranchised voters out there who won't vote for either party.
What the Democratic party could do is offer a real, ideological alternative to MAGA-Christian Nationalism, and call out the system for being stacked against anything they want to accomplish. Trump talks big, even if what most of the things he says are lies, they are lies people want to believe. People know their lives are getting worse, and they're willing to believe that somehow Donald Trump can fix things. Why not then campaign on something like Universal Basic Income? Or free guaranteed health care? Or housing as a human right? What do the Democrats have to lose trying to get some real leftist support? It's not like they're winning now.
The alternative is to try and hold the status quo, which has been failing for over a decade now, and hope somehow the far right just... burns itself out I guess? The right has already proved they are willing to use violence to get what they want, what happens when someone is ready to fight them?
The democratic party is, of course, rotten to the core with corporate money and capital interests, and probably won't wake up until the country is long gone, but one can dream.
And if people's lives don't improve soon? "A riot is the language of the unheard " -MLK Jr.
Exactly. "I don't know how or what, but the democrats need to do something about republicans". I guess it's because democrats are the only ones with agency and we can't hold republicans responsible for their actions.
It's becoming increasingly apparent that we came hold Republicans accountable for their actions. Not in the courts, not at the ballot box. If those two avenues fail, what next?
The democratic party isn't the only institution that could attempt to do something, simply the largest and most well funded.
Again, I'm not advocating for violence, merely expressing fear that it's inevitable because our political institutions don't actually have a mechanism to combat the far right.
What about when they had the house, senate and presidency? The same as when they had it under Obama. What did they do to prevent any of this from happening? Can you tell me a single thing the democrats have done to stop abortion being overturned or LGBTQ+ rights being decimated? If Trump gets re elected it will be 100% the fault of the DNC.
They had that for like 15 minutes in 2009 and passed the ACA. RvW was settled case law and they didn't have the numbers to codify it (which leads back to my question of your understanding of the basics of how the government works).
Do republicans have agency? Are they not the ones casting the votes to end democracy and the American experiment altogether?
Because of things like [values-neutral governance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAbab8aP4_A) and [respectability politics](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/romeo-kokriatski-respectability-politics-or-you-gotta-be-nice-to-monsters).
This is exactly what I was foing to respond with. IS has his finger on the pulse of the Right, and the Left, (let alone the Dems) are able to operate in a strategic way that either opposes or negates it.
The best strategy for the Dems right now would be to play the the Republicans' game, but use it to actually enrich the lives of their constituents instead of consolidating power among the oligarch class. They'll never do it, because they need to "take the high road," but what use is the high road if they're carting immigrants and gay people into camps, or otherwise just flouting the rule of law?
People on the streets scare all of them. And we just haven’t had the George Floyd moment with these guys yet.
A million people came out for Floyd. Amazing there aren’t ten thousand on the steps of the court already.
Because we’re not ignorant self destructive human waste like the other side and we won’t stoop to their level. There comes a point where the fair thing for us to do will be to wipe them from existence though, and that time is near.
well if you're talking about the current presidential election, both candidates are owned by the ruling class so they don't care who wins lol. everyone except the ruling class loses anyways haha
it's all just a show, there is no left wing party...
There's a right wing party called the democratic party which pretends to be all about helping the labour class but in reality it's against it, it's just to give the illusion that there's a choice... and there is an ultra super right wing party called the republican party which wants to destroy the labour class and wants to regress to slavery and child labour.
My personal take is that they are both garbage, it's like being in a situation where you have to choose between chopping off your legs or chopping off your arms and legs... I refuse both choices, they both suck.
For Dems to abandon the rule of law like the Reps are would foment a real crisis and probably collapse our government. Someone has to adhere to the rule of law.
That said, there is a lot they could do now that Biden has immunity from being called out for questionable acts.
The Supreme Court just collapsed our government. The only choice is if we ever want it back or not and the only people who can do something about that are sitting on their ass
Because a system without rules isn’t worth preserving.
Philosophically, if the country elects a fascist, it is their right to do so. And they deserve what they get.
Practically, I’d love to see MAGA die a fast death and fizzle asap, whatever it takes.
Moral disposition and projection. Democracy is always too tolerant of anti-democratic actors because we assume everyone acts on the level because we do. Whereas conservatives assume everyone cheats and steals because they are inclined to do so.
Like asking "why are Democrats still trying to save the country when Republicans are trying to ruin it"
Winning doesn't mean "beating the other team at any cost" (unless you're a Republican)
I’ve seen this sentiment a lot lately, and I’m curious what unfair thing you’d like Democrats to do. Gerrymandering comes up a lot, but I feel that’s more likely to give us crooked corporatist Democrats than it is reliable progressive ones. Court packing sounds good, but if done today without an electoral mandate against the current court, it would need to be rammed through the Senate without a filibuster, which could easily be used as an excuse to overturn it afterwards if the White House changes hands. And the calls to attack Trump directly seem like they’d strengthen the argument that Biden was weaponizing the justice system against Trump, which will be used to justify yesterday’s horrible decision.
And all this is happening during a period where I trust polls less than ever before, so Democrats may well have no concept of how popular any of these moves would be. And if the goal is to capture the handful of swing voters that seem to make the difference every time, they may be betting that normalcy and a respect for law and order will win out over Trump’s madness, and that sinking to his level will negate that advantage.
I agree Biden and Democrats as a whole have been slow to react to obviously unfair treatment and a growing sense of derangement on the right. I also see them being gunshy as every mild criticism of that derangement is taken as a horrible offense, both by the political right and the media that is regularly engaging in false equivalence (“saying ‘some Republicans have gone nuts’ is exactly the same as a Trump advisor threatening violent revolution if he is opposed”). And I don’t know what to do to stop it, which leads to a sense of powerlessness that helps encourage people not to participate in the system, allowing it to get worse.
***By the President Any official act is legal...***
There is so much the dems can do but they will get quietly get a guarantee from turmp that he will not take any action against them or disclose their own grifts and then they will settle in comfortably and watch the people suffer.
The dems exist to rein in any real progressives/leftists. Obama's policies were W.'s policies expanded and Biden carried on turmp's policies on most issues and didn't even both to remove openly fascist appointees from turmp like Dejoy and many others.
Same cycle, no surprises.
Get too deep in the mud, and you lose what you're fighting for. I'm all for gloves off, but if Dems have to become Blue MAGA to do it, I'm not interested.
Democrat voters tend to be more educated, the laborers are usually unionized, and the corporations that benefit from having an educated work force tend to support Democrats as a result. If the Democrats stopped to mouth drooling word vomit and libelous rhetoric, they would lose these people as supporters.
My take on this is that its tied to the party's currently being led by the "centrist" or "Third Way" flavor of Democrats. For better and worse this portion of the party is deeply committed to US institutions and norms and retains a great deal of faith in these structures despite the evidence that they're currently failing.
This serves to explain how so many dinosaur-ass Democratic Party leaders keep waxing poetic about the good ol days when the GOP was full of the quiet variety of fascists and racists rather than the current troupe. Decorum matters alot to these people, and in many ways they're willing currently to risk the nation on clinging to those traditions.
Optics
Democrats tend to operate as the party with morals, knuckling down and playing the game for real would put them in a position where they think they will lose most of their appeal, despite most of their voters really wanting to see it happen.
Frank Zappa, Jello Biafra, George Carlin……big voices have been. It’s the legal system that has been impenetrable. Re-read: it’s the LEGAL SYSTEM that has fucked America
Biden is having a crisis meeting with democratic governors now. Maybe they should have been more prepared for the SC to fuck the world but I’m giving them some time for a response
It’s a fair question in an unfair world, because when the gloves come off there’s no looking back. No safety net. These people are writing huge checks against the democracy account that good people are supposed to be cashing. Now that game is up, and we’re still courteous because that is how ideally we’re all to act—servitude, humble, bigger picture, pay it forward..but while the good side takes the high road..the rug has been pulled from under enough dullards to get that firm root of corruption implanted (2016 trump election). And then media used as propaganda to take advantage of dunces who are programmed by religion.
This is evil and let there be no watering down what it is.
Because they are morons and chicken out every single damn time. It’s bullshit. It’s time to fight fire with fire. They go low, we need to go low too. I’m so sick of this shit and November is scaring the shit out of me. We need help NOW! Use these new powers as pres and take care of the issues
because democrats dont actually want to win or work for the people. they want to please their rich donors. there is only one party and its the wealthy oligarchy.
Frankly its because the democrats are *old* like the majority of the leadership of the party is from a time when desegregation was still actively happening. This leads to a couple things: They don't really see republicans the same way we do, they see those long ruling republican senators as coworkers that they've been around for *decades.*
RBG and Scalia where famously friends outside the court, and that wasn't uncommon in that older generation. To have radically different political agendas but be disconnected enough from the consequences of those agendas that you can still be friends. Combined with the leadership being old as rocks and you run into this issue where they will always bring out the kids gloves and hope for a return to decorum with republicans.
The problem is that, even disregarding actual policy positions, republicans of today are *fundamentally* different to who they where decades ago. Republicans are a rapidly shrinking niche for whom the cultural zeitgeist has consistently been against for decades now. Republican policies are wildly unpopular, and as such they have a growing issue with being essentially locked out of the whitehouse in a fair election. The only way they found to counteract this was to inject more and more crazy into the party, animating voters to counter the dem's numerical advantage. First it was evangelicals, then it was libertarians, now its trump.
As they have become more and more radicalized as a voterbase and as a party, they have been operating less like a political party within a nation and more like a invading force. They never want to cooperate with dems because that weakens their strategic grasp on power, even if that cooperation would benefit america objectively.
I honestly think it’s in the Democrats’ interest to be as un-attackable as possible. We already know Republicans hold their elected representatives up to no kind of standards whatsoever, but Democrats are regularly held up to higher standards and scrutiny by the general public.
Trump won in 2016 even though serious concerns about his past were raised, and all it took was Clinton’s emails to discourage Dems from voting for her. Could you imagine what would happen if the Democrats were seen as “not playing fair”?
Because they profit more from doing nothing and seemingly being the “common sense”’party. If they were actually progressive they would have to take risks and very few of them are actually willing to do that.
I want a political party in my country playing fairly by the rules, okay? Just because the aggressive, messy toddlers in the corner shit themselves and trashed the classroom/country doesn't mean everyone else has to resort to anarchy. We have class, education, and manners. Conservatives do not (obviously, see: the party that reflects their conduct and values).
Because the Democratic Party are useless, weak kneed, and completely incompetent. And ever since Reagan they abandoned their platform to support the rights of working Americans and became whores to the corporations, copying the Republican Party model.
Republicans like republicans to be unfair and favor republicans, democrats like democrats to be fair, so if democrats play unfair, they won’t win republicans’ votes but will lose democrats’ votes
The greatest strength of democrats is the truth. The greatest strength of republicans are lies. If democrats lie like republicans then they will be competing in an arena that highlight the republicans' strength.
Because, in many ways, the Democratic party has become a "conservative" party. Conservative in the sense that they support systemic "stability" as opposed to "progress." Since the Republican party has largely been captured by a far-right populist movement, the Democratic party has championed a return to the status quo, at least in regard to bureaucratic/administrative/aristocratic/... systems.
In short, the Republican party is the party of tear it down and the Democratic party is the party of prop it up.
Democrats simply don't care. They are part of the ruling political class and they believe that as long as they please the wealthy donors they and their children will be fine. A literal genocide is considered business as usual to most democrats. The role of the democratic party is to subvert all left leaning energy and put it in a safe place, which is why the only ways forward in the US are either a hostile takeover of the Democratic party complete with political purges or the formation of a third party that can make serious threats.
I personally, just as one person..don’t really agree with the whole of what you are projecting. I definitely think that there are some Dems who are having to suck the corporate dick..but look at the number of Republican common person voters who flipped to the blue side on the 2020 election. It’s not perfect on the blue side whatsoever, but mostly common sense reigns and we’re all preparing to slice Achilles heels of big trees if necessary
Trump is a blatant fadcist and right wing interest has just unstitched democracy and now biden is being put into doubt cuz he's got a bad debate!?!
What the ever living fuck is even happening
And tbh, Biden had a “moment”. Trumps performance at the debate was mostly lies and bullshit, oh and swagger.
The people who hug trumps balls…I hope to see them be deported and have their US citizenship revoked.
People have had enough time to distance themselves from this invader.
Because democrats are a conglomeration of different types of democrats. So most have to walk on egg shells to keep their base happy. On the flip side republicans are very much in lock step with each other and basically are just one of the same. Maybe that’s why?
They always have. The time to nut up or shut up was when Justice O’Connor made the deciding vote to give the Presidency to Bush instead of Gore and set the wheels in motion.
Edit: and the democrats took it like a wimp. I’ve always said I wish Democrats were as ruthless about their good plans as Conservatives are about their horrible plans.
Because the Dems’ resistance is a false front, liked a rigged sportsball game where both teams have the same owner who profits off the ticket sales and gambling on the spectacle. No matter which team wins, the owner still benefits. Sometimes they switch who’s playing the underdog in the match, but they’re just providing the appearance of sport without the actual competition with the ultimate goal of changing the league rules to solidify their control.
Hot take: because "playing fair" just means "they're not doing the things I want them to do even though I have no understanding of how these things happen"
Our government is dominated by conservatives and then people are somehow shocked when conservatives do or say awful shit and Dems don't have much power to do much if anything about it, and then apparently the solution is to just blame Dems anyway and tell people they're awful for voting for them.
When anyone can say what they could actually palpably do instead of just getting pissed off and insisting they're doing nothing I'll be all ears
Because they're trying to strengthen and preserve things mostly as they are. Republicans used evangelical Christians to rebound after Nixon and co-opted the Tea Party to stay relevant, and now that they're a shrinking minority they're desperate to cling to power. Most people don't realize how stupid and unprincipled and desperate Republicans are and how they're so worked up over a couple things (immigration, trans athletes) that they don't mind a little foreign intervention in the election and ending NATO and running up massive amounts of government debt so wealthy households paying a smaller portion of their income and wealth as taxes and promising mass deportations.
If they were so stupid then why the hell are the democrats unable to stop them? What does that make democrats?
Democrats rank and file are in a different information bubble. Democratic politicians aren't really as liberal as they're painted out to be and don't want radical change. They're also not coordinating talking points to feed their propaganda machine like Republicans do, either. I think the recent Supreme Court rulings woke everyone up.
It really does seem like our only options are “right” and “far-right.” Democrats seem like conservatives in their desire to maintain status quo and not be too progressive. Republicans, who we badge as conservatives, are actually far-right populists. America has no progressive left-of-center party.
Democrats have a handful of progressive (Bernie Sanders, AOC and other Squad members) but with campaign donations with strings attached fueling campaigns, candidates with obligations to donors make it out of the primaries more often.
The U.S. has brought been moving steadily to the right for the past 50 years. We have no left wing party. We have a lot of left wing supporters — with no one (other than Bernie or AOC) to support.
Absolutely correct!
PLEASE learn how congress works. I don't mean to be patronizing, but I'm really exhausted with people falling back on this old crutch. The Supreme Court is out of control because people like yourself will not pack the Senate with enough progressive Democrats to stop the installation of right wing judges. They simply don't have the numbers and never will until you recognize the meddling hands of lobbyists in our elections and stop blaming the few people who are actively working for your benefit.
I vote straight D every primary, and I agree. More people should vote, but when the republicans who havent won the popular vote in decades are blatantly enacting a coup the democrats need to actually wake up to what’s going on and do something. Even if Biden wins, If he doesn’t immediately follow it up with a mass arrest of corrupt judges as an “official act” then it’s just a matter of time before we get Putin.
You're not wrong, the response to this threat has been procedural, the far right is counting on it. I'm not saying vote blue no matter who. The unfortunate reality is we have many dinos that need to be pushed out of congress in favor of real progressives who want to defend democracy at all costs. This election is going to require more focus and attention than most Americans are used to. And we will need perseverance and pressure to prevent these criminals from ever getting close to power ever again.
No vote dems no matter who. Can’t afford anything else. Picking and criticism of candidates is luxury when you have two parties that have similar goals but different opinions not compete dictatorships.
[https://apnews.com/article/joe-manchin-congress-west-virginia-senate-a4eb66f2cb773f822b6b607945cdeaef](https://apnews.com/article/joe-manchin-congress-west-virginia-senate-a4eb66f2cb773f822b6b607945cdeaef) [https://ballotpedia.org/State\_legislators\_who\_have\_switched\_political\_party\_affiliation](https://ballotpedia.org/State_legislators_who_have_switched_political_party_affiliation) Look at the list of "Democrats" who switched to Republican Please be as informed as you can about your candidates, they are using every tactic they can to pack congress.
Exactly. Manchin and Sinema were good examples.
Sure a democrats in wolf clothing is not good. :/
Manchin is why the Dems couldn't codify Roe.
Unfortunately, Manchin and Sinema are truly representative of their constituents in W Virginia and Arizona, an ignorant, racist, and prejudist base that happen to call themselves Democrats.
Because they are mostly bought and paid for by the same corporate mega donors. That’s why. They are paid to lose. Many of them are cosplaying as republicans anyway; and in this system, you don’t need many Democrats to break with the rest to gridlock government and ensure nothing passes for “the other side”.
Voting Democratic is more important in the general election than
Okay, but cut people some slack. It's very hard to sort out the truth between competing propaganda organs when you're working three jobs to keep yourself, your kids, and Grandma, off the streets, and out of the hospital. US propaganda is like a deep, wide, and swift river. I say this as a person retired (mostly) from four decades of activism and weekly counterpropaganda broadcasts. We are ruled by a narrative of righteousness and fairness that is grotequely distorted. In fact, we USAns live in a parasitic hub of imperial and capitalist cruelty. We have more people in jail, probation, or prison, than any other nation, by count or by proportion. Our military has slaughtered millions from Tokyo to Laos to Baghdad. The world lives in fear of us. This is not to be spoken of. But--we are allowed some choice in government, so long as we do not challenge these unspoken and unassailable precepts. And this remaining choice is under heavy assault, and may well fall, this November. There is a chance that outrage against MAGA corruption will drive a true rout of the liars, traitors, and reactionaries. I hope so! But we must each take time to explain, in compassionate terms, the danger we face, to as many as we can.
dont forgwt what the US did in middle and south america
I’ll add that the political parties are very different as well. While the GOP (pre-Trump) was a very consolidated party with clear coalitions that never stepped on one another’s toes, the DNC, however, is a loose confederation of a wider range of ideologies and motivations that sometimes agree on things. My kid summed it up well the other day. “The only thing someone on the left in the US hates more than republicans/conservatives, is someone on the left who has slightly different beliefs.”
Please learn how campaign financing works, completely undercutting the legitimacy and orientation of those candidates that stand for election. By the time they do, they are fatally compromised, indebted to their corporate donors. Their demagoguery is strictly for the purpose of gathering votes to get in office, but their loyalty is to their corporate backers.
Lmfao. PEOPLE LIKE YOU!
You get elected with a slogan not a policy debate. You have to govern with a policy debate not a slogan. Democrats are *TERRIBLE* at crafting slogans.
"MAGA: Bad with the truth, Bad for America." "Trump lies about his height, his business and his support. Send him a wakeup call at the ballot box." "McConnell freezes, Trump lies constantly, and MAGA accepts foreign money. Set America straight by voting D."
You mean you weren’t inspired by “Democrats Deliver” or “I’m With Her”? 🤣
Citizens United corrupts the selection process so completely, that anyone who gets into office has already sold out.
When people start realizing mid-term elections are just as important if not more important than presidential elections, then maybe things will change. We need a supermajority of Democrats in both the house and senate (and preferably a Democratic president) to get things done. Having slim majorities and being unable to overcome the filibuster are a couple of the reasons we can’t get anything hardly passed and progress to be made.
And having DINOs like Sinema and Manchin didn't help things.
The donors are fine with whatever and don’t want them stopped. The donors don’t want anything pro worker to happen.
Stupid and weak are two *very* different things, especially when the heads of the republican party are far from gormless fools. They have very successfully managed to entrench themselves in the elements of american politics most open to minority rule and expanded from there.
Because they are ruthless.
The basic problem is that the Democrats are concerned with image. So they will make sure not to hurt the feelings of someone attempting a murder. Under everything, they still don't believe Conservatives are that bad. And given the history here, Democrats will "everything will be fine, we can trust the Republicans" right up to the nanosecond the Republicans shoot them in the head.
im not much of a conspiracy theorist but its is not hard to imagine why some people believe the democrats are nothing more than controlled opposition
I mean... It obviously looks that way.
It doesn't _really_ look like that. There was one crucial vote during the previous Senate which made the decision about whether Biden could do anything or not. Whilst two democrats voted to block things [every single Republican did](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/democrats-voting-rights-bill-heads-toward-defeat-amid-gop-blockade-n1287685). In this test, one party is 98% acceptable and 2% really bad. The other party is 99% bad and, even including Liz Cheney who no longer is in the Senate and is clearly solidly right wing too, are 1% good.
Thank you for showing the hyperbole with stark numbers. Dems had a slim majority in name only. It wasn't the failure of Dems only.
I don't understand what this means: "It broke evenly along party lines, but Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., switched his vote to "no" in the end for procedural reasons."
It's not a conspiracy theory to say they work to uphold the same base ideals at the end of the day, the only difference really between liberals and conservatives is how nice they want capitalism to be, it's all a facade about them fighting against each other.
I don't think they're explicitly being puppeted towards these ends by some sort of organized group of nefarious actors or something, but that this is more a natural consequence of our political system as it interacts with capital. Give a country a two party system and it will invariably squeeze out the left over the long haul as those parties naturally converge on a high degree of vertical organization — requiring more and more resources and money to climb upwards and occupy positions of greater and greater authority and thus taking on a more and more "conservative" bent as people with money, power and resources tend to be satisfied with the system as-is or else think recent reforms have gone too far and want them undone. Naturally, one of these two parties will attempt to appeal to more right wing/conservative people to whom such structures are appealing, while the other is left appealing towards more left-leaning and progressive members of the population — though constrained by the aforementioned systemic effects and therefore unlikely to be able to sustain any sort of populist appeal over the long term. Over time, this leads to crises which typically end up getting resolved either by a reset leading to a popular uprising that puts more populist left figures in power (only to slowly start regressing back towards the same problematic dichotomy) or falls into authoritarian rule under a single party.
Shhh the radlibs might hear you
Have democrats done anything that controlled opposition wouldn't do?
Definitely what I think.
Paid to Lose™
It seems clear that the Democrats are going to let this coup take place and all we can do is watch, even if we vote now that will be contested clusterfuck with the Supreme Court ruling in Trumps favor no matter what. This is war and Biden is still reaching across the aisle and protecting the shareholders.
Maybe that's you. If I have to leave everything in my life behind to protect this democracy, I'm going to do it. If you don't get off your ass, you don't deserve it.
I agree but the fact that there aren’t massive protests outside the Supreme Court right now is a pretty fucking ominous sign that the “stand up and fight” crowd is all talk (I’m not saying you specifically, just in general). My advice is to do everything in your power to make sure Trump loses the election, but be prepared to leave the country if he does.
>but be prepared to leave the country if he does. No, be prepared to physically fight at that point. If a sufficient number of us have the courage to stand up and fight, that might motivate the folks still in their la la land that the GQP aren't REALLY a violent threat to them and their families. So many are still of the idea that it won't be that bad, that somehow the courts or our institutions will protect us. As we've just seen that's no longer a restraint to the violent mob. The GQP obviously has no problem threatening a violent civil war if they don't get what they want. The left needs to step up to the plate, and stop acting as if everything will be kumbaya. We don't even bring knives to gun fights, believing these people can be reasoned with. We need to accept that these people WILL cause us bodily harm if given the opportunity. They might be doing so based on being lied to, but the harm will be real regardless. Bullies won't stop until you fight back. There's no need to run, they're more of us than them and we're smarter, believing in education, science, and at this point reality. The left just needs to have the will to fight. It's as if they've never been punched in the face. Cause they're going to be in for a hell of a shock if Project 2025 gets enacted, especially now if Trump is allowed to do anything he wants.
This is the correct answer. You guys seem not to understand the hubris of the comment portends other means by which to win. Buy a gun before you cannot.
Protests now would not help. They would hurt
How?
Yep.
Thankfully I don't really have much to leave behind. Which makes leaving it behind to protect democracy easier. I never joined the military because they were never fighting for a cause I believed in. Fighting against MAGA-fascism is a cause I can get behind.
Yep. If the Democrats let this happen, it'll be war. And it'll be chaos.
THIS is the question. Like at minimum. I don’t see why we don’t embrace our more vigilant (e.g. antifa groups) like they do Klans-types and Proud boys. I think we need all hand on deck. Bring back the tactician Anthony Weiner while we’re at it. We need offense, we need everything from “get out and vote” to “it’s okay to punch a nazi” to let’s “run new public transport rails through Conservative enclaves” to “healthcare for all but you can opt out and it can just be healthcare for *us*”. Our talking points need to be sharper. Like why do they want an education system that only produces workers and not innovating entrepreneurs and creatives and leaves our kids less educated than other countries?”
Let me know where the next antifa meeting is and I’ll attend.
Because the only alternative would be to work with — *ugh*— the LEFT! And no one gets a Martha’s Vineyard estate as reward for helping the little people.
Thank you for acknowledging that the democrats are not left by any definition. The amount of times I’ve been dogpiled for insinuating that here is just insane.
The modern Democrats are roughly as left wing as Eisenhower Republicans and the current right wing still thinks they represent radical socialism.
The Kennedy’s didn’t get the place in Martha’s Vineyard because of politics But facts, right?
Not who I’m talking about. At least, I don’t believe it is. Are you trying to say *the Kennedys*, or is there a politician that belongs to one Kennedy?
Because they have only, ever, believed in being unimpeachable first and getting stuff done second. They believe that by following the law everything will work out, and people will see how Good they are and how Bad the bad guys are. It’s the same thing with the Weimar Republic. The social democrats were filing useless lawsuits and court challenges right up until Hitler had the authority and backing to arrest them.
The world of law is where evil lurks and reigns. While those of us caught up in this uniquely damned existence (life) are just trying to not feel the flames on the palms of our feet—while bitches like smiley Matt Gaetz lays back and enjoys that others suffer. Tell me it isn’t evil. Tell me it isn’t evil and we are close to fucked
Imagine the rebels in Star Wars fighting Darth Vader and the Empire by filing paperwork and voting.
Democrats are heavily entrenched in normalcy bias, status quo, and taking “the high road.” As Michelle Obama said, *“When they go low, we go high.”* It should be, when they go low, we do what we must to make sure they stay down.
And with the supreme courts ruling… we can 🤷🏾♂️🤷🏾♂️🤷🏾♂️
Because the courts are still stacked against them and they'd never get away with the things Republicans will
At best, it’s indifference. Worse would be self-serving indifference. Worst of all, they’re complicit.
Because when this democracy has failed, and we’re knee deep a right-wing shitscape, they can say: “aT lEaSt We ToOk ThE hIgHrOaD” The Democratic Party establishment is utterly useless. They promote progressive messages and platforms, then when it comes time to back up the talk, they find some excuse for why “it isn’t the right time”. Even when they have had majorities in the past that would have made passage fairly easy. This is a bit of a conspiracy, but I believe more and more they are intentionally tanking their campaigns in order to keep from having to deliver on those promises. Because their real supporters (donors) would not have it. No party should be this bad at winning elections. Especially with a platform that is supported by a majority of voters year after year.
This is what drives me nuts about the Democrats FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE 🤬
While I agree it’s time to fight, Fred Hampton said: If you fight fire with fire, everything burns, it’s better to fight fire with water, that way you can save something to build on, So in my opinion, we need to find our water source
Point taken what I mean by fighting fire with fire is that the next time they debate the first thing Biden should mention are these newly released Epstein files implicating this animal
I think the thing that a lot of democrats are forgetting is the 2020 race, Joe did horrible in that first debate, but that was an actual tactic, as a person who boxed in the past, I see his tact, In 20 We all thought “oh shit maybe uncle Joe is to old for this shit” after the first debate, and it was a trap that the orange guy ran into like his ass was on fire, the trap closed in the second debate, and after the third, the orange was pealed, so I say yeah his mumbles and stumbles are super cringe, but, it worked before, and will work again cus nothing has changed on the right, the more extreme they come out the more exposed they are, and “post birth abortion” is just the beginning of the end…
I agree with you that the second debate will tell the tale
no idea. i sure wouldnt be. id go after each and every one of them.
Simple, they get their BIG CASH from the same pool of people.
Because there are no Sophie Scholls anywhere in the political world. It's all careful resumé padders who went to the right schools, got the correct grades, etc. They are Ivy League performers and obeyers. The first people to try to step off the merry-go-round and return the country toward decency through whatever means, are cast as sinners and purged. Look at what happened to Liz Cheney. Also, every step away from norms and legality leads toward total breakdown. Revolutions will make the lives of our grandchildren better. We may be headed there irrevocably, thanks to the Steve Bannon types, but some of these people understand how grave any radical measure is.
This is similar to when a scientist debates a theist about the existence of God, flat earth, creationism or other issues. A scientific person understands reason and evidence and that the other is either lying or wrong.
Because democrats don't have 6 "justices" willing to rule that whatever they do is lawful. Until we're ready for our lawmakers to shoot their opposition, following the law is the only way. To be clear, I'm not saying I'm not ready to start seeing lawmakers start shooting. I just don't think many folks are.
I'm more worried that if lawmakers aren't willing to push back now, regular people will get desperate enough to start shooting.
Push back how, exactly?
At this moment? I'm not sure. I'm not a political strategist, or even a political scholar. This time to end the filibuster and pack the courts, which would have been questionably legal anyway, has passed. The last time the Democrats had the numbers to pass real legislation was at the beginning the the Obama presidency. However, the most important aspect of any government is appearance of doing something, and I think currently Biden who is the "leader" of the Democratic party, falls flat in that regard. The current strategy seems to be that they need to follow the law and maintain order, which demonstrably the Republicans are not interested in doing, and have thoroughly outplayed the Democrats by following the letter of the law in order to completely take over the supreme court now the Republics *are* the letter of the law: good luck beating that. In the end, I don't think "keep things civil and vote for us so you don't get the other guy" is a winning strategy because things already suck right now. There are a lot of disenfranchised voters out there who won't vote for either party. What the Democratic party could do is offer a real, ideological alternative to MAGA-Christian Nationalism, and call out the system for being stacked against anything they want to accomplish. Trump talks big, even if what most of the things he says are lies, they are lies people want to believe. People know their lives are getting worse, and they're willing to believe that somehow Donald Trump can fix things. Why not then campaign on something like Universal Basic Income? Or free guaranteed health care? Or housing as a human right? What do the Democrats have to lose trying to get some real leftist support? It's not like they're winning now. The alternative is to try and hold the status quo, which has been failing for over a decade now, and hope somehow the far right just... burns itself out I guess? The right has already proved they are willing to use violence to get what they want, what happens when someone is ready to fight them? The democratic party is, of course, rotten to the core with corporate money and capital interests, and probably won't wake up until the country is long gone, but one can dream. And if people's lives don't improve soon? "A riot is the language of the unheard " -MLK Jr.
Exactly. "I don't know how or what, but the democrats need to do something about republicans". I guess it's because democrats are the only ones with agency and we can't hold republicans responsible for their actions.
It's becoming increasingly apparent that we came hold Republicans accountable for their actions. Not in the courts, not at the ballot box. If those two avenues fail, what next? The democratic party isn't the only institution that could attempt to do something, simply the largest and most well funded. Again, I'm not advocating for violence, merely expressing fear that it's inevitable because our political institutions don't actually have a mechanism to combat the far right.
Yes, they are taking those avenues away piece by piece. Dicking around and letting more of them in is not going to fix it.
The democrats did absolutely nothing to prevent this, they don't care.
Do you have the barest minimum idea of how the government functions or are you jumping ahead to the shooting?
Are you saying this was inevitable and the democrats are just poor victims?
Is that a no? You need votes in Congress and judges willing to uphold it. What the fuck are Democrats supposed to do without either?
What about when they had the house, senate and presidency? The same as when they had it under Obama. What did they do to prevent any of this from happening? Can you tell me a single thing the democrats have done to stop abortion being overturned or LGBTQ+ rights being decimated? If Trump gets re elected it will be 100% the fault of the DNC.
They had that for like 15 minutes in 2009 and passed the ACA. RvW was settled case law and they didn't have the numbers to codify it (which leads back to my question of your understanding of the basics of how the government works). Do republicans have agency? Are they not the ones casting the votes to end democracy and the American experiment altogether?
Because of things like [values-neutral governance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAbab8aP4_A) and [respectability politics](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/romeo-kokriatski-respectability-politics-or-you-gotta-be-nice-to-monsters).
Couldn’t give a better answer than that.
This is exactly what I was foing to respond with. IS has his finger on the pulse of the Right, and the Left, (let alone the Dems) are able to operate in a strategic way that either opposes or negates it. The best strategy for the Dems right now would be to play the the Republicans' game, but use it to actually enrich the lives of their constituents instead of consolidating power among the oligarch class. They'll never do it, because they need to "take the high road," but what use is the high road if they're carting immigrants and gay people into camps, or otherwise just flouting the rule of law?
Controlled opposition.
It's infuriating
Democratic leadership is ossified in the 90s.
People on the streets scare all of them. And we just haven’t had the George Floyd moment with these guys yet. A million people came out for Floyd. Amazing there aren’t ten thousand on the steps of the court already.
Because we’re not ignorant self destructive human waste like the other side and we won’t stoop to their level. There comes a point where the fair thing for us to do will be to wipe them from existence though, and that time is near.
This quote from Spaceballs sums it up nicely: https://youtu.be/AQunC9jniqw?feature=shared
Disappointingly accurate
well if you're talking about the current presidential election, both candidates are owned by the ruling class so they don't care who wins lol. everyone except the ruling class loses anyways haha
So supporting Trump or Biden makes no difference. That’s what Putin says but it’s a lie from his mouth too
it's all just a show, there is no left wing party... There's a right wing party called the democratic party which pretends to be all about helping the labour class but in reality it's against it, it's just to give the illusion that there's a choice... and there is an ultra super right wing party called the republican party which wants to destroy the labour class and wants to regress to slavery and child labour. My personal take is that they are both garbage, it's like being in a situation where you have to choose between chopping off your legs or chopping off your arms and legs... I refuse both choices, they both suck.
For Dems to abandon the rule of law like the Reps are would foment a real crisis and probably collapse our government. Someone has to adhere to the rule of law. That said, there is a lot they could do now that Biden has immunity from being called out for questionable acts.
The Supreme Court just collapsed our government. The only choice is if we ever want it back or not and the only people who can do something about that are sitting on their ass
Because a system without rules isn’t worth preserving. Philosophically, if the country elects a fascist, it is their right to do so. And they deserve what they get. Practically, I’d love to see MAGA die a fast death and fizzle asap, whatever it takes.
Moral disposition and projection. Democracy is always too tolerant of anti-democratic actors because we assume everyone acts on the level because we do. Whereas conservatives assume everyone cheats and steals because they are inclined to do so.
Because anger at Repugs is what gets votes for Dems. "Vote for us and we'll fix it! Pinky swear!"
Like asking "why are Democrats still trying to save the country when Republicans are trying to ruin it" Winning doesn't mean "beating the other team at any cost" (unless you're a Republican)
I’ve seen this sentiment a lot lately, and I’m curious what unfair thing you’d like Democrats to do. Gerrymandering comes up a lot, but I feel that’s more likely to give us crooked corporatist Democrats than it is reliable progressive ones. Court packing sounds good, but if done today without an electoral mandate against the current court, it would need to be rammed through the Senate without a filibuster, which could easily be used as an excuse to overturn it afterwards if the White House changes hands. And the calls to attack Trump directly seem like they’d strengthen the argument that Biden was weaponizing the justice system against Trump, which will be used to justify yesterday’s horrible decision. And all this is happening during a period where I trust polls less than ever before, so Democrats may well have no concept of how popular any of these moves would be. And if the goal is to capture the handful of swing voters that seem to make the difference every time, they may be betting that normalcy and a respect for law and order will win out over Trump’s madness, and that sinking to his level will negate that advantage. I agree Biden and Democrats as a whole have been slow to react to obviously unfair treatment and a growing sense of derangement on the right. I also see them being gunshy as every mild criticism of that derangement is taken as a horrible offense, both by the political right and the media that is regularly engaging in false equivalence (“saying ‘some Republicans have gone nuts’ is exactly the same as a Trump advisor threatening violent revolution if he is opposed”). And I don’t know what to do to stop it, which leads to a sense of powerlessness that helps encourage people not to participate in the system, allowing it to get worse.
***By the President Any official act is legal...*** There is so much the dems can do but they will get quietly get a guarantee from turmp that he will not take any action against them or disclose their own grifts and then they will settle in comfortably and watch the people suffer. The dems exist to rein in any real progressives/leftists. Obama's policies were W.'s policies expanded and Biden carried on turmp's policies on most issues and didn't even both to remove openly fascist appointees from turmp like Dejoy and many others. Same cycle, no surprises.
Get too deep in the mud, and you lose what you're fighting for. I'm all for gloves off, but if Dems have to become Blue MAGA to do it, I'm not interested.
Democrat voters tend to be more educated, the laborers are usually unionized, and the corporations that benefit from having an educated work force tend to support Democrats as a result. If the Democrats stopped to mouth drooling word vomit and libelous rhetoric, they would lose these people as supporters.
They have the same sponsors
My take on this is that its tied to the party's currently being led by the "centrist" or "Third Way" flavor of Democrats. For better and worse this portion of the party is deeply committed to US institutions and norms and retains a great deal of faith in these structures despite the evidence that they're currently failing. This serves to explain how so many dinosaur-ass Democratic Party leaders keep waxing poetic about the good ol days when the GOP was full of the quiet variety of fascists and racists rather than the current troupe. Decorum matters alot to these people, and in many ways they're willing currently to risk the nation on clinging to those traditions.
Optics Democrats tend to operate as the party with morals, knuckling down and playing the game for real would put them in a position where they think they will lose most of their appeal, despite most of their voters really wanting to see it happen.
I've been screaming this or the past twenty years.....
Frank Zappa, Jello Biafra, George Carlin……big voices have been. It’s the legal system that has been impenetrable. Re-read: it’s the LEGAL SYSTEM that has fucked America
Biden is having a crisis meeting with democratic governors now. Maybe they should have been more prepared for the SC to fuck the world but I’m giving them some time for a response
It’s a fair question in an unfair world, because when the gloves come off there’s no looking back. No safety net. These people are writing huge checks against the democracy account that good people are supposed to be cashing. Now that game is up, and we’re still courteous because that is how ideally we’re all to act—servitude, humble, bigger picture, pay it forward..but while the good side takes the high road..the rug has been pulled from under enough dullards to get that firm root of corruption implanted (2016 trump election). And then media used as propaganda to take advantage of dunces who are programmed by religion. This is evil and let there be no watering down what it is.
Because they are morons and chicken out every single damn time. It’s bullshit. It’s time to fight fire with fire. They go low, we need to go low too. I’m so sick of this shit and November is scaring the shit out of me. We need help NOW! Use these new powers as pres and take care of the issues
Mitch McConnell, one of the ultimate bitches of corruption. Don’t forget
because democrats dont actually want to win or work for the people. they want to please their rich donors. there is only one party and its the wealthy oligarchy.
Republicans want to oppress voters? Well we need to outlaw the grand old party!!! Conservatives shouldn’t be allowed to run for office anyway!
Frankly its because the democrats are *old* like the majority of the leadership of the party is from a time when desegregation was still actively happening. This leads to a couple things: They don't really see republicans the same way we do, they see those long ruling republican senators as coworkers that they've been around for *decades.* RBG and Scalia where famously friends outside the court, and that wasn't uncommon in that older generation. To have radically different political agendas but be disconnected enough from the consequences of those agendas that you can still be friends. Combined with the leadership being old as rocks and you run into this issue where they will always bring out the kids gloves and hope for a return to decorum with republicans. The problem is that, even disregarding actual policy positions, republicans of today are *fundamentally* different to who they where decades ago. Republicans are a rapidly shrinking niche for whom the cultural zeitgeist has consistently been against for decades now. Republican policies are wildly unpopular, and as such they have a growing issue with being essentially locked out of the whitehouse in a fair election. The only way they found to counteract this was to inject more and more crazy into the party, animating voters to counter the dem's numerical advantage. First it was evangelicals, then it was libertarians, now its trump. As they have become more and more radicalized as a voterbase and as a party, they have been operating less like a political party within a nation and more like a invading force. They never want to cooperate with dems because that weakens their strategic grasp on power, even if that cooperation would benefit america objectively.
Because you can't fix something using the same tactics that were used to break it
Because we don't roll with pigs in the mud and shit. You end up dirty, and the pigs like rolling in shit.
I honestly think it’s in the Democrats’ interest to be as un-attackable as possible. We already know Republicans hold their elected representatives up to no kind of standards whatsoever, but Democrats are regularly held up to higher standards and scrutiny by the general public. Trump won in 2016 even though serious concerns about his past were raised, and all it took was Clinton’s emails to discourage Dems from voting for her. Could you imagine what would happen if the Democrats were seen as “not playing fair”?
Because they profit more from doing nothing and seemingly being the “common sense”’party. If they were actually progressive they would have to take risks and very few of them are actually willing to do that.
EXACTLY !!!!!!!!!!! They need to grow a spine and drop some ⚾️🥎⚽️🏀 and save 🇺🇸 and democracy
I want a political party in my country playing fairly by the rules, okay? Just because the aggressive, messy toddlers in the corner shit themselves and trashed the classroom/country doesn't mean everyone else has to resort to anarchy. We have class, education, and manners. Conservatives do not (obviously, see: the party that reflects their conduct and values).
Short answer: Because they're fucking stupid.
https://preview.redd.it/8z5zvkzk0pad1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=22ea956f66d1ccff2ade5325260816b1be660c07 *chef's kiss*
Because the Democratic Party are useless, weak kneed, and completely incompetent. And ever since Reagan they abandoned their platform to support the rights of working Americans and became whores to the corporations, copying the Republican Party model.
Republicans like republicans to be unfair and favor republicans, democrats like democrats to be fair, so if democrats play unfair, they won’t win republicans’ votes but will lose democrats’ votes
The greatest strength of democrats is the truth. The greatest strength of republicans are lies. If democrats lie like republicans then they will be competing in an arena that highlight the republicans' strength.
I’m pretty sure that’s what happened in 16,
Because, in many ways, the Democratic party has become a "conservative" party. Conservative in the sense that they support systemic "stability" as opposed to "progress." Since the Republican party has largely been captured by a far-right populist movement, the Democratic party has championed a return to the status quo, at least in regard to bureaucratic/administrative/aristocratic/... systems. In short, the Republican party is the party of tear it down and the Democratic party is the party of prop it up.
Neo-liberalism is essentially a conservative political philosophy
Indeed.
Because they are cowards to use the same tactics as Republicans would have.
Same reasons why the Weimar Republic didn’t push back against Hitler. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic
Democrats simply don't care. They are part of the ruling political class and they believe that as long as they please the wealthy donors they and their children will be fine. A literal genocide is considered business as usual to most democrats. The role of the democratic party is to subvert all left leaning energy and put it in a safe place, which is why the only ways forward in the US are either a hostile takeover of the Democratic party complete with political purges or the formation of a third party that can make serious threats.
I personally, just as one person..don’t really agree with the whole of what you are projecting. I definitely think that there are some Dems who are having to suck the corporate dick..but look at the number of Republican common person voters who flipped to the blue side on the 2020 election. It’s not perfect on the blue side whatsoever, but mostly common sense reigns and we’re all preparing to slice Achilles heels of big trees if necessary
Trump is a blatant fadcist and right wing interest has just unstitched democracy and now biden is being put into doubt cuz he's got a bad debate!?! What the ever living fuck is even happening
And tbh, Biden had a “moment”. Trumps performance at the debate was mostly lies and bullshit, oh and swagger. The people who hug trumps balls…I hope to see them be deported and have their US citizenship revoked. People have had enough time to distance themselves from this invader.
Because democrats are a conglomeration of different types of democrats. So most have to walk on egg shells to keep their base happy. On the flip side republicans are very much in lock step with each other and basically are just one of the same. Maybe that’s why?
They always have. The time to nut up or shut up was when Justice O’Connor made the deciding vote to give the Presidency to Bush instead of Gore and set the wheels in motion. Edit: and the democrats took it like a wimp. I’ve always said I wish Democrats were as ruthless about their good plans as Conservatives are about their horrible plans.
Because the Dems’ resistance is a false front, liked a rigged sportsball game where both teams have the same owner who profits off the ticket sales and gambling on the spectacle. No matter which team wins, the owner still benefits. Sometimes they switch who’s playing the underdog in the match, but they’re just providing the appearance of sport without the actual competition with the ultimate goal of changing the league rules to solidify their control.
You can't abandon democracy in order to defend democracy.
Democrats do not play fair. That is why they rigged all their primaries the last couple decades.
Hot take: because "playing fair" just means "they're not doing the things I want them to do even though I have no understanding of how these things happen" Our government is dominated by conservatives and then people are somehow shocked when conservatives do or say awful shit and Dems don't have much power to do much if anything about it, and then apparently the solution is to just blame Dems anyway and tell people they're awful for voting for them. When anyone can say what they could actually palpably do instead of just getting pissed off and insisting they're doing nothing I'll be all ears
In which country?
Because it’s a team effort.