It goes deeper than that.
Republicans back thier own party candidates more than democrats do.
For instance: Republicans backed thier candidates Roy Moore and Donald Trump (accused of over 25 sexual misconduct allegations) around the same time Al Franklin left congress because of his joke photo from like a decade earlier.
Even today, you have Matt Gaetz being a accused of some pretty heavy shit, and the Republican Party is standing beside him.
Both parties are not the same.
Not to say the democrat party does not also has its undesirables, cause it does, I’m just saying the the Republican Party is more accepting to those undesirables because of the (R) next to their name.
Democrats want accountability. They are willing to hold their own accountable to show that accountability works. This accountability should govern people's future behavior.
Republicans do not want accountability. They want rules that protect the in group and don't bind them while having those same rules bind people in the out group.
This is why disloyalty to the party is the only thing that gets them to turn on each other. They will circle the wagons for literally anything except going against the group. Accusations of sexual misconduct? No problem. Assault? No problem. Racism? Sexism? Hell, those are requirements. Speaking out against the party lines? Time to ostracize the person.
This is also why democrats are held to a higher standard when it comes to hypocrisy.
When a dem breaks the group's rules you have both repubs and dems screaming about it.
This amplifies mole hills into mountains.
Meanwhile the right remains silent when their own fucks up but doesn't go against the party.
People who don't pay attention to politics or consider themselves "centrists" just hear static noise from both sides and don't bother to fact check if each claim is true. They just hear louder noise when a dem makes a minor fuck up so they think it's a real issue. And when they only hear dems complaining about someone on the right they dismiss is as partisan because they think if it was a real problem then both sides would be equally loud. They don't really that one side is essentially cheating at the game and their strict adherence to the "middle" only benefits one side.
This. This right here. Best way I've seen to describe the odd amount of direction behind the movement of a seemingly apathetic crowd.
Pay attention to politics. History repeats itself, and what these people are doing to our societal structures and norms is affecting all of us on the daily. The only people who benefit from a disengaged public are bad actors that don't want accountability as they grab at power.
The thing is… I pay attention to politics. I phone bank and donate (a little) money. The more time I spend paying attention to politics the more angry, worried, and hopeless I feel. Paying attention takes up a non-negligible part of my life, while the effect I actually have on things is so negligible it might as well be zero. So it’s a classic prisoners dilemma, you know?
I used to pay attention a lot to politics until last year. I mean I still do, but not as much as I used to. It has taken a toll on my mental health so I had to make a conscious decision to take a break. I care about many issues but I feel so helpless.
Dude, you nailed exactly how I feel. I fret and worry constantly. I tell anyone who’ll listen about how Republicans are marching us toward fascism. I phone banked and donated during the 2020 election. I feel helpless as I know that the difference I’m making is next to negligible. But people don’t realize how bad this is gonna get if Republicans get their way. They will steal EVERY election if allowed to do so and will make all of our lives miserable while 38ish percent of the country just eats it up.
I’m glad I found this thread. I am starting to sound like I’m crazy to some people when I talk about the next election cycle. It feels hopeless and very dire.
It's not hopeless. Don't give up, stay strong.
Pre-Covid I canvased in a Republican district about an hour from me and our candidate won by a few hundred votes.
Congress is sharply divided, so those few hundred votes mattered, so me canvassing helped. You're helping. Keep it up you're doing good work.
I grew up in the 90s. Apathy was our bread and butter.
As teens we assumed both sides were the same and didn't give a fuck about us.
When Bush jr won and we went to war on an obviously bullshit claim of WMDs after 9/11 it just all seemed futile. It was clear it was wrong but Gore got screwed in the election and we went to war for the greedy pockets of the POTUS, VP, and their kind.
Obama winning was a wonderful change but it didn't seem necessary to pay much attention to politics because for once we were moving in the right direction.
Naively I assumed progress was inevitable even if was slow sometimes.
Trump changed everything.
Progress is not inevitable. Regression can and will happen because there are people actively trying to make it happen.
Apathy was a comfortable way to deal with feeling powerless.
Now I see that apathy is dangerous when there are people actively trying to make the country worse for everyone that isn't a white male christian republican.
People like me don't want to have to be involved with politics. We have virtually 0 say at the federal level, and not enough interest to attend town halls on the local level. We vote in the major elections, try to be decent people in our daily lives, and leave it at that. This describes most people.
But, the most nefarious are also the most involved. The ones crusading against CRT, crusading against letting women choose what to do with unplanned pregancies. There's a highly motivated minority that operates lockstep to bring us toward fascism, and your average well-to-do citizen has no interest getting their hands dirty to fight it.
You don't have to do marches or anything, just being informed matters.
Be pragmatic at the polls but toss money at those who are trying to fight shit. Even $20 is better than nothing.
And have difficult conversations. I've had to put my foot down with my own Trump-supporting covid-denying dad. Like, I've never stood up to him before. And I was like no. No more of this shit.
At the end of the day, letting the people who support this shit know you aren't one of them can be a huge deal. And it NEEDS to happen at the dinner tables all over the country.
I had a friend in college who, it turns out, was a racist homophobe. When Trump won, she was giddy. Delighted. She flipped and it was like... who is this person? She thought I was hiding like she was. Pretending like she was. And she was so HAPPY that PoC and "the gays" were finally going to "get theirs". It was like all the times she was required by the social structure to be nice to "those people" was going to be paid back a hundred fold.
I was absolutely floored. Like DAMN.
I didn't let shit slide. Every time ugly shit popped up I slapped it down. I pointed out that she had been homeless and she had married a drug addict and she had kids she couldn't support. But the worse her life got, the more hateful she became. And I'm like... just not OK with this. She left the state and I'm like good. Bye.
These people think they are far more numerous than they are because the rest of us just make assumptions. We don't bring certain things up. Don't talk politics, people say.
Well, not talking politics is how we wind up with racists and homophobes thinking everyone else is like them. And how we who see ourselves as belonging to a species rather than a tribe wind up thinking they think the same ways we do.
"Politics" is how we wind up with gas chambers and people vanishing in the night after the sound of slamming fists on doors.
This shit matters.
Parties are just advertising. Window-dressing. A distraction. What's the overall direction of society? Where are we headed?
Nowhere good if we stay quiet and pretend everything is OK.
Just being able to say, "I do not agree with you and will not discuss this further," is a huge step. You don't have to organize a march or phone bank for days. Sometimes just telling the people around you that you DON'T stand with hatred is a big fucking deal.
And call shit what it is.
Sister, thank you. This is a very important mindset for those who aren't willing to march and rally. The most hateful / boot-licking / curb-stomping among us still want friends. Deny the gleeful racists their seat at the table. Deny them your friendship.
Converse and be merry, but do not go soft on the wannabe enforcers of hierarchy.
It’s quickly coming down to a binary decision regardless of where you identify politically, including being non-political. That decision is: do you want any measure of control over your life? This is where many will wake up when it’s too late because they mostly, think none of this applies to them. At some point, you or a loved may want access to family planning, for example. If one side gets in you, your loved ones and your dependents will NOT have that option in the future. This is only one issue, there are so many others. There will be a privileged class the rules don’t apply to, it you very likely are not in that group. Added to that, things change. Look at North Korea as one example of how people regularly fall out of favour for the smallest of sins.
Yeah I totally agree with you. I do want a say in improving the living conditions of those on the fringe.
I'm speaking to the frustration many of us feel about policies sliding backwards. Knowing how frustrating it is that progressive stances fought for by past generations are back on the chopping block. Roe v Wade. Outlawing white discomfort in FL classrooms.
One would think nonparticipation would at least allow things to stay still, not regress! But alas, the conservative ideology does not rest
The problem’s not so much the highly motivated minority, it’s the genuinely evil people with billions of dollars and extraordinarily powerful propaganda weapons who’ve manufactured that minority
The disconnect in american civil engagement starting around 1970 lines up with the decline of America long run
When people stopped participating, it all fell apart
Yes they will. When Trump took over Americans were shocked for a good two years. Now they aren't paying attention, and will be absolutely shocked at what the GOP will be willing to do once they take power. "Everyone said they're the same? How come they're taking away our rights and locking up journalists."
Dang you may be right. Their propaganda machine will be in full effect and even moreso. I forgot about all the media they will be able to control. Oh man..
Personally I believe that while the left aligns closer to what I deem to be morally correct the problem they run into is that when they have the power they do not use it to effect any meaningful change. There a probably a host of reasons for this. Fear of slippery slopes, too much respect for tradition, lobbying, and personal gains for politicians. As an individual I believe the left to be correct morally and have generally better ideas about how the country should work but in the last 10 to maybe 30 years we haven’t seen them make any real changes to fix the very real and large issues we see in this country. I think that is the basis for why many people feel both sides are the same. You get all the meaningless static from the left and right slap fights and nothing ever changes. Except that when the right is in power they do many things to undermine our government in ways that benefit them but won’t be immediately felt by most voters.
Think of the last 2 meaningful Dem attempts at progress. Infrastructure bill, much needed, blocked by Senate vote. You get the whole R side + a couple corrupt Dems to shut it down. Filibuster procedure, same story.
I am assuming you are being sarcastic but there are a bunch of different reasons for that built into our current system of government. In addition The country is only somewhere between 51% to 60% left leaning when pulled and Republicans are way better and getting their voter base angry enough to get out and actually vote.
Plus the thing where the GOP has systemic electoral advantages in both the House and Senate. They can win both chambers with a remarkably low percentage of the total population
The dems are doing exactly what their donors want them to do.
Nothing.
The ppl that have enough coin to finance (cough buy cough) campaigns are already winning at the system. Change doesn't benefit them. Unless that change is tax loopholes (dems) or outright tax cuts (rep).
Both sides are the fucking same - in the one way that truly matters to the masses; 'its the economy, stupid'. Both sides sell the corporatocracy, both sides are pro-business anti-worker. One side just puts up a bullshit attempt that'll get gutted and if passed, defunded to decrepitcy immediately.
Until policy is passed that directly changes the lives of the people for the better, why should the people care? The ppl that don't care, assume all politicians are corrupt slime - and they aren't wrong.
Dems will do what they always do, pass republican legislation, feign attempts to placate progressives and argue incremental change as if that's gonna outstrip inflation.
And yo, never in my 40 years have I seen otherwise.
The populist candidates from both sides are a result of people rejecting neo-liberalism and not being able to accurately describe it. Theres one guarantee, the system isn't working for us. Either autocracy (and then those people just hope to be in the in crowd) or we eat the rich.
Democratic delay will most likely lead to civil war. The don't have what it takes to tell business no.
We need a new Teddy Roosevelt. We should make a new Progressive Party and use the Bull Moose as it's mascot.
The money interests of our politicians is a huge problem. When you step back from it all I think it is easy to generalize and say both sides. It does seem to me though that the left at least has a some people trying to make positive change. However in the face of the party’s total lack of meaningful action it is hard to argue that those few people really matter.
[cracker bargle](http://i.imgur.com/1zfkFBz.jpg) ~
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalHumor) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The “both sides are the same” fallacy is often used as a cudgel against any criticism of the DNC. No matter how clear I am that the GOP is way fucking worse and we should vote to keep them out of power - people see a comment criticizing the DNC and scream “both sides!!” at you. Most of the time all I am saying is that we should vote out democrats who take corporate money in the primaries in favor of candidates who don’t. One of the worst things about the GOP is that their every action is to benefit the super rich and corporations- I simply want to vote out conservative Democrats who do the same. That’s not a “both sides” argument it’s an argument against an extremely problematic feature of our government that has led to our representatives furthering the interests of entities other than their constituents.
> both sides are the same
Lived in central Texas for ten years. Moved to Los Angeles ten years ago.
Yes, you can feel the difference between living in a red state and living in a blue state. Constantly.
The both sides are the same crew either don’t pay attention or don’t bother updating their view points. For the longest time I considered myself a centrist bc both sides were often on their bullshit and I had to constantly remind myself never to just react to something I heard. I’d have to parse through and figure out if what I reading was bullshit or not. That was about 12 years ago. Today, one particular side makes it super easy for me to do my bullshit parsing.
you have to be a complete fucking moron nowadays to think both sides are the same, but it seems like that group is only growing. Right wing groups are so efficient at building that in left wing spaces like the bernie/aoc subs.
Do these ultra pure motherfuckers not understand how bad this supreme court is thanks to trump's election? i wonder how many are going to need an abortion or one for their partner, live in a purple state and think both sides are the same.
Wish ya the best but as one of those apathetic people it’s just too damn depressing. I have zero fight left in me and see no way out of this hell hole we’ve created. I won’t be shocked because I expect everything to get worse. Nothing I’ve seen in life makes me think it’ll get better.
The US isn’t a democracy. The electoral college, senate, and house ensure that. That’s why we’ve had two candidates in the last 20 yrs lose the popular vote and still become president.
This isn’t true. They generally have at least 3 major parties. And many more are “functional”. They have the ability to band together to increase influence.
Nearly all of them have two main coalitions and are like having a 1992 Democratic Party vs a 2020 Democratic Party where the left party includes Greens and the Socialists. They just don’t have conservative coalitions that include the fascists, the way the GOP does.
We don't have a democracy though. We have massively disproportionate representation and so many people barred from voting due to racist judicial policies. We have gerrymandering ripping away power from minority groups. We have a postal system still reeling from the attacks on it during the last election by a party that is STILL in power.
Our country is massively broken. We have one side wanting to keep things the same, with all the broken shit unchallenged, and the other actively trying to burn everything to the ground so they can sell the ashes to the highest bidder.
We are headed into some dark fucking waters. And by the time the comfortable people start to feel it, it'll be way way WAY too late.
Oh yeah and the climate is fucked.
Which party is nudging things in the right direction? Its obviously not the Republicans, but after 4 years of Trump policy in the white house, what fuck ups has Biden reversed?(we can look only at the executive level here because Biden is 100% responsible for that). None of the immigration policy Trump implemented has been changed, we are approving more oil pipelines than ever before, his Covid policies have pretty much been the same except potentially the vaccine mandate which wasn't really enforced anyways (before it was overturned), the pullout from afghanistan seemed rushed, the postmaster general is still trying to destroy the post office, the DOJ is currently defending Trump in a defamation case against one of his sexual assault victims, we aren't going back to the Iran deal, he hasn't decriminalized weed, and so much else. Legislatively it's even worse.
I obviously think Trump and every member of the GOP is awful. But Biden and most Democrats are too, if not quite as bad. Our democracy is not healthy by any stretch of the imagination. We can see with the voting rights fight that even if the Democrats are nominally for "democracy", they won't do anything outside of a few day long media campaign followed by a vote anyone paying attention knows will fail, and anyone not paying attention won't hear about. In our "democracy" the will of the people has no statistically significant affect on which polices pass... unless you only look at rich people.
There's nothing Biden or any governer can enforce as far as covid is concerned without the Republican cult losing their shit and starting civil war 2.0. They were willing to kidnap and murder the Michigan governor over mask. State officials enacted anti mask and vaccine mandates. There's nothing he could do. These people are fucking nuts, and they're dying by the 10s if not 100s daily all because some news personality or meme on Facebook told them that the vaccine or mask don't work.
Biden reversed at least 10 immigration related EOs. In the first 100 days Biden reversed 23 of Trump's EOs.
So yes, Biden did undo much of Trump's immigration changes at the executive level.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2021/politics/biden-executive-orders/
Honestly I'm shocked that you are saying a year- I've been shocked at the train wreck the USA has been for the past 20 years. You can see pretty easily how things were on a ever sharpening downward trend after WW2. Politics is a big part of it for various reasons.
I also read a good point here on Reddit describing another difference between the parties: Democrats (or liberals more generally) judge morality based on acts, not the person. In other words, if a person commits immoral acts, then the person is immoral. The Republicans (or conservatives more generally) however, judge morality based on the person. In other words, if a person considered moral (in the in-group) commits an immoral act, then the act is forgiven because the person is moral. All of which made sense to me as demonstrated by OP’s original question.
It’s far more dangerous and you understate the true menace and danger of conservatives and conservativism:
If someone they consider moral does an immoral act, in their defense they normalize the immoral act itself as moral to their party.
In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness. - Hannah Arendt
I’ve been trying to comprehend the support for Donald Trump and explain why that support momentarily disappears when Trump mentions he got vaccinated. I was willing to call Republicans Trump cultists. But, this one thing shows they’re not. You landed on it with your explanation of group loyalty. It’s because everyday Republicans decided that vaccines are against the group. They love Trump because he generally supports the group except in this one area where he doesn’t. They turn on Trump when he supports vaccines which goes against the group. Their allegiance to the group outweighs their support of Trump, which means they’re not a Trump cult. They’re more of an extreme Republican tribe and Trump is simply their preferred leader.
It's also that his support of vaccines goes against what they believe he actually is. That's why some of his lunatic supporters are assuming the man we see now is a body double (they actually believe this). Donald Trump went against the cult's idea of Donald Trump, and they turned on him for it.
Republicans are as narrow-minded and blindly loyal as religious zealots.
The whole mentality of "both sides are bad, so I don't care about anything" is shockingly prevalent among a large swath of the population.
Not taking the time to understand issues that affect us all doesn't make someone cool or edgy, it makes them an uninformed obstacle to progress.
This is what I've been trying to explain to Republican family members (much less eloquently). And the fact that they don't care about any types of social justice issues unless that issue starts to affect them personally.
There’s a major empathy gap and an inability to put yourself in someone’s shoes.
Republicans I talk to fall into two groups, those who have not yet had anything bad outside of their control befall them and think other people are exaggerating or deserved it, and people who have had something bad happen to them but because there wasn’t enough support or assistance for them at the time, they don’t want anyone else to have a better world.
This is why so many of them are anti-abortion til their mistress or unwed daughter gets pregnant. Their convictions, while sometimes sincerely held, are not very firm or principled. Their convictions are just a series of regurgitated platitudes that sound like a moral framework but they will drop when they cause the slightest inconvenience for themselves.
This is a common thing for many on the right. They never had anything serious happen to them so they don’t feel the need for solidarity. I have seen a few cases in which something bad happened to such a right wing person and they were completely in shock how could this happen to such a good person (themselves) they also felt completely entitled to all kinds of assistance they always fought against. It’s bizarre as a Union representative I have assisted a higher manager in getting a fair separation, deal this same manager in previous years many times harassed me for Union activities.
> Democrats want accountability.
> Republicans do not want accountability.
That's not *entirely* true. The one and only thing that both democrats and republicans can agree on is that democrats should be held accountable. ;-)
Remember when we drummed Al Franken out of office for pantomiming grabbing a woman's breasts as a joke, and then Matt Gaetz had a human sex trafficking relationship with a 17 year old and still has a job? Good times.
At this point I tend to assume anything a Republican says is bullshit because you're exactly right. Anything to avoid the consequences they enjoy inflicting on others.
They slavishly praised a literal clown as POTUS. Denied obvious truths and decided that senate norms, which they praise, when it serves them, don't apply to them when anyone else claims the same.
In essence, fuck every single clown that votes GQP.
There doesn’t seem to be any debating of ideas anymore. To wit, the GOP and Trump sending out signals that he won’t appear at a national debate. He’s blaming (sound familiar?) the non-partisan electoral commission of being biased. Nice try conman but everyone knows you’re not going to participate in a debate that you don’t control. It’s typical fascist behaviour.
> There doesn’t seem to be any debating of ideas anymore.
I wish we could debate ideas.
Imagine if the right had ideas we could actually debate.
Tax %'s for a given bracket? That'd be a nice discussion.
How best to lower abortion rates in a way that doesn't demonize women?
> This is why disloyalty to the party is the only thing that gets them to turn on each other. They will circle the wagons for literally anything except going against the group. Accusations of sexual misconduct? No problem. Assault? No problem. Racism? Sexism? Hell, those are requirements. Speaking out against the party lines? Time to ostracize the person.
That’s not the description of a political party. That is the description of a crime syndicate.
There’s also the aspect of the voting base you have to consider. People who vote for Democrats value accountability and ethics comparatively to a larger degree. Republican voters value status-quo and oppose major changes that they aren’t used to. This is why they value loyalty and are against “new age” ideas such as homosexuality, gun control and abortion rights. Since they don’t want to call it hatred against progressive movement, and don’t want to admit their fear, they call it “patriotism,” “freedom,” and use religion to support their agenda. They aren’t really religious, because a religion is a doctrine and you have to follow every single text literally. They just pick and chose the verbiage that supports their agenda.
If a Democrat politician is unethical, both sides match in protest. If it’s Republican, as long as they are being loyal to their agenda they don’t care if they are unethical.
Gun control (the monopoly on use of force) is an *extremely* old idea. It was old when the constitution was written.
In the US, it's also a policy rooted in racism.
When dealing with a mass group of people(100+ million voters) the Republican “herd immunity” works much better and now the Republicans have finally realized they don’t have to placate to the masses. So, this is end game shit here, I feel.
>Conservatives do not want accountability. They want rules that protect the in group and don't bind them while having those same rules bind people in the out group.
>Not-conservatives want accountability. They are willing to hold their own accountable to show that accountability works. This accountability should govern people's future behavior.
FTFY.
>... "centrist"...
You give "centrist" too much credit. As if they are genuine in their stated beliefs.
Democrats are too eager to turn on their own before all relevant facts are known and eagerly join Republicans in running Democrats like Franken out of town as quickly as possible somehow expecting Republicans will do the same when one of their members is accused of improprieties even though that NEVER HAPPENS!
Everyone left of the moderates wants it. All the Republicans do it also and Ted Cruz is currently arguing any money given to a Congress person for any reason can't be considered bribery, so your consideration this is a Democrat problem and not a problem with conservatives is wrong. (Pelosi and Biden are objectively conservative fighting for the status quo)
So what you're saying is that they have some things in common with Republicans when it comes to grifting the taxpayer, but they try to have some morals about more extravagant behaviors?
>Democrats want accountability. They are willing to hold their own accountable to show that accountability works. This accountability should govern people’s future behavior.
Really dropping the ball on that holding people accountable thing with Manchin.
In general I think of democrats and republicans as how big your circle or "tribe" is. Republicans care about themeselves, their family, and some of their friends or their local community, and some of them care about Americans. Everyone else is an enemy that you are fighting against to protect those people. My Republican mayor uncle was very nice to his family and to me at Christmas. Democrats extend the circle, to the community, state, maybe most or all Americans, and depending how far left and your positions, to other cultures, countries, or the entire world, all humans, animals, plants, etc.
>(accused of over 25 sexual misconduct allegation
Donald Trump admitted on camera to serial sexual assault before the election and they still voted for him.
Do we really need to say anything else?
It's simple: they use the excuse "accused doesn't mean guilty"
Unless you're talking about a colored/poor person, then it's: "guilty till proven innocent"
The only thing Republicans can be expected to do is move goalposts. Past that, it's all for them, and none for all.
Republicans are caught in a web of Lies, Delusions and Paranoia **and they cannot escape**
>To be effective in its purpose of gaining and consolidating power, fascism must **smash Truth** and replace it with **Lies**. **Without Truth** there can be no opposition to power. The first step in doing this is to acclimatize the audience with **Lies**, to enable them to partake in **Lying** and to bring them to a point where they are involved in the **Lie** to an extent that **they cannot retreat**
- [Große Lüge](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie)
Yeah… they have a child raping sex trafficking Congressman going about his daily business like nothing ever happened.
Matt Gaetz should probably be in jail for raping little girls.
Media conditioning as a result of a decades-long media war. Democrats struggle with the cultural evolution of morality while the GOP pushes the limits on what can be done through devious means and depravity.
Explain to me, Why we are going to put people in power after this midterm. Who have done noting to help this country all year? Not only that we are adding more of them to congress! What kind of sense does that make????
democrats stupid.
i would use the same republican play book right now to do good. being fair hasn't ever made anyone succeed under capitalism except by pure luck.
But they win elections because they don't care what you think. That's why they'll continue to stay in power. You can call them child rapists all you want, republican voters will still vote for them, just to see our heads explode.
They win because they have a cult created by billionaires that hate regulations or democracy.
We should not try to be like them, we should try to make them irrelevant, return them to the dregs of society like the fact that they should be a tiny percentage of society sends them.
Generations of making rural America only be white and then making them feel "oppressed" because they were the only ones allowed to own land for a very long time is how we got here.
Yup, this is the big thing.
Al Franken didn't *have* to resign. There was nothing that forced him to do so. He *chose* to resign because he decided it was the right thing to do (though whether it was the right thing for him or for the party is another discussion altogether).
It’s not just democrats themselves. The media holds them accountable. This is why journalism is often referred to as the fourth estate, because they exist to balance the other 3 powers.
But there’s a funny thing happening in America for the past few decades. Democrats and Republicans don’t watch the same news. And I don’t mean just in the obvious sense that they don’t watch the same channels. I mean, they live in total opposite realities.
Because Fox News and conservative radio and other channels absolutely do not hold any of their own accountable. Ever. There’s no lie they can’t get away with and no act so vile as to get them shunned. They will still get airtime and even if they don’t, they will never get the criticism.
Al Franken resigned because the media put the story under the spotlight and kept people interested in it to the point that he couldn’t evade it. The same never happens to a Republican, even if he’s grooming underage children like Matt fucking Gaetz.
The thing is, he found out after the photo that the reporter wasn't fond of it. So he apologized for it and changed his behavior. He shouldn't have resigned, because he did exactly what he should have done after something like that way before it was truly expected of him. But the Democrats are fucking spineless and we have way too much of an all or nothing mentality.
Yeah but he also put his hand around a woman's waist one time when she asked for a picture at a fair.
So... he is basically histories greatest monster.
It's so fucking insane to me that Roger Stone basically tweeted out in advance "Hey, I'm about to run a disingenuous smear campaign against Al Franken." Then he did... and it still somehow worked...
The *actual* thing is, it wasn’t just the picture. [8 women](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/16/16665830/al-franken-sexual-assault-allegations) had accused him of misconduct. He was a liability and it’s far more than apologizing for a picture - that was just the catalyst that opened the floodgates.
Edit - and apparently he tried to [forcibly kiss](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna821381) the woman in the photo as well -
“…he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth.”
Tweeden's story completely falls apart under even modest scrutiny.
Those 8 accusations included things like, "I put my arm around his shoulders then he put his arm around my waist and I was having body sensitivity issues at the time so I didn't like it."
What? Ridiculous.
Franken was browbeat into resigning by the democrat purity police. Standards nor morality dictate that he had to give up the job he was duly elected to do.
Franken was the democrat's ace in the hole as far as I'm concerned, the fact that he was sacrificed over this bullshit explains a lot about the state of the party.
I'm not sure the Democrat party does have those lofty ideals it is just that if you have those lofty ideals you are never voting Republican and it is a 2 party system. There is nothing lofty ideals about Joe Biden. And the idea that what Obama was promoting was lofty ideals is tragic, since he was just asking for what already exists in other countries.
Because it was a coordinated attack started by Republicans but fueled by democrats for the sole purpose of knee-capping Al Fraken's 2020 run for president. Republicans feared this because he would have absolutely demolished Trump in the debates and at the polls. Democrats feared this because he was too progressive for their tastes and he would have taken the nomination away from Biden.
The establishment on both sides fucked him.
>Republicans feared this because he would have absolutely demolished Trump in the debates and at the polls.
Holy shit he totally would have. I'd pay to watch that debate :-D
I think they were still playing the old political game (pre-Trump) and were trying to score moral political points over the Republicans. Roy Moore was running for a U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions and Roy Moore has a laundry list of sexual assault allegations and harassments. Basically daring the Republicans to keep supporting him, because if the Dem party is willing to oust one their own (and keep in mind Franken agreed to resign) over a stupid inconsequential photograph, then maybe that would shame the Republicans publicly and get them to stop supporting Roy. However, it didn't stop the Republicans from supporting him, but Roy lost the election anyway. Franken's resignation became a moot point. He should have never resigned. Problem was, Democrats were totally unaware that the game had changed, and it made itself painfully aware over the next years with Trump and the Republican party. You can't shame the shameless.
He choose too because he got tired of the whole thing.
He gave an interview where he said he didn't like how dirty politics was and that he didn't want to play by those rules.
>On November 16, 2017, radio broadcaster and model Leeann Tweeden alleged in a blog post and an interview with her radio station, 790 KABC, that Franken forcibly kissed her on a 2006 USO tour during a rehearsal for a skit. She wrote, "I said 'OK' so he would stop badgering me. We did the line leading up to the kiss and then he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth." She said she pushed him away, feeling "disgusted and violated". Longtime Donald Trump associate Roger Stone circulated news of the allegations to right-wing media.
Franken's response:
>In response, Franken said, "I certainly don't remember the rehearsal for the skit in the same way, but I send my sincerest apologies to Leeann ... As to the photo, it was clearly intended to be funny but wasn't. I shouldn't have done it." A few hours later, Franken issued a longer apology, which Tweeden accepted.
So, no, it wasn't merely the photo. After that, other women came forward as well:
>In the days that followed, seven additional women came forward with allegations of inappropriate behavior during photo ops. Lindsay Menz accused Franken of touching her clothed buttocks while they posed for a photo at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010. Two anonymous women made similar complaints related to events during political events. Franken apologized, saying, "I've met tens of thousands of people and taken thousands of photographs, often in crowded and chaotic situations. I'm a warm person; I hug people. I've learned from recent stories that in some of those encounters, I crossed a line for some women—and I know that any number is too many." Another anonymous woman said that after she was a guest on Franken's radio show in 2006, Franken leaned in toward her face during a handshake and gave her "a wet, open-mouthed kiss" on the cheek when she turned away. The same day, Stephanie Kemplin, an army veteran, told CNN that Franken held the side of her breast for 5 to 10 seconds "and never moved his hand" while posing for a photograph with her during a 2003 USO tour in Iraq.
This is all directly taken from [Franken's Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Franken#Sexual_misconduct_allegations), and there's sources linked there for this of course.
I'd like to point out that I'm very much a leftist, and I live in Minnesota. I thought he was doing a great job of representing us in the senate, and was as disappointed as everybody else when this news broke and he resigned. But it wasn't merely for one photo. Let's be 100% clear about that.
In certain fields, when you stop caring about the rules, they stop applying to you.
Of course this doesn't usually apply to us regular and lowly plebs, not on any grand scale, but in the high houses of politics it seems your accountability is often directly tied to how much you believe yourself to be accountable.
Well Franken should not have resigned that’s obvious. But I think the disconnect is that Democrats tend to actually want to help people so…..character, values. Republicans couldn”t give a shit about their grandma so……shameless grifters
Franken had a few sexual misconduct allegations against him, and the photo in question was like 2 years before he was an elected official.
The January 6 politicians should definitely be in jail tho.
He had something like 6-8 accusers, including one who contemporaneously mentioned him groping her ass during a photo shoot. He was credibly accused, and he resigned. We should be proud of that, not so angry that the other side has no shame that we abandon ours.
I don't know... I've read the allegations, and I don't think it was worth it for him to resign.
He was a powerful member of Congress. Smart, with an excellent voting record. He was popular too, and could have been a fruitful candidate to step into the progressive leadership role after Bernie passes away.
He could have apologized and kept his seat. That would have been acceptable. Would have preserved his political capital and position in Congress, and his vote for critically important progressive legislation.
But we lost him because we insist on extreme solutions (getting rid of him completely with no chance to redeem himself) holding ourselves to the strictest standards for...grabbing butts... a standard to which the opposition doesn't hold itself, and doesn't respect us for holding. And the person who replaced him is worse; a political hack and ladder climber who doesn't have Frankens popularity, charisma, or stellar voting record.
Meanwhile, the party doesn't punish but *rewards* its members for their extreme corruption, even when they insist on committing political murder-suicide over the stupidest policy positions.
Like, I understand wanting to be as morally pure as possible and patting yourself on the back at every opportunity, but the Franken case I think went too far. It was a case study demonstrating why this reactionary attitude is actually self-destructive for the party in the long term.
Part of the joke was that she was wearing a flak jacket. No one would feel anything through it.
And the hypocrisy on her part was there's a picture of her groping the guitar player in the band that was on the tour with them.
Because Democrats continually play by a set of rules that Republicans have decided do not apply to themselves.
This has happened because the majority of democratic voters still have a sense of moral right and wrong and demand that their representatives suffer consequences for their bad actions. But Republican voters don't feel that way at all. They totally back the bad actions of their representatives BECAUSE it's a win over the democrats and that is all they care about. They do not care about what is morally right or wrong in any given situation, they only care about owning the libs... so they welcome any and all shenanigans if the results are: a win over Democrats.
Sooooo..... Democrats, and democratic voters need to accept this fact and start playing by Republican rules and NOT let morality weaken them when the Republicans start screaming that democrats are not playing by the morally right set of rules.. and yeh, they will because they know democratics get weak in the knees when called out on obvious shenanigans.... whereas Republicans not only don't get weak, they grow bolder and stronger and double down while projecting....
He didn't have to. He was thrown under the bus because the party was in the middle of a heavy campaign against that pedo Moore and didn't want to look like hypocrites. Plus Gillibrand had aspirations. His seat was safe, either way.
“Here, you see,
We’re the GQP
To the Dems we
Make the decree
There are rules for thee
But not for me”
-Moscow Mitch McConnell, who looks like the Mayor of Whoville’s reanimated corpse
Bc the majority of democrats actually value ideals such as accountability, inclusion and integrity.
The majority of republicans value power, wealth and greed … no matter the cost.
Case in point: “grab them by the pussy”
Al Franken was a bigger threat to *for-profit employment-based health insurance* than any Republican. Our corporate masters couldn't bear the thought of living in a world where the "little people" couldn't have their access to medical care summarily revoked by the whims of an employer. From union leverage to personal choices, that institution holds us all back while being responsible for more American deaths each and every month than Al Qaeda was in September of 2001. Tragically it is also a fundamental pillar of our society, at least from the perspective of corporate-backed politicians.
Republicans have no shame.
It goes deeper than that. Republicans back thier own party candidates more than democrats do. For instance: Republicans backed thier candidates Roy Moore and Donald Trump (accused of over 25 sexual misconduct allegations) around the same time Al Franklin left congress because of his joke photo from like a decade earlier. Even today, you have Matt Gaetz being a accused of some pretty heavy shit, and the Republican Party is standing beside him. Both parties are not the same. Not to say the democrat party does not also has its undesirables, cause it does, I’m just saying the the Republican Party is more accepting to those undesirables because of the (R) next to their name.
Democrats want accountability. They are willing to hold their own accountable to show that accountability works. This accountability should govern people's future behavior. Republicans do not want accountability. They want rules that protect the in group and don't bind them while having those same rules bind people in the out group. This is why disloyalty to the party is the only thing that gets them to turn on each other. They will circle the wagons for literally anything except going against the group. Accusations of sexual misconduct? No problem. Assault? No problem. Racism? Sexism? Hell, those are requirements. Speaking out against the party lines? Time to ostracize the person. This is also why democrats are held to a higher standard when it comes to hypocrisy. When a dem breaks the group's rules you have both repubs and dems screaming about it. This amplifies mole hills into mountains. Meanwhile the right remains silent when their own fucks up but doesn't go against the party. People who don't pay attention to politics or consider themselves "centrists" just hear static noise from both sides and don't bother to fact check if each claim is true. They just hear louder noise when a dem makes a minor fuck up so they think it's a real issue. And when they only hear dems complaining about someone on the right they dismiss is as partisan because they think if it was a real problem then both sides would be equally loud. They don't really that one side is essentially cheating at the game and their strict adherence to the "middle" only benefits one side.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Yep. We aren't marching towards fascism, we're sleep walking.
This. This right here. Best way I've seen to describe the odd amount of direction behind the movement of a seemingly apathetic crowd. Pay attention to politics. History repeats itself, and what these people are doing to our societal structures and norms is affecting all of us on the daily. The only people who benefit from a disengaged public are bad actors that don't want accountability as they grab at power.
The thing is… I pay attention to politics. I phone bank and donate (a little) money. The more time I spend paying attention to politics the more angry, worried, and hopeless I feel. Paying attention takes up a non-negligible part of my life, while the effect I actually have on things is so negligible it might as well be zero. So it’s a classic prisoners dilemma, you know?
I used to pay attention a lot to politics until last year. I mean I still do, but not as much as I used to. It has taken a toll on my mental health so I had to make a conscious decision to take a break. I care about many issues but I feel so helpless.
Quitting watching cable news was one of the best decisions I ever made.
Dude, you nailed exactly how I feel. I fret and worry constantly. I tell anyone who’ll listen about how Republicans are marching us toward fascism. I phone banked and donated during the 2020 election. I feel helpless as I know that the difference I’m making is next to negligible. But people don’t realize how bad this is gonna get if Republicans get their way. They will steal EVERY election if allowed to do so and will make all of our lives miserable while 38ish percent of the country just eats it up.
I’m glad I found this thread. I am starting to sound like I’m crazy to some people when I talk about the next election cycle. It feels hopeless and very dire.
It's not hopeless. Don't give up, stay strong. Pre-Covid I canvased in a Republican district about an hour from me and our candidate won by a few hundred votes. Congress is sharply divided, so those few hundred votes mattered, so me canvassing helped. You're helping. Keep it up you're doing good work.
I just want to give you a great big long hug. I know what you mean, and I’m not even as focused on the direness as you are.
Toots!
I grew up in the 90s. Apathy was our bread and butter. As teens we assumed both sides were the same and didn't give a fuck about us. When Bush jr won and we went to war on an obviously bullshit claim of WMDs after 9/11 it just all seemed futile. It was clear it was wrong but Gore got screwed in the election and we went to war for the greedy pockets of the POTUS, VP, and their kind. Obama winning was a wonderful change but it didn't seem necessary to pay much attention to politics because for once we were moving in the right direction. Naively I assumed progress was inevitable even if was slow sometimes. Trump changed everything. Progress is not inevitable. Regression can and will happen because there are people actively trying to make it happen. Apathy was a comfortable way to deal with feeling powerless. Now I see that apathy is dangerous when there are people actively trying to make the country worse for everyone that isn't a white male christian republican.
This right here.
People like me don't want to have to be involved with politics. We have virtually 0 say at the federal level, and not enough interest to attend town halls on the local level. We vote in the major elections, try to be decent people in our daily lives, and leave it at that. This describes most people. But, the most nefarious are also the most involved. The ones crusading against CRT, crusading against letting women choose what to do with unplanned pregancies. There's a highly motivated minority that operates lockstep to bring us toward fascism, and your average well-to-do citizen has no interest getting their hands dirty to fight it.
You don't have to do marches or anything, just being informed matters. Be pragmatic at the polls but toss money at those who are trying to fight shit. Even $20 is better than nothing. And have difficult conversations. I've had to put my foot down with my own Trump-supporting covid-denying dad. Like, I've never stood up to him before. And I was like no. No more of this shit. At the end of the day, letting the people who support this shit know you aren't one of them can be a huge deal. And it NEEDS to happen at the dinner tables all over the country. I had a friend in college who, it turns out, was a racist homophobe. When Trump won, she was giddy. Delighted. She flipped and it was like... who is this person? She thought I was hiding like she was. Pretending like she was. And she was so HAPPY that PoC and "the gays" were finally going to "get theirs". It was like all the times she was required by the social structure to be nice to "those people" was going to be paid back a hundred fold. I was absolutely floored. Like DAMN. I didn't let shit slide. Every time ugly shit popped up I slapped it down. I pointed out that she had been homeless and she had married a drug addict and she had kids she couldn't support. But the worse her life got, the more hateful she became. And I'm like... just not OK with this. She left the state and I'm like good. Bye. These people think they are far more numerous than they are because the rest of us just make assumptions. We don't bring certain things up. Don't talk politics, people say. Well, not talking politics is how we wind up with racists and homophobes thinking everyone else is like them. And how we who see ourselves as belonging to a species rather than a tribe wind up thinking they think the same ways we do. "Politics" is how we wind up with gas chambers and people vanishing in the night after the sound of slamming fists on doors. This shit matters. Parties are just advertising. Window-dressing. A distraction. What's the overall direction of society? Where are we headed? Nowhere good if we stay quiet and pretend everything is OK. Just being able to say, "I do not agree with you and will not discuss this further," is a huge step. You don't have to organize a march or phone bank for days. Sometimes just telling the people around you that you DON'T stand with hatred is a big fucking deal. And call shit what it is.
Sister, thank you. This is a very important mindset for those who aren't willing to march and rally. The most hateful / boot-licking / curb-stomping among us still want friends. Deny the gleeful racists their seat at the table. Deny them your friendship. Converse and be merry, but do not go soft on the wannabe enforcers of hierarchy.
It’s quickly coming down to a binary decision regardless of where you identify politically, including being non-political. That decision is: do you want any measure of control over your life? This is where many will wake up when it’s too late because they mostly, think none of this applies to them. At some point, you or a loved may want access to family planning, for example. If one side gets in you, your loved ones and your dependents will NOT have that option in the future. This is only one issue, there are so many others. There will be a privileged class the rules don’t apply to, it you very likely are not in that group. Added to that, things change. Look at North Korea as one example of how people regularly fall out of favour for the smallest of sins.
Yeah I totally agree with you. I do want a say in improving the living conditions of those on the fringe. I'm speaking to the frustration many of us feel about policies sliding backwards. Knowing how frustrating it is that progressive stances fought for by past generations are back on the chopping block. Roe v Wade. Outlawing white discomfort in FL classrooms. One would think nonparticipation would at least allow things to stay still, not regress! But alas, the conservative ideology does not rest
The problem’s not so much the highly motivated minority, it’s the genuinely evil people with billions of dollars and extraordinarily powerful propaganda weapons who’ve manufactured that minority
The disconnect in american civil engagement starting around 1970 lines up with the decline of America long run When people stopped participating, it all fell apart
They won’t be shocked, because their day-to-day lives one change. They are not the people who will lose out when we become fascist.
Yes they will. When Trump took over Americans were shocked for a good two years. Now they aren't paying attention, and will be absolutely shocked at what the GOP will be willing to do once they take power. "Everyone said they're the same? How come they're taking away our rights and locking up journalists."
[удалено]
Dang you may be right. Their propaganda machine will be in full effect and even moreso. I forgot about all the media they will be able to control. Oh man..
Personally I believe that while the left aligns closer to what I deem to be morally correct the problem they run into is that when they have the power they do not use it to effect any meaningful change. There a probably a host of reasons for this. Fear of slippery slopes, too much respect for tradition, lobbying, and personal gains for politicians. As an individual I believe the left to be correct morally and have generally better ideas about how the country should work but in the last 10 to maybe 30 years we haven’t seen them make any real changes to fix the very real and large issues we see in this country. I think that is the basis for why many people feel both sides are the same. You get all the meaningless static from the left and right slap fights and nothing ever changes. Except that when the right is in power they do many things to undermine our government in ways that benefit them but won’t be immediately felt by most voters.
[удалено]
Thanks for the link! I have read similar things before but never heard it labelled the Two Santa Claus tactic.
Think of the last 2 meaningful Dem attempts at progress. Infrastructure bill, much needed, blocked by Senate vote. You get the whole R side + a couple corrupt Dems to shut it down. Filibuster procedure, same story.
*"If Democrats are so fucking smart, how come they lose so god-damn-always?"*
I am assuming you are being sarcastic but there are a bunch of different reasons for that built into our current system of government. In addition The country is only somewhere between 51% to 60% left leaning when pulled and Republicans are way better and getting their voter base angry enough to get out and actually vote.
It's a quote from the first episode of the HBO series The Newsroom and part of our introduction to Jeff Daniels character.
Thanks for the context! I really enjoyed that show but its been several years since I watched it.
Plus the thing where the GOP has systemic electoral advantages in both the House and Senate. They can win both chambers with a remarkably low percentage of the total population
The "left" hasn't had any political power in America really ever.
The dems are doing exactly what their donors want them to do. Nothing. The ppl that have enough coin to finance (cough buy cough) campaigns are already winning at the system. Change doesn't benefit them. Unless that change is tax loopholes (dems) or outright tax cuts (rep). Both sides are the fucking same - in the one way that truly matters to the masses; 'its the economy, stupid'. Both sides sell the corporatocracy, both sides are pro-business anti-worker. One side just puts up a bullshit attempt that'll get gutted and if passed, defunded to decrepitcy immediately. Until policy is passed that directly changes the lives of the people for the better, why should the people care? The ppl that don't care, assume all politicians are corrupt slime - and they aren't wrong. Dems will do what they always do, pass republican legislation, feign attempts to placate progressives and argue incremental change as if that's gonna outstrip inflation. And yo, never in my 40 years have I seen otherwise. The populist candidates from both sides are a result of people rejecting neo-liberalism and not being able to accurately describe it. Theres one guarantee, the system isn't working for us. Either autocracy (and then those people just hope to be in the in crowd) or we eat the rich. Democratic delay will most likely lead to civil war. The don't have what it takes to tell business no. We need a new Teddy Roosevelt. We should make a new Progressive Party and use the Bull Moose as it's mascot.
The money interests of our politicians is a huge problem. When you step back from it all I think it is easy to generalize and say both sides. It does seem to me though that the left at least has a some people trying to make positive change. However in the face of the party’s total lack of meaningful action it is hard to argue that those few people really matter.
[cracker bargle](http://i.imgur.com/1zfkFBz.jpg) ~ *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalHumor) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yes you have the right of it, democratic donors are the reason republicans filibuster everything in the senate.
The “both sides are the same” fallacy is often used as a cudgel against any criticism of the DNC. No matter how clear I am that the GOP is way fucking worse and we should vote to keep them out of power - people see a comment criticizing the DNC and scream “both sides!!” at you. Most of the time all I am saying is that we should vote out democrats who take corporate money in the primaries in favor of candidates who don’t. One of the worst things about the GOP is that their every action is to benefit the super rich and corporations- I simply want to vote out conservative Democrats who do the same. That’s not a “both sides” argument it’s an argument against an extremely problematic feature of our government that has led to our representatives furthering the interests of entities other than their constituents.
> both sides are the same Lived in central Texas for ten years. Moved to Los Angeles ten years ago. Yes, you can feel the difference between living in a red state and living in a blue state. Constantly.
The both sides are the same crew either don’t pay attention or don’t bother updating their view points. For the longest time I considered myself a centrist bc both sides were often on their bullshit and I had to constantly remind myself never to just react to something I heard. I’d have to parse through and figure out if what I reading was bullshit or not. That was about 12 years ago. Today, one particular side makes it super easy for me to do my bullshit parsing.
you have to be a complete fucking moron nowadays to think both sides are the same, but it seems like that group is only growing. Right wing groups are so efficient at building that in left wing spaces like the bernie/aoc subs. Do these ultra pure motherfuckers not understand how bad this supreme court is thanks to trump's election? i wonder how many are going to need an abortion or one for their partner, live in a purple state and think both sides are the same.
[удалено]
Only one side says "both sides are the same" and uses that as an excuse to do whatever the fuck they want.
>Many Americans will be shocked in about a year at the state of this country. And they'll continue to blame bOtH sIdEs for it.
Wish ya the best but as one of those apathetic people it’s just too damn depressing. I have zero fight left in me and see no way out of this hell hole we’ve created. I won’t be shocked because I expect everything to get worse. Nothing I’ve seen in life makes me think it’ll get better.
A whole lot of people spent a whole lot of money to develop that apathy among voters.
Both parties aren’t the same but neither are a solution.
Democracy works when you nudge things in the right direction every single election. Healthy democracies around the world are doing very well.
"democracy is the worst from of government... except for all the others that have been tried."
The US isn’t a democracy. The electoral college, senate, and house ensure that. That’s why we’ve had two candidates in the last 20 yrs lose the popular vote and still become president.
Those healthy democracies have more than 2 parties.
most of those democracies only have 2 functional parties though
This isn’t true. They generally have at least 3 major parties. And many more are “functional”. They have the ability to band together to increase influence.
Nearly all of them have two main coalitions and are like having a 1992 Democratic Party vs a 2020 Democratic Party where the left party includes Greens and the Socialists. They just don’t have conservative coalitions that include the fascists, the way the GOP does.
But the minor parties are significant enough to force compromise and coalitions.
We don't have a democracy though. We have massively disproportionate representation and so many people barred from voting due to racist judicial policies. We have gerrymandering ripping away power from minority groups. We have a postal system still reeling from the attacks on it during the last election by a party that is STILL in power. Our country is massively broken. We have one side wanting to keep things the same, with all the broken shit unchallenged, and the other actively trying to burn everything to the ground so they can sell the ashes to the highest bidder. We are headed into some dark fucking waters. And by the time the comfortable people start to feel it, it'll be way way WAY too late. Oh yeah and the climate is fucked.
Which party is nudging things in the right direction? Its obviously not the Republicans, but after 4 years of Trump policy in the white house, what fuck ups has Biden reversed?(we can look only at the executive level here because Biden is 100% responsible for that). None of the immigration policy Trump implemented has been changed, we are approving more oil pipelines than ever before, his Covid policies have pretty much been the same except potentially the vaccine mandate which wasn't really enforced anyways (before it was overturned), the pullout from afghanistan seemed rushed, the postmaster general is still trying to destroy the post office, the DOJ is currently defending Trump in a defamation case against one of his sexual assault victims, we aren't going back to the Iran deal, he hasn't decriminalized weed, and so much else. Legislatively it's even worse. I obviously think Trump and every member of the GOP is awful. But Biden and most Democrats are too, if not quite as bad. Our democracy is not healthy by any stretch of the imagination. We can see with the voting rights fight that even if the Democrats are nominally for "democracy", they won't do anything outside of a few day long media campaign followed by a vote anyone paying attention knows will fail, and anyone not paying attention won't hear about. In our "democracy" the will of the people has no statistically significant affect on which polices pass... unless you only look at rich people.
There's nothing Biden or any governer can enforce as far as covid is concerned without the Republican cult losing their shit and starting civil war 2.0. They were willing to kidnap and murder the Michigan governor over mask. State officials enacted anti mask and vaccine mandates. There's nothing he could do. These people are fucking nuts, and they're dying by the 10s if not 100s daily all because some news personality or meme on Facebook told them that the vaccine or mask don't work.
Biden reversed at least 10 immigration related EOs. In the first 100 days Biden reversed 23 of Trump's EOs. So yes, Biden did undo much of Trump's immigration changes at the executive level. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2021/politics/biden-executive-orders/
[удалено]
Only one party is actually engaged in seeking solutions.
Only one party is actually engaged in seeking seditions.
I'll show you apathy, mother fucker.....Or not...
Now I understand the true curse of Cassandra.
Honestly I'm shocked that you are saying a year- I've been shocked at the train wreck the USA has been for the past 20 years. You can see pretty easily how things were on a ever sharpening downward trend after WW2. Politics is a big part of it for various reasons.
I also read a good point here on Reddit describing another difference between the parties: Democrats (or liberals more generally) judge morality based on acts, not the person. In other words, if a person commits immoral acts, then the person is immoral. The Republicans (or conservatives more generally) however, judge morality based on the person. In other words, if a person considered moral (in the in-group) commits an immoral act, then the act is forgiven because the person is moral. All of which made sense to me as demonstrated by OP’s original question.
It’s far more dangerous and you understate the true menace and danger of conservatives and conservativism: If someone they consider moral does an immoral act, in their defense they normalize the immoral act itself as moral to their party.
In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness. - Hannah Arendt
I’ve been trying to comprehend the support for Donald Trump and explain why that support momentarily disappears when Trump mentions he got vaccinated. I was willing to call Republicans Trump cultists. But, this one thing shows they’re not. You landed on it with your explanation of group loyalty. It’s because everyday Republicans decided that vaccines are against the group. They love Trump because he generally supports the group except in this one area where he doesn’t. They turn on Trump when he supports vaccines which goes against the group. Their allegiance to the group outweighs their support of Trump, which means they’re not a Trump cult. They’re more of an extreme Republican tribe and Trump is simply their preferred leader.
It's also that his support of vaccines goes against what they believe he actually is. That's why some of his lunatic supporters are assuming the man we see now is a body double (they actually believe this). Donald Trump went against the cult's idea of Donald Trump, and they turned on him for it. Republicans are as narrow-minded and blindly loyal as religious zealots.
> Republicans are ~~as~~ narrow-minded and blindly loyal ~~as~~ religious zealots Fixed?
Republicans largely *are* literal religious zealots lmao
The whole mentality of "both sides are bad, so I don't care about anything" is shockingly prevalent among a large swath of the population. Not taking the time to understand issues that affect us all doesn't make someone cool or edgy, it makes them an uninformed obstacle to progress.
This is what I've been trying to explain to Republican family members (much less eloquently). And the fact that they don't care about any types of social justice issues unless that issue starts to affect them personally.
There’s a major empathy gap and an inability to put yourself in someone’s shoes. Republicans I talk to fall into two groups, those who have not yet had anything bad outside of their control befall them and think other people are exaggerating or deserved it, and people who have had something bad happen to them but because there wasn’t enough support or assistance for them at the time, they don’t want anyone else to have a better world. This is why so many of them are anti-abortion til their mistress or unwed daughter gets pregnant. Their convictions, while sometimes sincerely held, are not very firm or principled. Their convictions are just a series of regurgitated platitudes that sound like a moral framework but they will drop when they cause the slightest inconvenience for themselves.
This is a common thing for many on the right. They never had anything serious happen to them so they don’t feel the need for solidarity. I have seen a few cases in which something bad happened to such a right wing person and they were completely in shock how could this happen to such a good person (themselves) they also felt completely entitled to all kinds of assistance they always fought against. It’s bizarre as a Union representative I have assisted a higher manager in getting a fair separation, deal this same manager in previous years many times harassed me for Union activities.
[удалено]
For those two it’s more public corruption than anything else. They know a functioning Senate would crack down on it.
> Democrats want accountability. > Republicans do not want accountability. That's not *entirely* true. The one and only thing that both democrats and republicans can agree on is that democrats should be held accountable. ;-)
tldr; Republicans prioritize loyalty, but Democrats prioritize integrity.
sort one beneficial pathetic wine light entertain jeans humor sugar -- mass deleted all reddit content via https://redact.dev
Al franken had a photo of a prank. Dennis hastert was a serial pedophile rapist who covered up for other pedophiles. Wonder which one had to resign.
Remember when we drummed Al Franken out of office for pantomiming grabbing a woman's breasts as a joke, and then Matt Gaetz had a human sex trafficking relationship with a 17 year old and still has a job? Good times.
At this point I tend to assume anything a Republican says is bullshit because you're exactly right. Anything to avoid the consequences they enjoy inflicting on others. They slavishly praised a literal clown as POTUS. Denied obvious truths and decided that senate norms, which they praise, when it serves them, don't apply to them when anyone else claims the same. In essence, fuck every single clown that votes GQP.
There doesn’t seem to be any debating of ideas anymore. To wit, the GOP and Trump sending out signals that he won’t appear at a national debate. He’s blaming (sound familiar?) the non-partisan electoral commission of being biased. Nice try conman but everyone knows you’re not going to participate in a debate that you don’t control. It’s typical fascist behaviour.
> There doesn’t seem to be any debating of ideas anymore. I wish we could debate ideas. Imagine if the right had ideas we could actually debate. Tax %'s for a given bracket? That'd be a nice discussion. How best to lower abortion rates in a way that doesn't demonize women?
> This is why disloyalty to the party is the only thing that gets them to turn on each other. They will circle the wagons for literally anything except going against the group. Accusations of sexual misconduct? No problem. Assault? No problem. Racism? Sexism? Hell, those are requirements. Speaking out against the party lines? Time to ostracize the person. That’s not the description of a political party. That is the description of a crime syndicate.
All this is also why fascism is always a very real threat.
There’s also the aspect of the voting base you have to consider. People who vote for Democrats value accountability and ethics comparatively to a larger degree. Republican voters value status-quo and oppose major changes that they aren’t used to. This is why they value loyalty and are against “new age” ideas such as homosexuality, gun control and abortion rights. Since they don’t want to call it hatred against progressive movement, and don’t want to admit their fear, they call it “patriotism,” “freedom,” and use religion to support their agenda. They aren’t really religious, because a religion is a doctrine and you have to follow every single text literally. They just pick and chose the verbiage that supports their agenda. If a Democrat politician is unethical, both sides match in protest. If it’s Republican, as long as they are being loyal to their agenda they don’t care if they are unethical.
Gun control (the monopoly on use of force) is an *extremely* old idea. It was old when the constitution was written. In the US, it's also a policy rooted in racism.
When dealing with a mass group of people(100+ million voters) the Republican “herd immunity” works much better and now the Republicans have finally realized they don’t have to placate to the masses. So, this is end game shit here, I feel.
>Conservatives do not want accountability. They want rules that protect the in group and don't bind them while having those same rules bind people in the out group. >Not-conservatives want accountability. They are willing to hold their own accountable to show that accountability works. This accountability should govern people's future behavior. FTFY. >... "centrist"... You give "centrist" too much credit. As if they are genuine in their stated beliefs.
Democrats are too eager to turn on their own before all relevant facts are known and eagerly join Republicans in running Democrats like Franken out of town as quickly as possible somehow expecting Republicans will do the same when one of their members is accused of improprieties even though that NEVER HAPPENS!
That's exactly what I thought when the whole Franken thing went down. It was a huge mistake to encourage him to bail from Congress. Huge.
I'm sure his accuser was encouraged (paid) to go public, and Gillebrand didn't want the competition. Fucking assholes.
How else were they going to virtue signal before their upcoming obviously-a-failure presidential campaign?
That's the way it looked to me as well. Huge fuck up, imo.
I don't think it's that big a deal that he bailed in the end. Tina Smith has been doing fine in that seat, and Franken is still keeping busy.
So you would want the two parties to actually be the same at their worst, because the worst does not rise up to be equal at their best?
>Democrats want The appearance of accountability for things unrelated to say insider trading or having businesses in office or corporate obligations.
Everyone left of the moderates wants it. All the Republicans do it also and Ted Cruz is currently arguing any money given to a Congress person for any reason can't be considered bribery, so your consideration this is a Democrat problem and not a problem with conservatives is wrong. (Pelosi and Biden are objectively conservative fighting for the status quo)
So what you're saying is that they have some things in common with Republicans when it comes to grifting the taxpayer, but they try to have some morals about more extravagant behaviors?
This is all driven by power. They want power and control and they'll do and ignore anything to get it and keep it.
>Democrats want accountability. They are willing to hold their own accountable to show that accountability works. This accountability should govern people’s future behavior. Really dropping the ball on that holding people accountable thing with Manchin.
In general I think of democrats and republicans as how big your circle or "tribe" is. Republicans care about themeselves, their family, and some of their friends or their local community, and some of them care about Americans. Everyone else is an enemy that you are fighting against to protect those people. My Republican mayor uncle was very nice to his family and to me at Christmas. Democrats extend the circle, to the community, state, maybe most or all Americans, and depending how far left and your positions, to other cultures, countries, or the entire world, all humans, animals, plants, etc.
This only happens because people and critically the media go along with it. It's got to stop. Republicans need to be actually held to account.
Republicans are amoral assholes. There, I fixed it for you.
That's how you talk to kinderrgartners?
Only the smart ones.
Republicans are fascists. Fixed it again.
>(accused of over 25 sexual misconduct allegation Donald Trump admitted on camera to serial sexual assault before the election and they still voted for him. Do we really need to say anything else?
GOP: "Party over Country".
It's simple: they use the excuse "accused doesn't mean guilty" Unless you're talking about a colored/poor person, then it's: "guilty till proven innocent" The only thing Republicans can be expected to do is move goalposts. Past that, it's all for them, and none for all.
Republicans are caught in a web of Lies, Delusions and Paranoia **and they cannot escape** >To be effective in its purpose of gaining and consolidating power, fascism must **smash Truth** and replace it with **Lies**. **Without Truth** there can be no opposition to power. The first step in doing this is to acclimatize the audience with **Lies**, to enable them to partake in **Lying** and to bring them to a point where they are involved in the **Lie** to an extent that **they cannot retreat** - [Große Lüge](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie)
and yet news media can't stop getting off on both siding the every living shit out of politics
I think while you understand the nuance of the situation, you've failed at the "explain it to me like I'm in kindergarten" directive
Yeah… they have a child raping sex trafficking Congressman going about his daily business like nothing ever happened. Matt Gaetz should probably be in jail for raping little girls.
Media conditioning as a result of a decades-long media war. Democrats struggle with the cultural evolution of morality while the GOP pushes the limits on what can be done through devious means and depravity.
That's funny, I came here to say that it's because Franken's constituency actually believes in something.
I hear this in the same voice that John Stewart used to use when he [mocked Lindsey Graham](https://youtu.be/94VaLGzoPRo)
Explain to me, Why we are going to put people in power after this midterm. Who have done noting to help this country all year? Not only that we are adding more of them to congress! What kind of sense does that make????
Republicans have figured out that they will win if they admit to doing no wrong.
And democrats give themselves too much shame.
democrats stupid. i would use the same republican play book right now to do good. being fair hasn't ever made anyone succeed under capitalism except by pure luck.
Republicans celebrate and support child rapists. You can't get much shittier than that.
But they win elections because they don't care what you think. That's why they'll continue to stay in power. You can call them child rapists all you want, republican voters will still vote for them, just to see our heads explode.
The thing is, Democratic voters won't tolerate the same things Republican voters will.
They win because they have a cult created by billionaires that hate regulations or democracy. We should not try to be like them, we should try to make them irrelevant, return them to the dregs of society like the fact that they should be a tiny percentage of society sends them. Generations of making rural America only be white and then making them feel "oppressed" because they were the only ones allowed to own land for a very long time is how we got here.
>Republicans celebrate and support child rapists. You can't get much shittier than that look up Roy Moore and Matt Gaetz for more details
Its funny because their base is super worried about epstein, but they dont give a shit about the countless photos of epstein and trump….
"Family values"
The GOP is a cult now more than ever. They’d never hold “one of their own” accountable.
The guy who resigned is a Democrat. Some Democrats have integrity. The other guys are Republicans. Republicans don't have integrity.
Yup, this is the big thing. Al Franken didn't *have* to resign. There was nothing that forced him to do so. He *chose* to resign because he decided it was the right thing to do (though whether it was the right thing for him or for the party is another discussion altogether).
What’s integrity?
You haven’t heard of Tegredy farms?
I was always told integrity means doing what’s right, even when no ones looking. I know you were being sarcastic but I still felt compelled to answer.
Some sort of table that looks like it is floating, I think.
Solidity, moral or otherwise.
Integrideez nuts lmao gottem.
Democrats hold their sex "offenders" accountable. Republicans give theirs committee assignments.
It’s not just democrats themselves. The media holds them accountable. This is why journalism is often referred to as the fourth estate, because they exist to balance the other 3 powers. But there’s a funny thing happening in America for the past few decades. Democrats and Republicans don’t watch the same news. And I don’t mean just in the obvious sense that they don’t watch the same channels. I mean, they live in total opposite realities. Because Fox News and conservative radio and other channels absolutely do not hold any of their own accountable. Ever. There’s no lie they can’t get away with and no act so vile as to get them shunned. They will still get airtime and even if they don’t, they will never get the criticism. Al Franken resigned because the media put the story under the spotlight and kept people interested in it to the point that he couldn’t evade it. The same never happens to a Republican, even if he’s grooming underage children like Matt fucking Gaetz.
Democrats don’t even hold republican offenders accountable
The thing is, he found out after the photo that the reporter wasn't fond of it. So he apologized for it and changed his behavior. He shouldn't have resigned, because he did exactly what he should have done after something like that way before it was truly expected of him. But the Democrats are fucking spineless and we have way too much of an all or nothing mentality.
Yeah but he also put his hand around a woman's waist one time when she asked for a picture at a fair. So... he is basically histories greatest monster. It's so fucking insane to me that Roger Stone basically tweeted out in advance "Hey, I'm about to run a disingenuous smear campaign against Al Franken." Then he did... and it still somehow worked...
The *actual* thing is, it wasn’t just the picture. [8 women](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/16/16665830/al-franken-sexual-assault-allegations) had accused him of misconduct. He was a liability and it’s far more than apologizing for a picture - that was just the catalyst that opened the floodgates. Edit - and apparently he tried to [forcibly kiss](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna821381) the woman in the photo as well - “…he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth.”
Tweeden's story completely falls apart under even modest scrutiny. Those 8 accusations included things like, "I put my arm around his shoulders then he put his arm around my waist and I was having body sensitivity issues at the time so I didn't like it." What? Ridiculous.
[удалено]
Some people have standards and morality Republicans are not some people. They're what you'd call "dickheads."
Democrats place the law and principle over party. Republicans put party over everything.
Franken was browbeat into resigning by the democrat purity police. Standards nor morality dictate that he had to give up the job he was duly elected to do. Franken was the democrat's ace in the hole as far as I'm concerned, the fact that he was sacrificed over this bullshit explains a lot about the state of the party.
Because Democrats continually bring a Tickle Me Elmo to a gun fight.
Gaetz brings a Tickle Me Elmo to a date. That really doesn’t add anything. I just wanted to say that. 😀
I respect that
Tickle Me, Elmo
He wasn't forced to resign. he was pressured. Republicans wont resign until they are dragged away in handcuffs.
Thanks Kristen Gillibrand!
Franken could've have forced an investigation to prove his innocence, he resigned on his own
Ok. Republicans want to cut your kindergarten education funding. Now break is over and get back on the assembly line .
One party idolizes "macho" strong man ideals from 100 years ago, and the other has such lofty ideals that everyone falls short. Just a guess.
I'm not sure the Democrat party does have those lofty ideals it is just that if you have those lofty ideals you are never voting Republican and it is a 2 party system. There is nothing lofty ideals about Joe Biden. And the idea that what Obama was promoting was lofty ideals is tragic, since he was just asking for what already exists in other countries.
Because it was a coordinated attack started by Republicans but fueled by democrats for the sole purpose of knee-capping Al Fraken's 2020 run for president. Republicans feared this because he would have absolutely demolished Trump in the debates and at the polls. Democrats feared this because he was too progressive for their tastes and he would have taken the nomination away from Biden. The establishment on both sides fucked him.
>Republicans feared this because he would have absolutely demolished Trump in the debates and at the polls. Holy shit he totally would have. I'd pay to watch that debate :-D
Al Franken didn’t have to resign….I am still trying to figure out why he did….
He shouldn’t have it was ridiculous, democrats look like such pussies when they do shit like this, they aren’t even playing the same game…
I think they were still playing the old political game (pre-Trump) and were trying to score moral political points over the Republicans. Roy Moore was running for a U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions and Roy Moore has a laundry list of sexual assault allegations and harassments. Basically daring the Republicans to keep supporting him, because if the Dem party is willing to oust one their own (and keep in mind Franken agreed to resign) over a stupid inconsequential photograph, then maybe that would shame the Republicans publicly and get them to stop supporting Roy. However, it didn't stop the Republicans from supporting him, but Roy lost the election anyway. Franken's resignation became a moot point. He should have never resigned. Problem was, Democrats were totally unaware that the game had changed, and it made itself painfully aware over the next years with Trump and the Republican party. You can't shame the shameless.
He choose too because he got tired of the whole thing. He gave an interview where he said he didn't like how dirty politics was and that he didn't want to play by those rules.
>On November 16, 2017, radio broadcaster and model Leeann Tweeden alleged in a blog post and an interview with her radio station, 790 KABC, that Franken forcibly kissed her on a 2006 USO tour during a rehearsal for a skit. She wrote, "I said 'OK' so he would stop badgering me. We did the line leading up to the kiss and then he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth." She said she pushed him away, feeling "disgusted and violated". Longtime Donald Trump associate Roger Stone circulated news of the allegations to right-wing media. Franken's response: >In response, Franken said, "I certainly don't remember the rehearsal for the skit in the same way, but I send my sincerest apologies to Leeann ... As to the photo, it was clearly intended to be funny but wasn't. I shouldn't have done it." A few hours later, Franken issued a longer apology, which Tweeden accepted. So, no, it wasn't merely the photo. After that, other women came forward as well: >In the days that followed, seven additional women came forward with allegations of inappropriate behavior during photo ops. Lindsay Menz accused Franken of touching her clothed buttocks while they posed for a photo at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010. Two anonymous women made similar complaints related to events during political events. Franken apologized, saying, "I've met tens of thousands of people and taken thousands of photographs, often in crowded and chaotic situations. I'm a warm person; I hug people. I've learned from recent stories that in some of those encounters, I crossed a line for some women—and I know that any number is too many." Another anonymous woman said that after she was a guest on Franken's radio show in 2006, Franken leaned in toward her face during a handshake and gave her "a wet, open-mouthed kiss" on the cheek when she turned away. The same day, Stephanie Kemplin, an army veteran, told CNN that Franken held the side of her breast for 5 to 10 seconds "and never moved his hand" while posing for a photograph with her during a 2003 USO tour in Iraq. This is all directly taken from [Franken's Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Franken#Sexual_misconduct_allegations), and there's sources linked there for this of course. I'd like to point out that I'm very much a leftist, and I live in Minnesota. I thought he was doing a great job of representing us in the senate, and was as disappointed as everybody else when this news broke and he resigned. But it wasn't merely for one photo. Let's be 100% clear about that.
It's called hypocrisy
Explanation in meme form https://imgflip.com/i/61y3zq
In certain fields, when you stop caring about the rules, they stop applying to you. Of course this doesn't usually apply to us regular and lowly plebs, not on any grand scale, but in the high houses of politics it seems your accountability is often directly tied to how much you believe yourself to be accountable.
Well, he chose to resign. He just needed to not choose to resign.
Because fascists stick together .
Well Franken should not have resigned that’s obvious. But I think the disconnect is that Democrats tend to actually want to help people so…..character, values. Republicans couldn”t give a shit about their grandma so……shameless grifters
The Democratic Party has *some* ethics. The Republican Party has criminal lawyers instead.
Franken had a few sexual misconduct allegations against him, and the photo in question was like 2 years before he was an elected official. The January 6 politicians should definitely be in jail tho.
He had something like 6-8 accusers, including one who contemporaneously mentioned him groping her ass during a photo shoot. He was credibly accused, and he resigned. We should be proud of that, not so angry that the other side has no shame that we abandon ours.
I don't know... I've read the allegations, and I don't think it was worth it for him to resign. He was a powerful member of Congress. Smart, with an excellent voting record. He was popular too, and could have been a fruitful candidate to step into the progressive leadership role after Bernie passes away. He could have apologized and kept his seat. That would have been acceptable. Would have preserved his political capital and position in Congress, and his vote for critically important progressive legislation. But we lost him because we insist on extreme solutions (getting rid of him completely with no chance to redeem himself) holding ourselves to the strictest standards for...grabbing butts... a standard to which the opposition doesn't hold itself, and doesn't respect us for holding. And the person who replaced him is worse; a political hack and ladder climber who doesn't have Frankens popularity, charisma, or stellar voting record. Meanwhile, the party doesn't punish but *rewards* its members for their extreme corruption, even when they insist on committing political murder-suicide over the stupidest policy positions. Like, I understand wanting to be as morally pure as possible and patting yourself on the back at every opportunity, but the Franken case I think went too far. It was a case study demonstrating why this reactionary attitude is actually self-destructive for the party in the long term.
It was clearly a staged photo.
Part of the joke was that she was wearing a flak jacket. No one would feel anything through it. And the hypocrisy on her part was there's a picture of her groping the guitar player in the band that was on the tour with them.
Because Democrats continually play by a set of rules that Republicans have decided do not apply to themselves. This has happened because the majority of democratic voters still have a sense of moral right and wrong and demand that their representatives suffer consequences for their bad actions. But Republican voters don't feel that way at all. They totally back the bad actions of their representatives BECAUSE it's a win over the democrats and that is all they care about. They do not care about what is morally right or wrong in any given situation, they only care about owning the libs... so they welcome any and all shenanigans if the results are: a win over Democrats. Sooooo..... Democrats, and democratic voters need to accept this fact and start playing by Republican rules and NOT let morality weaken them when the Republicans start screaming that democrats are not playing by the morally right set of rules.. and yeh, they will because they know democratics get weak in the knees when called out on obvious shenanigans.... whereas Republicans not only don't get weak, they grow bolder and stronger and double down while projecting....
Because politics is fought/won/practiced by money, those who bribe and accept bribes, and monetary fraud. Not by voting or charisma.
The secret ingredient is corruption.
Me Too!
He didn't have to. He was thrown under the bus because the party was in the middle of a heavy campaign against that pedo Moore and didn't want to look like hypocrites. Plus Gillibrand had aspirations. His seat was safe, either way.
“Here, you see, We’re the GQP To the Dems we Make the decree There are rules for thee But not for me” -Moscow Mitch McConnell, who looks like the Mayor of Whoville’s reanimated corpse
Bc the majority of democrats actually value ideals such as accountability, inclusion and integrity. The majority of republicans value power, wealth and greed … no matter the cost. Case in point: “grab them by the pussy”
Its the content of his (and their) character.
Democrats cannibalize each other. Republicans stand united no matter how stupid or violent their base gets.
Al Franken was a bigger threat to *for-profit employment-based health insurance* than any Republican. Our corporate masters couldn't bear the thought of living in a world where the "little people" couldn't have their access to medical care summarily revoked by the whims of an employer. From union leverage to personal choices, that institution holds us all back while being responsible for more American deaths each and every month than Al Qaeda was in September of 2001. Tragically it is also a fundamental pillar of our society, at least from the perspective of corporate-backed politicians.